In 2005 I took a trip to Jordan and as a side trip I visited the little town of Madaba. There in the apse of the little church of St. George is a mosaic map made of several million tesserae. Composed in the 6th century roughly during the time of Justinian, it’s the oldest known [...]
Archive for the ‘Current Events’ Category
A Peek into a Lost City
Thursday, Mar 18th, 2010 by lars | 2 Comments
Filed under: Byzantine, Current Events, history, new discovery
Filed under: Byzantine, Current Events, history, new discovery
The Mystery of the Great Palace
Tuesday, Jan 26th, 2010 by lars | 5 Comments
Filed under: Byzantine, Current Events, Uncategorized, history, new discovery
Filed under: Byzantine, Current Events, Uncategorized, history, new discovery
On a Saturday evening in 1997 a man rushed into the offices of Alpay Pasinli- the director of Istanbul’s Museum of Archeology- and breathlessly announced that he had made a discovery. He had been charged with excavating an old Ottoman prison that stood between the Hagia Sophia and the gates to the Topkapi Palace, but [...]
Dig a hole, uncover history…
Yesterday I ran across an interesting story on CNN. A little more than four years ago Turkish workers digging a tunnel to connect Asia and Europe ( hoping to relieve some of Istanbul’s horrendous traffic in the process) stumbled across the remains of a major Byzantine port. Nicknamed Port Theodosius after the fourth century emperor [...]
Lost to the West
Tuesday, Sep 15th, 2009 by lars | 3 Comments
Filed under: Byzantine, Current Events, Uncategorized, book, history, lost to the west
Filed under: Byzantine, Current Events, Uncategorized, book, history, lost to the west
Today my book Lost to the West: The Forgotten Byzantine Empire that Rescued Western Civilization goes on sale. I like to think of it (with apologies to Procopius) as a ’secret’ history- the 1200 years of the Roman Empire that you weren’t taught about in school. Sure, we’ve all heard of Julius Caesar crossing the [...]
Running into Byzantium
For a lost empire, it’s amazing how omnipresent Byzantium is. You are liable to run into it at any moment- with little or no warning. That fork you use so nonchalantly was introduced to the west by a Byzantine noblewoman in the 11th Century. That hospital you hope to avoid and those female doctors who [...]