Secrets of the Serpent: In Search of the Sacred Past - Special Revised Edition, Featuring Two New Appendices by Philip Gardiner. Across time and across the world, an ancient serpent cult once dominated mankind. Then a great battle ensued and Christianity stamped it's authority on the face of the planet. Now, after years of research, the real religious history of the world can be told. In Secrets of the Serpent, Philip Gardiner for the first time reveals the world's most mysterious places were once sacred to the Serpent Cult. The history and mythology of the so-called reptilian agenda and alien visitation in ancient times now has a solid opponent - giving answers for the many symbols and myths often confused by those who believe in such things. In Secrets of the Serpent, the author reveals the real "bloodline" spoken of by Dan Brown in the Da Vinci Code - it was in fact a serpent bloodline. Philip Gardiner is the international best selling author of The Shining Ones, The Serpent Grail, Gnosis: The Secret of Solomon's Temple Revealed and Proof - Does God Exist? He has appeared on hundreds of radio and television programs worldwide speaking on religion and propaganda. He has infiltrated various secret societies and been initiated into Orders many people had thought were long forgotten. Committed to the constant struggle to uncover the real history of mankind and the unraveling of manipulative propaganda, he has come up against many obstacles and yet in his book, The Serpent Grail he reveals a truth about the Holy Grail that gained the backing of academia and scholars. The truth shall be found in the Secrets of the Serpent.

Edward Williams (1746-1826) also known by his Bardic name, 'Iolo Morganwg, ' was a Republican, Radical, Revolutionary, Pacifist, Abolitionist, Flutist, Song Writer, Jailbird, Lexicographer, Grammarian, Antiquarian, Encyclopaedist. Linguist, Debtor, Mediaevalist, Folklorist, Bird Watcher, Agriculturist, Master Mason, Bookshop Owner, Poet (in both Welsh and English) a Bard, a Druid, a Visionary, a 'Noble Savage, ' a 'Child of Nature, ' a 'Pagan' - in short, a true Herald of Wales He was also a 'fabulist' and 'invented' a whole cosmology and mythology relating to Stonehenge and the Druids, and the 'antient Britons, ' that is, the Welsh. He incorporated these 'discoveries' into the ceremonies of the Welsh National Festival of Poetry, the 'eisteddfods, ' which, quite authentically, date from pre-Christian times. Iolo proclaimed these 'mythologies' on Primrose Hill, Hampstead Heath, London, in 1792. They were formally recognized at the great Carmarthen 1819 Eisteddfod, and have lasted in the form laid down by Iolo to this very day. Iolo's vision of a united Wales continues to draw admirers not only from Wales but from many parts of the world, and have included, in their day, such figures as Tom Paine, 'Humanity's William Wilberforce, ' and 'General George Washington.'

Shortly after the death in 161 of Antoninus Pius, his sons dedicated a column to him as a funerary monument. The form of the column in general and the reliefs on the pedestal in particular raise problems central to the understanding of Roman art. In this first thorough study, illustrated with nearly 100 photographs, Lise Vogel restores the column to its rightful place as one of the major monuments of Roman art. In addition, she re-evaluates the meaning of the column of Antoninus Pius in the context of the development of second century Roman imperial sculpture.

1906. Illustrated. Contents: Early Italians; Raphael and Correggio; The Great Venetians; Later Italian Schools; Spanish Masters; Painters of the French and English Schools; Pastels and Miniatures, with Late German and Italian Pictures Hanging in Adjoining Rooms; Early Flemish, Dutch, and German Pictures: Durer and Holbein; Other Netherlandish and German Artists; Rubens and Van Dyck; Rembrandt and Some of His Contemporaries; Dutch Painters; and Modern German Masters. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

Employing the same methodology she has used in her previous studies of Greek sculpture, Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway critically scrutinizes most of the best-known pieces of Greek sculpture to determine what can be securely considered to have been produced during 200-100 B.C. Arguing that characterizations of the second century have been overly influenced by the dramatic Pergamon Altar, Ridgway begins afresh, examining architectural sculpture, statuary in the round, funerary and votive reliefs, and the difficult cases of sculptures known only, or primarily, through later copies, or found on Italian soil but probably made by Greek masters. Her exploration ultimately reveals a tentative but plausible picture of the artistic trends of this fascinating period.

San Juan: Memoir of a City conducts readers through Puerto Rico's capital, guided by one of its most graceful and reflective writers, Edgardo Rodriguez Julia. No mere sightseeing tour, this is culture through immersion, a circuit of San Juan's historical and intellectual vistas as well as its architecture. In the allusive cityscape he recreates, Rodriguez Julia invokes the ghosts of his childhood, of San Juan's elder literati, and of characters from his own novels. On the most tangible level, the city is a place of cabarets and cockfighting clubs, flaneurs and beach bums, smoke-filled bars and honking automobiles. Poised between a colonial past and a commercial future, the San Juan he portrays feels at times perilously close to the pitfalls of modernization. Tenement houses and fading mansions yield to strip malls and Tastee Freezes; asphalt hems in jacarandas and palm trees. In Puerto Rico, he muses, life is not simply cruel, it is also busy erasing our tracks. Julia resists that erasure, thoughtfully etching a palimpsest that preserves images of the city where he grew up and rejoicing in the one where he still lives.

The ancient Mesoamerican city of Izapa in Chiapas, Mexico, is renowned for its extensive collection of elaborate stone stelae and altars, which were carved during the Late Preclassic period (300 BC-AD 250). Many of these monuments depict kings garbed in the costume and persona of a bird, a well-known avian deity who had great significance for the Maya and other cultures in adjacent regions. This Izapan style of carving and kingly representation appears at numerous sites across the Pacific slope and piedmont of Mexico and Guatemala, making it possible to trace political and economic corridors of communication during the Late Preclassic period.

In this book, Julia Guernsey offers a masterful art historical analysis of the Izapan style monuments and their integral role in developing and communicating the institution of divine kingship. She looks specifically at how rulers expressed political authority by erecting monuments that recorded their performance of rituals in which they communicated with the supernatural realm in the persona of the avian deity. She also considers how rulers used the monuments to structure their built environment and create spaces for ritual and politically charged performances. Setting her discussion in a broader context, Guernsey also considers how the Izapan style monuments helped to motivate and structure some of the dramatic, pan-regional developments of the Late Preclassic period, including the forging of a codified language of divine kingship. This pioneering investigation, which links monumental art to the matrices of political, economic, and supernatural exchange, offers an important new understanding of a region, time period, and group of monuments that played a key role in the history of Mesoamerica and continue to intrigue scholars within the field of Mesoamerican studies.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

This catalogue contains all the sculptures on display in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, undoubtedly the most important collection of ancient Greek sculptures in the world. Each entry is supplemented by a full bibliography and is written not only for experts but also for the general reading public. A useful short introduction offers readers an overview of ancient Greek sculpture from the Archaic period to the end of Antiquity.
Included in this lavishly illustrated volume are the Poseidon of Artemision, a statue of the god brandishing his trident; a marble group of Aphrodite, Pan and Eros found on Delos; the Sounion Kouros, a colossal votive statue found in the sanctuary of Poseidon at Sounion; and the Roman statue of a young athlete, Diadoumenos.

1906. Illustrated. Contents: Early Italians; Raphael and Correggio; The Great Venetians; Later Italian Schools; Spanish Masters; Painters of the French and English Schools; Pastels and Miniatures, with Late German and Italian Pictures Hanging in Adjoining Rooms; Early Flemish, Dutch, and German Pictures: Durer and Holbein; Other Netherlandish and German Artists; Rubens and Van Dyck; Rembrandt and Some of His Contemporaries; Dutch Painters; and Modern German Masters. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

Barbaric Splendour: the use of image before and after Rome comprises a collection of essays comparing late Iron Age and Early Medieval art. Though this is an unconventional approach, there are obvious grounds for comparison. Images from both periods revel in complex compositions in which it is hard to distinguish figural elements from geometric patterns. Moreover, in both periods, images rarely stood alone and for their own sake. Instead, they decorated other forms of material culture, particularly items of personal adornment and weaponry. The key comparison, however, is the relationship of these images to those of Rome. Fundamentally, the book asks what making images meant on the fringe of an expanding or contracting empire, particularly as the art from both periods drew heavily from - but radically transformed - imperial imagery.

Sculptured figural motifs were an important component of many buildings in the Hellenistic world, and their frequent relegation to subsidiary status has, until now, left our knowledge of both Hellenistic architecture and sculpture incomplete. In Hellenistic Architectural Sculpture, Pamela A. Webb examines the full range of figural embellishment - from simple to complex, on large monuments as well as on more obscure ones, and in the major population centers as well as the smaller cities, sanctuaries, and isolated areas throughout western Anatolia and the Aegean islands. In this book, the first to focus specifically on the figural adornment of Hellenistic architecture, Webb provides extensive information about the chronology and interpretation of figural motifs adorning religious, civic, commercial, commemorative, and domestic constructions. She finds that figural sculptures adorn structures at every level from the ground to the roof, and display a wide variety of motifs on such architectural elements as columns, walls, entablatures, pediments, and cornices. 142 illustrations of Hellenistic monuments - temples, altars, cult buildings, heroa, theaters, bouleuteria, stoas, gymnasia, and houses - and their sculptured adornment complement the author's descriptions and analyses. The book features an extensive bibliography, citing resources from the early nineteenth century to the most recent publications.

This scarce antiquarian book is a selection from Kessinger Publishings Legacy Reprint Series. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment to protecting, preserving, and promoting the worlds literature. Kessinger Publishing is the place to find hundreds of thousands of rare and hard-to-find books with something of interest for everyone!

When the discovery was made that the design forms of the Greek vase were strictly dynamic and it became apparent that an analysis of a sufficient number of vase examples would be equivalent to the recovery of the technical methods of Greek designers of the classic age, William Sergeant Kendall, Dean of the Yale School of the Fine Arts, immediately recognized its importance and offered his personal service and that of the University to help in the arduous task of gathering reliable material for a volume. Handsomely illustrated.

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Some of the loveliest works of Archaic art were the Athenian korai-sculptures of beautiful young women presenting offerings to the goddess Athena that stood on the Acropolis. Sculpted in the sixth and early fifth centuries B.C., they served as votives until Persians sacked the citadel in 480/79 B.C. Subsequently, they were buried as a group and forgotten for nearly twenty-four centuries, until archaeologists excavated them in the 1880s. Today, they are among the treasures of the Acropolis Museum. Mary Stieber takes a fresh look at the Attic korai in this book. Challenging the longstanding view that the sculptures are generic female images, she persuasively argues that they are instead highly individualized, mimetically realistic representations of Archaic young women, perhaps even portraits of real people. Marshalling a wide array of visual and literary evidence to support her claims, she shows that while the korai lack the naturalism that characterizes later Classical art, they display a wealth and realism of detail that makes it impossible to view them as generic, idealized images. This iconoclastic interpretation of the Attic korai adds a new dimension to our understanding of Archaic art and to the distinction between realism and naturalism in the art of all periods.

CONTENTS Characteristics of Greek Sculpture Early Masterpieces Myron Phidias Polyclitus Praxiteles Scopas Lysippus Hellenistic Sculpture Index

This is not a history of Greek art. Still less is it a record of personal research or exploration beyond the limits of previous knowledge. The subject here chiefly discussed is Greek art, but with emphasis rather upon the adjective than upon the noun. The subject is never dissociated in thought from its great background of Greek civilization and history, and it derives its chief interest to the writer from the fact that it so constantly reveals and interprets this larger fact. Copiously illustrated with 137 illustrations.