Minerva Magazine - November/December 2018

In this issue

Twilight of the gods
Stunning exhibits on show in Leiden – both from the Nederlands’ National Museum of Antiquities and on loan from national and private collections – reveal the mysteries of Ancient Egypt’s many deities. Maarten J Raven

King of the world
Assyria’s ruler Ashurbanipal and Nineveh, his ‘city of sin’ have had a bad press but this scholarly king, who inherited a vast empire, also built up an outstanding library of cuneiform tablets. Dominic Green

A tale of four cities
Destroyed, damaged, looted or neglected, the ancient cities of Palmyra, Aleppo, Mosul and Leptis Magna can now be seen in dazzling virtual reconstructions at L’institut du monde arabe in Paris. Nicole Benazeth

Pointing the finger
The discovery of Emperor Constantine’s missing bronze index finger in the Louvre points in the direction of the Campana collection, many of whose treasures are currently displayed there. Dalu Jones

Found in translation
Emily Wilson, Professor of Classics at the University of Pennsylvania, the first woman to translate Homer’s Odyssey, talks about the challenges of the task and explains why she kept the metres running. Lucia Marchini

On site at Sardis
The capital of the Lydian King Croesus is where money was first coined and it offers rich archaeological rewards to Professor Cahill and his Sardis Expedition team who make use of the latest technology. Ismail Mardin

Anglo-Saxon attitudes
The last book written by historian Jean Manco unravels the origins of the Anglo-Saxons, while an exhibition on the same subject at the British Library includes a manuscript not seen here since AD 716. David Miles