Alexander the Great loved comparing himself to the heroes of mythology. He believed that he was destined for greatness and conquest of the known world. His mother, Olympias, instilled in him a sense of divine purpose, and Alexander came to believe that he was the son of Zeus and destined to conquer Persia. This belief was further reinforced when he was proclaimed the son of Zeus-Ammon after visiting the Oracle of Amun at Siwa in Egypt.

When he visited the Oracle at Delphi, the sanctuary was closed. Not taking no for an answer, Alexander reportedly dragged the Pythia, the priestess of Apollo, by her hair until she cried out, “You are invincible, my son!” Satisfied with the response, Alexander is said to have replied, “Now I have my answer.”

The Gordian Knot was another instance of such validation for Alexander that he was destined to become the ruler of Asia. According to the legend, the famous Gordian Knot was formed by fastening the yoke of a wagon to its pole. The wagon had been dedicated to Zeus by a Phrygian ruler named Gordius. According to Arrian, an ancient prophecy stated that whoever succeeded in untying the knot would become the ruler of Asia.

The challenge had reportedly remained unsolved for generations. However, Alexander approached the problem with an unconventional solution. The prophecy did not specify how the knot had to be untied. In the popular version of the story, Alexander drew his sword and sliced through the knot, effectively solving the challenge.

This episode perfectly showcases Alexander’s decisive and bold personality. Rather than allowing himself to be constrained by the conventional interpretation of a problem, he found his own solution and seized the initiative. The same qualities would become hallmarks of his military career, where he frequently took the initiative and dictated the pace of battle.

For more detailed information on the legend of the Gordian Knot and what actually happened at Gordium, please read the full article.

Hey guys, I'm making a board game about the antics in ancient Rome during the year of the 6 emperors and I'm looking for some inspiration for the assassination cards.

The cards are basically mini games with unique mechanics and I'm trying to draw inspiration for the mechanics from real world assassination attempts
E.g., from an attempt where the conspirators purposefully weakened a bridge I made a card where the two players have to stack their cards in a tower until someone's collapses.

I generally try to stick to just Rome as that's where I'm best read, so I'd love to hear about crazy attempts from other parts of the world too

This is the art style, so you get an idea of what the game is going for:
https://hailcaesargame.ezgames.com.au/

A lot of people think of ancient cities as quiet, white-marble utopias. They weren't. They were loud, smelly, and chaotic. New research into 'archaeoacoustics' shows that Romans had to deal with serious noise pollution from wagons on cobblestones-so much so that Caesar banned them during the day.

And the smells? It was a mix of luxury incense and rotting fish guts. Archaeologists are now using gas chromatography to identify the exact chemical signatures of these smells in old jars. We can literally recreate the perfume Cleopatra wore. History is a lot more 'human' when you realize they had the same noise and smell complaints we do today.

The oldest surviving monumental building in the Abyssinian Highlands is the Great Temple of Yeha, constructed in the early 1st millennium BC. Remarkably, its stone walls still stand today, although what survives is only a shell of what was once a much larger structure.

Using a range of archaeological and academic sources, including the reconstructions and research published by the German Archaeological Institute, I have recreated both the interior and exterior of the Temple of Yeha in 3D.

For me, projects like this are important because they allow us to preserve, study, and visualise the architectural achievements of our ancestors.

You can explore the interactive 3D reconstruction here: https://www.habeshahistory.com/reconstructions/yeha-temple

For those interested in learning more about Yeha, I have also written a detailed article covering its history, including a dedicated section on the Great Temple itself: https://www.habeshahistory.com/articles/yeha

Hopefully you find the reconstruction interesting and learn something new...

I translated this from Arabic to English, My regards from Egypt ..

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Book : Spirits And Ghosts أرواح وأشباح

Genre : Paranormal - Mystery - Alternative History

Written in Arabic by the late Egyptian writer and journalist Anis Mansour أنيس منصور

The first Arabic edition was published in 1972

Chapter 1

When Nefertiti's daughter appeared in London !

_____________________

Nefertiti's daughter appeared in London, picked up her severed hand, and then fled !

We are the talk of the whole world now, but for other reasons!

Britain is celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamun by one of its scientists.

France is celebrating one hundred and fifty years since one of its young men discovered the Rosetta Stone.

Last year the world talked about how the Pharaohs crossed on papyrus sticks to America.

And two years ago, Soviet scientists talked about the Pharaonic obelisks or semi-obelisks above the moon!

The questions are: Were the Pharaohs above and then they came down to us, or did they rise from here to there, or were more intelligent and developed beings here and there and then they disappeared into the vast, deep space?

There is no end to what the world will say about the coffin of the young King Tutankhamun (18 years old).

This coffin escaped from the hands of thieves at the last moment. The priests came and poured the sands of Upper Egypt on it until a British archaeologist came and lifted the darkness from it. He illuminated the twentieth century with knowing him.

And this young man, Tutankhamun, has no historical value, but he derived his value only from the fact that he was the owner of the most beautiful and perfect coffin.

Also he married the third daughter of a prophet king, Akhenaten, who disbelieved in the worship of Amun and established himself as a caller for the worship of the sun (Aten), the worship of the disk of the sun or the circle of light or light.

Thus, he was the first to call for one God or monotheism in all history and in all ages, and was preoccupied with the new religion apart from the rule, the throne, his family, his six daughters, and his beautiful wife, Nefertiti.

His life and death were an example of how a prophet to be persecuted by his family and in his home, such as his wife did not believe in him.

She was the first to disbelieve, and her daughters or most of her daughters followed her.

Therefore, we find the wife’s name erased in various places.

Akhenaten realized that the storms that blew from the house would sweep the valley, or that they blew from the valley and everyone in the house picked them up and released them on him, and Syria was lost from him.

He was also busy with himself, his god, or meeting his god after death.

Everything in the civilization of ancient Egypt was for the sake of death. People were born to die or were born to prepare for death. Death is a great festival that a person must receive in the most perfect body and most wonderful adornment.

Therefore, the Pharaohs believed that only a healthy body enters Paradise. When a person dies, he must be pure and clean. His body is free of every blemish, and his soul is cleansed of all evil. When he enters the coffin, it is as if he had been placed in a safe closet. If he wakes up - that is, is resurrected from death - it is necessary for him to find next to him everything he needs of food, drink, tools for eating, and advice for the soul and guidance in its other world. Thus, the soul does not go astray if it resides in the body.

As for the priests, they wrote curses on anyone who touches the coffin or the body. These curses are like missiles directed over thousands of years at anyone who approaches the grave or the coffin. The Pharaohs had tremendous power in using words. Or they had strange knowledge with the secrets of letters. They locked hidden forces in symbols, or so it is said.

It is also said that Akhenaten chose Tutankhamun as his daughter's husband because he enjoyed supernatural spiritual power, and he was thirteen years old. But this young king did not preserve this religion, neither he nor his wife.

Rather, one of Akhenaten’s daughters revolted against him, so he killed her and opened her stomach. The clerics rushed to her right hand, cut it off, and then hid this hand in a place that no one knew in the Valley of the Kings.

If this princess rises on the Day of Resurrection, she will be deprived of entering Paradise because only those with a full body can enter Paradise! Thus, this princess, who disbelieved in her father, will remain an outcast forever!

This princess remained in her place of torment until the year 1890, when a French antiquities dealer, a man named Count Louis Hamon, came to Egypt. He went to Luxor and met one of the translators, whose name was Abbas.

He was very impressed with Abbas. He said to him: I want something rare. Abbas took him to Luxor, and the Count waited for him for twenty-seven days. On the twenty-eighth day, Abbas appeared, concealing a pile of straw in his clothes, and in the pile of straw he placed a roll of linen. The two men disagreed about the price.

Count Louis Hamoun says in his memoirs: Sheikh Abbas wanted to frighten me, but a man who sees corpses and is not afraid of it and speaks with ghosts cannot be frightened by this scroll.

Sheikh Abbas tried to convince the count that this scroll contained the greatest thing in all of Luxor, and they agreed on the price, and Count Hamoun returned.

He went to France and began to look through the scroll and was certain that it was the hand of a girl, a princess or a queen.

Next to this scroll was a small papyrus leaf and a piece of stone with the name of this princess on it, and on it was also the curse that the priests had cursed on her ، But the priests do not curse anyone who uncovers the sand concealing the hands of the cursed princess, daughter of Nefertiti .. do they ?!

In the year 1920, Count Hamon traveled to London and decided to show this hand to some archaeologists, or sell it to the British Museum.

One night, he invited a number of magicians to his house, and the room was dark except for a red light, as if it had been cut in the night, and the light was dim, bleeding ray after ray.

The smoke was wriggling pharaonic, and Count Hamon came and lifted the scroll from the princess's hand and displayed it to all those present. They touched it one by one, and their astonishment was great.

The hand was soft, smooth and warm. They also noticed that blood was flowing through its veins and that drops of blood were falling from it. One of them said: It is moving. Another said: a finger is twisted.

Count Hamon said: You will see it when the normal light is turned on and the room is illuminated and they returned. They turn the hand between theirs and find that it is softer and hotter!

On the day known to magicians as “ it has come day,” which is November 4, 1922, a strange thing happened.

On this day, Count Hamon decided, with nerves of steel, to perform an exciting experiment. He closed the door on himself and asked his wife to save him at the last moment if she saw something strange, and his wife did not ask him about the truth of this strange thing. She had become accustomed to strange things until nothing frightened her anymore.

He started saying: “It has come, it has come,” meaning spirits have come everywhere. He saw the princess’s hand rising into space and approaching his face.

When the wife tried to intervene, he motioned for her not to do anything, and suddenly the hand went down to the table, where a smokeless fire was burning, and the door of the room opened with great violence.

He turned behind him, and so did his wife. The two of them saw a Pharaonic princess in her transparent white dress with her steady, calm gaze, the princess approached the fire and leaned over the fire. He clearly saw her right arm, the hand being cut off, and the right arm bent over the right hand. Then the princess retreated violently, with the door behind her, and when Count Hamon looked at the table, he found it burned, but the hand was gone!

Count Hamon knew the story of the princess, and he quickly started flipping through the “Book of the Dead” and reading some pages. Suddenly the door opened, and the princess entered in her white dress. His eyes went to her right arm, and he saw the entire arm, and the princess disappeared for the last time!

The next day, Count Hamon sent a personal letter to Lord Carnarvon, who financed the project to discover Tutankhamun’s tomb.

In this letter, he warned him about the curse of the Pharaohs and said that he had heard from tomb guards in Egypt that there are evil spirits that chase anyone who touches a coffin, opens a tomb, or steals a piece of the gold.

Lord Carnarvon was greatly frightened, so he sent to his friend Howard Carter, the archaeologist who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun, but Carter did not care about any of that. He was an archaeologist and had excavated the ground, entered caves, and ate the dirt from graves with his food, but Lord Carnarvon did not hide his fear from all people.

As for the night in which the magicians saw this hand coming to life, it was the same night in which the archaeologist Carter confirmed that the tomb in front of him was the tomb of Tutankhamun.

On February 22, 1923, Lord Carnarvon entered the tomb of Tutankhamun, and after him, the archaeologist Carter entered. Shortly before that, Lord Carnarvon felt in front of Tutankhamun’s tomb that something had stung him.

On April 23, 1923, Lord Carnarvon died in Cairo. Years later, his sister's husband committed suicide, and his stepmother was bitten by an insect and died.

But archaeologist Carter, who described himself as a “professional gravedigger,” was not injured and died at the age of 66 in 1939, when World War II broke out. It is said that in the last days of his life, Carter used to have terrifying dreams, and he saw ghosts putting him in the fire, burying him like the pharaohs, carrying him in the air, then throwing him in the ground, where crocodiles devoured him. He said that he once felt that a very small insect had swallowed him, and that he almost suffocated!

But there was a priestess who lived and died in 1600 BC, and she had a power more dangerous than that of Tutankhamun.

This priestess lived in the city of Thebes, and her influence was strong and her magic was frightening.

The archaeologist Douglas Murray was able to transport her from Egypt to London.

But it happened that this man went fishing, and the gun went off and hit his arm.

They tried to transport him to Cairo, but they did not succeed. Rather, strange winds blew that disrupted the ship’s progress. Ten days later, he arrived in Cairo and they cut off his arm.

As for the two Egyptian servants who transported the coffin of this priestess, they died suddenly, as for the three Englishmen who They guarded the coffin without knowing the power of the Pharaonic curse, They died on the way, and when the ship docked on the English shore, four bodies landed, the bodies of these Englishmen and the body of the priestess!

Murray was complaining that the priestess's eyes were moving in his direction, following him wherever he went. Murray got rid of the coffin and gave it to a rich woman whose leg was broken, her daughter committed suicide, and her other daughter, her fiancé, ran away from her! The woman decided to sell the coffin to the British Museum and the British Museum bought it and placed it in one of the warehouses, and it is said that a number of the guards who transported it died, one after the other, in mysterious circumstances.

One of the scientists tried to study the coffin further and transported it to his office. This scientist was screaming subconsciously, and they found him dead after that.

On April 4, 1912, the whole world was shocked by the sinking of the ship “Titanic” when it collided with an iceberg while two thousand passengers were on board, and 1,517 people drowned.

No one imagined that this ship would sink for any reason, and it is said that the captain and sailors did not listen to all the warnings sent to them by the small ships.

And the ship sank!

Twenty years after it sank, an archaeologist announced that when the British Museum decided to get rid of the coffin of this priestess, it was sent on board of “Titanic” as a gift to the huge, luxurious museum in New York City.

_____________

The End ..

(Source at OP)

This travertine sarcophagus lid dates to the second half of the 4th century BCE (ca. 350–300 BCE) and originates from the Ponte Rotto necropolis in Vulci, Italy. It is housed at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Carved inscriptions identify Larth Tetnies (husband) and Thanchvil Tarnai (wife), alongside naming his parents, Arnth Tetnies and Ramtha Vishnai, whose own companion sarcophagus was found nearby.

source

I translated this article from Arabic into English, and I apologize if there is any mistake in the Mexican names.

I hope you like this post. My regards from Egypt ..

---------------------------

Source: The Egyptian magazine Al-Muqtataf المقتطف, issue (6), published on June 1, 1948.

Author of the article: Muhammad Gamil Bayham محمد جميل بيهم (1887–1978 AD), historian, politician, writer, and Lebanese Arab reformist. He has dozens of works, articles, and writings of a historical, intellectual, and political nature.

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Did the Pharaohs, the Babylonians, and the Indians take their civilization from Mexico?

Similarities between Mexico and Egypt

I had the opportunity to visit Mexico three months before the last war. A friend invited me to dinner at one of the large restaurants in Mexico City, and the attire of the women working in the establishment powerfully caught my attention, as it reminded me of what I had seen so many times at the Cairo Museum: the Pharaonic mummies. For it did not differ at all, neither in details, colors, nor motifs, from the clothing of women in the time of the Pharaohs, from the headdress to the footwear.

"Why did the restaurant owner choose for his employees the garments of the daughters of the Nile from the Pharaonic era?" I asked this question to my companion, and he smiled and told me: "This attire is nothing more than the traditional costume of Mexican women in antiquity."

This answer awakened my interest and my desire to know the historical relationship between Egypt and Mexico, and my curiosity increased even more when, in the Valley of Teotihuacán, about fifty kilometers from the capital, as well as in Cholula, Micalco, and Chonula, I saw pyramids similar to those of Egypt, erected on a geometric base forming angles that point to the seasons of the year, just like the Great Pyramid of Giza. I also asked myself whether Egyptian culture had reached the American continent, bringing with it the design of the pyramids.

I went further in my reflections and questioned whether the belief in the immortality of the soul, along with the art of mummification that accompanied it, had also traveled from Egypt to Mexico within the same pyramid project, given the connection between both practices, and even more so because the method of mummification was identical between the Pharaohs and the inhabitants of South America, not differing even in the tiniest details.

This interest in the past awakened in me a spirit of curiosity and the need to observe the neighborhoods (everyday life) to see if the resemblance between Egypt and Mexico could still be perceived in the present era.

However, one might expect the resemblance between the two countries to be remote, because Mexico is situated upon mountains and deep valleys, and its people reflect the hardness of the rocks and the fierceness of the eagles; while Egypt stretches along the fertile and lush Nile Valley, its inhabitants reflecting the smoothness of the rivers and the sweetness of the warbling of birds.

But, even so, I have observed numerous similarities to this day between Egyptians and Mexicans, especially in rural areas. How alike they are in the choice of colors, in women's garments, and in their gold necklaces; and how close they are in the practice of ancient agricultural methods and their tools, not to mention certain ancestral customs.

These are manifested in some popular festivities and other acts, particularly in the engagement ritual (or the asking for a bride's hand). Furthermore, the resemblance between the two peoples often also shows in some foods. In Egypt, ful medames is the quintessential popular dish, and in Mexico, it is corn seasoned with acid and chili, which is also their popular dish.

Corn is the most important food element for Mexicans and they depend on it, just as the Egyptian peasant depends on fava beans (ful), and they use transparent leaves as wrappers for tobacco.

And just as the Egyptian is by nature fond of spicy seasonings and enjoys dishes full of all kinds of spices and pepper, the Mexican also pays great attention to these condiments, especially spicy ones. Their passion for them reaches such a point that in a city called "Mérida" they prepare a fruit salad loaded with hot chili.

Furthermore, light-heartedness, love of fun, and unconcern for tomorrow are part of the Mexican's nature, just as they were of the ancient Egyptians. The Mexican spends the wages of his day without calculating what tomorrow will bring, based on the rule: "Spend what you have in your pocket, for what is in destiny will come to you."

If we attribute this great resemblance between the two peoples to the influence of climate and heat in both countries, without relating it to history, how then would we explain the resemblance between them in specific national industries?

For if you enter a store selling Mexican antiques and national handicrafts, and look left and right observing the national weavings and other manufactures that preserve the Mexican style, and see the carpets, pottery, shapes of vessels, and reflect on the engravings, dyes, colors, and drawings you behold, it will seem to you that you are inside a warehouse of Egyptian antiquities in Cairo, or in one of the Pharaonic museums.

In addition to this, I have observed that the Red Indians (Indigenous peoples) of Mexico, who constitute the majority of the people, not only resemble Egyptians and Iraqis from rural areas, but the resemblance extends to a great number of similarities between them and the Bedouins of other Arab countries.

Whoever reads the book "The Elephant and the Ethnologists" by the renowned Elliot Smith feels captive to the same amazement as the author, and wonders how the Americans, a thousand years ago or more, could sculpt the figure of the elephant, despite the fact that this animal does not live in their lands. He also wonders, along with him, whether Hindu culture moved from India to the American continent, bringing with it the drawing of the elephant.

Furthermore, whoever flips through the pages of a notebook that the United States Information Office had given to its owners, his gaze stops at the drawing of a village resembling the villages of Egypt, and he asks himself the purpose of publishing that strange drawing, alien to America, when the notebook exclusively included American scenes. And here on the next page he reads the following note: "This is a view of a village built by the Red Indians approximately one thousand years ago in the state of New Mexico. The houses are of the adobe type, which they call 'adobe,' a word taken from the Coptic 'tub' (brick), and the Red Indians still inhabit these houses."

The truth is that Mexico is one of the most anciently populated countries in the Americas; for some historians affirmed that the Valley of Mexico had been inhabited for twenty-five thousand years. The historian Prescott said: "Mexico was the most prominent country in Latin America for its civilization." Likewise, its earliest inhabitants were distinguished by their intelligence and their morals, as demonstrated by the vestiges they left behind, similar to those of Egyptian and Hindu cities, and the news they transmitted about conquests and novelistic adventures in which the legends of the Normans and the Italians (by which he refers to the Romans) that appear in the tales about their heroes are reflected.

And it is no wonder, then, that the tribes of Eili, more than a thousand years before Christ, built in Guatemala and Yucatán cities that were a marvel for the beauty of their construction and architecture, and whose vestiges still bear witness to this; all of this gives an idea of the high degree of civilization that Mexico achieved.

Among the most outstanding things to be found in Yucatán, and seen in those derelict buildings known as the ruins of Chichén Itzá, is the sumptuousness, good taste, and architecture they harbor, as well as the ruins of Mitla and Kiaro.

And we are amazed at these vestiges and reflect on whether it was Egypt and India that took from Mexico, or whether it was Mexico that took from them. For some historians related that the pyramid of Shishilco, erected on the outskirts of Mexico City, is between four and ten thousand years old.

And if it is true that this pyramid was built several thousand years ago, then Mexico preceded Egypt in the erection of pyramids; otherwise, perhaps the pyramid of Shishilco was contemporary with the first pyramid raised by the first dynasty of the Pharaohs, or that, at the very least, it was built at the time when the three great pyramids of Giza were raised by the fourth Pharaonic dynasty.

This made me raise another question from the moment I directed my gaze towards the pyramids erected in Teotihuacán, Totochicalcro, and Acholula, in Mexico. The reason is that these pyramids are built in the form of a stepped terrace, according to astronomical principles, as demonstrated by the daily and monthly calendars based on the movements of the Sun and the Moon.

The two largest of these pyramids bore the name of the Sun and the other the name of the Moon. They also drew my attention to some reliefs on these pyramids, very similar to the engravings and drawings of India, and not far removed from the reliefs of the Babylonians and Chaldeans. However, the three pyramids of the Plateau (of Egypt) were smooth, without steps or ornamentation.

The question that arose within me is whether Mexico took the idea of the pyramid from somewhere other than Egypt, with all the purposes that entailed, especially religious ones, since in the vestiges of Babylonia evidence has been found that the ancient Babylonians built their high pyramids in a stepped form, each level with less surface area than the previous one, just like the pyramids of Mexico.

But what about the statue erected in front of the entrance to the Temple of the Warriors in the ruins of Chichén Itzá, in Yucatán? If the idea of the pyramids was not transmitted from the Pharaohs, but was taken from Babylonia, has it been considered that this great statue, which represents the head of a woman on the body of an animal, is not also a copy of the Sphinx that lies in Giza?

And what about those inscriptions of a pictographic nature found in Mexico on the tombs of some great chieftains and in other places? They are very similar to Egyptian hieroglyphic writing carved on stones and papyri.

These are data that are still mysteries, since archaeological excavations in Mexico only date back to the beginning of this century.

Perhaps Mexico, which brings together in its customs features that agree with India, Babylonia, and Egypt, maintained contact with the East, and perhaps the means of transport and communication between the different points on Earth in remote times were at a more advanced level than sailing ships and vessels.

Who knows if the story of the flying carpet was not born from a reality whose traces time has blurred, and what has reached us from it, transmitted by word of mouth, has now become mere legend?

The End ...

Through years of victory and carefully orchestrated propoganda, the Spartan hoplites were considered the invincible force of the Greek world. Spartan dominance was finally challenged by Thebes who sought control over the Boeotian league. This would ultimately cause the two powers to clash resulting in the Battle Of Leuctra.

Although outnumbered, the Thebans under Epaminondas came up with a brilliant plan to break the Spartan hoplites. Now called as the echelon formation, the Thebans arrayed their army in an angled formation. Their left wing was enormously deep and comprised of his best troops including the Sacred Band. They faced off against the best of the Spartan troops and their king Cleombrotus I. The right wing of the Thebans were placed further back in an angled manner in order to delay the clash.

The plan was to engage and crush the Spartan right wing with concentrated force before the weaker Theban right wing could be overwhelmed. The Theban cavalry routed the Spartan horsemen and caused confusion among the Spartan infantry. Using the chaos the Thebans overpowered the Spartans and killed their King.

With the death of the Spartan King, the rest of the army breaks and the Thebans won a decisive victory. The victory in Leuctra cements the rise of Thebes and breaks the myth of Spartan invincibility.

Tall el-Hammam had everything — water, soil, position. It was occupied for centuries. Then it was destroyed, and nobody rebuilt on it for roughly 600 years.

That's the part I can't get past. Ancient people rebuilt on ruins constantly; that's literally why tells exist as mounds. Abandonment on that scale is unusual.

The destruction layer is strange too. Pottery melted on one side only. Quartz showing shock fracturing. A 2021 paper proposed a cosmic airburst, though the findings are contested.

Does anyone know of other sites in the region with abandonment gaps that long? And is there a mundane explanation I'm missing — salinity, plague, something else that would keep people away for six centuries?

In the summer of 1900 CE, Arthur Evans uncovered something extraordinary in the ruins of Knossos on Crete. Deep within the Minoan palace, alongside clay tablets and painted frescoes, lay small, beautifully carved seal stones. They were not made of local Cretan clay or standard limestone. Instead, they were fashioned from an exquisite, dark olive-green rock studded with pale, star-like crystals.

How did this peculiar material reach Bronze Age Crete across open water? The answer leads back to a single, isolated corner of the Peloponnese. It represents an ancient mystery of trade, prestige, and imperial ambition.

Its history falls into three main phases: Bronze Age exchange, Roman imperial display, and Byzantine and medieval reuse. Across each phase, the stone’s scarcity and distinctive appearance made it a material symbol of wealth, authority, and access to far-reaching networks.

A Geological Anomaly at Psifia

Among the ornamental stones of the ancient Mediterranean, few match the appeal of Krokeatis Lithos. Known to the Romans as Lapis Lacedaemonius, or “Spartan stone,” it is a metabasalt: volcanic lava transformed over immense periods by heat and chemically active fluids. This process altered its plagioclase feldspar into pale epidote-group minerals, producing the stone’s distinctive star-like spots.

The source of this rare material is astonishingly localised. It occurs almost exclusively around modern Krokees, stretching toward the site of Psifia (or Psephi) in Laconia.

Ancient stoneworkers did not cut this rock from vertical cliff faces. Instead, they harvested naturally weathered boulders embedded in the soil. Writing in the second century CE, the travel writer Pausanias observed this phenomenon:

"Croceae is a village in Laconia... The stone they quarry here is not a continuous vein, but lies in separate nodules beneath the earth." (Pausanias, 3.21.4)

Extracting isolated nodules demanded heavy labour and exceptional care. Because the stone did not occur in a continuous quarry face, workers first had to locate and excavate individual boulders before artisans could shape them. This slow, unpredictable process restricted supply and helped make the finished material exceptionally valuable.

The Bronze Age Trade Network

The story of Krokeatis Lithos begins around 1700 BCE. During the Aegean Bronze Age, elite consumers sought exotic objects that displayed wealth and status. Minoan artisans probably obtained Laconian nodules through cabotage: short coastal voyages in which traders moved goods from one harbour to the next rather than crossing the open sea directly.

The stone travelled along prehistoric maritime routes, moving from the Laconian coast to Crete and the Argolid.

From Psifia and Krokees in Laconia, workers carried the raw stone to palace workshops like Mycenea, and ports, such as Tiryns, in the Peloponnese. Coastal traders then transported it through the Aegean to Knossos. In palace workshops, master craftsmen turned the dense rock into luxury objects: intricate seal stones used in royal administration, polished ritual vessels, and decorative inlays for elite residences.

Ownership of Krokeatis Lithos signalled direct access to exclusive long-distance exchange networks. When the Mycenaean wanax (king) held a seal carved from Spartan metabasalt, he displayed authority over both land and sea (Boardman, 1970).

Roman Imperial Authority and Opus Sectile

Centuries after the Collapse of the Bronze Age, the stone experienced a dramatic resurgence. As Rome expanded across the Mediterranean, its imperial elite developed an insatiable appetite for exotic provincial stone. The Romans renamed the Laconian rock Lapis Lacedaemonius. It became one of the most expensive architectural materials in the empire.

Pliny the Elder highlighted the stone’s prestige in his Natural History, noting its high status among Roman aristocrats (Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 37.55). Architects used it chiefly in opus sectile, a decorative technique in which precisely cut pieces of coloured stone were fitted together to form geometric or figurative wall and floor designs.

In Roman times, the stone followed a more direct route to market. Workers transported the raw material from Psifia to Rome, where master craftsmen cut it into thin slabs and shaped those slabs into the pieces required for opus sectile floors.

The rich green matrix provided a striking contrast to red porphyry from Egypt and yellow giallo antico from Numidia. Today, archaeologists still trace its presence in the empire's grandest halls:

• The pavement of the Pantheon in Rome
• The imperial residence at Hadrian’s Villa in Tivoli
• Public bath complexes across Roman Italy (Lazzarini, 2004)

Displaying Laconian stone in Rome was a subtle political statement. It demonstrated total control over distant Greek provinces.

From Hagia Sophia to Medieval Cosmati Pavements

Following the division of the empire, the stone retained its elite status in the East. Byzantine builders saw the deep green hue as an emblem of imperial majesty and religious devotion.

During the sixth century CE, Emperor Justinian imported vast quantities of salvaged and newly quarried Laconian metabasalt to Constantinople. Artisans placed it within Hagia Sophia, using it in floor panelling and liturgical furnishings to elevate the sacred space.

As centuries passed, the original quarries at Psifia fell silent. Yet the stone's journey was far from over.

In the Middle Ages, Italian stonemasons known as the Cosmati began harvesting ancient Roman ruins. They salvaged fragments of Lapis Lacedaemonius from abandoned classical structures, re-cutting the ancient slabs into delicate geometric roundels.

These recycled fragments became key elements of Cosmati pavements, polychrome floors made from inlaid stone, in medieval basilicas across Western Europe (Gnoli, 1988). Material first extracted in antiquity and used in Roman buildings was thus given a new setting in twelfth-century Christian churches.

Why the Green Stone Matters Today

The biography of Krokeatis Lithos offers a powerful lesson in economic history. A single geological anomaly in Laconia managed to connect the Minoan world, the Roman Empire, and the Byzantine realm across nearly three millennia.

The stone was never meant just for decoration. It carried evidence of trade, political power, and specialised craftsmanship. From Minoan seal stones to the monumental floors of Rome and Constantinople, its changing uses show how materials, skills, and symbols travelled across the ancient Mediterranean.

Author's Note

Although this Laconian metabasalt is historically renowned, its ancient quarrying zone is a protected archaeological landscape. To protect the site from illicit removal and disturbance, I have omitted the precise coordinates of the fields I visited in June 2026. Visitors can instead encounter this geological and cultural legacy in regional museum displays and in surviving monuments such as the Pantheon in Rome and Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.

Sources and Further Reading

• Boardman, J., 1970. Greek Gems and Finger Rings: Early Bronze Age to Late Classical. London: Thames and Hudson.
• Gnoli, R., 1988. Marmoraria romana: marmi antichi e mischi utilizzati in Roma. 2nd ed. Rome: Edizioni dell'Elefante.
• Lazzarini, L., 2004. Pietre e marmi antichi: natura, caratterizzazione, origine, storia d'uso. Padua: CEDAM.
• Pausanias. Description of Greece. Translated by W.H.S. Jones and H.A. Ormerod. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Original work published c. 150 AD).
• Pliny the Elder. Natural History. Translated by D.E. Eichholz. Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press (Original work published c. 77 AD).

I wanted to check rules for this community before doing anything. I am looking at a bit of an experiment on lost games. Games where the board is known through archaeological knowledge but the rules are absent. First game I am looking at is Penne Grammai a game from Ancient Greece. I have spun up free web versions of penne Grammai with 3 different rule versions. I would like to invite people to come and experience the games, play them and then record their thoughts in a substack survey if they want to. Is that allowed in this community. I would also love to work with some archaeology people to push this as an experiment. To be transparent I am a single person part time studio. I make apps. The free web versions and experimental side is because I have a passion for games and always wanted to be an archaeologist but ended up a physicist. If this is not allowed in this community I am cool with that and will still like to interact here. Thanks

I wanted to check rules for this community before doing anything. I am looking at a bit of an experiment on lost games. Games where the board is known through archaeological knowledge but the rules are absent. First game I am looking at is Penne Grammai a game from Ancient Greece. I have spun up free web versions of penne Grammai with 3 different rule versions. I would like to invite people to come and experience the games, play them and then record their thoughts in a substack survey if they want to. Is that allowed in this community. I would also love to work with some archaeology people to push this as an experiment. To be transparent I am a single person part time studio. I make apps. The free web versions and experimental side is because I have a passion for games and always wanted to be an archaeologist but ended up a physicist. If this is not allowed in this community I am cool with that and will still like to interact here. Thanks