Temple Articles

The temple was an important physical and ceremonial structure in any Roman city. Originally a gathering place (a templum), the temple evolved into a place for people to gather, to worship gods and deified emperors, and to perform ceremonial sacrifices and rites. The temples of the Forum Romanum, particularly from the period of the Roman Republic (509 &ndash... [continue reading]

The Enuma Elish (also known as The Seven Tablets of Creation) is the Mesopotamian creation myth whose title is derived from the opening lines of the piece, `When on High'.  All of the tablets containing the myth, found at Ashur, Kish, Ashurbanipal's library at Nineveh, Sultantepe, and other excavated sites, date to c. 1100 BCE but their colophons... [continue reading]

Located in modern Turkey, Göbekli Tepe is one of the most important archaeological sites in the world. The discovery of this stunning 10,000 year old site in the 1990s sent shock waves through the archaeological world and beyond, with some researchers even claiming it was the site of the biblical Garden of Eden. The many examples of sculptures... [continue reading]

The temples built in the Forum Romanum during the Imperial era (27 B.C. – A.D. 476) were largely built to commemorate mortal men who had been deified after death. These were usually Emperors of Rome who had been particularly influential and popular. Temple of Caesar – Built in honor of Julius Caesar by Augustus in 29 B.C., this temple stood... [continue reading]

  Abacus - a large slab placed above the column capital to support the architrave or an arch placed above it. Akroterion - a decorative piece added to the roof of a temple at the apex and corners, usually made of clay or bronze and often in the form of a palm or statue, for example of Nike. Adyton - the most sacred inner... [continue reading]

Her name echoes down the corridors, in classrooms and in books, Christiane Desroches Noblecourt was a great French Egyptologist and, in the opinion of the writer, a woman strong and determined enough to have been the first female to direct an excavation in 1938 and afterwards, in 1960, possibly the most epic archaeological undertaking of all time... [continue reading]

The Mayan religious text, the Popol Vuh (known by many names, among them, The Light That Came From Beside The Sea) is the story of creation written down in the early 18th century by the Spanish priest Francisco Ximenez from much older tales. As most of the books of the Maya were burned by the Bishop of the Yucatan, Diego de Landa, in July of 1562, this... [continue reading]

The pantheon of the Maya is a vast collection of deities who were worshipped throughout the region which, today, comprises Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Tabasco, and Chiapas in Mexico and southward through Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. Not all of the gods were venerated in all of the city-states of the Maya (at least, not by the same... [continue reading]

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, as first recorded by Philo of Byzantium in 225 BCE in his work, `On The Seven Wonders’, were: The Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt; The Hanging Gardens of Babylon; The Statue of Zeus at Olympia, Greece; The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus; The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus; The Colossus of Rhodes and the Lighthouse... [continue reading]