Record · Ancient world · South Asia
The Indus cities without a visible king
The Indus cities of 2600–1900 BC left no identified palace or royal tomb. J. M. Kenoyer proposes rule by competing elites and calls 'Great Bath' a guess.
· 2500 BCRulers & dynasties
Articles about rulers & dynasties across every continent and era, oldest first.
Record · Ancient world · West Asia
How was the world's first empire born? Sargon of Akkad in his own inscriptions
Sargon's inscriptions say he captured Lugalzagesi of Uruk and took lands from the sea to Mari and Ebla. Three later tales disagree on where he came from.
· 2279 BC
Record · Ancient world · West Asia
Naram-Sin of Akkad, the king his own city made a god
A copper statue from Bassetki says Naram-Sin won nine battles in a year, and the people of Agade asked eight gods to make him their city's god.
· 2250 BC
Record · Ancient world · Africa
Clay letters to the pharaoh: the Amarna tablets found in 1887
Around 1887 cuneiform letters from Babylon, Mitanni and Canaan surfaced at Tell el-Amarna. Dealers split them up; Knudtzon's EA numbers put them in order.
· 1350 BC
Record · Ancient world · Africa
Why did Tutankhamun's tomb hold 130 walking sticks?
A 2010 JAMA study counted 130 sticks and staves in Tutankhamun's tomb, many worn by use, and found a mild clubfoot and bone disease in his left foot.
· 1323 BC
Record · Ancient world · Africa
Why did Tutankhamun's tomb stay hidden until 1922?
Later building buried KV62 and its location was lost; floodwater never filled it, the Theban Mapping Project says. It may not first have been his tomb.
· 1323 BC
Record · Ancient world · West Asia
A silver tablet in year 21: Ramesses II and Hattusili III make peace
Egypt's text of the peace between Ramesses II and the Hittite king Hattusili III is dated year 21. The UN gives 1269 BC, Livius.org about 1259 BC.
· 1259 BC
Record · Ancient world · East Asia
A name on the bronzes: the unlooted tomb of Fu Hao, Anyang, 1976
Zheng Zhenxiang excavated Fu Hao's unlooted tomb at Yinxu, Anyang, in 1976; the name inscribed on 109 of its bronzes divided scholars by 1986.
· 1200 BC
Record · Ancient world · The Americas
Seventeen heads, five to fifty tons: the Olmec portraits in basalt
Seventeen Olmec colossal heads are known, from San Lorenzo, La Venta and Tres Zapotes; the first was found in 1862, the last at San Lorenzo in May 1994.
· 1000 BC
Record · Ancient world · Central Asia
Arzhan 2 in Tuva: a man, a woman, 14 horses and 40 pounds of gold
Under the Arzhan 2 mound in Tuva, southern Siberia, a man and a woman of the 7th century BC lay with 33 other people, 14 horses and over 40 pounds of gold.
· 650 BC
Record · Classical world · West Asia
A cylinder from Babylon, 1879: a building text called a rights charter
Hormuzd Rassam dug the Cyrus Cylinder out of Babylon in 1879. The British Museum reads it as a building text; in 1971 it became a human rights symbol.
· 539 BC
Record · Classical world · West Asia
How did Persia run the largest empire the world had seen?
Darius I cut the Achaemenid empire into tax districts, linked them with a road of 111 stations and relay couriers, and paid in gold darics.
· 500 BC
Record · Classical world · Europe
The plebeians' walkout to the Sacred Mount and the first tribunes
In 494 BC Rome's plebeian soldiers left the city for the Sacred Mount. Livy says they came back after winning officials of their own, the tribunes.
· 494 BC
Record · Classical world · Europe
Cincinnatus, dictator for sixteen days and then back to his farm
In 458 BC Rome made Cincinnatus dictator for six months to save a blockaded army. He resigned on the sixteenth day and, Dionysius says, refused the spoils.
· 458 BC
Record · Classical world · Europe
Alexander's empire split, and Greek stayed in the towns of the east
Alexander died at Babylon on June 11, 323 BC; by 280 BC his generals ruled three kingdoms, yet Greek stayed the language of eastern towns and of Bactria.
· 323 BC
Record · Classical world · Africa
Meroë's royal pyramids and the gold Ferlini took in 1834
A Berlin museum record says Giuseppe Ferlini opened a Meroë pyramid in 1834 and took gold jewelry, once thought forged, made for Queen Amanishakheto.
· 300 BC
Record · Classical world · Africa
The Pharos of Alexandria, a marble tower with a fire for ships
Ptolemy I commissioned the Pharos in 299 BC and it was finished in 279. Strabo and Pliny describe its white marble, its architect Sostratus and its fires.
· 280 BC
Record · Classical world · South Asia
Why did an emperor carve his regret for a war into rock across India?
After the Kalinga war of about 261 BC, Ashoka had edicts cut on rocks and pillars from Kandahar to Karnataka. No one could read them again until 1837.
· 260 BC
Record · Classical world · Africa
Hannibal's oath at the altar, as he told it to a king
Polybius says Hannibal told King Antiochus how, at nine, his father had him swear at an altar never to be a friend of the Romans. Livy calls it a story.
· 237 BC
Record · Classical world · East Asia
Jing Ke's dagger in the map, and how the king of Qin survived
In 227 BC Jing Ke unrolled a map of Dukang before the king of Qin and seized the poisoned dagger inside. A doctor's medicine bag bought the king time.
· 227 BC
Record · Classical world · East Asia
Some 38,000 slips from a well in Liye: Qin rule in Qianling county
In 2002 a well at Liye, Hunan, gave up the Qin archive of Qianling county, 222 BC to 208 or 210 BC, naming a commandery missing from the Shiji.
· 222 BC
Record · Classical world · East Asia
Qin Shi Huang, from a hostage's son to the First Emperor
Born in Handan to a Qin hostage prince and king at thirteen, Zheng of Qin took six kingdoms by 221 BC and named himself huangdi, the First Emperor.
· 221 BC
Record · Classical world · Africa
Hannibal over the Alps, 218 BC, with thirty-seven elephants
Hannibal left Spain in 218 BC with 37 elephants; Polybius gives a five-month march and 15 days in the Alps. His numbers and his pass are still argued.
· 218 BC
Record · Classical world · Central Asia
Mithradatkert: the Parthian fortress at Old Nisa and its ivory rhyta
Ostraca beside Old Nisa's Square House named a Parthian fortress Mithradatkert, where about fifty ivory rhyta and a disputed Round Hall survive.
· 200 BC