一说到太监，有人会轻蔑一笑，也有人还会骂一句“死太监”。孰不知，在古代想当个太监真心不容易，尤其是在明代那个“监才林列”的年代。明朝得太监都很牛，出现了王振、汪直、刘瑾、魏忠贤、冯保等权倾天下的臭名昭著的大太监，那么，他们又是怎么“炼成”的呢？

I n 2023, an Italo-American archaeological team announced their discovery of a 5,000-year-old tavern in Lagash, an ancient city-state capital in southern Iraq. A cuneiform tablet found among the ...

Al-Monitor is an award-winning media outlet covering the Middle East, valued for its independence, diversity and analysis. It is read widely by US, international and Middle East decision makers at the ...

When we talk about a phalanx in a military context, we automatically think of Alexander the Great’s Macedonian army, with its ...

Hudson: The early Sumerian cities like Uruk or Lagash frequently experienced the upheavals of warfare and disease. That meant there were large numbers of widows, orphans, and slaves in these cities.

And some of the earliest conflicts over water that are not myths or legends, but actually recorded in histories, appear about 25 BC in Ancient Mesopotamia, the land between the Tigris and the ...

University of Ghent and the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago Gelb, I. J. 1986. “Ebla and Lagash: Environmental Contrast.” Pp. 157–67 in Harvey Weiss (ed.), The Origins of Cities in ...