Welcome back to Book Break! In today's video we are diving back into the past to learn all about
the ancient world. Because recently with the massive rise in popularity of, in particular
Greek myth retellings, people are just becoming more and more fascinated with the ancient world.
So in this video I have got a stack of fascinating non-fiction recommendations to teach us the
strangest things we never knew about the ancient world - beyond just the Greeks. Though don't worry
we've obviously got the Greeks in here too. I'm going to start by recommending A World Beneath the
Sands by Toby Wilkinson. Toby Wilkinson is one of the leading experts in Egyptology, which is
the study of ancient Egypt. And Egyptology has a fascinating history of its own. So there have been
two pretty major breakthroughs. In 1822 a scholar called Jean-Francois Champollion - sorry about my
terrible attempt to pronounce his French surname there - became the first scholar to decipher
hieroglyphics. And he was a very interesting man himself. He apparently preferred to work
completely alone, saying he needed absolute silence in order to hear the voice of history.
He also insisted on drinking water from the Nile, which was far from safe, but I guess there must
have been something in the water, because he did make this incredible breakthrough which allowed
us to learn so much from these ancient writings. For what it's worth, the author Toby Wilkinson can
also read hieroglyphics, which is very impressive. And then a hundred years after that, the second
major breakthrough was of course the discovery of Tutankhamen's tomb, and all of the thousands of
objects buried inside it. So this book takes us on a journey with these scholars and archaeologists
who were so devoted to discovering the secrets beneath the sands of Egypt. So it's a really
fascinating angle for this book that we get to see how they made these huge breakthroughs,
and the race for information, as well as actually learning so much about ancient Egypt. And from the
size of this book, you can tell this is packed with information. I promised you I wouldn't
leave off the Greeks, so next I'm going to recommend Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes.
And Natalie Haynes has herself become so beloved for her brilliant female-centered Greek myth
retellings. So A Thousand Ships is her retelling of the Trojan war, and Children of Jocasta is her
retelling of the story of Antigone. But this is her non-fiction book, which is exploring
all the ways women are portrayed in Greek myths. So we have chapters dedicated to Helen of Troy,
to Medusa, to Penelope. It's absolutely fascinating and will totally make you rethink
the way you see these women in these myths. And while we're talking about the Greeks, I've got
two books here by Paul Cartledge about Greek cities. So there is Thebes, the forgotten city,
which is where Oedipus was born, it's where Heracles was born, but as it was so close to
Athens and for a long time was its active enemy, it was never given the same legendary status.
But in this book Paul Cartledge argues that Thebes is every bit as fascinating a city as
Athens. And i'll give you one little tidbit: so allegedly the first inhabitants of Thebes
sprung up from the ground where they had been planted in the form of dragon's teeth. And then
another Greek city that Paul Cartledge wrote about. He wrote this book on the Spartans,
so Sparta had a very very different culture to Athens. Where Athens promoted individualism,
culture, society, democracy, Sparta was all about totalitarianism, the military, repression
and segregation. And this book looks at that history but also about the legacy of that history
on the British Empire. The next book I want to recommend is Black and British by David Olusoga,
and I've got here the adult version as well as the version for younger readers as well.
So this is a very full history of Britain all the way from Roman Britain through to present day. So
really I recommend reading this entire book to totally redefine your understanding of British
history. But as we are talking specifically about the ancient world in this video, there is a lot in
here on Roman Britain, and on Black Britons living during that time. David Olusoga has talked about
how when he was growing up he would often hear that incredibly racist refrain of 'go back where
you came from', which is not only offensive but very ignorant, and relies on a complete
erasure of Black people from British history. So this book is a complete rebuttal of that,
and this version aimed at younger readers is filled with maps and illustrations as well.
There's also an essay collection called Black Women in Antiquity edited by Ivan Van Sertimer,
which is a collection of essays all about the role of Black women in history and mythology.
And it particularly focuses on women from Egypt and Ethiopia and looks at their influence
on European culture and religion as well. Now the art historians among you will love my next
recommendation: Mesopotamia by Zainab Bharani. So Mesopotamia was an ancient area that roughly
corresponds now to modern Iraq, a bit of Syria and a bit of Turkey. And this book is all about the
art and architecture of Mesopotamia, charted all the way from around 8000 BCE up to around 600 BCE,
filled with maps and time charts to take you through the many civilizations that thrived in
that area over those thousands of years. And as I said, art historians will absolutely love this one
because Bharani uses her analysis of the art that has survived from that time period to tell such an
amazing story of the development of human thought and human culture. Another part of the world that
I never learned about in ancient history is Australia, so my next book recommendation is
Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia by Billy Griffiths. So this book looks at two
parallel histories. More recently it looks at the reassertion of aboriginal identity in the second
half of the 20th century, but it also digs further back into the past to uncover Australia's ancient
history and the more that is discovered about that past, the more is understood in the present,
about what was lost, and it really makes sense of modern indigenous politics for example. Next a
fun one. Apocalypse by Amos Nur and Dawn Burgess. So Amos Nur is actually a rock physicist, in fact
one of the world's leading rock physicists, and in this book he applies his extensive knowledge
of earthquakes to the Greek myths and comes up with new theories for what actually might have
caused some of the real events behind the stories. So what if for example Troy wasn't destroyed by
the ancient battle that we read about in the Iliad but was destroyed by an earthquake so catastrophic
that people at the time could only interpret it as an act of god. And Amos Nur looks at so many
different myths, and also some of the world's most famous archaeological sites, and presents really
compelling evidence for earthquakes. And then finally, combining books with food is my favourite
activity, so the last book on my list is Food in the Ancient World by John M Wilkins and Shaun
Hill. This book investigates an entire millennium of food consumption, so starting from around 750
BCE going through to around 250 CE, and looks at food and how it was linked to morality and the
pivotal role that it played in society, as well as analyzing the use of food in ancient literature.
So a really niche topic that I never knew I needed but I so did. If you enjoyed this
video I will link a whole playlist here of all of our book recommendations about the ancient world.
We would love to hear from you as well so do leave any of your own favourite book recommendations
in the comments. And do hit that subscribe button below and we will see you next time!