Humans love secrets, and are deeply intrigued by unexplained phenomena. When those secrets persist for hundreds or even thousands of years, the stories can be universally fascinating. Like the Antikythera mechanism, an unsettlingly modern machine found in the undersea wreckage of an ancient ship. Or the buried army of thousands of life-size Chinese warriors carved in stone. From lost cities to the Holy Grail to the identity of Jack the Ripper to

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Uses activities and handicraft projects to reinforce information about the clothing, architecture, writing, work, food, and religion of the Egyptians, Mesopotamians, Nubians, and Hittites who lived in the Near East in ancient times.

Susan L. Einbinder is Professor of Hebrew Literature at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. When Crusader armies on their way to the Holy Land attacked Jewish communities in the Rhine Valley, many Jews chose suicide over death at the hands of Christian mobs. With their defiant deaths, the medieval Jewish martyr was born. With the literary commemoration of the victims, Jewish martyrology followed. Beautiful Death examines the evolution of a long-neglected...

A dead emperor guarded by his army for 2,000 years… One day in 1974, a group of farmers in rural China found a life-size clay statue of a man's head buried deep in a field. When government archaeologists inspected the area, they discovered that beneath the ground were more than eight thousand life-size clay soldiers, each one with a unique face. In nearby chambers, they unearthed clay horses, carefully preserved swords, bronze statues, and other...

An ancient city unearthed… In the 1730's, Charles of Bourbon, king of the area around present-day Naples, Italy, learned that local peasants were finding marble and other ancient objects when they dug their wells. He sent army colonel Rocque Joachin Alcubierre and later Karl Jacob Weber to explore the area. Working in darkness with only torches to light their way, Alcubierre's and Weber's crews of workers tunneled through hardened mud. The crews...

"Winner of the 2005 Meritorious Publication Award, University of Cape Town" David M. Goldenbergis Isidore and Theresa Cohen Chair of Jewish Religion and Thought at the University of Cape Town, and Visiting Scholar at the University of Pennsylvania. He was formerly President of Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, Associate Director of the Annenberg Research Institute for Judaic and Near Eastern Studies, and Editor of The Jewish Quarterly...

Jonathan Elukin is Associate Professor of History at Trinity College. This book challenges the standard conception of the Middle Ages as a time of persecution for Jews. Jonathan Elukin traces the experience of Jews in Europe from late antiquity through the Renaissance and Reformation, revealing how the pluralism of medieval society allowed Jews to feel part of their local communities despite recurrent expressions of hatred against them. Elukin...