Ancient Politics

A giant of archaeology, Colin Renfrew has immeasurably improved our understanding of human history. In this passionately argued work, he offers a concise summary of prehistory - human existence that predates the development of written records - while challenging the very definition of prehistory itself.

One day in 1872, self-taught Assyriologist George Smith was sifting through a pile of clay tablets when he realized he was reading about "a flood, storm, a ship caught on a mountain, and a bird sent out in search of dry land". This is the riveting story of the discovery of the world's first literary epic, the "Epic of Gilgamesh".

Marcus Porcius Cato: aristocrat who walked barefoot and slept on the ground with his troops, political heavyweight who cultivated the image of a Stoic philosopher, a hardnosed defender of tradition who presented himself as a man out of the sacred Roman past-and the last man standing when Rome's Republic fell to tyranny. His blood feud with Caesar began in the chamber of the Senate, played out on the battlefields of a world war, and ended when he took his own life rather than live under a dictator.

The Picts were an ancient nation who ruled most of northern and eastern Scotland during the Dark Ages. Despite their historical importance, they remain shrouded in myth and misconception. Absorbed by the kingdom of the Scots in the ninth century, they lost their unique identity, their language, and their vibrant artistic culture. Among their few surviving traces are standing stones decorated with incredible skill and covered with enigmatic symbols.

Jason and the Golden Fleece is one of the finest tales of Ancient Greece, an epic journey of adventure and trial standing beside similar stories of Perseus, Theseus and the Labours of Heracles. The finest classic account comes from Apollonius of Rhodes, the Greek poet of the 3rd century BCE and librarian at Alexandria. Though less well-known than Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, and much shorter, it is an epic poem which is both exciting and moving, with remarkably vivid portraits of the main characters, Jason and Medea.

In this hands-on guide to working with the sacred energies of the sun, night sun, and moon, curandera Erika Buenaflor details the rites, rituals, and deities for each part of the day and night and explores the sacred tools and techniques used by ancient Mesoamerican shamans for harnessing solar and lunar energies. She explains how the sun is the source of soul energy that heals, animates, strengthens, and revitalizes us on many levels, while night energies are transformative and conducive for connecting with non-ordinary realms.

Drawing on the wisdom of Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and others, Nancy Sherman's Stoic Wisdom presents a compelling modern Stoicism that teaches grit, resilience, and the importance of close relationships in addressing life's biggest and smallest challenges.

From Aristotle to Ada Lovelace: a brief history of the mathematical ideas that have forever changed the world and the everyday people and pioneers behind them. The story of our best invention yet. From our ability to calculate the passing of time to the algorithms that control computers and much else in our lives, numbers are everywhere. They are so indispensable that we forget how fundamental they are to our way of life.

What are the secrets to a contented life? One of Rome's greatest and most influential poets, Horace (65-8 BCE) has been cherished for more than 2,000 years not only for his wit, style, and reflections on Roman society, but also for his wisdom about how to live a good life - above all else, a life of contentment in a world of materialistic excess and personal pressures. In How to Be Content, Stephen Harrison provides fresh, contemporary translations of poems from across Horace's works that continue to offer important lessons about the good life, friendship, love, and death.

Theophrastus' Characters is a joyous festival of fault-finding: a collection of thirty closely observed personality portraits, defining the full spectrum of human flaws, failings, and follies. With piquant details of speech and behavior taken straight off the streets of ancient Athens, Theophrastus gives us sketches of the mean, vile, and annoying that are comically distorted yet vividly real. Enlivened by Pamela Mensch's fresh translation, Theophrastus' Characters transports us to a world populated by figures of flesh and blood, not bronze and marble.

The tradition of ancient philosophy is a long, rich, and varied one, in which a constant note is that of discussion and argument. This book introduces listeners to some ancient debates to engage with the ancient developments of some themes. Getting away from the presentation of ancient philosophy as a succession of Great Thinkers, the book gives listeners a sense of the freshness and liveliness of ancient philosophy and of its wide variety of themes and styles.

The Nature of Things was written in the 1st century BC by Roman polymath Lucretius. It is written as a didactic poem, and explains Epicurean physics.

Aristotle's Poetics is best known for its definitions and analyses of tragedy and comedy, but it also applies to truth and beauty as they are manifested in the other arts. In our age, when the natural and social sciences have dominated the quest for truth, it is helpful to consider why Aristotle claimed poetry is more philosophical and more significant than history. Like so many other works by Aristotle, the Poetics has dominated the way we have thought about all forms of dramatic performance in Europe and America ever since.

In 1922, after fifteen years of searching, archaeologists finally discovered the tomb of King Tutankhamun. There, buried alongside the king's mummy, they found more than 5,000 unique objects, from the mundane to the extravagant, from the precious to the everyday. Tutankhamun's spectacular gold mask is justifiably famous, but the rest of the treasures remain largely unknown, their stories untold.

Written in the tradition of historians like Stacy Schiff and Amanda Foreman who find modern lessons in ancient history, this provocative narrative explores the lives of five remarkable pharaohs who ruled Egypt with absolute power, shining a new light on the country's 3,000-year empire and its meaning today.

Cette édition traduite en français explique le principe divin féminin comme source de la création à la fois physique et métaphysique, la double nature féminine d’Isis avec Nephtys, la relation (et l’une-ité) des principes féminin et masculin, la numérologie d’Isis et d’Osiris, le rôle d’Isis en tant que Mère Vierge, l’explication d’une vingtaine de divinités féminines en tant que manifestations des attributs féminins, le rôle du culte d’Isis à travers le monde, l’allégorie d’Isis, Osiris et Horus, et bien plus encore.

The Masks of God is a four-volume study of world religion and myth that stands as one of Joseph Campbell’s masterworks. In this second volume of The Masks of God - Campbell’s major work of comparative mythology - the preeminent mythologist looks at Asian mythology as it developed over the course of five thousand years into the distinctive religions of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and Japan.

For more than two centuries, Egypt was ruled by the most powerful, successful and richest dynasty of kings in its long end epic history. They included the female king Hatshepsut, the warrior kings Thutmose III and Amenhotep II, the religious radical Akhenaten and his queen Nefertiti, and most famously of all for the wealth of his tomb the short-lived boy king Tutankhamun. The power and riches of the pharaohs of the 18th dynasty came at enormous cost to Egypt's enemies and most of its people.

Mankind has a distinct advantage over other terrestrial species: we talk to one another. But how did we acquire the most advanced form of communication on Earth? Daniel L. Everett, a "bombshell" linguist and "instant folk hero" (Tom Wolfe, Harper's), provides in this sweeping history a comprehensive examination of the evolutionary story of language, from the earliest speaking attempts by hominids to the more than 7,000 languages that exist today.

For over two millennia in the West, familiarity with the literature, philosophy, and values of the Classical World has been synonymous with education itself. The traditions of the Greeks explain why Western Culture’s unique tenets of democracy, capitalism, civil liberty, and constitutional government are now sweeping the globe. Yet the general public in America knows less about its cultural origins than ever before, as Classical education rapidly disappears from our high school and university curricula.