Archaeology · In the Press · The East · Science

In 1913 a number of English-language newspapers carried an article claiming that several temple-like chambers had been discovered inside the Great Sphinx

In 1913 a number of English-language newspapers carried an article claiming that several temple-like chambers had been discovered inside the Great Sphinx. The text reported that there was a fairly large room both inside the head and inside the body, and that in one of these chambers small

The East · Art · Monarchies · Ethnography

Kashan Mohtashem carpets, their distinctive features and the end of production

Persian Carpet by Mohtashem of Kashan with a Portrait of Nicholas II. Mohtashem was a celebrated weaver who, in the Iranian city of Kashan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, produced carpets so skilful and of such high quality that his name became a byword for an entire

NB! · Faith · The East · Art

The Archangel Michael in China

The East · Cinema · Monarchies · Pop Culture

Gillian Anderson recalls working with Michael Gambon on Viceroy's House in 2017

The film is devoted to the end of British rule in India. Lord Mountbatten, who presided over the partition of British India into Pakistan and India, is played by Hugh Bonneville. His wife, Lady Edwina, is played by Gillian Anderson. Michael Gambon plays Lord Ismay, the Chief of Staff, who

NB! · Aristocracy · The East · Monarchies · People

Archduke Franz Ferdinand Tries On the Costume of a Pharaoh of Egypt, 1894

Antique engraved map of Asia with Cyrillic labels, coloured borders and a decorative cartouche reading “Азия” in the lower left corner.

NB! · The East · Geography · Maps

Russian map of Asia of 1745 showing Great Tartary, Free Tartary and Chinese Tartary

A map of Asia from 1745. It shows Great Tartary, which comprises Independent Tartary and Chinese Tartary

Archive · The East · Geography · Books

The Russian Empire is bounded on the north by the Northern Ocean; on the east it is parted from America by the Eastern, Pacific or Kamchatka Sea; on the south it borders upon Chinese and Free Tartary, upon Persia, Georgia and Little Tartary; and on the we

From the Methodical Geographical Description of the Russian Empire, with a Proper Introduction to a Thorough Knowledge of the Terrestrial Globe and of Europe in General, 1776. By Chinese Tartary, in all likelihood, are meant the lands of present-day Mongolia and China; by Free Tartary, the lands of Turkestan

Archaeology · Archive · The East · Observations · Mores · Humour

The text of a clay tablet: a letter to his mother from a son who complains that she does not buy him fine clothes, while the clothes of the other young gentlemen grow finer with every passing year

The boy cites the son of his father's assistant, who has two new sets of clothes. "Even though you bore me, and his mother merely adopted him, his mother loves him, and you do not love me!" 3,500 years have passed, and so little has

Miniature of a teacher in an orange robe seated in a courtyard, surrounded by pupils with books and sheets on a patterned carpet beneath white domes.

The East · Art · Books · Education · Humour

A schoolroom scene in a miniature from Saadi's “Gulistan” manuscript, 1567/8

Disorder in the classroom. A pupil does not obey his teacher. A tale as old as time. From a manuscript of Saadi's «Gulistan», 1567/8, attributed to Mir Ali Husayni of Bukhara

The East · Art · Books

"The Merchant of Venice" first appeared in Japanese in 1883

The translator, Inoue Tsutomu, gave the book the title "The Trial of the Pledged Flesh". The action was transposed into contemporary settings, and in Utagawa Yoshimune's illustrations the characters appear in the dress and surroundings of the nineteenth century

The East · Observations

It all depends on the angle

Photograph by Sami Uchan, Istanbul

A carpet with two wrestlers at the centre and three musicians in arched niches above, framed by a broad ornamental border.

NB! · Archive · The East · Art · Ethnography

The carpet “Olympiad” of 1979 by Arif Gandi oglu Ismailov

"Olympiad" carpet, 1979. Designed by Arif Gandi ogly Ismailov