You may have been wondering, "What is a 'Golgotha' anyway?"

Golgotha is an Aramaic word which means "skull."

If you have ever heard of the word it probably came from the biblical context: Golgotha was the site where Jesus Christ was crucified.

According to biblical scholars, the Romans took Jesus to a hill outside of Jerusalem to execute him. The hill was near an old quarry and supposedly if you looked at the hill from across the quarry you would see in the hillside what appeared to be the shape of a skull. Today, most biblical scholars agree that the exact location of Golgotha is unknown.

Some scholars, however, claim that the location of Golgotha is known.  This is one site which is claimed to be Golgotha:

The biblical reference to Golgotha is sometimes said to refer to other cemetaries or executions. For example, the third century scholar Origen thought Golgotha was the burial place of Adam. Because of this reference, many artists have often placed a skull at the base of the cross in representations of the crucifixion.

Another semi-common reference to Golgotha was by William Shakespeare, who wrote in King Richard II, "this land be call'd the field of Golgotha, and dead men's skulls."

Golgotha is also the name of a computer game by the now-extinct gaming company Crack-Dot-Com. Crack-Dot-Com was set to release this game -- a type of adventure wargame set in the Middle East -- but closed before it was released.  The game Golgotha is now being developed by a team of programmers on the Internet and will be released as a free, open-source code program.

So, how did this name get associated with Golgotha Systems -- the computer consulting firm which runs the domain golgotha.net -- and computers? That involves some history.

For years Golgotha Systems was previously known as Spartacus Systems. However, upon the company moving to New Hampshire the Department of State would not register a trade name of "Spartacus Systems" because of possible confusion with another company which used the word "Spartacus" in its name.

Local policy was to name computer host names after various Gnostic Christian terms or words. For example, the primary server of our network was known as "golgotha.spartacus.*".

It was determed quickly that the easiest way to reconfigure the machines was simply to rename them to "spartacus.golgotha.net". "Golgotha Systems" was batted around as our company name instead of "Spartacus Systems" and it was decided the new name would work.  With that logic, "golgotha.net" was registered with the InterNic as our domain name and the State of New Hampshire approved "Golgotha Systems" as our registered trade name.