Tales of Times Forgotten

Did the Ancient Greeks Really Believe in Their Myths?

On Quora, I have noticed there seems to be an endless number of questions dealing with the same overall theme: “Did the ancient Greeks and Romans really believe in their gods?” and “Did the ancient Greeks really believe in their myths?”

I think these questions are born from a strange discordance that people have noticed between the ancient Greeks’ reputation for rational skepticism and the stories we still tell about their gods and heroes—stories that—let’s face it—in most cases are pretty unbelievable to say the least.

Thus people have wondered, “How on Earth could a people so supposedly enlightened believe in such absurd stories?” As it turns out, though, believing in the Greek deities and believing in Greek myths are two different things; many people in ancient times believed in the deities without necessarily believing in all the stories attached to them.

For the Last Time, Donald Trump Isn’t the Modern-Day Julius Caesar

One thing I have discovered is that people really love to directly equate Donald Trump with various historical figures from the ancient world. As I discuss in this article from December 2019, Trump’s evangelical supporters are constantly comparing him to Cyrus the Great, claiming that he is God’s vessel appointed to fulfill God’s will by enacting conservative policies. Meanwhile, people who do not like Trump seem to habitually joke about Donald Trump being Caligula or Nero.

Both Trump’s supporters and his fiercest enemies, though, love to compare him to one man in particular: Julius Caesar. This obsession with equating Trump with figures from ancient history annoys me because it inevitably leads to the distortion of history to suit the needs of the present.

The Fascinating Truth about the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are symbolic figures that appear in the Book of Revelation, the last book in the New Testament canon. They seem like familiar figures to most of us. Even if you aren’t a Christian or weren’t raised as a Christian, you’ve probably been exposed to the idea of the “Four Horsemen” through popular culture. Popular culture’s portrayal of the Four Horsemen, though, isn’t very accurate. For instance, nearly all popular culture adaptations get the identity of the first horseman wrong.

Even if you have read the original descriptions of the Four Horsemen from the Book of Revelation, chances are you aren’t aware of the complex cultural background and symbolism that these descriptions draw on. For instance, original readers of the Book of Revelation may have imagined the first horseman as a Parthian archer and the fourth horseman, Death, as a naked young man with wings, since that’s how the personification of Death is usually portrayed in ancient Greek art.

What Did Cleopatra Really Look Like?

There are a lot of misconceptions about Kleopatra VII Philopator of Egypt, the ancient queen most commonly known in English as simply “Cleopatra.” For instance, as I discuss in this article from March 2019, she actually lived closer to the present day than to the time of the construction of the pyramids of Giza. Meanwhile, as I discuss in this article from August 2019, the popular story about Cleopatra committing suicide by allowing an Egyptian asp to bite her on the breast is probably apocryphal and it is more likely that she actually committed suicide by drinking poison or by cutting herself and applying poison to the wound.

Perhaps the greatest misconception of all about Cleopatra, though, is what she looked like. Modern people have a very clear image of what Cleopatra looked like: a beautiful, pale, small-nosed woman like Elizabeth Taylor dressed in a revealing outfit with thick makeup, straight, black hair, bangs, and braids with gold ornaments going down to her shoulders. Unfortunately for fans of classic films, this image is inaccurate in almost every single way.

We actually have pretty good idea of what the historical Cleopatra looked like and it’s nothing at all like the image most people have in mind. For one thing, she didn’t have bangs. She did have a large, hooked nose, a prominent chin, and curly hair that she normally wore in a bun at the back of her head. There’s even a possibility that she may have been a redhead.

Here Are a Few of the Major Cultural Sites in Iran that Donald Trump May Be Threatening to Destroy

On Saturday, 4 January 2020, Donald J. Trump, the current president of the United States of America, announced on Twitter that the United States has targeted fifty-two Iranian cultural sites and that, if Iran makes any move against any American or against any American asset, the United States will destroy those sites. Trump declared, over the course of two tweets, the following words:

“Let this serve as a WARNING that if Iran strikes any Americans, or American assets, we have….”
“….targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!”

Donald Trump is literally holding Iran’s cultural sites hostage, threatening to destroy them if Iran does not comply with his demands. This sounds more like the kind of threat you’d expect to hear from the Joker than from the president of the United States.

Destroying Iranian cultural sites would certainly constitute a war crime under international law. The United Nations made this very clear in 2017 when they adopted a resolution for the protection of heritage in response to the deliberate destruction of cultural sites in Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). You know you live in a messed-up world when the president of the United States is literally threatening to do what ISIS did.

No, the Ancient Romans Didn’t Overharvest Silphium to Extinction Because It Was a Highly Effective Contraceptive

Chances are, many of my readers have seen articles on the internet about how, supposedly, in ancient times there was a kind of giant fennel plant called silphium that was grown in North Africa in the region around the Greek city of Kyrene that was a highly effective contraceptive, perhaps even the most effective one of all time. According to the articles on the internet, the ancient Romans were so horny and they loved having sex so much that they overharvested silphium, leading it to go totally extinct in around the middle of the first century AD.

There is some truth to this story, but much of it is false. Silphium was a real plant that really was grown in the region around Kyrene in North Africa and some Romans did believe it to possess contraceptive properties. Likewise, there is a Roman source that seems to support the idea that some Romans thought that, by the middle of the first century AD, the particular variety of silphium from Kyrenaïka had become extremely rare, if not extinct.

Nonetheless, it is unclear whether silphium was actually effective at all as a contraceptive and, although a few ancient texts claim it to have possessed contraceptive properties, its primary use in antiquity was never as a form of birth control. In antiquity, silphium was, in fact, always primarily desired as a food item because people thought it was a culinary delicacy. There is far more ancient evidence for silphium’s consumption as a food item than there is for its use as a method of birth control.

This Is How We Know the Egyptian Pyramids Were Built as Tombs

Sometimes I feel like academics live in one world and everyone else lives in a totally different one. Virtually all professional academic Egyptologists agree that the ancient Egyptian pyramids were built as tombs for the pharaohs and their relatives. On the other hand, most members of the general public seem to believe that the pyramids were built for just about any purpose other than as tombs for the pharaohs.

Did the Ancient Egyptians Have Electric Lighting?

It has been widely claimed on the internet that the ancient Egyptians had electric lighting. This claim is made largely based on an extremely tendentious interpretation of a series of relief carvings from the southern crypt of the ancient Egyptian Temple of Hathor at Dendera and the fact that some Egyptian tombs and temples do not currently have very much soot on their ceilings.

Unfortunately for those who want to believe that the ancient Egyptians had electric lighting, they simply didn’t. As I will show, the reliefs from Dendera almost certainly don’t depict lightbulbs and there is a much more reasonable explanation for why some Egyptian temples and tombs do not have soot on their ceilings.

Here’s Where Some Famous Rulers from Ancient Times Were Buried

I am frequently asked the question of where famous people from the ancient world were buried. In most cases, we have no idea where the remains of famous people from the ancient world were originally deposited. Nonetheless, when it comes to famous rulers from the ancient Mediterranean world, we often have a great deal more information about where they were buried than we do for ordinary people.

For instance, we actually do have some information about where famous leaders such as Perikles, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, and Augustus’s remains were deposited. Unfortunately, even when we do know the exact location of a person’s original burial, it is exceedingly rare for their remains to have survived to the present day. None of the bodies of any of the rulers I have mentioned have ever been identified by archaeologists.

Burial practices in the ancient world varied considerably from one culture to the next. The ancient Romans traditionally cremated their dead. The ancient Greeks traditionally buried their dead in the ground uncremated and unembalmed with grave markers to show where the person was buried. The ancient Egyptians traditionally embalmed their dead and placed their embalmed bodies in tombs with extensive grave goods.