Minerva Magazine 202
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Making a splash
How did water go from being something to fear to a place of privilege in Greece and Rome? Karen Eva Carr plunges into the cultural history of swimming.
Secrets of their craft
Many metalworkers and ceramicists in Renaissance Europe seemingly had no qualms about killing a lizard – or other animal – for their art. Pamela Smith investigates the intriguing practice of life-casting that turned nature into art, and why artisan authors recorded practical knowledge in words.
Professor Lukas Nickel on the Terracotta Army’s cultural connections
While studying the Terracotta Warriors in the tomb of China’s first emperor, Professor Lukas Nickel of the University of Vienna came to some interesting conclusions about links between China and the Hellenistic World, as he explains to Dalu Jones
Ancient America: following the Thunderbird
Well-known for his television programmes on the archaeology of South America, curator Dr Jago Cooper now focuses on the ancient cultures of the northwest coast of North America in his new exhibition at the British Museum, as he tells Diana Bentley
A stitch in time: masterpieces of English medieval embroidery
Jenny Davenport marvels at all the astoundingly intricate works of medieval English embroidery in Opus Anglicanum, a major exhibition currently on show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London
Memories of Antiquity: the ancient world through medieval eyes
Dominic Green gives us a preview of an exhibition about to open at the Getty Center in Los Angeles that shows us how the ancient world was viewed through medieval eyes
Patrick Leigh Fermor: paddy power
Dominic Green leads a tour travelling in the footsteps of the accomplished writer, scholar and soldier Patrick Leigh Fermor around Southern Greece
Isis in Italy
Dalu Jones follows on the trail of the Ancient Egyptian goddess to Pompeii, Naples and Turin
Leading a life of luxury
Dominic Green reports on what the discovery of fragments of Aegean-style frescoes and an extensive wine cellar can tell us about life in the Bronze Age palace being excavated at the Tel Kabri site in the Galilee region of Israel
Democracy in Athens: power to the people?
Paul Cartledge, who has written the biography of the revolutionary idea of democracy, explains how it was practised in ancient Athens where it originated.
A colourful past: the art and science of illuminated manuscripts
One of the ways that the Fitzwilliam Museum is celebrating its 200th anniversary is by the staging of a splendid exhibition of illuminated manuscripts at the end of July – a very fitting tribute to its founder, reports Theresa Thompson