Last week, United States President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping shook hands outside China's Great Hall of the People, in Beijing, for 14 seconds. Almost immediately, we saw various pundits trying to interpret the meaning of the interaction. A brief look at the history of the handshake, however, reveals the complexity of this gesture's symbolism.
Ankara -- The Assyrian civilization recorded its history on clay tablets. Ancient Assyrian merchants, for example, documented their commercial and economic activities on these tablets. However, they also preserved other aspects of life, most notably the practice of blood money.
Although the Assyrian population of Iraq has declined dramatically this century, to below one per cent of the population, five of the 26-member national football squad that qualified for the soccer-mad country's first World Cup since 1986 are Assyrian Christians.
Karm El Tin, Metn District, Mount Lebanon -- The Monastery of Saints Peter and Paul, Karm El Tin stands as a witness to long centuries of faith and heritage. Bearing the names of the great apostles, Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the monastery is not merely a place of worship, but a deeply rooted spiritual and cultural landmark in the history of the region.
Researchers are painstakingly reconstructing the oldest-known map of the night sky -- previously thought lost forever -- by X-raying parchment that contains the star catalog hidden beneath other text. The map of the cosmos is thought to be the work of the renowned ancient astronomer Hipparchus, who lived from around 190 to 120 BCE, long before the invention of the telescope.
Three hundred and fifty years separate us from the last medieval Maronite epigraph, that of Our Lady of Ilige dated 1277 and the new inscription, dated 1628, at Mar Chalita of Ghosta, which marks the beginning of a renaissance that Lebanon was to experience under Ottoman rule.