Santa Claus (courtesy of Coca-Cola ®) Since this is Christmas Eve, it might do well to try following a Christmas tradition. Or perhaps its intriguing antithesis in this brief speculation. Giordano Bruno said, “To think is to speculate with images.” Of course Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy in 1600 in Rome, and…
Author: Patrick Hunt
Achaemenid Persian Griffin Capital at Persepolis
Fig. 1 Persepolis stone griffin double protome column capital Dr. Patrick Hunt, Stanford University One of the most impressive yet enigmatic surviving capitals from Persepolis is an Achaemenid masterpiece: the double griffin protome capital. On the one hand, there ought to be more than one of these griffin capitals from before the 330 BCE destruction,…
Celtic Iron Age Sword Deposits and Arthur’s Lady of the Lake
Fig. 1 N. C. Wyeth, “Sword Excalibur Rises From the Lake” (c. early 20th c.) Malory tells in his Morte d’Arthur epic (c. 1450) that just before the mortally-wounded Arthur passes from this world to Avalon, Arthur instructs Sir Bedivere (Bedwyr) to throw his sword Excalibur into the nearby water. Bedivere does not wish to…
Reading Livers Through Reading Literature: HEPATOSCOPY and HARUSPICY in Iliad 20:469 ff & 24:212 ff, Aeneid 4:60 ff & 10.175 ff, Cicero and Pliny on Divination, among others
Co-authored research by Patrick Hunt, Stanford University, and Whitney de Luna, Stanford Hospital Liver Clinic Fig. 1 Etruscan Bronze Mirror of Chalchas the Seer Reading a Liver (Vatican: Gregorian Museum, Rome, cat # 12240) Figure 2 Sheep’s liver in clay. 14.6 cm across. Old Babylonian, circa 1900-1600 BC. Provenance: likely Sippar in modern southern Iraq….
Hannibal’s Engineers and Livy (XXI.36-7) on Burned Rock – Truth or Legend?
Many have commented on Livy’s famous passage (Hist. XXI.36-7) where he describes Hannibal’s engineers surmounting a large rock blockage on the Italian descent of the Alps, including the late great French archaeologist Serge Lancel (Lancel, 1998:78-9) and our History Channel team 2006 production (June-November, 2006). According to Livy, and repeated in Ammianus Marcellinus (de Sanctis,…
Alpine Archaeology and Paleopathology: Was Hannibal’s Army also decimated by epidemic while crossing the Alps?
Fig. 1 Alpine vista Joint Research by Patrick Hunt, Stanford University, and Andreea Seicean, Case Western Reserve University Epidemiology of ancient causes of death is difficult to reconstruct by descriptions of disease. Paleopathology is a growing field relative to ancient history, but as such usually depends either on material remains – generally bioarchaeological – or…