In classical antiquity, writers such as Herodotus, Plato, Xenophon, Athenaeus and many others explored aspects of homosexuality in Greek society.The most widespread and socially significant form of same-sex sexual relations in ancient Greece amongst elite circles was between adult men and pubescent or adolescent boys, known as pederasty (marriages in Ancient Greece between …

The statue of Laocoön and His Sons, also called the Laocoön Group (Italian: Gruppo del Laocoonte), has been one of the most famous ancient sculptures ever since it was excavated in Rome in 1506 and placed on public display in the Vatican Museums, where it remains. It is very likely the same statue that was praised in the highest terms by the main Roman writer on art, …

Gandhara’s first recorded civilization was the Grave Culture that emerged c. 1400 BCE and lasted until 800 BCE, and named for their distinct funerary practices. It was found along the Middle Swat River course, even though earlier research considered it to be expanded to the Valleys of Dir , Kunar , Chitral , and Peshawar . [29]

Aegean civilization is a general term for the Bronze Age civilizations of Greece around the Aegean Sea.There are three distinct but communicating and interacting geographic regions covered by this term: Crete, the Cyclades and the Greek mainland. Crete is associated with the Minoan civilization from the Early Bronze Age. The Cycladic civilization converges with the …

Ptolemaic pharaohs were crowned by the Egyptian high priest of Ptah at Memphis, but resided in the multicultural and largely Greek city of Alexandria, established by Alexander the Great of Macedon. They spoke Greek and governed Egypt as Hellenistic Greek monarchs, refusing to learn the native Egyptian language. In contrast, Cleopatra could speak multiple languages by …

Tritheism (from Greek τριθεΐα, "three divinity") is a nontrinitarian Christian heresy in which the unity of the Trinity and thus monotheism are denied. It represents more a "possible deviation" than any actual school of thought positing three separate deities. It was usually "little more than a hostile label" applied to those who emphasized the individuality of each hypostasis or divine ...

The sculpture of ancient Greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient Greek art as, with the exception of painted ancient Greek pottery, almost no ancient Greek painting survives. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumental sculpture in bronze and stone: the Archaic (from about 650 to 480 BC), Classical (480–323) and Hellenistic.

The Minoan civilization was a Bronze Age Aegean civilization on the island of Crete and other Aegean Islands, whose earliest beginnings were from c. 3500 BC, with the complex urban civilization beginning around 2000 BC, and then declining from c. 1450 BC until it ended around 1100 BC, during the early Greek Dark Ages, part of a wider bronze age collapse around the …

Human history, also called world history, is the narrative of humanity's past. It is understood and studied through anthropology, archaeology, genetics, and linguistics.Since the invention of writing, human history has been studied through primary and secondary source documents.. Humanity's written history was preceded by its prehistory, beginning with the Paleolithic ("Old Stone Age") …

Raqqa (Arabic: ٱلرَّقَّة, romanized: ar-Raqqah, also Raqa and Rakka) is a city in Syria on the northeast bank of the Euphrates River, about 160 kilometres (99 miles) east of Aleppo.It is located 40 kilometres (25 miles) east of the Tabqa Dam, Syria's largest dam.The Hellenistic, Roman, and Byzantine city and bishopric Callinicum (formerly a Latin and now a Maronite Catholic titular ...

A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance.The curves are typically circular in shape, lending a semi-cylindrical appearance to the total design. The barrel vault is the simplest form of a vault: …

An empire is a "political unit" made up of several territories and peoples, "usually created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries". The center of the empire (sometimes referred to as the metropole) exercises political control over the peripheries. Within an empire, there is non-equivalence between different populations who have different …

Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer OM (German: [ˈalbɛʁt ˈʃvaɪ̯t͡sɐ] (); 14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was an Alsatian-German/French polymath.He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. A Lutheran minister, Schweitzer challenged both the secular view of Jesus as depicted by the historical-critical method current …

The zodiac is a belt-shaped region of the sky that extends approximately 8° north or south (as measured in celestial latitude) of the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun across the celestial sphere over the course of the year. The paths of the Moon and visible planets are within the belt of the zodiac.. In Western astrology, and formerly astronomy, the zodiac is divided into twelve …