Equal to men in battle, legends claimed they cut off their right breasts to improve their archery skills and routinely killed their male children to purify their ranks.For centuries people believed in their existence and attempted to trace their origins. Artists and poets celebrated their battles and wrote of Amazonia. Spanish explorers, carrying these tales to South America, thought they lived in the forests of the world’s greatest river, and named it after them. In the absence of evidence, we eventually reasoned away their existence, concluding that these powerful, sexually liberated female soldiers must have been the fantastical invention of Greek myth and storytelling. Until now.Following decades of new research and a series of groundbreaking archeological discoveries, we now know these powerful warrior queens did indeed exist. In Searching for the Amazons, John Man travels to the grasslands of Central Asia—from the edge of the ancient Greek world to the borderlands of China—to discover the truth about the truth about these women whose legend has resonated over the centuries.

    This book, written by one of the world’s leading experts on Sparta, traces the rise and fall of Spartan society and explores the tremendous influence the Spartans had on their world and even on ours. Paul Cartledge brings to life figures like legendary founding father Lycurgus and King Leonidas, who embodied the heroism so closely identified with this unique culture, and he shows how Spartan women enjoyed an unusually dominant and powerful role in this hyper-masculine society. Based firmly on original sources, The Spartans is the definitive book about one of the most fascinating cultures of ancient Greece.

    Assuming no knowledge on the part of the reader, it shows how to interpret the information on the inscriptions in a step-by-step journey through the script and language of ancient Egypt.We enter the world of the ancient Egyptians and explore their views on life and death, Egypt and the outside world, humanity and the divine. The book draws on texts found on some thirty artifacts ranging from coffins to stelae to obelisks found in museums in Egypt, America, and Europe, and selected across two thousand years. The texts are then explained clearly, and are supported by full translations, photographs, and line drawings.

    While several of these are well known, for all those that have been recorded, many have been unjustly forgotten. Our history is overflowing with different cultures that have all evolved over time, sometimes dissolving or reforming, though ultimately shaping the way we continue to live. But for every culture that has been remembered, what have we forgotten?This thorough guide explores those civilizations that have faded from the pages of our textbooks but played a significant role in the development of modern society. Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World covers the Hyksos to the Hephthalites and everyone in between, providing a unique overview of humanity’s history from approximately 3000 BCE–550 CE. A wide range of illustrated artifacts and artworks, as well as specially drawn maps, help to tell the stories of forty lost peoples and allow readers to take a direct look into the past. Each entry exposes a diverse culture, highlighting their important contributions and committing their achievements to paper.Forgotten Peoples of the Ancient World is an immersive, thought-provoking, and entertaining book for anyone interested in ancient history.

    Transcripts of audio and videotapes are featured, as well as over 16 pages of shocking photos.

    The culmination of his years at this particular intellectual pursuit, Ancient Egypt: The Light of the World is Massey's crown jewel. In this, the most philosophical (in both tone and concept) of his Egyptological works, Massey, ever the intrepid escort, leads a tour through thousands of years of sociological, cultural, and spiritual development, all the while pointing, with dazzling reason and persuasive prose, to a distant, common, Egyptian origin. British author GERALD MASSEY (1828-1907) published works of poetry, spiritualism, Shakespearean criticism, and theology, but his best-known works are in the realm of Egyptology, including A Book of the Beginnings and The Natural Genesis.

     • Provides dramatic evidence from both archaeological and documentary sources. • A radical challenge to long-established beliefs on the origin of Semitic religion. During his reign, the Pharaoh Akhenaten was able to abolish the complex pantheon of the ancient Egyptian religion and replace it with a single god, the Aten, who had no image or form. Seizing on the striking similarities between the religious vision of this “heretic” pharaoh and the teachings of Moses, Sigmund Freud was the first to argue that Moses was in fact an Egyptian. Now Ahmed Osman, using recent archaeological discoveries and historical documents, contends that Akhenaten and Moses were one and the same man. In a stunning retelling of the Exodus story, Osman details the events of Moses/Akhenaten's life: how he was brought up by Israelite relatives, ruled Egypt for seventeen years, angered many of his subjects by replacing the traditional Egyptian pantheon with worship of the Aten, and was forced to abdicate the throne. Retreating to the Sinai with his Egyptian and Israelite supporters, he died out of the sight of his followers, presumably at the hands of Seti I, after an unsuccessful attempt to regain his throne. Osman reveals the Egyptian components in the monotheism preached by Moses as well as his use of Egyptian royal ritual and Egyptian religious expression. He shows that even the Ten Commandments betray the direct influence of Spell 125 in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Moses and Akhenaten provides a radical challenge to long-standing beliefs concerning the origin of Semitic religion and the puzzle of Akhenaten's deviation from ancient Egyptian tradition. In fact, if Osman's contentions are correct, many major Old Testament figures would be of Egyptian origin.

    Their consuming passions for food, wine and sex drove their society, as well as generating the rich web of privilege, transgression, guilt and taboo for which they are remembered today. Using pamphlets, comic satires, forensic speeches - from authors as illustrious as Plato and as ignored as Philaenis - as source material - this study combines a traditional classicist's rigour with an appreciation of the new analytical techniques pioneered in gender and cultural studies to provide an alternative view of ancient Athenian culture and to bring its reality into a focus easier on the modern eye.

    This time, however, was different. Little did he know in 1983 that he would spend the next six years being brutally, mindlessly tortured by those he supported. “Brother Hamid”, Asadi’s torturer, stopped at nothing to extract his “confessions”. Asadi was a spy for Russia, for Britain, for anyone or anything. Hamid became an ambassador; Asadi a fugitive, haunted by nightmares and persisting pain. His feet lashed till lame, he was grilled until he could no longer answer a simple question. In these letters, discover how, through his accidental friendship with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, a fellow cellmate under the regime, Asadi was saved from execution – and confronts his torturer one last time. In 1983, Houshang Asadi was imprisoned in Tehran. Under torture, he said he was a spy. Many of his friends also confessed and were executed. He was released after six years. Today he lives in Paris with his wife, Nooshabeh Amiri. They write for the Iranian news website Rooz Online

    In Face Paint, Lisa Eldridge reveals the entire history of the art form, from Egyptian and Classical times up through the Victorian age and golden era of Hollywood, and also surveys the cutting-edge makeup science of today and tomorrow. Face Paint explores the practical and idiosyncratic reasons behind makeup’s use, the actual materials employed over generations, and the glamorous icons that people emulate and how they achieved their effects. An engaging history of style, it is also a social history of women and the ways in which we can understand their lives through the prism and impact of makeup.

    It is also a story so filled with intrigues, accusations, international imbroglios, and lasting scandals that it forever altered the way archaeological expeditions were organized and conducted. Hoving's Tutankhamun focuses on Howard Carter, the archaeologist who persisted for six years in his search in the Valley of the Kings for Tutankhamun's tomb. Other major figures in the discovery include: Carter's patron Lord Carnarvon, who died shortly after entering the tomb, thus kindling rumors of a curse; Carter's rival Pierre Lacau, a French Jesuit who headed the Antiquities Service in Cairo and did everything he could to ruin Carter and deny his claim; the Egyptian authorities determined to keep the artifacts of their national heritage in their country; and Arthur Weigall and other Egyptologists who felt slighted by Carter's refusal to admit experts anywhere near his discovery.

    Sojourner Truth, activist and abolitionist. Ada Lovelace, first computer programmer. Marie Curie, first woman to win the Nobel Prize. Joan Jett, godmother of punk. The 100 revolutionary women highlighted in this gorgeously illustrated book were bad in the best sense of the word: they challenged the status quo and changed the rules for all who followed. From pirates to artists, warriors, daredevils, scientists, activists, and spies, the accomplishments of these incredible women vary as much as the eras and places in which they effected change. Featuring bold watercolor portraits and illuminating essays by Ann Shen, Bad Girls Throughout History is a distinctive, gift-worthy tribute.

    In his astonishing new bestseller exploring the implications of these explosive new findings, Colin Wilson takes us on a grand tour of the knowledge amassed by researchers over the centuries to ask questions about mysteries that have puzzled humanity since Plato: Was there an ancient civilization destroyed by some great catastrophe whose survivors built the Sphinx some 10,500 years before Christ? If so, who were these people who had developed a highly advanced culture and who traveled the world from China to the South Pole (then free of ice)? Were they really so unique in their thinking, as Wilson suggests, that, compared with modern man, they were as alien as Martians? Via paleontology and ritual cannibalism, Wilson's tour through time and space sets out to reconstruct that ancient knowledge. In a fascinating exploration of the remote depths of history, From Atlantis to the Sphinx takes us from the structure of the pyramids and the purpose of their tortuous interior shafts, to the prehistoric cities of America by way of ancient sea maps apparently showing the outlines of Antarctica before it was covered by ice.

    We come to know and love this girl, called Small Bird by her family, through the events of her colorful childhood and her marriage to Tutankhaten, a boy of royal birth. Her efforts to save the kingdom from conniving priests and soldiers were gallant and dramatic.While the fate of the Queen is unknown, in her story Lucile Morrison ventures to suppose a satisfying ending to the romance. An extraordinarily accurate, vivid picture of domestic and court life which will enrich any study of the culture of ancient Egypt.Illustrations by Franz Geritz, done in the style of ancient Egypt, help set the mood of Ankhsen­amon's story as the clock is turned back more than three thousand years. Color frontispiece and newly recolored map end pages.

    I was stolen as a baby to be part of one of the most terrible of all Nazi experiments: Lebensborn.’ Watch the 2016 interview with the author. In 1942 Erika, a baby girl from Rogaška Slatina, the Slovenian town that was renamed Sauerbrunn (another town with the same name exists in Austria, which made it harder for the author to find her roots after the war) by Nazi occupiers of the northern part of Slovenia, the only present-day European nation that was trisected and completely annexed into both Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy during WWII, was one of many children that were stolen from their parents by the Nazi occupiers, declared an ‘Aryan’, her true identity erased, and sent to German couples who could not have their own children under the pretense that children were saved from dysfunctional families, struck by prostitution and whatnot, so she was renamed Ingrid, and given new surname "von Oelhafen".After the war, Erika/Ingrid began to uncover her true identity, the full scale of the Lebensborn scheme and the Nazi obsession with bloodlines became clear -- including the kidnapping of up to half a million babies like her and the deliberate murder of children born into the program who were deemed ‘substandard.’The Lebensborn program was the brainchild of Himmler: an extraordinary plan to create an Aryan master race, leaving behind thousands of displaced victims in the wake of the Nazi regime.Written with insight and compassion, this is a powerful meditation on the personal legacy of Hitler’s vision, of Germany’s brutal past and of a divided Europe that for many years struggled to come to terms with its own history.