When the Sun disappears, the frost demon Hahhima holds the land in his icy grip. An entity of cold and numbness, Hahhima has an arsenal...

Yazılıkaya comes from the Turkish for inscribed rock. The sacred site is beside the city of Hattusa, the Hittite Bronze Age capital until...

Hashamili (Ḫašamili, Ḫašameli) is the Hittite god of metal workers and metallurgists, metal working, smiths and smithing. He's also a...

Mercenaries, pirates, fugitives and thieves, what better place to plunder than the sunny eastern Mediterranean? With cunning coves and...

Cilicia (Kazziwatna) in today's southern Turkey is a busy place in the ancient Bronze Age. The land is bountiful, the climate sublime,...

In 1938 BCE, the ancient port city of Byblos in the Levant is once more commandeered by the Egyptians. The region is an Egyptian ally...

Erra (Irra) is a powerful plague demon, bringing sickness, blight, mental chaos and political confusion. Mortal pain, suffering, madness,...

Ugallu means big weather beast or big storm. In ancient Mesopotamia Ugallu is a masculine entity with deific and demonic connections. He...

A fascinating center of commerce in the Bronze Age, Byblos has been sporadically inhabited since c. 8800 BCE and continuously since 5000...

While the mysterious Sea Peoples ransack the Mediterranean c. 1200, they give little sign of their identity and seem to appear out of...

The Terramare (Terramara) culture of Bronze Age Italy develops in the fertile black earth of the Po Valley c. 1700 - 1150 BCE. The term...

Best known as an ore of the soft metal tin, cassiterite (SnO2) has an elemental magic all its own. Cassiterite occurs in igneous rocks...

The striped hyena (Hyaena hyaena) is widespread during Neolithic and Bronze Age times, with fossils going back three million years. The...

The Phoenicians rise from semi-nomadic hunter gatherers who settle the coasts of today's Lebanon to become the foremost merchant and...

Tukulti-Ninurta I (r. 1243 - 1207 BCE) rules during the Middle Assyrian Empire. His father Shalmaneser I has subdued the Hurrian Empire...

In the ancient world, trade unites countries, spreads knowledge and formalizes safe travel routes. In Mesopotamia a local trade network...

Nungal (Manungal) is a goddess of prisons in Mesopotamia. She can be empathetic or merciless. She's especially popular in the Ur III...

Humbaba (Ḫumbaba, Ḫuwawa) features in the Mesopotamian poem Epic of Gilgamesh, which is often copied at scribe schools. A huge mountain...