Ancient

Cuneiform tablets preserved in the fire that devastated the Mesopotamian city of Ebla offer an extraordinary insight into life 4,000 years ago. 

Iran, despite its conquest by the armies of Islam, retained its own Persian language and much of its culture. Khodadad Rezakhani examines the process by which a Zoroastrian empire became part of the Islamic world.  

Many of the world’s languages derive from a single source. Harry Ritchie tells the story of Proto-Indo-European.

Before its untimely end this once great city was the centre of a vast and powerful civilisation.

Charles Bawden discusses the shifting borders and evolving cultures of the Mongolian nation.

R.W. Davies describes the life of the other ranks in the Roman armed services, as recorded in surviving letters.

James Marshall-Cornwall describes how Christianity was spread across modern Turkey during the first century AD.

Neil Ritchie describes a pastoral race who flourished on Sardinia between 1500 and 500 B.C.. The Nuraghi have left us more than seven thousand finely built towers and a host of magnificent bronze figurines.

Pergamon became independent in the third century B.C.; Philip E. Burnham describes how its last king bequeathed his territory to Rome, and whence the Roman occupation of Asia began.

Scents; cosmetics; essences: D.C.S. Wiltshire finds that enormous variety for the unguents were produced in fashionable Roman world.