The story of Hypatia, a leading Roman scholar murdered by monks

Cleopatra was a rare female pharaoh who sided with Rome to preserve power

The figure is famous for her love affair with Roman leader Mark Antony and her suicide in 30 BCE to escape capture. Parse through the many versions of Cleopatra with more recent archaeological evidence, including a 2007 coin depicting the queen as less glamorous than historically believed.

The Greek city of Alexandria in Egypt helped form the template for modern cities by considering function, commerce, culture, and politics.

The true story of Cleopatra and Mark Antony

One of history's most romanticized couples, Greek-descended Queen of Egypt Cleopatra and Roman warrior Mark Antony carried out their tryst in the waning days of ancient Egypt. Hollywood has long been fascinated with the pair and has offered up depictions historians claim obscure the real story. Here, an Egyptologist helps separate myths from history.

Caesar and Cleopatra's complicated affair

The Egyptian queen Cleopatra, a known charmer in history, had a public affair with Roman leader Julius Caesar. Read this article for details and a timeline of their doomed romance—from their first meeting to her later affair with Marc Antony.

When Marcus Aurelius created endowed philosophy chairs in Athens

The Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius is known as one of the most famous Stoic writers or thinkers, penning his classic opus ‘Meditations.’ In 176 CE, he endowed four philosophy chairs in Athens: one for Stoicism, and one for three of Stoicism’s rival schools: Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Epicureanism.

A Roman mosaic records the outcome of a retiarius–secutor fight

Displayed at the National Archaeological Museum, this mosaic depicts the classic retiarius–secutor battle. The lower panel shows the bout under referees’ supervision; the upper panel declares Astyanax vicit, with a symbol confirming his opponent was killed.

In 1822, French scholar Jean-François Champollion deciphered Egyptian hieroglyphs using the Rosetta Stone.

Unraveling the charred remains of the only known library from antiquity

This article details the quest to decipher the charred remains of a library buried during Mt. Vesuvius' volcanic blast. In 1752, nearly 2,000 papyrus scrolls were found in Herculaneum. According to this article, this collection is the only complete library that has survived from antiquity. In the last decade, scientists have made strides in decoding the crumbling texts.

Mummification in Ancient Egypt transformed a body into a divine statue

Rather than for preservation, the ritual was a means of turning the biological body into an eternal vessel for the top percent of society. With no way to preserve eyes that would shrivel during dehydration, eye sockets were filled with onions or black and white stones.

Various ancient writers reinterpreted the life of Helen of Troy

Helen of Troy is the woman whose face launched a thousand ships and the Greek wife of Menelaus taken by Paris of Troy to be his wife. To get her back, the Greeks launched the war that would end in the burning of the city of Troy and contribute to the literary tradition through Homer, Horace, and more.

The warrior women of Ancient Scythia who inspired the Greek Amazons

Greek literature regales readers with tales of Amazon queens and warriors going toe-to-toe with heroes, including Achilles and Hercules. This article explores why these female warriors were relegated to myth. For a long while, it was believed that these stories about all-female warriors were just stories. But scientists have since found evidence that these ancient warriors were part of the nomadic tribes of Scythia, and more discoveries are expected.

Ancient Greek told to kick rocks after claiming moon wasn't a deity

About 2,500 years ago, ancient Greek philosopher Anaxagoras theorized that the moon probably wasn't a goddess. This article explains how this belief led to his exile. Anaxagoras also argued the sun was just a burning rock, writing that it was the sun that illuminated the moon. According to this resource, this theory enabled Anaxagoras to accurately explain eclipses and lunar cycles.

Bad Ancient: a site to fact-check claims about the ancient world

Peruse popular questions about ancient Rome, Egypt, Greece, and more, from whether Greek boxers were ripped or to what extent Alexander the Great conquered the world.

Pompeii’s ruins expose the brutal realities of Rome’s sex trade

Drawing on graffiti, slave collars, brothel art, and the story of “Eutychis, a Greek lass with sweet ways,” this piece reconstructs the violent, coercive world of Pompeii’s enslaved prostitutes—and how their owners controlled, renamed, and exploited them.

Aliens have invaded ancient history

Avid fans of archaeology can sometimes fall prey to unsubstantiated claims like "aliens built the pyramids," provocative, dubious theories which fall under the category of pseudo-archaeology. Many of these claims are premised on hidden biases toward non-Western cultural heritages. This professor explores the hidden contours of pseudo-archaeology in this 12-minute TED talk.

The story of Sporus, the castrated boy who married Emperor Nero

Ancient Romans’ views of homosexuality are quite different from Western understandings. Nero was an emperor is infamous for his cruelty, and appears to have heaped that cruelty upon Sporus, a boy he fell for and married in a public ceremony. As a slave, Sporus was held captive at the whims of Nero and subject to the class-based rules on same-sex relationships in ancient times.

An Egyptologist answers questions from the internet

Professor of Egyptology and Archaeology Laurel Bestock answers your questions about ancient Egypt from X. What did ancient Egyptians sound like? Why is King Tut so enduringly popular? What ancient Egyptian medicine and tools do we still use in modern times?

Learn how the Egyptians, Romans, and other ancient civilizations worshipped the sun

In Egypt, the pharaoh was seen as the living embodiment of the son of Ra, the sun god. In Mesopotamia, the sun god Shamash was a divine judge whose light could reveal the truth. Huitzilopochtli, the Aztec god of sun and war, was thought to require sacrifices to prevent the universe's destruction.

Roman terror was key to its centuries-long dominance

Historians like Polybius recorded Rome's violent tactics in detail, including the enslavement of entire populations and the mass killing of whole cities. Even as terror and violence proved effective in war, many Romans came to view the tactics with skepticism.

Caesar's true betrayer wasn't Brutus but Decimus, a conspirator history forgot

It was Decimus—not Brutus—who was closest to Caesar, dined with him the night before his murder, and talked him out of skipping the Senate meeting on the Ides of March when Caesar grew suspicious. This article argues that in his play named after the Roman dictator, Shakespeare immortalized the wrong man. Decimus was captured and executed within two years; Brutus and Cassius took slightly longer to meet their ends.

Socrates, who never wrote down his ideas, is considered by many the father of Western philosophy.

The century-long debate over religious images in Byzantium

The iconoclast controversy, which tore Byzantium apart in the eighth and ninth centuries, centered on the use of sacred images (or icons) in Christian worship. The Iconoclasts (literally, “icon smashers”) regarded sacred images as sacrilegious; their opponents, the Iconophiles (“icon lovers”), defended icons as aids to personal devotion. After decades of struggle, the Iconophiles prevailed; their victory ensured that icons, and the brilliant mosaics inspired by them, remained a feature of Byzantine churches.

Medieval monasteries preserved ancient knowledge through hand-copied books

Medieval monks and nuns lived in religious communities devoted to work and prayer. Still, their script-copying traditions had a lasting impact: through illuminated manuscripts, monasteries preserved hundreds of ancient texts that might have otherwise been lost.

The Rosetta Stone praised the Pharoah Ptolemy V in the 196 BCE

Since its discovery in 1799, 27 other copies have been found throughout Egypt, the most recent in 2011. Dr. Ilona Regulski, curator of ancient writing at the British Museum, discusses the crucial artifact and its specific content.

The prophetic Oracle of Delphi was believed to have a direct line to the Greek god Apollo.

The Pius XI Medal—named after the pope who rebranded the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in 1936—has been awarded every two years to a promising scientist under 45.

The lost history of Fredegund and Brunhild

In the Middle Ages, there were many powerful queens who ruled their kingdoms with strength and determination, two of the most notable examples of which were Fredegund of Neustria and Brunhild of Austrasia. Unafraid to use murder and intrigue to maintain their power, they played a significant role in shaping the political landscape of their time—but have largely been lost to history.

Ancient Romans sometimes lobbed insults through graffiti

Graffiti was used to communicate ideas, offer advice, and, not unlike the internet, talk some trash. That was especially true with tourists, who sometimes scrawled messages on the pyramids, including one person who complained, "I can not read the hierogylphics." In response, someone replied, "Why do you care that you can not read the hieroglyphics? I do not understand your concern."

To reach the afterlife, Egyptians lived in accordance with ma'at, or harmony

The ancient Egyptians held many beliefs about eternal life, fueling entire industries tasked with building tombs for the dead. Their leader, the pharaoh, was believed to be divine, and the lives of ordinary people were punctuated with ritual and myth. Learn more about their religion here.

Reconstructing an average day in ancient Egypt

Egyptologists can reconstruct the intimate details of everyday life in the ancient civilization by studying the archaeological material preserved in tombs, monuments, and partially intact neighborhood layouts. Watch a comprehensive tour of the daily habits and lifestyles of ancient Egyptians with expert Dr. Joann Fletcher.

How Byzantine scholars supercharged Renaissance Italy

A brief survey of how Byzantine scholars changed the course of the Renaissance by introducing Classical Greek literature to Italy. These scholars and their students were responsible for translating, interpreting, and printing many of the most fundamental texts in the Western tradition. Without their efforts, the Italian Renaissance and Western thought would have been immeasurably poorer.

The prominent role of women in the Easter story

In the first century, women's testimony was not legally admissible in Jewish courts—the historian Josephus wrote that their accounts were not admissible based on a prejudiced view of women. Scholars who argue for the historical reliability of the resurrection point to this as counterintuitive evidence: no one fabricating the story would have chosen women as the prime witnesses.

Aristophanes was put on trial for his satire

The ancient Greek’s 426 BCE play “The Babylonians” criticized Athens’ role in the Peloponnesian War. The politician Cleon accused the dramatist of being unpatriotic, but that didn’t thwart Aristophanes. Two years later, Aristophanes premiered “The Knights,” which mocked Cleon, leaving him working as a sausage seller outside the city.

Ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus created accurate maps of the night sky way ahead of his time, with coordinates sometimes within a single degree of modern values.

English playwright Christopher Marlowe's violent and mysterious death

According to an official coroner’s report, in 1593 a heated argument over payment for supper escalated into a physical struggle, during which Marlowe wounded a man named Ingram Frizer, who then fatally stabbed Marlowe above the right eye. Though we still don't have a definitive explanation for why Marlowe was killed, the true motive continues to be debated, with suspicions surrounding the official account. Read more here.

Ancient Greek gymnasium: where philosophy met fitness

In ancient Greece, gymnasiums were not just places of physical training, but centers of intellectual life. This article explores the ways in which exercise, philosophy, and education were deeply intertwined, reflecting a cultural belief that physical fitness was essential for mental development.