Articles

In ancient Egypt, if a woman were having difficulty conceiving a child, she might spend an evening in a Bes Chamber (also known as an incubation chamber) located within a temple. Bes was the god of childbirth, sexuality, fertility, among...

The Regolini-Galassi Tomb is located in the Etruscan town of Cerveteri (aka Cisra or Caere) near the western coast of central Italy, around 50 km north of Rome. Cerveteri flourished between the 7th and 4th century BCE and has hundreds of...

A famous story from Greece relates how a young woman named Agnodice wished to become a doctor in Athens but found this forbidden. In fact, a woman practicing medicine in Athens in the 4th century BCE faced the death penalty. Refusing to give...

Medicine in ancient Egypt was understood as a combination of practical technique and magical incantation and ritual. Although physical injury was usually addressed pragmatically through bandages, splints, and salves, even the broken bones...

The ancient Egyptians experienced the same wide array of disease that people do in the present day, but unlike most people in the modern era, they attributed the experience to supernatural causes. The common cold, for example, was prevalent...

The clothing of the ancient Etruscans, a civilization which flourished in central Italy between the 8th and 3rd century BCE, can be seen in many media of their art including wall paintings, bronze sculpture, stone relief carvings, and painted...

In Europe, in the 19th century CE, an interesting device began appearing in graveyards and cemeteries: the mortsafe. This was an iron cage erected over a grave to keep the body of the deceased safe from 'resurrectionists' - better known as...

The social organisation of the ancient Etruscans, a civilization which flourished in central Italy between the 8th and 3rd century BCE, can only be pieced together from a collection of rather unsatisfactory sources which, unfortunately, do...

The practice of mummifying the dead began in ancient Egypt c. 3500 BCE. The English word mummy comes from the Latin mumia which is derived from the Persian mum meaning 'wax' and refers to an embalmed corpse which was wax-like. The idea of...

Religion in ancient Egypt was fully integrated into the people's daily lives. The gods were present at one's birth, throughout one's life, in the transition from earthly life to the eternal, and continued their care for the soul in the afterlife...