#byzantine — Public Fediverse posts

1,500-year-old stone capital with rare menorah unveiled in Jerusalem

A 1,500-year-old limestone capital featuring a rare eight-branched menorah was unveiled for the first time. The stone was found lying upside down on the floor of a Byzantine-period building dating to the 6th or 7th century CE...

More information: https://archaeologymag.com/2025/04/stone-capital-with-rare-menorah-in-jerusalem/

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#archaeology #archeology #archaeologynews #menorah #byzantineart #byzantine

Allegedly, #Prighozhin’s march on #Moscow has ended in a deal brokered by #Lukashenko, in which #Wagner Group forces will head to #Belarus and … become Lukashenko’s #Varangian Guard, or something? Assuming of course #Putin doesn’t wait for them to get strung out on the road and bomb them all to bits.

I can’t help but be struck by how antiquated all this feels. The Varangian Guard reference above is deliberate—the whole thing is #Byzantine in both the original and modern senses of that word. Shades of #Belisarius and #Justinian. Yes, I know I’m mixing up periods, and the analogy is inexact in all kinds of ways: history doesn’t repeat itself, but sometimes it rhymes.

#Kings and #emperors and shifting personal loyalties, not cold-blooded calculation of national interests. It’s not the way #modern states make #war—even though #Ukraine may well be the first modern war of the twenty-first century, through future eyes. Something older, more visceral, rising from ancient slumber.

Hell of a time to be alive. I suppose that’s always true.