Author: Jan van der Crabben

Osama Receives Honours

Sulaymaniyah Museum Honours AHE’s Osama Muhammed

Published by Jan van der Crabben

It is with great pleasure that I report the honour bestowed upon Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin, one of the key contributors to Ancient History et cetera: In conjunction with International Museum Day on 18 May 2016, the Sulaymaniyah Museum honoured Osama’s contribution to the development of the museum, through the publication of several articles detailing the museum, its artefacts, and its discoveries here on AHetc. We’re incredibly proud of Osama’s achievement, and grateful for his unique and highly interesting contributions to this site, giving us a glimpse of the treasures of Iraq, which are otherwise inaccessible to most of us.

Sumer: A Digital Board Game with an Ancient Twist

Published by Jan van der Crabben

Sumer is a digital board game inspired by M.U.L.E. and the Epic of Gilgamesh. Race across the Ziggurat in ancient Sumer to harvest barley, herd goats, and sacrifice to the great goddess Inanna. Sumer draws on modern Eurogame design elements like worker placement, territory control, and auctions. Its unique innovation is to place these into an action video game. In this exclusive interview, Jan van der Crabben, CEO and Founder of Ancient History Encyclopedia (AHE), sat down with developers of Sumer at Game Developer’s Conference 2016 in San Francisco as they walk us through their accomplishments.

Our Rome Visit in Photos

Published by Jan van der Crabben

In late January 2016, Jan (CEO) and James (Communications Director) went to Rome to present at the EAGLE 2016 Conference at La Sapienza University. The conference was about Latin epigraphy and the Europeana project, and our presentations were about how academics, historians, and archaeologists could reach a wider audience. But when in Rome… one has to see the city! We could not help being pulled in by the Eternal City, drawn to wander around and explore its ancient heritage. When it comes to history, Rome is like the mother lode… very few cities in the world (if any) have such a concentration of historical sites and buildings!

Happy Holidays & 2015 Summary

Published by Jan van der Crabben

Dear Readers! Once again, it’s that time of year. Most of our readers are ready for the festivities of Christmas, gathering with their families, and enjoying a festive moment. Most of our team will do the same, and we wish you all Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year! 2015 in Review It’s time to look at what we’ve achieved in 2015… Quite a lot, in fact! It’s been a very good year for Ancient History Encyclopedia. Let’s have a look at some numbers, with comparisons to last year: Reach We’re now the #1 ancient history website and the #4 general history website in the world Surpassed 1,000,000 monthly unique readers, currently 1.7 million Served a grand total of 12,184,308 unique readers on Ancient History Encyclopedia, helping them learn about ancient history (+82%) Served a grand total of 65,442 unique readers on Ancient History et cetera, sharing our love of history (+216%) Grew our newsletter to 5,100 subscribers (+200%) Our content has been widely and repeatedly cited by publications such as: – National Geographic – BBC – New York Times – Time – CNN – …

Planet Knowledge Partnership

Published by Jan van der Crabben

The AHE team is excited to announce that we’ve partnered with Planet Knowledge, a company that you will certainly be interested in. They are a free to watch documentary video on demand channel, available on smartphones and tablets (iOS & Android), Samsung SmartTVs, and even FreeviewHD in the UK and Ireland. They don’t just cover history, but also nature, culture, science & technology, travel, and children’s documentaries… and their selection is growing every month! Most videos are free and supported through advertising, but similarly to AHE, you can pay a small monthly fee to watch ad-free. To start this partnership, we’ve published two full-length documentaries on Ancient History Encyclopedia: The Lost Gods: The Maya The Lost Gods: The Romans   Expect more to come in the future, and watch out for AHE content on Planet Knowledge in early 2016!

Our Little-Known but Amazing Tools for History Buffs

Published by Jan van der Crabben

With several thousand pages, Ancient History Encyclopedia is huge! There are a few features on our site that most people don’t know about, but which are absolutely amazing! So come give our amazing tools for history buffs a try: We’ve got a searchable timeline of ancient history. Just enter a date range and a few keywords and you’ll see a list of timeline entries. You can even search by event category, such as warfare or philosophy. By searching the world timeline, relationships between events appear that you never knew were there.

Novelist Nick Brown on ‘The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae’

Published by Jan van der Crabben

Jan van der Crabben, CEO & Founder of Ancient History Encyclopedia (AHE), recently sat down with Nick Brown, a teacher of archaeology and now novelist, to discuss his latest title: The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae. Brown’s book is a work historical fiction centred on the battle of Thermopylae, as told from the perspective of a foot soldier. AHE: Mr. Nick Brown, thank you for granting AHE this interview. In a few sentences, what is the basic plot of The Wooden Walls of Thermopylae ? NB: Wooden Walls follows on from Luck Bringer and is a research-based novel. I wanted to fill in the gaps with evidence based conjecture to flesh out a great narrative. The Athenians have won their battle at Marathon and Athens is a city seething with fear and treachery as it awaits the revenge of Xerxes, king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. It tells the story of the desperate alliance between Sparta and Athens, and how it led to Thermopylae and the destruction of the city of Athens. It also gives a flavour of the …

New Record: 1 Million Monthly Readers

Published by Jan van der Crabben

It’s an immense pleasure to tell you that we’ve just surpassed a major milestone this month: We now have over 1,000,000 monthly unique visitors on Ancient History Encyclopedia! A million! Every month. Wow… mind blowing. This is by far the biggest success we have ever celebrated here at the AHE team in our six-year history. This makes us without a doubt the world’s #1 ancient history website: We were already ranked the world’s 11th history website overall on July’s data where we only had 675,000 unique visitors, with no website specific to ancient history in front of us. Now there’s no possible doubt that we’re the #1 for ancient history! When I launched AHE over six years ago, I had no idea we would ever reach such heights. It was just a little side project… Now it’s a non-profit organisation with 14 amazing team members (all very dedicated volunteers), countless contributors from all over the globe, members & donors who support us financially, and partnerships with many other reputable organisations. We’ve become kind of a big deal now, and we get more …

Palmyra in Photos: Ancient Gem of Syria

Published by Jan van der Crabben

Palmyra (also known as Tadmor) is mentioned frequently in the news, as the so-called Islamic State is advancing on this ancient gem of a ruined city in Syria. The formerly prosperous metropolis of Palmyra is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, with good reason. From 44 BCE to 272 CE, the city became a wealthy trade centre at the crossroads between Roman, Greek, and Persian cultures. Located in an oasis in the Syrian desert along key trade routes across the ancient world, it was an important hub for trade, and many caravans passed through this city, increasing its wealth. Its architecture and arts reflects this mix of styles and economic wealth.

Help get Ancient History Magazine off the ground!

Published by Jan van der Crabben

There is a Kickstarter campaign with the goal of launching a new ancient history magazine! We find that a worthy cause, so we’ll let the publishers speak for themselves: Ancient History Magazine is a new magazine from Karwansaray Publishers. Karwansaray is an independent publishing house in the Netherlands. We specialize in the publication of historical books and magazines for a large, interested and informed audience. Our most well-known publication is Ancient Warfare, a bimonthly magazine on the military history of the ancient world. Ancient Warfare is currently in its ninth year and we are edging toward publication of the fiftieth issue, later this year. Four years ago, Ancient Warfare got a little brother: Medieval Warfare, which covers warfare in the period between ca. AD 500 and 1500. At the same time we also took over publication of Wargames, Soldiers & Strategy, and turned it into a very successful wargaming magazine. Ancient History Magazine – or AHM for short – will be similar to Ancient Warfare, except that it will explore the whole of the ancient world …