50
votes
Accepted
Why is this Latin text black but the Latin numerals are red?
The present day structure (Marian column (Prague)) is intended to be a very precise reconstruction of the original one built in 1650 that was torn down in 1918, when the original inscription was ...
- 80k
27
votes
Where is the location of this large stump and monument (lighthouse?) background?
That looks a great deal like the Astoria Column, in Astoria, Oregon at the mouth of the Columbia River. In particular, the image from Wikipedia show a similar base and top part. While a bit difficult ...
- 2,376
25
votes
Accepted
Why did Ancient Greek religious monument (herms) have genitalia?
Sex and nudity weren't as taboo then as they are now - particularly since the puritan Victorian days.
Olympic athletes, for instance, raced naked. Homosexuality was pervasive enough to have been ...
- 23.1k
18
votes
Accepted
Which is the earliest surviving inscription of "SPQR"?
Whether or not there are any surviving SPQR initials inscriptions from the time of the Roman Republic is unclear. For inscriptions, the earliest use of these initials seems to have been on coins from ...
- 107k
17
votes
Where is the location of this large stump and monument (lighthouse?) background?
Here is a picture comparing OP's image with the image of the monument at Wikipedia to confirm Jon Custer's answer:
If we look at the tree at the right behind the column it seems as if the time was ...
- 271
11
votes
Accepted
Has any place exhumed more dead bodies than San Francisco?
The Catacombs of Paris contain the remains of more than 6 million people, and much like the San Francisco situation the catacombs were established to alleviate overflowing cemeteries throughout Paris. ...
- 3,993
7
votes
Accepted
Who are the five figures in the niches in the 'Monument of Marchese Spinetta Malaspina'
The five small statues in the niches of the cenotaph represent (from left to right) St. Jerome, St. John the Baptist and the Virgin and Child, a bearded male saint (perhaps St. Paul or St. Peter) and ...
MCW♦
- 31.7k
7
votes
Accepted
How can a megalith be dated via the C14 method?
In general, structures like megaliths are dated by their archaeological context.
In most cases, a socket will have been excavated when the megalith was erected. When archaeologists excavate that ...
- 76.9k
6
votes
Monuments of Sesostris
With help from user4419802's answer I have found pictures of at least two of these monuments. The first (in Palestine) is at Nahr el-Kalb north of Beirut:
The other, known as the Karabel relief, is ...
- 37.6k
6
votes
Has any place exhumed more dead bodies than San Francisco?
Singapore: over 250,000 individual graves exhumed, and more will follow.
Reasonably accurate estimates of the number of individual graves exhumed can be established for Singapore where more than 20 ...
- 107k
5
votes
What is the ruined tower in the background of this 1649 drawing of the Igeler Säule by Joan Blaeu?
wip
The apparently oldest drawing showing the surrounding — one Mercator drawing shows just the monument — is Ortelius Vivianus 1584:
We then get another take on it in Braun & Hogenberg: "...
- 80k
5
votes
Monuments of Sesostris
H. Shliemann in "Ilios, the city and country of the trojans", NY 1881, p. 700 wrote:
Moreover, I had not then made the important discovery of the Hittite origin of the sculptures and inscriptions ...
- 4,268
4
votes
Did the avenue of the Gods exist?
As far as I can say, the only historically supported template that the scene was based on was the Avenue of Sphinxes in Luxor (previously known as Thebes). The statues of sphinxes were there and they ...
- 2,724
4
votes
Why did Ancient Greek religious monument (herms) have genitalia?
Building off of Denis's answer, there was a lot of imagery of detached phalloi (plural for phallus, or penis) in ancient Greece. Here is a vase image of a woman watering a phallus garden. Some ...
- 1,503
4
votes
What is the ruined tower in the background of this 1649 drawing of the Igeler Säule by Joan Blaeu?
We all know the impossiblity of proving a negative, but I'm going to go out on a limb and claim that there was no such ruin, and that the artist added it for symmetry or effect.
Why?
First, while ...
- 27.4k
3
votes
Who erected Luis Argüello's tombstone?
(Updated below with new information concerning the monument creator John Daniel.)
I'm afraid that the best I have been able to do so far is narrow down the timeline for this, and provide a little ...
- 36.3k
3
votes
Why did Ancient Greek religious monument (herms) have genitalia?
(It's a high resolution photograph, in case it will help to be able to read the text.)
Thank you very much for the high resolution image. As far as I can tell, the inscription reads:
ΠΟ[Μ]ΠΗΙΑΝΟΝ ΚΟ[...
- 188
3
votes
Is there a name for the style of the 'superhero' Russian statues?
There was no special name for hero statues style, at least in the Soviet Union.
"Socialist realism", according to Soviet official definition, was not a particular style but a general method (as they ...
- 38.1k
2
votes
Did the Sword of the Republic really fall from the Arc de Triomphe on the first day of the Battle of Verdun?
Just like the curtain in the temple when Jesus died?
English Wikipedia has a shady reference, Italian Wikipedia a [citation needed] attached to this tidbit.
The other languages pages of Wikipedia ...
- 80k
1
vote
Who is this monument near Huesca for?
They were volunteers (very young according to the cited Wikipedia article) fighting in the Carlist Wars. Details in the comments and edited into the question. Also,
https://requetespuntocom....
- 279
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