deepstash
Beta
8 Legendary Ancient Libraries
The Villa of the Papyri
- The collection of the "Villa of the Papyri" is the only collection to survive to the present day.
- About 1,800 scrolls were located in the Roman city of Herculaneum.
- When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D., the library was buried - and preserved - under 90-foot of volcanic material. It was rediscovered in the 18th century.
- The library contains several texts by an Epicurean philosopher and poet named Philodemus.
1 SAVE
SIMILAR ARTICLES & IDEAS:
Alexandria during the third and second centuries BCE
Alexandria, with its Great Library, was marked as the intellectual capital of the world.
During the third century BCE, the Musaeum, an educational and research institution,...
The start of the city Alexandria
Alexandria was founded in 331BCE by the Macedonian leader Alexander the Great. Alexander left Egypt a few months later, leaving his viceroy Cleomenes in charge.
Alexander passed away in 323 BCE, and one of his deputies, Macedonian general Ptolemy Lagides, took control of Egypt. Ptolemy executed Cleomenes and declared himself pharaoh. He started the Ptolemaic dynasty and made Alexandria his capital in 305 BCE.
Alexandria: A cosmopolitan city
The city's population grew to around 300,000 people. It remained the capital of Ptolemaic Egypt, as well as Roman and Byzantine Egypt, for almost a thousand years.
Alexandria was designed by the architect Dinocrates of Rhodes, using a Hippodamian gridiron street plan. The city was cosmopolitan and diverse. It consisted of Greeks, Jew, and Egyptian Arabs.
12
Key Ideas
Egyptian Senet
One of the earliest known board games, Senet was played in 3100 BC and loved by Queen Nefertari and the Pharaoh Tutankhamun.
Played using a longboard having three rows of ten squar...
The Royal Game Of Ur
- Also known as Twenty Squares, this 4500-year-old game, first unearthed in ancient Mesopotamia, is impressive in its complex rules and intricate design.
- The beautiful game board uses twenty squares and has a narrow bridge in the middle part, was played in Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Turkey and many other ancient civilizations.
- To finish the game as winners, players had to race their opponent to the opposite end of the board, moving pieces according to knucklebone dice rolls.
The Game of Mehen
- Named after the Egyptian serpentine deity, Mehen is also known as the Egyptian Snake Game and was played between 3100 to 2300 BC.
- Six players could simultaneously play this spiral board, each having a piece crafted in the shape of a lion or a sphere.
- The rules of this game are not very clear because it lost its popularity after the decline of Egypt’s Old Kingdom and is hardly found in archaeological records.
The heart and love - Ancient Greeks
In ancient Greek, lyric poetry identified the heart with love.
Greek philosophers agreed that the heart was linked to our strongest emotions, including love. Plato thought the heart was re...
The ancient Roman belief about the heart
The ancient Romans believed there was a vein extending from the fourth finger of the left hand directly to the heart.
In the medieval period in Salisbury, England, the groom was told to place a ring on the bride's fourth finger during a marriage ceremony, because of that vein.
The heart symbol in the feudal courts of Europe
During the 12th and 13th centuries, minstrels in France celebrated a form of love that we call today courtly love. The troubadour was to pledge his whole heart to only one woman and promise to be true to her forever. He'd sing to her and the members of the court to which she belonged.
During this time, artists depicted love between a couple as a fanciful tree that rises to form the outline of a heart. It carries within it a coat of arms bearing the Latin word AMOR (love).