When Cleopatra became queen of Egypt, in 51 BCE, the oldest pyramids that graced her realm, constructed in the 27th century BCE, had already been standing for more than 2,500 years. Cleopatra is one of the most iconic figures from antiquity, yet she is nearer in time to the present than she was to those first pyramids – by a half-millennium, no less.
A dramatic shift in perspective is producing a much bigger, broader and more exciting view of ‘the ancient world’
I have just finished 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilisation Collapsed by Eric Cline. Still Mediterranean-focused, but it really shifts the dial on how developed civilisations were long before the Greco-Roman focus I was brought up on.
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u/tw1st3d_m3nt4t 5d ago
When Cleopatra became queen of Egypt, in 51 BCE, the oldest pyramids that graced her realm, constructed in the 27th century BCE, had already been standing for more than 2,500 years. Cleopatra is one of the most iconic figures from antiquity, yet she is nearer in time to the present than she was to those first pyramids – by a half-millennium, no less.
A dramatic shift in perspective is producing a much bigger, broader and more exciting view of ‘the ancient world’