Articles

The discovery of diamonds in 1867 in Griqualand ultimately transformed the entire region of Southern Africa. Huge European financial investment and significant immigration followed...

The Suez Canal in Egypt, which links the Mediterranean to the Red Sea, was taken over by the British in 1882 and was only reluctantly released 75 years later. The seizure in the 19th century...

On 22 September 1326, a strong wind carried 95 ships from the shores of Flanders into the foamy maw of the North Sea. The weather was fair for the first hours of their voyage, but gradually, blue...

The search for the source of the Nile River was one of the last great geographical mysteries of 19th-century European exploration. Men like Livingstone, Burton, Speke, and Stanley...

Lullaby for a Son of Shulgi is a Sumerian cradlesong from the reign of Shulgi of Ur (2094 to circa 2046 BCE) written for one of his sons. The lullaby follows a standard form of encouraging...

In Germanic society, the surest route to wealth, status and power was success in battle. Its most important institution was the comitatus or war band, the personal retinue of elite warriors that every king...

The world's oldest love poem is The Love Song for Shu-Sin (written circa 2000 BCE), composed in ancient Mesopotamia for use in part of the sacred rites of fertility. Prior to its discovery in the...

In the Merovingian period, Scandinavia was only just emerging from its prehistoric Iron Age. A process of political centralization that had begun in the Migration Period led to the emergence of the first Scandinavian...

Shulgi and Ninlil's Barge is a Sumerian poem dated to the reign of Shulgi of Ur (2094 - circa 2046 BCE) celebrating the caulking of the barge of the goddess Ninlil, consort of the sky god Enlil...

The Debate Between Bird and Fish (written circa 2000 BCE) is a Sumerian poem dated to the Ur III Period (circa 2112-circa 2004 BCE) when the genre of the literary debate was especially...