History of ancient world

Illustrated guide to where and how the first great civilizations lived, shown on maps. From the first cities of Sumer to the empire of the Incas, travel around the world and through 5,000 years of history to see where and how ancient peoples lived. What was it like to live in the crowded city of Rome? Why did the Egyptians build pyramids? When did Samurai warriors first ride into battle? How did sailors first navigate the Pacific Ocean? Which Chinese emperor has a palace with 1,000 bedrooms? All these questions and more are answered in The Ancient Worlds Atlas - a lavishly illustrated guide to past civilizations. From North America to New Zealand, this book takes you on a trip around the world and through history to visit ancient cities and empires, showing who lived where and explaining the unique features of each civilization. Russell Barnett's hand-drawn illustrations literally put the past on map, showing where and why the world's great cities grew and how archaeological evidence h

An Artist in Abydos is the first book to recognize Myrtle Broome's great contribution to the work done during this golden age of excavation in Upper Egypt. In this remarkable account, Lee Young tells

Social Control in Late Antiquity: The Violence of Small Worlds explores the small-scale communities of late antiquity – households, monasteries, and schools – where power was a question of personal relationships. When fathers, husbands, teachers, abbots, and slave-owners asserted their own will, they saw themselves as maintaining the social order, and expected law and government to reinforce their rule. Naturally, the members of these communities had their own ideas, and teaching them to 'obey their betters' was not always a straightforward business. Drawing on a wide variety of sources from across the late Roman Mediterranean, from law codes and inscriptions to monastic rules and hagiography, the book considers the sometimes conflicting identities of women, slaves, and children, and documents how they found opportunities for agency and recognition within a system built on the unremitting assertion of the rights of the powerful.

By their social and material context as markers of graves, dedications and public signs of honour, inscriptions offer a distinct perspective on the social lives, occupations, family belonging, mobility, ethnicity, religious affiliations, public honour and legal status of Roman women ranging from slaves and freedwomen to women of the elite and the imperial family, both in Rome and in Italian and provincial towns. They thus shed light on women who are largely overlooked by the literary sources. The wide range of inscriptions and graffiti included in this book show women participating not only in their families and households but also in the social and professional life of their cities. Moreover, they offer us a glimpse of women's own voices. Marital ideals and problems, love and hate, friendship, birth and bereavement, joy and hardship all figure in inscriptions, revealing some of the richness and variety of life in the ancient world.

Eunuchs tend to be associated with eastern courts, popularly perceived as harem personnel. However, the Roman empire was also distinguished by eunuchs – they existed as slaves, court officials, religi