The official website for BBC History Magazine
Wanderlust: Bettany Hughes on the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World were daring and dazzling constructions that have burned bright in the human imagination right up to the modern day. Bettany Hughes follows in the footsteps of the ancients to tell their remarkable stories
Crawling underneath Egypt’s Great Pyramid, 70 metres down, is an unforgettable experience. On hands and knees in the sand, as the descending tunnel gets narrower and deeper, the bedrock of the Giza Plateau presses in so close you can actually taste it. The rock is salty, because 50 million years ago this was all sea. I am not the first to have had this visceral, time-travelling experience. As well as the Greek and Roman tourists who left graffiti here, this subterranean tunnel, and the chamber which it led to, was described by the ‘father of history’ Herodotus, and some 2,300 years later was explored by the Italian tomb-raider Giovanni Battista Caviglia. Other passages in the Great Pyramid – a huge burial place for Egypt’s King Khufu – were charted by medieval Arabic scientists and desecrated by off-duty Napoleonic soldiers. Built more than 45 centuries ago, this pyramid, the oldest of the famous Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, has always been a catalyst for awe. And it is not alone. Across time, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World – the Pyramids at Giza, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria – have really mattered. They mattered so much that, in the epoch after Alexander the Great’s death, a bespoke catalogue, the Laterculi Alexandrini, was generated to group them together. Written in papyrus about 150 BC, it is our oldest extant evidence for a catalogue. We are not sure who created the list, but we do know that it was copied and shared, and that it has inspired poetry, prose and works of art for millennia. Don't miss... Bettany's new three-part docuseries Seven Wonders of the Ancient World is airing on Channel 5 from Saturday 2 August 2025 The precise entries vary a little: in some versions, the walls or an obelisk of Babylon are included; later, the Colosseum is mentioned; the Lighthouse has sometimes been left out. The Laterculi Alexandrini also lists the seven greatest rivers, the seven best mountains, the seven finest artists and the seven best lakes. The fact the Wonders deserved to be listed in a group of seven proved that not only were these exemplars of their age, projects of pioneering ambition that made extraordinary incursions into the landscape, but that they each encapsulated something special and important about the human experience. Marvellous news The word wonder (from the Old German wuntar) means ‘something marvellous’. Originally in the Greek, these attractions were described as thaumata – works that needed to be seen. Crucially, and this is a fact that is too often overlooked, all seven were connected. In some cases, the same artists worked on them. They also reference one another’s designs. Some of antiquity’s greatest names, including Alexander the Great, visited many of the sites. Ahead of writing my new book on the Seven Wonders, I set myself the task of travelling to the location where each once stood. This, I reasoned, was the best way to get a feel for what these creations meant to the women and men of antiquity who designed them, built them, worshipped in them, fought over them, wrote about them, maintained, cherished, loved and looted them, and made perilous journeys to visit and to tick them off their bucket lists. Following in their footsteps took me on a journey through both ancient and modern landscapes. 1. The Great Pyramid at Giza Egypt’s giant resurrection machine Built at least 4,500 years ago, the Great Pyramid is the oldest of all the Wonders, and yet still stands today almost intact. And it could be even older than previously thought: the 2013 discovery of 1,000 fragmented papyri documents on the Red Sea coast potentially pushes its date back a further 100 years. The pyramid was built over a span of 20–23 years as a giant resurrection machine for Khufu, the king of a united Egypt, helping to transport him to the afterlife. As such, it was conceived as a means for the ancient Egyptians to try to understand the place of humans in the cosmos and the possibilities of both mortality and immortality. Read more | Were the pyramids built by aliens? The real history that debunks the conspiracy The pyramid’s mathematical precision is astonishing (it is close to geometrically perfect – just 2cm out in some places). Constructed of 2.3 million limestone blocks, rising 146.6 metres high, it was originally cased in gleaming, polished, white Tura stone. A few slabs still remain on the Giza plateau, surveyed by bored camels waiting for their tourist burdens. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/02/BAL611268web-203f90e.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A 20th-century drawing of the construction of the pyramid. The enormous tomb took more than 20 years to build. (Image from Bridgeman)" title="A 20th-century drawing of the construction of the pyramid. The enormous tomb took more than 20 years to build. (Image from Bridgeman)" /> As the site of the pyramid was originally lapped by the Nile for 6–8 weeks of the year during the time of inundation, we now think that ancient Egyptian builders may have used the river’s rise and fall to move the pyramid’s stone building blocks into place. Listen | Ancient Egyptian pyramids: everything you wanted to know 2. The Hanging Gardens of Babylon Botanical booty takes centre stage Created sometime between 691 and 550 BC, the Hanging Gardens are the most elusive of all the Wonders. No indisputable archaeological evidence for them exists, and we have filled this gap with our imaginations. Therefore, while the Hanging Gardens have left behind the least hard evidence in the ground, they are, ironically, the most famous, and the most commonly cited of all the ancient seven. Built either by King Nebuchadnezzar II in Babylon or by the Assyrian king Sennacherib in Nineveh, they almost certainly employed ingenious watering schemes (including palm tree trunks lined with waterproof bitumen) running up a series of staggered planting ledges, all kept hydrated by machines that were an early version of Archimedes’s screw. Exotic plants and trees were showcased here – many seized as botanical booty on campaigns of expansion by either Assyrian or Babylonian monarchs. Read more | A guide to ancient gardening A venue for hosting visiting dignitaries, for displaying wealth, and possibly a location to sit and be healed by the night-time power of the stars, the gardens seem to be the ancient world’s attempt to replicate (and control) nature itself. Exploring the story of the Hanging Gardens is important because it reminds us to privilege eastern as well as western sources for the Wonder monuments. Crucially, we learn from Babylonian and Assyrian records that both the concept of ‘wonders’ and the symbolic power of seven stretches right back to the beginnings of history itself. Seven was a potent number because it connected the four elements of the Earth (earth, air, fire and water) with the three of the heavens (the sun, the moon and the stars). So we hear of seven heavens, seven hells and seven ages of man in Middle Eastern cultures. Grouping objects or ideas into lists of seven gives us meaning because they suggest human culture has a predictable pattern. Whereas the Great Pyramid was a gargantuan imposition on the landscape by a king and his people seeking to understand their connection to the chemistry of space and the cycle of life and death, the Hanging Gardens celebrated both the beauty of nature and the possibilities of humankind’s dominion over it. 3. The Temple of Artemis at Ephesus A place of refuge... and murder This Wonder was subsidised in the sixth century BC by the famously rich King Croesus of Lydia. Yet the temple, sited near the western coast of modern-day Turkey, was accessible not just to kings but to commoners. And as well as honouring an eastern deity, Artemis – who protected animals and virgins alike – it was renowned as a place of sanctuary. Many sought refuge here, including Cleopatra’s sister Arsinoe (who was double-crossed and murdered on the temple’s steps). Recent archaeological excavations have shown the stalls where refuge-seekers slept. The temple was destroyed in the mid-fourth century BC (21 July 356BC) – before being rebuilt, in even grander form, in c340 BC (this later version would itself succumb to fire, earthquake and plunder). Gargantuan in scale, the temple’s double row of columns would become the model for Greek temples across three continents. In fact, a number of the artists employed on the later building would go on to work on other Wonders, such as the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. And a building inspired by the Temple of Artemis would house another of the Wonders: the Statue of Zeus... 4. The Statue of Zeus at Olympia Where man met the divine The imposing ivory and gold Statue of Zeus, seated in his temple home, overlooked the stadium of the sanctuary of Olympia in southern Greece. The statue was an incarnation not just of divine, but of human potential. Built around 430 BC, at a time in the classical world when pioneers like Socrates were declaring the power of philosophy, human agency and the human mind, this bearded, muscle-bound male god was built to celebrate the potency of agnostic competition, of striving and of winning. The ancients would have experienced this ferocious artwork, whose forehead was said to glower like a thunderstorm, after arriving at the site as religious pilgrims. I travelled to Olympia along the sacred route that connected it to the city of Elis, during lockdown. Without the mechanical sounds of the modern world around, Zeus’s sanctuary was thick with birdsong and with the rustle of sacred olive trees. The statue itself is now, however, long gone – it’s believed that it was taken to Constantinople in the early centuries AD, where it was probably lost in a fire. At the time Zeus’s sanctuary was built, it would also have resounded with the hum of 50,000–100,000 visitors – Greeks summoned from everywhere from the Black Sea to Byzantium to praise the king of the Olympian Gods with displays of athletic prowess. 5. The Mausoleum of Halicarnassus A site of death and glory Standing at more than 45 metres high, this gigantic building gave its name to mausoleums all over the world and has been mimicked in the cenotaphs and tombs of everyone from Abraham Lincoln to Vladimir Lenin. The mausoleum (which was ultimately destroyed by war and earthquake) reveals much about the cosmopolitan nature of life around the Mediterranean 2,300 years ago. Built by the Karian ruler Mausolos with his wife (and sister), Artemisia, in c351 BC, its wonderful hybrid of styles included Assyrian, Egyptian, Greek and Karian. It would have exploded like a firework on the coast of what is now Bodrum. While researching the building techniques of the mausoleum, I was fortunate enough to be allowed 5 metres below ground into a grave commissioned by Mausolos for his father, Hekatomnos, in nearby Mylas. Hekatomnos’s sarcophagus demonstrates the exquisite nature of the stone-carving that would have decorated Mausolos’s own burial place. It was covered with scenes of Hekatomnos’s family, including portraits of Mausolos and Artemisia, and a lion hunt. Artemisia has become infamous through history thanks to an anecdote handed down from Roman times. According to the author Aulus Gellius, Artemisia missed her brother-husband so much that after his death she ground down his bones to drink them, together with the ash from his funeral, and then pined away. But there is a strong chance, given we know gladiators drank bone-meal for strength, that Artemisia actually sought to steal Mausolos’s power. Whatever her intentions, Artemisia completed this vast, richly painted grave after her husband’s death, and was buried in her own chamber in the mausoleum. Five centuries later, the essayist Lucian of Samosta imagined a dialogue between Diogenes the Cynic and Mausolos in the underworld. The king boasted that because he was tall, handsome and a superb warrior, he needed to be commemorated with the most splendid tomb in the world. Diogenes quietly pointed out that the ruler’s hairless, skinless, eyeless skull would now look the same as his own. In fact, Diogenes added, Mausolos would look worse, as Halicarnassus’s mausoleum was a dead weight bearing down on the king’s corpse. 6. The Colossus of Rhodes Greece’s second sun The colossus was a gargantuan celebration of a moment in history when conflict sharpened into diplomacy. Wipe from your minds the popular image of a massive, kitsch statue, legs akimbo, straddling two of Rhodes’s harbours. That would have been structurally impossible. In reality, Rhodes’s towering representation of the sun-god Helios (with a face reminiscent of Alexander the Great) was probably erected high on the island overlooking the sanctuary of Helios where the Helian games were held in the god’s honour. The colossus was built (in c302/292 BC) after a pitiless siege of Rhodes by the son of one of Alexander the Great’s generals, Demetrius the Besieger. Legend has it that much of the raw material to make the figure derived from the melted down weapons and siege engines used to break through heavy walls and gates, which were surrendered following a truce. Yet those raw materials also, it seems, came from below the ground. The author Philo of Byzantium wrote: “The artist used so much bronze for the work there was almost a shortage of metals, for all the Earth’s mines were exploited in carrying out the project... for in the world a second sun stood to face the first.” Indeed, ice cores from Greenland show pollution levels soaring in the Hellenistic and Roman ages, caused by the process of larger-than- life-size metal statues being produced to prove man’s dominion over cities and far-flung territories. All of the Seven Wonders prove the fevered possibilities of the human imagination – and the harsh demands of making our dreams flesh. By building a statue more than 30 metres tall honouring the sun, the Colossus of Rhodes’s creators set in train a history of humans plundering the Earth’s resources, and a heating of the planet, which now threatens us all. 7. The Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria History’s greatest warning beacon? The Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria guided sailors to safety along one of the most perilous coastlines of northern Egypt. Built in c297 BC, it also acted as a warning beacon in times of distress – and, with an articulated decoration on its summit, may have been the world’s first weathervane. It was also, clearly, beautiful. Standing at 120 metres tall (until its collapse, as a result of earthquakes, in the Middle Ages), the lighthouse played with a sequence of geometrical shapes: oblong, circular and square. It was decorated with the same pink granite that lined Khufu’s burial chamber in the Great Pyramid. Some of these blocks are still in situ, re-used as door frames and as thresholds in the fort of Qaitbey, which now swamps the lighthouse’s footprint. Lucian (one of my favourite authors of antiquity) was inspired by a hidden inscription on the Pharos Lighthouse, left by its architect, Sostratus of Knidos, as an allegory for the writing of history itself. The visible inscription praised the pharaohs who had commissioned the Pharos. But when the gypsum covering was washed away, we are told that underneath was a dedication commemorating Sostratus’s hope for the safety of sailors. As Lucian wrote: “History should be written in that spirit, with truthfulness and an eye to future expectations rather than with adulation and a view to the pleasure of present praise.” <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/02/GettyImages-89164073web-93219a5.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="This block from the lighthouse would originally have been decorated in a glowing pink colour. (Photo by DEA / C. SAPPA/De Agostini via Getty Images)" title="This block from the lighthouse would originally have been decorated in a glowing pink colour. (Photo by DEA / C. SAPPA/De Agostini via Getty Images)" /> In an 1,800-year-old work of science fiction (also written by Lucian), an ancient astronaut staring down from the Moon recognises Earth, thanks to a sighting of the Lighthouse of Alexandria and the Colossus of Rhodes. Today, courtesy of satellite imagery, we really can look down on Earth from space. But even though we’d only be able to see one of the Seven Ancient Wonders standing in situ, their power to fire our intellect and capture our imaginations still burns disproportionately bright. This article was first published in the February 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine. You can listen to Bettany Hughes explore the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World in a this podcast episode. Bettany is the presenter of a new three-part docuseries Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The first episode airs on Channel 5 at 6.30pm on 1 August 2025. The series will explore the history and significance of the ancient wonders, combining archaeological access, new research, and digital reconstructions.
“Africans have been starved of historical figures from their own lands that they can look up to”: Paula Akpan on female African leaders
Paula Akpan speaks to Danny Bird about powerful African woman leaders and the complexities of interrogating historical narratives, colonial biases and these women’s own flaws
Danny Bird: At the heart of your book are a dozen African women, many of whom held immense power and high social standing. Who were they, and when did they live? Paula Akpan: I’ve traced the lives of 12 formidable women over the past millennium. The earliest was Princess Mọrèmí of Offa, who rose to rule in Ilé-Ifẹ`, in what’s now Nigeria, in the 12th century. From there, we journey through time and across regions, weaving together stories of power, resistance and legacy. Another key figure is the 17th-century Queen Njinga of Ndongo and Matamba – territories today in northern Angola. A master strategist and diplomatic force, they blurred gender conventions: they insisted on being addressed as both king and queen, asserting their sovereignty in a male-dominated world. We also encounter Ranavalona I of the kingdom of Imerina, encompassing much of the island of Madagascar. History remembers her as a fearsome ruler vilified even by her own people, largely due to her aggressive stand against Christianity and European imperialism – policies that reportedly resulted in the population of her realm plummeting by half during her reign in the 19th century. Yet the narrative is not solely about feared rulers. Other women are revered as icons of resistance: Nana Yaa Asantewaa of present-day Ghana, for example, who led the people of the ancient Asante town of Edweso in defiance of British colonisers. Her fight to protect the sacred Golden Stool, a symbol of Asante sovereignty, remains a powerful moment in the anti-colonial struggle. These stories are as varied as the women themselves. Some are celebrated today as symbols of strength and inspiration; others have been pushed to the margins of collective memory, their legacies forgotten or deliberately erased. Ririkumutima of Burundi, for instance, played a pivotal role in shaping key treaties in the early 20th century, yet her childhood home was demolished last century and her story was largely scrubbed from ‘official’ history. What drew you to these women? I aimed to conduct in-depth research into specific rulers, ensuring geographical breadth across the continent, while also challenging some of the dominant narratives. Figures such as Nana Yaa Asantewaa are often portrayed as entirely selfless, while the Modjadjis – the Rain Queens of the Balobedu people in South Africa – are shrouded in mystery. I wanted to interrogate these portrayals alongside lesser-known rulers I discovered during my research. It was also essential that the book not be written solely from London, drawing only on archives or institutions such as SOAS [School of Oriental and African Studies]. My historical work has always aimed to be community-centred. I believe that those whose lives and legacies I’m exploring should be part of the process. It should be a dialogue – a shared conversation. This is especially important in African history, where there’s a long and harmful legacy of colonial anthropologists and explorers declaring expertise on places they had never visited. I was determined not to replicate that approach. If you’re writing a focused history of a place, it should be expected that you visit the sites you’re referencing. For instance, in exploring Njinga – their gender expression as well as their political role – I visited a queer organisation in Angola. Speaking with its members gave me insights into how they connect with a historical figure who understood gender in plural terms, yet is often remembered simply as a queen. I didn’t want to create a neat, linear history. I wanted it to reflect the complexity and richness of the narratives I encountered. That meant engaging with all kinds of voices – historians, storytellers, even taxi drivers – whose everyday recollections and interpretations added depth to the legacies of these rulers. Read more | The history of Africa: why we need to look much deeper than slavery and colonisation How are these women remembered by present-day Africans? Their legacies are far-reaching. But it’s not just about individual rulers; as readers move through the book, I hope they also see it as a broader history of colonisation – western, certainly, but also involving the Ottoman empire. Africans on the continent and, to a lesser extent, those in the diaspora are still grappling with the consequences of colonisation and the decisions made in that Berlin conference room in 1884–85: the division of Africa, the scramble for territory, and the arbitrary borders drawn. These borders created or reinforced ethnic divisions. Identity cards were introduced in places such as Rwanda and Burundi, and the genocides that followed were, in part, consequences of colonial hierarchies. That’s not to say that such divisions didn’t exist before, but they were exacerbated by colonial powers such as Belgium. You can trace hatred and violence – between Hutu and Tutsi, for example – back to colonisation and to what many rulers in the book were trying to resist through confrontation, diplomacy or strategic retreat. Returning to the women themselves, as I mentioned earlier, many of these rulers have been forgotten or marginalised. Consider the Dahomey woman warriors: an all-woman force who fought seasoned armies. In recent years, they’ve gained renewed attention through films such as Black Panther (2018) and The Woman King (2022). Yet many historical documents are ambiguous about whether Queen Hangbé, who founded the Agoodojıˇè regiment, even existed. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/2HP7K1Y-CMYK-285f0f5.jpg" width="2808" height="1871" alt="A black and white photo shows a group of warrior women wearing headdresses and carrying spears" title="Women warriors of Dahomey (now part of Benin), pictured at the turn of the 20th century. During the 18th and 19th centuries, these troops – dubbed ‘Amazons’ by Europeans – faced seasoned armies (Image by Alamy)" /> When I visited the Royal Palaces of Abomey in Benin and spoke to local historians, though, there was no doubt. Hangbé was erased from official history because she was a woman, and her reign from 1708 to 1711 was omitted for that reason. Had I relied solely on colonial sources, I’d have found scholars debating whether she was mythical. But I met the current reigning Queen Tassi Hangbé, a direct descendant who still represents her lineage. The gap between what is accepted in the west and what is known locally is striking. As a member of the African diaspora, I cannot speak for continental Africans, nor would I presume to. But from what I’ve been told, there are deep silences around these histories. One Rwandan interviewee told me she struggled to find information about a pivotal woman ruler in her country. She also shared that the word ‘feminist’ doesn’t exist in her community as it does in the west. To identify as such is to be seen as ‘uppity’ or a man-hater, and she doesn’t feel safe using the term. For her and for others, it may be empowering to see stories of erased or overlooked women brought into focus. This book is an attempt to critically engage with historical sources while contributing to the growing canon around these rulers. You state that your book is fundamentally about power. Can you elaborate on that point? The power that African rulers wielded is often overlooked, and understandings of both pre-colonial and post-colonial Africa are frequently reductive. Within these narratives, there’s often insufficient analysis of how African elites treated other Africans – particularly the lower classes and those they enslaved. This lack of scrutiny is troubling. I understand the desire to highlight wealth and heroism, especially because so much of African history focuses on suffering – colonisation, displacement and occupation. It makes sense that Africans, both on the continent and in the diaspora, seek to counterbalance that pain with stories of greatness. For example, Mansa Musa, 14th-century ruler of the Mali empire, is frequently cited as one of the wealthiest individuals in history. Emphasising such figures helps assert that Africans were also rulers, also kings. However, this focus can obscure the reality that many African rulers also caused harm. Like rulers elsewhere, they were often self-interested, consolidating power at the expense of others. When considering women and genderqueer figures, the narrative becomes even narrower. Women are often portrayed as selfless mothers, nurturers, life-givers – idealised in educational materials for children. But we must also confront the violence they oversaw. Under rulers including Ranavalona, Mәntәwwab of Ethiopia and others I examine in this book, violent structures were expanded. That, too, is part of African history. We shouldn’t shy away from these truths. To understand these figures fully, we must take in the whole picture. Rather than turning them into paragons, we should look at their actions and how they presented themselves, and engage with them honestly. Africa is vast, diverse and complex. Have certain regions dominated historical narratives over others? Some regions are clearly dominant in popular narratives. Ghana – the former Gold Coast and Asante territories – features heavily. Many of my Ghanaian friends appreciated that I included Nana Yaa Asantewaa. Similarly, figures such as Shaka Zulu from South Africa are often highlighted. I believe this is partly shaped by our world view. The Gold Coast and much of South Africa were occupied by the British, who imposed English across these regions. This colonial lens has influenced which African regions are viewed as most prominent – often those where English was imposed. There’s also significant emphasis on the pyramids and ancient Egyptian history. Over time, this positioned Egypt as the pinnacle of African civilisation, or at least its primary representative. Early explorers and anthropologists didn’t see similar structures elsewhere on the continent, reinforcing this perception. Colourism plays a role, too. Physical features and skin tone influenced how palatable certain groups were to colonisers. In Rwanda and Burundi, for example, the Belgians favoured the Tutsis, describing them as having ‘Ethiopianoid’ features such as long fingers, narrow noses and a tall stature. The Hutus, by contrast, were perceived as shorter and broader. These arbitrary distinctions fed racist ideas about who was ‘fit to rule’. The Belgians reinforced a hierarchy that aligned physical features with intelligence, which was typical of pseudoscientific thinking of the time. This has influenced which African histories and leaders are spotlighted. Colonial chroniclers also played a part. They dramatised accounts of figures including Shaka Zulu, filling them with gory details, and wrote fantastical tales about rulers such as Ranavalona, who was said to have tried to build enormous scissors to cut enemies in half. There was a thirst for sensational stories about distant, ‘uncivilised’ societies that captivated western audiences. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2025/06/WHA1810460-2-cmyk-acfd4bb.jpg" width="3827" height="2549" alt="A woman in a long red dress and crown stands for a portrait, facing to the left" title="Western audiences were captivated by descriptions of Ranavalona I, sovereign of the Kingdom of Madagascar, cutting her enemies in half with enormous scissors (Image by TopFoto)" /> At the core of this issue is the question: what do people imagine that precolonial African societies looked like? That’s perhapsnwhere the conversation should begin. What do historians think that these peoples were doing before colonisation, or during the occupation by Europeans? Colonisers often painted Africa as empty or undeveloped. They claimed that the land wasn’t being used, that its people weren’t harnessing resources, and that colonial intervention was necessary to bring civilisation, introducing concepts such as tenancy, property rights and the nuclear family. Missionaries often arrived with wives and children as models for what they believed African people should aspire to. Something you also ponder in the book is the ‘what if’ aspect of Africa’s history, engaging with a concept called ‘critical fabulation’. What is that? Critical fabulation originates from the work of Saidiya Hartman, a distinguished scholar who doesn’t strictly describe herself as a historian. Her work bridges history and narrative, examining source materials, often archival, and challenging them to imagine alternative possibilities. This isn’t about inventing freely, but a radical act of interpretation. Think about the fact that many African enslaved people were documented merely as cargo, listed alongside gold or mahogany yet considered of lesser value. The presence of enslaved Africans is often traceable only faintly through ship logs or fragments, highlighting their systematic erasure. Critical fabulation begins with the premise that the archive itself is a site of violence. This approach acknowledges that archivists and historians bring their own biases to the material they curate. It offers counter-histories produced using the same or similar sources – not necessarily to ‘humanise’ or ‘give voice’, but to challenge what is already accepted as fact, what is already deemed unquestionable. Read more | Zeinab Badawi on writing the history of a whole continent | “It is important to look at African history through the lens of African people themselves” In my introduction, I reference the Cape Coast incident of 1721 [in which enslaved Africans overpowered the crew on a slave ship en route to the Americas]. Colonial officials chose to present a version of those events that would be more palatable to their audience, because the idea that 17 enslaved African men and boys could escape and overpower seven white men was inconceivable – it disrupted the assumed order of their society. Recognising that colonial sources often serve specific agendas, critical fabulation and the pursuit of counter-histories confront the violence in these records and offer both alternatives and correctives. If you could have a conversation with one of these historical figures, who would it be, and why? I think I’d really like to speak to Ranavalona I. I’m fascinated by her as a ruler of Imerina who was so determined to preserve her island and its way of life against French and British colonisers that she was willing to purge any trace of foreign influence, including Christianity. That kind of single-mindedness – ultimately to her own detriment – is something I struggle to fully comprehend. And yet, despite her fierce commitment to self-sufficiency and resistance, Madagascar was colonised anyway. I’d be curious to know how she would perceive her legacy today. When I visited Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, I spoke to local Malagasy people about Ranavalona. Many either disliked her, were indifferent to her or hadn’t heard of her. Some genuinely hated what she represented. One interviewee described her as a feminist. I’m not sure I’d use that term myself, but I understand the sentiment, seeing her as a powerful woman figure. But that’s where things gets complicated with woman African rulers. Being a woman – and an African woman – doesn’t automatically make someone a positive figure. We also have to acknowledge the harm some of them caused. At the same time, many Africans have been starved of historical figures from their own lands that they can look up to. In the ongoing context of colonisation and neo-colonialism, someone like Ranavalona, who stood firm, can be a galvanising symbol, especially as a woman. It’s complex. I’d be deeply curious to know if she had any regrets. Would she have done things differently, knowing that Madagascar would be colonised regardless? Would she still have gone to such extremes, knowing that her son would quickly undo all she built after her death? How would that have affected her? She’d definitely be high on my list. Read more | Mavia of Tanukh: the warrior queen of Arabia What are some of the biggest misconceptions about African leadership, especially by women, that you aim to challenge in your book? I didn’t undertake the project with a deliberate approach, but being a black African lesbian woman brings a particular lens to how I engage with history. For example, I was especially interested in exploring Njinga’s gender, the sexualities of the Agoodojıˇè and how they engaged with women in the palace – be they sex workers, companions, or each other. This perspective allows me to highlight aspects that might be overlooked by other historians. Many scholars have dismissed the possibility that the Agoodojıˇè engaged sexually with one another, which reflects a broader resistance to recognising queerness in historical narratives. That connects to how I read Njinga, and my aim to honour the plurality of their identity. It wasn’t about setting out to challenge the dominant narrative; I naturally gravitate towards certain critical approaches, and that inevitably shapes my work. A key part of the book involved examining colonial scholars who are often quoted uncritically. Too often, we fail to interrogate the vested interests behind colonial source material. I found that many of these commentators – those critical of figures including Ranavalona and other African rulers – often held colonial administrative positions in places such as Senegal or Madagascar. Their perspectives weren’t neutral; they were shaped by colonial power and bias. All of this ties in with the lens through which I view history. Every historian brings subjectivity to their work, whether they admit it or not. The idea of objectivity is a myth. Embracing that subjectivity has allowed me to sharpen my critiques and deepen my research. Paula Akpan is a journalist, historian and public speaker whose work focuses on blackness, queerness, social politics and our relationship with technology This article was first published in the June 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
Ptolemy XII: Cleopatra's father from hell
The tragic fate of Cleopatra has long overshadowed her predecessor, Ptolemy XII. But, as Diana T Nikolova explains, it’s impossible to understand the daughter’s downfall without exploring the father’s hapless reign.
It's one of the most famous episodes in all of ancient history. Cleopatra VII, Egypt’s formidable queen, ends her life and creates a legend. Following the suicide of her lover, Mark Antony – and with Octavian’s armies closing in – she concludes she has nothing more to give and succumbs to the poison. For all the drama surrounding her final moments, Cleopatra’s demise was, in reality, an ignominious one. When she killed herself in 30 BC, Egypt was in dire economic straits, its wealth pillaged, its people shocked and confused. The future of this once extraordinarily powerful kingdom lay in subjugation. Read more | Cleopatra, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony: how the last pharaoh's love affairs shaped Ancient Egypt's fate So how had it come to this? How did Egypt, with all its material riches and even richer cultural heritage, arrive at a point where it was subsumed into the Roman empire? One answer to these questions lies in the legacy of Cleopatra’s father, Ptolemy XII, a man who sought to shore up his position by funnelling funds to Rome’s politicians, but in so doing bankrupted his country and alienated his own elite. Ptolemy is not a man who comes down through the years with much credit. The Greek geographer, philosopher and historian Strabo, writing in Geographica, dismissed Ptolemy as one of the worst of the dozen Egyptian rulers to bear this name. Not only did Ptolemy descend from a line “corrupted by luxurious living” but he was a man of “general licentiousness”. A telling detail is that Ptolemy’s nickname, ‘Auletes’, literally meant ‘flute player’ and reflected his eccentric habit of joining the musicians in Dionysian revels. The philosopher and lawyer Cicero was equally damning in his pithy assessment, dismissing Ptolemy as a man lacking “any royal disposition”. Parlous position So that’s it then. Case closed. Ptolemy XII was a terrible ruler whose daughter never stood a chance. And yet his hapless reign invites a further question. Given the parlous position of his kingdom when he assumed power, did he stand any better chance of consolidating his rule than his famous offspring? To answer this question more fully, we first need to jump back three centuries to the death of Alexander the Great in June 323 BC. Over the preceding decade, Alexander had constructed the greatest empire the world had yet seen, one that took in swathes of south-east Europe, western Asia and north Africa. The great empire-builder’s sudden demise was an Earth-shattering event, and it triggered four decades of war as his generals fought one another for control of his vast territories. Egypt, as one of the jewels in Alexander’s crown, found itself sucked into the spiral of conflict – and, when the dust finally settled, one man was left standing: a Macedonian Greek called Ptolemy Lagus. He had already earned himself a place in history by intercepting Alexander’s funerary cortège as it made its way across the Syrian desert and ordering his burial in the ancient Egyptian capital of Memphis. Then, in 305/304 BC, he made history once again by having himself crowned king of Egypt. Ptolemy’s coronation – as Ptolemy I Soter (the Saviour) – was a true turning point in the story of Egypt, for he was the founder of the ancient kingdom’s last dynasty, one that would endure until Cleopatra’s suicide 275 years later. Read more | The seven Cleopatras who shaped the ancient world The Ptolemaic Dynasty, as this royal house is known, differed from anything that had before ruled Egypt. For a start, its rulers were Greek, skilfully blending their Hellenistic cultural heritage with the traditions and iconography of their Egyptian predecessors (while adopting the pharaohs’ alleged habit of marrying their sisters). Yet there was another factor that distinguished the Ptolemaic era from what had gone before: and that was that its leaders would have to contend with the inexorable rise of Rome. The Ptolemies had the misfortune to rule in a period when the Roman Republic was slowly but surely establishing itself as the coming force in the Mediterranean world. At first, this was nothing more than a background distraction, and the early Ptolemies were able to go about their business (which often involved vicious infighting between rival claimants to the throne) relatively unhindered. However, as time advanced – and by the dawn of the first century BC in particular – Rome was beginning to exert an uncomfortable squeeze on its neighbour south of the Mediterranean. This became all too evident during a brutal civil war between two scions of the dynasty – Ptolemy IX and his younger brother Ptolemy X – in the early 80s BC. As that conflict raged, Ptolemy X offended the people of Alexandria so deeply that they expelled him from the country. In a bid to regain his throne, Ptolemy X took out a large loan from the Roman Republic and, as collateral, left Egypt to the Roman state if he was to die without an heir. Fortunately, he had a son and so the kingdom retained its independence. Yet the die of Roman meddling in Egyptian affairs had well and truly been cast. Things did not get any better under Ptolemy X’s son and heir, Ptolemy XI. This latest ruler married his cousin, stepmother and possible half-sister, Berenice III – and then murdered her just 19 days later. Unfortunately for Ptolemy XI, Berenice was highly popular with the people of Alexandria – and, in their rage at his crimes, they lynched him. And so, when Ptolemy XII assumed the throne in 80 BC, he found himself in possession of a weak and chaotic kingdom – one that was increasingly beholden to the powerbrokers in Rome. In that respect, you could say he was dealt a bad hand. It’s just that – in the eyes of the likes of Cicero and Strabo – he played that hand very badly indeed. Roman meddling In the early years of Ptolemy XII’s reign, it seems Rome was satisfied with the continuation of Ptolemaic rule. The Roman senate certainly did not press the claim to Egypt they had because of Ptolemy X’s unwise will. Things began to change in 65 BC, when Marcus Licinius Crassus, one of the most powerful men in Rome, proposed the annexation of Egypt as a Roman province. Luckily for Ptolemy XII, the Roman senate rejected the idea. The fact the proposal was made at all, however, illustrates the dangers to Egyptian independence at a time when Roman politicians were increasingly seeing the annexation of Egypt as a good opportunity for career advancement. Ptolemy XII was forced to take immediate action to keep his throne and protect the sovereignty of Egypt. War with the powerful Roman Republic was not an option, so he instead embarked on a campaign of bribery. The goal of this campaign was for Ptolemy XII to be recognised as king by Rome – and, pursuing this aim, he bribed Roman officials from different political parties. Ptolemy XII tried to establish a particularly strong relationship with the leading general and statesman Pompey. The Egyptian king even went as far as sending Pompey a heavy gold crown. Bribing the Roman elite did not come cheap and Ptolemy XII had to raise taxes, which resulted in resistance within Egypt. The hostility of the Egyptian population to their king was so great that Ptolemy was forced to reach out to Pompey in 63 BC and request his assistance in putting down a rebellion within Egypt. Despite the gradually worsening situation in Egypt, Ptolemy XII kept sending equipment to the army of Pompey, although the Roman general refused to help with the rebellion in return. This in turn left Ptolemy XII with no other choice but to borrow even more money from Roman lenders, chief among them the powerful banker Gaius Rabirius Postumus. The political situation in Egypt only kept worsening as heavy taxation was met with strikes. It was clear that Ptolemy XII had to do something – and quickly. So, the Egyptian ruler changed ‘favourites’ and, instead of fixing his primary hopes on Pompey, he promised the exorbitant sum of 6,000 talents (roughly the entire annual revenue of Egypt) to both Pompey and a man with whom the kingdom of Egypt would become all too familiar in the coming decades: Julius Caesar. In the short term at least, this turned out to be the right move. In 59 BC, during his first consulship, Caesar ensured the Roman senate confirmed Ptolemy XII as Egypt’s king. Bribes and exile But Ptolemy’s troubles were far from over. Rome’s recognition did little to aid the monarch in dealing with the strained political situation within his own domain. While the Romans did not annex Egypt, they did seize Cyprus. As monarch of the island, Ptolemy XII’s dishonoured half-brother, also called Ptolemy, killed himself with poison. The Alexandrian elite, who had placed the half-brother on the Cypriot throne in the first place, viewed the annexation as a massive failure by Ptolemy XII. With the country left penniless by the vast bribes paid to Rome, the Egyptian court forced their monarch to leave Egypt in 58 BC. Ptolemy XII headed for Rome and, at some point in 57 BC, he was received at Pompey’s villa in the Alban hills. The disgraced Egyptian king entered exile in the company of his daughter, 11-year-old Cleopatra VII. Ptolemy XII’s dreams of being the powerful leader of a dynamic independent Egypt were in disarray. And things got even worse when, in his absence, his other daughter, Berenice IV, took control of the throne with her mother, Cleopatra VI. This joint reign did not last long as Cleopatra VI died before the end of 57 BC. Fearing that the Romans would contest the new Egyptian ruler, Berenice IV was encouraged to marry. In the spring of 56 BC, she wed a nobleman named Archelaos. Although Ptolemy XII had found an ally in his host, Pompey, while in Rome, the possible reinstatement of the Egyptian king had become a complicated political matter. The issue was to be decided on whether the Roman senate believed Ptolemy could pay his debts to Roman creditors. Berenice IV and Archelaos decided not to stand by idly while this was debated, but instead sent an embassy comprised of a hundred men headed by the Alexandrian philosopher Dion. This embassy was to argue to the Roman senate that Berenice and Archelaos were the rightful rulers of Egypt and, moreover, that Ptolemy XII was not able to repay his loans. It was now that Ptolemy showed his true colours and sent hired assassins to kill the embassy en route to Rome. Most died in the Roman port city of Puteoli, while those who managed to make it to the imperial capital were murdered there instead. The philosopher Dion was poisoned in his host’s home. A senate investigation into these murders was planned, but as Ptolemy XII had received money from Roman bankers in 57 BC, and an investigation represented a huge risk to recovering these loans, it never occurred. The matter was hushed up as much as possible. From Alexander to Cleopatra: A timeline of the Ptolemies 323 BC Alexander the Great (right) dies suddenly in Babylon, sparking a 40-year war for the spoils of his vast empire, including Egypt. 305/304 BC The Macedonian Greek general Ptolemy Lagus is crowned king of Egypt, the first monarch of the Ptolemaic Dynasty. 88 BC During a civil war with his brother, Ptolemy X takes out a large loan from Rome and promises Egypt to the Roman Republic if he dies without an heir. 80 BC Ptolemy XI marries Berenice III, who also happens to be his cousin, his stepmother and his possible half-sister. He murders his new wife just 19 days later – a crime for which he is lynched by his enraged subjects. 80 BC Ptolemy XII ascends the throne of Egypt. In an attempt to shore up his position, he will later send bribes to the Roman general Pompey – and Julius Caesar. 58 BC Ptolemy XII flees to Rome with his daughter Cleopatra after being forced into exile. The following year he is received at Pompey’s villa. 55 BC Ptolemy XII returns to Egypt and defeats the forces of his daughter Berenice IV and Archelaos (who had usurped his throne). 52 BC Ptolemy XII makes his daughter and oldest surviving child, Cleopatra, his co-regent. He dies the following year. 30 BC As Octavian’s armies close in, Cleopatra kills herself, probably with poison, bringing a close to the Ptolemaic dynasty. The final battle The final resolution of the ‘Egyptian question’ came in 55 BC, when Ptolemy issued yet another series of bribes to his Roman backers. These resulted in Aulus Gabinius, the proconsul of Syria, throwing his weight behind Ptolemy’s campaign to win back the Egyptian throne. After marching through Palestine, Ptolemy’s Roman-backed army headed for Alexandria. In front of the city, the forces of Berenice IV and Archelaos were routed. Mark Antony, who oversaw the Roman cavalry, rescued the body of Archelaos after he was killed in the battle, thus ensuring him a proper royal burial. Cleopatra VII, then 14 years old, travelled into Egypt with the Roman force, and Mark Antony would later say this was when he fell in love with her. Back on the Egyptian throne, Ptolemy XII wasted little time in consolidating his power and had Berenice IV and many of her sup- porters murdered. Desperate to pay his debts, he placed one of his most prominent Roman supporters, the banker Rabirius Postumus, in charge of the finances of Egypt. The Roman’s attempts to recover the money that Ptolemy had borrowed were so aggressive that the Egyptian king had to place him under special protection to shield him from angry Alexandrians. Rabirius Postumus was then allowed to escape from Egypt back to Rome. Who knows where Ptolemy XII might have turned next for financial help, but he was nearing the end of his life and seems at least to have tried to prepare his country for the future. At some point during 52 BC, he made his daughter and oldest surviving child, Cleopatra VII, co-regent. He also made a will stipulating that, in keeping with tradition, she was to rule with her eldest brother, Ptolemy XIII, by her side. The Egyptian king tasked Rome with making sure the terms of his will were carried out. Read more | Cleopatra: what is the real legacy of the last pharaoh? At the start of 51 BC, Ptolemy XII died. His bribes had managed to secure Egypt’s autonomy, but the economy of the country was shattered, the island of Cyprus was lost and Rome now exerted enormous influence over Egypt. His daughter inherited a country that was bankrupt and heavily dependent on the whims of Roman generals and politicians. And it was Cleopatra’s continued involvement with Rome that would eventually be her undoing. Dr Diana T Nikolova is the collections access officer at the Garstang Museum of Archaeology, part of the University of Liverpool. This article was first published in the Christmas 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
The history of Africa: why we need to look much deeper than slavery and colonisation
Slavery, exploitation and racism. These tragedies have long dominated histories of Africa. But there’s another way to tell this story, argues Luke Pepera. And it’s one that puts Africans right at the centre of their continent’s extraordinarily rich and vibrant past
In 1414, in the Chinese city of Nanjing, a giraffe caused a stir. Amid a crowd of shocked, noble spectators, an official, leading the creature via a rope tied round its face, presented it to China’s Yongle emperor. His officials said it was a qilin – an auspicious unicorn – which his sage governance had made appear. This giraffe was a gift from the sultan of Bengal. But it had originally come from Africa – specifically, the city-state of Malindi in today’s Kenya. In 1415, ambassadors from Malindi and Mogadishu sailed to China. In a special ceremony, the Malindi ambassadors gifted the Yongle emperor another giraffe. Delighted at having received his second qilin, the Yongle emperor gave an order. His senior eunuch, Zheng He, whom he’d charged with overseeing the construction of a 200-strong fleet of treasure ships, was to sail to Malindi to obtain more giraffes and other goods. With the holds of his ships full of treasures, including gold, silver, silk and ceramics, Zheng He set sail for Malindi in 1417. He exchanged what he had for goods including live animals such as leopards and zebras, frankincense and ivory. Sometime between then and 1423, Malindi’s king himself sailed to China to meet the Yongle emperor in Nanjing. He made it as far as Fujian, a province in south-eastern China, where he died, seemingly succumbing to illness. He was buried in Fujian, and the Yongle emperor decreed that his grave be given a small sacrifice every year. This is an intriguing story. But for Africa, it’s not extraordinary. For at least 2,000 years, African civilisations have been plugged into international trade networks. Third-century AD Nubia (now northern Sudan and southern Egypt) exported goods including gold, ivory and ostrich feathers to Rome and Yemen. Along Africa’s eastern coast, from northern Somalia to southern Tanzania, east African merchants exchanged similar goods for date syrup from Persian traders, swords from Yemenis and carnelian beads from Indians. Chinese pottery and Indian beads have been found as far inland as Great Zimbabwe – a stone city located in southern Zimbabwe that thrived between about 1100 and 1500 AD. Great Zimbabwe’s residents obtained these treasures from east African merchants in exchange for gold, which was plentiful around Great Zimbabwe. Chinese silk also made it as far west as Mali, whose emperors had it woven into robes. One-dimensional view Given historical African societies’ economic, political and cultural importance, why is so little of their history generally known? Quite simply, this is because of a tendency to focus on narratives of slavery, colonisation, victimisation and dominance. In the UK, when we tell stories about African peoples or their history, either in the classroom or in documentaries, books, films and TV series, we cover largely the events of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism. Read more | The big question: Is Africa a prisoner of its past? We talk and tell stories about European ‘discovery’ of the Americas, the Atlantic triangle, abolition, anti-African racism, European presence in Africa, colonial wars and the British empire. In all of these narratives, the African is inevitably presented as a victim of superior European technology, economic might and military prowess. This, then, becomes our view of the African throughout history, and, arguably, even our view of Africans today. We assume that this relationship between Europe and Africa has always been the natural order of things, and we do little either to scrutinise, interrogate or contradict this view. The truth is, our conversations about African history and culture lack nuance. As far as the eras of the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism are concerned, we don’t question enough how and why they happened. To our minds, it is a simple story of dominance – European over African. We think that when the Europeans arrived in Africa, they almost immediately subdued its societies, imposed their rules and regulations and captured the poor, unwitting Africans whom they stuffed in slave ships and shipped off to the Americas. We think that in this scenario Africans had only two options: capitulate and trade slaves willingly or be destroyed. We don’t consider for a moment African agency in these turning points in world history. If we dug a little bit deeper into the history of these events to look at things from the African perspective, we would see that in many places the scenario I’ve sketched out here wasn’t what necessarily happened. Read more | 7 key questions about the transatlantic slave trade – answered A war on slavery Take 18th-century Dahomey (now Benin) and arguably its best king, Agaja, as an example. Born in c1673, Agaja was crowned in 1708. From the records we have of him, including those of an English Royal African Company agent called Bulfinch Lambe (who was forced to live with Agaja for three years), we know that Agaja was handsome, majestic, intelligent and an incomparable strategist and military commander. In 1724 and 1727, Agaja invaded the nearby kingdoms of Allada and Whydah respectively. At the time, both of these kingdoms were the region’s premier slave traders. Since the late 17th century, the Europeans in the region, including the Dutch, Portuguese, English and French, had had their slaving headquarters in one or both of these kingdoms. Annually, both Whydah and Allada ‘exported’ close to 20,000 enslaved Africans, mostly prisoners of war, those who’d committed crimes or broken serious taboos. Some historians, such as Archibald Dalzel, a late 18th-century historian and also a slave trader who had spent significant time in both Whydah and Dahomey, argued that Agaja invaded Whydah and Allada because he wanted to take over their slave-trading infrastructures. However, Agaja immediately went about dismantling these structures, destroying ports, forts and castles almost with glee. He also showed little interest in preserving good relationships with the Europeans in Allada and Whydah. In fact, he took about 40 of them prisoner. Read more | Africa’s medieval golden age When he consolidated his control over Allada and Whydah, Agaja also did nothing to repair the slave-trading infrastructures he’d destroyed. Instead, he ordered his soldiers to stop slave-traders from bringing enslaved people to the coast. He also jailed Dahomeans who tried to sell enslaved people. When Europeans made to leave Allada and Whydah for kingdoms whose rulers were more hospitable to the idea of selling enslaved people, Agaja blocked them. The Europeans complained that trade dropped off a cliff and that they couldn’t see it returning to its previous levels as long as Agaja remained in power. Read more | The warrior ‘Amazons’ of Dahomey What’s more, any difficulty Agaja faced in holding on to power came not from Europeans, but largely from other great African kingdoms who, for one reason or another, disagreed with his policies. The rulers of Oyo – a city-state of the Yoruba people in what’s now Nigeria – felt that, in conquering neighbouring kingdoms, Agaja had contravened age-old customs that had for centuries governed relations between the coastal west African kingdoms. But stories like Agaja’s, where the African isn’t presented solely as an agency-less victim at the mercy of the Europeans with whom they dealt, are sorely missing from our conception and tellings of African history. Another way in which our understanding of African history lacks nuance is in a poor appreciation for the true breadth and depth of African history and culture. The earliest ancestor in the evolutionary line that produced our species, Homo sapiens, is said to be Sahelanthropus tchadensis (‘Sahel man of Chad’), who lived in around that part of Africa 7 million years ago. Until the emergence of Homo erectus some 5 million years later, early humans lived only in Africa. What’s crucial to remember is that Sahelanthropus wasn’t the only early human being who inhabited the continent. There were lots of different groups of these hominids that probably migrated back and forth across it, lived in different areas, developed differently and then mixed with others, resulting in the emergence of plenty of new groups. It is largely this deep history, diversity and mixing that means Africans today are some of the most ethnically, culturally and racially diverse peoples on Earth. Africans speak around a third of the world’s 7,000 languages. Africa boasts the largest language group in the world – Niger-Congo – which contains around 1,500 languages spoken by more than 300 million people. Africa also boasts one of the oldest language groups in the world – Khoisan – whose 35 languages emerged from one that’s said to have been spoken as far back as 20,000 years ago. A misunderstanding of the depth and complexity of African cultures is often what led 19th-century European anthropologists to dismiss certain aspects of these cultures as nonsensical or unnecessary. One such aspect that comes to mind is witchcraft. Early European anthropologists saw it largely as a universal, superstitious belief system. They mostly didn’t account for the differences in African peoples’ witchcraft beliefs, nor could they conceive of the practical purposes these beliefs served. For example, in the case of the Azande people of what’s now the Democratic Republic of the Congo and South Sudan, witchcraft was about diffusing tensions and restoring social harmony. Read more | 5 things you (probably) didn’t know about medieval West Africa The Azande believed that you bewitched someone by feeling negatively towards them. In other words, if a Zande (the singular of Azande) was angry, hateful or resentful towards another person, they bewitched that person, causing them to suffer some kind of misfortune (falling ill, say). Therefore, when a Zande suffered a misfortune, they thought of someone with whom they had a problem. They then confronted that person, garnered sympathy by explaining what they’d been going through and asked for reconciliation. Customarily, the latter complied, and social harmony was restored. Complex cultures Another aspect that comes to mind is African female leadership. To many European observers, this represented the inverse of their societies – one in which men dominated institutions and the public sphere, whereas women were often relegated to second-class citizens. In short, these African societies represented to them Amazonia. But this wasn’t really the case. In many female-led African societies, there was actually a balance of power between men and women. From about 25 to 21 BC, the Nubians and the Romans (the latter under their first emperor, Augustus Caesar) were at war. Rome had conquered Egypt and northern Nubia. When the northern Nubians rebelled, their king, Teriteqas, and queen, Amanirenas, lent them the support of their royal army. In Nubia, the king didn’t have absolute authority. In various ways, he shared this authority with his mother (the queen mother) and his wife. The Nubians believed that duality and balance was the foundation of success in any sphere. This included in rulership, which required both male and female energies to function successfully. It was not unusual then that when Teriteqas died in one of this war’s early conflicts, Amanirenas succeeded him (their young son, Akinidad, was not yet elected king). She sacked Roman Egyptian cities, took prisoners and looted statues of Augustus, securing a victory for the Nubians and a favourable peace treaty from Augustus himself. She is the best known of the ‘Kandakes’, Nubian royal women who ruled Meröe (the last Nubian kingdom) nearly absolutely. Gaps in the story These stories represent just a fraction of the breadth, depth and nuance of African peoples’ history and cultures. If we not only want to understand truly the African past but also fill in a significant gap in the story of our species, we need to consider the African perspective even when it comes to well-trodden areas of history like the transatlantic slave trade and colonialism. We need to understand and present Africans and their history more accurately. Africans haven’t historically been only the enslaved or the conquered. We’ve been emperors, sculptors, merchants, architects and scholars. We’ve navigated our continent and the globe. We’ve created world-class architecture and art. We’ve innovated, leading academic, governmental and industrial institutions. This is some of the African history we need to see in books, documentaries, films and TV series. If we fail to explore this history, we do a disservice not just to Africans, but to peoples of other societies who otherwise come away with a woefully erroneous understanding of the peoples that have inhabited our world the longest. Luke Pepera is a Ghanaian-born writer, broadcaster, historian and anthropologist. He is the author of Motherland: A Journey Through 500,000 Years of African History, Cultures and Identity (W&N, 2025) This article was first published in the February 2025 issue of BBC History Magazine
5 things you (probably) didn’t know about medieval West Africa
From super rich rulers and complex belief systems to an Iron Age brought about by pot making, OO Sangoyomi reveals surprising facts from the history of West Africa
It is uncommon to see West African histories in mainstream media, and even more unlikely to come across West African histories from pre-colonial times. This lack of resources makes it all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking that recorded history in Africa began with colonisation. A European explorer in the 19th century even dubbed Africa the “Dark Continent”, implying that this was a vast and undiscovered land just waiting for outsiders to impose civilisation. This could not be further from the truth. The continent has seen countless complex civilisations, with indigenous peoples in West Africa in particular having begun the development of their societies at least as far back as 40,000 years ago. The diversity of West Africa – and the continent in general – makes it impossible to give a generalised history without watering down many unique cultures and their stories. But scratch the surface of this region in medieval times and you’ll find a rich history – literally. Here are five fascinating facts about medieval West Africa… 1. Medieval West Africa was a global trading hub Between the eighth and 16th centuries, West Africa experienced a dynamic period of cultural, intellectual and economic growth. This was, in large part, thanks to the success of the extensive Trans-Saharan trade routes. Crossing over the vast Sahara Desert, these routes connected the Mediterranean with the West African savannah, which enabled sub-Saharan Africa to trade its much-coveted metals, ivory and salt. More than economic gain, they also allowed people to escape conflict, and, in the process, spread customs, traditions and languages. Read more about Africa’s medieval golden age This period was typified by a passionate exchange of knowledge. The region’s emphasis on education was seen best at Timbuktu: the city, now located in modern-day Mali, was not only a centre of commerce, but of scholarship. In the 14th century, it became the home of the University of Sankore, which is still functioning to this day. The bustling activity along the Trans-Saharan routes helped fuel economies beyond the continent as the network reached places as far as the Middle East, Europe and Asia. But for all the various goods traded, undoubtedly there was one in particular that travellers from distant lands sought the most: gold. 2. The wealthiest man in world history came from West Africa With some of the largest gold mines in the world, West Africa has long attracted gold-seekers from across the globe. According to al-Istakhri, a 10th-century Persian author and traveller: “It is said that no other mine is known to have more abundant or purer gold.” There is no better representation of the abundance of gold in West Africa during this time than the figure of Mansa Musa. The ruler of the Mali Empire in the 14th century may well have been the wealthiest person to have ever lived. When adjusted for today’s inflation, his net worth is estimated to have stood at an eye-watering $400 billion. His wealth was built on the Mali Empire’s production and trade of West African gold, and he was personally responsible for some of its movement across the continent. During a now-legendary trip to Mecca, multiple accounts talk of Mansa Musa bringing so much gold to Cairo and handing it out so generously that he single-handedly crippled Egypt’s economy. It took more than a decade for the country to recover, while West Africa became widely known as the ‘Land of Gold’. View Green Video on the source website 3. Sub-Saharan Africa entered the Iron Age faster than the rest of the world For the majority of the world, the general evolution in metallurgy meant graduating from the Stone Age to the Bronze Age, then to the Iron Age. In the case of sub-Saharan Africa, however, stone was directly followed by iron. This has caused a large amount of debate among historians, many of whom have contended that it was impossible to have the Iron Age without first moving through the Bronze Age. But the fact remains that archaeological evidence points to iron production beginning in sub-Saharan Africa independent of any outside influence, and without the use of copper and bronze. Read more | Normans in Africa: the 12th-century attempt to forge a north-African Norman kingdom There is even the possibility that sub-Saharan Africa was the first part of the world to enter the Iron Age, with some evidence suggesting that iron production began as early as 2000 BC. In West Africa, it is likely that advances in iron were able to come around so quickly due to the historical prominence of pottery. Iron is smelted from the same type of clay used for making pots, meaning that West African people had long been familiar with the material as well as with the high-heat fires needed for the process. Rather than coming to the Iron Age through the adoption of copper and bronze, as seen around the world, West Africa may have made the leap as a by-product of their existing proclivity for pot production. 4. The Yorùbá people have been one of the greatest influences on West Africa Given its important role in the development of West African societies, it is no wonder that the making of iron was often seen as a venerated act. This is especially true for the Yorùbá people, who associated iron with cultural and spiritual power. As masters of the transformative process that is converting iron ore into objects such as weapons, essential tools and prestige items, blacksmiths were believed to be imbued with supernatural powers, and they formed secretive guilds to keep the knowledge among themselves. Reverence for blacksmiths can be seen across many different West African cultures. Read more | Zeinab Badawi on writing the history of a whole continent: “It is important to look at African history through the lens of African people themselves” The Yorùbá people – one of Africa’s largest ethnic groups, spread across modern day Nigeria, Togo and Benin – left their mark on the region in many other ways, too. As one of the oldest occupants of West Africa, they have a long history of conquering neighbouring peoples and absorbing them. Most other West African tribes can point to at least one aspect of their culture that originated with the Yorùbá. Their influence spread beyond the continent as well, particularly in regard to religion. The belief system commonly referred to as ‘Ifá’ was brought to the New World by enslaved peoples in the 19th century, and has since spread throughout the Americas. It even influenced the creation of similar yet distinct religions, such as Santería in Cuba or Candomblé in Brazil. 5. The ‘mythology’ of Ifá is actually rooted in real West African history For all the millions of practitioners of Ifá, many may not know that central figures in the religion were once living people. The deities are called òrìṣàs, and a few have become so popular that they are known by people who do not even practise a variation of the Yorùbá religion, such as Ṣàngó, Ọbàtálá and Odùduwà. These beings are often referred to as being part of ‘Nigerian mythology’. However, many òrìṣàs were real people. Ṣàngó was the fourth ruler of the Ọ̀yọ́ Empire, one of the most prominent kingdoms in Yorùbá history, which saw its peak around the 17th century. Following his death, it was said he became one with the skies as the god of thunder, lightning, and fire. Similarly, Odùduwà was a great military leader in the late-10th century and the founder of the Ife Empire, arguably the most influential civilisation in Yorùbá history. For years, he was at war with a man named Ọbàtálá, and ultimately emerged victorious. Now, both Odùduwà and Ọbàtálá are principal òrìṣàs, with the former regarded as the father of the Yorùbá race and the latter, who is often depicted as subordinate to Odùduwà, possessing a paternal role. The deification of important figures is how the Yorùbá tribe preserves their memory. The analysis of the religion can therefore offer valuable insight into Yorùbá history. That is why referring to the òrìṣàs as ‘mythology’ is reductive and potentially offensive. When it comes to the Yorùbá people, and other West African cultures, it is impossible to study their history without respect for their beliefs and religion. West African histories may have been recorded differently than the conventions of the West, but that does not make them any less real. OO Sangoyomi is the author of Masquerade, a historical novel set in 15th-century West Africa (Solaris Books, 2024)
Is the mummy's curse real? False tales about ancient Egyptian mummies (plus some true ones)
Booby-trapped tombs, eviscerated corpses and terrifying curses – countless ‘facts’ swirl around the burial practices of ancient Egyptians. But which are based in fact, and which are a tissue of lies? Campbell Price unwraps the truth about mummies
FALSE (sort of): the aim of mummification was preservation Generations of schoolchildren have been taught that ancient Egyptians treated the remains of high-status individuals to preserve them for the afterlife. Yet this idea is shaped by modern – which is to say modern western – cultural expectations of what the dead should look like, linked to the fact that the first Europeans to investigate ancient Egyptian mummies in the 18th century were themselves interested in embalming techniques. These researchers were keen to preserve their own dead just as they had been in life – so they looked as if they had simply fallen asleep. Even today, people take comfort from this approach. The ancient Egyptians, however, did not intend their dead to be seen by the living, and were apparently less concerned with preserving the transitory appearance of a human during their lifetime. Rather, they focused on transforming the body into an enduring and perfect effigy resembling one of their immortal gods. Read more | How to make an Egyptian mummy in 6 steps None of the gory details of mummification are depicted in Egyptian art. Instead, our knowledge comes from the Greeks and Romans, both morbidly fascinated by mummies, who left accounts of a practice they thought weird. They describe how mummification dehydrated the body, made it hard and brittle. Once anointed with scented oils, the body resembled the expensive woods from which sculptures of the gods were carved. In ancient texts, Egyptian deities are said explicitly to have flesh of gold, bones of iron or silver and hair of lapis lazuli, a blue semi-precious stone. So those who could afford it might be supplied with a gilded mask and a blue-painted hair covering to emulate these divine features. The facial appearance of a mummy mask is the product of the shaping of plaster and linen on an idealised and reusable mould – so was never intended to be an accurate likeness of the deceased. In inscriptions, the dead are often referred to in divine terms, with men and women alike given the designation Osiris, the god of rebirth. From around 300 BC, women alone were referred to as Hathor, also known as the ‘Golden One’, the afterlife goddess par excellence. For the wealthy, therefore, mummification was about transformation in order to achieve immortality – not about preserving the body in the form of that person while alive. FALSE: the brain was always removed from a mummy’s body The ancient Egyptian concept of post-mortem judgment is illustrated by a scene in the funerary composition known as the Book of the Dead, first written on papyrus during the 16th century BC. This depicts the heart of the deceased being weighed on a set of scales against a feather representing Maat – the concepts of truth, order and justice. It is often assumed that, for this reason, the heart had to be kept in place in the body during mummification, while the other internal organs might be removed and placed in containers that became known to early Egyptologists as canopic jars. Read more | 10 things you (probably) didn't know about ancient Egypt But what of the brain? According to popular perception, this wasn’t even afforded the respect of being placed in a jar. Instead, so we’ve been led to believe, it was always removed and discarded. As many schoolchildren can recount, this was achieved by breaking through the ethmoid bone to penetrate the skull cavity with a metal instrument, then spooning brain matter piecemeal out through the nostrils. This procedure is often explained both by a perceived need to reduce the rate of putrefaction and by the assumption that the Egyptians did not understand higher brain function, believing that intelligence and consciousness resided in the heart. However, ancient medical texts describe treatment of head injuries that shows an understanding of the effects of damage to the brain casing, while the vulnerability of the head is also a major concern of religious texts. Physical examinations and X-ray and CT scans of mummified bodies have shown that, in fact, the brain was often left untouched. In addition, more often than not, the heart was removed – sometimes prompting headlines about the apparently exceptional and unintended ‘loss’ of a heart. In short, neither of these ‘rules’ of pharaonic funerary practice is as neat and tidy as has often been assumed. FALSE: ancient Egyptians mummified their pets to accompany them into the afterlife The people of ancient Egypt were widely believed to have been great animal lovers. Greek and Roman visitors to the Nile Valley viewed what they saw as excessive devotion to these creatures as yet another of the Egyptians’ odd traits. This is why, for example, the Greek historian Herodotus recorded that, when a cat in an Egyptian household died, everyone in that household shaved off their eyebrows. However, keeping a relatively domesticated feline to control vermin is not quite the same as coddling a pet cat. In pharaonic Egypt, animal forms were a means of expressing and communicating with the divine. Only in rare cases were they viewed as worthy of specific veneration. Read more | Why were cats so important in ancient Egypt? A single living bull was the focus of several religious cults throughout Egypt, notably at the site of Saqqara, near the prominent city of Memphis in the north, where a succession of sacred Apis bulls were kept over many centuries. Asked if he wanted to visit the bull on a tour of his newly conquered territory in 30 BC, the future Roman emperor Augustus declined, saying he was “accustomed to worship gods, not cattle”. Pet ownership was limited to a few apparently domesticated animals given personal names. The most famous example belonged to a prince named Thutmose, who had a stone sarcophagus created for a cat named Ta-miu (literally, ‘the she-cat’) in the 14th century BC. However, this was highly unusual and there is no evidence that Ta-miu was buried with the prince. In fact, the tens of millions of mummified animals known from ancient Egypt were almost all raised for slaughter as wrapped gifts to the gods. Depending on the sacred animal of the intended divine recipient, you could give a cat, a crocodile, a fish, a falcon or even a shrew. Each was an appropriate offering, even in cases where the mummified bundle didn’t actually contain any animal inside. Most important was that the mummy was associated with, or in the image of, one of the gods. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/10/2MM6DF6-CMYK-4e93f97-e1730129509189.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="Mummified cats uncovered at an ancient necropolis located near the pyramids at Saqqara, south of Cairo (Photo by Associated Press/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="Mummified cats uncovered at an ancient necropolis located near the pyramids at Saqqara, south of Cairo (Photo by Associated Press/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> FALSE: people were buried with all of their possessions Ancient Egyptian ideas about the afterlife seem to offer an exception to the rule that ‘you can’t take it with you’. Tutankhamun’s relatively small – but hugely famous – tomb in the Valley of the Kings was found stuffed full of objects, many of them covered with gold. But this was not stockpiling bullion just for the sake of it. Every item found in the tomb was there for a very specific reason: to help transform the king into, and maintain his status as, a god in the afterlife. Tutankhamun was provided with more than 140 linen loincloths – essentially, ancient underwear – not because this set was expected to last him for eternity but because these items had likely touched his skin. Considered a semi-divine being while alive, items with which he had come into contact were thought to be sacred. The same special treatment was given to linen cloth that had wrapped statues of gods during temple rituals. Tutankhamun’s tomb even contained a plain reed staff, richly embellished with gold and bearing an inscription saying the king had “cut with his own hand” this reed from a thicket. Read more | Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun Bearing this in mind, a royal tomb had more in common with caches of temple equipment used in rituals. They earned their place in the tomb not because the king planned to use them in the afterlife, but because they were considered too religiously charged to discard. The king would, after all, be a full-blown deity in the beyond, so presumably wouldn’t need material trappings such as undergarments and a walking stick. What’s more, these objects may have had magical value, and could have been buried to prevent personal items of the king from falling into impure hands. Presumably the much larger tombs of longer-lived kings contained even more stuff – items they had used during their lives rather than things they’d need to navigate their way through eternity. There’s another factor we need to bear in mind when considering the treasures of Tutankhamun’s tomb: it was far from the norm. Egyptian royalty was exceptional in almost every way and even the richest courtiers did not receive the same treatment in burial as kings. Although they might try to emulate their ruler, a noble person’s own burial provisions were much more restricted. Most ancient Egyptian tombs contain very few, if any, grave goods. The vast majority of the population were likely buried with a few simple items. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/10/GettyImages-122225741-727e8e9-e1730130237981.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="A recreation of the antechamber of Tutankhamun’s tomb as it would have been when it was found in 1922 (Photo By DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini via Getty Images)" title="A recreation of the antechamber of Tutankhamun’s tomb as it would have been when it was found in 1922 (Photo By DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini via Getty Images)" /> TRUE: Victorians used mummified remains as paint, and mummified cats were used as fertiliser The Egyptian dead have been used for purposes they could never have imagined – and would probably have feared. Indeed, many modern treatments of mummified remains make tomb robbery seem the preferred option. For a mummy left untouched for thousands of years, a museum was in some ways a stable destination – if not one where it could be guaranteed to stay intact. Scientific examination of mummies has included dissection, in some cases resulting in various parts of one body being placed into hundreds of sample jars across several institutions. Other desecrations have been rather more commercial. Listen | Joyce Tyldesley answers your questions on the mysteries surrounding religion in ancient Egypt Pulverised Egyptian mummified bodies and bandages were used to produce a deep earthy brown pigment favoured by artists of the 19th century. ‘Mummy brown’ paint was commonly found in artist’s studios and was being produced as recently as 1964. Pre-Raphaelite painter Edward Burne-Jones was so horrified upon discovering the origin of the pigment that he gave one tube of the paint a respectful burial in his garden. Linen wrappings – presumably the least discoloured ones – were reportedly shredded and pulped for use in paper mills in the US in the mid-19th century. Around the same time, mummified bodies were burned as fuel for the railway system in Egypt. This practice was observed by Mark Twain, who reported that, because of the lack of trees in Egypt and the high price of coal, mummified bodies were “purchased by the ton or by the graveyard” to power locomotives. Mummified humans were not the only victims. The remains of an estimated 180,000 mummified cats from near the site of Beni Hassan in Middle Egypt were shipped to the port of Liverpool in early 1890. Used as ballast on both the SS Pharos and SS Thebes, 19.5 tonnes of unwrapped felines (the linen bandages had been put to other uses) were sold to farmers as fertiliser, with a few being donated to a Liverpool museum. In fact, the word ‘mummy’ is derived from mūmiyā, an Arabic/Persian term for a black mineral substance, often referred to as bitumen, which occurred naturally in Iran and was thought to have curative properties. This was likened to a black, resinous goo applied to the bodies of the ancient Egyptian dead – or at least to the bodies of those who could afford to have such an expensive concoction poured over them. Later recipes for the substance may have contained traces of bitumen, showing a certain circularity in the association. Most alarmingly, the confusion between curative mineral and mummification resin led to the active acquisition and atomisation of ancient Egyptian corpses for consumption as medicine in the Middle Ages and later. Mumia was even sold as a treatment for sexually transmitted diseases such as syphilis. Suffice to say that medicated cannibalism never really did anyone any good. TRUE: ancient Egyptians placed curses on tombs Almost all Egyptian tombs had two parts: a sealed section for the burial itself and an open area that was intended for the eternal commemoration of the deceased. There was a constant tension between keeping the burial secure and seeking attention from visitors. In a culture that placed importance on the transformation of the deceased by material means, it was to be expected that the wealthy would invest considerable resources in the burial of their dead. It therefore comes as no surprise that the practice of robbery in elite cemeteries is known from the earliest periods. One kind of deterrent was architectural – but another was metaphysical. Although commonly depicted in Gothic fiction and Hollywood films, actual evidence for curses placed on tombs is rather limited. Some texts concern the ritual integrity of the outer (open) part of the tomb and are concerned with preventing the reuse of valuable architectural elements – presumably because that would compromise the monumental presence of the deceased in the space where they hoped to be remembered. Read more | How many people are supposed to have died from the curse of Tutankhamun's tomb? However, a small number of tombs from around 2500 BC are inscribed with explicit threats to would-be stone robbers. A typical example warns: “As for anyone who will do anything evil against this [tomb]… the crocodile is against them in the water, the snake is against them on the land.” These threats also appear on other monuments, warning anyone who might erase the name on a statue or stela (commemorative slab) that their action will have consequences. The belief seems to have been that retribution would come from a higher, divine power, not from the dead themselves. And curses do not generally relate to harm of the mummified body. In various funerary texts, allusions are made to the dead prevailing over unspecified enemies. A particularly evocative example in a version of chapter 172 of the Book of the Dead asserts of the deceased: “Your fingers are picks of gold and their nails are knives of flint in the faces of those who would harm you.” This rather chilling threat echoes examples of magic cast by the living against one’s enemies – threats that were largely uttered aloud. Curses against tomb robbers may have also been spoken and therefore only rarely entered the written record. FALSE: traps were built into ancient Egyptian tombs to deter robbers Egyptian tombs were intended to stand for eternity. The houses of the living were made from mud-bricks and, many of them standing on or near the Nile floodplain, frequently needed to be repaired or rebuilt. Elite tombs, however, were mostly cut from rock or built from stone, set back into or towards the cliffs. Such a tomb was commonly referred to as a ‘house of eternity’. A small number of examples featured actively defensive architecture. Blind passages were constructed inside some pyramids to confuse would-be robbers. From the earliest tomb structures, built around 3000 BC, portcullis slabs were lowered after the burial, part of the mechanics of sealing the tomb. Read more | Guidebook to the ancient Egyptian afterlife Deep shafts in many tombs in the Valley of the Kings served both a magical purpose – to connect the tomb to the Underworld – and acted as a practical way of protecting the inner parts of the tomb from the periodic flash floods that afflicted the valley. None of these devices was designed to be triggered by intruders, despite what Hollywood might suggest. Rather, they were simply ways of keeping a burial safe. Tomb robbers were, however, clever – and may have acquired their knowledge of such security features by being members of the communities responsible for creating and closing burials. Many thieves simply tunnelled around obstructions, and expended great effort breaking into heavy stone sarcophagi. Security precautions seem to have primarily consisted of policing burial grounds to deter robbers. This perhaps explains why an area such as the Valley of the Kings was considered an ideal royal cemetery: it was contained, and relatively easy to monitor. The punishment for defiling the burial of a god-king was, unsurprisingly, severe: death by impalement on a wooden stake, the body subsequently burned to destroy any chance of an afterlife. Fear of not living on meant cremation was anathema to the ancient Egyptians. <img src="https://images.immediate.co.uk/production/volatile/sites/7/2024/10/2T7GK41-CMYK-e578c8b-e1730130140884.jpg" width="620" height="413" alt="While tombs in the Valley of the Kings were protected, none were booby-trapped against robbers (Photo by Pete Niesen/Alamy Stock Photo)" title="While tombs in the Valley of the Kings were protected, none were booby-trapped against robbers (Photo by Pete Niesen/Alamy Stock Photo)" /> TRUE: the plots of the most famous mummy movies date back to ancient times Modern films about ancient mummies may seem to have been products of their times, betraying deep-seated colonial anxiety about the repercussions of disturbing ancient tombs and claiming the spoils in the name of science. Undoubtedly, the image of the animated mummy as a shuffling, unclean menace seems to date from the Victorian era – yet the inspiration for one of the major tropes in mummy fiction is much older. The plot of the 1932 Universal Studios film The Mummy centres on the reanimation of an ancient Egyptian named Imhotep, played by Boris Karloff. The best known historical Imhotep was widely revered as a sage and healer and as the mastermind behind the first pyramid, built in the 26th century BC. In the Karloff movie, Imhotep is brought back to life by an archaeologist – hungry for knowledge and ignorant of the potential consequences – who reads from an ancient scroll. This crucial plot point does in fact derive from an ancient source. A folk tale written down around two millennia ago, known today as the Tale of Setne Khaemwaset, was inspired by a real ancient person, Prince Khaemwaset, the fourth son of Ramesses II (the Great, reigned 1279–1213 BC). Read more | 5 of the most powerful pharaohs to rule ancient Egypt The historical prince is known to have been something of an archaeologist himself, touring ancient monuments – including the pyramids – and adding identifying inscriptions. In the folk tale, his thirst for knowledge leads him in search of the Book of Thoth, which he finds buried in the tomb of an ancient prince. Possessing the book gets Khaemwaset into trouble, bringing the owner of the tomb (and the scroll) back to life. More recent retellings – including the later 1959 Hammer film and the 1999 blockbuster, both also called The Mummy – hinge on the same plot point: reading forbidden knowledge from the Book of the Dead. Few viewers realise that the story is some 2,000 years old. Campbell Price is curator of Egypt and Sudan at Manchester Museum, University of Manchester. His books include Totally Chaotic History: Ancient Egypt Gets Unruly! (Walker, April 2024), and Brief Histories: Ancient Egypt (Seven Dials, October 2024) This article was first published in the November 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
“Impaled on a stake and left to die”: crime, punishment and law enforcement in ancient Egypt
How did law enforcement work in ancient Egypt? Arienne King explains how anti-crime forces came to be organised, the types of crimes worthy of punishment, and what life was like inside an ancient Egyptian jail
In the second century BC, an Egyptian scribe named Menches and his brother Polemon were accused of poisoning a high-ranking policeman. They were brought to trial before the royal scribe and chief of police. The potential sentence for attempted murder? Hard labour or even execution. Both men were acquitted due to lack of evidence, but were persecuted afterwards by local police. Fearing for their lives, Menches wrote a letter to Pharaoh Ptolemy VIII (who ruled c170–116 BC) protesting their innocence and asking for protection. This letter was part of a village archive that archaeologists uncovered in 1899, offering a view into just one aspect of law enforcement in ancient Egypt. Did ancient Egypt have a police force? In most ancient societies, there was no law enforcement – though some would have had, for example, a city watch that responded to disturbances. In these societies, victims of crimes would have been solely responsible for defending themselves and lodging legal charges against criminals. Ancient Egypt was one of the only civilisations in the ancient world to have had a professional police force (from the Middle Kingdom onwards). Described by historian John Bauschatz as “a smoothly functioning machine that provided options not only to victims of crime but also to police officers,” the police of the Ptolemaic Dynasty dealt with all aspects of crime prevention, investigation and punishment. But who were the predecessors of such a force? In early periods of Egyptian history, hired guards and soldiers protected the royal family and kept the peace. Specialised military units patrolled the roads and desert frontiers on horseback to intercept bandits and provide early warning of invasions. Other units guarded sacred spaces like temples and tombs. Read more | Are your neighbours spying on you? In the 17th century they had the power to destroy your life One such unit was a caste of Nubian warriors called Medjay, created in the Second Intermediate Period (1700–1550 BC). The Medjay were originally nomads from Egypt’s eastern desert who rose to prominence fighting against Hyksos invaders from Canaan. Medjay were used to patrol roads and borders, maintain order and protect the pharaoh. The chief of the Medjay answered directly to the vizier, the highest official under the pharaoh. Over time, native Egyptians were recruited into the Medjay order. How did policing change in the age of Cleopatra? By the Late Period (c700–300 BC), the organisation of a protective force had evolved. Egypt was policed by the kalasiris (glˇsr), who fulfilled functions very similar to modern police. They investigated crime reports, gathered evidence and arrested suspects. The Greek equivalent of this word, phylakitēs, was used simultaneously in the Ptolemaic period, when Egypt was ruled by Greek pharaohs such as the legendary queen Cleopatra (who ruled c51–30 BC). Elsewhere, low-ranking infantry – called machimoi – were often used to augment the police by protecting government officials and making arrests. Read more | The seven Cleopatra's of the ancient world Because of Egypt's arid climate, a multitude of papyrus documents from antiquity have survived into the present day. The most detailed evidence for Egypt’s complex law enforcement system comes from the Ptolemaic period. In one example from early in the reign of Cleopatra, the police in Herakleopolis, in Upper Egypt, received a letter from a man whose home had been burgled. The man had returned from work to find his front door kicked in, his mother attacked, and a dovecote stolen. Ordinarily, the police would arrive to collect witness statements, confirm signs of a break-in, and search for the lost property. The now damaged letter (papyrus BGU VIII 1855) is the only surviving record of the case, and it is unknown whether the victims ever received the justice they asked for, seen here in a translation by historian John Bauschatz: “I ask, if it seems best, that you please stand these men before you and deal with them in keeping with your hatred of wrongdoing, so that they attempt nothing violent in the future.” What was life like as a police officer in ancient Egypt? The papyri also include personal letters, government communications, and court documents which reveal the inner workings of Egypt's criminal justice system. The amount of evidence from Ptolemaic Egypt allows historians to reconstruct daily life in greater detail than ancient Greece or Persia. From this evidence, we can see that many police officers worked in their hometowns or villages. Police earned more money than the average farmer, and were also given small plots of farmland by the government. High-ranking officials usually lived and worked in major cities, but even rural desert outposts had a police presence. Regular police duties included patrolling roads, guarding riverboats from piracy, and responding to crimes reported by civilians via letter and through in-person testimony. We also know that police could act with almost complete autonomy, but if necessary they asked for support from further up the chain of command. Meanwhile, the chief of police was headquartered in the provincial capital and worked alongside civil authorities like town magistrates or provincial governors. The highest-ranking police officers answered directly to royal officials. How were crimes investigated in ancient Egypt, and what were the punishments? Reporting a crime in ancient Egypt was a straightforward process. Most people would visit a professional scribe who wrote a detailed report, describing the nature of the crime and the perpetrator. A messenger promptly delivered these reports to the police. Common complaints involved brawls, thefts and home invasions – but people could also be prosecuted for acts like adultery or trespassing on sacred land. Police officers had the right to arrest and interrogate suspects, confiscate illegal items, and gather witness statements to help build their case. Sometimes, police witnessed a crime firsthand and stepped in to intervene. Once they had gathered enough evidence, they would present their findings to their superior officers so the accused could be taken to trial. Read more | The dark side of ancient Egypt Once a suspect was arrested and a case against them was made, they faced trial in court. The pharaoh was the ultimate judicial authority in ancient Egypt, and could preside over court cases of national importance. The next most powerful official was the provincial governor, who acted like a chief justice. In most cases, trials were presided over by lower ranking judges in local courts. There were a variety of punishments in ancient Egypt, depending on the severity of the offense. Civil lawsuits were usually solved by fining the guilty party and compensating the victims. Criminal offences received more severe punishments like beatings, and crimes against the gods and pharaoh could even warrant the death penalty. The Nauri Decree of Seti I (c1290–1279 BC) proclaimed that anyone who stole the pharaoh’s livestock would be impaled on a stake and left to die. Other royal inscriptions decreed that tomb robbers and trespassers should be burned alive. Were there jails in ancient Egypt? There was a network of prisons throughout Egypt that held suspects and condemned criminals. These prisons usually doubled as headquarters for law enforcement. Conditions within prisons were extremely harsh, and prisoners often lacked adequate food and water. In some cases, prisoners may have been reliant on friends or family to feed them. Most people spent only short periods in prison while they awaited trial. This could take anywhere from a few days to a few months. Rarely, debtors and convicted criminals were punished with a prison sentence. Criminals were more commonly sentenced to harsh labour. Some convicts were sent to mines and quarries, while others helped build massive temples and monuments. The Great Prison at Thebes was an infamous criminal justice complex, where inmates were enslaved to build the temples of Karnak in the New Kingdom. Corruption was rife; through malice or incompetence, police sometimes victimised the civilians they were supposed to protect. Some police blackmailed locals into giving them bribes. If the locals didn’t comply, they could be beaten, robbed and even falsely arrested. Police were also accused of stealing property under the pretence of confiscating evidence. Read more | The rise of the Great British 'bobby': a brief history of Britain's police service Documents from the Late Period record complaints from people imprisoned for months or years without trial. The papyrus P. Coll. Youtie 1.12, written about 177 BC, records a complaint from a man mistakenly detained after his acquittal for tax crimes: “Without cause, Argeios took me away to the prison in Krokodilopolis where I have been detained for three years without access to basic necessities. But in fact I was previously acquitted of all charges by the finance minister Apollonios, and later by Queen Cleopatra and King Ptolemy.” Victims of corruption could petition a higher ranking official to intervene. Judicial misconduct was taken very seriously, and corrupt officials were tortured or executed in some periods. Ancient Egyptians worshipped Ma'at, the daughter of the Sun god Re and the personification of truth and justice. It was the pharaoh's duty to uphold these ideals and protect the Egyptian people. The pharaoh's enforcers were empowered to enact brutal justice, becoming protectors to some and thugs to others. Over 3,000 years, ancient Egyptian law evolved into a harsh but flexible judicial system that influenced subsequent civilisations. Arienne King is a writer and historical consultant specializing in Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt
War and pieces: 5 games from history that were about much more than fun
Far from idle pursuits, games have transformed the way societies have made sense of life and death, order and conflict for centuries. Kelly Clancy picks five examples that reveal how playtime has often been a serious business
Games are among our most enduring cultural technologies. They persist, in part, because they’re a way for our brains to serve themselves pleasure for free. The Greek historian Herodotus, for instance, wrote about the Lydian people, who reportedly suffered an 18-year famine. He claimed they alternated between eating food one day and playing games the next – play, in other words, lessened the sting of hunger. But games aren’t just fun: they are also essential education. Animals play to practise for the serious demands of adulthood: kittens chase yarn to drill hunting skills, and young kangaroos rough-house to prepare to box their way up the social hierarchy as adults. Read more | Ancient board games: which ones did people play for fun in the past? With the invention of games, humans brought play into the realm of thought, because games exercise various mental functions. Games are especially crucial for developing social skills. Plato believed they were the foundation of civic education, arguing that children who learned to follow game rules would grow up to be law-abiding citizens. And Plato wasn’t alone: scholars across history have lauded games for a range of educational virtues. As a result, people often endowed games with cultural principles they hoped to transmit to future generations. Games are messages from the past, and can reveal the values and beliefs of the people who play them. Senet, ancient Egypt The ancient board game that served as a map for players to pass to the afterlife Senet – likely the ancestor of backgammon – is one of the world’s oldest known board games. It originated in ancient Egypt in around 3100 BC as mammoths still roamed Siberia’s Wrangel Island, hieroglyphic writing was just emerging, and camels were first being domesticated. Senet means ‘passing’, possibly referring to the game’s race-like mechanic: players vied to be the first to move all their pieces across the board by casting sticks or knuckle bones. In the earliest known record of trash talk, a senet player depicted in the tomb of Pepyankh in Egypt brags: “You speak as one weak of tongue, for passing is mine.” Though its origins were secular, senet came, over time, to serve as a map for the soul’s journey after death. It makes several appearances in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a collection of magic spells inscribed inside coffins to help souls successfully navigate the netherworld. Read more | Guidebook to the Ancient Egyptian afterlife Certain squares on the board became associated with landmarks and obstacles in the afterlife. Landing on square 27, denoted with the hieroglyphic for the ‘waters of chaos’, sent players back to 15, ‘the house of rebirth’. Before exiting the board, pieces had to land on 26, ‘the house of happiness’ – the mummification chamber. Mummification was thought to help souls recognise their corpses, the doorway to the afterlife. Although it was prohibitively expensive for many Egyptians, personal senet boards, found buried in many graves, were another way a soul might recognise its former body. As such, senet democratised access to the immortal realm, serving as an accessible map of life after death. The Mesoamerican ballgame, the Americas A dangerous, sometimes fatal, ball game that may have helped rulers avoid conflict More of a family of games than an individual sport, the Mesoamerican ballgame – as it’s widely known – likely arose around 3,700 years ago in what’s now Mexico. It remained vital for millennia among the Olmec, Maya and Aztec people. Some experts suggest it helped maintain and cohere those cultures because they used it as a proxy for war. Players from opposing teams worked to keep a heavy rubber ball in the air, sometimes using sticks but most often using their hips. Points were scored by bringing the ball to the opposite end of the court, and lost if it hit the ground twice before it could be returned to the other team. A player automatically won the game for their team if they put the ball through one of the prohibitively tall hoops that lined the court. The ball weighed up to four kilograms, so players were frequently bruised and bloodied despite wearing heavy padding. Spanish accounts note players dying after the ball hit them in the head or stomach. Injuries weren’t the only danger: in some cases, play involved ritual sacrifice, and losing teams were decapitated. Read more | Q&A: Why and how did the Aztecs practise human sacrifice? In the Mayan creation myth Popul Vuh, human heroes play against the gods of the underworld, signifying the battle between life and death. However, the game had more than symbolic significance. Players were often important political figures, and their gaming victories may have legitimised their rise to power. Ancient Olmec art is best known for its colossal basalt heads, which are thought to be portraits of kings equipped in the regalia of ball players. Remarkably, the game may have been partly responsible for the rise and maintenance of these complex societies because it offered leaders a more peaceful way to settle disputes than costly and destructive wars. Ball courts were particularly prevalent in hotly contested areas with many border disputes. Other pre-Columbian American games, like chunkey and lacrosse, are also thought to have been peaceful ways to resolve conflicts. Indeed, some scholars argue that lacrosse was vital for maintaining peace among the Six Nations of the Iroquois. Chess, India An Indian stroke of genius honed the minds of medieval princes and early computers alike Chess is the most popular board game in history, originating in sixth-century India as a battle simulation game. In its earliest incarnation, it was known as chaturanga, or ‘four-limbed’, referring to four ancient divisions of the Indian army: infantry, cavalry, elephantry and chariotry. As the game percolated west, these pieces became the pawns, knights, bishops, and rooks familiar to European players. What was once a vizier piece came to be replaced by a more dynamic queen, influenced by the rise of powerful queens in Europe. Persian players would exclaim Shāh Māt (‘the king is helpless’), which, adopted into English, became ‘checkmate’. Chess is the first known game in which different pieces possess different powers, like the military regiments on which they were modelled. Writers have long celebrated chess for honing its players’ strategic skills and clarifying their thinking. Read more | From chess to hula hoops: the top 10 toys from history The game featured heavily in ‘mirrors for princes’, a genre of books on manners popular in India, Persia and Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Playing chess was like looking into a mirror, revealing players’ strengths and weaknesses to themselves. The 10th-century Abbasid scholar al-Masudi detailed how chess was used to train military strategy and mathematics. In fact, chess is so heavily associated with intellect that early computer pioneers took it up as a training ground for developing artificial intelligence. In 1950, Claude Shannon, the father of information theory, claimed that chess was an ideal problem for computers because it was discrete, and “generally considered to require ‘thinking’ for skilful play”. In their quest to teach machines to play chess and other games, researchers pioneered countless computing innovations and laid the groundwork for the striking capabilities of today’s machine learning systems. The philosopher’s game, Europe The medieval mathematical board game that reflected shifting views of the universe Beginning around the 11th century, rithmomachia, or ‘the philosopher’s game’, became central to higher education in Europe. The game was thought to represent, in aesthetic form, the formal number theory of Greek polymath Pythagoras. It was a favourite pastime of monks, because church leaders believed it had an enlightening quality. Ovid hailed it as “the leaf, flower and fruit of Arithmetic, and its glory, laud and honour”. Thomas More had the virtuous citizens of his 16th-century book Utopia play the edifying game of rithmomachia instead of morally corrosive games such as dice. Rithmomachia is similar to chess, and its different pieces move according to distinct rules. Like chess, players vie to capture opponent’s pieces. Unlike chess, each rithmomachia piece is inscribed with a number that dictates where and how pieces must be positioned to capture other pieces. For a ‘proper’ victory, the winner must arrange several of their pieces on their opponent’s side of the board in a mathematical progression – 2-4-8, for example. Pythagoras, who founded a mathematics cult that held a grip on European scholarship for more than a thousand years, proclaimed that “all is number”. Unfortunately, Pythagoras did not believe in all numbers: he instead held that rational numbers – whole numbers such as 1, 2, 3, and simple fractions such as 1/2 – were the foundation of the universe. Read more | Digital revolution: the evolution of Hindu-Arabic numerals His cult so esteemed rational numbers that they tried to cover up the existence of irrational numbers (non-repeating decimals, including pi) – reportedly assassinating the Greek philosopher Hippasus, who had stumbled on their existence. This myopic focus on rational numbers set back European scholarship by hundreds of years. Yet by the 17th century, new techniques borrowed from India and Persia had reinvigorated European mathematics, and rithmomachia’s popularity waned as Pythagoras’s ideas fell out of favour. Kriegsspiel, Europe The war games that allowed strategists to devise miniature melees to plot a conflict’s outcome Kriegsspiel, or ‘war game’, changed the face of modern Europe. Starting in the 18th century, German military strategists tinkered with chess – which was itself an abstraction of war – to create a more realistic military planning tool. Inspired by the success of the scientific method in so many other fields at the time, they hoped to recast war as a science. Using the game they devised, Kriegsspiel, new strategies could be tested and workshopped. Designers first expanded the chess board to thousands of squares, colour-coded to represent different terrains. Eventually, as map-making technology improved, the game was played on scaled maps of actual battlefields, which allowed officers to plan their real campaigns in minute detail. Each turn represented two minutes of warfare, and wooden block troops were constrained to move a realistic distance in that time. Umpires consulted casualty tables based on actual battle data to predict each simulated action’s effects. Dice throws randomised the damage from each ersatz attack. The result was a remarkably accurate prediction engine, which German officers used to cohere the first German empire in the late 19th century. General Karl Kraft, one of the most eminent strategists of that era, wrote: “The ability to quickly arrive at decisions and the cheerful assumption of responsibility which characterised our officers in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 was in no small measure due to the war games.” Read more | La débâcle! The aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War General Helmuth von Moltke, meanwhile, used Kriegsspiel to rethink traditional wisdom, too: its bird’s-eye view, for instance, inspired him to abandon column-and-line troop formations, which made soldiers easy targets, in favour of unstructured formations. Today, most major militaries still use some form of game simulation in their training and planning. The pacifist writer HG Wells published a simple tabletop war game, called Little Wars, in 1913 in the hope that playing at war and witnessing its horrors in miniature would inoculate people against it. Little Wars gave rise to a new family of tabletop war games, eventually evolving into Dungeons and Dragons and countless popular role-playing video games. War games have also informed modern policy. Every outcome of Proud Prophet, a nuclear war simulation game played by top US officials in 1983, was so harrowing that the exercise convinced the Ronald Reagan administration to open arms control negotiations with the Soviets. Read more | 8 of the best historical board games for history lovers Kelly Clancy is a neuroscientist, physicist and author of Playing with Reality: How Games Shape Our World (Allen Lane, 2024) This article was first published in the July 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
Britain’s war on the slave ships: how the Royal Navy policed the Atlantic in the 19th century
In the early 19th century, a Royal Navy squadron was sent to west Africa to hunt down ships carrying enslaved people to the Americas. The operation was hailed as an act of “pure unselfish philanthropy”. Yet, writes Mary Wills, the reality was far more tangled
In March 1821, the Royal Navy vessel Tartar exchanged fire with a Spanish ship, Anna Maria. Such a tussle was not unusual in this period of British naval supremacy, fewer than 20 years after victory at the battle of Trafalgar. Yet this was an intervention in a very different kind of war, unlike anything British naval personnel had previously encountered. For Anna Maria was a slave vessel, with more than 400 enslaved African men, women and children crowded on board. The Anna Maria had just embarked from the river Bonny in what is now Nigeria; its human cargo intended for forcible transportation to the Americas’ plantations. In a report to the Admiralty, the Tartar’s captain, Commodore Sir George Ralph Collier, a veteran of the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, struggled to put into words the human suffering he had witnessed on boarding such slave vessels. “No description I could give would convey a true picture of its baseness and atrocity,” he reported. This was neither the first nor the last time that Collier would witness such horrors, for he belonged to the West Africa Squadron, a detachment of Royal Navy vessels formed to enforce the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, passed by Britain’s parliament in 1807. From its formal establishment in 1818 to its disbandment in the 1860s, the squadron pursued and captured around 1,500 slaving ships along 2,000 miles of west African coastline – all with the aim of suppressing the prolific trade in human lives prosecuted by other nations. It was an endeavour that set London at loggerheads with a number of rival powers and saw its sailors engaged in a series of cat-and-mouse battles with the slavers. What’s more, it’s an episode that shines a light on Britain’s view of its place in the world in the first half of the 19th century. The dominant force That British sailors were hunting slaving ships at all in the 1820s is remarkable, given their nation’s deep and enduring links with transatlantic slavery. Just a few decades earlier, at the end of the 18th century, Britain was arguably the dominant force in a trade that, over four centuries, had led to an estimated 12–15 million African people being forcibly shipped across the Atlantic by European nations. All that changed in 1807 when – in the face of a rising tide of campaigning, petitioning and boycotts that saw the abolitionist cause build an unstoppable momentum – it became illegal for any British ship or subject to trade in enslaved people. A nation that had for so long condemned vast numbers of people to unimaginable horrors now set about signalling its commitment to the principles of abolitionism, humanity and philanthropy. And one of the ways in which it sought to do so was by intercepting and detaining slave vessels. Read more | Did the British royal family support slavery? The passing of the Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was a landmark moment in British history, but it hardly brought enslaved people’s suffering to an end. For a start, until 1834 (when Britain outlawed the owning, buying and selling of humans as property throughout its colonies around the world) nearly three-quarters of a million people remained enslaved across the Caribbean. And then, of course, there were the other slaving nations. Denmark (1792) and the United States (1808) moved early, abolishing the trade before or just after Britain. But it would be 1836 before the Dutch, French, Spanish, Brazilian and Portuguese governments had all followed suit. Even beyond this date, illegal trading flourished, largely driven by the booming demand for enslaved labourers from the sugar and coffee plantations of Cuba and Brazil. This was the environment in which the West Africa Squadron embarked upon its first mission in the early 19th century. Its crew may have represented the world’s most powerful maritime nation – one fired up by a newfound humanitarian zeal – yet, in reality, these sailors were severely under-resourced. Their numbers were bolstered by Kru sailors, West African seamen from present-day Liberia. Dozens served on every British vessel, assisting with navigation, interpreting, or transporting men between ship and shore. Read more | Did George III support the slave trade? At its height, in the 1840s, the squadron had a fleet of just 27 vessels to call upon. These were, for the most part, slower and less agile than the ships they were tasked with seizing. In fact, so rapid were the slavers’ vessels that the Royal Navy deployed former slave ships to counter them. The Black Joke (formerly the slave ship Henriqueta, detained in 1827) was renowned for its success in tracking and capturing its quarry. Soon slave-ship captains were developing ever more canny tactics to escape detection – and in response, the Admiralty started pursuing increasingly coercive strategies. This included blockades of established slave trading ports and rivers, and the bombardment of coastal settlements where merchants prepared enslaved Africans for embarkation in buildings called ‘barracoons’. One attack along the river Gallinas in Sierra Leone in 1845 destroyed a number of villages, enraging the locals and calling the squadron’s ‘humanitarian’ motives into question. Prize voyage The squadron patrolled the seas under nascent international treaties which enabled the Royal Navy to intercept slaving vessels of other nations. Once they had captured a slave ship, British sailors would undertake the ‘prize voyage’. This would see the intercepted vessel being transported to Sierra Leone on the west African coast, a journey that could take weeks. If the capture was declared legal, a financial reward, ‘prize money’, was distributed among the crew for the condemned vessel and its property (which in this context included the captive Africans). Some ships were empty when captured, but many were horrendously overcrowded, with 300 or 400 enslaved people crammed onto one vessel. First-hand testimonies of these harrowing voyages are rare. “My wretchedness I cannot describe,” reported the formerly enslaved Mahommah Gardo Baquaqua of his experiences. “Nothing can exceed the horrors of those slave vessels,” confessed Admiral Robert Wauchope in his memoirs. These are mere snapshots but they shine a light on the misery that enslaved people endured on the ‘Middle Passage’ across the Atlantic. Such conditions were not easily alleviated on prize voyages. Although no longer under the authority of a slave-ship crew, African captives still suffered from overcrowding, dehydration, poor ventilation and disease. Dysentery, smallpox and eye diseases were rife. “I certainly never beheld such a scene of complicated misery as our prize presents this morning,” wrote one officer in 1841 about a Portuguese prize brig that had 392 enslaved people on board. “I dread sending away an officer and men in such a floating pest house!” Read more | Michael Wood on the ongoing legacy of slavery Such appalling conditions contributed to tensions between sailors and captive Africans. The account of Samuel Ajayi Crowther – released from a Portuguese slave vessel before going on to become a missionary, and the first Anglican African bishop – reveals the distrust inherent in encounters with European sailors. “We found ourselves in the hands of new conquerors”, he wrote, “whom we at first very much dreaded, they being armed with long swords.” While there are many accounts of compassion in sailors’ narratives, there is also evidence of naval men asserting control in ways reminiscent of the trade they were trying to suppress. Lieutenant James Stoddart wrote that while he was in charge of the prize vessels Josephine and Veloz in 1836, “cats [cat o’nine tails whips] had to be used freely”. Virulent diseases Given the miseries they witnessed, the alien environment in which they plied their trade, and the fact that they often felt they were operating with one hand tied behind their backs, it’s hardly surprising that the West Africa Squadron had an infamous reputation and morale was poor. Climatic extremes on the west African coast included searing heat and violent tropical storms. Virulent diseases such as yellow fever and malaria were a constant concern. The climate, poor sanitation and lack of immunity to disease contributed to a significantly higher mortality rate than on other naval stations in this period. In September 1845, the Éclair arrived back in Britain with around two-thirds of the original crew (more than 70 officers and men) dead or dying. As for Sierra Leone, it was considered so unhealthy it was nicknamed ‘the white man’s grave’. After serving there for two years or more, many became, in the words of one naval officer, “heartily disgusted” with the service. Sailors weren’t alone in harbouring doubts about the West Africa Squadron. Britain claimed to be a champion of international justice, yet the squadron’s activities proved highly controversial on the global stage, raising issues of the rights of one nation to intervene in the activities of another. The squadron also enjoyed a mixed reception in Britain. While the Black Joke’s feats were celebrated in paintings and reproduced in newspapers, MPs used parliamentary debates to lambast the squadron’s spiralling cost and perceived lack of results. Was the criticism justified? This was an unquestionably ambitious and valiant operation. The 1,500 vessels that it captured represented an estimated 6–10 per cent of slaving vessels, and around 200,000 African people released. That’s a significant number, but a relatively small share of the estimated 3.2 million men, women and children who embarked as slaves between 1808 and 1863. Critics of the squadron could also point out that 5,000 British sailors lost their lives during the campaign off west Africa, along with a significant number of recaptives, mostly through disease. And though the transatlantic slave trade was largely extinguished by the late 1860s, this was arguably more the result of internal political changes within slave-trading nations than acts of suppression on the high seas. Yet, for all that, the work of the West Africa Squadron was undeniably the first chapter in a long history of British naval campaigns directed against international slavery, including in the Indian Ocean from the 1860s, in the Red Sea from the 1880s, and the Persian Gulf from the 1920s. It encouraged other nations to adopt anti-slavery laws and prompted the navies of the United States and France to engage in their own suppression efforts. The extensive military commitment made by the British to anti-slave-trade operations is, therefore, rightfully commended. But it certainly wasn’t the act of “pure unselfish philanthropy” acclaimed by the naval historian CD Yonge in 1863. The picture is inevitably far more nuanced. Ultimately, the same is true of the wider picture of British abolitionism in its varied forms in the early to mid-19th century. While such abolitionism was the product of a genuine humanitarianism, it also shaded into cultural arrogance – one that would produce a ‘civilising’ effort to encourage the end of slave trading in African societies and the conversion of African people to European forms of religion and government. As Commander Arthur Parry Eardley-Wilmot wrote in a defence of the West Africa Squadron in 1853: “If Africa is ever to be free and happy, England must be the apostle of that freedom.” The British believed they alone could save non-Europeans from slavery, and that attitude would inform policies towards British colonial possessions into the second half of the 19th century and beyond. One man who wouldn’t live to see these policies implemented was George Collier. The commodore’s understanding of his professional duty was imbued with a personal, moral responsibility to release the enslaved; his actions against slavers were performed with “no view to personal merit, for I did what humanity, and therefore my duty, only required”. In 1824, three years after leaving the squadron, Collier took his own life. At the inquest into his death, he was described as a “zealous and gallant officer”. A naval officer quoted in the Royal Cornwall Gazette asserted that his “services on the coast of Guinea could not but prove injurious to a mind more than commonly sensitive”. Collier’s fate is a sad footnote in a story of politics, principle, philanthropy and national identity – and of a flawed mission affecting human lives. The tale of the West Africa Squadron is one of servicemen often acting bravely with moral and religious imperative to end the transatlantic slave trade, but who endured hardship and disease in the name of abolition. And, of course, it’s also the story of formerly enslaved African people, who were seen to personify the victory of a humanitarian crusade, yet who still found themselves dominated by other forms of control. FROM HELL TO FREEDOM? The capture of a slave ship was the first step of a journey that rarely took enslaved people back to their homelands The seizure of a slaving vessel was a cause for celebration for the West Africa Squadron. But what fate awaited the enslaved Africans crammed aboard these ships? The British crown colony of Sierra Leone was often the first destination for those released from the hellish grip of the slavers. British abolitionists had founded the colony in the 1780s as part of their ‘civilising’ mis- sion – and its capital, Freetown, was the administrative centre of anti-slave trade operations. It was here that captured vessels were often adjudicated by British maritime courts. Once in British hands, the enslaved people were condemned as part of the ship’s property, registered and declared legally ‘free’. They were now referred to as ‘liberated Africans’. However, this was a version of liberty that many people would struggle to recognise today. As they remained subject to another nation’s will, the terms ‘recaptives’ or ‘recaptured Africans’ are now understood to better describe their situation. Few of the enslaved people could expect to see their homelands again. Rather than being repatriated, many were expected to build new lives in villages in and around Freetown. Some, such as Samuel Ajayi Crowther, were educated by the Church Missionary Society. Crowther made an extraordinary success of his post-enslavement life, going on to become the first African Anglican bishop. Others were enlisted into the armed forces or employed on naval vessels. James ‘Kaweli’ Covey joined the crew of HMS Buzzard in 1838, and acted as interpreter during legal proceedings following a revolt aboard the slave ship La Amistad in 1839. Thousands more were subjected to years of indentureship working in private households, in a system known as ‘apprenticeship’. This practice was brought to an end in 1847 after facing fierce criticism back in Britain. The West Africa Squadron had sought to prevent Africans from being transported to the Americas. Yet, from the 1840s, the Caribbean was the destination for thousands of recaptives recruited to work in the sugar plantations of the British West Indies. This scheme was introduced in the wake of the Emancipation Act of 1834 in a bid to replace enslaved people with ‘free’ labour. Yet, as Captain Joseph Denman, a commander with the West Africa Squadron, observed, it was seen to “perpetuate their slavery”. Mary Wills is a senior curator at British Online Archives. Her books include Envoys of Abolition: British Naval Officers and the Campaign Against the Slave Trade in West Africa (Liverpool University Press, 2019) This article is from the July 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine
The seven Cleopatras who shaped the ancient world
Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones talks to Matt Elton about the seven queens who shared the name Cleopatra, and how they were able to shape the ancient world in their image
The fact that there were multiple Cleopatras perhaps shouldn’t have come as a surprise to me — but it did. Why do you think the existence of the other Cleopatras is overlooked? It’s because of the dominance of Cleopatra VII – the Cleopatra, the indigo-eyed, Liz Taylor Cleopatra. That’s who we think of when we think of Cleopatra. The way in which her identity has been constructed has led us to see her as a lone wolf, a unique woman in the ancient world. The idea of one woman stepping out of the patriarchy to achieve amazing things has been very persuasive. Read more | Was Cleopatra really so beautiful? But she was not a lone wolf at all. There was a whole family of women behind her who formed the template for what she was able to become. Without the other six Cleopatras, it would have been impossible for Cleopatra the seventh to do what she did. So although her life and ambitions are remarkable, they are nonetheless better observed in the context of the dynasty that produced her. You write in your book that the history of the Cleopatras begins not in Egypt, but further to the east. What was the empire into which the first of the Cleopatras was born, and what do we need to know about the geopolitical situation at the time of her birth? By the second century BC, the Hellenistic period had already been going for about 150 years. It was a world forged following the death of Alexander the Great, and his empire being split up between rival generals. Cleopatra I was born into the house of Seleucus, which owned essentially all of what’s now Syria, Palestine, Israel and swathes of Mesopotamia as well. The first Cleopatra was the daughter of a man named Antiochus III, who even in his lifetime was known as ‘the Great’. He was a formidable man who extended his empire as far as he could – as far as the border with Egypt, which at the time was a superpower ruled by the Ptolemies. They were the descendants of Ptolemy, another of Alexander’s generals, and the Ptolemies and the Seleucids had been locking horns for roughly a century by this point, with land-grabs going on constantly across the border. The two sides were particularly squabbling over one piece of land: a part of what we now think of as the Beqaa valley in Lebanon. The marriage of the princess Cleopatra to Egyptian pharaoh Ptolemy V was Antiochus III’s way of offering an olive branch to the Egyptians, but it was also a way for him to get influence within the Egyptian court. So there was a double deal going on. Cleopatra I headed to Alexandria in 193 BC at the age of roughly 17. What was the Egypt that she encountered like? Even though she had been brought up in the very fine city of Antioch, I think she would have been in awe of Alexandria. It was the Greek centre of this world; basically, a colonialist power had imprinted itself on traditional Egypt. The north of Egypt – Alexandria and the Nile Delta – had a very Hellenised population. In fact, the Ptolemies offered free land and tax rebates to attract Greek-speaking settlers to the area. But as you went further down into Egypt you arrived at the heart of the Egyptian population – Egypt for the Egyptians. The fact that Alexandria had never completely aligned to Egypt had created a strange disconnect between the world of Alexandria and its ruling family and the rest of Egypt. Indeed, there had been revolts against the Ptolemies by the local Egyptian population – but by the time Cleopatra I arrived, a synergy had developed between the Greek settlers and Egypt’s local populations. This was very much fostered by the royal house itself: the first Ptolemies were keen to be seen both as Greek Hellenistic rulers and traditional pharaohs, and to do that they courted the traditional priests of Egypt and looked after the traditional cults of the Egyptian gods. So they had this double-faced, Janus approach to rulership – which, by and large, was working for them. The idea of looking in two directions is also interesting with regard to Cleopatra’s loyalties. How much was that an issue? Dynastic marriages are interesting. What role should a princess play when she goes into a marital home? There was always an element of the Egyptian court that questioned Cleopatra’s loyalty to the Egyptian crown, and spread rumours that Egypt would go to ruin because of Cleopatra making sure that her father had a strong influence. But that’s not what happened. Cleopatra I was remarkably loyal to her husband and to the Egyptian populace. The way she made a mark on the Egyptian court was by carefully fostering a good relationship with the Egyptian courtiers. She had a lesson to learn in that regard, because the queen she succeeded had been killed in a court coup. And so, knowing that it was very easy for the Egyptian court to get rid of a queen, she decided to play the long game. What do we need to know about the family history of Ptolemy V, the man Cleopatra I married? It was probably the most dysfunctional family in antiquity – which is saying something. Ptolemy V was a pretty ineffectual pharaoh, who was very happy to sit back and let his ministers do his work for him and be managed by his courtiers. What’s also notable about the Ptolemies more generally is that they had settled on the custom of pharaohs marrying their sisters. This was not just dynastic incest by name but by physical union: Ptolemy V, for instance, was the son of a brother-sister marriage. We can explain this theologically. The goddess Isis had a child with her brother Osiris – who essentially represented the living pharaoh. In the Greek world, Zeus married and slept with his sister Hera. So incestuous blood heightened the Ptolemies’ claim as god kings. But then the dynasty encountered a problem: Ptolemy V didn’t have any sisters. This is why Cleopatra I had been brought into Egypt – as a kind of pragmatic decision. What’s interesting, though, is that after she’d been on the throne for about a decade, Cleopatra I was honoured with the title ‘beloved sister of the king’. So they harked back to the idea of incest as much as they could, stretching what ‘sister’ meant to allow it to happen. By approximately 176 BC, both Cleopatra I and Ptolemy V were dead. What happened next? Cleopatra I had given birth to three children, and the eldest son was set to go on to the throne, but he was still too young to rule at the time his father died. Cleopatra I had been made regent, which was the first time that had happened – and the fact that the court didn’t make any fuss shows they obviously regarded her as a very capable woman. We don’t think there were any suspicious circumstances surrounding her death, at the age of about 45, and she was succeeded by her eldest son, Ptolemy VI, who married his full-blood sister Cleopatra II. But there was also a royal spare who wasn’t willing to take a back seat. His name was Ptolemy VIII, but he was known in antiquity as Psychon – which means something like ‘fatty’. I’ve called him Potbel- ly, because it describes him so well. He’s one of the most egregious characters in the whole of ancient history – a tyrant to his fingertips. He was placed on the throne alongside his brother and sister for a while, meaning that for a few years there was a very strange, and not particularly comfortable, tripartite monarchy. Certainly, there was no love lost between Cleopatra II and Potbelly. You write that the Cleopatras have not fared well in scholarship because, perhaps, they are “simply too melodramatic”. A vivid example of such melodrama is what’s said to have occurred on Cleopatra II’s 55th birthday. What happened? It’s a dreadful scenario – a Grand Guignol spectacle. Cleopatra II and Potbelly had married after the death of her first husband, and they’d had a son, Memphites. He and his father had quarrelled, and it looked like the situation was irreconcilable, so he’d been taken out of Egypt. At the time of Cleopatra II’s birthday, Potbelly had been with his son in Cyprus. Back in Alexandria, the queen had received lots of presents, including a large box. Cleopatra opened it – to discover Memphites’ dismembered corpse inside. That was the kind of man Potbelly was: if marking his authority meant slaughtering his own flesh and blood, so be it. You might ask: why did Potbelly do that to his son and heir? The answer is: he had another two sons and another ready-made family, because the other upsetting thing about this scenario is that Potbelly had also married his niece, Cleopatra II’s youngest daughter, Cleop- atra III. The fact he was married to mother and daughter at the same time did not, as this story attests, make for a happy home. This story highlights a strange aspect of this history: it features human characters with whom it’s possible to empathise, but a society with norms and values markedly different from our own. How do we go about making sense of that? That’s a really perceptive reading. It’s important to be able to walk into a world in which incest was acceptable and mortals were seen as living gods and goddesses, but to still see them as real people capable of loving and hurting each other. That’s why nicknames such as Potbelly are vital: it makes them human. Otherwise, they’re just lists of names and dates that mean nothing. Those nicknames also reveal a lot about their characters and the ways they were viewed. Cleopatra III, for instance, was given a vicious nickname – a slang word for female genitalia – which tells us a lot about how she was seen. I wanted to depict all of the Cleopatras as flesh and blood as far as possible, because it’s only by doing so that we can make sense of the macabre, outrageous incidents they experienced. You write that Cleopatra III alone makes for a fascinating psychological case study. What was her story? She was probably the most formidable of all the Cleopatras, with a sense of narcissism and self-promotion that puts even Liz Taylor’s Cleopatra in the shade. She amassed more religious and royal titles for herself than any other Egyptian queen. I think we can look to her background to explain this: her brothers had all been killed and she had no obvious person to marry, so got into the bed of her uncle Potbelly. This has sometimes been presented as a kind of Lolita scenario – of him grooming her – but I don’t think that’s what happened. She was far too knowing, and probably gave Potbelly children willingly. Yet I think the situation does account for some of her self-aggrandisement later in life. She dominated her sons, Ptolemy IX and X, taking precedence over them in religious rituals and court ceremonials. I’m sure this harked back to when she was young, when she could have been cast out of the dynasty with no role to play of any kind – she was making sure that would never happen. That is, I suppose, why she seems to have had no warmth about her at all. Even though Ptolemy IX had fallen in love with his sister-wife, Cleopatra IV, for instance, she forced them to divorce because it didn’t suit her politically. I don’t want it to sound as if I’m depicting this as ‘women’s interfering’. Cleopatra III saw the politics behind relationships first and feelings only afterwards. I wanted to cut her some slack, and show how she, and all the other Cleopatras, were brilliant politicians. Indeed, I think we judge Cleopatra III more harshly than Potbelly, for instance, simply because she was a woman – and it seems to me that that’s seen as the greatest crime of all the Cleopatras. They did everything men did, but are judged differently because they were women and are seen as having transgressed boundaries. Now is the time to put that reading aside. I’m aware that I’ve written a very feminist take on the Cleopatras, but it’s also an earnest take on their powers and prerogatives. You think the Cleopatras genuinely did have power, then? Yes – and they had it because the men of the family after Ptolemy V were incapable of rule. It was just generation after generation of losers, so the women stepped in and took charge. Had they not done so, I think Egypt would have disintegrated far earlier. It survived because of the wise rulership of successive Cleopatras. The reigns of the final three Cleopatras fall within a section of your book called ‘Terminal Decline’. What happened? The biggest factor was the emergence of Rome. For almost a century, it had been unwilling to enter Egyptian politics with both feet and had instead skirted around the edges. But by the middle of the first century BC, the Seleucids had fallen and Pompey had taken over their former territories – meaning that, for the first time, the Egyptians had Romans on their land borders. The Romans, of course, were one of history’s great warmongering civilisations, and I think the Ptolemies knew their time would be up if they didn’t play the game. Read more | Cleopatra's daughter: the tragic inheritance to triumphant reign of Cleopatra Selene But the Cleopatras did play the game brilliantly in a way their husbands simply couldn’t match. There is no doubt whatsoever that sexual politics was a key part of that. Cleopatra VII’s successes were down to sexual politics as well as her brilliance as a ruler: her womanhood helped her alongside her intellect and her brilliance. Her ability to switch characters was key, too: Mark Anthony was a blustering man who liked booze and coarse entertainments, so she performed that kind of music hall turn for him, whereas Julius Caesar was drawn to her intellect. She used her gender to create a bubble of security for Egypt. The same had been true of her great-aunt, Cleopatra V, who is my favourite of the Cleopatras – she was the first queen regnant since the Pharaonic period, and really wasn’t afraid to take on these big male figures. We should end where we began, then, with Cleopatra VII. How does knowing more about the lives of her predecessors help us recontextualise her story? Cleopatra VII was a clever woman and she knew her history. When, towards the end of her life, Mark Antony doled out the east of the Roman empire to Cleopatra and her children, she named herself Cleopatra Thea Philopator – ‘the newest goddess’. That was clearly in homage to two former Cleopatras: her great-great-grandmother Cleopatra III, who had taken on the living role of Isis, and one of her aunts, Cleopatra Thea, who had dominated Seleucid history for decades. She was deliberately allying herself to her illustrious ances- tors, and because she couldn’t really look to the men of her family for any sort of influence, it had to be the women. I think we need to do the same: when we put Cleopatra VII into the context of the remarkable women who preceded her, we can begin to understand her motives, what she was up against, and what she was able to do. Why do you think Cleopatra has so dominated our view of this history? Cleopatra VII has never been lost in the imagination. She was her own, brilliant public-relations expert anyway, but from the moment of her carefully stage-managed death she entered into the popular consciousness. She has been claimed by every successive historical era and society as its own. She has stayed in our imaginations because she is elastic enough to be stretched into being whatever we want her to be: a femme fatale clad in gold lamé in a 1960s spectacle, or as a champion of Black Lives Matter. She is so flexible because she is, in many respects, untouchable: we’re dealing with legend, not reality. I wanted to get back to the root of that reality, because it’s there that she’s most fascinating. Finally, why do all of the Cleopatras matter? They offer us a shining moment in the wider story of women’s history, and particularly that of antiquity in which women were often marginalised. We do our best to try to find female voices, but they’re hard to come across – and here, upfront and centre, we have the achievements of a remarkable, if unorthodox, group of women. And that in itself makes them worth studying. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones is professor in ancient history at the University of Cardiff. His previous books include Persians: The Age of the Great Kings (Wildfire, 2022)