Timeline of the Ancient World
The events behind the books, games, readings, courses and infographics on this site, from the first kings of Egypt to the fall of Rome, with a few later moments that brought the ancient world back to light. Each one links to what you can read, learn or play about it here. Early dates are approximate (for Egypt, they follow Shaw's Oxford History of Ancient Egypt), and the dates of legends are the ones ancient writers gave.
The First Kings and the Pyramids
to c. 2000 BC
- c. 4000–3100 BCEgypt
The Naqada culture
Farming villages along the Nile grow into chiefdoms whose pottery, trade and rich graves spread from the south across all of Egypt.
- c. 3200 BCEgypt
The first Egyptian writing
Small bone and ivory labels in a tomb at Abydos (tomb U-j) carry some of the earliest writing known anywhere.
- c. 3000 BCEgypt
The Two Lands become one
Upper and Lower Egypt come under one king. The Narmer Palette, found at Hierakonpolis, shows King Narmer in the white crown of the south on one side and the red crown of the north on the other.
- c. 2667–2648 BCEgypt
The Step Pyramid of Djoser
At Saqqara, King Djoser and his official Imhotep raise the first large building of cut stone: six steps, about 62 meters high.
- c. 2613–2589 BCEgypt
Sneferu builds the first true pyramids
Sneferu tries three times, at Meidum and Dahshur. The Bent Pyramid changes its angle partway up; the Red Pyramid gets it right.
- c. 2589–2566 BCEgypt
The Great Pyramid of Giza
Built for the pharaoh Khufu, it stayed the tallest building in the world for almost four thousand years.
- c. 2600–2400 BCThe Near East
The Royal Game of Ur
Game boards are buried with the dead in the Royal Cemetery at Ur, in what is now southern Iraq. More than two thousand years later a Babylonian tablet still records how the game was played.
- c. 2350 BCEgypt
The Pyramid Texts
King Unas has spells carved on the walls inside his pyramid at Saqqara, the oldest large body of religious writing in the world.
- c. 2160 BCEgypt
The Old Kingdom ends
Royal power fades and rival kings rule from Herakleopolis and Thebes. Historians still debate why.
- c. 2055 BCEgypt
Mentuhotep II reunites Egypt
A Theban king defeats his northern rivals, and the Middle Kingdom begins.
The Later Bronze Age
c. 2000 to 1100 BC
- c. 2100–1700 BCGreece
Cretan hieroglyphs
Crete's first script, carved mostly on seal stones. It is unrelated to Egyptian hieroglyphs and is still unread.
- c. 1900 BCGreece
The first palaces of Crete
The Minoans build great palaces around central courts at Knossos, Phaistos and Malia: homes for rulers, but also storehouses, workshops and record offices.
- c. 1900 BCEgypt
The Tale of Sinuhe
A courtier flees Egypt when the king dies and lives among the people of Canaan; the story becomes a classic, copied by schoolboys for centuries.
- c. 1860 BCEgypt
Forts at the Second Cataract
Senusret III fixes Egypt's southern border in Nubia with a chain of great mud-brick forts.
- c. 1800–1450 BCGreece
Linear A
Minoan scribes keep accounts in Linear A on clay tablets and carve it on stone offering tables. The script can be sounded out by borrowed values, but its language is unknown.
- c. 1700–1450 BCGreece
The palace of Knossos
The great palace of Minoan Crete. Its maze of rooms may lie behind the legend of the Labyrinth, where Theseus fought the Minotaur.
- c. 1650 BCEgypt
The Hyksos rule from Avaris
Rulers of western Asian origin govern northern Egypt as the 15th Dynasty, while Theban kings hold the south.
- c. 1600 BC (debated)Greece
The eruption of Thera
A huge eruption buries the town of Akrotiri on Thera (Santorini). Radiocarbon points to about 1600 BC; older archaeological dating put it near 1500 BC, and the question is still argued.
- c. 1550 BCEgypt
Ahmose drives out the Hyksos
The Theban king takes Avaris and founds the 18th Dynasty: the New Kingdom begins.
- c. 1473–1458 BCEgypt
Hatshepsut rules as king
She builds her terraced temple at Deir el-Bahari and sends ships to the land of Punt.
- c. 1457 BCEgypt
The battle of Megiddo
Thutmose III defeats a coalition of Canaanite rulers and begins twenty years of campaigns in the Levant.
- c. 1450 BCGreece
Greek speakers at Knossos: Linear B
After destructions across Crete, Knossos is run in Greek. Its scribes adapt Linear A's signs to write their own language: Linear B, the oldest written Greek.
- c. 1400–1200 BCGreece
The Mycenaean palace states
Palaces at Mycenae, Pylos, Thebes and Tiryns rule their regions and keep their records in Linear B. The earliest mainland tablet, from Iklaina near Pylos, dates to about 1400–1350 BC.
- 14th century BC (debated)Greece
The Knossos archive burns
Fire bakes thousands of Knossos tablets hard, preserving them. Most scholars date it to the 14th century BC; some argue for about 1200 BC.
- c. 1352–1336 BCEgypt
Akhenaten and the Aten
The king puts the sun disk, the Aten, above all gods and builds a new capital at Amarna; after him the old gods return.
- c. 1336–1327 BCEgypt
Tutankhamun
A boy king brings back the old gods and dies young. His small tomb will wait more than three thousand years to be found.
- c. 1279–1213 BCEgypt
Ramesses II
The great builder reigns 66 years: Abu Simbel, the Ramesseum, and a new Delta capital, Pi-Ramesses.
- c. 1274 BCEgypt
The battle of Kadesh
Ramesses II fights the Hittites in Syria. Both sides claim victory; most historians call it a draw.
- c. 1259 BCEgypt
A peace treaty with the Hittites
Egypt and the Hittites make one of the earliest surviving peace treaties; copies survive in both Egyptian and Akkadian.
- c. 1200 BCGreece
The palace of Pylos burns
The fire that destroys the palace bakes about a thousand Linear B tablets in its archive, among them the tripod tablet and a list of offerings to Zeus and Hera.
- c. 1200 BCGreece
The Trojan War, in legend
Ancient writers dated the fall of Troy to around 1184 BC. Troy itself was real, and was destroyed more than once; how much of Homer's war happened is still argued over.
- after the fall of TroyGreece
Odysseus's ten years at sea, in legend
The Lotus-Eaters, the Cyclops, Circe, Scylla and Charybdis, and at last the suitors waiting in his own house on Ithaca.
- c. 1200–1100 BCGreece
The end of the palaces
The mainland palaces are destroyed or abandoned, and Linear B goes out of use. Scholars weigh earthquakes, raids, wars between states and a breakdown of trade; most think several causes worked together.
- c. 1177 BCEgypt
Ramesses III and the Sea Peoples
Egypt fights off groups on the move from the north, recorded on the walls of Medinet Habu.
- c. 1157 BCEgypt
The first recorded strike
The tomb-builders of Deir el-Medina stop work because their grain rations are late.
Early Greece and the Founding of Rome
c. 1100 to 500 BC
- c. 1069 BCEgypt
The New Kingdom ends
Egypt divides: kings rule the north from Tanis while the high priests of Amun hold Thebes.
- c. 925 BCEgypt
Shoshenq I campaigns in Canaan
A Libyan king of Egypt leads an army north. Many scholars identify him with Shishak in the Bible; others doubt it.
- c. 800 BCGreece
The Greek alphabet
After about four centuries without writing, Greeks borrow the Phoenician letters and add vowels. Linear B has long been forgotten.
- 776 BCGreece
The first Olympic Games
The traditional date of the first games at Olympia, held every four years in honour of Zeus. Greeks later counted years in Olympiads.
- 753 BCRome
The founding of Rome
The traditional date when Romulus founded the city on the Palatine Hill. Close by, in legend, Hercules had once killed the fire-breathing Cacus.
- c. 728 BCEgypt
Piye of Kush conquers Egypt
A king from Napata in Nubia sails north and takes Egypt; his family rules it as the 25th Dynasty.
- c. 750–700 BCGreece
Homer's poems take shape
The Iliad and the Odyssey, the oldest works of Greek literature, are composed in a mixed poetic dialect much older than Koine.
- 664 BCEgypt
The Saite revival
Psamtek I reunites Egypt from Sais. From this year on, Egyptian dates are exact.
- 6th century BCGreece
Aesop tells his fables
Aesop was said to be a slave from Samos. The fables collected under his name were retold for centuries, in Greek prose and in Latin verse.
- 525 BCEgypt
Persia conquers Egypt
Cambyses II of Persia defeats the last Saite king; Egypt becomes a Persian province.
- 509 BCRome
Rome becomes a republic
The Romans drive out their last king, Tarquin the Proud, and are governed from now on by two consuls elected each year.
Classical Greece
500 to 323 BC
- 490 BCGreece
Marathon
The Athenians defeat the first Persian invasion on the plain of Marathon.
- 480 BCGreece
Thermopylae and Salamis
Leonidas and his Spartans hold the pass at Thermopylae for three days; weeks later the Greek fleet beats the Persians at Salamis.
- 431–404 BCGreece
The Peloponnesian War
Athens and Sparta, with their allies, fight for nearly thirty years. Sparta wins.
- c. 430 BCGreece
Herodotus writes his Histories
The story of the Persian Wars, and the first great work of history. Herodotus wrote in the Ionic dialect.
- 401–399 BCGreece
The march of the Ten Thousand
Greek soldiers hired by a Persian prince are stranded deep in Persia and fight their way home to the Black Sea. Xenophon, one of them, wrote it all down.
- 399 BCGreece
The death of Socrates
Socrates is tried in Athens and condemned to drink hemlock. His pupil Plato makes him the speaker of his dialogues.
- c. 375 BCGreece
Plato's Republic
What is justice, and what would a just city look like? Plato's answer includes philosopher-kings and the allegory of the cave.
- 343 BCEgypt
The last native pharaoh
The Persians return and Nectanebo II flees south. No Egyptian-born king will rule Egypt again for more than two thousand years.
- c. 340 BCGreece
Aristotle's Ethics
Aristotle, Plato's pupil and Alexander's tutor, asks what a good human life is, and answers: a life of virtue, lived in friendship.
- 334–323 BCGreece
Alexander the Great
Alexander conquers the Persian Empire as far as India. After him, Koine, the common Greek, becomes the language of the eastern Mediterranean.
- 332–331 BCEgypt
Alexander takes Egypt and founds Alexandria
The Persian governor gives Egypt up without a fight. Alexander visits the oracle of Amun at Siwa and founds a new city on the coast.
Alexander's Heirs and the Roman Republic
323 to 27 BC
- c. 285 BCEgypt
The Library of Alexandria
Under the first Ptolemies, Alexandria gathers scholars and books; the priest Manetho writes his history of Egypt in Greek, with the 30 dynasties we still use.
- 280–275 BCRome
Pyrrhus invades Italy
King Pyrrhus of Epirus beats the Romans twice, at such a cost that a costly win is still called a Pyrrhic victory.
- 3rd–2nd century BCBible and Church
The Septuagint
Jewish scholars in Alexandria translate the Hebrew Scriptures into Koine Greek. It became the Old Testament of the early Church.
- 218 BCRome
Hannibal crosses the Alps
In the Second Punic War the Carthaginian general marches elephants over the Alps and beats Rome at Cannae, but Rome wins at Zama in 202 BC.
- 196 BCEgypt
The Rosetta Stone
Priests issue a decree in honor of Ptolemy V, carved in hieroglyphs, Demotic and Greek. Two thousand years later it will help unlock the hieroglyphs.
- 58–50 BCRome
Caesar conquers Gaul
Julius Caesar's own account, written in the third person, is still a first book for Latin students.
- 44 BCRome
The Ides of March
Caesar is murdered in the Senate. That same year Cicero writes On Duties for his son; he is killed the next year.
- 51–30 BCEgypt
Cleopatra VII, the last Ptolemy
Allied with Caesar and then Antony, she loses to Octavian at Actium (31 BC). After her death in 30 BC, Egypt becomes a Roman province.
- 27 BCRome
Augustus, the first emperor
Caesar's adopted son Octavian wins the civil wars and takes the name Augustus. Suetonius tells how he liked to play knucklebones with friends at dinner.
The Early Roman Empire
27 BC to AD 180
- c. 27 BC – AD 17Rome
Livy writes the history of Rome
Under Augustus, Livy tells Rome's story from its founding, in 142 books; 35 survive. The first five carry it from Romulus to the sack of Rome by the Gauls.
- 29–19 BCRome
Virgil's Georgics and Aeneid
Virgil tells how Aeneas fled burning Troy to found the Roman people. He died before he could finish revising the Aeneid.
- AD 8Rome
Ovid's Metamorphoses, and his exile
Ovid finishes his poem of transformations and is banished by Augustus to the Black Sea. His poems mention the board games Romans played, including three-in-a-row and the game of soldiers.
- AD 9Rome
The Teutoburg Forest
Arminius leads the Germanic tribes in destroying three Roman legions under Varus. Rome gave up its plan to make Germany a province.
- early 1st century ADRome
Phaedrus puts Aesop into Latin verse
A freed slave of Augustus's household, Phaedrus retold the old fables, and added some of his own.
- c. AD 30Bible and Church
The ministry and death of Jesus
Jesus teaches in Galilee and Judea and is crucified in Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate.
- c. AD 62–65Rome
Seneca's Moral Letters
Nero's former tutor writes 124 letters on how to live as a Stoic, shortly before Nero orders his death.
- c. AD 50–100Bible and Church
The New Testament is written
Paul's letters and then the four Gospels, all in Koine Greek.
- c. AD 100Greece
Plutarch's Parallel Lives
Plutarch pairs famous Greeks with famous Romans, and compares them. Shakespeare took the plots of his Roman plays from them.
- c. AD 170–180Rome
Marcus Aurelius's Meditations
The emperor writes notes to himself, in Greek, on campaign along the Danube. They were never meant to be published.
Late Antiquity
AD 180 to 530
- c. AD 320Egypt
The first monasteries
In Upper Egypt, Pachomius gathers monks into the first communal monasteries; Christian Egyptians write their language in Coptic letters.
- c. AD 382–405Bible and Church
Jerome's Vulgate
Jerome translates the Bible into Latin. His version became the Bible of the Western Church for a thousand years.
- AD 394Egypt
The last hieroglyphs
At the temple of Isis at Philae, a priest carves the last known hieroglyphic inscription, dated 24 August 394.
- c. AD 397–400Bible and Church
Augustine's Confessions
Augustine, now a bishop in North Africa, tells God the story of his restless youth and his conversion in a garden in Milan.
- AD 410–426Bible and Church
Rome is sacked, and Augustine answers
The Visigoths sack Rome in 410. Pagans blamed the Christians; Augustine replied with The City of God.
- AD 452Egypt
The last Demotic
The last dated inscription in Demotic, also at Philae. After it, Egyptian is written only in Coptic.
- AD 476Rome
The last Western emperor
The boy emperor Romulus Augustulus is deposed by Odoacer. The empire in the East went on for nearly a thousand years more.
- c. AD 480Rome
The emperor Zeno's unlucky throw
A Greek poem records one throw in a game of tabula played by the Eastern emperor Zeno, so bad that it left eight of his pieces standing alone, open to capture. It is the oldest backgammon position we know.
- c. AD 524Rome
Boethius in prison
Accused of treason by the Gothic king Theodoric, the Roman senator Boethius writes The Consolation of Philosophy while awaiting execution. It was one of the most-read books of the Middle Ages.
After the Ancient World
AD 530 onward
- AD 641Egypt
The Arab conquest of Egypt
Arab armies under Amr ibn al-As take the fortress of Babylon and then Alexandria, ending Byzantine rule.
- AD 1799Egypt
The Rosetta Stone is found
French soldiers of Napoleon's expedition dig it up at Rosetta, in the Delta; it goes to the British Museum in 1802.
- AD 1822Egypt
Champollion reads the hieroglyphs
Jean-François Champollion reads the names of Ptolemy, Cleopatra, Ramesses and Thutmose and shows how the script works, building on Thomas Young's work.
- AD 1900Greece
Arthur Evans digs at Knossos
Evans uncovers the palace and thousands of clay tablets, and names the scripts Linear A and Linear B. He is sure their language is not Greek.
- AD 1922Egypt
Tutankhamun's tomb is found
Howard Carter finds the steps to tomb KV62 in the Valley of the Kings, nearly untouched since antiquity.
- AD 1939Greece
Carl Blegen finds the Pylos archive
On the first day of digging near Pylos, Blegen's trench cuts into a palace archive room with about six hundred Linear B tablets.
- AD 1945–1948Greece
Alice Kober's papers
Without guessing any sounds, Alice Kober shows that Linear B words change their endings and which signs must share a consonant or a vowel.
- AD 1952Greece
Michael Ventris: Linear B is Greek
Testing Cretan place names on his grid of signs, Ventris finds Greek. He announces it on BBC radio on 1 July 1952.
- AD 1953Greece
The decipherment is confirmed
Ventris and John Chadwick publish their case, and the newly cleaned Pylos tripod tablet reads exactly as their values predict: the words describe the vessels drawn beside them.
- AD 1956 to todayGreece
Linear A, still unread
With Linear B read, attention turns to Linear A. Its signs can be sounded out by the Linear B values, but its language is unknown; claims to read it appear every few years, and none has been accepted.
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