Ancient history: Did you mean...?

Ancient Argos, located in the Peloponnese in Greece, was a major Mycenaean settlement in the Late Bronze Age (1700-1100 BCE) and remained important throughout the Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman periods until its destruction by the...

The polytheistic religion of the ancient Celts in Iron Age Europe remains obscure for lack of written records, but archaeology and accounts by classical authors help us to piece together a number of the key gods, sacred...

The spices clove, nutmeg, and mace originated on only a handful of tiny islands in the Indonesian archipelago but came to have a dramatic, far-reaching impact on world trade. In antiquity, they became popular...

The mythology of ancient Persia originally developed in the region known as Greater Iran (the Caucasus, Central Asia, South Asia, and West Asia). The Persians were initially part of a migratory people who referred to themselves...

The Solomonic Dynasty ruled Ethiopia from the 1270s to the 1970s, and the 14th-century work, the Kebra Nagast (The Glory of the Kings) famously tells of how the dynasty of Ethiopian kings descended from King...

Ancient Egyptian Warfare developed from an army of conscripts in the Pre-Dynastic Period (circa 3150-2613 BCE) through the early era of the Middle Kingdom (2040-1782 BCE), supplied to the king by...

Cats and humans have shared in each other's lives for thousands of years and, even though they have not always been regarded as highly as in the present, have played an important role in a number of cultures. Always enigmatic...

Pets were very important to the ancient Egyptians and considered gifts from the gods to be cared for until their death when they were expected to be returned to the divine realm from which they had come. In life, pets were...

The game of chess has a particularly long and fascinating history of more than 1500 years. Over the centuries, there have also been hundreds of different chess variants, all of which incorporate the...

The most important cultural value in ancient Egypt was harmony; known to the Egyptians as ma'at. Ma'at was the concept of universal, communal, and personal balance which allowed for the world to function as it should...