Africa

Cleopatra's face on a coin

The face of Cleopatra: was she really so beautiful?

A painting of 1616 depicts the Moriscos boarding ships to sail from the port of Valencia

The 17th-century expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: what happened?

c50 BC, Cleopatra, queen of Egypt, the last and most famous of the Ptolemaic dynasty. (Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

Who was Cleopatra? Her life, her love affairs and her children, plus 6 little-known facts

Portrait of an African man, c1530

The missing Tudors: black people in 16th-century England

An illustration of slaves picking cotton on a plantation. (Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

David Olusoga "Black history affects all of us – it is British history"

Afua Hirsh with her ‘Enslaved’ co-presenters Simcha Jacobovici and Samuel L Jackson

Afua Hirsch on tracing the story of the transatlantic slave trade

Limestone relief depicting a a procession of courtiers paying homage to the Ahiram, king of the Phoenician city of Byblos

General ancient history

Your guide to... the Phoenicians

Michael Wood reveals how Hadrian, a little-known “man of Africa”, helped lay the foundations of English culture

The African who transformed Anglo-Saxon England

A reconstruction of an extract from the Book of the Dead depicting an embalming scene. (Photo by De Agostini Picture Library via Getty Images)

Guidebook to the Ancient Egyptian afterlife

Dag Hammarskjöld

The mysterious death of Dag Hammarskjöld: a Cold War killing?

Afua Hirsch in Kenya. (Photo by Clear Story/BBC)

Afua Hirsch: “The prejudice still surrounding Africa is absolutely rooted in a racist past”

The tomb of Pharaoh Djoser, built at Saqqara

General ancient history

Timeline: the evolution of ancient empires

Print of Hannibal ferrying his elephants over the Rhone on rafts during the Second Punic War

Your guide to... the Punic Wars

Afua Hirsch with the Samburu people, Kenya

Africa’s cultural liberation

Colourised print of the Lighthouse of Alexandria as imagined in the 18th century

General ancient history

The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World: what were they, and what happened to them?