On July 26, 1956, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser announced the nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, the joint British-French enterprise which had owned and operated the Suez Canal since its construction in 1869. Nasser’s announcement came about following months… Read More ›
Millennia before the Enlightenment, Egyptians, Persians, and Greeks all saw the possibility of connecting Asia to Europe through the construction of a canal. An examination of the ancient sources reveals that the ancient attempts to build a Red Sea canal followed a different path, but by most accounts they were successful.
From Dailyhistory.org: Among the major events in the ancient Near East, none were more earth-shattering than the fall of the ancient Assyrian city of Nineveh. The demise of Nineveh was so important because it marked the end of the Assyrian… Read More ›
From Dailyhistory.org: The rise of agriculture is a complex topic but from what we do know the earliest region to witness the domestication of plants and animals was in the Fertile Crescent region of the Near East, spanning modern-day Iraq, Syria,… Read More ›
Click here to go “How Was Science Practiced in Ancient Babylon?” at DailyHistory.org
In the ancient world, three dynasties of Persian speaking peoples created vast empires across central Asia and the Near East: the Achaemenid (559-330 BC), the Parthian (ca. 247 BC-AD 224), and the Sasanian (AD 224-651). Although each of the Persian… Read More ›
Click here to go “How did Sargon of Akkad Influence Ancient Mesopotamian History?” on DailyHistory.org
Today, the term “Philistine” has become synonymous with any person or people deemed uncultured, uncouth, and boorish. The word is repeated with little thought to its origin with few people knowing that it is derived from a maligned and often… Read More ›
Of all the events, inventions, and personalities that defined the European Middle Ages, none did more so than the Crusades. Beginning in the late eleventh century, the many kingdoms of western Europe awoke from their collective slumber to assert their… Read More ›
The Old Testament Book of Exodus has played an essential role in world history. It represents one of the most fundamental aspects of Jewish religion and early history and is also recognized as an important event by Christians and Muslims…. Read More ›
From OUP Blog by Philip Walker the author of Behind the Lawrence Legend: the Forgotten Few who Shaped the Arab Revolt (Oxford University Press, 2018): The aftermath of the Arab Revolt of 1916-18 and the settlement in the Middle East after the… Read More ›
The pyramids of Egypt are among the most recognizable and enduring monuments of the ancient world. Long after they were built, other ancient peoples, such as the Greeks and Romans, wrote about them with as much awe as people do… Read More ›
From the BBC by Raffi Berg: “Arous on the Red Sea, a wonderful world apart,” the glossy brochure says, pronouncing it “the diving and desert recreation centre of Sudan” Illustrated with pictures of putty-coloured chalets on a Sun-drenched beach, a smiling… Read More ›
From Aeon by Josephine Quinn author of In Search of the Phoenicians: Modern nationalism created history as we know it today: what we learn in school, what we study at university, what we read at home is all shaped… Read More ›
Today, Egyptology – the study of ancient Egyptian history, culture, and language – is a worldwide discipline studied and taught at major universities on nearly every continent. It has evolved from a more esoteric study known only to elites in… Read More ›
From History Today by Sarah Rijziger: Arabia Felix, or ‘Happy Arabia’, as the Romans called what is now Yemen, has always attracted explorers, despite being – or perhaps because it was – one of the most inaccessible places in the… Read More ›
From The Atlantic by James Fallows author of Blind into Baghdad: America’s War in Iraq: There’s a specific reason it is so hard to be president—in normal circumstances—and why most incumbents look decades older when they leave the job than… Read More ›
The people of ancient Mesopotamia practiced a religion that modern scholars are only just now beginning to understand and the physical focal point of their religion were the monumental, triangular structures known as ziggurats. Today, many people like to compare… Read More ›
From National Security Archive: A passage from a recently declassified document on the 1953 coup in Iran alleges that senior Iranian clerics received “large sums of money” from U.S. officials in the days leading up to the August 19, 1953,… Read More ›
The Ottoman Empire is one of the largest empires in history. In existence for 600 years, at its peak it included what is now Bulgaria, Egypt, Greece, Hungary, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories, Macedonia, Romania, Syria, parts of… Read More ›