Enlightening the Enlightenment
April 5, 2023
Dare to Know was a New York Times Best Art Book of 2022 Elizabeth M. Rudy — How can the organization of a book about the Enlightenment convey the period’s… READ MORE
Tag: ancient history
Where Next for the World’s First Author?
March 24, 2023
Sophus Helle— Enheduana is the first known author in the history of world literature. She was a royal princess and high priestess who lived in the 23rd century BCE in… READ MORE
Ep. 96 – The Art, Myths, and Gods of the Ancient Maya
December 7, 2022
In this episode of our podcast, we talk to professor and curator Oswaldo Chinchilla Mazariegos about two books: Lives of the Gods: Divinity in Maya Art, which accompanies an exhibition… READ MORE
The First Tycoon
November 21, 2022
“The marble busts that now appear stark, blank stones were once painted in vivid colors that made them seem fully human. The Ancient Lives series is founded on the conviction that what… READ MORE
Demetrius, The First Celebrity Politician
November 17, 2022
“We are very excited to add Ancient Lives to Yale’s successful series of interpretive biographies as a fresh way of telling history. Imagining ancient lives is a way to recapture not only the… READ MORE
Gilgamesh in the Twenty-first Century
December 14, 2021
Sophus Helle— “Gilgamesh is tremendous!” the poet Rainer Maria Rilke exclaimed in 1916. “I hold it to be the greatest thing a person can experience.” Many modern readers have shared… READ MORE
Founding God’s Nation
April 16, 2021
Leon R. Kass— Exodus, the second of the Five Books of Moses (The Torah), contains some of the most famous stories in Western literature: the enslavement of the Children of… READ MORE
The Epic of Gilgamesh
April 30, 2020
John Carey— The oldest surviving literary work is The Epic of Gilgamesh. It was composed nearly 4,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia (roughly equivalent to where Iraq and eastern Syria… READ MORE
What Is Wisdom?
February 19, 2020
Giambattista Vico— Wisdom is the faculty that commands all the disciplines; by these, all the sciences and arts that complete our humanity are apprehended. Plato defines wisdom as that which is… READ MORE
Western Ambivalence toward Iran
January 27, 2020
By Abbas Amanat — The Persians, and before them the Medes, were among the first people known to the ancient Greeks outside their own geographic sphere. As early as the… READ MORE
“I Create My Own Space”: A Conversation about Fierceness