🐍 Medusa is a divine entity mostly known for her hair made of snakes, which — according to Ovid — was a punishment from the goddess Athena. Her appearance would turn anyone who beheld her into stone. Like many in Greek mythology, the story of her cursed half-life and death began with a love affair.

🎉 Happy New Year! Here’s a Roman god to help with your resolutions. January’s namesake is thought to be Janus, the Roman god of beginnings & transitions. He was depicted with two faces, one looking to the past & the other to the future. A perfect representation of this transition into the New Year!

🌍 To begin our exploration of his legacy, we must first begin with the most famous novel in antiquity, the Alexander Romance. The Alexander Romance was a narrative of unknown Greek authorship composed between the 2nd & 4th centuries, gaining popularity during the Byzantine Period.

🍟 Did you know there were multiple fast food restaurants in Pompeii? These fast food restaurants were known as a ‘Thermopolium’. They had counters with embedded circular containers to hold and display the foods for sale. These containers were typically made of terracotta and called ‘dolia’.

🏙️ The oldest Yoruba city still standing, Ile-Ife was founded around 500 BCE. It currently has a population of over 500,000 people. Its name translates to “Place of Expansion.” According to Yoruba legend, Ile-Ife is the place where the deities Obatala and Oduduwa created the world.

🌍 Which would you say is more accurate? Alexander the Great: soldier, politician, and ruler, or Alexander the adventurer, inventor, and builder of walls holding back the forces of Hell? Is both allowed?

🐉 All kneel before Yinglong, the great winged dragon and the bringer of rain!

🎩 Is Wicked’s Wizard a “sentimental man” or a “tragic” one? While the so-called Wonderful Wizard is Wicked’s obvious villain, his fall from grace follows the blueprint of the Greek tragedy protagonist.

🗓️ As the new year begins, many of us are hanging up new calendars today! But where does the word ‘calendar’ come from?

👶 Before the Christmas season ends, let’s look at how Jesus’s birth story differed from Jewish customs observed in the ancient Near East. First, many women wouldn’t announce their pregnancy until the fourth month to avoid the evil eye, but Mary told her cousin Elizabeth right away!

🗿 They say you can’t take it with you, but they’re wrong. If it is a magical butler at least. Say hello to the Ushabti. Ancient Egyptians created Ushabti to do any manual labor that might have to be done in the afterlife, known as the Field of Reeds. Imagine being dead and still needing to work!

🪓 Behold, the ancestor to the Yoruba people, the orisha of lightning, fire, and justice, and a god worshiped across continents, Shango. Legend says Shango was born human, but he was no ordinary mortal. He became the fourth Alaafin of the Oyo Empire after overthrowing his brother.

🎲 The Demogorgon has been haunting Dungeons and Dragons games since the 1970s and Stranger Things fans since 2016. But did you know that the monster comes from a medieval mistranslation?

🤢 No, rich Romans did not have rooms just for throwing up. A vomitorium is the word for those big doors people walk into amphitheaters through. It’s stuck around as a name for the side doors that actors walk onto the stage through in theaters when they can’t enter from backstage.

💫 The Christmas Star has fascinated scholars for centuries. But to study it, they’ve had to slightly adjust the timeframe. Herod I was ruling, so most scholars estimate Jesus’s birth to be around 6-4 BCE in spring. There’s many theories, but the consensus is that it wasn’t a star at all.

🧱 You can find these amazing ruins in Turkmenistan! This is the site of the ancient city of Merv, an urban center from the 3rd millennium BCE to 1788 CE, nearly 5,000 years! It’s been referenced as an important site in Zoroastrian texts, and was a popular rest stop along the Silk Road.

🪐 The beloved Roman god of wealth and agriculture, or the villainous father of Jupiter? Saturn is both, thanks to Greek traditions making their way to Rome.

🏛️ Disney’s animated classic ‘Hercules’ follows Hercules as he tries to prove his heroism and earn back his rightful place on Mt. Olympus with his father, Zeus, and mother, Hera. In the movie, the Fates are antagonists who help Hades with his nefarious plans.

🩳 The word comes from the Hindi and Urdu ‘pājāma’, which itself comes from two Persian words, ‘pay’, meaning leg, and ‘jamah’, meaning clothing, or more specifically, pants!

🥖 Challah is a highly symbolic bread traditionally served on the Sabbath and other Jewish holy days. Known for its rich and sweet flavor, it’s made with yeast, eggs, flour, oil, sugar, and occasionally with sprinkles of seeds or raisins.

🕎 The Magdala Stone is the oldest known image of a carved menorah, a candelabra used during the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah, and a significant symbol in Jewish history. Hanukkah commemorates the restoration of the Jerusalem Temple by the Maccabees in 164 BCE, after their revolt against the Seleucids.

🐺 Of all of mythology’s many scary wolves, none is scarier than Fenrir, the Lord of All Wolves, the Dweller in the Marshes, and the fated killer of Odin.

🪖 Women are somewhat of an afterthought in the ‘Iliad’, but they still have an important story to tell. Euripides wrote that story in his 415 BCE play, the ‘Trojan Women’. The play follows the remaining members of Troy’s royal family

❤️ They say that sharing is caring, so allow us to share the origin of the word! ‘Care’ can trace its roots to the Old English word ‘caru’, which itself has Proto-Germanic roots, being connected to the word ‘karō’.

✡️ The bulk of the Dead Sea Scrolls writings are attributed to the Essenes, an apocalyptic sect in 2nd Temple Judaism that abandoned traditional society and created a community at Qumran dedicated to spiritual excellence in preparation for the imminent end of days.

🪦 Al-Khazna is an ancient mausoleum in Jordan, built by the Nabataeans, an ancient Arab people who ruled the area from the fourth century BCE, until they were annexed by the Romans in 106 AD. The tomb itself was built in the first century.

🎋 Bodhi Day is a Buddhist holy day, commemorating Buddha’s enlightenment in 538 BCE. Prince Siddhartha Gautama meditated under a fig tree to understand the nature of human suffering. After 49 days, he reached enlightenment and became the Buddha.

🪨 The greatest childhood game of all time, Rock, Paper, Scissors, goes back much further than you might guess.

❄️ December was originally the tenth month of the year in the calendar of Romulus, hence the name December (‘decem’ = ten). On that calendar, the next month in this calendar was March, and in between these two months, there was simply a monthless period of time.

⚡ In the animated series ‘Twilight of the Gods’, Sigrid is on a mission to kill Thor with the help of Loki, beginning Ragnarok. This retelling is a revenge story told from a distinctly human perspective, as our female lead and former Valkyrie faces off against the Norse Pantheon.

🐶 Calling all dog lovers! Did you know the original “beware of dog” sign is 2,000 years old? This Roman mosaic depicting a guard dog with the message “beware of dog” was found on the floor of the ‘House of the Tragic Poet’ in Pompeii.

🕉️ Hindu art often depicts deities with vahanas, aka animal companions, which essentially act as the adjoining spiritual force specific to the deity’s attributes. The animals' connection to their deity personifies the human struggle for balance amidst competing instincts, providing dharmic guidance.

🧶 In Taylor Swift’s song ‘Invisible String’, from her Grammy-winning album Folklore, she shares her belief that her relationship with then boyfriend Joe Alwin was predestined. She sings, “all along there was some invisible string tying you to me” and “one single thread of gold tied me to you”.

🧙 How did William Shakespeare accidentally change the meaning of the word ‘weird’? Originally from the Proto-Germanic word ‘wurthiz’, the word ‘weird’ can be traced back to the Old English ‘wyrd’, which meant something like ‘destiny’, or to refer to someone with the power to control fate.

🛡️ There is a temptation to view the spear and shield combination of the ancient hoplite as crude, but that could not be further from the truth! The design of the aspis shield is a great example of the ingenuity of ancient technology.

🖐️ Beginning nine thousand years ago, generations of the ancient inhabitants of Río Pinturas, filled a cave with some of the most impressive prehistoric art on Earth. The Cueva de las Manos may have been occupied as early as 10,000 BCE, and had people living there as recently as 700 AD.

🪨 See what happens when you try to cheat death! Sisyphus was a king from Greek mythology. Though he pulled many tricks in his life, his greatest was escaping death - twice!

🪲 How did Egyptian mummies become a part of the classic monster lineup? For many people, the lineup consists of vampires, werewolves, Frankenstein-esque monsters, and mummies. The mummy is an outlier, though, as unlike the rest, mummies are real! So how did they make the list?

🌳 Trees have more to do to with books then you may think - which is saying something! Paper as we know it was first invented in China around 200 BCE, and it was made (at least in part) with bark from the mulberry tree.

🐸 Frog legs are a French delicacy, but did another European society beat the French to the punch on this dish? Well, a team of archaeologists may have found evidence to suggest that that is the case!

☪️ This is a ‘Mihrab’ or a ‘Prayer Niche’, an important element of a Mosque. The ‘Mihrab’ indicates the direction of Mecca, the Holy City of Islam. This is important because practitioners of Islam face that direction while praying.

🦚 Bow before Hera, queen of the gods, protector of women during childbirth, and the goddess of marriage. Hera has been worshiped as far back as the Mycenaean period. She was prayed to in temples across Ancient Greece, and at the Heraean games, a footrace held in her honor every four years!

⚔️ Narnia is a world many of us fell in love with as children. But did you know this fantastical story was based on the Chrisitian Bible? In ‘The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe’, Aslan is meant to be Jesus, the Pevensies are humanity, and the White Witch is the devil.

⌛ Places of mortal combat … and sand? The word arena comes from the Latin word “harena”, which means “sandy place”! This is because arenas usually had a layer of sand over the wooden floor to help absorb the blood spilled by gladiators.

📜 Perhaps the oldest philosopher on record, Ptahhotep was an Ancient Egyptian vizier around 2400 BCE, around 2,000 years before Plato was even alive! As a vizier, he was one of the highest ranking officials in the Fifth Dynasty of Egypt.

🪨 In western France there’s a tomb a thousand years older than the Pyramid of Giza. The Cairn de Barnenez dates back to 4,800 BCE, but a second cairn was built in 4,400 BCE. The first was built from locally sourced dolerite, while the second is made of granite sourced from elsewhere.

🪲 According to Cherokee folklore, at the beginning of the world, there was no land - just water and the sky world. All of the animals lived in the sky, and eventually it became too crowded. So a water beetle named Dayuni’si volunteered to find them all a new home.

🎶 In her song ‘Cassandra’, Taylor Swift sings, “So they killed Cassandra first ‘cause she feared the worst / And tried to tell the town”. But who is Cassandra, and what does she have to do with Swift’s feud with Kimye?

🍂 November follows the same pattern as September and October, it was the ninth month of the old Romulan calendar (‘novem’ = nine) and the name stuck when the calendar was shifted.

🧘 Did you know that Avatar: The Last Airbender has several religious influences from some of the most ancient East and South Asian traditions, such as Buddhism, which dates back to the 5th century BCE, and Hinduism, which dates back to the 23rd century BCE!