History

An award-winning British-Egyptian writer presents an authoritative history of the first modern city and how it has shaped our modern world, including its role as a global capital of knowledge as well as the site of plagues and violence. A city drawn in sand. Inspired by the tales of Homer and his own ambitions of empire, Alexander the Great sketched the idea of a city onto the sparsely populated Egyptian coastline. He did not live to see Alexandria built, but his vision of a sparkling metropolis that celebrated learning and diversity was swiftly realised and still stands today. Situated on the cusp of Africa, Europe and Asia, great civilisations met in Alexandria. Together, Greeks and Egyptians, Romans and Jews created a global knowledge capital of enormous influence: the inventive collaboration of its citizens shaped modern philosophy, science, religion and more. In pitched battles, later empires, from the Arabs and Ottomans to the French and British, laid claim to the city but its independent spirit endures. In this sweeping biography of the great city, Islam Issa takes us on a journey across millennia, rich in big ideas, brutal tragedies and distinctive characters, from Cleopatra to Napoleon. From its humble origins to dizzy heights and present-day strife, Alexandria tells the gripping story of a city that has shaped our modern world.

"There are few historical figures more integral to South Asian history than Emperor Ashoka, a third-century BCE king who ruled over a larger area of the Indian subcontinent than anyone else before British colonial rule. Ashoka sought not only to rule his territory but also to give it a unity of purpose and aspiration, to unify the people of his vastly heterogeneous empire not by a cult of personality but by the cult of an idea--"dharma"--which served as the linchpin of a new moral order. He aspired to forge a new moral philosophy that would be internalized not only by the people of his empire but also by rulers and subjects of other countries, and would form the foundation for his theory of international relations, in which practicing dharma would bring international conflicts to an end. His fame spread far and wide both in India and in other parts of Asia, and it prompted diverse reimaginations of the king and his significance. In this deeply researched book, Patrick Olivelle draws on Ashoka's inscriptions and on the art and architecture he pioneered to craft a detailed picture of Ashoka as a ruler, a Buddhist, a moral philosopher, and an ecumenist who governed a vast multiethnic, multilinguistic, and multireligious empire."--Publisher.

This volume applies feminist epistemology to ancient Greece and Rome, examining how knowledge, authority, and objectivity were constructed across genres like poetry, philosophy, and law. Sixteen chapters use an intersectional lens to uncover how epistemic systems marginalized women and oppressed groups, exploring issues of gender, race, class, and citizenship. By recovering non-dominant narratives and drawing connections to modern injustices, the book fosters a more inclusive understanding of classical antiquity and its enduring relevance.

Summary: The siren passionately in love with Mark Antony, the seductress who allegedly rolled out of a carpet she had herself smuggled in to see Caesar, Cleopatra is a figure shrouded in myth. Beyond the legends immortalized by Plutarch, Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, and others, there are no journals or letters written by Cleopatra herself. All we have to tell her story are words written by others. What has it meant for our understanding of Cleopatra to have had her story told by writers who had a political agenda, authors who distrusted her motives, and historians who believed she was a liar? Francine Prose delves into ancient Greek and Roman literary sources, as well as modern representations of Cleopatra in art, theater, and film. She challenges the common narratives driven by orientalism and misogyny and offers a new interpretation of Cleopatra's history from the lens of our own era.

The Black Death was a disaster of huge magnitude, shaking medieval Europe and beyond to its economic and social core. Building upon his acclaimed study of 2004, Ole Benedictow here draws upon new scholarship and research to present a comprehensive, definitive account of the Black Death and its impact on European history. The medical and epidemiological characteristics of the disease, its geographical origin, its spread across Asia Minor, the Middle East, North Africa, Europe and Russia, and the mortality in the countries and regions for which there are satisfactory studies, are clearly presented and thoroughly discussed. The pattern, pace and seasonality of the spread of the disease reflect current medical work and standard studies on the epidemiology of bubonic plague. Benedictow's findings make it clear that the true mortality rate was far higher than had been previously thought: some 60% of Europe's population. In the light of those findings, the discussion of the Black Death as a turning point in history takes on a new significance.

This book is about the "daily life" of Roman women in the largest sense of daily life - the larger experiences of life from birth and childhood, through marriage and the family, the economic activities, public roles, pre-Christian religion, and the universal experiences of death and mourning. The focus of this book is on relatively "ordinary" women - including women of the upper classes - and away from "extraordinary" women such as the relatives of aristocratic politicians during the late Republic or the empresses and women of the imperial family during the Principate. This book uses documentary sources as well as literary ones; two inscriptions have already been quoted from the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, a collection of hundreds of thousands of Latin inscriptions on stone that have been reconstructed, transcribed, and published. Other documentary sources are discussed in this chapter. They are more likely to represent women's own voices and display the agency that women had within the framework of Roman society

Covering topics from Gilgamesh to Ancient Egypt to the Fall of Rome, this volume provides easy-to-use tools to engage, enlighten, and give students a new frame of reference to study and analyze the most important documents from Ancient History.

This title features fifty-two documents that span the history, politics, ethics, wars, and struggles for independence from China to Korea to Cambodia.

This volume offers in-depth analysis of a broad range of historical documents and historic events that shaped law, government, religion, and culture throughout the Middle Ages. The text provides in-depth analysis of more than forty primary source documents to deliver a thorough examination of events from 400 to 1400 B.C.E.

Designed for high school and college students, the aim of the series is to advance the study of primary source historical documents as an important activity in learning about history.

Provide thoughtful analysis of documents and speeches allowing readers to gain a better understanding of the roles, opinions, and changing attitudes of and toward women in world history. An important resource for the history collections of high schools, undergraduate libraries and public libraries.

"A Global History of the Ancient World" broadens the traditional focus on ancient Greece and Rome by exploring human societal developments worldwide from the last Ice Age to the rise of Islam in the seventh century CE. This unique book covers early civilizations in Asia, Africa, and Europe, emphasizing their historical significance. It offers thematic overviews that provide global perspectives on connections and developments, appealing to history and classics students and anyone interested in a comprehensive view of ancient history.

Josephine Quinn's How the World Made the West redefines "Western civilization," emphasizing its deep roots in global influences like Babylonian laws, Phoenician sailing, Indian literature, and Arabic scholarship. Challenging the traditional Greece-and-Rome-centric narrative, Quinn highlights ancient recognition of cultural exchange. Using literary analysis, archaeology, and scientific discoveries, she debunks the myth of Western self-sufficiency. With vivid prose, maps, and illustrations, this award-winning book offers a global perspective, reshaping our understanding of Western identity and history.

Presents a modern, readable, accurate, and lucid new translation of the Old English Herbarium used by practitioners in Medieval Europe for diagnosing and treating medical conditions. Includes context and explanations from modern specialists in herbalism, botany and medicine and pharmacy.

Daisy Dunn's The Missing Thread reframes ancient history by highlighting women's pivotal contributions, from Cleopatra and Sappho to lesser-known figures like Atossa and Olympias. Spanning 3,000 years across Minoan Crete, Mycenaean Greece, Persia, and Rome, Dunn showcases women as leaders, artists, and influencers, challenging traditional narratives that sidelined them. Through vivid storytelling and meticulous research, this groundbreaking work asserts women’s centrality in shaping antiquity, offering a fresh, long-overdue perspective on the Mediterranean world.

Jörg Rüpke provides a comprehensive and strikingly original narrative history of ancient Roman and Mediterranean religion over more than a millennium-from the late Bronze Age through the Roman imperial period and up to late antiquity.

The Phoenicians is a fascinating exploration of this much-mythologized people: their history, artistic heritage, and the scope of their maritime and colonizing activities in the Mediterranean. Two aspects of the book stand out from other studies of Phoenician history: the source-focused approach and the attention paid to the various ways that biases-ancient and modern-have contributed to widespread misconceptions about who the Phoenicians really were. The book describes and analyzes various artifacts (epigraphic, numismatic, and material remains) and considers how historians have derived information about a people with little surviving literature. This analysis includes a critical look at the primary texts (classical, Near Eastern, and biblical), the relationship between the Phoenician and Punic worlds; Phoenician interaction with the Greeks and others; and the repurposing of Phoenician heritage in modernity.

As Ruler of the Two Lands, Egypt's pharaoh wore the double pschent crown: the red crown of Lower Egypt, in the north, surrounding the white crown of Upper Egypt, in the south. Personified in the ruler, this union remained a central ideal throughout Egyptian history. The unity of Upper and Lower Egypt, also symbolized in the knot tied between papyrus and reed, was long seen as key to Egypt's success. (Fig. 1.1.1) In practice, however, the country was diverse in many ways, with an ongoing struggle between the central ideologies of unity and uniformity and the realities on the ground. Egypt was a self-consciously distinctive culture that also constantly received and absorbed immigrants from many countries into its society

Vanished Giants by paleontologist Anthony J. Stuart examines the lives of Ice Age megafauna like mammoths, sabertooth cats, and giant sloths across six continents. Using fossil evidence and radiocarbon dating, Stuart reconstructs their habitats, climates, and ecological interactions while exploring their extinction and its ties to human activity and climate change. Illustrated throughout, the book connects the loss of these giants to the ongoing Sixth Extinction, offering insights into the fate of today’s wildlife.

In this bold reinterpretation of Women's changing labor status during the late medieval and early modern period, Martha C. Howell argues that women's work was the product of the intersection of two systems, one cultural and one economic. Howell shows forcefully that patriarchal family structure, not capitalist development per se, was a decisive factor in determining women's work. Women could enjoy high labor status if they worked within a family production unit or if their labor did not interfere with their domestic responsibilities or threaten male control of a craft or trade

This sourcebook presents a wide-ranging collection of inscriptions and graffiti on the roles and activities of Roman women in Italy and the western provinces of the Roman Empire. To make it accessible to a wide readership, it provides translations and brief introductions to each inscription and to the various themes as well as selected references to further reading. By its thematic approach the book throws light on the family roles, social lives, occupations, legal status, travel and migration, ethnicity, religious offices and affiliations, benefactions, civic patronage and public honour of Roman women ranging from slaves and freedwomen to women of the elite and the imperial family. The book is accompanied by a PDF on the website providing the original texts in the same order as in the book and with added layout and punctuation to help students and scholars unacquainted with reading inscriptions