Timeline
Every guide, in its time.
Read across eras and regions, then open a guide to see the sources behind its dates. A shared date is a question to investigate, not evidence of contact.
11 of 57 guides in Egypt & Nubia
5000–3000 BCE 1
- 4000–2686 BCE
How did Egypt become a kingdom?
From Naqada to the first dynasties.
Upper Egypt and the Nile Valley · Egypt & Nubia · Kingdoms & monuments
Trace the thousand years in which Upper Egyptian communities became the Early Dynastic state, and compare a relative chronology with new radiocarbon dates.
3000–1000 BCE 4
- 2450–1500 BCE
What makes a state a state?
Kerma: an independent state on the Middle Nile.
Northern Sudan, Middle Nile · Egypt & Nubia · Early cities
Meet Kerma, the early Kushite center south of Egypt, and see which kinds of evidence let archaeologists describe it as an independent urban state.
- 1550–1500 BCE
What counts as medicine in an ancient text?
Papyrus Ebers: a medical scroll from the end of the 16th century BCE.
Thebes, Egypt · Egypt & Nubia · Medicine & natural knowledge
Open a scholarly digital edition of the Papyrus Ebers, one of the longest Egyptian medical texts, and learn to read remedies, incantations, and cosmology as separate layers.
- 1550 BCE
How did an Egyptian scribe do mathematics?
The Rhind Papyrus: a scribe's handbook of problems.
Thebes, Upper Egypt · Egypt & Nubia · Mathematics & measurement
Open the British Museum's record for the Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, a collection of 84 worked problems, and learn why an object's date and its text's origin are different questions.
- 1525–1401 BCE
Where does medicine end and magic begin?
Papyrus Berlin 3027: spells and remedies for mother and child.
Egypt (find spot unknown) · Egypt & Nubia · Medicine & natural knowledge
An 18th Dynasty papyrus collects incantations and recipes for mothers and children. Use it to test the line between medicine and ritual that modern categories draw.
1000 BCE – 1 CE 4
- 900–270 BCE
When did the direction of power reverse?
Napata: the kingdom that ruled Egypt from the south.
Gebel Barkal and the Napatan region, Sudan · Egypt & Nubia · Kingdoms & monuments
Follow Napatan Kush from its sacred mountain at Gebel Barkal to the 25th Dynasty, when kings from Kush ruled Egypt and revived older pharaonic forms.
- 900 BCE – 350 CE
How many pyramids are there, really?
The pyramids of Sudan: counting what survives.
Meroë, Nuri, Gebel Barkal, and Sedeinga, Sudan · Egypt & Nubia · Kingdoms & monuments
Sudan's royal cemeteries hold more pyramidal monuments than Egypt, but every total depends on a counting rule. Learn to read a number together with its definition.
- 250 BCE – 450 CE
What does 'deciphered' actually mean?
Meroitic: a script we can sound out but not fully read.
Kingdom of Kush, Sudan · Egypt & Nubia · Writing & languages
The Meroitic script of Kush has known sign values and an unresolved language. Learn the difference between reading signs, reconstructing grammar, and translating a text.
- 196 BCE
How do you read a lost script?
One decree. Three scripts. A way back into a language.
Egypt · Egypt & Nubia · Writing & languages
Begin with the Rosetta Stone: see how comparison turns an inscription into a research question you can follow.
1–500 CE 2
- 200–700 CE
How old is a text that says it is ancient?
The Corpus Hermeticum: dating a collection that claims to be older.
Graeco-Roman Egypt · Egypt & Nubia · How knowledge travelled
The Hermetic treatises present themselves as the wisdom of an Egyptian sage. Learn why the record dates each treatise separately and never projects the corpus into pharaonic prehistory.
- 270–299 CE
Is a recipe book alchemy or craft?
Leiden Papyrus X and the Stockholm Papyrus: recipes for metals, dyes, and stones.
Roman Egypt · Egypt & Nubia · Technology & instruments
Two Greek papyri from late Roman Egypt collect technical recipes for working metals, dyeing, and imitating gems. Learn how scholars read them and why their relationship is treated with caution.
Keep the habit
Dates are ranges. Read them that way.
Each guide names its period, its place, and the records that support them.
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