I’ve had an incredibly busy two days, action-packed, and it’s only now that I’m managing to get my head around Greg Bear’s passing. We’ve been friends for about as long as I’ve been in this field, so long that I can’t remember when or where we actually met. We’ve known each other for something like […]

Behold a 3500-year-old fresco of three Cretan ladies, found in the palace at Knossos. Except they may not be ladies, they might be goddesses. Or priestesses dressed as the goddesses they served. Or some upper-class women enjoying one another’s company. Archaeology can be complicated that way. The principle divinity of the Cretans seems to have […]

Greek religion was weird. It was a mashup consisting of various local traditions shoe-horned together, with myths having many variations depending on who you asked, and even the nature of the gods seemed somewhat protean, with very different versions of a god being worshiped in different places. The cult statue of Artemis worshiped in Ephesus […]

Turns out that Bouboulina has also been immortalized as a Playmobil playset. That’s how you know you’ve made it. Bouboulina’s granddaughter was a chip off the old block. During World War II she established an organization to smuggle Allied servicemen out of occupied Greece, along with bits of intelligence. Like most Resistance heroes, she was […]