Archaeology · Faith · Museums · Ethnography
The Taman Archaeological Museum holds many such Jewish gravestones of the Khazars, dating from the second half of the 1st millennium AD. On the spread of Judaism in the Khazar Khaganate there is, in general, no consensus: not on whether it was Rabbinic or Karaite Judaism, nor on how it
NB! · Faith · Observations · Ethnography
I do so love such charming details: in the Dormition Cathedral of the Kolomna Kremlin one can buy naive tile magnets from the cathedral's own ceramic workshop. The price is 150 roubles
Coming Up · Museums · Saint Petersburg · Ethnography
A reminder that until 4 October the exhibition "Earthly Beauty: The Image of Woman in Folk Culture" can be seen in Saint Petersburg. It has been prepared by specialists of the Russian Museum of Ethnography from ethnographic collections of the 19th-20th centuries and historical photographs illustrating the
Geography · Art · Nature · Ethnography
An image of the "Sleeping Lady" mountain, photographed by drone in Canada, 30 km north-west of Anchorage, is gaining popularity online. The story of Mount Susitna is bound up with an Indian legend about a girl who suffered from unhappy love: her beloved did not return from
Museums · Observations · Saint Petersburg · Ethnography
The essence of Peter's cabinet of curiosities in a few sentences. "Our museum is about the culture and way of life of the peoples of the world, and therefore it does not display the freaks, dwarfs, giants and other monsters who amused the grandees of the eighteenth
Museums · Ethnography · Humour
Do you know what these ultra-fashionable nineteenth-century boots from the museum of the French département of Ardèche were for? No, not for some forgotten martial art or a frightening provincial pastime, but for a peaceful and useful business: the husking of chestnuts and acorns, which are eaten. Incidentally,
Faith · Heritage · Ethnography
Darkened with age, brought back from the Crusades, they belong to a tradition of black female deities more than 4,000 years old in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Asia Minor. In general, no single theory exists to explain how the iconography of the dark-skinned Madonna and Child spread across Europe.
Coming Up · Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations · Ethnography
Since such fairy-tale goings-on are afoot, a reminder that from today you can visit the exhibition "The Russian Fairy Tale" at the Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val. The display brings together classic works on fairy-tale subjects, contemporary art, sculpture and media: a veritable journey through
The East · Books · Science · Mores · Ethnography
Modern medicine holds that birth inside the amniotic sac, or caul, occurs in roughly one case in eighty thousand, which is why such deliveries tend to become a significant news item for specialist journalists. In former times, children born in such a bubble, with the waters not yet broken, were
Observations · Mores · Ethnography
A note for the housewife: if a large hollow forms inside a loaf during baking, it may foretell the death of one of your nearest and dearest. Happily, folk omens are not ultimatums, and besides death they promise, for instance, an early pregnancy. The principle is clear enough: empty space
The East · Science · Ethnography
Kohl, the eye-liner pencil known in the East since the 4th millennium BC, etymologically precedes the word alcohol, borrowed by Europeans from the Arab world. Alcohol derives from the Arabic al-kuħl, meaning "made of antimony", or, literally, of kohl. The word entered Arabic from Assyro-Babylonian,
Archaeology · Faith · Mores · Ethnography
To cure an ailment, take a little water and mix it with plain... ...grave dust. Bede the Venerable writes of Saint Chad, Chad of Mercia, a bishop who lived in the seventh century and was canonised soon after his death, that dust from his grave was held to be miraculous