Gold in antiquity: Did you mean...?

An oil painting dating to c. 1545 CE illustrating the 'Field of the Cloth of Gold', a magnificent pageant held near Calais in June 1520 CE as a show of friendship between Henry VIII of England (r. 1509-1547 CE) and Francis I of France (r...

Georgia, lying at the junction of Europe and Asia, is a country of ancient myths with a rich and turbulent history. Home to the first European hominids and the birthplace of wine, Georgia's roots trace back to ancient civilisations. Throughout...

The monumental statue of Zeus at Olympia in Greece was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Created in the 430s BCE under the supervision of the master Greek sculptor Phidias, the huge ivory and gold statue was bigger even than...

The Lambayeque civilization (aka Sicán) flourished between c. 750 and c. 1375 CE on the northern coast of Peru, straddling the Middle Horizon and Late Intermediate Period of the ancient Central Andes. Prodigious producers of art objects...

The English historian Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) wrote and published his seminal work History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire between 1776 and 1788. The dominant theme of Gibbon's six-volume work is that the fall of the Roman Empire...

Bowl, gold. c. 1100 BCE. Zurich-Altstetten. Canton of Zurich. With images of stags and does grazing under round suns and crescent moons, this heavy vessel made of pure gold depicts both heaven and earth. It was buried by a farming community...

A gold bangle from the Hoxne Hoard, Suffolk, 4th-5th century. The British Museum, London. The Hoxne Hoard was discovered in Suffolk, in the east of England in 1992. The incredible collection contains 14,865 late-4th- and early-5th-century...

Antisemitism is a modern term that describes prejudice and hostility to Jews and Judaism. The origins of Christian antisemitism in the gospels are based on the story of a 1st-century itinerant Jewish preacher, Jesus of Nazareth, in the Roman...

Parthian art flourished within the Eurasian cultural corridor from the late hundreds BCE to the early 1st and 2nd centuries CE. With the Parthian Empire (247 BCE - 224 CE) stretching from India and China in the east to the Mediterranean shores...

Mystery cults, or mystery religions, were ancient religious associations characterized by secrecy and initiation rites. They typically surrounded one primary deity, but some mystery cults venerated multiple deities in their rites. Members...