Innholdsfortegnelse for July/August 2025 i National Geographic History

The renowned ancient maritime traders who ruled from coastal cities along the eastern Mediterranean may not have referred to themselves in the same way that history has: Phoenicians. If these seafarers used a collective name, it has been scattered in the winds. In our story, we examine the archaeological evidence that provides more insight into the origins of the Phoenicians and dig deeper to understand who they were (above, funerary masks from a Phoenician tomb). From the Mediterranean, we travel across oceans and time in our new department, This Day in America. To celebrate the coming 250th anniversary of our nation’s founding, we examine pivotal but often underappreciated moments that made the United States of America. In this issue we also witness the first golden age of Babylon, the remarkable…

RESEARCHERS know of at least two other Egyptian mummies whose mouths are wide open. The first, known as Unknown Man E, has been identified as Prince Pentawere, who was put to death, or forced to kill himself, for plotting to assassinate his father, Pharaoh Ramses III (r. 1186–1155 B.C.). Although researchers are unable to fully explain the cause of the facial distortion, the body’s scant embalming supports the theorythat the embalmers neglected to keep his mouth closed, perhaps as a gesture of disrespect for his crime. The second, a female mummy called Unknown Woman A, had her head tilted to the side and her legs crossed in a very atypical pose. A CT scan showed she suffered a cardiovascular disease. Her jaw likely dropped open just after death and the…

CHANGING ATTITUDES before Braille’s birth helped pave the way for tolerance. Philosopher Denis Diderot’s 1749 Letter on the Blind argued blind people have the same intellectual capacity as sighted people. Schools for the blind opened in France and England in the late 1700s, but Braille’s writing system provided a means of engaging with texts and scores. Braille was motivated by his affection for the visually impaired community, a kindness and grace apparent in his letters. His will—with bequests to everyone down to the night watchman and directing to burn a box of IOUs people in debt had left him—mirrored his generosity.…

SIX MILLION people around the world use braille today. Its future is secure in a high-tech world. It can be easily converted to digital formats, and it can be read and written on tactile displays on computers or tablets. An expert braille user can read 200 words a minute (most sighted people can read 250). Although braille literacy is declining, it will be necessary for a future in which an aging population increases the number of blind and visually impaired people. Its strength as a universal system that can be used by anyone, regardless of their linguistic background, has attained international hero status for its French creator. Numerous countries have paid homage to Braille in their postage stamps, including those displayed below (from top: the U.S.S.R., Qatar, and India).…

THE CELTS used the carnyx horn to intimidate their enemies, and the Greeks raised their troops’ spirits with the trumpet-like salpinx. The Janissaries, much like early modern armies, used percussion as they marched into battle. During sieges, such as that of Constantinople in 1453, the bands kept up the thunderous music of cymbals, drums, and fifes day and night without ceasing, energizing the Ottoman troops and intimidating the local population. The march on Constantinople, and later Vienna, captured the European imagination, inspiring rousing fanfares such as Mozart’s Piano Sonata No. 11 and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9.…

EVIDENCE ON HOW various Mesopotamians regarded abortion produces a mixed picture. One surviving medical text from the region seems to accept the practice, giving instructions for how a termination should be performed. It is addressed to: “A pregnant woman, so that her fruit [the fetus] is expelled.” It goes on to list eight plants that should be crushed, mixed with wine and drunk on an empty stomach. However, the Middle Assyrian Laws, from the 14th century B.C., establish a terrible punishment for any woman who makes the decision to abort: “If a woman aborts her fetus by her own action and they then prove the charges against her and find her guilty, they shall impale her, they shall not bury her. If she dies as a result of aborting her…

THE PAPYRUS ANASTASI I, a satirical text composed in the 13th century B.C. during the reign of the Egyptian pharaoh Ramses II, includes a brief description of the Egyptian-controlled cities of the Canaan coast. It is structured as a letter written by an Egyptian scribe, although it is more likely to be a literary composition. One section is dedicated to the cities of the people the Greeks later called the Phoenicians: “I will tell you of another mysterious city. Byblos is its name; what is it like, and its … goddess, once again? You have not trodden it. Come teach me about Berytus, and about Sidon and Sarepta … They tell of another city in the sea, Tyre-the-port is its name. Water is taken over to it in boats, and…

A.D. 165–180 The Antonine plague, the first major epidemic of the Roman Empire, kills up to 10 percent of its population. ca 249–269 The Cyprian plague spreads across the empire, taking a heavy toll on cities such as Rome, Carthage, and Alexandria. 368–369 Shifts in climate cause droughts in the Mediterranean. In Roman-ruled Turkey, deadly famines follow. 395 Theodosius I’s death splits the Empire into West and East. The East will outlast the West as the Byzantine Empire. 476 The Germanic leader Odoacer deposes Romulus Augustulus, the last emperor of the Western Roman Empire.…

IN THE SUMMER OF 452, Attila, leader of the Huns, invaded Italy. After taking Aquileia and plundering the Po Valley, the Hun forces started advancing toward Rome. Faced with this threat, Emperor Valentinian III sent a delegation to Attila, led by Pope Leo I (or Leo the Great) and other Roman dignitaries, to keep the Hun leader from plundering Rome. According to tradition, Attila ordered his forces to retreat after being impressed by the figure of the pontiff. Other sources suggest that the real reason for Attila’s retreat was that a disease, possibly malaria, was endemic in the plains of northern Italy. Malaria was, of course, as much a threat to Romans as to Huns, which explains the scant evidence for germ warfare in the Roman period. Nevertheless, the Romans were…

YOU CAN LEAVE THE WORLD BETTER THAN YOU FOUND IT. When you leave a gift to the National Geographic Society in your will or trust, or by beneficiary designation, you can protect the wonder of our world. NEED A WILL? We believe everyone should have access to estate planning tools. That’s why we are offering this free resource to our supporters. Get started today! natgeo.org/givingdocs CREATE A LEGACY OF YOUR OWN • Yes! Please send me information on leaving a gift to the National Geographic Society.• The National Geographic Society has already been included in my estate plans.• I would like to speak to someone about making a gift. Please contact me. Mail to: National Geographic Society Planned Giving Office 1145 17th Street, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20036-4688 Contact: legacy@ngs.org (800)…

1809 Louis Braille is born in Coupvray, east of Paris. As a child, he loses his sight after an accident in his father’s workshop. 1819 In Paris, he enrolls at France’s Royal Institute for Blind Youth, the world’s first such school. 1821 Capt. Charles Barbier presents his military code of “night writing.” Inspired, Braille adapts it for blind people. 1824–825 During these years, Braille officially completes his writing system. Later he invents a code for music. 1852 Braille dies in Paris after a long battle with tuberculosis and is buried in Coupvray.…

BRAILLE was born in Coupvray, east of Paris, in France’s Brie region, famous for the cheese of the same name. His childhood home, which became the Musée Louis Braille in the 1950s, is a traditional three-story house built the 1700s. The family worked as saddlers in Coupvrayfor more than a century, passing on the profession. In the museum, the leather workshop (pictured at right) showcases an original table, horse bridles, and an awl ofthe type that blinded Braille in the horrific childhood incident. A marble plaque outside the house honors the inventor with these words: “He opened the doors of knowledge to all those who cannot see.”…

Europeans in the Middle Ages were no strangers to diseases and plagues. When suffering from health problems, they did the same as people today: They looked to medicine in the hope for a cure, or at least for the easing of pain. People bought, ingested, or applied items that are still familiar—potions, ointments, and pills. The chemistry of such medication, however, was very different, made from natural substances once believed to have curative, even miraculous, properties. These included precious stones (agate was a remedy for eye complaints, while jasper was thought to counter hemorrhoids); mineral waters; products derived from animals or even humans (nails, urine, blood); and, above all, a great variety of plants. A pharmacopoeia called De Materia Medica by the Greek physician Dioscorides was widely circulated both in…

2217–2193 B.C. The earliest surviving evidence of the name Babylon is from the reign of the Akkadian King Shar-kali-sharri. Little is known about the city at that time. CA 1894 B.C. The Amorite dynasty begins its rule of Babylon. In the following decades, the city, and the region, established primacy in the political landscape of Mesopotamia. 1792–1750 B.C. The Amorite King Hammurabi is the driving force behind the Babylonian Empire, uniting much of Mesopotamia under his rule. He creates his famous legal code. 16TH CENTURY B.C. The Kassite dynasty is established, and its kings restore temples and erect numerous buildings. Its long reign consolidates Babylon as de facto capital of Mesopotamia. 605 B.C. Nebuchadnezzar II begins his reign of Babylon. He oversees an ambitious rebuilding of the city, and takes…

BABYLON’S NEW YEAR’S festival, Akitu, had its roots in an ancient ritual from the third millennium B.C. related to barley It took place around March and April. A key moment came when the Enuma Elish creation epic was read aloud in the House of the New Year, situated north of Babylon. This ancient text tells how the god Marduk took the body of his enemy, the goddess Tiamat, and split it in two to create the heavens and the earth. A statue of Nabû, son of the supreme god Marduk, was brought from the nearby city of Borsippa; later all the ritual statues were paraded before the joyous populace. The festival was observed in the region for over a millennium, until as late as the third century A.D.…

The Phoenicians never existed. Or, at least, the people we now know as Phoenicians didn’t use that name for themselves. While they identified as inhabitants of a particular city—Tyre, Sidon, Gebal (known by the Greeks as Byblos), Berytus (Beirut), or Aradus (Arwad)—they never identified themselves as a Phoenician collective. Each Phoenician city was independent: The inhabitants spoke different dialects and each city had its own pantheon, institutions, and an autonomous international policy. The term “Phoenician (Phoinikè)” is aGreek word first used in Homeric poems composed around the eighth to seventh centuries B.C. It refers to the people and region along the modern-day Lebanese coast. It’s not clear why Phoinikè was chosen; its meaning of a reddish purple may refer to the perceived tanned skin tone of the Phoenicians or, more…

THE TYRE PROJECT, a research program run by the Pompeu Fabra University of Barcelona, Spain, has uncovered new archaeological evidence about the deep history of Tyre. This port city drove Phoenician colonial expansion in the Mediterranean. In the program’s first phase, from 1997 to 2010, the research team focused on excavations at the site of Al Bass, the largest Phoenician necropolis in Lebanon, where around 250 cinerary urns, dated between 900 and 600 B.C., have been recovered. The program’s second stage (2013 to 2019) focused on exploring the acropolis area. The monumental remains of a sanctuary dating to 600 B.C. were among the most striking finds. From there, the team was able to dig down to the earliest strata, which confirmed that Tyre was founded between the end of the…

ROME’S POPULATION surpassed an estimated one million by the early imperial period. People coming into the city from across the empire led to over-crowding and the rapid spread of disease. New concrete techniques enabled lavish public baths to be built by emperors keen to project the image of Rome as civilized and hygienic. Bathing was a mainstay of the culture, but in a society with little understanding of disease transmission where the sick bathed alongside the healthy, the baths were not only an insufficient counterbalance to movement of people but also may have made matters worse. A 2020 study by England’s University of Cambridge found that Roman public baths, where fecal matter mixed with stagnant water heated by direct sunlight, became a breeding ground for parasites.…

Acentury before John’s birth, William the Conqueror’s invasion of England in 1066 bound English politics and culture to France. For John, like his brother Richard I and his father Henry II, the dominions they held in France were more significant than those in the British Isles. As Plantagenets, their dynasty was rooted both in the Norman heartland of their ancestors and the county of Anjou just to the south. The term that historians later used to describe this composite state, the Angevin Empire, is taken from the name of the capital of Anjou, the city of Angers. The empire, however, was built on shaky foundations. The Angevin territories were vulnerable to rivals to the east, specifically Philip II, the self-styled king of France and the feudal ruler to whom the…

The Magna Carta is a mixture of a peace treaty between the king and his barons and a charter of rights. Its clauses reflect the role of the clergy in its drafting: The first clause, for example, guarantees freedom to the church. Other clauses respond to the concerns of the barons, such as clause 39, which establishes the obligation for every free man to be judged “by the law‑ ful judgment of his peers or by the law of the land” and not by the sole will of the king. The most radical was clause 61, in which the king agreed to accept a committee of 25 barons dedicated to guaranteeing “the peace and liberties granted and confirmed to them by this charter.” If the king or his officers “offend…

THE SCREAMING MUMMY was discovered in 1935 in Theban Tomb 71, one of two built for Senenmut. An architect in the court of Queen Hatshepsut (r. 1479–1458 B.C.), Senenmut built Hatshepsut’s mortuary temple in Deir el Bahri. He also either fathered the queen’s daughter, Neferure, or acted as a godparent to her. Tomb 71 contained the bodies of Senenmut’s parents and other family members. According to Campbell Price, Egyptologist at the University of Manchester, England, and author of an upcoming book on Senenmut, the screaming mummy may have belonged to a woman associated with his family, although she may not have had a biological connection with him.…

THE ARTIST known as The Blind has created unique braille frescoes across the world since 2004. Based in Nantes in western France, he designs works that can be read by the visually impaired. As an activist, he calls attention to the importance of accessibility to art for all. His work with braille began with the assembling of plaster half spheres, later evolving into murals, installations, and sculptures. Deciphering the witty messages requires teamwork between a sighted person and someone who is visually impaired. The Blind posts on Instagram as @theblind1.…

THE MOST CHARACTERISTIC element of the Janissary uniform was its headdress, the börk. There are few surviving examples, but the börk has been described as a large, rigid felt cap with a square flap falling behind. It often contained a pocket holding a spoon, a symbol of a Janissary’s camaraderie with his fellow soldiers and an acknowledgement of gratitude to the sultan who provided his daily food. Many börks had feathers protruding from the top. Over time, as the corps declined, the börk gave way to extravagant turbans unsuitable for combat. By the 19th century, Janissaries were wearing other types of headwear, including the classic Turkish fez. The singular hats worn by the army became a particular preoccupation with modern Türkiye’s (Turkey’s) first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. In 1925, Atatürk…

THE CODE OF HAMMURABI, inscribed on a stela originally placed in the temple of Marduk in Babylon in the 18th century B.C., is the most iconic legal compendium from Mesopotamia. In the prologue, the king justifies his role as lawmaker: When Anu … and Bel … assigned to Marduk … dominion over earthly man, and made him great … they called Babylon by his illustrious name, made it great on earth, and founded an everlasting kingdom in it, whose foundations are laid so solidly as those of heaven and earth; then Anu and Bel called by name me, Hammurabi … to bring about the rule of righteousness in the land, to destroy the wicked and the evildoers, so that the strong should not harm the weak.…

Queen Nefertari, “beloved of Mut,” lived during the 19th dynasty (13th century B.C.) and was a Great Royal Wife of Pharaoh Ramses II. She was most likely his favorite and the most powerful of them. Nefertari was showered with numerous honorific titles, including Great Royal Wife, Wife of God, Mother of Pharaoh, Hereditary Noble-woman, and Mistress of Upper and Lower Egypt. However, one title, She for Whom the Sun Shines, points to Ramses’ special love for Nefertari. He built a magnificent tomb for her in the necropolis at the Valley of the Queens, or Ta Set Neferu (“the place of the beauties”) as the ancient Egyptians called it. The site is south of the Valley of the Kings, and the layout is characteristic of tombs from the time of the…

2500 B.C. The Canaanite port of Gebal (Byblos), later the epicenter of Phoenician power, is mentioned in tablets found at the Syrian site of Ebla. 1600–1200 B.C. The Phoenician cities of Tyre, Gebal, Sidon, and Berytus (Beirut) come under Egyptian rule, from which they benefit commercially. 1200 B.C. Invasions and settlements led by the Sea Peoples disrupt states in the region, but Phoenician trading continues. 801–900 B.C. Phoenicians from Tyre found Carthage in North Africa. One century later, Phoenician traders found Gadir (Cádiz) in Spain. 64 B.C. Three centuries after its conquest by Alexander the Great, Phoenicia is conquered by the Roman Republic.…

A DVANCES INpaleopathology and paleomicrobiology have enabled historians to better understand the evolution of diseases from the past. Scholars now identify the Antonine plague as an outbreak of smallpox that probably began in Seleucia (today in Iraq), capital of the Parthian Empire, which was at war with the Romans in the mid-second century A.D. The original infection is thought to have occurred through zoonotic transmission from a gerbil to a human some 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. This likely took place in Africa—the gerbil is found in arid habitats from Guinea to Ethiopia. The gerbil can be infected by the taterapox virus, which is related to the camelpox virus. Both are closely related to the variola virus, more commonly known as smallpox.…

Hunting had long been the sport of the Anglo-Saxon kings of England. The Norman Conquest in 1066, however, brought important changes to the way land was used for hunting. Prior to 1066, English kings hunted in open countryside, but the Normans brought with them a new idea: the forest. Although in modern English forest means an extensive woodland, the Latin roots of the word are related to legal ideas of land set aside for royal use. Royal forests were subject to strict rules about who could and could not use their resources, leading to discontentment among both nobles and common people. King John certainly made use of the royal forests established by his predecessors, as depicted in this 14th-century miniature held in the British Library. It shows the crowned king…

The first chroniclers to write about the reign of John did not suggest his misdeeds were especially unusual. The Barnwell Chronicle, written anonymously in the 1220s, portrays John as an unlucky prince who had lost many territories, although it does censure the late king for “stealing” from the English at the expense of his foreign allies. Among the first depictions of John as a notably malign ruler appear in the chronicle of the Benedictine monk Roger of Wendover, written around 1230, which recounts John sleeping with the wives of his barons, taking the Lord’s name in vain (swearing “By God’s teeth” and “By God’s feet”), and forcing an archdeacon to wear a robe of lead until he died. This final accusation is known to be false since the archdeacon in…

FOLLOWING Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire, Taxila was ruled first by the Greek Seleucid Empire, and then the Mauryan Empire, whose king, Ashoka, built the city’s Dharmarajika Stupa for relics of the Buddha. From about 200 B.C., Taxila was rebuilt and occupied by the Bactrian kingdom (centered on what today is Afghanistan and Uzbekistan), whose culture was heavily influenced by Greece, and whose kings allowed Buddhism to flourish. In the late Roman Republic, Taxila absorbed cultural influences from the Scythians and Parthians. Later, under the Kushan Empire, the fusion of Buddhism and Hellenism, known as Gandharan syle, was especially apparent, and manifested in numerous sculptures and reliefs found at the site. The flow of conquerors, trade, religions, and cultural styles through Taxila was driven bythe city’s location…