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• 2026-10-11 · Two articles on the eruption of Vesuvius (Pompeii in AD 79, the Herculaneum scrolls) · Rebuilt from Pliny the Younger’s letters, the Pompeii Archaeological Park’s 2024 study of the eruption date, its guide and press materials, the Herculaneum Society at Oxford, the Vesuvius Challenge and the University of Kentucky. We had written that the evidence points to an eruption in autumn, around October; the park’s own 2024 study finds that the oldest manuscripts of Pliny unanimously give August 24, calls the October 24 date less than 100 years old, and shows that the 2018 charcoal inscription cannot fix the year. Pompeii was buried under about 4 meters of ash and lapilli, as the park states, not 6 meters. The Pompeii article’s headline about bread found in an oven has been replaced, because we could not confirm the find in the park’s sources; removed also are an unsourced population figure, details of a thermopolium found in 2020, the measurements of the Alexander Mosaic and a count of about 1,100 scrolls, which the Herculaneum Society gives as some 1,800 fragments from perhaps 800 rolls. The scrolls article now dates the first word read inside an unopened scroll to its announcement on October 12, 2023, and reports that a whole scroll, PHerc. 1667, has since been read end to end.
• 2026-10-11 · Four articles on Athens and early Rome (ostracism, the lottery, Cincinnatus, the secession of the plebs) · Rechecked against Aristotle’s Constitution of the Athenians, Plutarch, Livy, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the American School of Classical Studies at Athens and the Bryn Mawr Classical Review. The ostracism article had said that “hundreds” of ostraka survive; the excavators report about 1,200 from the Agora by the early 1980s and about 8,500 from the Kerameikos, and the article now gives those counts. The Cincinnatus and secession articles were rebuilt around Livy’s own words; the Cincinnatus article now adds Dionysius’s account of the refused spoils and Livy’s record of a second dictatorship after Cincinnatus’s eightieth year, and drops an unsourced passage on the letters SPQR and a source that had no link. The secession article now says, as Livy does, that the first tribunes were two or five, and no longer states that early Roman law existed only in the patricians’ memory.
• 2026-10-11 · Three articles on Hannibal (the oath at the altar, the crossing of the Alps, Cannae) · Rebuilt from Polybius, Livy, Plutarch, Queen’s University Belfast and Jona Lendering’s Livius.org. We had written that Carthage paid 2,200 talents over twenty years after the First Punic War; Polybius gives that as the first draft, which Rome made harsher by halving the term and adding 1,000 talents. The Alps article, which had listed no sources, now gives each ancient count of Hannibal’s army and both modern candidates for his pass. The Cannae article no longer says the battle is still taught in military academies, which we could not source. Removed from the Alps article an account of the rest of the war, Cato’s “Carthago delenda est” and the fall of Carthage, which belong to other articles.
• 2026-10-11 · Three articles on Alexander the Great (his campaigns, Gaugamela, the division of his empire) · Rebuilt from Arrian, Diodorus, Strabo, the Encyclopaedia Iranica and Jona Lendering’s Livius.org. The Gaugamela article now reports that the Babylonian Astronomical Diary, the only contemporary source, says Darius’s troops abandoned him, where Arrian says Darius fled first; it also gives each ancient source’s figure for the Persian army. The campaign article no longer gives the figure of about 2,000 executed at Tyre, which comes from Diodorus and Curtius rather than Arrian; it now gives Arrian’s figures of about 8,000 killed and 30,000 enslaved. The Ai Khanum section now notes that its identification with Alexander’s “Alexandria on the Oxus” is uncertain. Removed statements we could not confirm in the sources now cited: that Philip II was killed by his bodyguard Pausanias at a wedding, the length of the sarissa, Philip’s youth in Thebes, an army of 32,000 infantry and 5,100 cavalry crossing to Asia, typhoid or malaria as the likely cause of Alexander’s death, and Koine Greek as the language of markets “from Spain to India.”
• 2026-10-11 · Four articles on the Indus and the Maya (the Indus cities without a visible king, Mohenjo-daro’s drains, the Maya zero, the Maya and Venus) · Rebuilt from Harappa.com and J. Mark Kenoyer’s 1991 study, the MacTutor History of Mathematics at the University of St Andrews, FAMSI, NASA and the Saxon State and University Library in Dresden. The Indus articles had called the civilization the largest of three Bronze Age civilizations; Harappa.com counts four, including China, and the articles now say so. They now report Kenoyer’s view that the labels “Great Bath” and “granary” are speculative and that the Indus may have been ruled by several competing elites. We had dated the Dresden Codex only to an 11th-century copy of an older original; its library dates it to about 1300–1521, and the article now gives both. Removed statements we could not confirm in the sources now cited: more than 1,000 known Indus settlements and a date for the “Priest King” figure.
• 2026-10-11 · Three articles on Egypt (the Great Pyramid’s alignment, the Rosetta Stone, the Pharos of Alexandria) · Rebuilt from Glen Dash’s surveys for Ancient Egypt Research Associates, Harvard’s Digital Giza, Carol Andrews’s translation of the Rosetta decree, Champollion’s letter of 1822, Strabo, Pliny the Elder and Livius.org. Removed statements we could not confirm in a primary or institutional source: that the Great Pyramid’s base is level to within about 2 centimeters, that it contains 2.3 million blocks, that its builders leveled the base with water channels and plumb lines, and that the last hieroglyphic inscription was carved around AD 400, with the “1,400 years” in the old headline. The Rosetta article now says, as Champollion’s letter does, that the stone’s broken hieroglyphic text preserved only the name of Ptolemy, and that an obelisk from Philae supplied Cleopatra’s; it no longer says the letter showed hieroglyphs to be a mixed system in general, since the letter’s own title limits it to the names of Greek and Roman rulers.
• 2026-10-11 · Five articles on Qin and early Han China (Qin Shi Huang, Jing Ke, the siege of Baideng, Sima Qian, Zhang Qian) · Rebuilt from the Chinese text of Sima Qian’s Shiji and Ban Gu’s Han Shu, the translations of A. Wylie and Friedrich Hirth published by the University of Washington, Columbia University’s Asia for Educators, the Encyclopaedia Iranica and the journal Early China. We had written that Jing Ke’s dagger struck a bronze pillar; the Shiji’s word, tong, names a tree, and the article now says the pillar was wooden. The Baideng article now gives both counts of the Xiongnu cavalry, 300,000 in the Han Shu and 400,000 in the Shiji. Removed statements we could not confirm in the sources now cited: that Li Si devised the strategy “befriend the distant, attack the near,” Shang Yang’s reforms, that Lü Buwei took poison, Zhang Qian’s departure in 138 BC (the Shiji gives only the Jianyuan era, 140–135 BC), the completion of the Shiji around 91 BC, and the description of Zhang Qian’s journey as the first foundation of the Silk Road. The Qin Shi Huang and Baideng articles had listed Wikipedia, Britannica and encyclopedic websites among their sources; they no longer do.
• 2026-10-11 · Three articles on the Mongol Empire (how the Mongols conquered, the Otrar caravan of 1218, the empire’s size) · Rebuilt from the Encyclopaedia Iranica, Juvaini’s history in J. A. Boyle’s translation, Rein Taagepera’s studies of empire size, Columbia University’s Asia for Educators and Morris Rossabi. We had written that the Mongol Empire was about twice the size of Rome; Taagepera’s figures give 24 million km² against 4.4 million for Rome, more than five times. The decimal army is no longer presented as a Mongol invention; Peter Jackson notes that the Khitan and Jurchen armies already used it. Removed statements we could not confirm in a primary or institutional source: that Genghis Khan’s attempt to flood the Tangut capital in 1209 broke back over his own camp, the gold and silver paiza tablets, relay stations every 25 to 40 kilometers, the ride of Subutai and Jebe with 20,000 men and the Battle of the Kalka River, the shaving of the envoys’ beards, and a quotation attributed to the historian Diana Lary.
• 2026-10-11 · Three articles on early Mesopotamia (Uruk, Enheduanna, Naram-Sin) · Rebuilt from the German Archaeological Institute, Robert K. Englund’s studies published by the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative, the Oxford corpus of Sumerian literature, Sophus Helle’s enheduana.org and the Encyclopaedia Iranica. We had written that Naram-Sin’s name was written with the sign for “god” in front of it; on the Bassetki statue that sign stands before Suen, the god’s name inside his own name, and the article now places the evidence for his deification in what the inscription says. The Uruk article no longer calls the city the first in the world; it uses the German Archaeological Institute’s words, “one of the world’s earliest metropolises,” and gives Englund’s count of 5,000 early tablets and fragments from Warka where we had written about 6,000. Removed figures we could not source: a population of 80,000 to 90,000 including the surrounding area, a city wall of about 9 kilometers, and the link from Uruk’s counting to the 60-minute hour. The Enheduanna article now quotes the end of the Exaltation of Inana, in which the goddess accepts her offerings, instead of saying that she returned to office.
• 2026-10-11 · Three articles on Tutankhamun (why his tomb stayed hidden, what Howard Carter saw, the 130 walking sticks) · Rebuilt from Howard Carter’s journal at the Griffith Institute, the Theban Mapping Project, Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, the 2010 JAMA study and the BMJ. We had written that flood deposits helped bury the tomb; the Theban Mapping Project states that flood debris did not fill it, and the articles now say debris from later tomb building buried the entrance. Carter’s journal for November 26, 1922 records his words as “Yes, it is wonderful”; “wonderful things” is from his book of 1923, and the article now says so. The curse figure is corrected to six deaths among 24 people, the number Herbert Winlock gave in 1934; we had written 26. Removed details we could not source: that Lord Carnarvon reopened the mosquito bite while shaving, a quotation attributed to the geneticist Carsten Pusch, and an age at accession.
• 2026-10-11 · How a clay tablet shook Victorian Britain, December 3, 1872 · Merged with our earlier article “Was a Great-Flood Story Carved in Clay Before the Bible?” and rebuilt from George Smith’s own books, the British Museum and University of Pennsylvania’s Ashurbanipal Library Project and the Oxford corpus of Sumerian literature. Layard’s excavations at Nineveh are now dated 1845–1851, with the first large find of library tablets in March–May 1850, as the British Museum project gives them; we had written 1849–1851. Removed statements we could not confirm in a primary or institutional source: that Prime Minister Gladstone attended Smith’s lecture, that Smith left school at 14, and a date of about 1640 BC for the Atrahasis epic.
• 2026-10-11 · How old is the Epic of Gilgamesh, and how does it end? · Merged with our earlier article “What Did a King Who Had Everything Walk to the End of the World to Find?” and rebuilt from the Oxford corpus of Sumerian literature, Jastrow and Clay’s 1920 edition, the Penn Museum tablet record and R. Campbell Thompson’s 1928 translation. The headline no longer calls the epic “humanity’s oldest story,” which we could not source; it now gives what the sources do: several editions by about 2000 BC. Removed: that King Enmebaragesi of Kish is independently confirmed by archaeology, and the statement that the epic ends with Gilgamesh looking at the walls of Uruk; Thompson’s 1928 translation ends it with the twelfth tablet.
• 2026-10-11 · How was the world’s first empire born? Sargon of Akkad in his own inscriptions · Merged with our earlier article “Why Wasn’t ‘Sargon’ His Real Name?” and rebuilt from Sargon’s inscriptions, the Oxford corpus of Sumerian literature, the Louvre’s records and Encyclopaedia Iranica. We could not confirm in a primary or scholarly source that the name Sargon (Šarru-kīn) means “the true king,” so the article no longer says so; the earlier article built on that reading has been withdrawn. Also removed: that his conquests reached Anatolia, that Akkad’s capital has never been found, and the passage on Enheduanna, which will be rechecked in its own article. The reign is now given with both datings, 2334–2279 BC and 2296–2240 BC, and the drought explanation for Akkad’s fall is given with the dissent recorded in the same Yale volume.
• 2026-10-11 · Was Cleopatra a seductress, and was she Egyptian? · Merged with our earlier article “Was Egypt’s Last Pharaoh Really Egyptian?” and rebuilt from the ancient sources: Plutarch, Cassius Dio, Diodorus Siculus and Horace. Removed details we could not confirm in primary or institutional sources: the exact day of the battle of Actium, the years 306 and 304 BC for Ptolemy’s royal title and coronation, Cleopatra’s age at accession, the drowning of Ptolemy XIII, statements about her coin portraits, and a date for the marble portrait. The article no longer says Plutarch settled the story of the snake; both he and Cassius Dio wrote that no one knew how she died.
• 2026-10-11 · Who really built the pyramids, and how? · Merged with our earlier article “Were the Pyramids Really Built by Slaves?” and rechecked against primary and scholarly sources. Removed statements those sources do not support: that the official Ankhhaf appears in the Diary of Merer as overseer of the work, that Hemiunu held the title “overseer of all the king’s works,” the figures of 2.3 million blocks and of granite beams of up to 80 tons brought 800 kilometers, the number of forty boatmen, and the claim that the gang graffiti are the only place Khufu’s name survives inside the pyramid. The base measurements now follow AERA’s 2015 survey instead of the rounded figures of 2 centimeters and 0.05 degrees. The Diary of Merer is now dated to year 26 or 27 of Khufu, as its excavators give it, not year 27 alone.
• 2026-09-30 · “Every record . . . has been lost”: Isandlwana, London Gazette, 1879 · Chelmsford’s dispatch of February 3, 1879, the court of inquiry evidence, Essex’s and Chard’s reports, the list of the dead and Umtegolalo’s statement were printed in the Gazette supplement published on March 15, 1879 (issue 24695), not in the one of March 5 (issue 24690) as the article first said. Dates and source references corrected.