History, Told as Connected Stories

Free lessons from the Aurelius: Learn History app: Ancient Egypt, Ancient Rome, Medieval Europe and the American Revolution, each told in the order it happened, with real paintings, a primary source and the causes and consequences of every event.

Ancient Egypt

c. 5000–3100 BCE, and every summer afterWhy Was the Nile River Important to Ancient Egypt?Every summer, with no rain falling anywhere in Egypt, the river began to rise. For three months it covered the fields, then drew back and left them black and soaked.…
c. 3100 BCEWho United Upper and Lower Egypt? Narmer and the First PharaohsIn the winter of 1897–98, two British archaeologists digging in the ruined temple of Hierakonpolis found a slab of dark stone. On one face, a king in a tall white…
c. 2589–2566 BCE (reign of Khufu)How Were the Pyramids Built?In 2013, in a cave on the Red Sea coast, archaeologists found scraps of papyrus about 4,500 years old. They were the logbook of an inspector named Merer, whose team…
c. 2600 BCE to the 4th century CEWhy Did the Egyptians Mummify Their Dead? The Mummification ProcessThe embalmer slid a long bronze hook up the dead man's nose, broke through the thin bone behind it and began to pull out the brain. It was the first step of seventy…
c. 1479–1458 BCEWho Was Hatshepsut? The Woman Who Became PharaohSome twenty years after Hatshepsut died, workmen went through her temple with chisels. They hacked her face from statues, cut her name out of the walls and dumped her…
c. 1353–1336 BCEAkhenaten and Nefertiti: The Pharaoh Who Changed Egypt's GodsIn about 1346 BCE a king of Egypt sailed north to an empty bay of desert on the east bank of the Nile, about halfway between Thebes and Memphis. Nobody lived there,…
c. 1332–1323 BCE; tomb found 1922How Did King Tut Die? Tutankhamun and His TombOn 26 November 1922, Howard Carter made a small hole in a sealed doorway in the Valley of the Kings and held up a candle. Behind him, his patron Lord Carnarvon asked…
1279–1213 BCEWho Was Ramses II? Kadesh, the First Peace Treaty and Abu SimbelIn the spring of about 1274 BCE, a young pharaoh marched north into Syria and camped near the city of Kadesh, trusting two captured herdsmen who told him the Hittite…
196 BCE; deciphered 1822What Is the Rosetta Stone and Why Is It Important?In September 1822 a young French scholar is said to have run down a Paris street to his brother's office, shouted “I've got it!”, and fainted. What he had got was a…
51–30 BCEHow Did Cleopatra Die? The Last Queen of EgyptIn August 30 BCE, Octavian's guards forced open the doors of a mausoleum in Alexandria. Inside, the queen of Egypt lay dead on a golden couch in her royal robes, one…