Archaeology · Faith · The East
Scarcely credible, but excavations at the ancient city of Irenopolis in Turkey have turned up a 1,300-year-old loaf of bread that has survived to this day. The Byzantine loaves have come down to us with a stamp and a Greek inscription, which may indicate that they were
Aristocracy · The East · Art · Monarchies · Paris
Sotheby's has put up for sale the collections of the Iranian princess Niloufar Pahlavi, niece of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The collection was kept in a mansion in the French capital, decorated by the legendary Renzo Mongiardino in the late 1970s. Most of the works of art
Archaeology · Faith · The East · Museums
An amulet in the form of a dog, made around the 3rd millennium BC, is dedicated to Gula of the pantheon of south-western Iran Gula was venerated in Mesopotamia as the patroness of healing and medicine. Her sacred symbol was the dog, associated with rites of healing
The East · Cinema · Books · Observations · People
Julio Peña plays Miguel de Cervantes. The action unfolds in 1575, and the narrative draws on the real biography of the author of Don Quixote. As attentive readers will remember, many years before he wrote the greatest novel of all time, Cervantes was a captive of Algerian pirates. Saavedra recounts
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📌 The story of the circus performer Matryona Rasputina, daughter of Grigory Rasputin 📌 666 degrees Celsius. The forecast of the end of the world by Isaac Newton 📌 The financing of the 1917 revolution and other insidious geopolitical projects of Germany 📌 The oldest Christian monastery in the Sinai desert is under threat
The East · Art
Engraving by Gilles Rousselet, late seventeenth century
Architecture · Faith · The East · Art · Monarchies · People
The beautiful frescoes of Mikhail Nesterov in the Church of Alexander Nevsky at Abastumani in Georgia. This is a unique case: the entire interior of the church was painted in fresco by Nesterov himself, without the help of other artists: 56 compositions in 8 years. Nesterov's biography in
Faith · The East · Books · Observations · Science · People · Humour
René Guénon writes that "intellect" once meant the perception of transcendent realities, and introduces the Sanskrit term buddhi, all but forgotten in the West. He explains that buddhi is the faculty of glimpsing another world, whose traces appear in the soul as intellectual intuitions. Apparently, the term is
NB! · The East · Art
Babylonian Prefab. Ivan Ponivanov, 2024
The East · Art · Humour
A Christian-Arab game of chess. Al-Andalus, 13th century. If Black's move is H2, White has a fair chance of drawing the game. Failing that, we are left with victory in the Reconquista, which is not at all bad either.
The East · Museums · Society · Saint Petersburg
The centres in Korea and Oman are the first overseas satellites of the Hermitage to be announced since 2022.
Faith · The East · Art · Observations
The statue of the Buddha Ushiku Daibutsu in Japan is the fifth tallest sculpture in the world. Construction was completed in 1993, and its total height is 120 metres.