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First Cities

3200 BCE - 2000 BCE. Writing, divine kingship, early Egypt, and the urban worlds of the ancient Near East.

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Articles nearest to this period

Mesopotamia / 2600 BCE

Ancient Sumerian schools, the edubba or House of Tablets, trained scribes through copying, discipline, clay tablets, and the power of writing.

Early Dynastic Sumer Inside this period

Ancient Egypt / 2500 BCE

Ancient Egypt turns the Nile divine: Hapi, god of the flood, hymns, nilometers, Elephantine, and water at the heart of power.

Pharaonic Egypt Inside this period

Ancient Egypt / 2400 BCE

Osiris, murdered by Set and restored by Isis, became Egypt's great god of resurrection, afterlife, and sacred kingship.

Pharaonic Egypt Inside this period

Mesopotamia / 2300 BCE

From Ur's ziggurats to Inanna's hymns: Enheduanna, high priestess and the world's first named author, speaks across four millennia.

Bronze Age Inside this period

Mesopotamia / 1750 BCE

Hammurabi shaped Babylonian power through law, conquest, administration, and a political imagination that still echoes today.

Bronze Age 250 years from this period

Greek World / 1600 BCE

The Minotaur's labyrinth: a myth rooted in Knossos, blending archaeology, mythology, and ancient power struggles between Athens and Crete.

Greek Mythology 400 years from this period

Greek World / 1250 BCE

Zeus deceives Alcmene, Hera delays Heracles' birth, and divine jealousy transforms a child into Greece's greatest hero.

Greek Mythology 750 years from this period

Greek World / 1180 BCE

The tragic and prophetic death of Ulysses, the last hero of Greek mythology.

Greek Mythology 820 years from this period

Ancient Egypt / 1070 BCE

Around 1070 BCE, Wenamun sailed from Thebes to Phoenicia for cedar wood, revealing an Egypt forced to negotiate where it once commanded.

Third Intermediate Period 930 years from this period