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In around 1485 or 1486, Florentine artist Sandro Botticelli came up with probably his most famous painting, the "Birth of Venus." Botticelli’s choice of subject was nothing new. Venus and her equivalents, including the Greek Aphrodite and the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, are among the most common figures depicted in art. Archaeologists dub one of the oldest of all sculptures, the “Venus of Willendorf,” on the assumption that this 25,000-year-old work was intended to represent a Stone Age fertility goddess similar to the Venus of later tradition. In virtually all civilizations, a Venus equivalent plays a prominent role in myth, legend...

You would think that 12 miles inland from the Mediterranean Sea is the last place to find a dolphin clutching a fish between its jaws. Hewn from marble, the 2,000-or-so-year-old statuette surfaced during archaeological excavations near Kibbutz Magen, bordering the Gaza Strip, in March of this year. The discovery of the dolphin statue amid the ruins of a late Byzantine and early Islamic site in the northern Negev was only announced this week by Israel's Antiquities Authority. Alexander Fraiberg, head archaeologist with the IAA team, said he believes the sculpture dates to the Roman era, but was incorporated into a...

In a recent meeting of the Board of Education in the city of Artichoke, Alabama, it was decided to ban the reading of Homer's Illiad and Odyssey in the classroom. The grounds given for the exclusion of these towering masterpieces of ancient literature is that reading them in a public school violated the first amendment's guarantee of the separation of church and state. Wallace Nobrainer, the attorney for the Artichoke school system, explained that "the Homeric texts are obviously designed to promote the polytheistic view of the Greeks," and hence they should be looked upon in the same light as...

Buried under soil for hundreds of years, the goddess of love and beauty has some chipping on her nose and face. Researchers think her presence could shed light on the extent of the Roman Empire's wide cultural influence at the time of its peak. Archaeologists found the sculpture while working at a site called Antiochia ad Cragum (Antioch on the cliffs), on the Mediterranean coast. The researchers believe the region, which is dotted with hidden inlets and coves, would have been a haven for Cilician pirates — the same group who kidnapped Julius Caesar and held him for ransom around...

One of the most complete descriptions of a ship from antiquity is that described by the Greek writer Athenaeus. Writing in the second century ce, but basing his account on more contemporary descriptions (now lost), he described a huge grain ship built by Hieron II, king of Syracuse from 269 to 215 bce. Lionel Casson considers this to be the largest ship built in antiquity... There were cabins for 142 first-class passengers on the second deck in addition to accommodations for steerage, the lower deck being reserved for cargo and the upper deck for soldiers, said to number 400. The...

Kingship of Christ, Queenship of Mary in Scripture Far back in the dim mists of ancient times, so far back, that we are not even certain of the century, in the strange land of Egypt, which thought gods had human bodies but animal heads, there lay dying the last of the great three Patriarchs, Jacob. His son, sold into slavery by his brothers for 20 pieces of silver, had by divine inspiration risen to be Vizier, second in power in all the land. The great Pharaoh - whose name we know not - had invited him to bring his father...

Cretan excavation sheds light on Dark Ages of Greek historyFinds from ancient Eleutherna at Cycladic Museum A marble statue of Aphrodite, from a second- to first-century-BC bathhouse in Eleutherna. By Nicholas Paphitis - Kathimerini English Edition On a narrow spur under the shadow of Mount Ida in central Crete, archaeologists for the past 20 years have been excavating a town that flourished from the Dark Ages of Greece’s early history until Medieval times. The Eleutherna project, a systematic dig carried out by a three-pronged team of top archaeologists from the University of Crete, is in itself unusual in a country...