Number of Change

In 548 AD, Empress Theodora died — one of the most powerful women in Byzantine history and co-ruler of Justinian I. Born the daughter of a circus bear-keeper, she rose to the throne and enacted landmark reforms protecting women's rights, outlawing human trafficking and granting women the right to divorce.

548 reduces to 8 (5+4+8=17, 1+7=8) — the number of power, abundance and the infinite cycle. Eight turned sideways becomes the infinity sign ∞. This is the number of great ambition and material mastery.

548 Kressida is a main-belt asteroid discovered in 1904 by German astronomer Max Wolf, named after Shakespeare's Cressida from Troilus and Cressida. Wolf pioneered the photographic method of asteroid discovery, cataloguing over 200 of them.

In music theory, 548 cents define an interval close to the augmented fourth — the infamous tritone, which medieval Europe called 'diabolus in musica' and banned from church performance for its unsettling dissonance.