Sublime

The initial kings (Saul, but especially David and his son Solomon), according to the Bible, ruled over a united Israel. This period, which covers…

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“Egypt was a civilization of stone. They made their art and architecture of stone, so it lasts forever. But you can’t write on stone. So they invented papyrus and wrote on that. But papyrus is perishable. So even though their art and architecture have survived, their written records—their data—have largely disappeared.” “What about all those hierog

Certain that it would take years for Egypt to recover the military might that the Jewish state had summarily destroyed in six lightning days, they assumed that Syria also knew better than to attack Israel’s northern border. Thanks to the IDF, they asserted, Israel was now invulnerable.

CHAPTER FOUR · ROME’S GREAT LEAP FORWARD Two centuries of change: from the Tarquins to Scipio Long-Beard

Despite Rome’s dominance of technology and population, the political stability of the Roman Empire waned over time. In 285 CE, the Roman emperor Diocletian divided the rule of the vast empire between the Eastern Roman Empire ruled from Byzantium, later Constantinople, and the Western Roman Empire ruled from Rome. While the governance of the Roman E

In the sorts of lordship and territorial holding that can be reconstructed for the fifth century, in which renders supported a modest élite, there is little to suggest the future fortunes of these great overlords. There is a gulf between the territoria of Cadbury hillfort or Great Chesterford and that immense swathe of France over which Clovis’s ar

The consorts of such lords, poetically exemplified by the figure of Wealþeow in Beowulf and by the Wife’s Lament of the Exeter Book, played critical roles in the management of the comitatus, as anthropologist Michael Enright has argued.24 A noble wife managed the elaborate drinking rituals through which the comites were bound into their lord’s serv

The impact of empire

Meanwhile, inside the sanctuary, an old man in a spotless white tunic shuffles between the wood and stone idols, lighting candles and rearranging the altars. This man is no priest; he is not even a Kahin. He is someone far more important. He is a Quraysh: a member of the powerful, fabulously wealthy tribe that had settled in Mecca centuries earlier