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Sidon is the Greek name (meaning 'fishery’) for the ancient Phoenician port city of Sidonia (also known as Saida) in what is, today, Lebannon (located about 25 miles south of Beirut). Along with the city of Tyre, Sidon was the most...

Zarathustra (also given as Zoroaster, Zartosht, Zarathustra Spitama, l. c. 1500-1000 BCE) was the Persian priest-turned-prophet who founded the religion of Zoroastrianism (also given as Mazdayasna “devotion to Mazda”), the first...

Following the conquest of North Africa by Muslim Arabs in the 7th century CE, Islam spread throughout West Africa via merchants, traders, scholars, and missionaries, that is largely through peaceful means whereby African rulers either tolerated...

For well over 1,000 years, sacred stories and heroic epics have made up the mythology of Hinduism. Nothing in these complex yet colourful legends is fixed and firm. Pulsing with creation, destruction, love, and war, it shifts and changes...

Carthage was a Phoenician city-state on the coast of North Africa (the site of modern-day Tunis) which, prior the conflict with Rome known as the Punic Wars (264-146 BCE), was the largest, most affluent, and powerful political entity in the...

The religious practices of the early Indo-Aryans, known as the Vedic religion (1500 BCE to 500 BCE) were written down and later redacted into the Samhitas, four canonical collections of hymns or mantras, called the Veda, in archaic Sanskrit...

Byblos was the ancient Phoenician port city of Gebal (called Byblos by the Greeks) on the coast of the Mediterranean sea in what is, today, Lebanon. According to the historian Durant, “Byblos thought itself the oldest of all cities...

Mithra is the Persian god of the rising sun, contracts, covenants, and friendship. He also oversaw the orderly change of the seasons, maintained cosmic order, and was responsible for bestowing divine grace on kings, legitimizing their rule...

Dated to the 7th century BCE, the Arslan Tash amulet (AT1) was discovered in Arslan Tash, Syria and contains the writing of Phoenician, magic incantations. The limestone plaque includes a variety of features: incantations perceived to prevent...

Ahriman is the evil spirit in Early Iranian Religion, Zoroastrianism, and Zorvanism, Lord of Darkness and Chaos, and the source of human confusion, disappointment, and strife. He is also known as Angra Mainyu (evil spirit or dark spirit...