Like a Lovecraft tale, the Rare Works section of the National Library of Brazil jealously guards a strange ten-page document baptized with the suggestive name of Manuscript 512. It narrates an eighteenth-century expedition during which the ruins of an ancient city were discovered that seemed to have developed a classical civilization in the Mediterranean style. […]
Legends
Posted inMiddle Ages
The sword embedded in the rock of the precipice of Rocamadour for 9 centuries
Durandal (or Durandarte) was the famous sword of Roland, the Frankish knight who died at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass on 15 August 788 by attack of the Basques. The accounts of that battle and the subsequent fate of the sword are plagued with mythical stories with little or no historical or archaeological basis. For […]
Posted inAntiquity
How archaeologists found the origin of the legend of King Midas, who turned everything he touched into gold
One of the best-known legends of antiquity is that of the Phrygian king Midas, who turned everything he touched into gold. According to Aristotle, he died of starvation when it was impossible to touch any food without transforming it into the precious metal. The problem is that there are at least three kings with that […]
