Ancient Mesopotamia: Did you mean...?

Ancient Persian culture flourished between the reign of Cyrus II (The Great, r. c. 550-530 BCE), founder of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, and the fall of the Sassanian Empire in 651 CE. Even so, the foundations of Persian...

A visual timeline illustrating the evolution of agriculture in parallel with invention and social development in the region of the Fertile Crescent (a term first used in 1916 by Egyptologist...

The sculpture of the ancient Celts between 700 BCE and 400 CE is nothing if not varied as artists across Europe developed their own ideas and borrowed what interested them from neighbouring cultures. Early Celtic stone...

This rock relief dates back to the Akkadian era. It lies on the cliff of Mt. Darbadi Bilula, Hori and Shekhan area, Sulaimaniya, near the Iranian border, Iraq. Circa 2100 BCE. It features a...

The Indus Valley Civilization was a cultural and political entity which flourished in the northern region of the Indian subcontinent between c. 7000 - c. 600 BCE. Its modern name derives from its location in the valley...

The popular view of life in ancient Egypt is often that it was a death-obsessed culture in which powerful pharaohs forced the people to labor at constructing pyramids and temples and, at an unspecified time, enslaved...

A text known as The Lay of the Harper, dating from the Middle Kingdom (2040-1782 BCE) encourages its audience to make the most of the time because death is a certainty: Make a holiday! And do not tire of playing! For no...

Lying at the crossroads of the eastern Mediterranean, the island of Cyprus has long been a meeting point for many of the world's great civilizations. Situated where Europe, Asia and Africa meet, its location shaped...

War was the chief means by which territory was annexed or rulers defeated in ancient India, which was divided into multiple kingdoms, republics and empires. Often one empire predominated or different empires co-existed...

Civilization (from the Latin civis=citizen and civitas=city) is a term applied to any society which has developed a writing system, government, production of surplus food, division of labor, and urbanization...