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 [...]
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, [...]
Ardashir, the first ruler of the Sassanians Rulers of the Parthian Empire In 211 AD, a group of Iranians called the Sassanians (the descendants of Sassan) took over control of the Parthian Empire from [...]
The Phoenicians: Phoenician glass - a face pendant of an African man. 400-200 BC Phoenicians in the Late Bronze Age Sometime in the Late Bronze Age, around 1300 BC, a group [...]
Philistines on the Egyptian temple of Medinet Habu At the end of the Late Bronze Age, around 1200 BC, there were bad times all over the Mediterranean and West Asia. The Egyptian New Kingdom collapsed, and [...]
The Persian shah, Xerxes, from the 400s BC. Death of Xerxes and revolt In 465 BC, someone killed the Persian King Xerxes. His assassin may have been his son Ardashir [...]
The Persians came from the Central Asian steppe The Persians and the Medes Around 1200 BC, some Indo-European people from Central Asia moved south into West Asia. These people were [...]
Scythian history: A Scythian milking a sheep (Tolstaja Mogila kurgan, Ukraine, 400 BC) Scythians lived in Central Asia The Scythians were a large group of loosely connected people who lived in [...]
