Sublime

The classical writer, Dion, in an imaginative account, described how she used a hare to divine the outcome of her first battle: ‘When she had finished speaking to her people, she employed a species of divination, letting a hare escape from the fold of her dress; and since it ran on what they considered the auspicious side, the whole multitude shout

But just as several phratries were united in a tribe, several tribes might associate together, on condition that the religion of each should be respected. The day on which this alliance took place the city existed.

Kings had to be more than mere warlords, as Clovis’s investiture shows: they must hold their sceptres and wear their ornamented battle helms as of divine right – whether that divinity was Christian or not. They must be able to claim that their family had always been kings; that the territories over which their writ ran had always been theirs. They

a few lines earlier, Tudhaliya IV had written, “And the Kings who are my equals in rank are the King of Egypt, the King of Babylonia, the King of Assyria, and the King of Ahhiyawa.”58 The strikethrough of the words “King of Ahhiyawa” is not a misprint in this book; it is a strikethrough found on the clay tablet of Tudhaliya IV. In other words, we h

Still, Iranians were too elated by their newfound independence, and too blinded by the conspiracy theories floating in the air about another attempt by the CIA and the U.S. embassy in Tehran to reestablish the Shah on his throne (just as they had done in 1953), to recognize the dire implications of the new constitution.

them, and would then bring them back to the guardroom. 12Because he humbled himself the wrath of the LORD turned from him, so as not to destroy them completely; moreover, conditions were good in Judah.

It is also apparent, from the painting and inscription in the tomb of Menkheperreseneb, first prophet of Amun, that the Egyptians knew about Minoan royalty and understood them to be on a par with those from other foreign areas. On the walls of the tomb we can see the “Prince of Keftiu” in the company of the Prince of the Hittites (from Anatolia), t

Some accounts say that the Nezam ol-Molk and Sa’adat Khan directly invited Nader to invade, and in later years the story that the Nezam in particular had betrayed his master, was widespread.

Genghis Khan was the most effective military leader in history. He conquered more than twice as much land as anyone else, and he did it in a series of astonishing campaigns. He subdued some twelve million square miles—an area roughly the size of Africa,