Gazing at the heavens arrayed before us—at least as pictured in a 1690 Polish volume on display in a fascinating exhibition at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art—we see Urania, the goddess of astronomy, ...

According to the first-century A.D. Roman writer Pliny the Elder, the ancient city of Lixus in what is now northern Morocco was the site of the Garden of the Hesperides, where the semidivine hero ...

Mortal and fleeting, human life barely registers on the vast clock of the cosmos. Claudius Ptolemy believed Earth stood at the center of that universe, with the Moon, Sun, planets, and stars moving in ...

A parchment, part of a larger manuscript found in the library of the Bobbio Abbey in Italy, is believed to be authored by ancient Greek mathematician, astronomer, and geographer Claudius Ptolemy. It ...

It was three-quarters of a century ago today, on November 5th, 1922, that Howard Carter discovered the tomb of the boy-king, Tutankhamun, near Luxor in the Valley of the Kings in Egypt. When the tomb ...

Nobody knows how to get under your skin quite like a sibling does. For many, these squabbles typically never amount to anything beyond petty disagreements over liberally borrowed items of clothing and ...

Just below the Mediterranean’s surface, in Alexandria’s harbor, lie the ruins of a mysterious ancient monument. For more than 20 years, French explorer Franck Goddio has been hoping to confirm these ...

In this series, The Week looks at the ideas and innovations that permanently changed the way we see the world. The heliocentric theory is the idea that the Sun is at the centre of the solar system and ...

You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add more. For some it’s a convenient icebreaker, for others it’s key to their identity. News this week that ...

IT is somewhat strange that in the article on Ptolemy in the “Penny Cyclopædia,” he is spoken of only as a geographer. His fame is undoubtedly built upon his two great works on astronomy and geography ...

In most maps designed for the general public, north is traditionally shown at the top. Despite this common orientation, there’s no physical reason for it. So, who decided that north should be at the ...