British Museum blog Bink Hallum, Arabic Scientific Manuscripts Curator, British Library  Marcel Marée, Assistant Keeper, Department of Ancient Egypt & Sudan, British Museum A page from the 18th-century copy of al-‘Irāqī’s Book of the Seven Climes (British Library, Add. MS 25724, fol. 50v) Among the many intriguing objects on display in the Egypt: faith after […]

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An interesting article on the ancestry of the European peoples to a single common ancestoy: Charlemagne Charlemagne’s DNA and Our Universal Royalty.

In the run up to the British General Election on May 7th there has been a great deal of debate about Britain’s role within Europe and, more importantly, the European Union. Among Europhobes, the great threat is that the EU will evolve into a superstate, a United States of Europe. The idea of a united […]

Coriolanus, written by William Shakespeare in 1608, is the tragic story of the Roman General Caius Marcius Coriolanus. The story is one of a brilliant general who, after his greatest victory, takes up a career in politics. When he stands for the consular elections, his temperament and hostility to the plebian class earn him the […]

At its height the Roman Empire was vast. It reached from northern England to the Sahara desert; from the straits of Gibraltar to Mesopotamia. We have inherited a great deal from the Romans including language, religion, science, and the remains of their gargantuan architecture. However, modern interest in Roman history is focussed primarily on the […]

It is a truth universally expounded by advocates of democracy as a system of government that “democracies do not declare war on each other”. It is under this pretext, among others, that the Western World has advocated the spread of democracy to all corners of the world. Recently television in the UK aired an episode […]

Originally posted on nationalismwatch:
Four things that are wrong with the conventional wisdom about the country’s politics. by Petra Stykow and Peter Rutland Transitions Online, 10 April 2014 The dramatic developments in Ukraine left Western media scrambling to explain a distant and complex country to an audience that could barely locate the places on a…

At the time of writing we are half way through Holy Week as the Lenten period comes to an end and we approach Good Friday and Easter Sunday. For some time now we have been inundated with images of chocolate eggs and chocolate bunnies that are part and parcel with this holiday. The etymology of […]

Emperor Jimmu (神武天皇 Jimmu-Tenno), whose name means “Divine Might” is the legendary founder of Japan’s Imperial House and a direct descendent of the Sun Goddess Amaterasu. His rule is said to have been between 660 and 585 BC. Today, Emperor Akihito can claim, through an unbroken line of succession, direct descent from Jimmu. Jimmu himself is […]

The katana, or samurai sword, is famed throughout the world for being the perfection of sword design. It has become the symbol of the samurai class, and Japan as a whole, to the outside world. To the Japanese the katana is also a symbol of their culture and national pride. During the Meiji restoration at […]