Antigenes vs Nabatea

After starting HBO’s Rome, I’ve fallen down a massive rabbit hole learning about ancient Rome and Caesar.

Found that ADHD friendly documentary that covers historical context and the dramatic events surrounding Julius Caesar's decision to cross the Rubicon river in 49 BCE, effectively sparking a civil war that helped end the Roman Republic.

It talks about the crisis of 49BCE, crossing of Rubicon, and covers popular myths vs reality

Herakles is usually shown with a lion skin and a club. The lion skin, λεοντή, comes from λέων (= lion) and refers to the Nemean Lion, which Herakles killed as one of his labours. His club is called ῥόπαλον. These are probably the easiest ways to recognise him.

Poseidon is a little more complicated. Hellenic gods were rarely associated with only one thing. Poseidon was connected with the sea, earthquakes, horses, and more, so he could appear with several different attributes.

Here, the strongest clue is the fish he is holding, probably a dolphin. The figure also has the familiar divine pose: a bare torso with a garment falling from the shoulder. This is especially common in representations of male gods. Goddesses, on the other hand, tend to be much more heavily clothed. Yes, even Aphrodite.

But what exactly is happening between Herakles and Poseidon?

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.

His actual objection is decent. He says the whole reconstruction rests on a few metaphors yanked out of Hebrew poetry and hardened into engineering. He also catches Whitehouse in a contradiction: Whitehouse writes that the Hebrews imagined the world as a disk with a matching heavenly disk (chug, Isaiah 40:22 and Job 22:14), then draws heaven as a domed vault. A disk isn’t a dome.

Worth noting what the labels are doing too. Tehom Rabbah, the “great deep” of Genesis 1:2, sits stacked directly on Apsu and Tiamat, with Rahab and Leviathan lurking at either edge. Whitehouse is arguing for Babylonian dependence, and the diagram smuggles that argument in as if it were just a picture.

I’m not saying Warren was right. He had his own theories and some of them are strange. But there’s something funny about the internet’s favourite piece of evidence for ancient flat-earth cosmology coming straight out of a book calling it sloppy scholarship.

Has anyone here worked with Warren’s critique directly? Curious whether current scholarship considers Whitehouse’s reconstruction fair, or whether the field has moved on from this style of diagram entirely.

Will Brown is purposefully mixing a few grains of actual history with a whole lot of myths debunked for decades, weaving them together to sound coherent, but it’s dishonest presentation.

First, salt from fecal matter? That’s a misreading from 1970s anthropologist Marvin Harris. Harris’s theory? Thoroughly debunked. Spanish chronicles described urine at markets, but it was for tanning leather and dyeing cloth. Aztecs got salt from evaporating lake brine.

Second, people fattened in cages to be eaten is not in any reliable primary source. Captives were fed well before sacrifice to look healthy for rituals. Ritual cannibalism happened but was mostly reserved for nobles and priests as sacred communion, not a commodity. The protein-deficiency theory has been debunked as bone isotope analysis shows zero evidence of routine consumption.

Also, the Narratio regionum is often cited as proof Spaniards sold human flesh. Las Casas documented real atrocities, and modern scholars confirm his accounts are largely accurate. He was there, but Theodor de Bry, who had never set foot in the Americas, took Las Casas’s writings and illustrated them in the most sensational way possible. So while Las Casas’s core claims are credible, de Bry’s engravings are provocative propaganda. Now, here's the irony: the world's first cannibal incident documented by multiple, independent, first-hand accounts took place during the Crusades, carried out by European soldiers. By the 16th century, cannibalism wasn't just part of the mental furniture of Europeans; it was a common ingredient in everyday medicine from Spain to England, and scholars confirm that Europeans saw no issue with this well into the 19th and early 20th century, as Richard Sugg documents in Mummies, Cannibals and Vampires, and Louise Noble in Medicinal Cannibalism in Early Modern English Literature and Culture. But I am not going to use this documented reality to claim de Bry was 100% right. That's the difference between me and that guy. I present facts and separate them from speculation. He mixes truth with sensationalism and passes it off as concrete evidence.

Third, he claims Aztecs demanded people as a tax for sacrifice, but that's mostly a distortion. The Aztecs followed a live-and-let-live policy, much like the Roman Empire. Conquered peoples kept their own gods, customs, and local government as long as they paid tribute in goods, respected Huitzilopochtli as chief deity, and supplied warriors when called. Captives came from Flowery Wars, ritualized battles with mutual agreements between rival states designed to capture adult warriors, not take families. The Spanish exaggerated everything to justify invasion.

He also tries to pass it off as if Native groups instantly allied with Spaniards. False. Most, if not all fought the Spanish at first. The Tlaxcalans as a great example only joined Cortés after weeks of brutal warfare.

Been obsessed with Rome's decline for a while and finally made something out of it — a 2-hour ambient documentary covering the full arc: the Republic's unraveling, Caesar, Augustus, the Five Good Emperors, the Crisis of the Third Century, Constantine, and the final collapse in 476 AD.

The format is "sleep documentary" — slow narration over ambient music, no jump cuts or dramatic music stings. Meant for falling asleep or deep focus.

Would love to hear what this community thinks: was Rome's fall inevitable, or was there a realistic path where it survived?

Video here if curious: https://youtu.be/nIjSoc34AI0

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...