Cuneiform writing (now in LACMA, Los Angeles) Early Sumerian writing West Asia is probably the first place in the world where people figured out how to write. (Though Egyptian people began writing [...]
Early alphabets and Hebrew Some time possibly around 4000 BC, as West Asian people settled down in towns and villages, each group of people began to develop their own special language. This was partly [...]
Shepherd on a cylinder seal (Berlin Museum) When the Sumerian king Gilgamesh refused to fall in love with the goddess Ishtar, he gave her a lot of reasons why not, and he was [...]
Epic of Gilgamesh: Gilgamesh and his friend Enkidu fight the monster Humbaba, on an Assyrian cylinder seal from the 600s BC The real king Gilgamesh The Epic of Gilgamesh is [...]
Enheduanna wrote this poem - this is a later copy of it, in cuneiform on a clay tablet Was Enheduanna her name? Nobody knows Enheduanna's real name, if she had [...]
Aramaic language: Comparing different ancient alphabets When did Aramaic get going? As people began to settle down in towns in West Asia, about 4000 BC, they began to speak differently from their [...]
Egyptian temple to Hathor at Serabit in the Sinai Early Writing Before about 1800 BC, all people in the world wrote using pictures that each stood for a word or a [...]
Standard of Ur This is the Middle Bronze Age in West Asia, about 2100 BC to 1700 BC. It corresponds roughly to the First Intermediate Period in Egypt, and just as in Egypt this [...]
A reconstruction of what Troy VI might have looked like. For thousands of years, people read Homer's Iliad and learned the story of the Trojan War. But nobody knew if it had really happened, [...]
Sumerians - Head of a woman from Warka, about 3000 BC When did the Sumerians get started? About the same time as the first Pharaohs were coming to power in Egypt, around 3100 BC, [...]
