The arabian nights: Did you mean...?

Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) was an Italian composer best known for his operas La Bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot. Puccini drew inspiration from a wide range of literary sources, and his late Romantic music with its immortal...

Freya Stark (l. 1893-1993) was an English explorer, writer, and political influencer who chronicled world events, especially in the Near East, throughout the 20th century. Stark both reported on and made the news as her travels, described...

The life of wealthy Romans was filled with exotic luxuries such as cinnamon, myrrh, pepper, or silk acquired through long-distance international trade. Goods from the Far East arrived in Rome through two corridors – the Red Sea and the Persian...

Caesarea Maritima, the city Herod the Great (r. 37-4 BCE) built for Rome on the southeastern coast of the Mediterranean served as the Roman Empire's powerbase of operations both commercially and militarily. With Rome's ultimate goal of adding...

In June of 323 BCE, Alexander the Great (r. 336-323 BCE) died in Babylon. His sudden death before his 33rd birthday has long been a point of speculation: was it disease, old wounds, or murder? Regardless of the cause, history ranks him as...

The Prophecy of Bear Man is a war story from the Cheyenne nation relating their response to a Pawnee horse-raiding party and how they defeated their enemy, regaining most of the horses taken. The story exemplifies Native American warfare...

The Song of Everlasting Sorrow is a narrative poem of the Tang Dynasty (618-907 CE) inspired by the love affair between Xuanzong (r. 712-756 CE), the seventh emperor of the dynasty, and his consort Lady Yang. It was written by the Chinese...

The desert campaigns in North Africa during the Second World War (1939-45) provided soldiers on all sides with a set of particular challenges. Scorching day temperatures, freezing night temperatures, sand and flies getting everywhere, the...

Gilgamesh, Enkidu, and the Netherworld is a Sumerian poem pre-dating The Epic of Gilgamesh and featuring its central characters. It is sometimes included in modern-day translations as Book 12 but is usually omitted as it does not fit the...

Sometimes it is the smallest discoveries that have the largest impact. When Alexandra Kleinerman and Alhena Gadotti found a new fragment of the Epic of Gilgamesh in 2015 CE, it did not seem to be particularly impressive. The broken tablet...