Other News

Art

Prado Museum Madrid Favorites

By P. F. Sommerfeldt –  A day at the National Prado Museum in Madrid is never enough, but there are always my landmark works of art to see when there. More Titians than one can easily count, and the Velazquez portraits are a Spanish Baroque force majeur, and the Goya […]

Artifacts of Material History Controversies

Possible Chinese Silk in Bronze Age or Iron Age Jericho: the “Babylonish” Garment from Shin’ar in Joshua 7 ?

By Patrick Hunt –  One of the more intriguing passages of the Hebrew Bible, Joshua 7: 10-23 & ff. describes the sin of Achan and his “accursed” secret purloined material spoliation after the taking of Jericho by the Israelites, a narrative with controversial historicity. Regardless of when it can be […]

Philosophy

Humanitas

By Walter Borden, M.D. – Before the beginning there was mythology, mysticism, a miasma of beliefs.  Might was right, savagery ruled.  It was truly dark. Then, in the 6th century BCE, a burst of light, a blossoming, a cultural epiphany, the birth of the first Enlightenment in classical Greece.  The light was the […]

Archaeologia

Temple of Zeus at Aizanoi, Turkey

By Jess Taylor – In late summer 2007 we decided to drive due south from Istanbul to Antalya. On day three, driving deep into central Turkey from Iznik – the modern name for ancient Nicaea but later famous for its Iznik ware porcelain in the Ottoman period – we detoured […]

Reviews

Vikings Renavigated in RIVER KINGS Book – A Review

By Patrick Hunt – Vikings continue to be a magnetic topic, especially in light of new discoveries of ships, burials and sites that enable us to concentrate more on their far-flung commercial savvy and technology than the weary and skewed caricature of merely violent rapacity.  Anyone who has been to […]

Reviews

Madeline Miller’s CIRCE : A Review

By P. F. Sommerfeldt – I’ve always found the Homeric sorceress Circe in the Odyssey to be fascinating in her power that transcends the feminism of any era. Having looked at many artists over five hundred years in their attempts to depict Circe, I was generally frustrated with nearly all […]