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Reclining fig

A painter’s paradise: the life of John Craxton

The artist John Craxton had a close relationship with archaeology. It began in his early years in England, where he encountered excavations of Roman mosaics, medieval churches, and an idiosyncratic museum. But, above all, it was the art of Greece that he longed for, as Ian Collins explains.

Domitian

Domitian: dominus et deus

Are bad Roman emperors really that different from good Roman emperors? Nathalie de Haan and Eric M Moormann look at the case of Domitian, an accomplished military man and prolific builder who emulated Augustus but was reviled as a new Nero.

Eurasian Steppe

The Eurasian Steppe: People, Movement, ideas

The Eurasian Steppe: People, Movement, Ideas is an ambitious scholarly volume tracing the origins of the European identity in the Eurasian steppe, the vast expanse of land that stretches from Hungary through to the Ural Mountains and China. Covering a…

How to be a farmer

Words of wisdom: ‘Give to him who gives’

For the man who gives willingly, even if he gives much, rejoices in the gift and feels glad in his heart. The man who takes for himself, observing no sense of shame, even if it involves a small amount, hardens the heart.

BELOW The iconic pylon (gateway) of Luxor temple marked the transition of the processional way associated with the Opet festival and the beginning of the temple.

Luxor temple: where kings become gods

After coronation, the new pharaoh would head to the temple at Luxor to assume the royal ka that flowed from the gods Horus and Re all the way down Egypt’s line of rulers. Nigel Fletcher-Jones takes us on a procession through this all-important site, developed by kings strengthening their claims to divine ka.

Sutton Hoo, 1939

Shown here is one of Wagstaff’s images, with the ghostly outline of the ship, whose planks had eroded in the acidic soil, clearly visible. In the foreground, Basil Brown (wearing a hat) works in the ship.

The First Ghosts: Most Ancient of Legacies

Ancient Mesopotamian literature, written in cuneiform from around 3000 BC, is haunted by omens and ghosts. Most of the sources on ghosts come from the 1st millennium BC, written in Akkadian, but some texts and ideas hark back to even…

Kallos

Kallos: eternal beauty

What did kallos mean to the Greeks? As the Museum of Cycladic Art explores this concept, Lucia Marchini talks to Nikolaos Stampolidis to uncover divine, mortal, and internal beauty in the Greek world.

Above Mantle depicting ancestors with feline mouth masks and holding severed heads. Cotton and camelid fibres; early Nasca, 100 BC AD 100. Size: 142cm x 286cm

Peru: the hills are alive

For some ancient Peruvian societies, the past and the future were alive, as were the dramatic landscapes they lived in. Lucia Marchini speaks to Cecilia Pardo, Jago Cooper, and Tom Cummins to find out more about how these concepts permeated the art of the Andes.

Homer: The Very Idea

Some time in the 8th century BC, with the Greek alphabet just decades old, two monumental poems, the Iliad and Odyssey, were committed to writing and so became the first great works of Western literature. We call their author Homer,…