This bronze blade was once attached to the axle of a chariot wheel, and is known as a wei. It was used to keep enemy foot soldiers away from the chariot. Source: Hubai Provincial Museum in Wuhan, China

The wall panel was excavated in the Northwest Palace of Nimrud, Iraq and is now in the Metropolitan Museum.

The Urartians were a neighbor and fierce rival of the Assyrian empire, and Urartian art borrows many elements of Assyrian iconography.

In Assyrian art, sages (Akkadian apkallū) are often depicted holding a “purifier” (Akk. mullilu, some sort of conifer cone) in the right hand and a “bucket” (Akk. banduddû) in the left hand. For example, one spell describes the magical figurines necessary for the ritual.

Read more about the Löwenmensch figurine (otherwise called the Lion-man of the Hohlenstein-Stadel) on Wikipedia

More info: British Museum

A silver koro modelled as an elaborately caparisoned elephant with a richly embellished harness comprising a bejewelled saddle-cloth bearing shishi masks and minogame, supporting a coiled dragon standing on swirling clouds holding a large rock-crystal ball. The creature’s headdress in the form of a stepped base upon which stands a gold ho-o bird with its wings spread. The whole carved and applied in shakudo, shibuichi, gold, silver, and a shakudo-copper mokume alloy. Details of the caparison are inlaid in rock crystal, malachite, coral, tiger’s-eye, agate, and nephrite.

It is int…Read more

The egg-shaped body of this amphora consists of two parts. The surface is entirely covered with relief and flattened representations making up three friezes.

The upper frieze depicts griffins tearing at stags.

The middle one has the cast figures of Scythians and horses which join together to create different scenes, with the sacrifice of a horse in the centre.

The lower frieze bears elements of floral ornamentation and is decorated by birds and rosettes.

The lower part of the vessel has three pouring lips. The representations on the amphora are assumed to reflect Indo-Iranian cosmological…Read more

Most likely made by the Scythians in modern-day Bulgaria and decorated with Celtic iconography.

It was found dismantled, with the other pieces stacked inside the base, in 1891 in a peat bog near the hamlet of Gundestrup in the Aars parish of Himmerland, Denmark

Phrygian in style, cavalry helmet, terminating in the head of an eagle, decorated with an all-over scale pattern, a warrior and winged victories.

Source: Mougins Museum in Cannes, France

Some historians believe this is an early version of the board game tafl, others believe its checkers. Experts are still discussing the subject.

The Mahiole headgear were symbols of the highest rank reserved for the men of the chiefly class of Hawaii.

These helmets are made from a woven frame structure decorated with bird feathers.

Whistling arrows are useful during hunting, because the effect on animals of an arrow whistling away high above the ground is often to make it stop, curious to see what is in the air.

This gives the hunter time to launch a second arrow, this time with a game head to kill the animal.

These whistling arrows made by inserting an arrowhead of bone in which air channels have been created. When shot, such arrowheads make a very audible sound through the air.

Each side bears the names of three months of the year.

For each month we can see, starting from the top: the number of days in it; the day on which the Nones (the day of the Moon’s first quarter) falls; the duration of the day and night expressed in hours; the sign of the zodiac; the protecting divinity; work to be attended to in the fields; and the most important festivities.

The translations are vaguely as follows:

Month of January. 31 days. Nones fall on the 5th. 9 hours, 3/4 of day. 14 hours, 1/4 of night.

The sun is in Capricorn, under the protec…Read more

The Aztecs would take the soldiers of their conquered enemies and lay them face up on a sacrificial stone at the top of a step pyramid, carve open their chest with an obsidian-bladed knife like this, cut out their still-beating heart, and offer it to the sun.

The Aztecs believed that without an ample supply of heart sacrifices, the sun would cease to move across the sky and plunge the world in to eternal darkness.

The Aztecs were also known for an ancient sport in which a hard leather ball was thrown across a court using ones elbows and knees, and points were scored by shooting the ball through a…Read more

RMS Titanic was a British passenger liner operated by the White Star Line that sank in the North Atlantic Ocean in the early morning hours of 15 April 1912, after striking an iceberg during her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York City.

Of the estimated 2,224 passengers and crew aboard, more than 1,500 died, making the sinking one of modern history’s deadliest peacetime commercial marine disasters.

This was the last thing some of those on board Titanic ate.

While the owner of this skull is unknown, the shop from which this was found, claimed that a traveller had sold it to them.

He added that the man got this skull from his ancestor, a doctor who traveled throughout Asia to help those in need.

At one point he treated an abbot in a Buddhist Monastery in Tibet, and in return the munks gave him the carved tibetan skull.

Studied by historians and experts, one Tibetan Khenpo (Monk-Professor) explained such skulls were carved a long time ago to take a curse off a family or to guide the soul of a mislead human being on the right path.

The Universe in your grasp. That is the promise of this spherical astrolabe, which is perfectly sized to nestle neatly in the palm of a hand. More than a representative model, it is a working device which captures and even seems to control the heavens.

All the cultures that inherited and developed Greek mathematics and philosophy agreed on the form of the world. The Earth was at the centre of everything, orbited…Read more