Archaeology · Faith · Art · Museums

Relief of the 2nd century AD dedicated to the goddess Vesta, guardian of the hearth and patroness of the millers' guild, set up at the expense of the baker Pupius Firminus and his wife Mudasena Trophima

Relief of the 2nd century AD dedicated to the goddess Vesta, guardian of the hearth and patroness of the millers' guild, set up at the expense of the baker Pupius Firminus and his wife Mudasena Trophima. In one hand Vesta holds a sceptre, in the other a plate of

NB! · Art · Museums · Rome

Dog Biting a Stag, from the Collection of the Vatican Museums

Archaeology · Faith · The East · Art · Museums · New York

An alabaster figurine from a Parthian-period necropolis, probably depicting Ishtar, the Akkadian goddess of love, fertility and war

An alabaster figurine from a Parthian-period necropolis, probably depicting Ishtar, the Akkadian goddess of love, fertility and war. The central female deity of the Mesopotamian pantheon is shown as a beautiful girl with a high bust and a narrow waist, ruby eyes, a headdress in the form of a

Faith · Museums · Ethnography

The Lar, Roman household deity, and a statuette in the Weissenburg Roman Museum

The Lar is a very old and most interesting household deity. The Romans held that he watched over the hearth, the house, the family, the clan and the community. The lares were applied to for help in every conceivable matter: from childbirth to the growth of one's income,

NB! · The East · Art · Museums · Observations · Paris · Humour

To gauge the level of early medieval Japanese sculpture, simply compare these wooden guardians with, say, the French statue of Adam from the 12th century in the Musée de Cluny

NB! · Architecture · Faith · Books · Museums

A medieval portable bookcase in the form of a chest on a pole, from Hereford Cathedral, the very one that houses the famous chained library

A chain of red-orange coral links with a carved cross, lying in a museum display case.

NB! · Art · Monarchies · Museums

Coral chain of the Order of the Holy Spirit that belonged to Louis XVI

The collar of the highest French order, that of the Holy Spirit, made of coral and belonging to Louis XVI. The other members of the order had to make do with something plainer: gold and enamel

NB! · Archaeology · Faith · Art · Museums · Rome

In the month named after Mars, let us remember the god of war and the patron god of the Eternal City

In the month named after Mars, let us remember the god of war and the patron god of the Eternal City. The front face of the altar from the Ostian portico of AD 124, with its bas-relief of Mars, Venus and a goose, has survived rather badly, having probably

Art · Museums · Paris

Wenzel Jamnitzer’s Statuette of Daphne at the Château d’Écouen and the Image of Rebirth

The brilliant Wenzel Jamnitzer managed to discern not the gloomy side of Daphne's story, and his remarkable sculpture shows less the suicide of a despairing girl than a rebirth, a passage into another form of life, free of sin and suffering. This is one of two statuettes of

NB! · Faith · Museums · Heritage · People

The terrifying mask of the Scottish prophet lay hidden for hundreds of years, kept in secret by the Peden family as the most precious relic of their famous forebear, and was shown to the public only in 1840

The terrifying mask of the Scottish prophet lay hidden for hundreds of years, kept in secret by the Peden family as the most precious relic of their famous forebear, and was shown to the public only in 1840. It is now on display in the National Museum of Scotland

Faith · Museums · Observations · Humour

A unique artefact, of course, and the most astonishing thing is that for its own time this mask of an eminent preacher of the Covenanter movement was a far more ordinary phenomenon than it is for us

A unique artefact, of course, and the most astonishing thing is that for its own time this mask of an eminent preacher of the Covenanter movement was a far more ordinary phenomenon than it is for us. Alexander Peden wore this mask not as some manifesto but, as historians write,

Faith · Museums · Society · People

Mask of preacher Alexander Peden made of hair, skin and teeth, and his opposition to Charles II

The mask of Alexander Peden, the seventeenth-century Scottish preacher, is made of human hair, animal skin and even human teeth! Today this wandering prophet would be called an oppositionist. He spoke out sharply against the Crown and every decision of Charles II, for which he was declared an outlaw