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Dated to the 7th century BCE, the Arslan Tash amulet (AT1) was discovered in Arslan Tash, Syria and contains the writing of Phoenician, magic incantations. The limestone plaque includes a variety of features: incantations perceived to prevent...

Cyrus the Great (558-530 BCE) built the first universal empire, stretching from Greece to the Indus River. This was the famous Achaemenid Empire of Persia. An inscription at Naqsh-i-Rustam, the tomb of his able successor Darius I (521-486...

Sumer was the southernmost region of ancient Mesopotamia (modern-day southern Iraq and parts of Kuwait), which has long been considered the cradle of civilization. The name comes from Akkadian, the language of the north of Mesopotamia, and...

Elam was a region in the Near East corresponding to the modern-day provinces of Ilam and Khuzestan in southern Iran (though it also included part of modern-day southern Iraq) whose civilization spanned thousands of years from circa 3200 to...

The Brahmi script is the earliest writing system developed in India after the Indus script. It is one of the most influential writing systems; all modern Indian scripts and several hundred scripts found in Southeast and East Asia are derived...

The White Huns were a race of largely nomadic peoples who were a part of the Hunnic tribes of Central Asia. They ruled over an expansive area stretching from the Central Asian lands all the way to the Western Indian Subcontinent. Although...

Side (pronounced see-day) was a city on the southern coast of Cilicia (modern-day Turkey) first settled in the 7th century BCE by immigrants from Cyme, an Aeolian municipality to the north near the kingdom of Lydia. Its name means 'pomegranate'...

Writing is the physical manifestation of a spoken language. It is thought that human beings developed language c. 35,000 BCE as evidenced by cave paintings from the period of the Cro-Magnon Man (c. 50,000-30,000 BCE) which appear to express...

Uruk was one of the most important cities (at one time, the most important) in ancient Mesopotamia. According to the Sumerian King List, it was founded by King Enmerkar circa 5000/4500 BCE. Uruk is best known as the birthplace of writing...

The Egyptian hieroglyphic script was one of the writing systems used by ancient Egyptians to represent their language. Because of their pictorial elegance, Herodotus and other important Greeks believed that Egyptian hieroglyphs were something...