50 Fun Facts About Ancient Near East

Which drink is praised in the Sumerian Hymn to Ninkasi, a poem about 3,900 years old that doubles as a recipe?

Beer in the hymn is usually read as brewed from a bread that is soaked and left to ferment, making it the oldest surviving recipe for the drink. Ninkasi was the Sumerian goddess of brewing.

Which of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is the only one whose site has never been definitively located?

The Hanging Gardens appear in no surviving Babylonian text, and digging at Babylon has found no sure trace of them. One theory places them at an Assyrian palace instead.

Which Babylonian king had 282 laws carved on a basalt stele that now stands in the Louvre in Paris?

Hammurabi's stele spent centuries as war loot: it was carried off to Susa, in modern Iran, about 600 years after it was carved, and was dug up there in 1901.

What name did the Greek historian Herodotus give to the Persian kings' elite corps of exactly 10,000 infantry?

The Immortals seemed never to die because every man killed or taken sick was replaced at once, keeping the corps at full strength. Herodotus says they carried wicker shields and short spears.

Which number system did Babylonian scribes inherit from Sumer, one that survives in how hours and circles are divided?

Base 60 suited the scribes because sixty divides evenly by every number from one to six, which keeps fractions simple. It is why a minute has sixty seconds.

Which legendary Sumerian king is the hero of an epic, recovered on clay tablets, with a flood story like Noah's?

Gilgamesh was probably a real king who was later worshipped as a god, and the epic about him is the world's oldest surviving work of narrative literature.

Which king of Phrygia, apparently the Mita of Assyrian records, shares his name with the Greek myth of the golden touch?

Midas was the name of a real ruler of the late 8th century BC who fought Assyria over its provinces in Anatolia. Greek storytellers tied the name to a king who turned whatever he touched to gold.

Which seafaring people of Tyre and Sidon devised the 22-letter alphabet that the Greeks adapted for their own?

Phoenicians wrote only consonants and left the reader to supply the vowels. The Greeks who borrowed the script added vowel letters to fit their own language.

Which Persian king captured Babylon in 539 BC and, in the Bible, let the exiled Jews return home to Jerusalem?

Cyrus the Great is the only non-Jew the Bible calls a messiah, an anointed one, a title the Book of Isaiah gives him for ending the exile. He also founded the Achaemenid Empire.

Which Sumerian city, often identified with Abraham's birthplace in Genesis, held the Royal Tombs dug by Leonard Woolley?

Ur was dug from 1922 to 1934 for the British Museum and the University of Pennsylvania. Queen Puabi's tomb there survived almost intact, with her jewellery of gold, silver, carnelian and agate.

Which script, pressed into wet clay with a reed stylus, is last seen on an astronomical tablet of about AD 80?

Cuneiform is the earliest known writing system, devised for Sumerian and then adapted for many other languages. Its signs are built from the wedge-shaped dents that give the script its name.

Which inscribed slab, found by French soldiers in Egypt in 1799, gave Champollion the key to reading hieroglyphs?

The Rosetta Stone repeats one decree of 196 BC three times, in hieroglyphs, in Demotic and in Greek, so scholars who could read the Greek had a crib for the other two.

Which Babylonian king destroyed Jerusalem in 587 BC and carried much of Judah's population into exile?

Nebuchadnezzar II reigned for 43 years, the longest of his dynasty. The Book of Daniel has him lose his mind and live like an animal for seven years.

Which Persian king crossed the Hellespont on bridges of boats in 480 BC and beat the Spartans at Thermopylae?

Xerxes I had the sea itself whipped 300 times after a storm wrecked his first bridges, or so Herodotus tells it. A second pair held, and his army marched into Europe.

Which river flowed through the middle of ancient Babylon and, with the Tigris, encloses the plain of Mesopotamia?

The Euphrates is the longest river in western Asia, at about 2,780 km. Babylon stood on its lower course, some 85 km south of where Baghdad is now.

Which name did James Henry Breasted popularise in 1914 for the lands running from the Levant to the Persian Gulf?

The Fertile Crescent is believed to be the first place where people settled down to farm, clearing land to raise newly domesticated plants as crops.

Which West Bank city already had a stone wall and a tower with an inner staircase about 10,000 years ago?

Jericho's tower stands over 8.5 metres high with 22 stone steps inside. The wall beside it may have been raised to hold back floodwater, not armies.

Which astrological system began when Babylonian astronomers split the Sun's yearly path into twelve equal parts?

The zodiac has drifted since it was drawn up: because Earth's axis slowly wobbles, the Sun no longer sits in the same constellations on the same dates as it did in Babylonian times.

Which Mesopotamian unit of weight for silver later became a coin and gave modern Israel's currency its name?

Shekel comes from a Semitic root meaning to weigh, a reminder that it was a measure on the scales long before it was a coin.

Which salt-tolerant grain did Sumerian farmers turn to in place of wheat and use, alongside silver, as currency?

Barley took over as centuries of irrigation left salt in the fields of southern Mesopotamia, which wheat tolerates poorly. A Sumerian debt could be repaid in grain or in silver.

Which lingua franca of the Assyrian kings displaced their own language and was later spoken by Jesus?

Aramaic was made the Assyrian empire's second official language by Tiglath-Pileser III. The Persian kings kept it on, and it became the common tongue of public life and trade across their lands.

Which people of Gaza, Ashkelon and Ashdod appear in the Bible as the foes of Samson, Saul and David?

Philistines were organised as a league of five cities, with Ekron and Gath completing the set. Their champion Goliath fell to David in single combat.

Which archaeological age began in the Near East in the 12th century BC and ends with the rise of Persia?

The Iron Age opened as the palace states of the Late Bronze Age collapsed. Historians of the Near East traditionally close it with the founding of the Achaemenid Empire around 550 BC.

Which Mediterranean island, the copper-exporting Alashiya of Near Eastern records, gave the metal its Latin name?

Cyprus shipped copper by the tonne: one royal letter apologises for sending only 500 talents, about 12.5 tonnes. The Romans called the metal aes cyprium, which was later worn down to cuprum.

Which colour of dye, made from sea snails at the Levantine port of Tyre, was said to fetch its weight in silver?

Purple from Tyre took tens of thousands of murex snails and a great deal of labour to make, so only the rich could wear it. Roman generals later put it on to celebrate a triumph.

Which type of stepped temple tower, built across Mesopotamia, do scholars link to the Bible's Tower of Babel?

Ziggurat builders at Babylon named theirs Etemenanki, the house of the foundation of heaven and earth. It no longer stands, but it is the likeliest model for the Babel story.

Which Iranian prophet preached the Wise Lord Ahura Mazda and a struggle between truth and deception?

Zoroaster's teaching became the religion of the Persian kings and remained the official creed of Iranian empires for roughly a thousand years.

Which people ruled central Anatolia from Hattusa and spoke the oldest Indo-European language known from written records?

Hittites took the name of their land, Hatti, from an older people of the region whose language was unrelated to their own. Deciphering their tablets was a landmark in the study of Indo-European languages.

Which ruler, said in legend to have been set adrift on a river as a baby like Moses, founded Mesopotamia's first empire?

Sargon of Akkad is said to have begun as cup-bearer to the king of Kish before taking a throne of his own. He went on to conquer the Sumerian city-states one after another.

In which Assyrian capital did King Ashurbanipal assemble a library of about 30,000 clay tablets and writing boards?

Nineveh's library survived because it burned: when the palace was sacked, the fire baked many of the clay tablets hard. Among them was the Babylonian creation story Enuma Elish.

Which ceremonial capital, begun by Darius I for receptions and festivals, burned after Alexander took it?

Persepolis may have been burned as revenge: one account says Alexander torched it to repay the Persian destruction of Athens. Another blames a drunken feast and the urging of a courtesan named Thaïs.

Which Persian highway ran about 2,700 km from Susa to Sardis, a trip mounted couriers were meant to cover in nine days?

The Royal Road took about ninety days on foot, which the king's relay of fresh riders cut to a tenth. That courier service was known as the Angarium.

What title did Persian kings give their provincial governors, an office Alexander the Great kept after his conquest?

Satrap comes from an Old Persian word meaning protector of the province. Each one was watched by a treasurer and a general who reported straight to the king.

Which realm of western Anatolia, ruled from Sardis, is credited with striking the world's first coins?

Lydia's first coins were made of electrum, a natural alloy of gold and silver. Its last king, Croesus, drew such riches from the gold of the River Pactolus that his wealth became proverbial.

Which blue-glazed gateway of Babylon, decorated with dragons and bulls, was rebuilt in Berlin's Pergamon Museum?

The Ishtar Gate on show in Berlin is only the smaller, front half of a double gate. It was rebuilt after the First World War from bricks excavated by Robert Koldewey.

Near which city on the Orontes did Ramesses II and Muwatalli II fight what is thought the largest chariot battle ever?

Kadesh drew an estimated 5,000 to 6,000 chariots. Some 15 years later the two powers sealed the earliest known international peace treaty, a replica of which hangs at the United Nations.

Which raiders, shown fighting Ramesses III on his temple at Medinet Habu, were long blamed for the Bronze Age collapse?

The Sea Peoples are now more often seen as refugees from a crisis already under way than as its cause. The label itself was invented by 19th-century Egyptologists.

Which foreign rulers held northern Egypt from Avaris as the Fifteenth Dynasty until Ahmose I defeated them?

Hyksos comes from an Egyptian phrase meaning rulers of foreign lands. They are often credited with bringing the horse and chariot to Egypt, though that claim is disputed.

Which archive of clay tablets, found in Egypt around 1887, holds the pharaohs' diplomatic post with Near Eastern rulers?

The Amarna letters were dug up in secret by local villagers and sold on the antiquities market. Most are written in the Babylonian-based language of diplomacy of the day, not in Egyptian.

In which period of Egyptian history, also called the Age of the Pyramids, were the three great pyramids of Giza built?

The Old Kingdom takes in the Fourth Dynasty, when Sneferu perfected the art of pyramid building and his son Khufu commissioned the largest of them all.

On which mountain did Darius the Great carve a three-language cliff text that Henry Rawlinson scaled the rock to copy?

Mount Behistun's text sits about 100 metres up a limestone cliff. Because it repeats itself in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian, it gave scholars the key to reading the scripts of Mesopotamia.

Which Iranian people, based around Ecbatana, helped bring down the Assyrian Empire before Persia absorbed them?

Medes kept their standing after the takeover: they ranked next to the Persians in honour and in war, and the Persian court spent its summers at Ecbatana.

Which dynasty, founded in 312 BC by a general of Alexander the Great, ruled from Mesopotamia and later from Antioch?

Seleucids lasted until 63 BC, when Pompey annexed what was left of their realm for Rome. By then the Parthians had already taken Mesopotamia from them.

Which Canaanite city did Thutmose III besiege for seven months after the first battle recorded in reliable detail?

Megiddo lent its name to the end of the world: the word Armageddon takes its root from the city's name. Thutmose III's battle there also produced the first recorded body count.

Which name is given to the human-headed winged bulls of Assyrian palace gateways, examples of which stand in the Louvre?

Lamassu in the earlier versions have five legs, a sculptor's trick that only shows when the statue is viewed from an angle. In Sumerian times the same spirit was pictured as a goddess.

Which site near Urfa in Turkey, dubbed the world's first temple, has carved T-shaped pillars from about 9500 BC?

Göbekli Tepe's pillars are among the oldest known megaliths, raised by people who had not yet begun to make pottery. Many are carved with wild animals.

Which high priestess, celebrated as the earliest author known by name, is credited with Sumerian hymns to Inanna?

Enheduanna came back to light in 1927, when Leonard Woolley unearthed an alabaster disc inscribed with her name and office. One of her poems pleads with Inanna from exile.

Which people from the Zagros Mountains ruled Babylonia for some four centuries after the Old Babylonian Empire fell?

Kassites left almost nothing in their own language beyond personal names and terms for horses and chariots. Their carved boundary stones, called kudurrus, recorded grants of land.

Which Levantine port, destroyed around 1185 BC, used the oldest known systematic alphabet, with 30 letters?

Ugarit's scribes pressed their 30 letters into clay tablets around 1400 BC. The city then lay forgotten until 1928, when its ruins came to light on the coast of northern Syria.

Which Hurrian-speaking state of northern Syria and south-east Anatolia had its capital at Washukanni?

Mitanni was Naharin to the Egyptians and Hanigalbat to the Assyrians. Its capital was sacked by Suppiluliuma, and nobody has yet pinned down exactly where the city stood.