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Chaldea
19 pictures
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Ancient Persia
6 pictures
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Ancient Rome
72 pictures
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Ancient Egypt
86 pictures
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Ancient Greece
47 pictures
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Assyria
28 pictures
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Phoenician patera, from Idalium, showing a religious ritual dance before a goddess in a temple around a sun emblem.
From the Phoenicians we have illustrated examples, but no record, whereas from their neighbours the Hebrews we have ample records in the Scriptures, but no illustrations.
129 visits
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Cyprian limestone group of Phoenician dancers, about 6½ in. high. There is a somewhat similar group, also from Cyprus, in the British Museum. The dress, a hooded cowl, appears to be of great antiquity.
107 visits
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The first and primaeval musical instruments must have been of the simplest kind.
A hollow reed, uttering, when blown with the mouth, one monotonous sound would be the first successful attempt at such an invention. The next step was to vary the sound by perforating it with holes, like to our " Penny Whistle."
195 visits
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“Clay pipe from Babylon, the most ancient yet found, apparently modelled to imitate the skull of some animal. It still sounds clearly the intervals of the common chord.”
167 visits
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The flutes of the Etruscans were not unfrequently made of ivory; those used in religious sacrifices were of box-wood, of a species of the lotus, of ass’ bone, bronze and silver. A bronze flute, somewhat resembling our flageolet, has been found in a tomb; likewise a huge trumpet of bronze. An Etruscan cornu is deposited in the British museum, and measures about four feet in length.
189 visits
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The African elephant (Elephas Africanus) with rider mounted on its back. The drawing is an enlarged representation of an ancient Carthaginian coin.
106 visits
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Perhaps the earliest people to form real cities in this part of the world, or indeed in any part of the world, were a people of mysterious origin called the Sumerians. They were neither Semites nor Aryans, and whence they came we do not know. Whether they were dark whites of Iberian or Dravidian affinities is less certainly to be denied.[103] They used a kind of writing which they scratched upon clay, and their language has been deciphered.
170 visits
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Scythians ... as portrayed by a Greek artist....
One of the Few Existing Representations of the Ancient Scythians. From a Greek Electrum Vase.
142 visits
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Samnite Warriors (From painted vases)
The Romans completely beaten by the Samnites at the battle of the Caudine Forks
190 visits
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Median and Second Babylonian Empires (in Nebuchadnezzar’s Reign)
103 visits
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Macedonian Warrior
115 visits
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The irruption of the Ephthalites is memorable not so much because of its permanent effects as because of the atrocities perpetrated by the invaders. These Ephthalites very closely resembled the Huns of Attila in their barbarism; they merely raided, they produced no such dynasty as the Kushan monarchy; and their chiefs retained their headquarters in Western Turkestan. Mihiragula, their most capable leader, has been called the Attila of India. One of his favourite amusements, we are told, was the expensive one of rolling elephants down precipitous places in order to watch their sufferings. His abominations roused his Indian tributary princes to revolt, and he was overthrown. But the final ending of the Ephthalite raids into India was effected not by Indians, but by the destruction of the central establishment of the Ephthalites on the Oxus (565) by the growing power of the Turks, working in alliance with the Persians.
172 visits
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At her zenith Carthage probably had the hitherto unheard-of population of a million. This population was largely industrial, and her woven goods were universally famous. As well as a coasting trade, she had a considerable land trade with Central Africa,[126] and she sold negro slaves, ivory, metals, precious stones and the like, to all the Mediterranean people; she worked Spanish copper mines, and her ships went out into the Atlantic and coasted along Portugal and France northward as far as the Cassiterides (the Scilly Isles, or Cornwall, in England) to get tin. About 520 B.C. a certain Hanno made a voyage that is still one of the most notable in the world. This Hanno, if we may trust the Periplus of Hanno, the Greek translation of his account which still survives, followed the African coast southward from the Straits of Gibraltar as far as the confines of Liberia. He had sixty big ships, and his main task was to found or reinforce certain Carthaginian stations upon the Morocco coast
169 visits
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Etruscan painting of a Ceremonial Burning of the Dead
172 visits
