Persepolis may have been built in the 500s BC as a place to celebrate Nowruz. What is the holiday of Nowruz? Zoroastrianism became much more popular suddenly when the Persian kings [...]
Clay tablets with cuneiform writing of the Enuma Elish Story of Creation By about the time of Hammurabi, about 1700 BC, people in the Babylonian Empire were beginning to write down this story about [...]
Mordecai is leading Esther (on the horse) to talk to the Persian king. A fresco from the world's oldest preserved synagogue at Dura-Europos in Syria (244 AD) How did Purim [...]
Handmade Matzoh The beginnings of Passover In its earliest beginnings, which could go back to the Stone Age, Passover was a Jewish spring festival. Like other spring festivals, it celebrated the [...]
Wheat and barley on the Warka Vase (Sumeria, ca. 3200-3000 BC) Why celebrate spring? When people moved out of Africa further north to West Asia and then to Europe, about 60,000 BC, they began to [...]
Chinese moon cakes for the New Year When did Chinese New Year get started? People in China probably started to celebrate the New Year - the beginning of farming in [...]
