Faith · The East · Art · Society

Metropolitan Germanos Blesses the Banner of the Insurgents at the Monastery of Agia Lavra

Today is Greek Independence Day. Every Hellene remembers 25 March 1821, when the Greek revolution against the Ottoman occupation began

The East · Observations · Society · People

So, on the subject of gender, nationality and politics

So, on the subject of gender, nationality and politics. Kazakhstan is issuing commemorative collector's coins with face values of 100, 500 and 5000 tenge bearing the image of Nursultan Nazarbayev. The inscription on the coins reads: independent Kazakhstan, 30 years. Of course, in Cyrillic the phrase would look

The East · Observations · Mores · Nature · Ethnography

A man in Turkish dress feeds stray cats and dogs, a tradition of Istanbul

A man in Turkish dress feeds stray cats and dogs with meat. Anyone who has been to Istanbul in our own day knows that the tradition of kindness to animals lives on there still. Perhaps in someone's heart this picture will awaken mercy towards stray cats and dogs

The East · Observations · Heritage · Society

Annual ceremony honouring participants of the 1821 revolution in Athens

Every year Greece holds a memorial ceremony honouring its heroic forebears, the participants of the revolution of 1821, also known as the Greek War of Independence from the Ottoman Empire. The country even has clubs of descendants of the fighters for freedom. The ceremony takes place at the memorial necropolis

Faith · The East · Art · Museums

Matteo di Giovanni: Saint Bartholomew with his own flayed skin draped over his shoulders

According to legend, one of the apostles, Bartholomew, was flayed alive and then beheaded. Bartholomew preached in Lesser India and in the Caucasus. In the Orthodox tradition he is held to have suffered martyrdom on the site of the modern city of Baku. In the 1480s di Giovanni was the

Archaeology · The East · Mores · People

Sophia Schliemann in 1874 wearing a diadem from the Treasure of Priam smuggled out of Troy

Everyone, no doubt, remembers Agatha Christie's remark that it is good to be an archaeologist's wife, since the older a woman grows, the more interesting he finds her. Sophia Schliemann would perhaps have added: and besides, one may wear the freshly discovered treasures. In 1874 Sophia,

NB! · The East · Art · People

The Work of Shira Barzilay, an Artist from Tel Aviv

The East · Monarchies · Observations · Society

The History of the Golden Horde Is Inseparable from the Chronicle of Modern Kazakh Statehood, Says Kazakhstan's President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev

In short, it is not only in Russia that politicians turn their gaze to the Middle Ages

Mummy of a woman with long dark hair and a pale fur hat lying on an ochre woven mat.

NB! · Archaeology · The East · Observations · Ethnography

Four-Thousand-Year-Old Mummy of a Woman from the Tarim Basin in Xinjiang

A beautifully preserved four-thousand-year-old mummy of a woman from the Tarim Basin in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. What lovely hair and headdress, even after all these years

NB! · Archive · The East · Society · Ethnography

Armenian Women Pose for a Keepsake Photograph with Their Weapons Before Setting Out for the War with the Ottomans

Armenian women pose for a keepsake photograph with their weapons before setting out for the war with the Ottomans. It is impossible to believe that this picture is 126 years old

Architecture · Faith · The East · Humour

The wooden crocodile in Seville Cathedral, a gift from the Egyptian sultan to Alfonso X

In Seville Cathedral, the largest Gothic church in Europe, there hangs a crocodile. There are, of course, many treasures and relics there, such as paintings by Velázquez, Goya and Murillo and the sarcophagus of Christopher Columbus, but the crocodile is the most memorable of them all. Not a real one,

Close-up of a stone mask with empty eye sockets, a long nose and an open mouth with carved teeth.

NB! · Archaeology · The East · Museums

Neolithic stone masks from the Judean Desert, 9,000 years old

With empty eye sockets and gaping mouths: not guests of Mutabor, but Neolithic masks from the Judean Desert. These 9,000-year-old artefacts are carved from limestone and served a ritual purpose, embodying the spirits of ancestors