Home/The Master Timeline

The Master Timeline

3000 BC – AD 180. History reviewed on sourced timelines, every entry graded by what actually attests it. AD 500 to the present →

History reviewed on sourced timelines — every event dated, every date carrying numbered references, and the missing sources listed beside the surviving ones.

The Periods

3,000 BC 2,500 BC 2,000 BC 1,500 BC 1,000 BC 500 BC AD 1 AD 500 Egypt before the Ptolemies c. 3100–1000 BC The Line from Noah to Jesus 2948–586 BC India c. 2600 BC – AD 200 China c. 2070 BC – AD 220 Abraham c. 2100–1650 BC Japan Jōmon – AD 720 Who Ruled the Land c. 1200 BC – AD 135 The Julii trad. 1184–27 BC The Ptolemies 323 BC – AD 40 Rome & Egypt 100–30 BC The Julii of Judaea 47 BC – AD 117 The Julii of Rome 44 BC – AD 90 The Building Programme 40 BC – AD 64

Each band is a period page — click to open. Drawn to scale on one linear axis, so the relative lengths are true.

The Chart — 3000 BC to AD 180

BEFORE THE SPLIT TWO KINGDOMS EMPIRES THE PTOLEMIES ROME 2800 BC 2400 BC 2000 BC 1600 BC 1200 BC 800 BC 400 BC 200 BC 200 BC 100 BC AD 1 AD 100 / / THE FLOOD ACCOUNTSAUL DIES 1056ISRAEL — THE NORTH, ends 721JUDAH — THE SOUTH, ends 586 2948 BC — Noah born. Tenth from Adam. Genesis gives him 500 years before Shem, Ham and Japheth.Variant: LXX places this c. 3900 BC [The Line from Noah to Jesus]1 2948 BC Noah born 2468 BC — The sons of God and the daughters of men. Genesis 6:1–4. The Nephilim are in the earth in those days, and after. The passage is four verses and the text does not explain it. It stands immediately before the reason given for the flood. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]2 2468 BC The sons of God and the daughters of… 2468 BC — The verdict, and 120 years. ‘My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.’ Genesis 6:3. Read either as a new limit on human lifespan or as the time remaining before the flood. The recorded lifespans do fall to about that figure within ten generations. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]3 2468 BC The verdict, and 120 years 2448 BC — Shem, Ham and Japheth. Noah is 500 when the three sons begin to be born. Genesis 5:32. Shem carries the covenant line; Genesis 10 traces seventy nations from the three. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]4 2448 BC Shem, Ham and Japheth 2358 BC — THE ARK COMMANDED. Genesis 6:14–16. Gopher wood, pitched within and without. Three hundred cubits long, fifty broad, thirty high — roughly 135 by 23 by 14 metres on a common cubit. Three decks, rooms throughout, one door in the side, and a window a cubit from the top. No rudder, no mast, no keel is described. It is a box built to float, not a ship built to sail. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]5 2358 BC THE ARK… 2349 BC — The animals, and the seven days. Genesis 7:2–4. Seven pairs of every clean beast and of fowls, one pair of the unclean. Noah is given seven days’ warning. The clean-and-unclean distinction is made here, centuries before it is codified in the law. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]6 2349 BC The animals, and the… 2348 BC — THE FLOOD. Noah is 600. The line narrows to eight people. Every nation in the table that follows descends from his three sons.Variant: LXX c. 3298 BC — 950 years earlier [The Line from Noah to Jesus]7 2348 BC THE FLOOD 2348 BC — The waters, and the dates. Genesis 7:11–8:14 gives a dated log. The fountains of the great deep broken up and the windows of heaven opened, on the seventeenth day of the second month. Rain forty days; the waters prevail a hundred and fifty; the ark rests on Ararat in the seventh month; the tops of the mountains seen in the tenth. Noah is in the ark one year and ten days. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]8 2348 BC The waters, and the dates 2347 BC — The covenant with Noah. Genesis 9. The earth given to Noah and his sons; every moving thing given for meat, but not the blood; and the requirement of a reckoning for the blood of man — the first grant of authority over men in the text, at Genesis 9:6. The bow in the cloud is the token, and the covenant is made with every living creature, not only with Noah. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]9 2347 BC The covenant with Noah 2347 BC — The table of nations. Seventy nations from Japheth, Ham and Shem — the text’s account of where every people came from. Canaan, Egypt, Assyria and Philistia are placed here. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]10 2347 BC The table of nations 2347 BC — Noah's vineyard, and the curse. Genesis 9:20–27. Noah plants a vineyard, is drunk, and Ham sees him. The curse falls on Canaan, Ham’s son, and not on Ham. Shem is blessed and Japheth is to dwell in his tents. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]11 2347 BC Noah's vineyard, and the curse 2347 BC — The raven and the dove. Genesis 8:6–12. The raven goes out and does not return. The dove is sent three times — finds no rest, returns with an olive leaf, and the third time does not come back. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]12 2347 BC The raven and the dove 2346 BC — Arphaxad born to Shem. Two years after the flood. The covenant line runs through Shem, not through Ham or Japheth. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]13 2346 BC Arphaxad born to Shem 2311 BC — Salah born. To Arphaxad, at 35. Genesis 11:12. Lived 433 years. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]14 2311 BC Salah born 2281 BC — Eber born. To Salah, at 30. Genesis 11:14. The name from which Hebrew is usually derived. Lived 464 years, outliving every descendant down to Abraham. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]15 2281 BC 2247 BC — Peleg born. To Eber, at 34. Genesis 11:16. Genesis 10:25 states that in his days the earth was divided, which the text places at Babel. Lived 239 years — the first sharp drop in the recorded lifespans. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]16 2247 BC Peleg born c. 2242 BC — Babel. One language becomes many and the nations scatter. Dated in the days of Peleg, in whose time the earth was divided. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]17 c. 2242 BC Babel 2217 BC — Reu born. To Peleg, at 30. Genesis 11:18. Lived 239 years. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]18 2217 BC Reu born 2185 BC — Serug born. To Reu, at 32. Genesis 11:20. Lived 230 years. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]19 2185 BC Serug born 2155 BC — Nahor born. To Serug, at 30. Genesis 11:22. Lived 148 years — less than half his great-grandfather’s span, three generations later. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]20 2155 BC Nahor born 2126 BC — Terah born. Ninth from Shem. The line has run Arphaxad, Salah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor to Terah. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]21 2126 BC Terah born 2004 BC — Ur III falls to Elam; the last Sumerian state ends. The traditional Abraham is born into the generation of this collapse. [Abraham and the Patriarchs]11 2004 BC Ur III falls to Elam; the… c. 2000 BC — Abraham born in Ur of the Chaldees. Traditional datings range from 1996 BC (Ussher) to 1812 BC (Seder Olam); position shown is estimated. [Abraham and the Patriarchs]1 c. 2000 BC Abraham born in Ur of the… c. 1925 BC — The call: Abram leaves Harran for Canaan, aged 75 in the text. [Abraham and the Patriarchs]2 c. 1925 BC 1913 BC — Lot separates. Lot takes the plain of Jordan and settles toward Sodom. His two sons by his daughters become Moab and Ammon — two of the neighbours. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]24 1913 BC c. 1910 BC — Ishmael born to Hagar; Abram 86 in the text. [Abraham and the Patriarchs]4 c. 1910 BC Ishmael… c. 1897 BC — Isaac born to Sarah; Abraham 100 in the text. [Abraham and the Patriarchs]5 c. 1897 BC 1897 BC — Sodom. The cities of the plain destroyed. Lot’s wife is lost; his daughters bear Moab and Ben-Ammi. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]27 1897 BC Sodom c. 1880 BC — The binding of Isaac on Moriah. [Abraham and the Patriarchs]6 c. 1880 BC 1871 BC — The binding of Isaac. On a mountain in the land of Moriah. The covenant is confirmed by oath after it. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]28 1871 BC The… c. 1860 BC — Sarah dies; Abraham buys the cave of Machpelah at Hebron from Ephron the Hittite — the first recorded land purchase of the line, price stated: 400 shekels of silver. [Abraham and the Patriarchs]7 c. 1860 BC Sarah dies;… 1856 BC — Ishmael’s twelve sons. Named as princes by their nations: Nebaioth, Kedar, Adbeel and the rest, dwelling from Havilah to Shur. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]29 1856 BC Ishmael’s… 1836 BC — Jacob and Esau born. Twins to Isaac and Rebekah. Two nations are in the womb, and the elder shall serve the younger. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]30 1836 BC c. 1825 BC — Abraham dies at 175 in the text; Isaac and Ishmael together bury him at Machpelah. [Abraham and the Patriarchs]8 c. 1825 BC Abraham dies at 175 in the text;… 1804 BC — Jacob takes the blessing. The birthright and the blessing pass to the younger son. Jacob flees to Harran. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]32 1804 BC Jacob takes the blessing c. 1800 BC — Jacob and Esau born to Isaac and Rebekah. [Abraham and the Patriarchs]9 c. 1800 BC 1796 BC — The twelve sons. Born to Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah over twenty years in Harran. Judah is the fourth. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]33 1796 BC The twelve sons 1792 BC — Hammurabi takes the throne of Babylon (middle chronology; reigns to 1750). The law-stele empire rises east of Canaan. [Abraham and the Patriarchs]13 1792 BC Hammurabi takes the throne of Babylon… 1760 BC — Esau becomes Edom. Esau settles in Seir. The dukes of Edom are listed and the nation is founded — the people who become the Idumaeans. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]34 1760 BC Esau becomes Edom 1689 BC — Jacob dies. The blessings are given son by son. Judah receives the sceptre — the verse the royal claim rests on. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]38 1689 BC Jacob dies c. 1635 BC — A new king who knew not Joseph. The oppression begins; the store cities Pithom and Raamses are built. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]40 c. 1635 BC A new king who knew not Joseph 1531 BC — Moses flees to Midian. Forty years in Midian before the bush. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]42 1531 BC c. 1500 BC — The Rigveda composed. Oral Sanskrit hymns, later written. The oldest surviving text of any Indo-European language, transmitted by memory for a millennium before it was set down. [India]4 c. 1500 BC 1491 BC — The plagues and the passover. Ten plagues; the firstborn; the departure by night. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]44 1491 BC 1491 BC — Sinai. The law given in the third month. The nation is constituted around it. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]45 1491 BC Sinai c. 1479 BC — Hatshepsut. A woman rules as pharaoh for two decades, depicted in male regalia with the false beard. Her mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri stands. Her images were systematically erased after her death, though not at once — the erasure begins some twenty years later. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]12 c. 1479 BC Hatshepsut c. 1457 BC — Megiddo. Thutmose III defeats a Canaanite coalition. The account cut on the walls of Karnak is the earliest battle in history for which a detailed record survives — order of march, dispositions, and the plunder counted. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]13 c. 1457 BC Megiddo 1451 BC — Moses dies. On Nebo, at 120, having seen the land and not entered it. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]46 1451 BC Moses dies c. 1425 BC — Joshua. Leads the conquest and divides the land by lot. Dies at 110. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]47 c. 1425 BC Joshua c. 1400 BC — Othniel. First judge. Caleb’s nephew; forty years’ rest. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]48 c. 1400 BC c. 1353 BC — AKHENATEN. The king abolishes the old gods, closes the temples, moves the capital to a virgin site and worships one god, the Aten. Art changes with him. After his death the temples reopen, his city is abandoned and his name is struck from the king-lists. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]14 c. 1353 BC AKHENATEN c. 1400 or c. 1150 BC — The war against Benjamin. The other eleven tribes make war on Benjamin over the outrage at Gibeah. The tribe is reduced to six hundred men at the rock of Rimmon, and wives are found for them by the destruction of Jabesh-Gilead and by abduction at the feast of Shiloh. Judges 19–21. Dating: the text places it early — Judges 20:28 has Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson, before the ark, so within a generation or two of the conquest. On the traditional reckoning that is c. 1400 BC. On the late-date exodus of c. 1250 it falls c. 1180–1150, inside the Late Bronze Age Collapse. The two [The Line from Noah to Jesus]49 c. 1400 or c. 1150 BC The war against Benjamin c. 1340 BC — Ehud. Kills Eglon of Moab; eighty years’ rest — the longest in the book. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]50 c. 1340 BC Ehud c. 1300 BC — Shamgar. Six hundred Philistines with an ox goad. One verse. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]51 c. 1300 BC Shamgar c. 1250 BC — Deborah and Barak. The only woman to judge Israel. Sisera defeated at the Kishon. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]52 c. 1250 BC c. 1208 BC — Merneptah Stele names ‘Israel’. The earliest surviving mention of Israel by name, on an Egyptian victory stele — written with the determinative for a people, not a place. [Who Ruled the Land]1 c. 1208 BC Merneptah… c. 1200 BC — Gideon. Three hundred men against Midian. Refuses the kingship offered to him. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]53 c. 1200 BC Gideon c. 1180 BC — Abimelech. Gideon’s son kills seventy brothers and makes himself king at Shechem for three years. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]54 c. 1180 BC Abimelech c. 1200–1150 BC — THE LATE BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE. Within about fifty years the eastern Mediterranean world ends. The Hittite empire ceases to exist and Hattusa burns, never reoccupied. Mycenaean Greece falls — Pylos, Mycenae and Tiryns destroyed, and Linear B stops being written; Greece has no writing for four centuries. Ugarit is destroyed and never rebuilt, its last tablets still in the kiln describing ships offshore. Every one of these is attested by excavation. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]56 c. 1200–1150 BC THE LATE BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE c. 1175 BC — Philistines settle the coast. Egyptian reliefs at Medinet Habu record the Sea Peoples repulsed by Ramesses III; the archaeology shows a new material culture at Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath and Gaza. [Who Ruled the Land]2 c. 1175 BC Philistines settle the coast c. 1150 BC — Jephthah. The Gileadite; defeats Ammon and makes the vow concerning his daughter. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]58 c. 1150 BC Jephthah 1141 BC — The ark taken at Ebenezer. Israel is beaten by the Philistines and the ark of the covenant is captured. Eli’s sons Hophni and Phinehas are killed; Eli falls and breaks his neck at the news. 1 Samuel 4. The ark is returned after seven months. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]60 1141 BC c. 1120 BC — Samson. Twenty years against the Philistines. Dies at Gaza. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]61 c. 1120 BC c. 1100 BC — Eli. Priest and judge at Shiloh forty years. The ark is lost in his lifetime. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]62 c. 1100 BC Eli c. 1200–1020 BC — The tribal allotments. Joshua 13–21 describes twelve territories drawn by lot, Levi holding none, two and a half tribes east of the Jordan. A kinship map. No external corroboration exists. [Who Ruled the Land]3 c. 1200–1020 BC The tribal… c. 1080 BC — Samuel. Last judge, first of the prophets. Anoints both Saul and David. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]63 c. 1080 BC Samuel c. 1050 BC — Saul anointed. The first king, of Benjamin, not of Judah. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]65 c. 1050 BC c. 1020 BC — Saul. The first king, over a territory the text does not define. Text only. [Who Ruled the Land]4 c. 1020 BC Saul c. 1010 BC — Ish-bosheth king in the north. Abner, Saul’s cousin and commander, takes him to Mahanaim and makes him king over Gilead, Ashuri, Jezreel, Ephraim, Benjamin and all Israel — everything but Judah. 2 Samuel 2:8–10. He is Esh-baal in 1 Chronicles 8:33 and 9:39; Samuel replaces the divine element with bosheth, shame. The same substitution turns Jonathan’s son Merib-baal into Mephibosheth. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]66 c. 1010 BC Ish-bosheth king in the… 1010 BC — David king. Of the tribe of Judah, at Hebron. The line the promise of Genesis 49 runs to. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]67 1010 BC c. 1010 BC — SAUL DIES AT GILBOA. Saul and three sons, Jonathan among them, fall against the Philistines. 1 Samuel 31. The kingdom divides immediately. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]68 c. 1010 BC c. 1008 BC — Abner defects to David. After a quarrel with Ish-bosheth over Saul’s concubine Rizpah. He is murdered by Joab at Hebron. 2 Samuel 3. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]69 c. 1008 BC Abner defects to David c. 1010–1003 BC — THE FIRST SPLIT. Abner makes Saul’s son Ish-bosheth king over Israel at Mahanaim while the men of Judah anoint David at Hebron. Two kings at war for about seven years, divided on the line Judah against Israel — the same line the kingdom splits along again in 931. [Who Ruled the Land]5 c. 1010–1003 BC c. 1003 BC — Ish-bosheth murdered. Killed in his bed by Rechab and Baanah, two of his own captains, who bring his head to David. David has them executed for it. 2 Samuel 4. Saul’s line ends, and the north has no king of its own until Jeroboam. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]70 c. 1003 BC — David takes Jerusalem. The houses reconcile and all the tribes come to David at Hebron. He takes Jerusalem — a Jebusite city on the seam between north and south. The text allots it to Benjamin (Joshua 18:28 lists Jebusi, which is Jerusalem, among Benjamin’s fourteen cities), with the Judah border running along the valley immediately below it. Neither tribe had taken it: Judah could not drive the Jebusites out and Benjamin did not. David of Judah takes it by his own men and it becomes the city of David. [Who Ruled the Land]6 c. 1003 BC David takes Jerusalem 970 BC — Solomon. The kingdom at its height, and the last king to hold all twelve tribes. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]71 970 BC c. 970 BC — Solomon’s twelve districts. 1 Kings 4:7–19: twelve officers, each victualling the royal household one month a year. A revenue map, and it does not follow the tribal boundaries. [Who Ruled the Land]7 c. 970 BC 966 BC — The Temple begun. In the 480th year after the exodus — the verse that anchors the whole chronology to a countable span. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]72 966 BC The Temple begun 959 BC — The Temple dedicated. Solomon’s Temple finished in seven years and dedicated with the ark brought up from the city of David. 1 Kings 6–8. The glory fills the house and the priests cannot stand to minister. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]73 959 BC The Temple dedicated 931 BC — Jeroboam I. Twenty-two years. Sets up calves at Bethel and Dan so the people need not go to Jerusalem. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]74 931 BC Jeroboam I 931 BC — Rehoboam. Solomon’s son. Refuses to lighten the burden and loses ten tribes. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]75 931 BC Rehoboam c. 931 BC — THE KINGDOM SPLITS. Rehoboam refuses to lighten the burden. Ten tribes go with Jeroboam as Israel; Judah and Benjamin remain. One land, two states, for two hundred years. [Who Ruled the Land]8 c. 931 BC THE KINGDOM SPLITS 913 BC — Abijah. Three years. War with Jeroboam. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]77 913 BC Abijah 911 BC — Asa. Forty-one years. Removes the idols; the first reforming king. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]78 910 BC — Nadab. Two years. Killed by Baasha. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]79 910 BC c. 910 BC — Elijah. Confronts Ahab and the prophets of Baal at Carmel. Taken up in a whirlwind. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]80 c. 910 BC Elijah c. 896 BC — Elisha. Succeeds Elijah; serves through six reigns of the north. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]82 c. 896 BC Elisha 886 BC — Elah. Two years. Killed while drunk. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]83 886 BC Elah 885 BC — Zimri. Seven days. Burns the palace over himself. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]84 885 BC — Omri. Buys the hill of Samaria and builds the capital. Named on the Mesha Stele; Assyria calls Israel ‘the house of Omri’ for a century. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]85 874 BC — Ahab. Twenty-two years. Marries Jezebel of Sidon. Named on the Kurkh Monolith with two thousand chariots at Qarqar. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]86 874 BC Ahab 872 BC — Jehoshaphat. Twenty-five years. Allies with Ahab by marriage — the alliance that nearly ends the line. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]87 872 BC Jehoshaphat 853 BC — Jehoram. Marries Athaliah, daughter of Ahab. Kills his six brothers. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]89 853 BC Jehoram 853 BC — Ahab at Qarqar. Shalmaneser III’s monolith names Ahab the Israelite among the coalition against Assyria, with two thousand chariots. [Who Ruled the Land]10 853 BC Ahab at Qarqar 852 BC — Joram. Twelve years. Killed by Jehu. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]90 841 BC — Ahaziah. One year. Killed by Jehu. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]93 841 BC — Athaliah. Destroys all the royal seed and reigns six years. One infant, Joash, is hidden in the Temple — the line survives by a single child. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]94 841 BC — Jehu pays tribute. The Black Obelisk shows an Israelite king prostrate before Shalmaneser III — the only contemporary image of a named ruler of Israel or Judah. [Who Ruled the Land]11 841 BC Jehu pays tribute c. 840 BC — Mesha of Moab. A Moabite king’s own inscription, naming Omri king of Israel and claiming the recovery of Moabite land. The neighbours speak for themselves here, and only here. [Who Ruled the Land]12 c. 840 BC Mesha of Moab 835 BC — Joash. Crowned at seven. Repairs the Temple; later murdered by his servants. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]95 c. 835 BC — The House of David named. An Aramaic victory stele from Tel Dan refers to the ‘House of David’ — the earliest external attestation of the dynasty. [Who Ruled the Land]13 c. 835 BC The House of David named 798 BC — Jehoash. Sixteen years. Defeats Judah and breaks Jerusalem’s wall. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]97 798 BC Jehoash 796 BC — Amaziah. Twenty-nine years. Defeated by Israel; Jerusalem’s wall broken down. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]98 796 BC Amaziah 793 BC — Jeroboam II. Forty-one years. The north at its largest and richest; Amos and Hosea preach against it. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]99 793 BC 792 BC — Uzziah (Azariah). Fifty-two years. Struck with leprosy for burning incense in the Temple. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]100 792 BC Uzziah (Azariah) c. 787 BC — Amos and Hosea. Against the prosperity of Jeroboam II’s north, a generation before it falls. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]101 c. 787 BC Amos and… c. 760 BC — Isaiah. Called in the year Uzziah died. Serves four kings of Judah through the Assyrian crisis. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]102 c. 760 BC 753 BC — Zechariah. Six months. The last of Jehu’s house. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]103 753 BC Zechariah 752 BC — Shallum. One month. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]104 752 BC Shallum 752 BC — Pekah. Twenty years. Loses Galilee and Gilead to Assyria. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]106 750 BC — Jotham. Sixteen years. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]107 750 BC Jotham 742 BC — Pekahiah. Two years. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]109 735 BC — Ahaz. Sends the Temple treasure to Assyria as tribute and copies its altar. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]110 735 BC Ahaz 732 BC — Hoshea. The last king of Israel. Samaria falls in his ninth year. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]111 734–732 BC — Assyria takes the north. Tiglath-Pileser III annexes Galilee, Gilead and the coast, and reduces Israel to Samaria and its hills. [Who Ruled the Land]14 734–732 BC Assyria takes the north 722 BC — Israel taken by Assyria. Samaria falls; the ten tribes are deported and do not return as tribes. Sargon II records it in his own annals.Variant: Modern dating: 722 BC [The Line from Noah to Jesus]112 722 BC Israel taken by Assyria 722 BC — Samaria falls. Sargon II’s annals record the deportation of 27,290 people and the resettlement of the province with others. Israel ends as a state. [Who Ruled the Land]15 722 BC Samaria falls 701 BC — Sennacherib in Judah. Forty-six walled towns taken; Hezekiah shut up in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage. Judah survives as a tributary. [Who Ruled the Land]16 701 BC Sennacherib in Judah c. 700 BC — Ekron names its king. A dedicatory inscription from Tel Miqne names Padi and four generations of Philistine rulers — the Philistines in their own words. [Who Ruled the Land]17 c. 700 BC Ekron names its king 697 BC — Manasseh. Fifty-five years, the longest reign. Named in Esarhaddon’s tribute list. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]115 697 BC Manasseh 642 BC — Amon. Two years. Murdered by his servants. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]117 642 BC Amon 640 BC — Josiah. Crowned at eight. The book of the law is found; the last reform. Killed at Megiddo. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]118 640 BC Josiah c. 640 BC — Ancus Marcius, fourth king — the descent the Marcii Reges claimed: the maternal royal line of the 69 BC eulogy. [The Julii]6 c. 640 BC 609 BC — Jehoiakim. Eleven years. Burns Jeremiah’s scroll. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]121 597 BC — Zedekiah. The last king. Blinded at Riblah after seeing his sons killed. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]125 597 BC Zedekiah 597 BC — The first deportation. Nebuchadnezzar takes Jerusalem and removes Jehoiachin. The Babylonian Chronicle dates it to the second day of Adar. [Who Ruled the Land]18 597 BC The first… 587 BC — Jerusalem destroyed. The Temple burned, the monarchy ended, the population deported. Judah becomes Babylonian territory. [Who Ruled the Land]19 587 BC Jerusalem… 586 BC — Judah taken by Babylon. Jerusalem and the Temple destroyed, the line carried into exile. The Babylonian Chronicle records the campaign. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]127 586 BC Judah taken by Babylon 536 BC — Zerubbabel. Of the house of David, leads the first return and lays the second Temple’s foundation. He is in both New Testament genealogies. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]129 536 BC Zerubbabel 536 BC — The return. Cyrus permits the return and the rebuilding. The line comes back through Zerubbabel, of the house of David. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]130 536 BC The return 520 BC — Haggai and Zechariah. Prophesy the Temple to completion. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]132 520 BC Haggai and Zechariah 515 BC — The second Temple. Finished in the sixth year of Darius. It stands until Herod rebuilds it. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]133 515 BC The second Temple 509 BC (trad.) — The kings expelled; the Republic begins — the traditional date. [The Julii]7 509 BC (trad.) The kings expelled; the Republic… c. 538–332 BC — Yehud, a Persian province. A small territory around Jerusalem under a governor, striking its own small silver coins inscribed YHD. [Who Ruled the Land]21 c. 538–332 BC c. 430 BC — Malachi. The last prophet of the Hebrew canon. Four centuries follow with no prophetic voice recorded. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]137 c. 430 BC Malachi 407 BC — The Elephantine papyri. Aramaic letters from a Jewish garrison on an island at Aswan, with their own temple to YHW. They write to the governor of Judah and to the sons of Sanballat of Samaria asking for its rebuilding. Contemporary documentary evidence for Jewish practice outside Judah in the Persian period. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]138 407 BC The Elephantine papyri c. 301–200 BC — Ptolemaic Coele-Syria. Ptolemy I takes the Levant after Ipsus; the Seleucids never accept the claim. Judaea is governed from Alexandria for a century, lightly, through the High Priest and the Temple. The Septuagint is made under this arrangement. [Who Ruled the Land]24 c. 301–200 BC c. 274–273 BC — The first canal lock. Necho and Darius had both stopped short of the Red Sea, on the stated ground that it stood higher and would flood the Delta. The Pithom stele records a navigable lock with sluices at the Heroopolite Gulf. It is the earliest documented canal lock. [The Ptolemies]20 c. 274–273 BC c. 270 BC — Callimachus and the Pinakes. A catalogue of the Library in 120 books, arranged by subject and author. The first library catalogue in the world. [The Ptolemies]21 c. 270 BC Callimachus and the Pinakes c. 250 BC — Philae begun. The temple of Isis. It carries the last dated hieroglyphic inscription in existence, AD 394, and the last demotic, 452. The script ends on this building. [The Ptolemies]28 c. 250 BC Philae begun c. 245 BC — Callimachus completes the Pinakes. A catalogue of the Library in 120 books, arranged by subject and author, recording each work’s opening words and length. The first library catalogue in the world. Lost. [The Ptolemies]30 c. 245 BC Callimachus completes the Pinakes c. 240 BC — Aristarchus proposes a heliocentric model. Eighteen centuries before Copernicus. The work is lost and survives only because Archimedes describes it in order to argue against it. [The Ptolemies]32 c. 240 BC Aristarchus proposes a heliocentric… 237 BC — Edfu begun. The temple of Horus, built over 180 years. It is the best-preserved temple in Egypt, and it is Ptolemaic. [The Ptolemies]35 237 BC Edfu begun 200–198 BC — Coele-Syria lost. Antiochus III takes the Levant at Panium. Judaea passes from Ptolemaic to Seleucid rule, and the events of the Maccabean books follow from it. [The Ptolemies]38 200–198 BC Coele-Syria lost 167 BC — The Temple desecrated. Antiochus IV proscribes Jewish practice and rededicates the Temple to Olympian Zeus. Revolt follows. [Who Ruled the Land]27 167 BC The Temple desecrated 142 BC — Independence. Simon Maccabee wins remission of tribute. A Jewish state again, for the first time since 587. [Who Ruled the Land]28 142 BC Independence c. 120 BC — Hippalus and the monsoon. A Greek navigator is credited with working out the monsoon crossing, which allows a direct run from the Red Sea to India rather than a coastal creep. The volume of the trade multiplies from this point. [India]27 c. 120 BC Hippalus and the monsoon 119 BC — The salt and iron monopolies. The state takes the trade in both. The debate over it was recorded and survives as the Discourses on Salt and Iron — an argument about state control of the economy, written down in 81 BC. [China]20 119 BC The salt and iron monopolies c. 111 BC — The Gerizim temple destroyed. Hyrcanus razes the Samaritan sanctuary. Excavation on Mount Gerizim confirms a large sacred precinct destroyed at this date. [Who Ruled the Land]29 c. 111 BC The Gerizim temple destroyed c. 110 BC — THE HELIODORUS PILLAR. A Greek ambassador from Taxila sets up a pillar at Besnagar to Vasudeva, in Sanskrit, calling himself a Bhagavata — a devotee of Vishnu. Contemporary stone evidence of a Greek adopting Indian religion, and the earliest surviving epigraphic reference to Vasudeva worship. [India]28 c. 110 BC THE HELIODORUS PILLAR c. 112–107 BC — Idumaea absorbed. John Hyrcanus conquers Edom’s successor territory; the Idumaeans adopt Jewish law and are counted Jews thereafter. Herod’s family among them. [Who Ruled the Land]30 c. 112–107 BC Idumaea absorbed 104 BC — The title of king resumed. Aristobulus I takes the diadem — the first Jewish king since 587 — and annexes Galilee. [Who Ruled the Land]31 104 BC The title of king resumed 103–76 BC — The greatest Hasmonean extent. Under Alexander Jannaeus the kingdom reaches from Galilee to the Negev and across the Jordan — the largest Jewish state since the united monarchy. [Who Ruled the Land]32 103–76 BC The greatest Hasmonean extent c. 80 BC — Wins the civic crown at the storming of Mytilene, aged about twenty. [Rome & Egypt]4 c. 80 BC Wins the civic… c. 75 BC — Captured by pirates off Pharmacussa; ransomed at fifty talents at his own insistence, then captured and crucified by him under no public office. [Rome & Egypt]5 c. 75 BC Captured by pirates off… 69 BC — Quaestor in Further Spain; at his aunt Julia’s funeral he claims descent from kings and gods in the one surviving fragment of his oratory. [Rome & Egypt]6 69 BC Quaestor in Further Spain; at… 63 BC — Pompey. Rome intervenes in a Hasmonean civil war and takes Jerusalem. The coastal cities and the Decapolis are detached and freed; the Jewish state loses the sea. [Who Ruled the Land]33 63 BC Pompey 58 BC — The Gallic war opens: the Helvetii and Ariovistus defeated. Nine campaign seasons follow. [Rome & Egypt]11 58 BC The Gallic war opens: the… 57 BC — Gabinius divides it in five. The proconsul breaks the territory into five councils, at Jerusalem, Jericho, Gadara, Amathus and Sepphoris. The arrangement does not hold. [Who Ruled the Land]34 57 BC Gabinius divides it in five 52 BC — Alesia: the double siege lines; Vercingetorix surrenders. [Rome & Egypt]13 52 BC Alesia: the… 9 Aug 48 BC — Pharsalus: Pompey’s larger army broken; Brutus and Cassius among the pardoned. [Rome & Egypt]16 9 Aug 48 BC Pharsalus: Pompey’s larger army… 47 BC — Caesar grants Antipater the Idumaean Roman citizenship, tax exemption and the procuratorship of Judaea, for service in the Alexandrian war. An enfranchised client takes his patron’s name: the house becomes, in law, Julii. The grant is reported by Josephus alone, with no external authority cited and no inscription recording it; the decrees Josephus quotes from the same period reward Hyrcanus the high priest and do not name Antipater. [The Julii of Judaea]1 47 BC Caesar grants Antipater the Idumaean… 46 BC — Caesar places a gilded statue of Cleopatra beside the goddess in the Temple of Venus Genetrix — the temple of the Julian ancestress. [Rome & Egypt]23 46 BC Caesar places a gilded statue of… late 40 BC — The Senate, on Antony’s motion with Octavian supporting, declares Herod king of Judaea; the new king walks to the Capitol to sacrifice between the two of them. [The Julii of Judaea]2 late 40 BC 40 BC — The Parthians install Antigonus. The last Hasmonean king, placed by Rome’s enemy. Herod flees; the Senate votes him king of a kingdom he does not hold. [Who Ruled the Land]35 40 BC 37 BC — The citadel and first works. On taking Jerusalem, work begins on the fortifications of the Upper City and on the Baris, the Hasmonean fort at the north-west corner of the Temple Mount. [The Building Programme]1 37 BC The citadel and first works 37 BC — Herod takes Jerusalem from the Parthian-backed rival; the reign begins in fact and runs thirty-three years. [The Julii of Judaea]20 37 BC Herod takes Jerusalem from the… 30 BC? (disputed) — The “year 3” series is struck — the only dated coinage of the reign and its largest denomination: helmet with star and palm branches, tripod with ceremonial bowl, legend BASILEOS HERODOU, date LΓ and the monogram TP. Bronze only, as a client king’s rank required; no portrait and no territorial title. The mint (Jerusalem or Samaria), the domed device (helmet or incense burner), the monogram and the era are all disputed — the standard catalogues date this issue variously to 40, 38/37, 37 and 30/29 BC. On Marshak’s reading it postdates Actium and marks Octavian [The Julii of Judaea]21 30 BC? (disputed) The “year 3” series is… c. 35–30 BC — Masada. The desert refuge fortified: casemate wall, storehouses, cisterns fed by dammed wadis, and the three-tiered Northern Palace stepped down the cliff face. [The Building Programme]9 c. 35–30 BC Masada 30 BC — The kingdom confirmed. After Actium, Octavian confirms Herod at Rhodes and enlarges the kingdom. The building programme of the following two decades runs on that confirmation. [The Building Programme]11 30 BC c. 30 BC — Rhodes. The temple of Pythian Apollo rebuilt; shipbuilding funded. The city where Octavian returned his crown. [The Building Programme]18 c. 30 BC Rhodes 30 BC — After Actium, having backed Antony, Herod meets Octavian at Rhodes — by the account removing his diadem before speaking and arguing the case of a loyal client rather than denying the loyalty. He leaves with the crown restored and the kingdom enlarged. [The Julii of Judaea]3 30 BC After Actium, having… c. 28 BC — Theatre, amphitheatre, games. Quinquennial games instituted in Caesar’s honour; a theatre built at Jerusalem and a great amphitheatre in the plain. Neither has been securely identified archaeologically. The trophies displayed caused offence until stripped to show bare frames. [The Building Programme]3 c. 28 BC Theatre, amphitheatre, games c. 27 BC — Sebaste. Samaria refounded and renamed for Augustus — Sebastos being the Greek for the title. A temple of Roma and Augustus on a raised platform, a colonnaded street, a stadium. [The Building Programme]12 c. 27 BC Sebaste c. 25–23 BC — The royal palace and the three towers. The palace on the western hill, with wings named for Augustus and Agrippa. On its northern side the towers Phasael, Hippicus and Mariamme — a brother, a friend, and the executed wife. [The Building Programme]4 c. 25–23 BC 25 BC — Famine in Judaea. Herod melts down the gold of his own household to buy Egyptian grain through Petronius, prefect of Egypt, and distributes it — the one relief operation of the reign that is dated and specific. [The Julii of Judaea]22 25 BC c. 23–15 BC — Herodium. An artificial mountain raised over a fortified palace at the site of a battle he won in flight, with a lower palace, pools and gardens below. The only work he named for himself, and his burial place. [The Building Programme]13 c. 23–15 BC 22–10 BC — Caesarea Maritima and Sebastos. A city and an artificial deep-water harbour built on an open coast with no natural anchorage, in hydraulic concrete set underwater using pozzolana shipped from the Bay of Naples. Dedicated 10 BC with games. [The Building Programme]14 22–10 BC Caesarea Maritima and Sebastos 22–10 BC — Caesarea Maritima and the harbour of Sebastos: the largest artificial open-sea harbour of its age, built in hydraulic concrete using pozzolana shipped from the Bay of Naples. Dedicated 10 BC with games. [The Julii of Judaea]23 22–10 BC Caesarea Maritima and the harbour of… 20–18 BC — The Temple: platform and sanctuary. The rebuilding begins. Materials prepared before demolition; a thousand priests trained as masons; the sanctuary raised in eighteen months without interrupting the sacrificial service. [The Building Programme]5 20–18 BC The Temple:… undated — The Cave of the Patriarchs, Hebron. The enclosure over the tombs at Hebron — the only Herodian building still standing intact, unroofed, its walls and pilaster order complete. [The Building Programme]15 undated The Cave of the Patriarchs,… 20–19 BC — The rebuilding of the Temple begins: the Mount doubled to a platform of some 144,000 square metres, on walls founded on bedrock. The outer works ran on for decades after the king’s death. [The Julii of Judaea]24 20–19 BC The rebuilding of the… through the reign — The fortress chain. Alexandreion, Hyrcania, Machaerus and Cypros rebuilt, several with palaces inside the walls; temples of Roma and Augustus at Caesarea, Sebaste and in the north near Paneion. [The Building Programme]16 15 BC — Marcus Agrippa — Augustus’s deputy and the second man in the empire — visits Judaea as Herod’s guest, is shown the new Temple, sacrifices there, and feasts the people of Jerusalem. [The Julii of Judaea]4 15 BC 14 BC — Chios. Held up by a north wind on the voyage to join Agrippa, he pays to rebuild the city portico that had lain in ruins since the Mithridatic war. [The Building Programme]21 14 BC 14 BC — Herod takes a fleet north to help Agrippa on campaign at the Bosporus — Rhodes, Kos, Chios (where he pays to rebuild the ruined city portico), Mytilene, Byzantium — and catches him at Sinope in Pontus. Josephus says Herod was all in all to Agrippa in the management of the war and his counsellor in civil affairs. They travel home together through Asia Minor, and on the road Nicolaus of Damascus pleads the case of the Jews of Ionia before Agrippa, and wins it: Agrippa writes to the Ephesians confirming the right to send gifts to the Temple and to keep the Sabbath. Herod renames Anthe [The Julii of Judaea]5 14 BC Herod takes a… c. 20s–10s BC — Athens honours Herod with statue bases on the Acropolis, in the standard language of civic gratitude — styling him Philoromaios, friend of the Romans, on one, and Eusebes Philokaisar, the pious friend of Caesar, on the other. Kos honours him in a form read as attesting his Roman citizenship. At most six monuments to him are known in the world. [The Julii of Judaea]6 c. 20s–10s BC Athens honours Herod with statue… 12 BC — Olympia. Finding the games in financial collapse, he settles permanent revenues on them and is made perpetual president — a title Josephus says was recorded in their inscriptions. [The Building Programme]22 12 BC Olympia 12 BC — Sailing to Rome, Herod stops at Olympia and finds the games in financial collapse. He competes in them, then settles permanent revenues on them in perpetuity. The Eleans make him agonothetes for life — perpetual president — a title Josephus says was recorded in their inscriptions. The endowment is credited with carrying the festival into the second century AD. [The Julii of Judaea]7 12 BC Sailing to Rome, Herod stops at… 12 BC — Herod brings his quarrelling sons before Augustus at Aquileia; the emperor reconciles them — the first hearing, five years before the second condemned them. [The Julii of Judaea]8 12 BC Herod brings his quarrelling sons… c. 11 BC — The porticoes complete. Eight years’ work on the colonnades around the esplanade, including the Royal Stoa with its 162 Corinthian columns. Solomon’s Porch on the east left untouched, held to be older than the king. [The Building Programme]7 c. 11 BC The porticoes complete through the reign — The coastal cities. Halls, porticoes, temples and markets at Tyre and Berytus; theatres at Sidon and Damascus; gymnasia at Damascus, Tripolis and Ptolemais; walls at Byblos; an aqueduct at Laodicea; a standing endowment at Kos. [The Building Programme]23 through the reign The coastal cities c. 4 BC — Jesus born. Matthew traces the descent from Abraham through David and Judah; Luke traces it back to Adam. The two genealogies do not agree and the text does not reconcile them.Variant: The two lists differ from David onward [The Line from Noah to Jesus]147 c. 4 BC Jesus born 4 BC — The heirs argue Herod’s will before Augustus in Rome; the kingdom is split three ways, subject to the emperor’s ruling. The Julian patron disposes of the client succession. [The Julii of Judaea]9 4 BC The heirs argue Herod’s will… 4 BC — Herod dies at Jericho. [The Julii of Judaea]25 4 BC Herod dies at Jericho 4 BC — THE FOUR-WAY DIVISION. Augustus splits the kingdom: Archelaus ethnarch of Judaea, Samaria and Idumaea; Antipas tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea; Philip tetrarch of the north-east; Salome three towns. The title of king passes to no one. [Who Ruled the Land]37 4 BC THE FOUR-WAY DIVISION AD 6 — Archelaus deposed by Augustus and banished to Vienne in Gaul; Judaea annexed as a province. [The Julii of Judaea]10 AD 6 Archelaus… c. AD 6 — Tigranes V, grandson of Herod through the executed Alexander, placed on the throne of Armenia by Augustus. His nephew Tigranes VI is placed there again by Nero in AD 60. [The Julii of Judaea]26 c. AD 6 Tigranes V, grandson of Herod through… AD 6 — Judaea becomes a province. Archelaus is deposed on his subjects’ complaint and exiled to Gaul. His third passes to direct Roman rule and a census. [Who Ruled the Land]38 AD 6 Judaea becomes a province AD 9–23 — Wang Mang. A regent takes the throne and declares a new dynasty. He nationalises land, abolishes slavery and reissues the coinage; the reforms fail, the Yellow River shifts course, and rebellion ends him. The Han are restored in 25. [China]23 AD 9–23 Wang Mang AD 16 — Clemens, a slave impersonating the murdered Agrippa Postumus — the blood, not the name — gathers a following. Asked by Tiberius how he had made himself Agrippa, he answers: the same way you made yourself Caesar. Killed secretly. [The Julii of Rome]10 AD 16 Clemens, a slave impersonating the… AD 34 — Philip dies. The best-governed of the three tetrarchies, held thirty-seven years, reverts briefly to the province of Syria. [Who Ruled the Land]39 AD 34 AD 36 — Agrippa, grandson of Herod, imprisoned by Tiberius over an overheard wish for Caligula’s accession. [The Julii of Judaea]11 AD 36 AD 37 — Gaius (Caligula), son of Germanicus, becomes emperor — Julian blood in him only through women, at every link of the chain. [The Julii of Rome]11 AD 37 Gaius… AD 39 — Antipas — the Herod of the Gospels — asks for a royal title, is denounced by his nephew Agrippa, and is banished to Lugdunum in Gaul. [The Julii of Judaea]13 AD 39 Antipas — the… AD 41 — Claudius gives Agrippa the whole of his grandfather’s kingdom: Marcus Julius Agrippa, king of Judaea. [The Julii of Judaea]27 AD 41 AD 41 — Marcus Julius Agrippa — grandson of Herod — made king of Judaea. The family were Julii by enfranchisement: Caesar’s grant of citizenship to Antipater in 47 BC carried the family name to his clients, and client kings now wear it. [The Julii of Rome]12 AD 41 Marcus Julius Agrippa —… AD 41 — The kingdom whole again. Claudius adds Judaea and Samaria. For three years one man rules everything Herod ruled. [Who Ruled the Land]41 AD 41 The kingdom whole again AD 44 — Agrippa dies at Caesarea after five days of pain. Josephus and the Acts of the Apostles record the death independently, from opposite directions. [The Julii of Judaea]28 AD 44 Agrippa dies at Caesarea after five… AD 44 — And gone again. Agrippa I dies at Caesarea. The whole territory reverts to Roman administration. [Who Ruled the Land]42 AD 44 And gone again AD 54 — Nero, in his first year, grants Armenia Minor to Aristobulus, great-grandson of Herod — a throne from the last of the adopted line to the enfranchised line. [The Julii of Judaea]29 AD 54 Nero, in his first year, grants… c. AD 64 — The complex finished. Work continues under Herod’s successors for sixty-eight years after his death. Its completion puts some eighteen thousand men out of employment. Six years later Titus burns it. [The Building Programme]8 c. AD 64 The complex… AD 66 — The Great Revolt: Judaea rises against Rome — the first month, the Roman garrison at Jerusalem is massacred; the legate of Syria, Cestius Gallus, brings four legions and is driven back at Beth-Horon with the loss of his eagle. Rome appoints Titus Flavius Vespasianus to subdue the province with three legions. Agrippa II argues against the war in the speech Josephus reproduces, and the house sides with Rome throughout — the war ends Herodian rule in fact if not in name. [The Julii of Judaea]30 AD 66 The Great… AD 66 — The revolt. War across the whole territory. Nabataean troops serve with the Roman force. [Who Ruled the Land]43 AD 66 The revolt AD 69 — The Judaean command raises an emperor: Vespasian, campaigning in Judaea, is proclaimed by the eastern legions in July AD 69 — the Year of Four Emperors. He leaves the siege to Titus and goes to Rome. The war begun in the East against a Herodian-named house is what hands the Flavian dynasty its army, its legions’ loyalty, and its throne. Titus Julius Alexander, prefect of Egypt and brother of Berenice’s first husband, declares for Vespasian first. [The Julii of Judaea]15 AD 69 The Judaean… AD 70 — Jerusalem falls; the Temple Herod rebuilt burns. [The Julii of Judaea]31 AD 70 Jerusalem falls; the… AD 70 — The Temple burned. Titus takes Jerusalem. The arch in Rome shows the spoils carried in triumph. [Who Ruled the Land]44 AD 70 The Temple burned AD 73 — Masada. The last stronghold falls. The Roman siege works survive on the ground. [Who Ruled the Land]45 AD 73 Masada c. AD 75 — Berenice, great-granddaughter of Herod, lives with Titus on the Palatine — by Dio’s account a wife in everything but law. [The Julii of Judaea]16 c. AD 75 Berenice,… after AD 60 — The Berytus architrave: Agrippa II and Berenice restore a building “which King Herod their great-grandfather had built” — the king’s titles at its head reading rex magnus Agrippa Philocaesar. The name of Caesar carried as a Latin title by the last king of the house. [The Julii of Judaea]32 after AD 60 The Berytus architrave: Agrippa II… AD 79 — The son of Drusilla — Agrippa I’s daughter — and the procurator Felix dies, with his wife, in the eruption of Vesuvius. A great-great-grandson of Herod among the dead of the catastrophe. [The Julii of Judaea]33 AD 79 The son of Drusilla — Agrippa… c. AD 79 — Junia Calvina, sister of the Silani, dies — the last known descendant of Augustus. The founder’s blood, which never once passed father to son, outlives his dynasty by eleven years and ends in a private citizen. [The Julii of Rome]21 c. AD 79 Junia Calvina, sister of the Silani,… c. AD 92–100 — Agrippa II — Marcus Julius Agrippa on his coins — dies, the last king of the house. The date is disputed: c. 92 by the common dating, c. 100 by the tradition Photius preserved from Justus of Tiberias. [The Julii of Judaea]34 c. AD 92–100 Agrippa II — Marcus Julius… c. AD 116–17 — Gaius Julius Alexander Berenicianus, by the standard prosopography a descendant of Herod, holds a suffect consulship of Rome under Trajan. The name is back in the fasti — carried by the enfranchised line. [The Julii of Judaea]18 c. AD 116–17 Gaius Julius Alexander Berenicianus,… AD 132 — Zhang Heng's seismoscope. A bronze vessel with eight dragons that dropped a ball toward the direction of a distant earthquake. It is reported to have detected a shock some 500 km away that was not felt at the capital. The device does not survive; the description does. [China]26 AD 132 Zhang Heng's seismoscope AD 132–135 — Bar Kokhba, and the name changed. A second revolt, its administration attested in its own letters and coinage. After it the province is renamed Syria Palaestina. [Who Ruled the Land]46 AD 132–135 Bar Kokhba, and the name changed AD 184 — The Yellow Turbans. A millenarian peasant rising against the Han, put down by regional commanders who then keep their armies. The dynasty never recovers the provinces from them. [China]28 c. 1894 BC — First Dynasty of Babylon founded under Sumu-abum. [Abraham and the Patriarchs]12 c. 1894 BC First Dynasty of Babylon founded… 1184 BC (trad.) — Troy falls — 1184 BC in the traditional computation of Eratosthenes. The date is a later calculation, not a record; but Troy VIIa is destroyed around 1180 and that destruction sits inside the Late Bronze Age Collapse, which took the Hittite empire, Mycenaean Greece and Ugarit within about fifty years. The war as a narrative is legend; a destruction at Troy in that window is archaeology. Aeneas escapes carrying his father Anchises and the Palladium. [The Julii]1 1184 BC (trad.) Troy falls — 1184 BC in the… c. 1180 BC — Troy VIIa destroyed. The layer at Hisarlik usually identified with the Homeric city is destroyed in this window. The Trojan War as a narrative is legend; a destruction at Troy around 1180 is archaeology. The traditional date of 1184 BC comes from Eratosthenes and is a later computation, not a record. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]55 c. 1180 BC Troy VIIa destroyed c. 1180 BC — Aeneas reaches Latium, marries Lavinia, founds Lavinium. [The Julii]2 c. 1180 BC Aeneas reaches Latium, marries… c. 1150 BC — Ascanius — Iulus in the family’s identification, a disputed equation the tradition itself records — founds Alba Longa; the Silvii kings follow for some four centuries. [The Julii]3 c. 1150 BC Ascanius — Iulus in the… 909 BC — Baasha. Twenty-four years. Destroys the house of Jeroboam. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]81 909 BC Baasha 853 BC — QARQAR, AND THE FIRST SYNCHRONISM. Shalmaneser III of Assyria fights a coalition of twelve kings on the Orontes. His own Kurkh Monolith lists Ahabbu Sir’ilaya — Ahab the Israelite — with 2,000 chariots and 10,000 foot. It is the earliest mention of an Israelite king in any source outside the Bible, and because Assyrian dates are fixed by eponym lists anchored to the solar eclipse of 763 BC, this is the synchronism by which the whole Israelite chronology is dated. Ahab’s chariot number is the largest in the coalition and is disputed. 1 Kings gives Ahab three chapters and [The Line from Noah to Jesus]88 853 BC QARQAR, AND… 841 BC — JEHU ON THE BLACK OBELISK. Shalmaneser III’s obelisk shows a figure bowing to the ground before him, captioned Iaua mar Humri — Jehu, son of Omri. It is the only contemporary depiction of an Israelite king that survives, and it shows him prostrate, paying tribute. 2 Kings records Jehu’s reign at length and says nothing of it. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]92 841 BC JEHU ON THE BLACK OBELISK c. 800 BC — Jonah. Sent to Nineveh, the Assyrian capital — to the enemy. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]96 c. 800 BC 753 BC (trad.) — Romulus, of the Alban royal house in the tradition, founds Rome — the Varronian date. [The Julii]4 752 BC — Menahem. Ten years. Pays Tiglath-Pileser a thousand talents; named in the Assyrian annals. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]105 752 BC Menahem 715 BC — Hezekiah. Twenty-nine years. Survives Sennacherib’s siege; his tunnel and its inscription survive. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]113 715 BC Hezekiah 701 BC — Hezekiah's tunnel and the Siloam inscription. A conduit driven 533 metres through rock to bring the Gihon spring inside the walls before Sennacherib’s siege. 2 Kings 20:20 and 2 Chronicles 32:30. The Siloam inscription, cut where the two teams met, describes the moment they broke through to each other — one of the oldest Hebrew inscriptions of any length. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]114 701 BC Hezekiah's tunnel and the Siloam… c. 650s BC — Tullus Hostilius, third king of Rome, destroys Alba Longa and transplants its noble families to Rome — the Julii named among them. [The Julii]5 c. 650s BC Tullus… 605 BC — Daniel. Taken as a youth to serve in the palace at Babylon; serves under Babylonian and Persian kings. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]122 605 BC Daniel 598 BC — Jehoiachin. Three months. Deported to Babylon; his rations are recorded on Babylonian tablets. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]124 598 BC Jehoiachin 597 BC — Ezekiel. A priest, taken in the first deportation, prophesying by the river Chebar in Babylon. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]126 597 BC Ezekiel 539 BC — The Cyrus Cylinder. A clay barrel inscribed for Cyrus after the taking of Babylon, recording the return of displaced peoples and their gods to their own places. It does not name the Jews, but it attests the policy under which the return in Ezra 1 is described. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]128 539 BC The Cyrus… 539 BC — Cyrus takes Babylon. The Persian conquest, and a policy of returning deported peoples and restoring their sanctuaries. [Who Ruled the Land]20 539 BC Cyrus takes… 489 BC — Gaius Julius Iulus, consul — the first Julius in the consular record. Five more Iuli consulships follow to 434. [The Julii]8 489 BC c. 480 BC — Esther and Mordecai. In the Persian court under Ahasuerus. The one book that never names God. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]134 c. 480 BC 457 BC — Ezra. Brings the law back from Babylon and reads it to the assembly. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]135 457 BC Ezra 451 BC — A Julius sits on the Decemvirate that writes the Twelve Tables — Rome’s first written law. [The Julii]9 451 BC A Julius sits on the Decemvirate that… 445 BC — Nehemiah. Rebuilds the wall in fifty-two days under the Persian commission. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]136 445 BC Nehemiah 434 BC — The last consulship of the Julii Iuli. The family fades from high office for nearly three centuries. [The Julii]10 434 BC The last consulship of the Julii Iuli 323 BC — THE PARTITION OF BABYLON. The territories divided among the senior officers, with Philip Arrhidaeus and Alexander’s unborn son as joint kings and Perdiccas regent. Of the assignments made that year, only Egypt was still held by the same man a generation later. [The Ptolemies]5 323 BC THE PARTITION OF BABYLON 200 BC — Panium, and Seleucid rule. Antiochus III defeats Scopas at the headwaters of the Jordan and Coele-Syria changes hands permanently. Antiochus IV, the Temple desecration and the Maccabean revolt follow, and produce the Hasmonean state. [Who Ruled the Land]26 200 BC Panium, and Seleucid rule 157 BC — The first of the Julii Caesares reaches the consulship. [The Julii]11 157 BC The first of the Julii Caesares… 12/13 Jul 100 BC — Gaius Julius Caesar born; the day is disputed between the 12th and 13th, and a minority scholarly case argues 102 BC. [Rome & Egypt]1 12/13 Jul 100 BC Gaius Julius Caesar born; the day is… c. 100 BC — The gens Julia dedicates the altar at Bovillae to Vediovis leege Albana — by Alban law. The family’s Alban cult, in stone, in the dictator’s generation. [The Julii]12 c. 100 BC The gens Julia dedicates the altar at… 12/13 Jul 100 BC — Gaius Julius Caesar born — the last Julian to hold the blood claim inside Roman law. His life runs on Rome and Egypt, 100–30 BC. [The Julii]13 12/13 Jul 100 BC Gaius Julius Caesar born — the… 90 BC — Lucius Julius Caesar, consul, carries the lex Julia: Roman citizenship for the Italian allies who lay down arms. [The Julii]14 90 BC 87 BC — Lucius Caesar and his brother Caesar Strabo, the orator, killed in the Marian seizure of Rome. [The Julii]15 87 BC Lucius Caesar and his… c. 85 BC — Caesar’s father dies suddenly, in Caesar’s sixteenth year; Pliny records he died in the morning while dressing. [Rome & Egypt]2 c. 85 BC Caesar’s father dies suddenly,… 82 BC — Sulla orders Caesar to divorce Cornelia; Caesar refuses, loses priesthood, dowry and inheritance, and is hunted until pardoned — with Sulla’s recorded warning that in him were many Mariuses. [Rome & Egypt]3 82 BC Sulla orders Caesar to divorce… 65 BC — Aedile: games with 320 pairs of gladiators on borrowed money; Marius’s trophies restored to the Capitol overnight. [Rome & Egypt]8 65 BC Aedile: games with 320 pairs… 63 BC — Elected pontifex maximus against two senior ex-consuls, on decisive spending. [Rome & Egypt]9 63 BC Elected pontifex maximus against two… 59 BC — Consul with Pompey and Crassus behind him; the lex Vatinia grants Gaul and legions for five years; his daughter Julia marries Pompey. [Rome & Egypt]10 59 BC Consul with Pompey… 54 BC — Julia, Caesar’s daughter and Pompey’s wife, dies in childbirth; the child dies with her. [Rome & Egypt]12 54 BC Julia, Caesar’s… 11 Jan 49 BC — Caesar crosses the Rubicon with one legion; Suetonius gives the words in Latin, Plutarch in Greek from Menander. [Rome & Egypt]15 11 Jan 49 BC 46–44 BC — Cleopatra in Rome with the child, lodged in Caesar’s own gardens across the Tiber. Caesar places a gilded statue of her in the temple of Venus Genetrix beside the goddess. [Rome & Egypt]21 46–44 BC 46 BC — Cleopatra and Caesarion arrive in Rome; housed in Caesar’s villa across the Tiber until Apr 44. [Rome & Egypt]22 46 BC Cleopatra and… 13 Sep 45 BC — Caesar makes his will at Lavicum; deposits it with the chief Vestal. Octavius heir to three-quarters; guardians named for a son “should one be born to him.” [Rome & Egypt]24 13 Sep 45 BC Feb 44 BC — Caesar named dictator perpetuo — dictator without term. [Rome & Egypt]25 Feb 44 BC Caesar named dictator perpetuo… 15 Feb 44 BC — Lupercalia: the consul Antony twice offers Caesar a diadem before the crowd; Caesar refuses twice and sends it to the Capitol. Antony has the offer entered in the official calendar. [Rome & Egypt]26 15 Feb 44 BC Lupercalia: the consul Antony twice… early Mar 44 BC — Report spreads that the Sibylline books say Parthia can only be conquered by a king, and that the title will be moved in the Senate. Dio flags the report “whether true or false”; Cicero later called the prophecy fabricated. Its circulation, not its truth, is the event. [Rome & Egypt]27 early Mar 44 BC Report spreads that the Sibylline… Mar 44 BC — The tribune Helvius Cinna holds a drafted bill — on Caesar’s order, to be proposed in Caesar’s absence — making it lawful for him to marry what wives he wished, “for the begetting of children.” [Rome & Egypt]28 Mar 44 BC The tribune Helvius Cinna holds a… 15 Mar 44 BC — Caesar assassinated at the Senate sitting in Pompey’s curia — the last sitting before his eastern departure. About sixty conspirators; 23 wounds. [Rome & Egypt]29 15 Mar 44 BC Caesar assassinated at the Senate… 18 Mar 44 BC — The day set for departure to the Parthian war. Instead, Caesar’s will is unsealed and read at Antony’s house. [Rome & Egypt]30 18 Mar 44 BC The day set for departure to the… 20 Mar 44 BC — Caesar’s funeral. The crowd, hunting the conspirators’ sympathiser Cornelius Cinna, kills the tribune Helvius Cinna by mistake of name. The drafted marriage bill is never heard of again. [Rome & Egypt]31 20 Mar 44 BC Caesar’s funeral Apr 44 BC — Amatius, the false Marius — an impostor claiming kinship with Caesar through the Marian marriage — builds an altar at the pyre site and draws crowds. Antony has him executed without trial. The first man killed over a claimed connection to the dead dictator, inside a month of the Ides. [The Julii of Rome]1 May 44 BC — Gaius Octavius arrives in Rome and takes the name of the will: Gaius Julius Caesar. A male-line Octavius, a Julian through his mother’s line — the name now runs on adoption. [The Julii of Rome]2 15 Mar 44 BC — The Ides: Caesar killed. In law the line ends here — no legitimate son exists, none can now be fathered, and the name passes by testamentary adoption to a sister’s grandson, an Octavius in the male line. [The Julii]16 Nov 43 BC — Second Triumvirate formed: Antony, Octavian, Lepidus. Proscriptions follow; Cicero killed 7 Dec 43. [Rome & Egypt]34 Nov 43 BC Oct 42 BC — Philippi: Brutus and Cassius defeated and dead. Antony, the senior victor, takes the East. [Rome & Egypt]36 Oct 42 BC Philippi: Brutus and Cassius… 42 BC — Caesar deified by the state: Divus Julius. The adopted heir becomes divi filius — son of a god — by the same instrument that made him a Julian: law, not blood. [The Julii of Rome]3 42 BC Caesar deified by the state: Divus… c. 40 BC — Lucius Julius Caesar, consul of 64 — spared in the proscriptions when his sister Julia, Antony’s mother, faced the death squads at her door — dies without surviving sons. The male gens Julia, of every branch, is extinct. [The Julii of Rome]4 c. 40 BC Lucius… 36 BC — Antony’s invasion of Parthia fails with heavy losses. Two years later he will confer the Parthian kings’ own title, King of Kings, on Caesarion, and grant Parthia itself to Alexander Helios. [Rome & Egypt]38 36 BC Antony’s invasion of Parthia… c. 35–31 BC — The Antonia. The old Baris rebuilt as a stronghold on scarped rock with four corner towers, garrisoned and overlooking the Temple courts. Named for Mark Antony, so before his fall in 30 BC. [The Building Programme]2 c. 35–31 BC The Antonia c. 35–15 BC — The Jericho winter palaces. Three successive palaces in the Jordan valley, bringing Roman construction technique into the kingdom — opus reticulatum facing and Roman-plan bath suites, built by imported specialists. [The Building Programme]10 c. 35–15 BC The Jericho winter palaces summer 30 BC — With the war lost, Caesarion is enrolled among the ephebi and Antyllus given the toga virilis, with feasting in Alexandria for days. He is seventeen; the usual age is fourteen. The ceremony makes him an adult king — and removes the only ground on which Rome might have spared him. [Rome & Egypt]43 summer 30 BC late Aug 30 BC — Caesarion, 17, lured back from flight toward the Red Sea and executed on Octavian’s order. The recorded advice: “too many Caesars is not good.” The Ptolemaic line of pharaohs ends. With him the attested male blood of the Julii ends — fourteen years after the line ended in law. [Rome & Egypt]46 late Aug 30 BC after 31 BC — Nicopolis. Public buildings for the victory city Octavian founded on the site of his camp at Actium — a benefaction aimed squarely at the winner. [The Building Programme]19 after 31 BC Nicopolis 27 BC — Octavian takes the name Augustus. The Julian name rules; the Julian male line is gone. [The Julii of Rome]6 27 BC Octavian takes the name Augustus c. 20–15 BC — The water system. The Wadi el-Biyar aqueduct driven partly as a groundwater-collecting tunnel — 2.8 km, longer than any tunnel in Rome’s own systems — and the low-level aqueduct, 23 km from Solomon’s Pools to the Temple cisterns on a fall of thirty metres. Wilson’s Arch built to carry it. [The Building Programme]6 c. 20–15 BC undated — Antioch. A colonnaded main street about four kilometres long, paved in polished stone — counted as the first monumental colonnaded avenue of the Roman East. [The Building Programme]20 undated Antioch 17 BC — Augustus adopts his grandsons Gaius and Lucius Caesar — his blood through his daughter Julia; Julians by adoption, as he is. Both die young, AD 2 and AD 4. [The Julii of Rome]7 17 BC Augustus adopts his grandsons Gaius… AD 4 — Augustus adopts Tiberius — a Claudian, with no Julian blood at all — and requires Tiberius, on the same day, to adopt Germanicus. The succession is now adoption stacked on adoption. [The Julii of Rome]8 AD 4 Augustus adopts Tiberius — a… AD 14 — Augustus dies. The name Caesar passes by adoption for the second time — to a man with no drop of the family’s blood. Within days, Agrippa Postumus, the founder’s last grandson, is killed under guard. [The Julii of Rome]9 AD 14 Augustus dies AD 37 — Tiberius dead, Caligula frees his friend, gives him a gold chain the weight of his iron one, and makes him king of Philip’s former tetrarchy. [The Julii of Judaea]12 AD 37 Tiberius dead,… AD 37–41 — Agrippa I gathers it back. Caligula gives him Philip’s tetrarchy, then Antipas’s after the tetrarch is exiled to Gaul. [Who Ruled the Land]40 AD 37–41 Agrippa I gathers it back AD 41 — Caligula assassinated. Josephus places Agrippa at the centre of the crisis, moving between the terrified Claudius and the Senate. Claudius becomes emperor owing a debt to a grandson of Herod. [The Julii of Judaea]14 AD 41 Caligula assassinated AD 41 — Claudius made emperor by the Praetorians. No adoption ever made him a Julius; he takes the name Caesar by accession alone — the first time the name moves as a title, not an inheritance. [The Julii of Rome]13 AD 41 Claudius made emperor by the… AD 50 — Claudius adopts Nero — the fourth adoption in the chain that keeps the dynasty “Julian”. [The Julii of Rome]14 AD 50 Claudius… AD 54 — Nero becomes emperor. [The Julii of Rome]15 AD 54 Nero becomes emperor AD 54 — The first death of the new reign, in Tacitus’s account: Marcus Junius Silanus, proconsul of Asia, poisoned — a great-great-grandson of Augustus, killed for standing a generation closer to the founder’s blood than the emperor did. His brothers follow in 64 and 65. [The Julii of Rome]16 AD 54 The first death of the new reign, in… c. AD 60 — Arikamedu, a Roman post in Tamil country. Excavation on the Coromandel coast has produced Arretine ware, amphorae and Roman glass. Roman coin hoards across south India are counted in tens of thousands. [India]32 c. AD 60 Arikamedu, a Roman post in Tamil… AD 68 — Nero dies. The mechanism: Gaius Julius Vindex, legate of Gallia Lugdunensis — himself a Julian enfranchisee — revolts in early 68; Galba is declared; Nero, abandoned by the Guard, opens his own throat in June. With him dies the last emperor carrying any blood of the Julii — and that blood, at every step back to Caesar’s sister, had passed through women. Vespasian’s legions in Judaea are still in the field when the dynasty falls. [The Julii of Rome]18 AD 68 Nero dies AD 68 — Galba — no relation, no adoption by the house — takes the name Caesar on accession. The name is now an office of the Roman state. [The Julii of Rome]19 AD 68 Galba — no relation, no… AD 69 — The first false Nero — an impostor gathering ships and men in the Aegean — is hunted down and killed. [The Julii of Rome]20 AD 69 The first false Nero — an… c. AD 80 — A second false Nero — Terentius Maximus — appears in the East and finds refuge across the Euphrates with the Parthians. [The Julii of Rome]22 c. AD 80 A second false Nero — Terentius… c. AD 88 — A third false Nero, twenty years after the death — the name still being claimed by men who never bore it, a generation after the last of the blood was gone. [The Julii of Rome]23 c. AD 88 A third false Nero, twenty years… c. 3100 BC — THE TWO LANDS UNITED. The Narmer Palette shows a king wearing the white crown of the south on one face and the red crown of the north on the other. The single oldest political document in the world, and the union it records lasts, with breaks, for three thousand years. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]1 c. 3100 BC THE TWO LANDS UNITED c. 3000 BC — Hieroglyphs. Writing appears fully formed on labels and palettes. It stays in use for three and a half thousand years — the last dated inscription is cut at Philae in AD 394. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]2 c. 3000 BC Hieroglyphs c. 2670 BC — THE STEP PYRAMID. Djoser's monument at Saqqara, the first large stone building anywhere, six stepped mastabas rising sixty metres. Its architect Imhotep is named on the base of Djoser's statue — the earliest architect in history known by name. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]3 c. 2670 BC THE STEP PYRAMID c. 2600 BC — Sneferu builds three. Meidum, the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid. The Bent Pyramid changes angle halfway up, recording a structural correction in progress. Sneferu moved more stone than any other pharaoh. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]4 c. 2600 BC c. 2560 BC — THE GREAT PYRAMID. Khufu's monument at Giza: 2.3 million blocks, 146 metres, aligned to true north within a twentieth of a degree. The tallest structure on earth for 3,800 years. The Merer papyrus, found at Wadi al-Jarf in 2013, is a work diary from the crew that hauled its casing stone — the oldest inscribed papyrus known. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]5 c. 2560 BC THE GREAT… c. 2500 BC — Khafre, Menkaure and the Sphinx. The second and third pyramids, and the lion-bodied figure cut from the bedrock of the quarry. Nothing contemporary records who ordered the Sphinx or why. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]6 c. 2500 BC Khafre, Menkaure and the Sphinx c. 2350 BC — THE PYRAMID TEXTS. Spells cut into the burial chambers of Unas and his successors. The oldest religious writings in the world, and the ancestor of the Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]7 c. 2350 BC THE PYRAMID TEXTS c. 2181 BC — The Old Kingdom falls. Central authority collapses into the First Intermediate Period. The Ipuwer papyrus describes a land turned upside down; drought and a failing Nile are the usual explanation, and low flood levels are attested. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]8 c. 2181 BC The Old Kingdom falls c. 2055 BC — The Middle Kingdom. Mentuhotep II reunites Egypt from Thebes. Literature flourishes — the Tale of Sinuhe, the Eloquent Peasant — and the language of this period became the classical standard scribes were later trained on. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]9 c. 2055 BC The Middle Kingdom c. 1920 BC — Famine drives the household down to Egypt, and back. [Abraham and the Patriarchs]3 c. 1920 BC Famine drives the household down to… 1745 BC — Joseph sold into Egypt. By his brothers, at seventeen. The line that will hold the birthright goes down first as a slave. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]35 1745 BC 1706 BC — Jacob goes down to Egypt. Seventy souls. Jacob is 130 and stands before Pharaoh. The family is now in Egypt and will not leave for four centuries. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]36 1706 BC Jacob goes… 1706 BC — Seventy souls into Egypt. Jacob’s household settles in Goshen under Joseph’s protection. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]37 1706 BC Seventy souls… c. 1690 BC — Jacob’s house descends into Egypt under Joseph — seventy persons in the text; the patriarchal period closes. [Abraham and the Patriarchs]10 c. 1690 BC Jacob’s… c. 1650 BC — Hyksos rule Lower Egypt (to c. 1550) — Semitic-speaking dynasts on the Nile in the era the descent narrative describes. [Abraham and the Patriarchs]14 c. 1650 BC Hyksos rule Lower Egypt… c. 1650 BC — The Hyksos take the Delta. Rulers of foreign origin hold Lower Egypt for a century. They bring the composite bow, the horse and the chariot, and Egypt turns those weapons on the world when it expels them. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]10 c. 1650 BC The Hyksos take the Delta 1635 BC — Joseph dies. At 110, in Egypt, with the oath that his bones be carried up. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]39 1635 BC Joseph dies 1571 BC — Moses born. Hidden three months, drawn from the river, raised in Pharaoh’s house. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]41 1571 BC Moses born c. 1550 BC — The New Kingdom. Ahmose drives the Hyksos out and Egypt becomes an empire, holding the Levant to the Euphrates. The richest and best-documented period of Egyptian history. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]11 c. 1550 BC The New Kingdom 1491 BC — THE EXODUS. Four hundred and thirty years after the promise. The nation leaves Egypt.Variant: Scholarly dates: 1446 BC (early) or c. 1250 BC (late) [The Line from Noah to Jesus]43 1491 BC THE EXODUS c. 1327 BC — Tutankhamun. A minor king who reigned nine years and restored the old worship. His tomb was found nearly intact in 1922 — the only royal burial of the period to escape robbery, and the reason the period is so vividly known. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]15 c. 1327 BC Tutankhamu… 1274 BC — Kadesh, and the first treaty. Ramesses II fights the Hittites to a standstill. Both sides claim victory in their own records. The peace treaty of 1259 survives in Egyptian on temple walls and in Akkadian on clay from Hattusa — the oldest international treaty whose text we have from both parties. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]16 1274 BC Kadesh, and the… c. 1213 BC — What Ramesses II left. Sixty-six years on the throne. Abu Simbel, the Ramesseum, Pi-Ramesses, and additions at Karnak and Luxor. He usurped older monuments by recutting their inscriptions with his own name, which is why he appears on so many. [Egypt before the Ptolemies]17 c. 1213 BC 1177 BC — Ramesses III and the Sea Peoples. Egypt repels the coalition at the Nile mouths and records it on the walls of Medinet Habu. Egypt survives the collapse and is the only great power that does — but broken, and the New Kingdom ends within a century. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]57 1177 BC Ramesses III and the Sea Peoples c. 1150 BC — Egypt’s last great pharaoh. Ramesses III repels the Sea Peoples and is the last pharaoh to hold the empire. Within a generation the workmen at Deir el-Medina strike over unpaid rations — the first recorded strike in history. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]59 c. 1150 BC Egypt’s last great pharaoh 1069 BC — THE NEW KINGDOM ENDS. Egypt splits: pharaohs at Tanis, high priests of Amun at Thebes. The Levant is lost. The decline begins here, seven hundred years before Alexander. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]64 1069 BC THE NEW KINGDOM ENDS c. 925 BC — Shoshenq I campaigns north. The Karnak relief lists towns taken in the Levant — the first external record touching the divided kingdoms. [Who Ruled the Land]9 c. 925 BC Shoshenq I campaigns north 747 BC — Nubia takes Egypt. The Kushite kings of the 25th dynasty rule Egypt from the south. Foreign rule begins and, with brief interruptions, does not end. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]108 747 BC Nubia takes Egypt 671–663 BC — Assyria sacks Memphis and Thebes. Esarhaddon takes Memphis, Ashurbanipal sacks Thebes. The destruction is so complete that Nahum 3:8 uses Thebes as the image of total ruin. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]116 671–663 BC c. 630 BC — Jeremiah. From Josiah’s reform to the fall of the city, and after it into Egypt. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]119 c. 630 BC Jeremiah 609 BC — Jehoahaz. Three months. Taken to Egypt by Pharaoh Necho. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]120 609 BC Jehoahaz 605 BC — Carchemish. Nebuchadnezzar defeats Necho II of Egypt and takes the Levant from Egyptian control. Jeremiah 46:2. The Babylonian Chronicle records the same battle, and the first deportation from Jerusalem follows within the year. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]123 605 BC Carchemish 525 BC — Persia conquers Egypt. Cambyses takes Egypt and it becomes a satrapy. Independence returns briefly; Persia reconquers in 343. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]131 525 BC Persia conquers Egypt 337 BC — Ptolemy exiled by Philip II. With Harpalus, Nearchus, Erigyius and Laomedon, for supporting Alexander in the Pixodarus affair. All recalled by Alexander in 336. [The Ptolemies]1 337 BC 332 BC — Alexander enters Egypt. Welcomed, because the alternative was Persia. He founds Alexandria and is gone within months. He dies in 323. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]139 332 BC 330 BC — Ptolemy made one of the seven somatophylakes. The royal bodyguard. He had been raised with Alexander at court as a syntrophos. [The Ptolemies]2 330 BC Ptolemy… 323 BC — PTOLEMY TAKES EGYPT. Alexander’s general takes the richest province, and takes the body with it. He inherits a civilisation seven centuries past its peak, mostly under foreign rule, whose script is already dying — and gives it three hundred more years. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]140 323 BC PTOLEMY… 323 BC — Alexander dies at Babylon. The empire is divided among the generals. Ptolemy son of Lagus takes Egypt as satrap. [The Ptolemies]4 323 BC Alexander… 321 BC — Ptolemy takes the body. He intercepts Alexander’s funeral cortege bound for Macedon and diverts it to Memphis, later to Alexandria. Possession of the body is a claim to the succession, and the other generals understood it as one. [The Ptolemies]7 321 BC Ptolemy… 321 BC — Perdiccas invades Egypt and dies. He failed to force the Nile and was murdered in his camp by Peithon, Seleucus and Antigenes. Ptolemy declined the regency. [The Ptolemies]8 321 BC Perdiccas… c. 320 BC — Ptolemy writes his own history. A general who becomes a source. His account of the campaigns is lost but is the principal thing Arrian used four centuries later. [The Ptolemies]9 c. 320 BC Ptolemy… 305 BC — Ptolemy I takes the title of king. Soter, the saviour. The satrapy becomes a kingdom. [The Ptolemies]10 305 BC Ptolemy I takes the title of king 301 BC — Ptolemaic rule. After Ipsus the land is administered from Alexandria for a century. [Who Ruled the Land]23 301 BC Ptolemaic… c. 300 BC — The Mouseion founded. A research institution with salaried scholars, funded by the crown, attached to the palace. There is no earlier example of the arrangement. [The Ptolemies]14 c. 300 BC — Euclid at Alexandria. The Elements is compiled here. It remains the standard geometry textbook of the West for more than two thousand years. [The Ptolemies]15 c. 297 BC — The Pharos begun. Under Ptolemy I, completed under Ptolemy II. One of the seven wonders. Its foundation blocks lie underwater off Fort Qaitbay and have been surveyed. [The Ptolemies]16 c. 295 BC — The Library and the Mouseion. Founded at Alexandria under Ptolemy I and II. Galen records the policy: books are seized from ships in the harbour, copied, and the originals kept. [The Line from Noah to Jesus]141 c. 295 BC 285 BC — Ptolemy II Philadelphus. The reign in which the Library, the translation programme and the ruler cult all take their mature form. [The Ptolemies]17 285 BC c. 280 BC — Manetho writes Egypt in Greek. An Egyptian priest composes the Aegyptiaca for the new rulers. The division of Egyptian history into thirty dynasties is his, and it is still the one in use. [The Ptolemies]18 c. 280 BC c. 279 BC — Ptolemy II marries his sister Arsinoe II. Egyptian practice, not Greek. It closes the succession to outside families and makes the queen a Ptolemy in her own right. Arsinoe is deified in her lifetime and appears on the coinage. Every reign after is shaped by it, and seven women go on to rule. [The Ptolemies]19 c. 279 BC c. 270 BC — THE FAYUM RECLAIMED. The level of Lake Moeris is lowered under Ptolemy II and the drained basin turned to farmland, settled with new villages on a grid and allotted to soldiers. The largest civil work of the dynasty, and the dry rubbish of those villages is why Ptolemaic Egypt is the best-documented administration of the ancient world. [The Ptolemies]22 c. 270 BC THE FAYUM… c. 270 BC — The Red Sea canal reopened. Ptolemy II re-engineers the Nile-to-Red-Sea canal begun by Necho and finished by Darius, adding a lock at the seaward end. The Mediterranean joined to the Indian Ocean, two thousand years before Suez. [The Ptolemies]23 c. 270 BC The Red Sea canal reopened c. 270 BC — The elephant ports. Berenice, Myos Hormos and Ptolemais Theron founded down the Red Sea to capture African elephants, the Seleucids holding the Indian supply. The elephants lost at Raphia; the ports became the India trade route Rome inherited. [The Ptolemies]24 c. 270 BC The elephant ports c. 250 BC — The Septuagint. The Hebrew scriptures translated into Greek at Alexandria. It becomes the Bible of the early Church, and its chronology differs from the Masoretic by 1,386 years. [The Ptolemies]26 c. 250 BC The… c. 250 BC — Herophilus and Erasistratus. Human dissection is practised at Alexandria. It is the only period in antiquity when it was permitted, and the anatomical vocabulary from it is still in use. [The Ptolemies]27 c. 250 BC Herophilus and Erasistratus 246–241 BC — The Third Syrian War. Ptolemy III campaigns as far as Babylon. The dynasty is at its greatest extent. [The Ptolemies]31 246–241 BC The Third Syrian War c. 240 BC — Eratosthenes measures the earth. Librarian of Alexandria. Using the sun’s angle at Syene and Alexandria he calculates the earth’s circumference to within a few per cent of the true figure. [The Ptolemies]33 c. 240 BC Eratosthenes measures the earth 238 BC — The Canopus Decree. A priestly synod under Ptolemy III orders a sixth epagomenal day every fourth year. The priesthood does not adopt it. Two centuries later Caesar takes the same reform and makes it work. Trilingual, on stone. [The Ptolemies]34 238 BC The Canopus Decree 217 BC — Raphia. Ptolemy IV defeats Antiochus III. Egyptian troops are armed and trained in the Macedonian manner for the first time, and the decree recording the victory is trilingual. [The Ptolemies]36 217 BC Raphia 200 BC — Seleucid rule. Antiochus III defeats the Ptolemies at Panion; the land passes to Antioch. [Who Ruled the Land]25 200 BC Seleucid rule 206–186 BC — The revolt of Upper Egypt. Native pharaohs Horwennefer and Ankhwennefer hold Thebes and the south for twenty years. The dynasty loses half its country and takes two decades to recover it. [The Ptolemies]39 206–186 BC The revolt of Upper Egypt 196 BC — THE ROSETTA STONE. A priestly decree for Ptolemy V, cut in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek. It is the key that reopened the Egyptian record — the script had been unreadable for fourteen centuries when Champollion read it in 1822. [The Ptolemies]40 196 BC THE ROSETTA STONE 175–164 BC — Cleopatra I rules as regent. The first woman to hold power in the dynasty, regent for her son Ptolemy VI. [The Ptolemies]41 175–164 BC Cleopatra I rules as regent 168 BC — THE DAY OF ELEUSIS. Popillius Laenas draws a circle in the sand around Antiochus IV outside Alexandria and demands his answer before he steps out of it. Antiochus withdraws. Egypt is a Roman client from that day, a hundred and thirty-eight years before it is a province. [The Ptolemies]42 168 BC THE DAY OF ELEUSIS c. 145 BC — The scholars scatter. The expulsions under Ptolemy VIII disperse Alexandrian scholarship across the Greek world. Some of what the Library held travels with them; what stays begins to be lost. [The Ptolemies]43 c. 145 BC The scholars scatter 145–116 BC — Ptolemy VIII. The reign in which the dynasty turns on itself. Josephus and the later sources record the murder of his own son and the dismemberment; scholars persecuted and expelled from Alexandria. [The Ptolemies]44 145–116 BC Ptolemy VIII 131–127 BC — Cleopatra II rules alone. In open civil war against her brother-husband Ptolemy VIII, having driven him from Alexandria. Reconciled and reigned jointly to 116. [The Ptolemies]45 131–127 BC Cleopatra II rules alone 142–101 BC — Cleopatra III, forty years dominant. Co-ruler through four decades, making and unmaking both her sons on the throne. [The Ptolemies]46 142–101 BC Cleopatra III, forty years dominant c. 118 BC — The Philae obelisk. The priests of Philae petition Ptolemy VIII and the two Cleopatras for relief from the cost of state officials. Bilingual. It carries the cartouche of Cleopatra, which Rosetta lacks — the pairing that let the signs be tested and the script read. [The Ptolemies]47 c. 118 BC The Philae obelisk 116–80 BC — Dynastic civil war. Cleopatra III against her sons; Ptolemy IX and X alternate on the throne. The coinage is debased through the period. [The Ptolemies]48 116–80 BC Dynastic civil war 81–80 BC — Berenice III rules alone. By popular acclaim. Murdered within nineteen days of a forced marriage to her stepson, who was then lynched by the Alexandrians for it. [The Ptolemies]49 81–80 BC Berenice III rules alone 80 BC — The will of Ptolemy Alexander. Rome claims Egypt was bequeathed to it. The claim is disputed then and now, but it is never withdrawn. [The Ptolemies]50 80 BC The will of Ptolemy Alexander c. 69 BC — Cleopatra born; the year is reckoned from her recorded age at death. [Rome & Egypt]7 c. 69 BC Cleopatra born; the year is reckoned… 58–55 BC — Berenice IV rules alone. While her father is in Rome buying his throne back. Executed on his return. [The Ptolemies]51 58–55 BC Berenice IV rules alone 51 BC — Ptolemy XII dies; Cleopatra takes the throne of Egypt with her brother Ptolemy XIII under their father’s will. [Rome & Egypt]14 51 BC 51 BC — Cleopatra VII accedes. With her brother Ptolemy XIII. The last of the line to rule as a Ptolemy in the old sense. [The Ptolemies]52 51 BC Oct 48 BC — Caesar arrives in Alexandria in pursuit of Pompey; the Alexandrian War begins. [Rome & Egypt]17 Oct 48 BC Caesar… 48–47 BC — Caesar is pinned in Alexandria. The relief marches overland under Mithridates of Pergamum, and Antipater brings three thousand Jewish troops, having also secured the Arab chieftains and the rulers of Lebanon. He is first over the wall at Pelusium; he talks the Jews of the Onias district and of Memphis into letting the column through, carrying letters from the high priest Hyrcanus; and in the Delta battle he rescues Mithridates’s broken wing and takes the enemy camp, wounded doing it. For this campaign Josephus cites Strabo, and through him Asinius Pollio and Hypsicrates — named ext [The Julii of Judaea]19 48–47 BC Caesar is… Jan–Mar 47 BC — The war ends; Cleopatra is restored to the throne, co-ruling with her brother Ptolemy XIV. [Rome & Egypt]18 Jan–Mar 47 BC The war ends;… Apr–May 47 BC — Caesar departs Egypt for the Pontic campaign. Month approximate. [Rome & Egypt]19 Apr–May 47 BC Caesar departs Egypt for the Pontic… 23 Jun 47 BC — Caesarion (Ptolemy Caesar) born in Alexandria. The precise date rests on the reading of one contemporary stele. [Rome & Egypt]20 23 Jun 47 BC Caesarion (Ptolemy Caesar) born in… 47 BC — Ptolemy XV born. Caesarion. The last Ptolemy. [The Ptolemies]54 47 BC Ptolemy XV born mid-Apr 44 BC — Cleopatra and Caesarion leave Rome for Egypt. [Rome & Egypt]32 mid-Apr 44 BC 2 Sep 44 BC — Caesarion crowned co-ruler of Egypt as Ptolemy XV, aged three — within six months of his father’s death. [Rome & Egypt]33 2 Sep 44 BC Caesarion crowned co-ruler of Egypt… 42 BC — The Roman state formally deifies Caesar as Divus Julius. In Egyptian doctrine a dead deified king is Osiris; Rome supplies the term itself, and the Osirian pattern of Isis and Horus is thereby complete without anyone in Egypt arranging it. [Rome & Egypt]35 42 BC The Roman state formally deifies… 41 BC — Antony summons Cleopatra to Tarsus; the alliance begins. [Rome & Egypt]37 41 BC Antony summons… 37–36 BC — At Antioch, Antony makes major territorial grants to Cleopatra and her children — the first donation event, administrative rather than theatrical. [Rome & Egypt]39 37–36 BC At Antioch,… autumn 34 BC — Donations of Alexandria: on golden thrones in the gymnasium, Cleopatra is proclaimed Queen of Kings and Caesarion King of Kings — and declared the true son of the deified Caesar. The Senate refuses ratification. [Rome & Egypt]40 autumn 34 BC 32 BC — Rome declares war on Cleopatra. The formal charges against Antony include his acknowledgement of Caesarion as Caesar’s legitimate son, named as a degradation of his office and a menace to Octavian. One third of the Senate and both consuls go over to Antony. [Rome & Egypt]41 32 BC Rome declares war on Cleopatra 2 Sep 31 BC — Actium: Octavian’s fleet under Agrippa defeats Antony and Cleopatra. [Rome & Egypt]42 2 Sep 31 BC Actium: Octavian’s fleet under… 10 or 12 Aug 30 BC — Cleopatra dies in Alexandria. The date is disputed between the 10th and 12th; the manner (the asp) rests on tradition Plutarch already reports as uncertain. [Rome & Egypt]45 10 or 12 Aug 30 BC Cleopatra dies in Alexandria late Aug 30 BC — Caesarion, the attested natural son, executed in Alexandria on the adopted heir’s order. In blood the male line ends here — fourteen years after it ended in law. [The Julii]17 late Aug 30 BC Caesarion, the attested natural son,… 30 BC — ALEXANDRIA FALLS. Cleopatra dies; Ptolemy XV is killed on Octavian’s order. Egypt becomes the personal property of the emperor, governed by a prefect, and no senator may enter without permission. [The Ptolemies]55 30 BC ALEXANDRIA FALLS 30 BC — Cleopatra Selene II taken to Rome. With her brothers Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus, walked in Octavian’s triumph and given to Octavia to raise. No death is recorded for either brother. [The Ptolemies]56 30 BC Cleopatra Selene II taken to Rome c. 25 BC — Cleopatra Selene II queen of Mauretania. Married to Juba II and installed on a throne in north-west Africa. She struck coinage in her own name with Egyptian iconography and named her son Ptolemy. The Ptolemaic line continues on a throne for seventy years after Alexandria falls. [The Ptolemies]57 c. 25 BC Cleopatra Selene II queen of… c. AD 1 — Tamil at Berenike. Excavation at the Red Sea port of Berenike — built by Ptolemy II for elephants — has recovered Indian peppercorns, teak, and potsherds inscribed in Tamil-Brahmi. Indian writing, in an Egyptian harbour. [India]30 c. AD 1 Tamil at Berenike AD 40 — Ptolemy of Mauretania killed by Caligula. The last ruling descendant of the dynasty. [The Ptolemies]58 AD 40 Ptolemy of Mauretania killed by… AD 79 — On his accession, under public pressure and the spoken memory of Cleopatra, Titus sends Berenice away finally — dimisit invitus invitam. [The Julii of Judaea]17 AD 79 On his accession, under public… c. AD 150 — The Muziris papyrus. A commercial contract in Greek, found in Egypt, for a cargo shipped from Muziris on the Malabar coast. It values one shipload at some seven million sesterces. The single best document of the India trade. [India]35 c. AD 150 The Muziris papyrus AD 150 — The work continues under Rome. Claudius Ptolemaeus writes the Almagest and the Geographia at Alexandria, under Roman rule. They govern astronomy and geography until the sixteenth century. The institution outlives the dynasty by four hundred years. [The Ptolemies]59 AD 150 The work continues under Rome c. 2600 BC — THE INDUS CITIES. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro at their mature phase — grid-planned streets, standardised fired brick, covered drains and a public bath, contemporary with the Egyptian Old Kingdom. The script is undeciphered, so a literate urban civilisation of a million people leaves no readable word. [India]1 c. 2600 BC THE INDUS CITIES c. 2300 BC — Meluhha in the Akkadian records. Mesopotamian texts name a trading partner, Meluhha, generally identified with the Indus. Indus seals have been excavated at Ur and Susa. Contemporary evidence of trade between the two oldest urban systems. [India]2 c. 2300 BC Meluhha in the Akkadian records c. 1900 BC — The Indus cities decline. Abandoned over some centuries; the causes are disputed and include river shift and monsoon change. No destruction layer of conquest has been found. [India]3 c. 1900 BC The Indus cities decline c. 600 BC — The sixteen Mahajanapadas. Northern India organised into sixteen great states, republics and kingdoms both. Magadha rises among them, and it is Magadha the Mauryas inherit. [India]5 c. 600 BC c. 563 BC — Siddhartha born at Kapilavastu. A prince of the Shakya republic, son of Shuddhodhana, on the present India–Nepal border. The tradition holds the Shakyas to be Suryavamsha, of the Solar Dynasty — the line of Ikshvaku that also produced Rama. Set out in Two Wheels. [India]6 c. 563 BC c. 540 BC — Mahavira and the Jains. A contemporary of the Buddha, and of the same Kshatriya class. Two renouncer traditions from the warrior caste, in the same generation, in the same region. [India]7 c. 540 BC Mahavira and… c. 534 BC — THE RENUNCIATION. He leaves the kingdom, his wife and his son Rahula. A Kshatriya of the senior royal line abandons the throne, and the tradition makes the renunciation the point: the wheel of dharma is taken up in place of the wheel of empire. [India]8 c. 534 BC THE RENUNCIATION c. 518 BC — Darius takes the Indus. The Persian empire annexes the Indus valley. Herodotus states it was the most heavily taxed satrapy of all, and Darius’s own inscriptions list Hidush among his lands. [India]9 c. 518 BC Darius takes the Indus c. 483 BC — The Buddha dies at Kushinagar. The relics are divided among eight claimants and stupas raised over them — the beginning of the reliquary practice Ashoka later takes up at scale. [India]10 c. 483 BC The Buddha dies at Kushinagar 326 BC — Alexander turns back at the Hyphasis. His army refuses to go further east. The Macedonian frontier stops at the Punjab, and the satrapies he leaves behind become the ground the Mauryas take. [India]11 326 BC Alexander… 326 BC — The Hydaspes: Alexander and Porus. Alexander defeats Porus in the Punjab, then restores him to his own kingdom as satrap. It is the last of his great battles. [India]12 326 BC The Hydaspes:… c. 322 BC — Chandragupta founds the Maurya empire. In the vacuum left by Alexander's withdrawal. Within twenty years it holds the whole north Indian plain and the passes into Afghanistan. [India]13 c. 322 BC Chandragupta… c. 303 BC — SELEUCUS TRADES LAND FOR ELEPHANTS. Seleucus campaigns east, cannot hold, and settles. He cedes Arachosia, Gedrosia, Aria and the Paropamisadae to Chandragupta and receives five hundred war elephants. A marriage agreement is part of the terms. [India]14 c. 302 BC — Megasthenes at Pataliputra. Seleucus sends him as ambassador to the Mauryan court. His Indica is the first substantial Greek description of India. It is lost and survives only in quotation by Strabo, Arrian and Diodorus. [India]15 301 BC — The elephants decide Ipsus. Chandragupta's five hundred elephants are used at Ipsus, where Antigonus is killed and his kingdom divided. Ptolemy takes Coele-Syria from that settlement and Seleucus disputes it — the grievance behind six Syrian Wars, and behind Judaea changing hands in 200. [India]16 c. 300 BC — The Arthashastra. The treatise on statecraft attributed to Kautilya, Chandragupta’s minister. Its dating is disputed and the surviving text is later, but it is the fullest ancient Indian account of how a state was to be run. [India]17 c. 273 BC — Bindusara writes to Antiochus. He asks the Seleucid king for sweet wine, dried figs and a sophist. Antiochus sends the wine and figs and replies that Greek law forbids the sale of philosophers. Athenaeus preserves the exchange. [India]18 c. 273 BC Bindusara writes to Antiochus c. 268 BC — Ashoka accedes. Grandson of Chandragupta. His empire holds nearly the whole subcontinent, and his edicts are the earliest deciphered Indian inscriptions. [India]19 c. 268 BC Ashoka accedes c. 261 BC — KALINGA, AND THE TURN. The Thirteenth Rock Edict records the conquest of Kalinga and the king’s own remorse for it in his own words — a hundred thousand killed, many times that number dead of other causes. He turns to dhamma. No other ancient monarch records regret for a victory in a public inscription. [India]20 c. 261 BC KALINGA, AND THE TURN c. 258 BC — The Kandahar bilingual edict. Ashoka's edict cut in Greek and Aramaic at Kandahar, in Alexander's own foundation. Greek was still the administrative language of the region a century after he passed through. [India]21 c. 250 BC — The Third Buddhist Council, and the missions. Held at Pataliputra under Ashoka by the Theravada account. Missions are sent out afterwards — to Sri Lanka under his son Mahinda, and westward to the Greek kings of Edict 13. The emperor spends the empire’s reach on the renouncer’s teaching. [India]22 c. 250 BC — ASHOKA NAMES THE HELLENISTIC KINGS. The Thirteenth Rock Edict records missions sent to five named Greek kings, Ptolemy II Philadelphus among them, with Antiochus II, Antigonus Gonatas, Magas of Cyrene and Alexander. Contemporary Indian inscription naming the king who built the Library. [India]23 c. 250 BC — The pillar edicts and the lion capital. Ashoka’s edicts cut on polished sandstone pillars across the empire. The lion capital from Sarnath is the state emblem of India today. [India]24 c. 185 BC — The Mauryas end. The last Maurya is killed by his commander Pushyamitra Shunga. The empire lasts about 137 years; the teaching it exported outlasts it by more than two thousand. [India]25 c. 185 BC The Mauryas end c. 155 BC — Menander, the Greek king of India. The Indo-Greek kingdom at its height. His coins are found across the north-west, and the Pali Milindapanha records him in dialogue with a Buddhist monk. A Greek king remembered in Buddhist scripture. [India]26 c. 155 BC Menander, the Greek king of India 22 BC — An Indian embassy reaches Augustus. Sent by a king Strabo calls Pandion or Porus, with gifts and a letter in Greek. One of the party, an ascetic named Zarmanochegas, burned himself alive at Athens; Strabo and Dio both record it and give his tomb inscription. [India]29 22 BC An Indian embassy reaches Augustus c. AD 50 — The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. A Greek merchant's handbook to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade, naming ports, goods and sailing seasons. Roman coin hoards in south India confirm the volume. The route runs through the ports the Ptolemies built for elephants. [India]31 c. AD 50 The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea c. AD 127 — Kanishka and the Kushans. The Kushan empire spans Bactria to the Ganges. Gandharan sculpture gives the Buddha a human form for the first time, in a Greek idiom — drapery, proportion and features from Hellenistic art, on an Indian subject. [India]34 c. AD 127 Kanishka and the Kushans c. AD 200 — Clement of Alexandria names the Buddha. In the Stromata he records Indian philosophers who follow the precepts of Boutta, whom they honour as a god. The Buddha named in a Christian text, at Alexandria. [India]36 c. 2070 BC — The Xia, in tradition. The first dynasty in the Chinese histories, and the only one with no writing of its own to attest it. Sima Qian gives its king-list. The Erlitou site, c. 1900 BC, is the usual candidate; the identification is disputed. [China]1 c. 2070 BC The Xia, in tradition c. 1600 BC — The Shang. The first Chinese dynasty attested by its own writing. Bronze casting at a scale unmatched anywhere at the date. [China]2 c. 1600 BC The Shang c. 1250 BC — THE ORACLE BONES. Ox scapulae and turtle plastrons inscribed at Anyang, heated until they cracked, and the cracks read as answers. The earliest Chinese writing, and it is already a mature script — some 150,000 pieces recovered, and the characters are the direct ancestors of those in use today. [China]3 c. 1250 BC THE… c. 1200 BC — Sanxingdui. A bronze-working culture in Sichuan producing masks and standing figures unlike anything Shang, including a figure nearly four metres tall. No writing, and no mention in any Chinese text. A civilisation known only from its pits. [China]4 c. 1200 BC Sanxingdui c. 1200 BC — Fu Hao. A consort of King Wu Ding, buried at Anyang with 468 bronzes, 755 jades and sixteen sacrificed people. The oracle bones record her leading armies. The earliest named woman in Chinese history, and her tomb was found intact in 1976. [China]5 c. 1200 BC Fu Hao 1046 BC — The Zhou take the mandate. The Shang are overthrown, and the Zhou justify it with the Mandate of Heaven: rule is granted by Heaven and withdrawn from the unworthy. A doctrine that makes rebellion legitimate, and it governs Chinese political thought for three thousand years. [China]6 1046 BC The Zhou take the mandate c. 1042 BC — The Duke of Zhou. Regent for his nephew, and the figure Confucius held up as the model of the good statesman five centuries later. The Book of Documents preserves the speeches attributed to him. [China]7 c. 1042 BC The Duke of Zhou 771 BC — The Zhou lose the west. The capital falls and the court moves east. Royal authority becomes nominal and the states begin acting for themselves. [China]8 771 BC The Zhou lose the west 771–476 BC — Spring and Autumn. The period named for the chronicle of the state of Lu, which Confucius was said to have edited. Zhou authority is nominal; the states contend. [China]9 771–476 BC Spring and Autumn c. 551 BC — Confucius born. A contemporary of the Buddha and of Mahavira. Three teachers in one century, in three separate civilisations, all answering the same question about how a man should live. [China]10 c. 551 BC Confucius… c. 500 BC — The Daodejing. Attributed to Laozi, whose historicity is disputed. The counterweight to Confucius: withdrawal against engagement, the same fork the Indian renouncers took. [China]11 c. 500 BC The Daodejing c. 500 BC — Cast iron. China is casting iron in moulds some eighteen centuries before Europe manages it, using blast furnaces developed from bronze practice. Ploughshares, weapons and tools follow. [China]12 c. 500 BC Cast iron 475 BC — The Warring States. Two and a half centuries of war between seven states, and the most productive period in Chinese thought — the hundred schools, Mozi, Mencius, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi, and Sunzi’s Art of War. [China]13 221 BC — QIN SHI HUANG UNIFIES CHINA. The first emperor. Script, weights, measures and axle widths standardised by decree; the states' walls joined into one; the empire divided into commanderies under appointed officials rather than hereditary lords. Two years before Rome fights Zama. [China]14 221 BC QIN SHI HUANG UNIFIES CHINA 213–212 BC — THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS. Qin Shi Huang orders the histories of the other states destroyed and, by the tradition, scholars buried alive. Sima Qian is the source and he wrote under the succeeding dynasty; the scale is disputed. What is not disputed is that the pre-Qin record survives thinly. [China]15 213–212 BC THE BURNING OF THE BOOKS 210 BC — The terracotta army. Some eight thousand figures buried with the first emperor at Xi'an, each with an individual face, discovered in 1974. The tomb mound itself has never been opened. [China]16 206 BC — The Han. Four centuries, with one interruption. The dynasty that fixes Chinese administration, and from which the majority ethnicity still takes its name. [China]17 141–87 BC — Emperor Wu. Fifty-four years. The empire doubles; the Xiongnu are pushed back; Confucianism is made the state doctrine and an imperial academy founded to teach it. Officials begin to be selected on learning rather than birth. [China]18 141–87 BC 138 BC — ZHANG QIAN GOES WEST. Sent by Emperor Wu to find allies against the Xiongnu, he is captured, held ten years, escapes and continues. He reaches Bactria — Greek-ruled Bactria, the far edge of Alexander's conquests — and returns after thirteen years. His report opens the Silk Road. [China]19 138 BC ZHANG QIAN GOES WEST c. 94 BC — Sima Qian's Shiji. The Records of the Grand Historian, covering two thousand years to his own day. He completed it after being castrated rather than executed, choosing the disgrace so the work would be finished. It is the model for every Chinese dynastic history after it. [China]21 c. 94 BC Sima Qian's Shiji 53 BC — Silk at Carrhae. Roman sources report the Parthians unfurling silk banners at Carrhae, where Crassus was destroyed. Rome meets Chinese silk on a battlefield without knowing where it came from. [China]22 53 BC Silk at Carrhae AD 65 — Buddhism reaches China. The first securely dated notice of a Buddhist community, at the court of a Han prince. The Indian teaching travels the road Zhang Qian opened, and China becomes the largest Buddhist population in the world. [China]24 AD 65 Buddhism reaches China c. AD 77 — Pliny counts the cost. He complains that India, China and Arabia drain a hundred million sesterces a year from the empire, and that India alone takes fifty-five million — Natural History 12.84. A Roman writer treating the trade deficit as a scandal. [India]33 c. AD 77 Pliny counts the cost AD 105 — Paper. Cai Lun reports the process to the Han court. It reaches the Islamic world in the eighth century and Europe in the twelfth — a thousand years to cross, and it is the medium every surviving library then depends on. [China]25 AD 105 Paper AD 166 — ROME REACHES CHINA. The Hou Hanshu records envoys from Daqin, sent by a ruler named Andun — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus — arriving by sea and presenting ivory and tortoiseshell. The Chinese annals record a Roman embassy; no Roman source records sending one. [China]27 AD 166 ROME REACHES CHINA AD 220 — THE HAN END. Four hundred years close, and China divides into the Three Kingdoms. The same century in which Rome enters its own crisis — and neither empire knew the other was failing. [China]29 c. 14,000 BC — JOMON POTTERY. Cord-marked pottery from the Japanese islands is among the oldest ceramic vessels found anywhere, with some sherds dated beyond 14,000 BC. Made by hunter-gatherers, not farmers — which inverts the usual sequence in which pottery follows agriculture. [Japan]1 c. 14,000 BC JOMON POTTERY c. 3000 BC — The Jomon at its height. Settled villages, lacquerware, and the dogu clay figures. A sedentary culture without agriculture, sustained on marine and forest resources for some ten thousand years. [Japan]2 c. 3000 BC The Jomon at its height c. 900 BC — The Yayoi transition begins. Wet-rice paddy farming arrives from the Korean peninsula, with bronze, iron and the loom. The dating has been pushed back several centuries by radiocarbon work and is disputed. Population rises sharply. [Japan]3 c. 900 BC The Yayoi transition begins c. 300 BC — Bronze bells and the new order. Dotaku bronze bells, weapons and mirrors, most cast locally from continental models. Moated settlements appear, and with them the first evidence of organised warfare in the islands. [Japan]4 c. 300 BC Bronze bells and the new order AD 57 — THE GOLD SEAL OF NA. The Hou Hanshu records that the king of Na in Wa sent envoys to the Han court and was given a gold seal. A gold seal was ploughed up on Shikanoshima island in 1784, inscribed with characters read as king of Na of Wa of Han. The object and the text agree. [Japan]5 AD 57 THE GOLD SEAL OF NA AD 107 — Suishō sends slaves. The Hou Hanshu records a king of Wa presenting 160 people to the Han emperor. The earliest named ruler in Japanese history is named in a Chinese book. [Japan]6 AD 107 Suishō sends slaves c. AD 180 — The disorder in Wa. Chinese records describe years of warfare among the states of Wa, ended when the people agree to set a woman on the throne. [Japan]7 c. AD 180 The disorder in Wa AD 238 — HIMIKO, QUEEN OF WA. The Wei zhi records her sending envoys to the Wei court, receiving the title Friend of Wei, Queen of Wa, a gold seal and a hundred bronze mirrors. She is described as ruling by sorcery, unmarried, seen by almost no one. Her kingdom Yamatai has never been located and its position is the longest-running argument in Japanese archaeology. [Japan]8 AD 238 HIMIKO, QUEEN OF WA c. AD 250 — The Kofun tombs. Vast keyhole-shaped burial mounds begin. The largest is longer than the base of the Great Pyramid. The imperial tombs are administered by the Household Agency and have not been opened to archaeologists. [Japan]9 c. AD 250 The Kofun tombs AD 712 and 720 — The Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. Japan's own histories, compiled eight centuries after the events above. They give a first emperor, Jimmu, in 660 BC and a descent from the sun goddess — and no archaeology or contemporary record supports either. Everything on this page before AD 712 reaches us from China or from the ground. [Japan]10
Levant — the land, its kingdoms and the peoples who held it Israel — the northern kingdom, from Saul’s death to 721 BC Judah — the southern kingdom, to 586 BC Rome — and the empires before it Egypt India — the Indus cities, the renouncers and the Mauryas China — from the oracle bones to the Silk Road Japan — the Jōmon, the Yayoi, and a record written in China

This chart ends at AD 180. From 500 to the Present carries the fifteen centuries after it, on a segmented scale and with new lanes.

Period Timelines

The Register

Every event on the chart above, in order. 474 entries, aggregated from the fourteen period registers — the source column links each one back to the page that owns it, where it carries its attestation grade and its citation. Duplicates across registers are merged, so an event recorded on two pages appears here once, under the register that owns it.

№DateStreamEventRegister
1c. 14,000 BCJAPANJOMON POTTERY. Cord-marked pottery from the Japanese islands is among the oldest ceramic vessels found anywhere, with some sherds dated beyond 14,000 BC. Made by hunter-gatherers, not farmers — which inverts the usual sequence in which pottery follows agriculture.Japan
2c. 3100 BCEGYPTTHE TWO LANDS UNITED. The Narmer Palette shows a king wearing the white crown of the south on one face and the red crown of the north on the other. The single oldest political document in the world, and the union it records lasts, with breaks, for three thousand years.Egypt before the Ptolemies
3c. 3000 BCEGYPTHieroglyphs. Writing appears fully formed on labels and palettes. It stays in use for three and a half thousand years — the last dated inscription is cut at Philae in AD 394.Egypt before the Ptolemies
4c. 3000 BCJAPANThe Jomon at its height. Settled villages, lacquerware, and the dogu clay figures. A sedentary culture without agriculture, sustained on marine and forest resources for some ten thousand years.Japan
52948 BCLEVANTNoah born. Tenth from Adam. Genesis gives him 500 years before Shem, Ham and Japheth.Variant: LXX places this c. 3900 BCThe Line from Noah to Jesus
6c. 2670 BCEGYPTTHE STEP PYRAMID. Djoser's monument at Saqqara, the first large stone building anywhere, six stepped mastabas rising sixty metres. Its architect Imhotep is named on the base of Djoser's statue — the earliest architect in history known by name.Egypt before the Ptolemies
7c. 2600 BCEGYPTSneferu builds three. Meidum, the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid. The Bent Pyramid changes angle halfway up, recording a structural correction in progress. Sneferu moved more stone than any other pharaoh.Egypt before the Ptolemies
8c. 2600 BCINDIATHE INDUS CITIES. Harappa and Mohenjo-daro at their mature phase — grid-planned streets, standardised fired brick, covered drains and a public bath, contemporary with the Egyptian Old Kingdom. The script is undeciphered, so a literate urban civilisation of a million people leaves no readable word.India
9c. 2560 BCEGYPTTHE GREAT PYRAMID. Khufu's monument at Giza: 2.3 million blocks, 146 metres, aligned to true north within a twentieth of a degree. The tallest structure on earth for 3,800 years. The Merer papyrus, found at Wadi al-Jarf in 2013, is a work diary from the crew that hauled its casing stone — the oldest inscribed papyrus known.Egypt before the Ptolemies
10c. 2500 BCEGYPTKhafre, Menkaure and the Sphinx. The second and third pyramids, and the lion-bodied figure cut from the bedrock of the quarry. Nothing contemporary records who ordered the Sphinx or why.Egypt before the Ptolemies
112468 BCLEVANTThe sons of God and the daughters of men. Genesis 6:1–4. The Nephilim are in the earth in those days, and after. The passage is four verses and the text does not explain it. It stands immediately before the reason given for the flood.The Line from Noah to Jesus
122468 BCLEVANTThe verdict, and 120 years. ‘My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.’ Genesis 6:3. Read either as a new limit on human lifespan or as the time remaining before the flood. The recorded lifespans do fall to about that figure within ten generations.The Line from Noah to Jesus
132448 BCLEVANTShem, Ham and Japheth. Noah is 500 when the three sons begin to be born. Genesis 5:32. Shem carries the covenant line; Genesis 10 traces seventy nations from the three.The Line from Noah to Jesus
142358 BCLEVANTTHE ARK COMMANDED. Genesis 6:14–16. Gopher wood, pitched within and without. Three hundred cubits long, fifty broad, thirty high — roughly 135 by 23 by 14 metres on a common cubit. Three decks, rooms throughout, one door in the side, and a window a cubit from the top. No rudder, no mast, no keel is described. It is a box built to float, not a ship built to sail.The Line from Noah to Jesus
15c. 2350 BCEGYPTTHE PYRAMID TEXTS. Spells cut into the burial chambers of Unas and his successors. The oldest religious writings in the world, and the ancestor of the Coffin Texts and the Book of the Dead.Egypt before the Ptolemies
162349 BCLEVANTThe animals, and the seven days. Genesis 7:2–4. Seven pairs of every clean beast and of fowls, one pair of the unclean. Noah is given seven days’ warning. The clean-and-unclean distinction is made here, centuries before it is codified in the law.The Line from Noah to Jesus
172348 BCLEVANTTHE FLOOD. Noah is 600. The line narrows to eight people. Every nation in the table that follows descends from his three sons.Variant: LXX c. 3298 BC — 950 years earlierThe Line from Noah to Jesus
182348 BCLEVANTThe waters, and the dates. Genesis 7:11–8:14 gives a dated log. The fountains of the great deep broken up and the windows of heaven opened, on the seventeenth day of the second month. Rain forty days; the waters prevail a hundred and fifty; the ark rests on Ararat in the seventh month; the tops of the mountains seen in the tenth. Noah is in the ark one year and ten days.The Line from Noah to Jesus
192347 BCLEVANTThe covenant with Noah. Genesis 9. The earth given to Noah and his sons; every moving thing given for meat, but not the blood; and the requirement of a reckoning for the blood of man — the first grant of authority over men in the text, at Genesis 9:6. The bow in the cloud is the token, and the covenant is made with every living creature, not only with Noah.The Line from Noah to Jesus
202347 BCLEVANTThe table of nations. Seventy nations from Japheth, Ham and Shem — the text’s account of where every people came from. Canaan, Egypt, Assyria and Philistia are placed here.The Line from Noah to Jesus
212347 BCLEVANTNoah's vineyard, and the curse. Genesis 9:20–27. Noah plants a vineyard, is drunk, and Ham sees him. The curse falls on Canaan, Ham’s son, and not on Ham. Shem is blessed and Japheth is to dwell in his tents.The Line from Noah to Jesus
222347 BCLEVANTThe raven and the dove. Genesis 8:6–12. The raven goes out and does not return. The dove is sent three times — finds no rest, returns with an olive leaf, and the third time does not come back.The Line from Noah to Jesus
232346 BCLEVANTArphaxad born to Shem. Two years after the flood. The covenant line runs through Shem, not through Ham or Japheth.The Line from Noah to Jesus
242311 BCLEVANTSalah born. To Arphaxad, at 35. Genesis 11:12. Lived 433 years.The Line from Noah to Jesus
25c. 2300 BCINDIAMeluhha in the Akkadian records. Mesopotamian texts name a trading partner, Meluhha, generally identified with the Indus. Indus seals have been excavated at Ur and Susa. Contemporary evidence of trade between the two oldest urban systems.India
262281 BCLEVANTEber born. To Salah, at 30. Genesis 11:14. The name from which Hebrew is usually derived. Lived 464 years, outliving every descendant down to Abraham.The Line from Noah to Jesus
272247 BCLEVANTPeleg born. To Eber, at 34. Genesis 11:16. Genesis 10:25 states that in his days the earth was divided, which the text places at Babel. Lived 239 years — the first sharp drop in the recorded lifespans.The Line from Noah to Jesus
28c. 2242 BCLEVANTBabel. One language becomes many and the nations scatter. Dated in the days of Peleg, in whose time the earth was divided.The Line from Noah to Jesus
292217 BCLEVANTReu born. To Peleg, at 30. Genesis 11:18. Lived 239 years.The Line from Noah to Jesus
302185 BCLEVANTSerug born. To Reu, at 32. Genesis 11:20. Lived 230 years.The Line from Noah to Jesus
31c. 2181 BCEGYPTThe Old Kingdom falls. Central authority collapses into the First Intermediate Period. The Ipuwer papyrus describes a land turned upside down; drought and a failing Nile are the usual explanation, and low flood levels are attested.Egypt before the Ptolemies
322155 BCLEVANTNahor born. To Serug, at 30. Genesis 11:22. Lived 148 years — less than half his great-grandfather’s span, three generations later.The Line from Noah to Jesus
332126 BCLEVANTTerah born. Ninth from Shem. The line has run Arphaxad, Salah, Eber, Peleg, Reu, Serug, Nahor to Terah.The Line from Noah to Jesus
34c. 2070 BCCHINAThe Xia, in tradition. The first dynasty in the Chinese histories, and the only one with no writing of its own to attest it. Sima Qian gives its king-list. The Erlitou site, c. 1900 BC, is the usual candidate; the identification is disputed.China
35c. 2055 BCEGYPTThe Middle Kingdom. Mentuhotep II reunites Egypt from Thebes. Literature flourishes — the Tale of Sinuhe, the Eloquent Peasant — and the language of this period became the classical standard scribes were later trained on.Egypt before the Ptolemies
362004 BCLEVANTUr III falls to Elam; the last Sumerian state ends. The traditional Abraham is born into the generation of this collapse.Abraham and the Patriarchs
37c. 2000 BCLEVANTAbraham born in Ur of the Chaldees. Traditional datings range from 1996 BC (Ussher) to 1812 BC (Seder Olam); position shown is estimated.Abraham and the Patriarchs
38c. 1925 BCLEVANTThe call: Abram leaves Harran for Canaan, aged 75 in the text.Abraham and the Patriarchs
39c. 1920 BCEGYPTFamine drives the household down to Egypt, and back.Abraham and the Patriarchs
401913 BCLEVANTLot separates. Lot takes the plain of Jordan and settles toward Sodom. His two sons by his daughters become Moab and Ammon — two of the neighbours.The Line from Noah to Jesus
41c. 1910 BCLEVANTIshmael born to Hagar; Abram 86 in the text.Abraham and the Patriarchs
42c. 1900 BCINDIAThe Indus cities decline. Abandoned over some centuries; the causes are disputed and include river shift and monsoon change. No destruction layer of conquest has been found.India
43c. 1897 BCLEVANTIsaac born to Sarah; Abraham 100 in the text.Abraham and the Patriarchs
441897 BCLEVANTSodom. The cities of the plain destroyed. Lot’s wife is lost; his daughters bear Moab and Ben-Ammi.The Line from Noah to Jesus
45c. 1894 BCROMEFirst Dynasty of Babylon founded under Sumu-abum.Abraham and the Patriarchs
46c. 1880 BCLEVANTThe binding of Isaac on Moriah.Abraham and the Patriarchs
471871 BCLEVANTThe binding of Isaac. On a mountain in the land of Moriah. The covenant is confirmed by oath after it.The Line from Noah to Jesus
48c. 1860 BCLEVANTSarah dies; Abraham buys the cave of Machpelah at Hebron from Ephron the Hittite — the first recorded land purchase of the line, price stated: 400 shekels of silver.Abraham and the Patriarchs
491856 BCLEVANTIshmael’s twelve sons. Named as princes by their nations: Nebaioth, Kedar, Adbeel and the rest, dwelling from Havilah to Shur.The Line from Noah to Jesus
501836 BCLEVANTJacob and Esau born. Twins to Isaac and Rebekah. Two nations are in the womb, and the elder shall serve the younger.The Line from Noah to Jesus
51c. 1825 BCLEVANTAbraham dies at 175 in the text; Isaac and Ishmael together bury him at Machpelah.Abraham and the Patriarchs
521804 BCLEVANTJacob takes the blessing. The birthright and the blessing pass to the younger son. Jacob flees to Harran.The Line from Noah to Jesus
53c. 1800 BCLEVANTJacob and Esau born to Isaac and Rebekah.Abraham and the Patriarchs
541796 BCLEVANTThe twelve sons. Born to Leah, Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpah over twenty years in Harran. Judah is the fourth.The Line from Noah to Jesus
551792 BCLEVANTHammurabi takes the throne of Babylon (middle chronology; reigns to 1750). The law-stele empire rises east of Canaan.Abraham and the Patriarchs
561760 BCLEVANTEsau becomes Edom. Esau settles in Seir. The dukes of Edom are listed and the nation is founded — the people who become the Idumaeans.The Line from Noah to Jesus
571745 BCEGYPTJoseph sold into Egypt. By his brothers, at seventeen. The line that will hold the birthright goes down first as a slave.The Line from Noah to Jesus
581706 BCEGYPTJacob goes down to Egypt. Seventy souls. Jacob is 130 and stands before Pharaoh. The family is now in Egypt and will not leave for four centuries.The Line from Noah to Jesus
591706 BCEGYPTSeventy souls into Egypt. Jacob’s household settles in Goshen under Joseph’s protection.The Line from Noah to Jesus
60c. 1690 BCEGYPTJacob’s house descends into Egypt under Joseph — seventy persons in the text; the patriarchal period closes.Abraham and the Patriarchs
611689 BCLEVANTJacob dies. The blessings are given son by son. Judah receives the sceptre — the verse the royal claim rests on.The Line from Noah to Jesus
62c. 1650 BCEGYPTHyksos rule Lower Egypt (to c. 1550) — Semitic-speaking dynasts on the Nile in the era the descent narrative describes.Abraham and the Patriarchs
63c. 1650 BCEGYPTThe Hyksos take the Delta. Rulers of foreign origin hold Lower Egypt for a century. They bring the composite bow, the horse and the chariot, and Egypt turns those weapons on the world when it expels them.Egypt before the Ptolemies
641635 BCEGYPTJoseph dies. At 110, in Egypt, with the oath that his bones be carried up.The Line from Noah to Jesus
65c. 1635 BCLEVANTA new king who knew not Joseph. The oppression begins; the store cities Pithom and Raamses are built.The Line from Noah to Jesus
66c. 1600 BCCHINAThe Shang. The first Chinese dynasty attested by its own writing. Bronze casting at a scale unmatched anywhere at the date.China
671571 BCEGYPTMoses born. Hidden three months, drawn from the river, raised in Pharaoh’s house.The Line from Noah to Jesus
68c. 1550 BCEGYPTThe New Kingdom. Ahmose drives the Hyksos out and Egypt becomes an empire, holding the Levant to the Euphrates. The richest and best-documented period of Egyptian history.Egypt before the Ptolemies
691531 BCLEVANTMoses flees to Midian. Forty years in Midian before the bush.The Line from Noah to Jesus
70c. 1500 BCLEVANTThe Rigveda composed. Oral Sanskrit hymns, later written. The oldest surviving text of any Indo-European language, transmitted by memory for a millennium before it was set down.India
711491 BCEGYPTTHE EXODUS. Four hundred and thirty years after the promise. The nation leaves Egypt.Variant: Scholarly dates: 1446 BC (early) or c. 1250 BC (late)The Line from Noah to Jesus
721491 BCLEVANTThe plagues and the passover. Ten plagues; the firstborn; the departure by night.The Line from Noah to Jesus
731491 BCLEVANTSinai. The law given in the third month. The nation is constituted around it.The Line from Noah to Jesus
74c. 1479 BCLEVANTHatshepsut. A woman rules as pharaoh for two decades, depicted in male regalia with the false beard. Her mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri stands. Her images were systematically erased after her death, though not at once — the erasure begins some twenty years later.Egypt before the Ptolemies
75c. 1457 BCLEVANTMegiddo. Thutmose III defeats a Canaanite coalition. The account cut on the walls of Karnak is the earliest battle in history for which a detailed record survives — order of march, dispositions, and the plunder counted.Egypt before the Ptolemies
761451 BCLEVANTMoses dies. On Nebo, at 120, having seen the land and not entered it.The Line from Noah to Jesus
77c. 1425 BCLEVANTJoshua. Leads the conquest and divides the land by lot. Dies at 110.The Line from Noah to Jesus
78c. 1400 BCLEVANTOthniel. First judge. Caleb’s nephew; forty years’ rest.The Line from Noah to Jesus
79c. 1353 BCLEVANTAKHENATEN. The king abolishes the old gods, closes the temples, moves the capital to a virgin site and worships one god, the Aten. Art changes with him. After his death the temples reopen, his city is abandoned and his name is struck from the king-lists.Egypt before the Ptolemies
80c. 1400 or c. 1150 BCLEVANTThe war against Benjamin. The other eleven tribes make war on Benjamin over the outrage at Gibeah. The tribe is reduced to six hundred men at the rock of Rimmon, and wives are found for them by the destruction of Jabesh-Gilead and by abduction at the feast of Shiloh. Judges 19–21. Dating: the text places it early — Judges 20:28 has Phinehas, Aaron’s grandson, before the ark, so within a generation or two of the conquest. On the traditional reckoning that is c. 1400 BC. On the late-date exodus of c. 1250 it falls c. 1180–1150, inside the Late Bronze Age Collapse. The twoThe Line from Noah to Jesus
81c. 1340 BCLEVANTEhud. Kills Eglon of Moab; eighty years’ rest — the longest in the book.The Line from Noah to Jesus
82c. 1327 BCEGYPTTutankhamun. A minor king who reigned nine years and restored the old worship. His tomb was found nearly intact in 1922 — the only royal burial of the period to escape robbery, and the reason the period is so vividly known.Egypt before the Ptolemies
83c. 1300 BCLEVANTShamgar. Six hundred Philistines with an ox goad. One verse.The Line from Noah to Jesus
841274 BCEGYPTKadesh, and the first treaty. Ramesses II fights the Hittites to a standstill. Both sides claim victory in their own records. The peace treaty of 1259 survives in Egyptian on temple walls and in Akkadian on clay from Hattusa — the oldest international treaty whose text we have from both parties.Egypt before the Ptolemies
85c. 1250 BCLEVANTDeborah and Barak. The only woman to judge Israel. Sisera defeated at the Kishon.The Line from Noah to Jesus
86c. 1250 BCCHINATHE ORACLE BONES. Ox scapulae and turtle plastrons inscribed at Anyang, heated until they cracked, and the cracks read as answers. The earliest Chinese writing, and it is already a mature script — some 150,000 pieces recovered, and the characters are the direct ancestors of those in use today.China
87c. 1213 BCEGYPTWhat Ramesses II left. Sixty-six years on the throne. Abu Simbel, the Ramesseum, Pi-Ramesses, and additions at Karnak and Luxor. He usurped older monuments by recutting their inscriptions with his own name, which is why he appears on so many.Egypt before the Ptolemies
88c. 1208 BCLEVANTMerneptah Stele names ‘Israel’. The earliest surviving mention of Israel by name, on an Egyptian victory stele — written with the determinative for a people, not a place.Who Ruled the Land
89c. 1200 BCLEVANTGideon. Three hundred men against Midian. Refuses the kingship offered to him.The Line from Noah to Jesus
90c. 1200 BCCHINASanxingdui. A bronze-working culture in Sichuan producing masks and standing figures unlike anything Shang, including a figure nearly four metres tall. No writing, and no mention in any Chinese text. A civilisation known only from its pits.China
91c. 1200 BCCHINAFu Hao. A consort of King Wu Ding, buried at Anyang with 468 bronzes, 755 jades and sixteen sacrificed people. The oracle bones record her leading armies. The earliest named woman in Chinese history, and her tomb was found intact in 1976.China
921184 BC (trad.)ROMETroy falls — 1184 BC in the traditional computation of Eratosthenes. The date is a later calculation, not a record; but Troy VIIa is destroyed around 1180 and that destruction sits inside the Late Bronze Age Collapse, which took the Hittite empire, Mycenaean Greece and Ugarit within about fifty years. The war as a narrative is legend; a destruction at Troy in that window is archaeology. Aeneas escapes carrying his father Anchises and the Palladium.The Julii
93c. 1180 BCLEVANTAbimelech. Gideon’s son kills seventy brothers and makes himself king at Shechem for three years.The Line from Noah to Jesus
94c. 1180 BCROMETroy VIIa destroyed. The layer at Hisarlik usually identified with the Homeric city is destroyed in this window. The Trojan War as a narrative is legend; a destruction at Troy around 1180 is archaeology. The traditional date of 1184 BC comes from Eratosthenes and is a later computation, not a record.The Line from Noah to Jesus
95c. 1180 BCROMEAeneas reaches Latium, marries Lavinia, founds Lavinium.The Julii
96c. 1200–1150 BCLEVANTTHE LATE BRONZE AGE COLLAPSE. Within about fifty years the eastern Mediterranean world ends. The Hittite empire ceases to exist and Hattusa burns, never reoccupied. Mycenaean Greece falls — Pylos, Mycenae and Tiryns destroyed, and Linear B stops being written; Greece has no writing for four centuries. Ugarit is destroyed and never rebuilt, its last tablets still in the kiln describing ships offshore. Every one of these is attested by excavation.The Line from Noah to Jesus
971177 BCEGYPTRamesses III and the Sea Peoples. Egypt repels the coalition at the Nile mouths and records it on the walls of Medinet Habu. Egypt survives the collapse and is the only great power that does — but broken, and the New Kingdom ends within a century.The Line from Noah to Jesus
98c. 1175 BCLEVANTPhilistines settle the coast. Egyptian reliefs at Medinet Habu record the Sea Peoples repulsed by Ramesses III; the archaeology shows a new material culture at Ashdod, Ashkelon, Ekron, Gath and Gaza.Who Ruled the Land
99c. 1150 BCLEVANTJephthah. The Gileadite; defeats Ammon and makes the vow concerning his daughter.The Line from Noah to Jesus
100c. 1150 BCEGYPTEgypt’s last great pharaoh. Ramesses III repels the Sea Peoples and is the last pharaoh to hold the empire. Within a generation the workmen at Deir el-Medina strike over unpaid rations — the first recorded strike in history.The Line from Noah to Jesus
101c. 1150 BCROMEAscanius — Iulus in the family’s identification, a disputed equation the tradition itself records — founds Alba Longa; the Silvii kings follow for some four centuries.The Julii
1021141 BCLEVANTThe ark taken at Ebenezer. Israel is beaten by the Philistines and the ark of the covenant is captured. Eli’s sons Hophni and Phinehas are killed; Eli falls and breaks his neck at the news. 1 Samuel 4. The ark is returned after seven months.The Line from Noah to Jesus
103c. 1120 BCLEVANTSamson. Twenty years against the Philistines. Dies at Gaza.The Line from Noah to Jesus
104c. 1100 BCLEVANTEli. Priest and judge at Shiloh forty years. The ark is lost in his lifetime.The Line from Noah to Jesus
105c. 1200–1020 BCLEVANTThe tribal allotments. Joshua 13–21 describes twelve territories drawn by lot, Levi holding none, two and a half tribes east of the Jordan. A kinship map. No external corroboration exists.Who Ruled the Land
106c. 1080 BCLEVANTSamuel. Last judge, first of the prophets. Anoints both Saul and David.The Line from Noah to Jesus
1071069 BCEGYPTTHE NEW KINGDOM ENDS. Egypt splits: pharaohs at Tanis, high priests of Amun at Thebes. The Levant is lost. The decline begins here, seven hundred years before Alexander.The Line from Noah to Jesus
108c. 1050 BCLEVANTSaul anointed. The first king, of Benjamin, not of Judah.The Line from Noah to Jesus
1091046 BCCHINAThe Zhou take the mandate. The Shang are overthrown, and the Zhou justify it with the Mandate of Heaven: rule is granted by Heaven and withdrawn from the unworthy. A doctrine that makes rebellion legitimate, and it governs Chinese political thought for three thousand years.China
110c. 1042 BCCHINAThe Duke of Zhou. Regent for his nephew, and the figure Confucius held up as the model of the good statesman five centuries later. The Book of Documents preserves the speeches attributed to him.China
111c. 1020 BCLEVANTSaul. The first king, over a territory the text does not define. Text only.Who Ruled the Land
112c. 1010 BCISRAELIsh-bosheth king in the north. Abner, Saul’s cousin and commander, takes him to Mahanaim and makes him king over Gilead, Ashuri, Jezreel, Ephraim, Benjamin and all Israel — everything but Judah. 2 Samuel 2:8–10. He is Esh-baal in 1 Chronicles 8:33 and 9:39; Samuel replaces the divine element with bosheth, shame. The same substitution turns Jonathan’s son Merib-baal into Mephibosheth.The Line from Noah to Jesus
1131010 BCJUDAHDavid king. Of the tribe of Judah, at Hebron. The line the promise of Genesis 49 runs to.The Line from Noah to Jesus
114c. 1010 BCLEVANTSAUL DIES AT GILBOA. Saul and three sons, Jonathan among them, fall against the Philistines. 1 Samuel 31. The kingdom divides immediately.The Line from Noah to Jesus
115c. 1008 BCISRAELAbner defects to David. After a quarrel with Ish-bosheth over Saul’s concubine Rizpah. He is murdered by Joab at Hebron. 2 Samuel 3.The Line from Noah to Jesus
116c. 1010–1003 BCLEVANTTHE FIRST SPLIT. Abner makes Saul’s son Ish-bosheth king over Israel at Mahanaim while the men of Judah anoint David at Hebron. Two kings at war for about seven years, divided on the line Judah against Israel — the same line the kingdom splits along again in 931.Who Ruled the Land
117c. 1003 BCISRAELIsh-bosheth murdered. Killed in his bed by Rechab and Baanah, two of his own captains, who bring his head to David. David has them executed for it. 2 Samuel 4. Saul’s line ends, and the north has no king of its own until Jeroboam.The Line from Noah to Jesus
118c. 1003 BCLEVANTDavid takes Jerusalem. The houses reconcile and all the tribes come to David at Hebron. He takes Jerusalem — a Jebusite city on the seam between north and south. The text allots it to Benjamin (Joshua 18:28 lists Jebusi, which is Jerusalem, among Benjamin’s fourteen cities), with the Judah border running along the valley immediately below it. Neither tribe had taken it: Judah could not drive the Jebusites out and Benjamin did not. David of Judah takes it by his own men and it becomes the city of David.Who Ruled the Land
119970 BCJUDAHSolomon. The kingdom at its height, and the last king to hold all twelve tribes.The Line from Noah to Jesus
120c. 970 BCLEVANTSolomon’s twelve districts. 1 Kings 4:7–19: twelve officers, each victualling the royal household one month a year. A revenue map, and it does not follow the tribal boundaries.Who Ruled the Land
121966 BCLEVANTThe Temple begun. In the 480th year after the exodus — the verse that anchors the whole chronology to a countable span.The Line from Noah to Jesus
122959 BCLEVANTThe Temple dedicated. Solomon’s Temple finished in seven years and dedicated with the ark brought up from the city of David. 1 Kings 6–8. The glory fills the house and the priests cannot stand to minister.The Line from Noah to Jesus
123931 BCISRAELJeroboam I. Twenty-two years. Sets up calves at Bethel and Dan so the people need not go to Jerusalem.The Line from Noah to Jesus
124931 BCJUDAHRehoboam. Solomon’s son. Refuses to lighten the burden and loses ten tribes.The Line from Noah to Jesus
125c. 931 BCLEVANTTHE KINGDOM SPLITS. Rehoboam refuses to lighten the burden. Ten tribes go with Jeroboam as Israel; Judah and Benjamin remain. One land, two states, for two hundred years.Who Ruled the Land
126c. 925 BCEGYPTShoshenq I campaigns north. The Karnak relief lists towns taken in the Levant — the first external record touching the divided kingdoms.Who Ruled the Land
127913 BCJUDAHAbijah. Three years. War with Jeroboam.The Line from Noah to Jesus
128911 BCJUDAHAsa. Forty-one years. Removes the idols; the first reforming king.The Line from Noah to Jesus
129910 BCISRAELNadab. Two years. Killed by Baasha.The Line from Noah to Jesus
130c. 910 BCLEVANTElijah. Confronts Ahab and the prophets of Baal at Carmel. Taken up in a whirlwind.The Line from Noah to Jesus
131909 BCISRAELBaasha. Twenty-four years. Destroys the house of Jeroboam.The Line from Noah to Jesus
132c. 900 BCJAPANThe Yayoi transition begins. Wet-rice paddy farming arrives from the Korean peninsula, with bronze, iron and the loom. The dating has been pushed back several centuries by radiocarbon work and is disputed. Population rises sharply.Japan
133c. 896 BCLEVANTElisha. Succeeds Elijah; serves through six reigns of the north.The Line from Noah to Jesus
134886 BCISRAELElah. Two years. Killed while drunk.The Line from Noah to Jesus
135885 BCISRAELZimri. Seven days. Burns the palace over himself.The Line from Noah to Jesus
136885 BCISRAELOmri. Buys the hill of Samaria and builds the capital. Named on the Mesha Stele; Assyria calls Israel ‘the house of Omri’ for a century.The Line from Noah to Jesus
137874 BCISRAELAhab. Twenty-two years. Marries Jezebel of Sidon. Named on the Kurkh Monolith with two thousand chariots at Qarqar.The Line from Noah to Jesus
138872 BCJUDAHJehoshaphat. Twenty-five years. Allies with Ahab by marriage — the alliance that nearly ends the line.The Line from Noah to Jesus
139853 BCISRAELQARQAR, AND THE FIRST SYNCHRONISM. Shalmaneser III of Assyria fights a coalition of twelve kings on the Orontes. His own Kurkh Monolith lists Ahabbu Sir’ilaya — Ahab the Israelite — with 2,000 chariots and 10,000 foot. It is the earliest mention of an Israelite king in any source outside the Bible, and because Assyrian dates are fixed by eponym lists anchored to the solar eclipse of 763 BC, this is the synchronism by which the whole Israelite chronology is dated. Ahab’s chariot number is the largest in the coalition and is disputed. 1 Kings gives Ahab three chapters andThe Line from Noah to Jesus
140853 BCJUDAHJehoram. Marries Athaliah, daughter of Ahab. Kills his six brothers.The Line from Noah to Jesus
141853 BCLEVANTAhab at Qarqar. Shalmaneser III’s monolith names Ahab the Israelite among the coalition against Assyria, with two thousand chariots.Who Ruled the Land
142852 BCISRAELJoram. Twelve years. Killed by Jehu.The Line from Noah to Jesus
143841 BCISRAELJEHU ON THE BLACK OBELISK. Shalmaneser III’s obelisk shows a figure bowing to the ground before him, captioned Iaua mar Humri — Jehu, son of Omri. It is the only contemporary depiction of an Israelite king that survives, and it shows him prostrate, paying tribute. 2 Kings records Jehu’s reign at length and says nothing of it.The Line from Noah to Jesus
144841 BCJUDAHAhaziah. One year. Killed by Jehu.The Line from Noah to Jesus
145841 BCJUDAHAthaliah. Destroys all the royal seed and reigns six years. One infant, Joash, is hidden in the Temple — the line survives by a single child.The Line from Noah to Jesus
146841 BCLEVANTJehu pays tribute. The Black Obelisk shows an Israelite king prostrate before Shalmaneser III — the only contemporary image of a named ruler of Israel or Judah.Who Ruled the Land
147c. 840 BCLEVANTMesha of Moab. A Moabite king’s own inscription, naming Omri king of Israel and claiming the recovery of Moabite land. The neighbours speak for themselves here, and only here.Who Ruled the Land
148835 BCJUDAHJoash. Crowned at seven. Repairs the Temple; later murdered by his servants.The Line from Noah to Jesus
149c. 835 BCLEVANTThe House of David named. An Aramaic victory stele from Tel Dan refers to the ‘House of David’ — the earliest external attestation of the dynasty.Who Ruled the Land
150c. 800 BCROMEJonah. Sent to Nineveh, the Assyrian capital — to the enemy.The Line from Noah to Jesus
151798 BCISRAELJehoash. Sixteen years. Defeats Judah and breaks Jerusalem’s wall.The Line from Noah to Jesus
152796 BCJUDAHAmaziah. Twenty-nine years. Defeated by Israel; Jerusalem’s wall broken down.The Line from Noah to Jesus
153793 BCISRAELJeroboam II. Forty-one years. The north at its largest and richest; Amos and Hosea preach against it.The Line from Noah to Jesus
154792 BCJUDAHUzziah (Azariah). Fifty-two years. Struck with leprosy for burning incense in the Temple.The Line from Noah to Jesus
155c. 787 BCLEVANTAmos and Hosea. Against the prosperity of Jeroboam II’s north, a generation before it falls.The Line from Noah to Jesus
156771 BCCHINAThe Zhou lose the west. The capital falls and the court moves east. Royal authority becomes nominal and the states begin acting for themselves.China
157771–476 BCCHINASpring and Autumn. The period named for the chronicle of the state of Lu, which Confucius was said to have edited. Zhou authority is nominal; the states contend.China
158c. 760 BCLEVANTIsaiah. Called in the year Uzziah died. Serves four kings of Judah through the Assyrian crisis.The Line from Noah to Jesus
159753 BCISRAELZechariah. Six months. The last of Jehu’s house.The Line from Noah to Jesus
160753 BC (trad.)ROMERomulus, of the Alban royal house in the tradition, founds Rome — the Varronian date.The Julii
161752 BCISRAELShallum. One month.The Line from Noah to Jesus
162752 BCISRAELMenahem. Ten years. Pays Tiglath-Pileser a thousand talents; named in the Assyrian annals.The Line from Noah to Jesus
163752 BCISRAELPekah. Twenty years. Loses Galilee and Gilead to Assyria.The Line from Noah to Jesus
164750 BCJUDAHJotham. Sixteen years.The Line from Noah to Jesus
165747 BCEGYPTNubia takes Egypt. The Kushite kings of the 25th dynasty rule Egypt from the south. Foreign rule begins and, with brief interruptions, does not end.The Line from Noah to Jesus
166742 BCISRAELPekahiah. Two years.The Line from Noah to Jesus
167735 BCJUDAHAhaz. Sends the Temple treasure to Assyria as tribute and copies its altar.The Line from Noah to Jesus
168732 BCISRAELHoshea. The last king of Israel. Samaria falls in his ninth year.The Line from Noah to Jesus
169734–732 BCLEVANTAssyria takes the north. Tiglath-Pileser III annexes Galilee, Gilead and the coast, and reduces Israel to Samaria and its hills.Who Ruled the Land
170722 BCLEVANTIsrael taken by Assyria. Samaria falls; the ten tribes are deported and do not return as tribes. Sargon II records it in his own annals.Variant: Modern dating: 722 BCThe Line from Noah to Jesus
171722 BCLEVANTSamaria falls. Sargon II’s annals record the deportation of 27,290 people and the resettlement of the province with others. Israel ends as a state.Who Ruled the Land
172715 BCJUDAHHezekiah. Twenty-nine years. Survives Sennacherib’s siege; his tunnel and its inscription survive.The Line from Noah to Jesus
173701 BCJUDAHHezekiah's tunnel and the Siloam inscription. A conduit driven 533 metres through rock to bring the Gihon spring inside the walls before Sennacherib’s siege. 2 Kings 20:20 and 2 Chronicles 32:30. The Siloam inscription, cut where the two teams met, describes the moment they broke through to each other — one of the oldest Hebrew inscriptions of any length.The Line from Noah to Jesus
174701 BCLEVANTSennacherib in Judah. Forty-six walled towns taken; Hezekiah shut up in Jerusalem like a bird in a cage. Judah survives as a tributary.Who Ruled the Land
175c. 700 BCLEVANTEkron names its king. A dedicatory inscription from Tel Miqne names Padi and four generations of Philistine rulers — the Philistines in their own words.Who Ruled the Land
176697 BCJUDAHManasseh. Fifty-five years, the longest reign. Named in Esarhaddon’s tribute list.The Line from Noah to Jesus
177671–663 BCEGYPTAssyria sacks Memphis and Thebes. Esarhaddon takes Memphis, Ashurbanipal sacks Thebes. The destruction is so complete that Nahum 3:8 uses Thebes as the image of total ruin.The Line from Noah to Jesus
178c. 650s BCROMETullus Hostilius, third king of Rome, destroys Alba Longa and transplants its noble families to Rome — the Julii named among them.The Julii
179642 BCJUDAHAmon. Two years. Murdered by his servants.The Line from Noah to Jesus
180640 BCJUDAHJosiah. Crowned at eight. The book of the law is found; the last reform. Killed at Megiddo.The Line from Noah to Jesus
181c. 640 BCLEVANTAncus Marcius, fourth king — the descent the Marcii Reges claimed: the maternal royal line of the 69 BC eulogy.The Julii
182c. 630 BCEGYPTJeremiah. From Josiah’s reform to the fall of the city, and after it into Egypt.The Line from Noah to Jesus
183609 BCJUDAHJehoahaz. Three months. Taken to Egypt by Pharaoh Necho.The Line from Noah to Jesus
184609 BCJUDAHJehoiakim. Eleven years. Burns Jeremiah’s scroll.The Line from Noah to Jesus
185605 BCROMEDaniel. Taken as a youth to serve in the palace at Babylon; serves under Babylonian and Persian kings.The Line from Noah to Jesus
186605 BCEGYPTCarchemish. Nebuchadnezzar defeats Necho II of Egypt and takes the Levant from Egyptian control. Jeremiah 46:2. The Babylonian Chronicle records the same battle, and the first deportation from Jerusalem follows within the year.The Line from Noah to Jesus
187c. 600 BCINDIAThe sixteen Mahajanapadas. Northern India organised into sixteen great states, republics and kingdoms both. Magadha rises among them, and it is Magadha the Mauryas inherit.India
188598 BCJUDAHJehoiachin. Three months. Deported to Babylon; his rations are recorded on Babylonian tablets.The Line from Noah to Jesus
189597 BCJUDAHZedekiah. The last king. Blinded at Riblah after seeing his sons killed.The Line from Noah to Jesus
190597 BCROMEEzekiel. A priest, taken in the first deportation, prophesying by the river Chebar in Babylon.The Line from Noah to Jesus
191597 BCLEVANTThe first deportation. Nebuchadnezzar takes Jerusalem and removes Jehoiachin. The Babylonian Chronicle dates it to the second day of Adar.Who Ruled the Land
192587 BCLEVANTJerusalem destroyed. The Temple burned, the monarchy ended, the population deported. Judah becomes Babylonian territory.Who Ruled the Land
193586 BCLEVANTJudah taken by Babylon. Jerusalem and the Temple destroyed, the line carried into exile. The Babylonian Chronicle records the campaign.The Line from Noah to Jesus
194c. 563 BCINDIASiddhartha born at Kapilavastu. A prince of the Shakya republic, son of Shuddhodhana, on the present India–Nepal border. The tradition holds the Shakyas to be Suryavamsha, of the Solar Dynasty — the line of Ikshvaku that also produced Rama. Set out in Two Wheels.India
195c. 551 BCCHINAConfucius born. A contemporary of the Buddha and of Mahavira. Three teachers in one century, in three separate civilisations, all answering the same question about how a man should live.China
196c. 540 BCINDIAMahavira and the Jains. A contemporary of the Buddha, and of the same Kshatriya class. Two renouncer traditions from the warrior caste, in the same generation, in the same region.India
197539 BCROMEThe Cyrus Cylinder. A clay barrel inscribed for Cyrus after the taking of Babylon, recording the return of displaced peoples and their gods to their own places. It does not name the Jews, but it attests the policy under which the return in Ezra 1 is described.The Line from Noah to Jesus
198539 BCROMECyrus takes Babylon. The Persian conquest, and a policy of returning deported peoples and restoring their sanctuaries.Who Ruled the Land
199536 BCLEVANTZerubbabel. Of the house of David, leads the first return and lays the second Temple’s foundation. He is in both New Testament genealogies.The Line from Noah to Jesus
200536 BCLEVANTThe return. Cyrus permits the return and the rebuilding. The line comes back through Zerubbabel, of the house of David.The Line from Noah to Jesus
201c. 534 BCINDIATHE RENUNCIATION. He leaves the kingdom, his wife and his son Rahula. A Kshatriya of the senior royal line abandons the throne, and the tradition makes the renunciation the point: the wheel of dharma is taken up in place of the wheel of empire.India
202525 BCEGYPTPersia conquers Egypt. Cambyses takes Egypt and it becomes a satrapy. Independence returns briefly; Persia reconquers in 343.The Line from Noah to Jesus
203520 BCLEVANTHaggai and Zechariah. Prophesy the Temple to completion.The Line from Noah to Jesus
204c. 518 BCINDIADarius takes the Indus. The Persian empire annexes the Indus valley. Herodotus states it was the most heavily taxed satrapy of all, and Darius’s own inscriptions list Hidush among his lands.India
205515 BCLEVANTThe second Temple. Finished in the sixth year of Darius. It stands until Herod rebuilds it.The Line from Noah to Jesus
206509 BC (trad.)LEVANTThe kings expelled; the Republic begins — the traditional date.The Julii
207c. 500 BCCHINAThe Daodejing. Attributed to Laozi, whose historicity is disputed. The counterweight to Confucius: withdrawal against engagement, the same fork the Indian renouncers took.China
208c. 500 BCCHINACast iron. China is casting iron in moulds some eighteen centuries before Europe manages it, using blast furnaces developed from bronze practice. Ploughshares, weapons and tools follow.China
209489 BCROMEGaius Julius Iulus, consul — the first Julius in the consular record. Five more Iuli consulships follow to 434.The Julii
210c. 483 BCINDIAThe Buddha dies at Kushinagar. The relics are divided among eight claimants and stupas raised over them — the beginning of the reliquary practice Ashoka later takes up at scale.India
211c. 480 BCROMEEsther and Mordecai. In the Persian court under Ahasuerus. The one book that never names God.The Line from Noah to Jesus
212475 BCCHINAThe Warring States. Two and a half centuries of war between seven states, and the most productive period in Chinese thought — the hundred schools, Mozi, Mencius, Zhuangzi, Xunzi, Han Feizi, and Sunzi’s Art of War.China
213457 BCROMEEzra. Brings the law back from Babylon and reads it to the assembly.The Line from Noah to Jesus
214451 BCROMEA Julius sits on the Decemvirate that writes the Twelve Tables — Rome’s first written law.The Julii
215c. 538–332 BCLEVANTYehud, a Persian province. A small territory around Jerusalem under a governor, striking its own small silver coins inscribed YHD.Who Ruled the Land
216445 BCROMENehemiah. Rebuilds the wall in fifty-two days under the Persian commission.The Line from Noah to Jesus
217434 BCROMEThe last consulship of the Julii Iuli. The family fades from high office for nearly three centuries.The Julii
218c. 430 BCLEVANTMalachi. The last prophet of the Hebrew canon. Four centuries follow with no prophetic voice recorded.The Line from Noah to Jesus
219407 BCLEVANTThe Elephantine papyri. Aramaic letters from a Jewish garrison on an island at Aswan, with their own temple to YHW. They write to the governor of Judah and to the sons of Sanballat of Samaria asking for its rebuilding. Contemporary documentary evidence for Jewish practice outside Judah in the Persian period.The Line from Noah to Jesus
220337 BCEGYPTPtolemy exiled by Philip II. With Harpalus, Nearchus, Erigyius and Laomedon, for supporting Alexander in the Pixodarus affair. All recalled by Alexander in 336.The Ptolemies
221332 BCEGYPTAlexander enters Egypt. Welcomed, because the alternative was Persia. He founds Alexandria and is gone within months. He dies in 323.The Line from Noah to Jesus
222330 BCEGYPTPtolemy made one of the seven somatophylakes. The royal bodyguard. He had been raised with Alexander at court as a syntrophos.The Ptolemies
223326 BCINDIAAlexander turns back at the Hyphasis. His army refuses to go further east. The Macedonian frontier stops at the Punjab, and the satrapies he leaves behind become the ground the Mauryas take.India
224326 BCINDIAThe Hydaspes: Alexander and Porus. Alexander defeats Porus in the Punjab, then restores him to his own kingdom as satrap. It is the last of his great battles.India
225323 BCEGYPTPTOLEMY TAKES EGYPT. Alexander’s general takes the richest province, and takes the body with it. He inherits a civilisation seven centuries past its peak, mostly under foreign rule, whose script is already dying — and gives it three hundred more years.The Line from Noah to Jesus
226323 BCEGYPTAlexander dies at Babylon. The empire is divided among the generals. Ptolemy son of Lagus takes Egypt as satrap.The Ptolemies
227323 BCROMETHE PARTITION OF BABYLON. The territories divided among the senior officers, with Philip Arrhidaeus and Alexander’s unborn son as joint kings and Perdiccas regent. Of the assignments made that year, only Egypt was still held by the same man a generation later.The Ptolemies
228c. 322 BCINDIAChandragupta founds the Maurya empire. In the vacuum left by Alexander's withdrawal. Within twenty years it holds the whole north Indian plain and the passes into Afghanistan.India
229321 BCEGYPTPtolemy takes the body. He intercepts Alexander’s funeral cortege bound for Macedon and diverts it to Memphis, later to Alexandria. Possession of the body is a claim to the succession, and the other generals understood it as one.The Ptolemies
230321 BCEGYPTPerdiccas invades Egypt and dies. He failed to force the Nile and was murdered in his camp by Peithon, Seleucus and Antigenes. Ptolemy declined the regency.The Ptolemies
231c. 320 BCEGYPTPtolemy writes his own history. A general who becomes a source. His account of the campaigns is lost but is the principal thing Arrian used four centuries later.The Ptolemies
232305 BCEGYPTPtolemy I takes the title of king. Soter, the saviour. The satrapy becomes a kingdom.The Ptolemies
233c. 303 BCINDIASELEUCUS TRADES LAND FOR ELEPHANTS. Seleucus campaigns east, cannot hold, and settles. He cedes Arachosia, Gedrosia, Aria and the Paropamisadae to Chandragupta and receives five hundred war elephants. A marriage agreement is part of the terms.India
234c. 302 BCINDIAMegasthenes at Pataliputra. Seleucus sends him as ambassador to the Mauryan court. His Indica is the first substantial Greek description of India. It is lost and survives only in quotation by Strabo, Arrian and Diodorus.India
235301 BCINDIAThe elephants decide Ipsus. Chandragupta's five hundred elephants are used at Ipsus, where Antigonus is killed and his kingdom divided. Ptolemy takes Coele-Syria from that settlement and Seleucus disputes it — the grievance behind six Syrian Wars, and behind Judaea changing hands in 200.India
236301 BCEGYPTPtolemaic rule. After Ipsus the land is administered from Alexandria for a century.Who Ruled the Land
237c. 301–200 BCLEVANTPtolemaic Coele-Syria. Ptolemy I takes the Levant after Ipsus; the Seleucids never accept the claim. Judaea is governed from Alexandria for a century, lightly, through the High Priest and the Temple. The Septuagint is made under this arrangement.Who Ruled the Land
238c. 300 BCINDIAThe Arthashastra. The treatise on statecraft attributed to Kautilya, Chandragupta’s minister. Its dating is disputed and the surviving text is later, but it is the fullest ancient Indian account of how a state was to be run.India
239c. 300 BCJAPANBronze bells and the new order. Dotaku bronze bells, weapons and mirrors, most cast locally from continental models. Moated settlements appear, and with them the first evidence of organised warfare in the islands.Japan
240c. 300 BCEGYPTThe Mouseion founded. A research institution with salaried scholars, funded by the crown, attached to the palace. There is no earlier example of the arrangement.The Ptolemies
241c. 300 BCEGYPTEuclid at Alexandria. The Elements is compiled here. It remains the standard geometry textbook of the West for more than two thousand years.The Ptolemies
242c. 297 BCEGYPTThe Pharos begun. Under Ptolemy I, completed under Ptolemy II. One of the seven wonders. Its foundation blocks lie underwater off Fort Qaitbay and have been surveyed.The Ptolemies
243c. 295 BCEGYPTThe Library and the Mouseion. Founded at Alexandria under Ptolemy I and II. Galen records the policy: books are seized from ships in the harbour, copied, and the originals kept.The Line from Noah to Jesus
244285 BCEGYPTPtolemy II Philadelphus. The reign in which the Library, the translation programme and the ruler cult all take their mature form.The Ptolemies
245c. 280 BCEGYPTManetho writes Egypt in Greek. An Egyptian priest composes the Aegyptiaca for the new rulers. The division of Egyptian history into thirty dynasties is his, and it is still the one in use.The Ptolemies
246c. 279 BCEGYPTPtolemy II marries his sister Arsinoe II. Egyptian practice, not Greek. It closes the succession to outside families and makes the queen a Ptolemy in her own right. Arsinoe is deified in her lifetime and appears on the coinage. Every reign after is shaped by it, and seven women go on to rule.The Ptolemies
247c. 274–273 BCLEVANTThe first canal lock. Necho and Darius had both stopped short of the Red Sea, on the stated ground that it stood higher and would flood the Delta. The Pithom stele records a navigable lock with sluices at the Heroopolite Gulf. It is the earliest documented canal lock.The Ptolemies
248c. 273 BCINDIABindusara writes to Antiochus. He asks the Seleucid king for sweet wine, dried figs and a sophist. Antiochus sends the wine and figs and replies that Greek law forbids the sale of philosophers. Athenaeus preserves the exchange.India
249c. 270 BCLEVANTCallimachus and the Pinakes. A catalogue of the Library in 120 books, arranged by subject and author. The first library catalogue in the world.The Ptolemies
250c. 270 BCEGYPTTHE FAYUM RECLAIMED. The level of Lake Moeris is lowered under Ptolemy II and the drained basin turned to farmland, settled with new villages on a grid and allotted to soldiers. The largest civil work of the dynasty, and the dry rubbish of those villages is why Ptolemaic Egypt is the best-documented administration of the ancient world.The Ptolemies
251c. 270 BCEGYPTThe Red Sea canal reopened. Ptolemy II re-engineers the Nile-to-Red-Sea canal begun by Necho and finished by Darius, adding a lock at the seaward end. The Mediterranean joined to the Indian Ocean, two thousand years before Suez.The Ptolemies
252c. 268 BCINDIAAshoka accedes. Grandson of Chandragupta. His empire holds nearly the whole subcontinent, and his edicts are the earliest deciphered Indian inscriptions.India
253c. 270 BCEGYPTThe elephant ports. Berenice, Myos Hormos and Ptolemais Theron founded down the Red Sea to capture African elephants, the Seleucids holding the Indian supply. The elephants lost at Raphia; the ports became the India trade route Rome inherited.The Ptolemies
254c. 261 BCINDIAKALINGA, AND THE TURN. The Thirteenth Rock Edict records the conquest of Kalinga and the king’s own remorse for it in his own words — a hundred thousand killed, many times that number dead of other causes. He turns to dhamma. No other ancient monarch records regret for a victory in a public inscription.India
255c. 258 BCINDIAThe Kandahar bilingual edict. Ashoka's edict cut in Greek and Aramaic at Kandahar, in Alexander's own foundation. Greek was still the administrative language of the region a century after he passed through.India
256c. 250 BCINDIAThe Third Buddhist Council, and the missions. Held at Pataliputra under Ashoka by the Theravada account. Missions are sent out afterwards — to Sri Lanka under his son Mahinda, and westward to the Greek kings of Edict 13. The emperor spends the empire’s reach on the renouncer’s teaching.India
257c. 250 BCINDIAASHOKA NAMES THE HELLENISTIC KINGS. The Thirteenth Rock Edict records missions sent to five named Greek kings, Ptolemy II Philadelphus among them, with Antiochus II, Antigonus Gonatas, Magas of Cyrene and Alexander. Contemporary Indian inscription naming the king who built the Library.India
258c. 250 BCEGYPTThe Septuagint. The Hebrew scriptures translated into Greek at Alexandria. It becomes the Bible of the early Church, and its chronology differs from the Masoretic by 1,386 years.The Ptolemies
259c. 250 BCEGYPTHerophilus and Erasistratus. Human dissection is practised at Alexandria. It is the only period in antiquity when it was permitted, and the anatomical vocabulary from it is still in use.The Ptolemies
260c. 250 BCLEVANTPhilae begun. The temple of Isis. It carries the last dated hieroglyphic inscription in existence, AD 394, and the last demotic, 452. The script ends on this building.The Ptolemies
261c. 250 BCINDIAThe pillar edicts and the lion capital. Ashoka’s edicts cut on polished sandstone pillars across the empire. The lion capital from Sarnath is the state emblem of India today.India
262c. 245 BCLEVANTCallimachus completes the Pinakes. A catalogue of the Library in 120 books, arranged by subject and author, recording each work’s opening words and length. The first library catalogue in the world. Lost.The Ptolemies
263246–241 BCEGYPTThe Third Syrian War. Ptolemy III campaigns as far as Babylon. The dynasty is at its greatest extent.The Ptolemies
264c. 240 BCLEVANTAristarchus proposes a heliocentric model. Eighteen centuries before Copernicus. The work is lost and survives only because Archimedes describes it in order to argue against it.The Ptolemies
265c. 240 BCEGYPTEratosthenes measures the earth. Librarian of Alexandria. Using the sun’s angle at Syene and Alexandria he calculates the earth’s circumference to within a few per cent of the true figure.The Ptolemies
266238 BCEGYPTThe Canopus Decree. A priestly synod under Ptolemy III orders a sixth epagomenal day every fourth year. The priesthood does not adopt it. Two centuries later Caesar takes the same reform and makes it work. Trilingual, on stone.The Ptolemies
267237 BCLEVANTEdfu begun. The temple of Horus, built over 180 years. It is the best-preserved temple in Egypt, and it is Ptolemaic.The Ptolemies
268221 BCCHINAQIN SHI HUANG UNIFIES CHINA. The first emperor. Script, weights, measures and axle widths standardised by decree; the states' walls joined into one; the empire divided into commanderies under appointed officials rather than hereditary lords. Two years before Rome fights Zama.China
269217 BCEGYPTRaphia. Ptolemy IV defeats Antiochus III. Egyptian troops are armed and trained in the Macedonian manner for the first time, and the decree recording the victory is trilingual.The Ptolemies
270213–212 BCCHINATHE BURNING OF THE BOOKS. Qin Shi Huang orders the histories of the other states destroyed and, by the tradition, scholars buried alive. Sima Qian is the source and he wrote under the succeeding dynasty; the scale is disputed. What is not disputed is that the pre-Qin record survives thinly.China
271210 BCCHINAThe terracotta army. Some eight thousand figures buried with the first emperor at Xi'an, each with an individual face, discovered in 1974. The tomb mound itself has never been opened.China
272206 BCCHINAThe Han. Four centuries, with one interruption. The dynasty that fixes Chinese administration, and from which the majority ethnicity still takes its name.China
273200 BCEGYPTSeleucid rule. Antiochus III defeats the Ptolemies at Panion; the land passes to Antioch.Who Ruled the Land
274200 BCROMEPanium, and Seleucid rule. Antiochus III defeats Scopas at the headwaters of the Jordan and Coele-Syria changes hands permanently. Antiochus IV, the Temple desecration and the Maccabean revolt follow, and produce the Hasmonean state.Who Ruled the Land
275200–198 BCLEVANTCoele-Syria lost. Antiochus III takes the Levant at Panium. Judaea passes from Ptolemaic to Seleucid rule, and the events of the Maccabean books follow from it.The Ptolemies
276206–186 BCEGYPTThe revolt of Upper Egypt. Native pharaohs Horwennefer and Ankhwennefer hold Thebes and the south for twenty years. The dynasty loses half its country and takes two decades to recover it.The Ptolemies
277196 BCEGYPTTHE ROSETTA STONE. A priestly decree for Ptolemy V, cut in hieroglyphic, demotic and Greek. It is the key that reopened the Egyptian record — the script had been unreadable for fourteen centuries when Champollion read it in 1822.The Ptolemies
278c. 185 BCINDIAThe Mauryas end. The last Maurya is killed by his commander Pushyamitra Shunga. The empire lasts about 137 years; the teaching it exported outlasts it by more than two thousand.India
279175–164 BCEGYPTCleopatra I rules as regent. The first woman to hold power in the dynasty, regent for her son Ptolemy VI.The Ptolemies
280168 BCEGYPTTHE DAY OF ELEUSIS. Popillius Laenas draws a circle in the sand around Antiochus IV outside Alexandria and demands his answer before he steps out of it. Antiochus withdraws. Egypt is a Roman client from that day, a hundred and thirty-eight years before it is a province.The Ptolemies
281167 BCLEVANTThe Temple desecrated. Antiochus IV proscribes Jewish practice and rededicates the Temple to Olympian Zeus. Revolt follows.Who Ruled the Land
282157 BCROMEThe first of the Julii Caesares reaches the consulship.The Julii
283c. 155 BCINDIAMenander, the Greek king of India. The Indo-Greek kingdom at its height. His coins are found across the north-west, and the Pali Milindapanha records him in dialogue with a Buddhist monk. A Greek king remembered in Buddhist scripture.India
284c. 145 BCEGYPTThe scholars scatter. The expulsions under Ptolemy VIII disperse Alexandrian scholarship across the Greek world. Some of what the Library held travels with them; what stays begins to be lost.The Ptolemies
285142 BCLEVANTIndependence. Simon Maccabee wins remission of tribute. A Jewish state again, for the first time since 587.Who Ruled the Land
286141–87 BCCHINAEmperor Wu. Fifty-four years. The empire doubles; the Xiongnu are pushed back; Confucianism is made the state doctrine and an imperial academy founded to teach it. Officials begin to be selected on learning rather than birth.China
287138 BCCHINAZHANG QIAN GOES WEST. Sent by Emperor Wu to find allies against the Xiongnu, he is captured, held ten years, escapes and continues. He reaches Bactria — Greek-ruled Bactria, the far edge of Alexander's conquests — and returns after thirteen years. His report opens the Silk Road.China
288145–116 BCEGYPTPtolemy VIII. The reign in which the dynasty turns on itself. Josephus and the later sources record the murder of his own son and the dismemberment; scholars persecuted and expelled from Alexandria.The Ptolemies
289131–127 BCEGYPTCleopatra II rules alone. In open civil war against her brother-husband Ptolemy VIII, having driven him from Alexandria. Reconciled and reigned jointly to 116.The Ptolemies
290c. 120 BCLEVANTHippalus and the monsoon. A Greek navigator is credited with working out the monsoon crossing, which allows a direct run from the Red Sea to India rather than a coastal creep. The volume of the trade multiplies from this point.India
291142–101 BCEGYPTCleopatra III, forty years dominant. Co-ruler through four decades, making and unmaking both her sons on the throne.The Ptolemies
292119 BCLEVANTThe salt and iron monopolies. The state takes the trade in both. The debate over it was recorded and survives as the Discourses on Salt and Iron — an argument about state control of the economy, written down in 81 BC.China
293c. 118 BCEGYPTThe Philae obelisk. The priests of Philae petition Ptolemy VIII and the two Cleopatras for relief from the cost of state officials. Bilingual. It carries the cartouche of Cleopatra, which Rosetta lacks — the pairing that let the signs be tested and the script read.The Ptolemies
294c. 111 BCLEVANTThe Gerizim temple destroyed. Hyrcanus razes the Samaritan sanctuary. Excavation on Mount Gerizim confirms a large sacred precinct destroyed at this date.Who Ruled the Land
295c. 110 BCLEVANTTHE HELIODORUS PILLAR. A Greek ambassador from Taxila sets up a pillar at Besnagar to Vasudeva, in Sanskrit, calling himself a Bhagavata — a devotee of Vishnu. Contemporary stone evidence of a Greek adopting Indian religion, and the earliest surviving epigraphic reference to Vasudeva worship.India
296c. 112–107 BCLEVANTIdumaea absorbed. John Hyrcanus conquers Edom’s successor territory; the Idumaeans adopt Jewish law and are counted Jews thereafter. Herod’s family among them.Who Ruled the Land
297104 BCLEVANTThe title of king resumed. Aristobulus I takes the diadem — the first Jewish king since 587 — and annexes Galilee.Who Ruled the Land
29812/13 Jul 100 BCROMEGaius Julius Caesar born; the day is disputed between the 12th and 13th, and a minority scholarly case argues 102 BC.Rome & Egypt
299c. 100 BCROMEThe gens Julia dedicates the altar at Bovillae to Vediovis leege Albana — by Alban law. The family’s Alban cult, in stone, in the dictator’s generation.The Julii
30012/13 Jul 100 BCROMEGaius Julius Caesar born — the last Julian to hold the blood claim inside Roman law. His life runs on Rome and Egypt, 100–30 BC.The Julii
301116–80 BCEGYPTDynastic civil war. Cleopatra III against her sons; Ptolemy IX and X alternate on the throne. The coinage is debased through the period.The Ptolemies
302c. 94 BCCHINASima Qian's Shiji. The Records of the Grand Historian, covering two thousand years to his own day. He completed it after being castrated rather than executed, choosing the disgrace so the work would be finished. It is the model for every Chinese dynastic history after it.China
30390 BCROMELucius Julius Caesar, consul, carries the lex Julia: Roman citizenship for the Italian allies who lay down arms.The Julii
304103–76 BCLEVANTThe greatest Hasmonean extent. Under Alexander Jannaeus the kingdom reaches from Galilee to the Negev and across the Jordan — the largest Jewish state since the united monarchy.Who Ruled the Land
30587 BCROMELucius Caesar and his brother Caesar Strabo, the orator, killed in the Marian seizure of Rome.The Julii
306c. 85 BCROMECaesar’s father dies suddenly, in Caesar’s sixteenth year; Pliny records he died in the morning while dressing.Rome & Egypt
30782 BCROMESulla orders Caesar to divorce Cornelia; Caesar refuses, loses priesthood, dowry and inheritance, and is hunted until pardoned — with Sulla’s recorded warning that in him were many Mariuses.Rome & Egypt
30881–80 BCEGYPTBerenice III rules alone. By popular acclaim. Murdered within nineteen days of a forced marriage to her stepson, who was then lynched by the Alexandrians for it.The Ptolemies
309c. 80 BCLEVANTWins the civic crown at the storming of Mytilene, aged about twenty.Rome & Egypt
31080 BCEGYPTThe will of Ptolemy Alexander. Rome claims Egypt was bequeathed to it. The claim is disputed then and now, but it is never withdrawn.The Ptolemies
311c. 75 BCLEVANTCaptured by pirates off Pharmacussa; ransomed at fifty talents at his own insistence, then captured and crucified by him under no public office.Rome & Egypt
31269 BCLEVANTQuaestor in Further Spain; at his aunt Julia’s funeral he claims descent from kings and gods in the one surviving fragment of his oratory.Rome & Egypt
313c. 69 BCEGYPTCleopatra born; the year is reckoned from her recorded age at death.Rome & Egypt
31465 BCROMEAedile: games with 320 pairs of gladiators on borrowed money; Marius’s trophies restored to the Capitol overnight.Rome & Egypt
31563 BCROMEElected pontifex maximus against two senior ex-consuls, on decisive spending.Rome & Egypt
31663 BCLEVANTPompey. Rome intervenes in a Hasmonean civil war and takes Jerusalem. The coastal cities and the Decapolis are detached and freed; the Jewish state loses the sea.Who Ruled the Land
31759 BCROMEConsul with Pompey and Crassus behind him; the lex Vatinia grants Gaul and legions for five years; his daughter Julia marries Pompey.Rome & Egypt
31858 BCLEVANTThe Gallic war opens: the Helvetii and Ariovistus defeated. Nine campaign seasons follow.Rome & Egypt
31958–55 BCEGYPTBerenice IV rules alone. While her father is in Rome buying his throne back. Executed on his return.The Ptolemies
32057 BCLEVANTGabinius divides it in five. The proconsul breaks the territory into five councils, at Jerusalem, Jericho, Gadara, Amathus and Sepphoris. The arrangement does not hold.Who Ruled the Land
32154 BCROMEJulia, Caesar’s daughter and Pompey’s wife, dies in childbirth; the child dies with her.Rome & Egypt
32253 BCCHINASilk at Carrhae. Roman sources report the Parthians unfurling silk banners at Carrhae, where Crassus was destroyed. Rome meets Chinese silk on a battlefield without knowing where it came from.China
32352 BCLEVANTAlesia: the double siege lines; Vercingetorix surrenders.Rome & Egypt
32451 BCEGYPTPtolemy XII dies; Cleopatra takes the throne of Egypt with her brother Ptolemy XIII under their father’s will.Rome & Egypt
32551 BCEGYPTCleopatra VII accedes. With her brother Ptolemy XIII. The last of the line to rule as a Ptolemy in the old sense.The Ptolemies
32611 Jan 49 BCROMECaesar crosses the Rubicon with one legion; Suetonius gives the words in Latin, Plutarch in Greek from Menander.Rome & Egypt
3279 Aug 48 BCLEVANTPharsalus: Pompey’s larger army broken; Brutus and Cassius among the pardoned.Rome & Egypt
328Oct 48 BCEGYPTCaesar arrives in Alexandria in pursuit of Pompey; the Alexandrian War begins.Rome & Egypt
32948–47 BCEGYPTCaesar is pinned in Alexandria. The relief marches overland under Mithridates of Pergamum, and Antipater brings three thousand Jewish troops, having also secured the Arab chieftains and the rulers of Lebanon. He is first over the wall at Pelusium; he talks the Jews of the Onias district and of Memphis into letting the column through, carrying letters from the high priest Hyrcanus; and in the Delta battle he rescues Mithridates’s broken wing and takes the enemy camp, wounded doing it. For this campaign Josephus cites Strabo, and through him Asinius Pollio and Hypsicrates — named extThe Julii of Judaea
330Jan–Mar 47 BCEGYPTThe war ends; Cleopatra is restored to the throne, co-ruling with her brother Ptolemy XIV.Rome & Egypt
331Apr–May 47 BCEGYPTCaesar departs Egypt for the Pontic campaign. Month approximate.Rome & Egypt
33223 Jun 47 BCEGYPTCaesarion (Ptolemy Caesar) born in Alexandria. The precise date rests on the reading of one contemporary stele.Rome & Egypt
33347 BCLEVANTCaesar grants Antipater the Idumaean Roman citizenship, tax exemption and the procuratorship of Judaea, for service in the Alexandrian war. An enfranchised client takes his patron’s name: the house becomes, in law, Julii. The grant is reported by Josephus alone, with no external authority cited and no inscription recording it; the decrees Josephus quotes from the same period reward Hyrcanus the high priest and do not name Antipater.The Julii of Judaea
33447 BCEGYPTPtolemy XV born. Caesarion. The last Ptolemy.The Ptolemies
33546–44 BCROMECleopatra in Rome with the child, lodged in Caesar’s own gardens across the Tiber. Caesar places a gilded statue of her in the temple of Venus Genetrix beside the goddess.Rome & Egypt
33646 BCROMECleopatra and Caesarion arrive in Rome; housed in Caesar’s villa across the Tiber until Apr 44.Rome & Egypt
33746 BCLEVANTCaesar places a gilded statue of Cleopatra beside the goddess in the Temple of Venus Genetrix — the temple of the Julian ancestress.Rome & Egypt
33813 Sep 45 BCROMECaesar makes his will at Lavicum; deposits it with the chief Vestal. Octavius heir to three-quarters; guardians named for a son “should one be born to him.”Rome & Egypt
339Feb 44 BCROMECaesar named dictator perpetuo — dictator without term.Rome & Egypt
34015 Feb 44 BCROMELupercalia: the consul Antony twice offers Caesar a diadem before the crowd; Caesar refuses twice and sends it to the Capitol. Antony has the offer entered in the official calendar.Rome & Egypt
341early Mar 44 BCROMEReport spreads that the Sibylline books say Parthia can only be conquered by a king, and that the title will be moved in the Senate. Dio flags the report “whether true or false”; Cicero later called the prophecy fabricated. Its circulation, not its truth, is the event.Rome & Egypt
342Mar 44 BCROMEThe tribune Helvius Cinna holds a drafted bill — on Caesar’s order, to be proposed in Caesar’s absence — making it lawful for him to marry what wives he wished, “for the begetting of children.”Rome & Egypt
34315 Mar 44 BCROMECaesar assassinated at the Senate sitting in Pompey’s curia — the last sitting before his eastern departure. About sixty conspirators; 23 wounds.Rome & Egypt
34418 Mar 44 BCROMEThe day set for departure to the Parthian war. Instead, Caesar’s will is unsealed and read at Antony’s house.Rome & Egypt
34520 Mar 44 BCROMECaesar’s funeral. The crowd, hunting the conspirators’ sympathiser Cornelius Cinna, kills the tribune Helvius Cinna by mistake of name. The drafted marriage bill is never heard of again.Rome & Egypt
346mid-Apr 44 BCEGYPTCleopatra and Caesarion leave Rome for Egypt.Rome & Egypt
3472 Sep 44 BCEGYPTCaesarion crowned co-ruler of Egypt as Ptolemy XV, aged three — within six months of his father’s death.Rome & Egypt
348Apr 44 BCROMEAmatius, the false Marius — an impostor claiming kinship with Caesar through the Marian marriage — builds an altar at the pyre site and draws crowds. Antony has him executed without trial. The first man killed over a claimed connection to the dead dictator, inside a month of the Ides.The Julii of Rome
349May 44 BCROMEGaius Octavius arrives in Rome and takes the name of the will: Gaius Julius Caesar. A male-line Octavius, a Julian through his mother’s line — the name now runs on adoption.The Julii of Rome
35015 Mar 44 BCROMEThe Ides: Caesar killed. In law the line ends here — no legitimate son exists, none can now be fathered, and the name passes by testamentary adoption to a sister’s grandson, an Octavius in the male line.The Julii
351Nov 43 BCROMESecond Triumvirate formed: Antony, Octavian, Lepidus. Proscriptions follow; Cicero killed 7 Dec 43.Rome & Egypt
35242 BCEGYPTThe Roman state formally deifies Caesar as Divus Julius. In Egyptian doctrine a dead deified king is Osiris; Rome supplies the term itself, and the Osirian pattern of Isis and Horus is thereby complete without anyone in Egypt arranging it.Rome & Egypt
353Oct 42 BCROMEPhilippi: Brutus and Cassius defeated and dead. Antony, the senior victor, takes the East.Rome & Egypt
35442 BCROMECaesar deified by the state: Divus Julius. The adopted heir becomes divi filius — son of a god — by the same instrument that made him a Julian: law, not blood.The Julii of Rome
35541 BCEGYPTAntony summons Cleopatra to Tarsus; the alliance begins.Rome & Egypt
356late 40 BCLEVANTThe Senate, on Antony’s motion with Octavian supporting, declares Herod king of Judaea; the new king walks to the Capitol to sacrifice between the two of them.The Julii of Judaea
357c. 40 BCROMELucius Julius Caesar, consul of 64 — spared in the proscriptions when his sister Julia, Antony’s mother, faced the death squads at her door — dies without surviving sons. The male gens Julia, of every branch, is extinct.The Julii of Rome
35840 BCLEVANTThe Parthians install Antigonus. The last Hasmonean king, placed by Rome’s enemy. Herod flees; the Senate votes him king of a kingdom he does not hold.Who Ruled the Land
35937 BCLEVANTThe citadel and first works. On taking Jerusalem, work begins on the fortifications of the Upper City and on the Baris, the Hasmonean fort at the north-west corner of the Temple Mount.The Building Programme
36037 BCLEVANTHerod takes Jerusalem from the Parthian-backed rival; the reign begins in fact and runs thirty-three years.The Julii of Judaea
36130 BC? (disputed)LEVANTThe “year 3” series is struck — the only dated coinage of the reign and its largest denomination: helmet with star and palm branches, tripod with ceremonial bowl, legend BASILEOS HERODOU, date LΓ and the monogram TP. Bronze only, as a client king’s rank required; no portrait and no territorial title. The mint (Jerusalem or Samaria), the domed device (helmet or incense burner), the monogram and the era are all disputed — the standard catalogues date this issue variously to 40, 38/37, 37 and 30/29 BC. On Marshak’s reading it postdates Actium and marks OctavianThe Julii of Judaea
36236 BCROMEAntony’s invasion of Parthia fails with heavy losses. Two years later he will confer the Parthian kings’ own title, King of Kings, on Caesarion, and grant Parthia itself to Alexander Helios.Rome & Egypt
36337–36 BCEGYPTAt Antioch, Antony makes major territorial grants to Cleopatra and her children — the first donation event, administrative rather than theatrical.Rome & Egypt
364c. 35–31 BCROMEThe Antonia. The old Baris rebuilt as a stronghold on scarped rock with four corner towers, garrisoned and overlooking the Temple courts. Named for Mark Antony, so before his fall in 30 BC.The Building Programme
365c. 35–30 BCLEVANTMasada. The desert refuge fortified: casemate wall, storehouses, cisterns fed by dammed wadis, and the three-tiered Northern Palace stepped down the cliff face.The Building Programme
366c. 35–15 BCROMEThe Jericho winter palaces. Three successive palaces in the Jordan valley, bringing Roman construction technique into the kingdom — opus reticulatum facing and Roman-plan bath suites, built by imported specialists.The Building Programme
367autumn 34 BCEGYPTDonations of Alexandria: on golden thrones in the gymnasium, Cleopatra is proclaimed Queen of Kings and Caesarion King of Kings — and declared the true son of the deified Caesar. The Senate refuses ratification.Rome & Egypt
36832 BCEGYPTRome declares war on Cleopatra. The formal charges against Antony include his acknowledgement of Caesarion as Caesar’s legitimate son, named as a degradation of his office and a menace to Octavian. One third of the Senate and both consuls go over to Antony.Rome & Egypt
3692 Sep 31 BCEGYPTActium: Octavian’s fleet under Agrippa defeats Antony and Cleopatra.Rome & Egypt
370summer 30 BCROMEWith the war lost, Caesarion is enrolled among the ephebi and Antyllus given the toga virilis, with feasting in Alexandria for days. He is seventeen; the usual age is fourteen. The ceremony makes him an adult king — and removes the only ground on which Rome might have spared him.Rome & Egypt
37110 or 12 Aug 30 BCEGYPTCleopatra dies in Alexandria. The date is disputed between the 10th and 12th; the manner (the asp) rests on tradition Plutarch already reports as uncertain.Rome & Egypt
372late Aug 30 BCROMECaesarion, 17, lured back from flight toward the Red Sea and executed on Octavian’s order. The recorded advice: “too many Caesars is not good.” The Ptolemaic line of pharaohs ends. With him the attested male blood of the Julii ends — fourteen years after the line ended in law.Rome & Egypt
37330 BCLEVANTThe kingdom confirmed. After Actium, Octavian confirms Herod at Rhodes and enlarges the kingdom. The building programme of the following two decades runs on that confirmation.The Building Programme
374c. 30 BCLEVANTRhodes. The temple of Pythian Apollo rebuilt; shipbuilding funded. The city where Octavian returned his crown.The Building Programme
37530 BCLEVANTAfter Actium, having backed Antony, Herod meets Octavian at Rhodes — by the account removing his diadem before speaking and arguing the case of a loyal client rather than denying the loyalty. He leaves with the crown restored and the kingdom enlarged.The Julii of Judaea
376late Aug 30 BCEGYPTCaesarion, the attested natural son, executed in Alexandria on the adopted heir’s order. In blood the male line ends here — fourteen years after it ended in law.The Julii
37730 BCEGYPTALEXANDRIA FALLS. Cleopatra dies; Ptolemy XV is killed on Octavian’s order. Egypt becomes the personal property of the emperor, governed by a prefect, and no senator may enter without permission.The Ptolemies
37830 BCEGYPTCleopatra Selene II taken to Rome. With her brothers Alexander Helios and Ptolemy Philadelphus, walked in Octavian’s triumph and given to Octavia to raise. No death is recorded for either brother.The Ptolemies
379c. 28 BCLEVANTTheatre, amphitheatre, games. Quinquennial games instituted in Caesar’s honour; a theatre built at Jerusalem and a great amphitheatre in the plain. Neither has been securely identified archaeologically. The trophies displayed caused offence until stripped to show bare frames.The Building Programme
380c. 27 BCLEVANTSebaste. Samaria refounded and renamed for Augustus — Sebastos being the Greek for the title. A temple of Roma and Augustus on a raised platform, a colonnaded street, a stadium.The Building Programme
381after 31 BCROMENicopolis. Public buildings for the victory city Octavian founded on the site of his camp at Actium — a benefaction aimed squarely at the winner.The Building Programme
38227 BCROMEOctavian takes the name Augustus. The Julian name rules; the Julian male line is gone.The Julii of Rome
383c. 25–23 BCLEVANTThe royal palace and the three towers. The palace on the western hill, with wings named for Augustus and Agrippa. On its northern side the towers Phasael, Hippicus and Mariamme — a brother, a friend, and the executed wife.The Building Programme
38425 BCLEVANTFamine in Judaea. Herod melts down the gold of his own household to buy Egyptian grain through Petronius, prefect of Egypt, and distributes it — the one relief operation of the reign that is dated and specific.The Julii of Judaea
385c. 25 BCEGYPTCleopatra Selene II queen of Mauretania. Married to Juba II and installed on a throne in north-west Africa. She struck coinage in her own name with Egyptian iconography and named her son Ptolemy. The Ptolemaic line continues on a throne for seventy years after Alexandria falls.The Ptolemies
386c. 23–15 BCLEVANTHerodium. An artificial mountain raised over a fortified palace at the site of a battle he won in flight, with a lower palace, pools and gardens below. The only work he named for himself, and his burial place.The Building Programme
38722–10 BCLEVANTCaesarea Maritima and Sebastos. A city and an artificial deep-water harbour built on an open coast with no natural anchorage, in hydraulic concrete set underwater using pozzolana shipped from the Bay of Naples. Dedicated 10 BC with games.The Building Programme
38822 BCINDIAAn Indian embassy reaches Augustus. Sent by a king Strabo calls Pandion or Porus, with gifts and a letter in Greek. One of the party, an ascetic named Zarmanochegas, burned himself alive at Athens; Strabo and Dio both record it and give his tomb inscription.India
38922–10 BCLEVANTCaesarea Maritima and the harbour of Sebastos: the largest artificial open-sea harbour of its age, built in hydraulic concrete using pozzolana shipped from the Bay of Naples. Dedicated 10 BC with games.The Julii of Judaea
39020–18 BCLEVANTThe Temple: platform and sanctuary. The rebuilding begins. Materials prepared before demolition; a thousand priests trained as masons; the sanctuary raised in eighteen months without interrupting the sacrificial service.The Building Programme
391c. 20–15 BCROMEThe water system. The Wadi el-Biyar aqueduct driven partly as a groundwater-collecting tunnel — 2.8 km, longer than any tunnel in Rome’s own systems — and the low-level aqueduct, 23 km from Solomon’s Pools to the Temple cisterns on a fall of thirty metres. Wilson’s Arch built to carry it.The Building Programme
392undatedLEVANTThe Cave of the Patriarchs, Hebron. The enclosure over the tombs at Hebron — the only Herodian building still standing intact, unroofed, its walls and pilaster order complete.The Building Programme
393undatedROMEAntioch. A colonnaded main street about four kilometres long, paved in polished stone — counted as the first monumental colonnaded avenue of the Roman East.The Building Programme
39420–19 BCLEVANTThe rebuilding of the Temple begins: the Mount doubled to a platform of some 144,000 square metres, on walls founded on bedrock. The outer works ran on for decades after the king’s death.The Julii of Judaea
39517 BCROMEAugustus adopts his grandsons Gaius and Lucius Caesar — his blood through his daughter Julia; Julians by adoption, as he is. Both die young, AD 2 and AD 4.The Julii of Rome
396through the reignLEVANTThe fortress chain. Alexandreion, Hyrcania, Machaerus and Cypros rebuilt, several with palaces inside the walls; temples of Roma and Augustus at Caesarea, Sebaste and in the north near Paneion.The Building Programme
39715 BCLEVANTMarcus Agrippa — Augustus’s deputy and the second man in the empire — visits Judaea as Herod’s guest, is shown the new Temple, sacrifices there, and feasts the people of Jerusalem.The Julii of Judaea
39814 BCLEVANTChios. Held up by a north wind on the voyage to join Agrippa, he pays to rebuild the city portico that had lain in ruins since the Mithridatic war.The Building Programme
39914 BCLEVANTHerod takes a fleet north to help Agrippa on campaign at the Bosporus — Rhodes, Kos, Chios (where he pays to rebuild the ruined city portico), Mytilene, Byzantium — and catches him at Sinope in Pontus. Josephus says Herod was all in all to Agrippa in the management of the war and his counsellor in civil affairs. They travel home together through Asia Minor, and on the road Nicolaus of Damascus pleads the case of the Jews of Ionia before Agrippa, and wins it: Agrippa writes to the Ephesians confirming the right to send gifts to the Temple and to keep the Sabbath. Herod renames AntheThe Julii of Judaea
400c. 20s–10s BCLEVANTAthens honours Herod with statue bases on the Acropolis, in the standard language of civic gratitude — styling him Philoromaios, friend of the Romans, on one, and Eusebes Philokaisar, the pious friend of Caesar, on the other. Kos honours him in a form read as attesting his Roman citizenship. At most six monuments to him are known in the world.The Julii of Judaea
40112 BCLEVANTOlympia. Finding the games in financial collapse, he settles permanent revenues on them and is made perpetual president — a title Josephus says was recorded in their inscriptions.The Building Programme
40212 BCLEVANTSailing to Rome, Herod stops at Olympia and finds the games in financial collapse. He competes in them, then settles permanent revenues on them in perpetuity. The Eleans make him agonothetes for life — perpetual president — a title Josephus says was recorded in their inscriptions. The endowment is credited with carrying the festival into the second century AD.The Julii of Judaea
40312 BCLEVANTHerod brings his quarrelling sons before Augustus at Aquileia; the emperor reconciles them — the first hearing, five years before the second condemned them.The Julii of Judaea
404c. 11 BCLEVANTThe porticoes complete. Eight years’ work on the colonnades around the esplanade, including the Royal Stoa with its 162 Corinthian columns. Solomon’s Porch on the east left untouched, held to be older than the king.The Building Programme
405through the reignLEVANTThe coastal cities. Halls, porticoes, temples and markets at Tyre and Berytus; theatres at Sidon and Damascus; gymnasia at Damascus, Tripolis and Ptolemais; walls at Byblos; an aqueduct at Laodicea; a standing endowment at Kos.The Building Programme
406c. 4 BCLEVANTJesus born. Matthew traces the descent from Abraham through David and Judah; Luke traces it back to Adam. The two genealogies do not agree and the text does not reconcile them.Variant: The two lists differ from David onwardThe Line from Noah to Jesus
4074 BCLEVANTThe heirs argue Herod’s will before Augustus in Rome; the kingdom is split three ways, subject to the emperor’s ruling. The Julian patron disposes of the client succession.The Julii of Judaea
4084 BCLEVANTHerod dies at Jericho.The Julii of Judaea
4094 BCLEVANTTHE FOUR-WAY DIVISION. Augustus splits the kingdom: Archelaus ethnarch of Judaea, Samaria and Idumaea; Antipas tetrarch of Galilee and Peraea; Philip tetrarch of the north-east; Salome three towns. The title of king passes to no one.Who Ruled the Land
410c. AD 1EGYPTTamil at Berenike. Excavation at the Red Sea port of Berenike — built by Ptolemy II for elephants — has recovered Indian peppercorns, teak, and potsherds inscribed in Tamil-Brahmi. Indian writing, in an Egyptian harbour.India
411AD 4ROMEAugustus adopts Tiberius — a Claudian, with no Julian blood at all — and requires Tiberius, on the same day, to adopt Germanicus. The succession is now adoption stacked on adoption.The Julii of Rome
412AD 6LEVANTArchelaus deposed by Augustus and banished to Vienne in Gaul; Judaea annexed as a province.The Julii of Judaea
413c. AD 6LEVANTTigranes V, grandson of Herod through the executed Alexander, placed on the throne of Armenia by Augustus. His nephew Tigranes VI is placed there again by Nero in AD 60.The Julii of Judaea
414AD 6LEVANTJudaea becomes a province. Archelaus is deposed on his subjects’ complaint and exiled to Gaul. His third passes to direct Roman rule and a census.Who Ruled the Land
415AD 9–23LEVANTWang Mang. A regent takes the throne and declares a new dynasty. He nationalises land, abolishes slavery and reissues the coinage; the reforms fail, the Yellow River shifts course, and rebellion ends him. The Han are restored in 25.China
416AD 14ROMEAugustus dies. The name Caesar passes by adoption for the second time — to a man with no drop of the family’s blood. Within days, Agrippa Postumus, the founder’s last grandson, is killed under guard.The Julii of Rome
417AD 16LEVANTClemens, a slave impersonating the murdered Agrippa Postumus — the blood, not the name — gathers a following. Asked by Tiberius how he had made himself Agrippa, he answers: the same way you made yourself Caesar. Killed secretly.The Julii of Rome
418AD 34LEVANTPhilip dies. The best-governed of the three tetrarchies, held thirty-seven years, reverts briefly to the province of Syria.Who Ruled the Land
419AD 36LEVANTAgrippa, grandson of Herod, imprisoned by Tiberius over an overheard wish for Caligula’s accession.The Julii of Judaea
420AD 37ROMETiberius dead, Caligula frees his friend, gives him a gold chain the weight of his iron one, and makes him king of Philip’s former tetrarchy.The Julii of Judaea
421AD 37LEVANTGaius (Caligula), son of Germanicus, becomes emperor — Julian blood in him only through women, at every link of the chain.The Julii of Rome
422AD 39LEVANTAntipas — the Herod of the Gospels — asks for a royal title, is denounced by his nephew Agrippa, and is banished to Lugdunum in Gaul.The Julii of Judaea
423AD 37–41ROMEAgrippa I gathers it back. Caligula gives him Philip’s tetrarchy, then Antipas’s after the tetrarch is exiled to Gaul.Who Ruled the Land
424AD 40EGYPTPtolemy of Mauretania killed by Caligula. The last ruling descendant of the dynasty.The Ptolemies
425AD 41ROMECaligula assassinated. Josephus places Agrippa at the centre of the crisis, moving between the terrified Claudius and the Senate. Claudius becomes emperor owing a debt to a grandson of Herod.The Julii of Judaea
426AD 41LEVANTClaudius gives Agrippa the whole of his grandfather’s kingdom: Marcus Julius Agrippa, king of Judaea.The Julii of Judaea
427AD 41LEVANTMarcus Julius Agrippa — grandson of Herod — made king of Judaea. The family were Julii by enfranchisement: Caesar’s grant of citizenship to Antipater in 47 BC carried the family name to his clients, and client kings now wear it.The Julii of Rome
428AD 41ROMEClaudius made emperor by the Praetorians. No adoption ever made him a Julius; he takes the name Caesar by accession alone — the first time the name moves as a title, not an inheritance.The Julii of Rome
429AD 41LEVANTThe kingdom whole again. Claudius adds Judaea and Samaria. For three years one man rules everything Herod ruled.Who Ruled the Land
430AD 44LEVANTAgrippa dies at Caesarea after five days of pain. Josephus and the Acts of the Apostles record the death independently, from opposite directions.The Julii of Judaea
431AD 44LEVANTAnd gone again. Agrippa I dies at Caesarea. The whole territory reverts to Roman administration.Who Ruled the Land
432c. AD 50INDIAThe Periplus of the Erythraean Sea. A Greek merchant's handbook to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean trade, naming ports, goods and sailing seasons. Roman coin hoards in south India confirm the volume. The route runs through the ports the Ptolemies built for elephants.India
433AD 50ROMEClaudius adopts Nero — the fourth adoption in the chain that keeps the dynasty “Julian”.The Julii of Rome
434AD 54LEVANTNero, in his first year, grants Armenia Minor to Aristobulus, great-grandson of Herod — a throne from the last of the adopted line to the enfranchised line.The Julii of Judaea
435AD 54ROMENero becomes emperor.The Julii of Rome
436AD 54ROMEThe first death of the new reign, in Tacitus’s account: Marcus Junius Silanus, proconsul of Asia, poisoned — a great-great-grandson of Augustus, killed for standing a generation closer to the founder’s blood than the emperor did. His brothers follow in 64 and 65.The Julii of Rome
437AD 57JAPANTHE GOLD SEAL OF NA. The Hou Hanshu records that the king of Na in Wa sent envoys to the Han court and was given a gold seal. A gold seal was ploughed up on Shikanoshima island in 1784, inscribed with characters read as king of Na of Wa of Han. The object and the text agree.Japan
438c. AD 60ROMEArikamedu, a Roman post in Tamil country. Excavation on the Coromandel coast has produced Arretine ware, amphorae and Roman glass. Roman coin hoards across south India are counted in tens of thousands.India
439c. AD 64LEVANTThe complex finished. Work continues under Herod’s successors for sixty-eight years after his death. Its completion puts some eighteen thousand men out of employment. Six years later Titus burns it.The Building Programme
440AD 65CHINABuddhism reaches China. The first securely dated notice of a Buddhist community, at the court of a Han prince. The Indian teaching travels the road Zhang Qian opened, and China becomes the largest Buddhist population in the world.China
441AD 66LEVANTThe Great Revolt: Judaea rises against Rome — the first month, the Roman garrison at Jerusalem is massacred; the legate of Syria, Cestius Gallus, brings four legions and is driven back at Beth-Horon with the loss of his eagle. Rome appoints Titus Flavius Vespasianus to subdue the province with three legions. Agrippa II argues against the war in the speech Josephus reproduces, and the house sides with Rome throughout — the war ends Herodian rule in fact if not in name.The Julii of Judaea
442AD 66LEVANTThe revolt. War across the whole territory. Nabataean troops serve with the Roman force.Who Ruled the Land
443AD 68ROMENero dies. The mechanism: Gaius Julius Vindex, legate of Gallia Lugdunensis — himself a Julian enfranchisee — revolts in early 68; Galba is declared; Nero, abandoned by the Guard, opens his own throat in June. With him dies the last emperor carrying any blood of the Julii — and that blood, at every step back to Caesar’s sister, had passed through women. Vespasian’s legions in Judaea are still in the field when the dynasty falls.The Julii of Rome
444AD 68ROMEGalba — no relation, no adoption by the house — takes the name Caesar on accession. The name is now an office of the Roman state.The Julii of Rome
445AD 69LEVANTThe Judaean command raises an emperor: Vespasian, campaigning in Judaea, is proclaimed by the eastern legions in July AD 69 — the Year of Four Emperors. He leaves the siege to Titus and goes to Rome. The war begun in the East against a Herodian-named house is what hands the Flavian dynasty its army, its legions’ loyalty, and its throne. Titus Julius Alexander, prefect of Egypt and brother of Berenice’s first husband, declares for Vespasian first.The Julii of Judaea
446AD 69ROMEThe first false Nero — an impostor gathering ships and men in the Aegean — is hunted down and killed.The Julii of Rome
447AD 70LEVANTJerusalem falls; the Temple Herod rebuilt burns.The Julii of Judaea
448AD 70LEVANTThe Temple burned. Titus takes Jerusalem. The arch in Rome shows the spoils carried in triumph.Who Ruled the Land
449AD 73LEVANTMasada. The last stronghold falls. The Roman siege works survive on the ground.Who Ruled the Land
450c. AD 75LEVANTBerenice, great-granddaughter of Herod, lives with Titus on the Palatine — by Dio’s account a wife in everything but law.The Julii of Judaea
451after AD 60LEVANTThe Berytus architrave: Agrippa II and Berenice restore a building “which King Herod their great-grandfather had built” — the king’s titles at its head reading rex magnus Agrippa Philocaesar. The name of Caesar carried as a Latin title by the last king of the house.The Julii of Judaea
452c. AD 77CHINAPliny counts the cost. He complains that India, China and Arabia drain a hundred million sesterces a year from the empire, and that India alone takes fifty-five million — Natural History 12.84. A Roman writer treating the trade deficit as a scandal.India
453AD 79EGYPTOn his accession, under public pressure and the spoken memory of Cleopatra, Titus sends Berenice away finally — dimisit invitus invitam.The Julii of Judaea
454AD 79LEVANTThe son of Drusilla — Agrippa I’s daughter — and the procurator Felix dies, with his wife, in the eruption of Vesuvius. A great-great-grandson of Herod among the dead of the catastrophe.The Julii of Judaea
455c. AD 79LEVANTJunia Calvina, sister of the Silani, dies — the last known descendant of Augustus. The founder’s blood, which never once passed father to son, outlives his dynasty by eleven years and ends in a private citizen.The Julii of Rome
456c. AD 80ROMEA second false Nero — Terentius Maximus — appears in the East and finds refuge across the Euphrates with the Parthians.The Julii of Rome
457c. AD 88ROMEA third false Nero, twenty years after the death — the name still being claimed by men who never bore it, a generation after the last of the blood was gone.The Julii of Rome
458c. AD 92–100LEVANTAgrippa II — Marcus Julius Agrippa on his coins — dies, the last king of the house. The date is disputed: c. 92 by the common dating, c. 100 by the tradition Photius preserved from Justus of Tiberias.The Julii of Judaea
459AD 105CHINAPaper. Cai Lun reports the process to the Han court. It reaches the Islamic world in the eighth century and Europe in the twelfth — a thousand years to cross, and it is the medium every surviving library then depends on.China
460AD 107JAPANSuishō sends slaves. The Hou Hanshu records a king of Wa presenting 160 people to the Han emperor. The earliest named ruler in Japanese history is named in a Chinese book.Japan
461c. AD 116–17LEVANTGaius Julius Alexander Berenicianus, by the standard prosopography a descendant of Herod, holds a suffect consulship of Rome under Trajan. The name is back in the fasti — carried by the enfranchised line.The Julii of Judaea
462c. AD 127INDIAKanishka and the Kushans. The Kushan empire spans Bactria to the Ganges. Gandharan sculpture gives the Buddha a human form for the first time, in a Greek idiom — drapery, proportion and features from Hellenistic art, on an Indian subject.India
463AD 132LEVANTZhang Heng's seismoscope. A bronze vessel with eight dragons that dropped a ball toward the direction of a distant earthquake. It is reported to have detected a shock some 500 km away that was not felt at the capital. The device does not survive; the description does.China
464AD 132–135LEVANTBar Kokhba, and the name changed. A second revolt, its administration attested in its own letters and coinage. After it the province is renamed Syria Palaestina.Who Ruled the Land
465c. AD 150EGYPTThe Muziris papyrus. A commercial contract in Greek, found in Egypt, for a cargo shipped from Muziris on the Malabar coast. It values one shipload at some seven million sesterces. The single best document of the India trade.India
466AD 150EGYPTThe work continues under Rome. Claudius Ptolemaeus writes the Almagest and the Geographia at Alexandria, under Roman rule. They govern astronomy and geography until the sixteenth century. The institution outlives the dynasty by four hundred years.The Ptolemies
467AD 166CHINAROME REACHES CHINA. The Hou Hanshu records envoys from Daqin, sent by a ruler named Andun — Marcus Aurelius Antoninus — arriving by sea and presenting ivory and tortoiseshell. The Chinese annals record a Roman embassy; no Roman source records sending one.China
468c. AD 180JAPANThe disorder in Wa. Chinese records describe years of warfare among the states of Wa, ended when the people agree to set a woman on the throne.Japan
469AD 184LEVANTThe Yellow Turbans. A millenarian peasant rising against the Han, put down by regional commanders who then keep their armies. The dynasty never recovers the provinces from them.China
470c. AD 200INDIAClement of Alexandria names the Buddha. In the Stromata he records Indian philosophers who follow the precepts of Boutta, whom they honour as a god. The Buddha named in a Christian text, at Alexandria.India
471AD 220CHINATHE HAN END. Four hundred years close, and China divides into the Three Kingdoms. The same century in which Rome enters its own crisis — and neither empire knew the other was failing.China
472AD 238JAPANHIMIKO, QUEEN OF WA. The Wei zhi records her sending envoys to the Wei court, receiving the title Friend of Wei, Queen of Wa, a gold seal and a hundred bronze mirrors. She is described as ruling by sorcery, unmarried, seen by almost no one. Her kingdom Yamatai has never been located and its position is the longest-running argument in Japanese archaeology.Japan
473c. AD 250JAPANThe Kofun tombs. Vast keyhole-shaped burial mounds begin. The largest is longer than the base of the Great Pyramid. The imperial tombs are administered by the Household Agency and have not been opened to archaeologists.Japan
474AD 712 and 720JAPANThe Kojiki and Nihon Shoki. Japan's own histories, compiled eight centuries after the events above. They give a first emperor, Jimmu, in 660 BC and a descent from the sun goddess — and no archaeology or contemporary record supports either. Everything on this page before AD 712 reaches us from China or from the ground.Japan

The Name of Caesar

Six memos in one sequence: how a family name became a title, and what became of the two houses that carried it. Read in order, or start anywhere.

History

The Missing Ancient Works

Varro wrote some 620 books and one survives complete. Sophocles wrote around 120 plays and we have seven — and these are only the works we know were written, because somebody who survived happened to name them. This is the arithmetic of that loss, what still exists unread, and a proposal to do about it what the Ptolemies once did.

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History

The Ptolemy Project

The material that would fill the gaps in the historical record largely exists — in museum drawers, unopened crates, family libraries and untranslated journals — and is unread because reading it is unfunded. A proposal for a top-level system that harvests from every existing programme, holds its own copies, translates, and grades what it holds.

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Levant · History

Who Ruled the Land

Eleven divisions of the country between the Jordan and the sea, c. 1200 BC – AD 135, each mapped and each linked to its entry on the timeline.

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Rome · History

The Julii: From Troy to the Ides

The family history of the gens Julia from the record: the Troy chain and who recorded it, the surviving altar at Bovillae, Alba destroyed and the Julii transplanted to Rome, kings twice over, the Republic’s consuls and the lex Julia — and the adoption break: Augustus was a Julian through two women, grafted by will onto a claim that runs father to son.

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Rome · History · People

Caesar, to the Ides

Part 1 of the Caesar–Cleopatra period: the life to 15 March 44 BC, from the record — the Julii, Sulla defied, the pirates, the kings-and-gods eulogy, the ladder to an army, Gaul, the civil war, Cleopatra in Rome, the will and the drafted marriage bill, the Ides, and the missing documents. Linked event-by-event to the period timeline.

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Egypt · History · People

Ptolemy XV: Cut From History

Caesarion — the only son Caesar is recorded as having and the last of the Ptolemies. Both Donations, the Nile voyage and the source that contradicts it, and a record better preserved in Egyptian stone than in Roman prose.

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Rome · History

The Julii of Rome

One daughter, then mothers all the way down: the founder’s blood never once passed father to son. Exiles, prisons, poison, a matricide, men killed for their descent — and Junia Calvina, the last of the blood, dying a private citizen c. AD 79, eleven years after the dynasty fell.

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Levant · History

The Julii of Judaea

Herod’s house and the name of Caesar: the citizenship grant of 47 BC, the exiles in Gaul, the kingmaker of Claudius, the thrones of Armenia, Berenice and Titus, Vesuvius — and a descendant of Herod sitting as consul of Rome, as a Julius, under Trajan.

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Levant · History · People

The Herod Question

One channel whose partiality its own transmitter states in writing; a massacre attested in one text written eighty-five years later; three rulers collapsed into one villain; and four bodies of material evidence that pass through none of it. What the record can carry, and what it cannot.

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Levant · History

Herod the Builder: The Programme, Work by Work

More than thirty projects across 800 kilometres — the Temple Mount platform, the Hebron enclosure still standing, the open-sea harbour at Caesarea in concrete shipped from Naples. The evidence about this reign that is not written, and does not pass through Josephus.

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Egypt · History

The Ptolemies

Three centuries between Alexander’s death and the fall of Alexandria — the Library, the translations, the temples, the wars, and what Rome inherited.

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