Q 01/05

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

A) Beer

B) Wine

C) Mead

D) Cider

Answer · why

A) Beer

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. Ninka...

Q 02/05

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

A) Lighthouse of Alexandria

B) Statue of Zeus

C) Hanging Gardens

D) Temple of Artemis

Answer · why

C) Hanging Gardens

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 Assyr...

Q 03/05

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

A) Nabonidus

B) Hammurabi

C) Ashurbanipal

D) Esarhaddon

Answer · why

B) Hammurabi

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 i...

Q 04/05

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

A) The Companions

B) The Sacred Band

C) The Silver Shields

D) The Immortals

Answer · why

D) The Immortals

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...

Q 05/05

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

A) Base 5

B) Base 12

C) Base 60

D) Base 360

Answer · why

C) Base 60

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 se...