I want to know one specific detail of the Epic of Gilgamesh but the different translations say it all in a different way. Does the serpent, that steals his plant of youth, come from a spring, a well, a lake or a water filled hole in the ground? Is there any accurate translation online?

I'm currently reading The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku and find this 2nd/3rd/4th century AD time period very interesting, particularly with regards to the adoptions of pagan rituals and practices by early Christianity.

In the same vein, I also recently learned (I grew up atheist) about the background behind the Pauline Epistles. It made me interested in learning more about early Christianity in the Apostolic age, particularly from a scholarly/historical perspective rather than a religious one.

Does anyone have any book, podcast, or even journal recommendations regarding these topics?

Last year I saw in a documentary that one of the oldest documents in history is a sumerian tablet about a teacher (or a parent) complaining about kids not embracing traditions and disrespecting elders. I have been searching for that letter but I have not found it and I don't remember the exact documentary in which I saw it. I would really appreciate if someone here could help me with more information or a source where I could see it myself.

Hi all,

This might sound stupid but after watching Game of Thrones last year it made me think of how horrible the hand to hand fighting must of been for those involved in previous centuries, especially with heavily armoured horses running into large groups of men with spears or other sharp weapons at speeds of upto 30-40mph.

My question is, did those who fought in hand to hand battles suffer from PTSD? The only real resources I can find is "battle fatigue "of Roman soldiers who were then advocated to exercise. I imagine as heavy armour for horses and men came into play things would of got a lot more gruesome since I simple stab or swing of a sword could be deflected by heavy armour.

Thank you

Hello everyone, I would like to know how to understand if a history book has been well received by scholars in the sector, has scholarly consensus and how important it is for the discipline.

It seems a logistically problematic to have enough caught traitors recently to keep a relevant collection for permanent display.

My friend was watching Battle of Britain and there’s a scene of them just dumping fuel on the outside of a spitfire. I can’t seem to find a reason why anyone would do this. Did the RAF dump fuel on their planes for some reason before battle? This seems like a huge fire hazard to me

It seems like depictions of Ancient Greece reflect a widespread belief in numerous different gods. Were supernatural entities universally accepted as real?

Here's the text from Chapter 1, Section V of That Hideous Strength in which a character (Prof. Cecil Dimble) is talking about Arthurian legend to his friend and wife:

You've noticed how there are two sets of characters? There's Guinevere and Launcelot and all those people in the centre: all very courtly and nothing particularly British about them. But then in the background--on the other side of Arthur, so to speak--there are all those dark people like Morgan and Morgawse, who are very British indeed and usually more or less hostile though they are his own relatives. Mixed up with magic. You remember that wonderful phrase, how Queen Morgan 'set all the country in fire with ladies that were enchantresses.' Merlin too, of course, is British, though not hostile.

Doesn't it look very like a picture of Britain as it must have been on the eve of the invasion? Wouldn't there have been one section of society that was almost purely Roman? People wearing togas and talking a Celticised Latin--something that would sound to us rather like Spanish: and fully Christian. But farther up country, in the out-of-the-way places, cut off by the forests, there would have been little courts ruled by real old British under-kings, talking something like Welsh, and practising a certain amount of the Druidical religion.

One can imagine [Arthur himself as] a man of the old British line, but also a Christian and a fully-trained general with Roman technique, trying to pull this whole society together and almost succeeding. There'd be jealousy from his own British family, and the Romanised section--the Lancelots and Lionels--would look down on the Britons. That'd be why Kay is always represented as a boor: he is part of the native strain. And always that under-tow, that tug back to Druidism.

Did Arthurian scholars in Lewis's time have this theory that half the characters represented Romanized characters and half represented non-Romanized Britons? Do current scholars see such a dichotomy within the legends? If current scholars do see such a division in the legends, do they think it was actually based on a real division in the society in which the legends arose? Did Lewis invent the dichotomy whole cloth?

What is the history of the term?

Hello there as the title suggests my question IS rather simple How does it work when a King has Twins who gets the title, are the titles divided? Thx un advance

I would imagine that the colonists and immigrants would have brought their folklore and mythology with them, but it appears not to be the case.

Is there an explanation for that?

Part of my family is from Rio de Janeiro for many generations now and my grandmother always say to me that her mother always told her that people would go to the beach only to fish or rent a boat. The famous beaches we go to nowadays were too far away (Copacabana, Ipanema, and others) and they would visit beaches and islands by the Guanabara bay, where there are no waves.

So I wonder when did this practice to go to the beach to enjoy the sun started. If it is possible to have an answer focused in Latin America/Brazil, I would appreciate.

What were the demographics of population like 100 years after the Norman invasion of Ireland? I recently read that Humprey Gilbert's near genocidal actions in the later Tudor invasion were used as a proto-colonization technique by the English in the same capacity the Spanish polished their tetechniques in the Eastern Atlantic Islands, which tracks given how active both he and his son (Raleigh Gilbert) were in English colonization (as well as his half brother, Walter Raleigh). Humphrey said about the path to his tent being lined with skulls in Munster;

[It brought] great terror to the people when they saw the heads of their dead fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolk, and friends.

Were these the skulls of indigenous people of Ireland? Had they retained an identity post Norman invasion, or were these folks the remnants of that?