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The striking turquoise mask now in the British Museum in London is thought to represent Xiuhtecuhtli, the Aztec god of fire, and dates to the final century of the Aztec empire, c. 1400-1521 CE. It is made from hundreds of small pieces of...

The New Fire Ceremony, also known as the Binding of the Years Ceremony, was a ritual held every 52 years in the month of November on the completion of a full cycle of the Aztec solar year (xiuhmopilli). The purpose of it was none other than...

Justinian I reigned as emperor of the Byzantine Empire from 527 to 565 CE. Born around 482 CE in Tauresium, a village in Illyria, his uncle Emperor Justin I was an imperial bodyguard who reached the throne on the death of Anastasius in 518...

The Quran (also written Qur’an or Koran), revealed in the 7th century, is the sacred book of Islam, following in the tradition of the Abrahamic faiths, with the Torah as the sacred book of Judaism and the New Testament as the sacred book...

Saint Boniface (born as Wynfreth, l. 672-754) is one of the most famous saints in the Netherlands. He helped Pope Gregory II (r. 715-731), who was keen to convert pagan Germanic tribes, to achieve his goal, the Christianization of Europe...

The pantheon of the Maya is a vast collection of deities worshipped throughout the regions of Yucatan, Quintana Roo, Campeche, Tabasco, and Chiapas in Mexico and southward through Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras. These gods informed...

Libraries were a feature of larger cities across the ancient world with famous examples being those at Alexandria, Athens, Constantinople, Ephesus, and Nineveh. Rarely ever lending libraries, they were typically designed for visiting scholars...

Scandinavians from the island of Gotland began to spread throughout the Baltic region along the Russian rivers in the 700s. While the Vikings of Norway and Denmark from the 8th to 11th centuries are widely recognized as fearsome raiders and...

Eusebius Pamphili (aka Eusebius of Caesarea, 260-340 CE) was a Christian historian, exegete, and polemicist. He became the bishop of Caesarea Maritima in 314 CE and served as court bishop during the reign of Constantine I (r. 306-337 CE...

A depiction of the Aztec god of war and the sun Huitzilopochtli. The god carries his typical atl-atl or spear-thrower, feathered arrows and shield and wears hummingbird feathers. (Codex Barbonicus).