Articles

Once upon a time, in the land known as Sumer, the people built a temple to their god, who had conquered the forces of chaos and brought order to the world. They built this temple at a place called Eridu, which, as scholar Gwendolyn Leick...

The question "Why do bad things happen to good people?" has been asked for millennia, probably since before writing was invented, but at least since circa 1700 BCE when the Sumerian (and later Babylonian) poem, Ludlul-Bel-Nemeqi (also known...

The Admonitions of Ipuwer (also known as The Papyrus Ipuwer and The Admonitions of an Egyptian Sage) is a literary text dated to the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (2040-1782 BCE). The only extant copy of the work, preserved on the Papyrus Leiden...

The Last Kingdom (2015-2022) is a historical fiction TV series based on Bernard Cornwell's The Saxon Stories novels and adapted for television by English screenwriter Stephen Butchard. With five seasons, the show began as a BBC production...

Ancient Egypt is defined as the civilization that flourished in North Africa between circa 6000 and 30 BCE – from the Predynastic Period in Egypt (circa 6000 to circa 3150 BCE) through the Ptolemaic Dynasty (323-30 BCE) before Egypt became...

For over two centuries, ancient Judea was a restless province of the Roman Empire, marked by rebellions, shifting loyalties, and the tensions between imperial might and local identity. In his latest book, Jews vs. Rome: Two Centuries of Rebellion...

There was actually only one cause for the American Civil War: slavery. All the events leading to the Civil War, understood as steps moving steadily up the conflict, had slavery as the underlying cause for upset and increasing division between...

Striking silhouettes, sumptuous fabrics, bright colours, frills galore, and all manner of ornate accessories define the clothing of the Victorian period, that is, during the reign of Queen Victoria, which spanned seven decades of the 19th...

When German generals decided on a strategy of attrition to methodically wear down the French Army in the middle of the First World War (1914-18), the Battle of Verdun was the result, an engagement that spiralled out of control and cost both...

The First World War (1914-18) stimulated a great wave of literary output, not least in the field of poetry. In an era when photography and film were still in their infancy, poems, especially those written by direct participants, were regularly...