This site is absolutely amazing! It’s essentially a college level text book put up on the web. If you’re a history geek, you’ll be lost here and want to spend hours just roaming the directories of this site.

On the negative side, the navigation kind of… well, it kind of bites. To get to the different index pages for the different civilizations is no problem. It’s just that navigating within the different civilizations is a pain. You’ll have to rely on your back button a lot. In the Near East section, clicking on the Chronology link gets me a perl script. I’m not sure why we would need to view a perl script code.

But…. oooh…. Clicking on the essays page is kind of like opening a treasure chest. There’s so many links to essays. And it’s the same thing with images, internet sites, and texts.

This is how it is in all of the sections. Just. Wow.

Okay, so the web design is very plain and simple. For a completely content driven site like this one, that’s awesome. There’s no fancy graphics to compete for your attention. There’s no colored background to compete with the content. It’s just… It’s boring on the eyes, which makes it super easy for the brain to focus on the content.

In short, holy crap, this site is so worth it for the history buff. I suspect I’ll be spending the next several hours here in front of my computer, enjoying what this site provides. The things about it that suck are far outweighed by the things that make it awesome.

Link: Exploring Ancient World Cultures
Score: 8/10
Reviewed by Enyo Perseus

Encyclopedia Mythica is one of those rare sites which presents valuable information and content in a way which completely fails to be gaudy, cheap-looking and/or annoying. I cannot say whether the owner of the site is pagan or not. But I can tell you that they provide information that is vital to a honest understanding of paganism throughout all ages, and do so in a way which is as unbiased and fair-minded as journalists are supposed to be.

While plain, the site is very well thought out and is designed in such a way as to focus upon making the information it contains as readily accessible as is possible. It is easy to read and very easy to navigate, which in turn makes it sublimely easy to find the information you need.

And that brings us to the contents of the site. Encyclopedia Mythica is one of the most complete sources for information on gods, goddesses, heroes and spirits found throughout all manner of pagan peoples and pantheons from around the world. The odds that you will not be able to find what you want are vanishingly small, and if the information you want is there then chances are it will be complete and accurate. I would also like to applaud the owners of the site for keeping the contents to materials which can be verified by several sources. Missing from these pages are the speculation and unfounded assertions which make up so much of the pagan web.

Link:Encyclopedia Mythica
Score: 9/10
Originally posted by Gwynn Elessacar at Paganetwork

This is easily one of the crappiest pages that I’ve ever come across regarding the myth of the Burning Times. Aside from the awful lay out, the spelling errors, and the grammatical errors, the amount of misinformation is just astonishing. What does it matter if witches were burned? People were burned. This site claims that the burnings itself was called “Malleus Maleficarum”. Malleus Maleficarum was, in fact, a text on how to spot witches and so forth. It was not what the time period was called. Honestly, the author of this page needs to take it down and learn a bit of history before attempting to spout bull shit ideas as facts. Oh, and because the site designer failed to name the page .html or .htm, it will only show in Internet Explorer. Other browsers will only see the source code. Also, here is her complete site. It seems to get even worse. There are some outright accusations of plagiarism on page three of her guestbook.

Link: Inquisicion
Score: 1/10
Originally posted by Enyo Perseus at Paganetwork