Take the Battle of Carchemish, early or in our period; it was at Carchemish that Babylon won Syria and Palestine from Egypt, and its sequel was the capture of Jerusalem nine years later.

In 1300BC, at the height of the Bronze Age, the great powers of Egypt, the Hittites in central Turkey, the Greeks, Babylonians and Middle Eastern city states would have seemed secure to any ...

Ancient peoples were looking after their teeth with – admittedly unappealing – concoctions that included animal bones, herbs and, in the case of the Romans, human wee. There was no single inventor, bu ...