Decisive History @DecisiveHist

@visualsancients Congrats on baby #2!

@visualsancients @DrDavidMiano The details in person are amazing and the eye is piercing. Was this the representative ram in the thicket that saved Issac?

The temple of Apollo at Corinth. Built c. 540 BC, it was one of the few remains of the Greek city to survive the Roman sack of 146 BC. Corinth had been a wealthy city, and many of its treasures were carried off to Rome. The city was refounded by Caesar in 44 BC.

1/5 Carved three and a half millennia ago from a piece of black steatite, this bull-head rhyton is today one of the symbols of the Minoan civilization. It's an image replicated in books and souvenirs everywhere. Let's see this marvel of ancient art in 8 close-up📸.

1/ The Spartans were not the indigenous inhabitants of the Eurotas valley, but were a component of the Dorian migrations that took place during the 11th century BC, when population groups living on the periphery of the former Mycenaean world set out from their original cradles 👉

Today we remember the Fall Of Constantinople! It was no ordinary city - it was New Rome, the city of Constantine, the Queen of Cities. It was the center of an ancient civilization, the capital, and the beacon of the Roman world! On May 29, 1453 it fell, conquered by the Turks!

ShadowsOfConstantinople @RomeInTheEast

2 months ago

On May 29, 1453 the Ottomans were amassing - they were to make history and be the first army to go through the Theodosian walls into the ancient capital of the Roman Empire. In a story to be told for eternity, Constantinople was about to fall, but not without a fight! 🧵🧵

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The "almond-shaped eyes, face-framing ringlets, and faint smile" reveal Greek Archaic period influence. Similarly, the curly beard and bulky hair over the neck recall Assyrian royal iconography, as in this bas-relief of Ashurnasirpal II (883-859 BC) at the Brooklyn Museum.

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Visuals of the Ancients @visualsancients

2 months ago

1/4 Sitting at the crossroads of the Eastern Mediterranean, Cyprus offers a fascinating panorama of ancient art. Displayed at The Art Institute of Chicago, here's the head of a bearded Cypriot man from the 5th century BC. Let's explore its different angles. 📸 by me.

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1️⃣ Perati was founded during the period of the fall of the Mycenaean palaces (1190 BC) by people associated with the old regime who arrived there as refugees looking for a safe place near the sea (it is believed that they came from the Peloponnese and Attica).

Jorrit Kelder @Jorrit_Kelder

2 months ago

Perati on the east coast of Attica. Near Eastern and Cypriote objects, as well as very pretty pottery from these tombs suggest some communities thrived after the destruction of the palaces. Where this community lived remains murky: perhaps on a nearby islet in the nearby bay.

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1/ During the 8th century BC, the Assyrians, under the leadership of powerful kings, expanded their rule in Syro-Palestine, seeking direct access to the harbors of the Mediterranean and mainly control of the rich Phoenician cities (access to precious metals, timber, fabrics).

"As men of reason we scoff at it; as men of business we fear it; as men of religion and good will we loathe it; and as artists we love it... Our response to the sudden fact of war is a response of thrilled emotion, an aesthetic delight, a self-yielding to some dark allurement more powerful than all reason and contemptuous of all expediency... At last, at last we are living deep... It is not the ape and tiger in us that leap to the call of war, but the poet." Ernest Raymond

Visuals of the Ancients @visualsancients

2 months ago

1/3 Dating to c. 330 BC, this amazingly well-preserved set of bronze armor belonged to the burial of a wealthy mounted warrior from the southern Italian region of Apulia, in what was at the time Magna Graecia.

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The Story of Thermopylae told by excerpts from Herodotus 🧵 x.com/DecisiveHist/s…

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57 years ago

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1/ During the Mycenaean era, Epidaurus was an important agricultural and trade center (harbour), integrated into the network of influence of Mycenae and constituting a sea gateway of the Argolic palatial centers towards the Argosaronic Gulf and more broadly towards the Aegean.

Jorrit Kelder @Jorrit_Kelder

2 months ago

The small theatre of Epidauros. Less famous than its bigger brother near the Asclepion, it was first built in the Classical period and modified in Roman times. The Classical city covered a small peninsula, with a scatter of buildings -including a submerged Roman villa- nearby. 🤿

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Restoration work has begun at the Ziggurat of Ur in Iraq's Dhi Qar province, as archaeologists race to protect the ancient Sumerian site from climate-linked erosion reut.rs/4wq4XFQ

@HistoriaJack Congrats!

This comparison between the ancient Roman and Sumerian columns made me think of Ennigaldi-Nanna (547 – 500 BC). She was the high priestess of the moon-God Sin in the Mesopotamian city of Ur and the daughter of Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian empire, making her also a princess. But there were many princesses and queens in the ancient world. That's not why she is special. She was, perhaps, the first museum curator in the world. Yes, two thousand five hundred years ago, Ennigaldi-Nanna founded a museum with artifacts from almost two thousand years before her. Mesopotamia is indeed an ancient land. Among those objects was, for example, a statuette of Shulgi,* the second king of the Third Dynasty of Ur (2094–2046 BC), and a Kassite boundary stele (kudurru). The objects had labels in three languages describing their History. Same as with a modern museum. It is even possible that Ennigaldi-Nanna led the excavations and research of these items. Imagine what the British archaeologist Leonard Woolley thought in the 1920s when he discovered among the ruins of Ur that someone ancient was discovering something even more ancient. 📸 by me. Made of copper alloy, this statuette of Shulgi (c. 2094-2046 BC) was excavated by the Oriental Institute of Chicago (now ISAC) in the 50s and is on display there. It was part of the foundation deposit boxes of the temple of Innana in the city of Nippur. Shulgi, here shown as a builder, carries a basket. A tablet with a text in Sumerian read: "For the goddess Inanna, his lady, Shulgi, mighty man, king of Ur, king of the lands of Sumer and Akkad, built the Eduranki (House of the Bond of Heaven and Earth) for her."

Visuals of the Ancients @visualsancients

3 months ago

The mosaic column on the left adorned a villa in Pompeii 2,000 years ago. But 2,400 years before that, the column on the left adorned a Sumerian temple. Let's take a quick look at this 🧵 of 📸.

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An old photo of the ruins of the once grand Theodosian walls of Constantinople

I’ve been late to this update. How legit is this?

Filippo Biondi @Filippobiondi_1

3 months ago

🚨 BREAKING: WE FOUND THE SECOND SPHINX – AND THIS TIME IT’S 100% REAL! 📷Folks, we have done it! Using a full series of high-resolution radar tomographies, we have located the Second Sphinx with millimeter precision. We know exactly where to dig. 📷 Attached is the satellite

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Taking a moment to admire the 14-foot gilded bronze equestrian statue of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, born on this day in 121 AD. A truly miraculous survival from ancient Rome, the statue has been preserved inside the Capitoline Museums since 1981 with a reproduction taking its place outside in Piazza del Campidoglio. Catalogues of Rome’s standing monuments compiled in the age of Constantine suggest that at least 22 of these ‘great horses’ (equi magni) – some many times bigger than this statue of Marcus – could be seen around the ancient city by the 4th century. The equestrian statue is not only the last of these remaining, it is the only complete equestrian bronze statue of an emperor to survive from the entire Roman world, spared from being melted down due to the mistaken belief that it depicted Constantine, the first ruler to convert to Christianity.

1/3 Here we have the Apkallu, meaning a genie or sage. These protective winged beings sometimes appeared with a human, a fish, or an eagle's head. Also known as the Seven Sages, the gods themselves bestowed exceptional wisdom upon the Apkallu. They helped humans gain knowledge of arts and crafts and even laid the foundations of much older cities such as Uruk. These figures flanked the entrances to or corners of the royal palace to protect the king and his entourage from evil spirits. Ashurnasirpal II (883 - 859 BC) holds a bowl used for offering libations and a hunter’s bow that may refer to a hunting ritual. These two Apkallu hold in one hand a pail or bucket (banduddu in Akkadian), which contains the sacred water they would sprinkle to purify those in their presence.

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Visuals of the Ancients @visualsancients

3 months ago

This is one of the 8 Assyrian bas-relief slabs on display at the Brooklyn Museum. Here you see two-winged Apkallu, meaning a genie or sage, and Ashurnasirpal II (883 - 859 BC), the third ruler of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. Today, let’s see some close-ups of this energetic king,

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The Ancient Maya world captured brilliantly in the works of English explorer Frederick Catherwood Catherwood and his American counterpart John Lloyd Stephens travelled through Mesoamerica in the 1830s and 40s. They documented dozens of lost sites and are credited with the "rediscovery" of the Maya Civilisation

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