On a number of pilgrimage objects from Late Antiquity, St Thecla, a highly revered saint, also known as Thecla the Protomartyr, is shown accompanied by St Menas, whose tomb in Egypt was the pilgrimage centre associated with healing miracles. The saintly couple appear in ad bestias compositions or in a simplified variant as two saints with a cross.…[Read more]

“Experience has shown pastoral caregivers that individuals do seem to cope better if they can “actualize” their spiritual experiences in times of crisis.”
A substantial amount of interest in spiritual experiences recently appears to be from a re-emergence of interest from the (unofficial) pastoral school of thought in psychology. For ins…[Read more]

Geertz, perhaps the most influential of the anthropologists, contends that symbolism and meaning are central to religion: “The view of man as a symbolizing, conceptualizing, meaning-seeking animal, which has become increasingly popular both in the social sciences and in philosophy over the past several years, opens up a whole new approach not o…[Read more]

Einstein observed, “Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration of this force beyond anything that we can comprehend is my religion. To that extent I am, in fact, religious.” As the p…[Read more]

This is a history of the Centre William Rappard, the first building designed to house an international organization in Geneva, and its art treasures. For nearly a century, these works of art and decorations offered by governments and institutions encouraged smooth diplomacy and fluent international negotiations in the fields of labour, trade and…[Read more]

“Every culture develops some kind of art as surely as it develops language. Some primitive cultures have no real mythology or religion, but all have some art – dance, song, design (sometimes only on tools or on the human body). Dance, above all, seems to be the oldest elaborated art….. Art is, indeed, the spearhead of human development, social…[Read more]

The name of Joaquina Mayol Bazo (Málaga, 1830 – 1915) is linked to her former husband, the photographer Eugenio Lorichon, son of the legendary pioneer of photography in Spain: Enrique Lorichon. Joaquina worked as an independent photographer in Malaga from 1860 to 1865, above all, under the name of Viuda de Lorichon. / El nombre de Joaquina Ma…[Read more]

Tags made of mudstone are predominantly found in ancient Egyptian Predynastic cemetery contexts. This study examines the symbolism and significance of mudstone tags that are crescent-shaped and/or feature the recurved horns of hartebeests. The use of syncretic imagery on these tags provides evidence for the fluidity of artistic perceptions in…[Read more]

This is a history of the Centre William Rappard, the first building designed to house an international organization in Geneva, and its art treasures. For nearly a century, these works of art and decorations offered by governments and institutions encouraged smooth diplomacy and fluent international negotiations in the fields of labour, trade and…[Read more]

In the Madrid photographic panorama between 1857 and 1868, the presence of Ángel Alonso Martínez is a permanent note, which does not correspond to the scant knowledge we have of his professional career. We intend to shed some more light on this signature: «A. Alonso Martínez and Brother». / En el panorama fotográfico madrileño entre 1857 y 1868,…[Read more]

Discover unique photographs by pioneer photographers in Spain: Clifford, Masson, Lorichon, Blanco, Clonwek, Napoleón, Franck y Sanz y Benito, Conde de Lipa, Massari and more… The primitives in the Fernández Rivero Collection of Old Photograph.

Announcement for the opening of the exhibition “Eden and Everything After” at the University of Stavanger Archaelogical Museum and publication of attendant catalogue.

Queer theorists have traditionally advocated for the adoption of an outlook of queer pessimism in order to develop a criticality that helps the queer community effectively address the issues it presently faces. Some queer theorists, however, have instead advocated for an outlook of queer optimism—an outlook which allows space for celebrating joy a…[Read more]

Calotypes, salted papers, albumen printing… these are the terms that take us back to the beginnings of photography, to the 1850s, when the passionate pioneers of this art hit the road eager to capture the world with their camera. The images created by some of these unique non-professional photographers who visited Spain are also kept at the C…[Read more]

En este artículo veremos un álbum con fotografías en cianotipia que reflejan la construcción de la línea férrea que, desde Girona, llegó a la frontera con Francia en Port-Bou en 1878. / In this article we will see an album with cyanotype photographs that reflect the construction of the railway line that, from Girona, reached the border with France…[Read more]

Egyptologists have long struggled to translate D.t nHH, with expressions ranging from ‘linear and circular eternity’ to ‘everlasting completedness and ongoingness’. Similarly, ethnologists have found it impossible to translate the pan-Australian Aboriginal concept of tjukurrpa, resorting to neologisms such as ‘the Dreamtime’ or ‘the Dreaming’.…[Read more]

“In Beautiful Terrible Ruins: Detroit and the Anxiety of Decline, Dora Apel goes on the offensive against the myriad myths and delusions peddled about the Motor City; not only that, she rebuffs the blame and shame that have traditionally been directed at the Detroit citizenry, and redirects our attention to the corporations and bureaucrats who…[Read more]

This note outlines several features common to the reception of ancient ruins by the Christian populations of three countries, each located on a different continent. Most of the sites were and are strongly associated with the realm of the dead. Fear of misadventure or calamity typically inspired a respectful avoidance of such pre-Christian sites…[Read more]

New evidence on scholarly patronage under the Roman empire can be garnered by analyzing the descriptions of learned magoi in several texts from the second to the fourth century CE. Since a common use of the term magos connoted flatterer-like figures (kolakes), it is likely that the figures of “learned sorcerers” found in texts such as Luc…[Read more]

Several documents from Egypt and Ḫatti (especially the Amarna letters and the Egyptian-Hittite correspondence) mention envoys and messengers in charge of diplomatic contacts between the two countries. Cuneiform and hieroglyphic transcriptions of Egyptian names at Ugarit hint at an actual presence (in Ugarit and Karkemish) of officials coming f…[Read more]