Tales of Times Forgotten

Did the Ancient Egyptians Have Electric Lighting?

It has been widely claimed on the internet that the ancient Egyptians had electric lighting. This claim is made largely based on an extremely tendentious interpretation of a series of relief carvings from the southern crypt of the ancient Egyptian Temple of Hathor at Dendera and the fact that some Egyptian tombs and temples do not currently have very much soot on their ceilings.

Unfortunately for those who want to believe that the ancient Egyptians had electric lighting, they simply didn’t. As I will show, the reliefs from Dendera almost certainly don’t depict lightbulbs and there is a much more reasonable explanation for why some Egyptian temples and tombs do not have soot on their ceilings.

Here’s Where Some Famous Rulers from Ancient Times Were Buried

I am frequently asked the question of where famous people from the ancient world were buried. In most cases, we have no idea where the remains of famous people from the ancient world were originally deposited. Nonetheless, when it comes to famous rulers from the ancient Mediterranean world, we often have a great deal more information about where they were buried than we do for ordinary people.

For instance, we actually do have some information about where famous leaders such as Perikles, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Cleopatra, and Augustus’s remains were deposited. Unfortunately, even when we do know the exact location of a person’s original burial, it is exceedingly rare for their remains to have survived to the present day. None of the bodies of any of the rulers I have mentioned have ever been identified by archaeologists.

Burial practices in the ancient world varied considerably from one culture to the next. The ancient Romans traditionally cremated their dead. The ancient Greeks traditionally buried their dead in the ground uncremated and unembalmed with grave markers to show where the person was buried. The ancient Egyptians traditionally embalmed their dead and placed their embalmed bodies in tombs with extensive grave goods.

How Violent Was the Pre-Modern World Really?

It is no secret that the ancient and medieval worlds were, in general, more violent than today’s world. After all, today in the twenty-first century, most countries do not have crucifixions, gladiator fights, or public executions that involve people being torn apart by wild beasts. Cities today rarely have to worry about rival cities attacking them and most modern cities are not even fortified. Clearly, the world has changed quite drastically since antiquity.

Nonetheless, the degree of violence that existed in the ancient and medieval worlds was not nearly so great as many people have been led to believe by popular films and television shows, which often portray an absurd level of violence that is completely beyond the amount of violence that actually existed during any period of human history.

Here Are Some of the Most Ancient Christmas Carols

One of my favorite Christmas traditions is singing carols with my family. Nowadays, we tend to think of many of our carols as being extremely old and traditional. After all, as I discuss in this article I wrote about the history of Santa Claus, even the song “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”—arguably one of the least traditional Christmas songs—is over seventy years old. Nonetheless, most of the songs we know today are actually relatively young compared to some of the other songs that have been sung historically. Few of the songs we know today were composed before the nineteenth century.

Here I have collected a few of my favorite extremely old Christmas songs, some of which date all the way back to the Middle Ages. I have gathered songs from places as diverse as the Byzantine Empire, late medieval Spain, Renaissance Finland and Sweden, and Early Modern England. All of these songs were composed before the nineteenth century and nearly all of them were originally composed in languages other than English. Enjoy!

No, the Antikythera Mechanism Was Not Unique

If you have any interest in ancient science and technology, you have almost certainly heard of the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient Greek mechanical orrery that was discovered in 1901 in an ancient shipwreck off the coast of the Greek island of Antikythera. It is a clockwork mechanism that was used to keep track of Olympiads and the movements of the celestial bodies. The wreck the device was recovered from dates to between c. 70 and c. 60 BC. The Antikythera mechanism itself was most likely originally created sometime in around the late second or early first century BC.

In popular science writings and in popular culture, the Antikythera mechanism is usually described as an “ancient Greek computer.” It is usually presented as an astonishing example of how incredibly advanced ancient Greek technology was and it is usually presented in such a way that makes it sound as though we had no idea that devices like it even existed before it was discovered.

The truth, though, is that devices like the Antikythera mechanism are actually well-attested in surviving ancient written sources and classical scholars already knew that these kinds of devices existed in antiquity long before the Antikythera mechanism was discovered. The Antikythera mechanism is not significant because it is the only device of its kind that ever existed, but rather because it is the only one of its kind that is known to have survived to the present day.

Why Was Aristarchos’s Heliocentric Model Dismissed and Ignored?

Many people are astonished to learn that the concept of heliocentrism did not originate with Nicolaus Copernicus, but rather with the ancient Greek astronomer Aristarchos of Samos (lived c. 310 – c. 230 BC), who published a book in around the early third century BC in which he argued that the Earth orbits around the Sun. This book has not survived, but we know about its existence because it is referenced by later authors.

What shocks many people even more than the fact that Aristarchos came up with the idea of heliocentrism in the third century BC is the fact that Aristarchos’s heliocentric model of the universe was almost totally rejected by ancient Greek and Roman scholars and never caught on in antiquity. Many people wonder why it was that the ancient Greeks never took Aristarchos seriously. In order to find out why Aristarchos’s heliocentric model of the universe was rejected, we are going to need to dive deep into the ancient sources.

No, Medieval Staircases Weren’t Designed to Give Right-Handed Defenders an Advantage

Chances are, if you have ever visited a medieval European castle or read about such castles online, you have probably heard that newel staircases in these castles were intentionally always designed in the form of a clockwise spiral to give the most space to the right-handed defenders at the top of the stairs to draw and swing their swords while simultaneously restricting the space available to the right-handed attackers attempting to ascend the staircase.

This is something that tour guides often tell people visiting castles. It is also one of those “fun facts” that are often repeated on the internet. Unfortunately, for reasons I am about to explain, it is also almost certainly wrong; there is no compelling evidence to suggest that medieval staircases were intentionally designed this way for this reason and there is a great deal of evidence to suggest the opposite. A far more parsimonious explanation is that the majority of staircases were designed clockwise simply so that a right-handed person could keep their right hand on the wall for balance while descending the staircase under everyday circumstances.

Did a Group of Lost Roman Soldiers Found a City in China?

There is a very popular story out there about how, supposedly, in the first century BC, a group of Roman soldiers inadvertently wound their way across the Asian continent, fighting as mercenaries for various peoples and being captured by others, before eventually settling in China. It is a truly fascinating story, but, unfortunately, there is probably no truth to it.

Here’s Where You Can Buy a Real First Edition Copy of the ‘Iliad’!

In 2015, a certain Hollywood film notoriously claimed that you can get an original, first edition copy of the Iliad for “a buck at a garage sale.” After the film came out, large numbers of people around the world began searching for places where they could buy their own first edition copy of the Iliad. I decided to take a look into this issue. If you have ever wanted to own a first edition copy of the Iliad, here’s how to get one.