HistoryExtra https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-egypt Tue, 01 Sep 2026 12:54:19 GMT en hourly 1 Was the Great Sphinx built by a lost civilisation? https://www.historyextra.com/membership/historys-greatest-conspiracies-episode-6/ Tue, 01 Sep 2026 11:10:23 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/historys-greatest-conspiracies-episode-6/ The Great Sphinx of Giza is one of the ancient world’s most enigmatic creations. So it’s no surprise that it has long been a magnet for pseudohistory and conspiracy theories. Could it be many thousands of years older than we think? Was it created by a lost civilisation? And do wondrous treasures lie beneath it waiting to be found?
In the final episode of season 3 of History’s Greatest Conspiracy Theories, Egyptologist Campbell Price joins Rob Attar to separate fact to fiction in the story of the Sphinx.
Want more from History's Greatest Conspiracy Theories? Listen to the rest of season 3.
]]> "The ancient past is utterly weird": Mary Beard on 50 years of studying the Romans https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-ancient-past-is-utterly-weird-mary-beard-on-50-years-of-studying-the-romans/ Thu, 28 May 2026 09:30:18 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/the-ancient-past-is-utterly-weird-mary-beard-on-50-years-of-studying-the-romans/ Mary Beard speaks to Charlotte Vosper about her new book exploring why we should study ancient worlds – and the questions we should really be asking about them Charlotte Vosper: You’ve written more than 20 books on ancient history, mostly focusing on Rome and Greece. What’s different about your new book?
Mary Beard: It has given me an opportunity to reflect on my career. I’ve spent 50 years researching, teaching and studying what I’m really interested in, but how do I explain why I think that’s worthwhile? In this book, I’m looking back in an autobiographical way, but I’m also looking at the big questions. Why be interested in the ancient world? What do we get out of the Greeks and the Romans, who were alive more than 2,000 years ago?
Often, those big questions get shelved. We take it for granted that a person buying a book about the classical past is interested in the topic, so we don’t explain why they should be interested in it. With Talking Classics, I tried to make myself stop and ask: what’s in it for my reader? Would it matter if nobody studied the ancient world anymore? Well, I think it would. Really, this book is my manifesto for what I have done.
The book is about your relationship with the classical past. Can you remember the moment when you first became interested in the ancient world?
I was five years old, and my mum thought that I should go to London for the first time. We lived quite close to the Welsh border, so we planned to make a trip of it and do all kinds of fun things, including visiting the British Museum. I was a fairly typical five-year-old, so I wanted to see the Egyptian mummies. My mum – being a sensible village school mistress – insisted that, if we’d seen how the ancient Egyptians died, we ought to see how they lived, too. So we went into an exhibition about ancient Egyptian everyday life, where my mum spotted a bit of ancient Egyptian bread.
I wanted to see it but, in the 1960s, museums weren’t child-friendly, and the cases were high. My mum tried to lift me – a big, wriggly five-year-old – up to the glass, and a man asked if I was trying to see anything in particular. Feeling a bit cross, I said yes. He must have been a curator, because he produced a bunch of keys, opened the case, and brought out the Egyptian bread for me to look at.
I think that was the most moving experience I’d ever had up to that point in my life: I was eyeball to eyeball with a 4,000-year-old piece of bread. It was the closest thing to time travel I could possibly imagine, and it lit the spark: I wanted to know what life was like a very long time ago.
I didn’t go on to become an Egyptologist, sadly, but I did study Greek and Latin, which was the next best thing. Throughout my career, that bread-roll spark was always there, as was the lesson that the curator taught me about sharing. He opened up the case and shared his knowledge with me. It’s a metaphor for what we can do with history: we can open the cases for lots of people – either literally, in his case, or metaphorically, in mine.
That ancient bread highlights ordinary aspects of the classical past, but elsewhere in the book you suggest that we should see antiquity as quite alien from us. Can you expand on that contradiction?
The ancient past is both very familiar to us and utterly weird at the same time, and it’s that paradox that keeps the classical world fascinating for me. It’s impossible to resolve. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of visiting Pompeii, looking at the ancient lavatories and visiting the ancient bars, and thinking: “Oh, they were just like us.” In some ways, they were just like us: they got sick, they had headaches, they made love. But if they were exactly like us, why would we bother to study them? The ancients were just like us – and also completely different.
Ancient people didn’t know how the sun or the stars worked. They didn’t have medicines like we do, and they didn’t have maps of the world. But even more striking for me are the mundane differences between us and them.
Take, for example, the fact that people in ancient Rome and Greece didn’t really know what they looked like. If you were very upmarket you might have a very shiny bit of polished metal to look into, but polished metal distorts reflections in a way that modern mirrors don’t. Recognising ourselves is something that we take for granted, but in the ancient world you wouldn’t be able to recognise your own image. I can’t imagine what that would be like because, in a way, what we look like is an embodiment of our identity. Such things highlight the fissure between utter familiarity and complete difference that underscores our understanding of antiquity.
What role should study of the classics play in the modern day?
We are the direct geopolitical inheritors of the Roman empire. The road system of Britain is essentially a Roman road system, and London is placed where it is because it was the Roman capital. But I don’t think this inheritance means that we can glean any ready-made lessons from antiquity. If we need a solution to a modern problem, I don’t think that we can go to the supermarket of Roman ideas, pick one up and say: “Right, that’s what we should do!” The Greeks and Romans can help us address our contemporary problems, but not because they’ve got the answers.
Instead, the classics can help us to look at things differently, by seeing them through ancient people’s eyes. When we do so, we recognise that we are not the first people on the block. In modern cultural debate, I think there’s a terribly presentist tendency to assume that we are the first people who’ve ever experienced a particular problem. Well, no, sunshine, we’re not.
One example is Euripides’ play Medea, written in the mid-fifth century BC. In it, a mother kills her children, which is absolutely shocking – but the play showcases struggle and difficulty, both of which we continue to grapple with now.
History is about more than just finding out what happened or wondering what it was like to live in the past – it is a conversation that asks us to think about difference. How do we understand modern politics? Well, if you think about Roman autocracy, you might view it differently. How do we understand topical debates on issues such as gender politics? The ancient world can open our eyes to the depth of that question. It’s about using the classics to constructively rethink the way the world works, rather than asking the ancients for direct answers to our questions.
Are there myths about antiquity perpetuated today that you’d like to challenge?
There’s a wide range of myths about antiquity. On a small scale, if I could stop people saying that a vomitorium was a place where ancient Romans went to be sick, I would die happy. It was actually an exit passage from the amphitheatre!
The big myth is that the ancients were admirable – that their world was a wellspring of western civilisation and that, accordingly, we should respect the ancient world and feel grateful for it. Leaving aside the notion of western civilisation, I think that the ancients are much more interesting if we knock them off their pedestals. The classical world could be horrible and violent. In my understanding of antiquity, the Greeks and Romans are shocking, difficult, surprising and not very nice – which makes them more fascinating.
How has our understanding of the classical past changed over the course of your career?
One way of tracing changes is by looking at what I learned as a student [in the 1970s] and what I ended up teaching. I attended a women-only college in Cambridge. Despite this, we largely learned posh blokes’ history, and only very occasionally – in the summer term, when it really didn’t matter – would we write an essay about women.
I did see the beginnings of change when I was taught by Moses Finley, who’d come to Cambridge from the US [after being interviewed by the House Un-American Activities Committee during the McCarthy-era anti-communist witch-hunts] and was expanding the discipline with courses on slavery, which had never been taught before. But those changes were only at the radical fringe of the study of the classics.
Over my career, that has changed dramatically. Ancient women, slaves, the poor and the disadvantaged are no longer at the margins – they are central to how we understand the ancient world. I think many people would say that there’s also been a move away from the study of the Greek and Roman heartlands, and a broadening of the terrain that we consider the ancient world to occupy.
Today, the ancient world of Egypt and the near east are being studied. When I was a student, Egypt didn’t come into the classics, and nor did Christianity; even though it was a religion of the Roman empire, we never touched on it.
This doesn’t mean that we’ve got rid of the Roman emperors, but now there’s a much more nuanced and richer idea of how we can understand antiquity.
What factors have contributed to this opening-up of the discipline?
I think there are two things. First, despite its image, classics is a very critical discipline: it’s always evaluating itself. How do we understand the ancient world? Did we get it right? Could we understand it in a different way? I think that attitude, in part, accounts for the fact that the classics have never stood still.
Second, there are political reasons for the changing geographical definition of the classical world. There has been a push to diversify the classics by encouraging people who are not of white European heritage to study and teach the subject.
In doing so, there has been a move away from studying solely ancient Greece and Rome to give more people a stake in this history. I see the force of this argument – in fact, I’m sure that I’ve made it from time to time – but I am slightly suspicious of it. That’s because I don’t think any of us can find ourselves in the ancient world.
There has long been a tendency for elite men to see themselves as Romans. For example, you can go to the UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. and look at the statues of the governors and generals, and you’ll see that they’re dressed in Roman togas and battle dresses. I think that association comes from a rather conservative tradition, and it’s a notion I’ve learned to want to fight during my career.
We are not Romans. We are not Greeks. And this problem – the temptation to identify yourself as an ancient – is only worsened if we suggest that even more people can identify themselves in the ancient past. I’m not trying to say that Egyptian students shouldn’t study the ancient Egyptian world, but I’d like to stop the idea that the history is somehow part of those who study it. In fact, the real benefit of studying the classics is that the ancient world is not about us. Antiquity is so removed and unfamiliar to us that the subject puts us on a level playing field and offers us a safe space for discussion.
What’s been your experience as a woman working in this field for more than 50 years?
I need to preface this by saying that I was a student – later a fellow – at an all-women’s college, with a power structure that I could relate to and rely on. So when, for a couple of years, I was the only woman working in the faculty alongside 26 or 27 blokes, I handled that situation much more productively than I otherwise might have. I was also warmly supported by my male colleagues. I know that not everybody is as lucky in that regard, but I never felt that they weren’t on my side.
That said, there was a sense that, in order to be a successful classicist, you had to either be a man or pretend to be one. At the beginning of my lecturing career, for maybe 10 years, I really did pretend to be one. I aped a very masculine version of what it was to be authoritative in classics in order to make people listen to what I had to say. I never felt very comfortable doing that, though, and my rhetorical style and what I said in my lectures never sounded very convincing in my own ears.
It took me some time, but eventually I saw that I had to sound like me. It’s a bit of a romantic view but, instead of getting up and saying to a group of undergraduates that “I want to start with a difficult question that has been much debated in the past 50 years,” I told them: “Look, I think there are some questions in ancient history that really aren’t worth asking."
In this, I’m not claiming correctness – I have sometimes said some very stupid things – but it has been me talking. It’s not about the little anecdotes, like answering the phone in the office and people assuming that you’re the secretary because you’re a woman – in the end, that’s trivial. The biggest hurdle for me was whether or not there was space in the classics for a woman who was not pretending to be a man.
What do you hope readers will take from your relationship with the classics?
I’m not asking my readers to share my experience entirely. In fact, in the book I try to get across very clearly that the classics are not the only show in town: there are all kinds of deep pasts that will inspire people in the same way that antiquity has inspired me.
I wouldn’t like to live in a world where everybody studied classics – that would be just awful. But I would like to live in a world where everybody thought it was complete rubbish when some government minister stood up and claimed that we don’t need to study ancient Rome or Greece. I’d like everybody to know enough to realise that that wouldn’t be true. Classics helps us see through the bullshit.
Mary Beard is a classicist, author and trustee of the British Museum. Her previous books include Emperor of Rome (Profile Books, 2023) and SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome (Profile Books, 2015)
This article was first published in the May 2026 issue of HistoryExtra Magazine
]]> The World of Cleopatra | Podcast series https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-egypt/the-world-of-cleopatra-podcast-series/ Sun, 24 May 2026 08:53:54 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-egypt/the-world-of-cleopatra-podcast-series/ In this four-part HistoryExtra series, Professor Islam Issa explores the life and times of one of the ancient world's most famous figures – and why she still captivates us today We often think of Cleopatra in two-dimensional terms – as a bewitching beauty who used her charm to maintain power. But, in this podcast series, Matt Elton is joined by Professor Islam Issa to paint a more rounded picture of the ancient queen.
Across four episodes, they chart the forces and figures who shaped her early life, how she navigated the shifting sands of political and familial conflict, and the talents and skills that allowed her to negotiate her complex world. Finally, they examine why Cleopatra remains so captivating today, thousands of years on – and how we should remember her in the 21st century.
]]> Cleopatra’s death – and cultural afterlife https://www.historyextra.com/membership/cleopatras-death-and-cultural-afterlife/ Sun, 24 May 2026 06:46:25 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/cleopatras-death-and-cultural-afterlife/ From her supposed death by snakebite to the location of her tomb, Cleopatra's final chapter is surrounded in mystery. Islam Issa reveals the truth behind the myth The final chapter of Cleopatra’s life is shrouded in mystery. Did she really take her own life? Was an asp involved? And why don’t we know where her tomb is? In this final episode of our four-part Sunday Series on the ancient queen’s life and times, Islam Issa – professor of public humanities at Birmingham City University – tackles these questions, and explores just why Cleopatra continues to fascinate us, thousands of years later.
Go Beyond the Podcast
Captivated by Cleopatra? Matt Elton has curated a collection of essential reading, listening and viewing from the HistoryExtra vaults to help bring the ancient queen to life.
And don’t miss our HistoryExtra Academy Royal Women, with Professor Kate Williams, for more on some of the past’s most powerful female leaders – from Cleopatra to Elizabeth II.
]]> Why Cleopatra was more than a bewitching beauty https://www.historyextra.com/membership/why-cleopatra-was-more-than-a-bewitching-beauty/ Sun, 24 May 2026 06:45:15 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/why-cleopatra-was-more-than-a-bewitching-beauty/ We often think of Cleopatra as using her feminine wiles to stay on top – but, says Islam Issa, she was a more complex, and three-dimensional, character than that We often think of Cleopatra as using her feminine wiles to secure, and maintain, power. But was that really the case? And what other skills and qualities did she have? In this third episode of our four-part Sunday Series charting the ancient queen and her world, Matt Elton is joined by Islam Issa – professor of public humanities at Birmingham City University – to discover more about Cleopatra the leader.
Go Beyond the Podcast
Captivated by Cleopatra? Matt Elton has curated a collection of essential reading, listening and viewing from the HistoryExtra vaults to help bring the ancient queen to life.
And don’t miss our HistoryExtra Academy Royal Women, with Professor Kate Williams, for more on some of the past’s most powerful female leaders – from Cleopatra to Elizabeth II.
]]> Cleopatra’s bloody rise to power https://www.historyextra.com/membership/cleopatras-bloody-rise-to-power/ Sun, 24 May 2026 06:44:41 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/cleopatras-bloody-rise-to-power/ Islam Issa charts Cleopatra's bloody rise to the top, and the personal qualities she drew up on to navigate her brutal world From formidable overseas leaders to vicious internecine conflict, Cleopatra’s rise to the top was bloody and brutal. So what personal qualities did she draw upon to navigate these shifting sands? And should her success mean we see her in a new light? In the second episode of our four-part Sunday Series on the ancient queen’s life and world, Islam Issa – professor of public humanities at Birmingham City University – tells Matt Elton about the truth behind the myth.
Go Beyond the Podcast
Captivated by Cleopatra? Matt Elton has curated a collection of essential reading, listening and viewing from the HistoryExtra vaults to help bring the ancient queen to life.
And don’t miss our HistoryExtra Academy Royal Women, with Professor Kate Williams, for more on some of the past’s most powerful female leaders – from Cleopatra to Elizabeth II.
]]> Young Cleopatra: the making of a queen https://www.historyextra.com/membership/young-cleopatra-the-making-of-a-queen/ Sun, 24 May 2026 06:43:46 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/young-cleopatra-the-making-of-a-queen/ Islam Issa explores the formative years of one of ancient history's most famous figures – from the wider geopolitical world to her complex family dynamic Thousands of years ago, a woman emerged on to the world stage whose name would echo down through the centuries: Cleopatra. But what we do we know about her youth? How did the geography, politics and society of her early life shape her personality? And why would you not want to get on the wrong side of her family? In this first instalment of our four-part Sunday Series chronicling Cleopatra’s life and cultural afterlife, Islam Issa – professor of public humanities at Birmingham City University – tells Matt Elton about the queen’s formative years.
Go Beyond the Podcast
Captivated by Cleopatra? Matt Elton has curated a collection of essential reading, listening and viewing from the HistoryExtra vaults to help bring the ancient queen to life.
And don’t miss our HistoryExtra Academy Royal Women, with Professor Kate Williams, for more on some of the past’s most powerful female leaders – from Cleopatra to Elizabeth II.
]]> Beyond the podcast: The world of Cleopatra https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-egypt/beyond-the-podcast-the-world-of-cleopatra/ Tue, 19 May 2026 14:00:19 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-egypt/beyond-the-podcast-the-world-of-cleopatra/ How much do you know about the life and cultural afterlife of Cleopatra? To accompany my four-part HistoryExtra podcast series on the ancient Egyptian pharaoh with author and broadcaster Dr Islam Issa, I've compiled a list of essential reading, listening and viewing to help you get to know one of the ancient world’s most formidable figures In the first century BC, a figure emerged on to the world stage who would prove to be a source of fascination for thousands of years: Cleopatra. Her rise to the throne was far from straightforward, with bloody family politics and the complexities of regional politics studding her path to power. Yet, despite her skill at navigating this and more, the Cleopatra of the popular imagination is often reduced to a bewitching beauty who used her feminine wiles to enthral any male leader who came into her orbit.
To help paint a fuller picture, this four-part HistoryExtra podcast series sees Dr Islam Issa – professor of public humanities at Birmingham City University – chronicle the real life and times of this towering figure of the ancient world. From her family background to her tragic final moments, we separate the myth from the reality, explore the ways in which Cleopatra is portrayed in non-western sources, and examine just why her story has proven so enduring.
Below, I’ve curated my picks of the best reading, listening and viewing from the HistoryExtra archives to help you make sense of Cleopatra’s life and world – including analysis skills as a leader to a look at her place in the pantheon of powerful female rulers.
]]> Would you eat a mummy to cure a disease? https://www.historyextra.com/membership/would-you-eat-a-mummy-video/ Fri, 17 Apr 2026 08:43:54 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/membership/would-you-eat-a-mummy-video/ Why, in the past, did people eat bits of dead body? And what sort of ailments were they believed to cure? HistoryExtra's Elinor Evans explains more Why, in the past, did people eat bits of dead body? And what sort of ailments were they believed to cure?
During the early-modern period, corpse medicine became a widely accepted practice throughout Europe. From the blood of the dead to the ground-up remains of mummies – and even, in Ancient Rome, fresh body parts – throughout history human bodies have been treated as potent remedies.
Drawing on expertise from historians including Dr Richard Sugg and Dr Campbell Price, HistoryExtra's Elinor Evans traces the history of this chilling historical practice.
View Green Video on the source website
]]> 3,100 years ago, ancient Egyptian workers defeated a God-King – without using any weapons https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-history/egyptian-workers-defeated-a-god-king/ Sat, 21 Feb 2026 10:45:11 GMT https://www.historyextra.com/period/ancient-history/egyptian-workers-defeated-a-god-king/ Before picket lines and unionisation, ancient Egyptian artisans learned that collectively withdrawing labour could force even a pharaoh to negotiate “1768 is really when the word ‘strike’ begins to develop out of the UK.”
That’s the view of classicist Sarah E Bond, speaking on the HistoryExtra podcast.
As Bond explains, the word ‘strike’ comes from a moment when sailors in the port of Sunderland decided to literally strike down the topsails of their ships, immobilising them until their demands were met by their bosses. The tactic worked, spread south to the shipyards of the Thames, and quickly entered the political vocabulary.
But the behaviour the word came to describe – the collective withholding of labour – is actually far older. “What that word represents is an action that goes all the way back to the second millennium BC,” Bond says.
Before the concept of money or coinage, workers had figured out a fundamental principle: stopping work was a way to force those in power to negotiate.
The ancient Egyptian origins of strikes
“Even if these words were not familiar to those within the ancient world, there are still methodologies within labour disputes that have been happening for thousands of years,” says Bond.
One of the earliest, clearest examples of what would now be termed a ‘strike’ comes from ancient Egypt – a civilisation that was rigidly hierarchical and dominated by unquestionable royal authority. Beneath the monumental architecture and other cultural feats, Egyptian society depended on a vast pool of labour.
In the second millennium BC, during the reign of Ramesses III, Egypt had passed the peak of imperial expansion it had enjoyed a century earlier. Ramesses III ruled during the early 12th century BC, at the end of the New Kingdom, a period marked by mounting economic pressure, as well as internal and external instability.
Ramesses III presented himself as a traditional warrior-pharaoh, defending Egypt against repeated Libyan incursions and threats from other foreign enemies, such as the mysterious ‘Sea Peoples’. Reliefs and inscriptions depict the pharaoh’s decisive victories, but modern historians view his reign as one of crisis management, with Egyptian prosperity faltering. Not only was the kingdom embroiled in expensive wars, but agricultural output was stalling.
Despite these pressures, Ramesses III occupied an impossibly powerful position. The Egyptian pharaoh was viewed as a divine intermediary, responsible for maintaining maat – a religious notion of cosmic order that guaranteed harmony between gods, people and nature. Feeding workers, paying temple staff and sustaining major construction projects were all part of that sacred duty.
- Read more | Life in ancient Egypt: what was it like?
However, Egypt didn’t yet have a system of coinage, and instead operated a redistributive economy centred on agricultural surplus.
According to Bond, workers were paid in barley and emmer wheat, which would have been enough to feed entire households. The state also collected agricultural produce as tax, stored it in granaries, and redistributed it to soldiers, officials, priests and specialised workers.
The system proved effective if harvests were stable and administration functioned efficiently. But during periods of disruption, the impact of shortages rippled through society.
The workers of Deir el-Medina
The strike itself unfolded at Deir el-Medina, a purpose-built village housing the highly skilled artisans who carved and painted the royal tombs in the Valley of the Kings. These workers were salaried state employees, exempt from agricultural work, housed by the government and supplied directly from royal granaries. Many were literate, and they left behind letters, complaints and administrative records that give historians a rare view into the lives of non-elite Egyptians.
But because they didn’t farm their own food, missed deliveries of their payment left them vulnerable. When Ramesses III’s administration fell badly behind on promised rations, families at Deir el-Medina faced serious consequences.
“The necropolis workers decided that they were going to go on strike until they got the rations and payment that they were promised by the pharaoh,” Bond says.
The workers peacefully withdrew their labour entirely and carefully chose their protest site. Their actions were documented by local scribes, making this the earliest recorded labour strike in human history.
“They decided that they were going to go and sit in the back of a temple, and that they were simply going to refuse to work until they were given the back payments.”
Temples in ancient Egypt were sanctuaries of non-violence. Fighting and bloodshed within them was taboo. It’s for that reason that “going and sitting in peaceful protest at the back of a temple, or just outside a temple, was something that became extremely common in Pharaonic Egypt, and continued well into the Ptolemaic period and beyond.”
- Read more | The dark side of ancient Egypt
The protest worked – or at least in the short term. After several days, grain was released from nearby temples and emergency rations were distributed to the workers of Deir el-Medina. Over the following years, delays in payment recurred because of the broader political and administrative trouble, and the artisans repeatedly downed tools.
“That, to me, was very much what we would today call a strike – even if that’s not what they were referring to it as,” concludes Bond.
As for Ramesses III, the strike was a warning sign of deeper systemic failure, and Egypt’s economic strain only worsened towards the end of his reign. In the final years of his rule, the pharaoh was caught up in the so-called ‘harem conspiracy’ – a palace plot involving members of his own household.
Modern forensic analysis suggests that Ramesses was assassinated, likely having his throat cut, bringing his 31-year reign to a violent end. But, even before that, the God-King had already been defeated by a band of striking necropolis workers.
Jon Bauckham was speaking to Sarah E Bond on the HistoryExtra podcast. Listen to the full conversation.
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