History of math: Sumerian multiplication table (2700 BC) Cuneiform multiplication table Once people in West Asia figured out how to write down numbers, about 3500 BC, they quickly began to want to use cuneiform to [...]
West Asian girls: An enslaved woman stands behind a free Elamite woman who is spinning (600s BC) Women were oppressed In West Asia, even more than in most other state societies all [...]
Inheritance: an Akkadian will (in the Louvre museum, Paris) A will written in cuneiform This is the will of a man named Baal-Karad from Syria, who lived about 1300 BC, in the [...]
Roman women: an old woman, about 50 AD. The sculptor has made her look silly on purpose to make fun of old women Were women oppressed in ancient Rome? Roman [...]
Inheritance and an ancient Egyptian family: boys and girls inherit equal shares What is inheritance? Inheritance means that when your parents die, you get whatever stuff they owned. That means [...]
Building at Gobekli Tepe (ca. 9000 BC) By about 9000 BC, in some places in West Asia and Egypt, towns were getting too big to be ruled by "big men". [...]
Egyptian inheritance: an Egyptian land register in demotic writing (200s BC), now at Duke University Egyptian inheritance law As in other parts of Africa, ancient Egyptian law said that every [...]
An Egyptian family: Nefertiti, Akhenaten, and their daughters A typical Egyptian family Most Egyptians lived in families with a mother and a father and children, just as many people do [...]
