The ancient world was full of strange creatures and legends, the most famous being the Blemmyes. Historians like Pliny the Elder and Herodotus chronicled the supposed existence of these 'headless' ...

Hair-covered blemmyes, symbols of greed and gluttony—two of the seven Catholic deadly sins. Gothic fresco from the church of Dalbyneder, Denmark (1511). Credit: Malene Thyssen / Wikimedia Commons ...

Master of the Geneva Boccaccio, "Thrace and Traponee (Sri Lanka)," in the Book of the Marvels of the World (Angers, France, c. 1460–65); Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum (all photos Natalie ...

A shrine unearthed in the ancient Egyptian seaport of Berenike, on the Red Sea coast, has revealed evidence of unique new ritual practices. The religious structure — dubbed the “Falcon Shrine” by ...

In 1492, when Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic Ocean in search of a fast route to East Asia and the southwest Pacific, he landed in a place that was unknown to him. There he found treasures – ...

Researchers recently published new findings from the excavations of the Berenike site, a Greco-Roman seaport in the Egyptian Eastern desert. The study results describes the excavation of a religious ...

The ancient Romans were passionate about emeralds. As the Roman writer Pliny the Elder declared in his first-century C.E. Natural History, “[T]here is no stone, the color of which is more delightful ...