Articles

Generally, the eye in the ancient Near Eastern world represented an all-seeing and omnipresent divinity. The eye served as the focus of all types of myths relating to the visually perceivable. In other words, a deity was reduced to an eye, and the form of the symbol suggested a meaning to the viewer or religious practitioner. When the eye is transformed into language, an ocular icon becomes a verbal icon.

Until recent times, the idea of a human-animal hybrid belonged only in tales of folklore and fantasy and the realm of science fiction.

The intention of this paper is to illustrate the degree of cultural activity that preceded pyramid construction. The purpose here is to examine two ideas: 1) the landscape was sacred before it was used for pyramid building and, 2) the patterns of Predynastic and Early Dynastic land use and how it may have influenced later pyramid placement.

When Emperor Marcus Aurelius died on the banks of the Danube in 180 CE at Vindobona, or Vienna, the Roman Empire he left behind was the largest transcontinental, transcultural, singular political entity in history before the rise of the European nation state some fifteen centuries later.