Ancient

An extraordinary account of how the Christian Revolution forged the Western imagination “A galloping tour of Christianity’s influence across the last 2,000 years.” —New York Times Crucifixion, the Romans believed, was the worst fate imaginable, a punishment reserved for slaves. How...

Paula Fredriksen traces the evolution of early Christianity—or rather, of early Christianities—through five centuries of Empire, mapping its pathways from the hills of Judea to the halls of Rome and Constantinople.

From an award-winning historian, the definitive account of the golden age of Rome—an ultimate superpower at the pinnacle of its greatness “Rarely has the distant past seemed so vividly alive.” —Financial Times The Pax Romana has long been shorthand for the empire’s golden age...

This extraordinary work delves into the subject of religion in the prehistoric and ancient worlds—humankind's earliest quests for meaning.

At last, the world will discover what happens to the greatest salesman when he finally emerges from his lonely retirement to commence a new career. At first, he finds failure - until he receives a special gift from someone he has not seen in half a century....

The Essential Talmud is a masterful introduction by Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz to the great repository of Jewish wisdom, the Talmud....

The Papyrus of Ani is a papyrus manuscript in the form of a scroll with cursive hieroglyphs and color illustrations that was created c.1250 BCE during the 19th Dynasty of the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt....

Tom DeLonge and Peter Levenda continue their revelatory work in a thoroughly-researched exposé that seeks to solve the scientific mysteries of the unidentified aerial phenomenon....

A radical and powerful reappraisal of the impact of Constantine's adoption of Christianity on the later Roman world, and on the subsequent development both of Christianity and of Western civilization....

The Ancient Dead Sea Scrolls speak about a mysterious 364-day solar calendar used by the ancients from the time of Creation to about 170 BC. In the second century BC, it was replaced with a lunar calendar by corrupt Jewish priests....

ystery Cults in the Ancient World makes plentiful use of artistic and archaeological evidence, as well as ancient literature and epigraphy, to reconstruct the sacred rituals and explore their origins....

ONE OF THE ECONOMIST'S BEST BOOKS OF 2025 See ancient Rome through the eyes of a gladiator—from the evening before the games at the Colosseum to the evening after "A grippingly original way of making the alien world of the Roman Amphitheatre both accessible and comprehensible." —Tom...

Following in the apocalyptic visions of Daniel, Ezekiel, and Revelation, The War Scroll reveals the conflict between good and evil in the final days of mankind....

In this electrifying social and intellectual history, Paula Fredriksen answers the question of how Jewish missionaries ended up inaugurating a movement that would grow into the gentile church by reconstructing the life of the earliest Jerusalem community....

The Book of the Dead is an ancient Egyptian funerary text written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom....

The Book of Jubilees was written in Hebrew by a Pharisee between 135 and 105 BC. The author interprets the history of events from the creation to the giving of the law on Sinai according to the Pharisaic standpoint of his time....

I was one of a research party of 11 persons that visited the Far East in 1894. During our stay - three and a half years - we contacted the Great Masters of the Himalayas....

Pagans explores the rise of Christianity from a surprising and unique viewpoint: that of the people who witnessed their ways of life destroyed by what seemed then a powerful religious cult....

"The Egyptian Book of the Dead," translated by E.A. Wallis Budge, is a pivotal work that opened the ancient Egyptian world of the afterlife to the West.

This book is a thoroughly researched primer on the 108 Upanishads, philosophical treatises that form a part of the Vedas, the revered Hindu texts. These Upanishads contain the most crystallized bits of wisdom gleaned from Hinduism. Roshen Dalal explains the concepts at the core of each Upanishad...

Not the Impossible Faith is a tour de force in that genre, dissecting and refuting the oft-repeated claim that Christianity could not have succeeded in the ancient world unless it was true....

History has given us two separate and very different books by the same title. One of these may be the book mentioned in the Holy Bible. If so, it would reveal history and information which would augment and supplement our knowledge....

This is G.R.S. Mead's translation of the Pistis Sophia, the most extensive Gnostic scripture available until the discovery of Nag Hammadi texts in 1945....

Meister Eckhart, who has been called the "Father of German Thought", was a Dominican monk and one of the most profound thinkers of the Middle Ages. He was born about 1260 AD in Thuringia and died at Cologne 1327 AD....

A concise and elegant treatise on occultism and high magic in Greece and Egypt, The Kybalion: A Study of the Hermetic Philosophy of Ancient Egypt and Greece will introduce you to the seven hermetic principles, a foundation upon which one can build their own personal spiritual path....