The seven wonders of the ancient world: Did you mean...?

Daily life in ancient China changed through the centuries but reflected the values of the presence of gods and one's ancestors in almost every time period. Villages like Banpo show evidence of a matriarchal society, where...

The question of what happens after death has been addressed by religious beliefs and philosophies of every world culture throughout recorded history and ancient Egypt is famous for its own response to the mysteries...

Monsters as forces of chaos are popular figures in world mythology so stick around for a glimpse of the terrifying monsters from mythology and folklore from around the world. Monsters and...

Ancient History Encyclopedia has over 100 articles on UNESCO World Heritage sites, and in this collection, we look at just a few of them. The selection of sites, some well-known and others much less so, represents...

Unlike the rich corpus of ancient Egyptian funerary texts, no such “guidebooks” from Mesopotamia detail the afterlife and the soul's fate after death. Instead, ancient Mesopotamian views of the afterlife...

Magic was an integral aspect of life in ancient Egypt. The world was created through the power of heka (magic) as Atum stood on the primordial mound of the ben-ben in the middle of the endless waters...

Ishtar (Inanna in Sumerian sources) is a primary Mesopotamian goddess closely associated with love and war. This powerful Mesopotamian goddess is the first known deity for which we have written evidence. While largely unknown in the modern...

To the ancient Egyptians, death was not the end of life but only the beginning of the next phase in an individual's eternal journey. There was no word in ancient Egyptian which corresponds to the concept of "death" as usually...

Festivals in ancient Mesopotamia honored the patron deity of a city-state or the primary god of the city that controlled a region or empire. The earliest, the Akitu festival, was first...

The Nebra Sky Disk is one of the most fascinating, and some would say controversial, archaeological finds of recent years. Dated to 1600 BCE, this bronze disk has a diameter of 32cm (about the size of a...