istoryworld
Assyrian reliefs
In about 645 BC Ashurbanipal, king of Assyria, commissions a series of carved reliefs for his new palace at Nineveh. They include several scenes of a lion hunt - a sport reserved for the king himself. Many details of this famous relief are charged with high drama. Grooms struggle to harness the king's horses, a dog strains at the leash, a lion races out of the cage opened by an attendant and another leaps at the king's chariot, to be warded off just in time ...
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Phonetics and the alphabet
Phoenician is a Semitic language and the new approach to writing is adopted by the various Semitic groups in Phoenicia and Palestine. Versions of it are used, for example, for Aramaic and Hebrew. Only the consonants are written, leaving the vowels to be understood by the reader (as is still the case today with a widespread Semitic language, Arabic). The contribution of the Greeks, adapting the Phoenician system of writing in the 8th century BC, is to add vowels. For some they use the names ...
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The Phoney War
In France and Britain the immediate aftermath of the declaration of war is a return to the defensive tactics of World War I. The French rush troops to the Maginot Line, an elaborate complex of concrete fortifications connected by underground railway lines, which has been constructed along the Franco-German border between 1929 and 1938. (It is named after André Maginot, minister of war from 1929 to 1931.)France's border with Belgium, running northwest to the sea, is not similarly protected. So, as in World War I, ...
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Chronometer
The terms are demanding. To win the prize a chronometer (a solemnly scientific term for a clock, first used in a document of this year) must be sufficiently accurate to calculate longitude within thirty nautical miles at the end of a journey to the West Indies. This means that in rough seas, damp salty conditions and sudden changes of temperature the instrument must lose or gain not more than three seconds a day - a level of accuracy unmatched at this time by the best ...
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Toltecs
The Toltecs lose control of their empire during the 12th century, when both Tula and Chichén Itzá are destroyed. But the Toltecs are not immediately replaced by another ruling dynasty in central Mexico. Instead the region lapses into a prolonged period of chaos and anarchy. Not until the 14th century does a migrant tribe create a base, at what is now Mexico City, from which they will establish the last and the most powerful of the Indian empires of central America. They are the Aztecs.
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Roman murals
Murals are even more fragile than the walls they are painted on, so it is not surprising that few survive from the days of the Roman empire. The accidents of being covered by ash or sand, or of being originally painted underground, have preserved some examples in Pompeii, Doura-Europos and the Roman catacombs. They are not for the most part very distinguished. But they demonstrate that it is a normal custom, in Roman communities, to decorate walls by painting on the plaster. It is equally ...
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Indian sculpture
The lively traditions of Indian sculpture date back to the first Indian empire, that of the Maurya dynasty. Sculptors begin to carve characters and scenes from the stories of India's three interconnected religions - Hinduism, Buddhism and to a lesser extent Jainism. The presentation tends to be frontal, as though the figures are posing for the camera. From the start, among other themes, there are examples of Hindu art's most abiding image - magnificent young women, nude, full-breasted, and often in some strikingly athletic pose ...
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England sophisticated
By the time of Richard II the English kingdom can hold its own in learning and the arts. The university of Oxford, which earlier in the century has produced William of Ockham (one of the last great figures of medieval scholasticism), is now buzzing with the radical notions of John Wycliffe. He dies in 1384, but his writings have a profound influence in Europe during the build-up towards the Reformation. In art and literature there is the same excellence. Richard II commissions some of the ...
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First Continental Congress
Fifty-six delegates from twelve colonies convene in Philadelphia. They are leaders of their own communities (George Washington is here for Virginia). Their voices will carry weight, and the message that they send to Britain is uncompromising. They state that the recent measures passed into law at Westminster violate natural rights (a theme developed two years later in the Declaration of Independence) and that as such they are unconstitutional. They declare their united support for Massachusetts. In more practical terms they announce a joint boycott, from ...
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War in the west
At first the thrust of the German armies through Belgium and south into France seems to fulfil the Schlieffen Plan. 'Victory by Christmas' does indeed seem possible (though the German high command is not alone in making this promise to its citizens - all the other combatants are professing equal optimism).The Belgian army puts up a heroic resistance but is unable to prevent the Germans from taking Liège on August 16, Brusssels on the 20th and Namur on the 23rd. Meanwhile a small British Expeditionary ...
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The Sassanians
Near Persepolis, at Naqsh-e-Rustam, Ardashir commissions a great relief sculpted high in the rock face. It depicts him on horseback, with a dead Parthian beneath his horse's hooves, while he receives the royal crown from Ahura Mazda. With the restoration of the first authentically Persian dynasty since the Achaemenids, the cult of Ahura Mazda becomes again the official state religion. There is now a ritual hierarchy throughout the empire, with chief priests for each major district and a supreme priest wielding overall authority.
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Mary in Scotland
Darnley is handsome and charming, and his royal lineage means that any child of Mary's and his will have an enhanced claim to the English throne (Henry VII's daughter Margaret Tudor is grandmother to Mary by her first marriage and to Darnley by her second). But these turn out to be Darnley's only merits. Idle, deceitful and unscrupulous, he soon earns Mary's hatred. The combination of his defects and her impulsiveness prompts a spiral of disaster. The first significant event is the murder, with Darnley's ...
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John I
The great Dominican abbey known variously as Batalha ('battle') or Santa Maria da Vitória ('St Mary of Victory') is the triumphal celebration of the battle of 1385, fought nearby at Aljubarrota, which secures the kingdom of Portugal for John I. The victory hastens the end of the war against his Castilian rival, four months after John has himself been acclaimed king by the Cortes in Coimbra. As a child of seven, John was appointed master of the Order of St Benedict of Avis, a Portuguese ...
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Glazed ceramics
In all the early civilizations, from Mesopotamia and Egypt onwards, pottery is a highly developed craft. An outstanding achievement is the Greek ceramic tradition of the 6th and 5th century BC. But technically all these pots suffer from a major disadvantage. Fired earthenware is tough but it is porous. Liquid will soak into it and eventually leak through it. This has some advantages with water (where evaporation from the surface cools the contents of the jug) but is less appropriate for storing wine or milk. ...
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British portraits
Reynolds often paints his subjects full length, in splendid poses and in close proximity to a classical column or urn. These are the sort of people who go on the Grand Tour. Their easy self-confidence in Reynolds's canvases revives the great tradition of the English portraits of van Dyck.If anything is missing in these powerful images by Reynolds, it is perhaps the fleeting quality of fashion - a quality abundantly supplied by his slightly younger rival Thomas Gainsborough. When Gainsborough catches William and Elizabeth Hallett ...
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Italian Gothic
The most impressive Italian contribution to the story of Gothic architecture is in secular buildings. In 1298 the authorities in Siena publish regulations for the city's central piazza, the semicircular Campo. The height and style of the surrounding houses are to be carefully regulated. Over the next few decades the commune builds the town hall, the Palazzo Publico, on the straight side of the gently sloping semicircle (the great tower is completed in 1348). The other sides fill in, as decreed, to provide a sense ...
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The Carolingian inheritance
Charlemagne intends, in the tradition of the Franks, to divide his territory equally between his sons. But the two eldest die, in 810 and 811, leaving only Louis - who succeeds as sole emperor in 814. His subsequent name, Louis the Pious, reveals a character different from his father's; he is more interested in asserting authority through the medium of church and monastery than on the battlefield. Charlemagne's great empire remains precariously intact for this one reign after his death. Its fragmentation begins when Louis ...
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Greek vases
The Greeks develop by far the most sophisticated tradition of early pottery, and Greek vases survive in greater numbers than any other ceramic group of comparable age. During the period of greatest distinction, from about 550 to 480 BC, the potters of Athens and the surrounding district of Attica are the most accomplished in the Greek world. It is they who perfect the decorative style known as black-figure and then introduce the subsequent red-figure technique. Crucial to the success of both is the discovery of ...
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A year of high drama AD 1066
Edward the Confessor dies on January 5. He is buried the next day in his new abbey church at Westminster, which has been consecrated only the previous week. On the same day as the funeral there is a coronation, almost certainly carried out in the abbey. Harold, earl of Wessex, named as his successor by the dying Edward, is now king. His reign will last ten months. And it will include a strange omen - a bright long-haired star moving through the sky. The succession ...
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Fra Angelico and San Marco
The Dominican order has among its ranks a superbly talented painter. As a friar he is referred to as 'brother' (frater in Latin, fratello in Italian), and the name by which he becomes known is Fra Angelico - the angelic brother. From 1443 Dominicans in Florence employ him to provide contemplative images for the walls of their convent of San Marco. Over the next four years he and his assistants create an extended masterpiece of Italian Renaissance art - though they would not have thought ...
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