The Mediterranean and Aegean seas were home to the pirates of Ancient Greece.
 
The Aegean was full of tiny islands where pirates could easily hide their ships. In Ancient Greek times ships did not cross the open ocean, so all the pirates had to do was wait by the coast for trade ships to come past.
 
Pirates [...]

The word “pirate” means “one who plunders on the sea.” But there were also different types of pirate:

Privateers, or “private men of war” were sea-raiders with a government licence to pillage enemy ships.
Buccaneers were 17th century pirates who menaced the Spanish in the Caribbean.
Corsairs were both privateers and pirates who roamed the Mediterranean.
Barbary corsairs were [...]

Ancient Egypt had armies and soldiers. Pharaohs sent armies to areas such as Palestine, Nubia and Syria. Armies had infantry and chariot troops. Chariots were made of wood, and were manned by two soldiers, and pulled by two horses. Archers would fire arrows at the enemy from chariots.
 
Egyptians also fought with the axe, which was [...]

The ancient Egyptians wrote in hieroglyphs, a form of picture-writing with 700 different symbols. Hieroglyphs were written by professional writers called scribes. They were deliberately difficult to write so that scribes could keep a special position in society. Hieroglyphs could be written from left to right, right to left, or top to bottom. They were written [...]

The Egyptians believed in an afterlife. When someone died they believed that the person’s “Ka”, or double, lived on. Therefore, the Egyptians would preserve a person’s body, so that the “Ka” could bring the body back to life in the afterlife.
 
The bodies of the dead would be embalmed. The internal organs, such as the intestines, [...]

Elizabeth was born on September 7th 1533. This Royal Diary covers the year 1544 when she was 11. Elizabeth’s father King Henry VIII has just married his sixth wife - Elizabeth’s fourth step-mother! Elizabeth’s mother was Anne Boleyn. Anne married Henry in 1533 and three years later he had  her head cut off! (He married his third [...]

The Egyptians worshipped hundreds of gods and goddesses. Many of the gods were represented by animals.
 
The main Egyptian god was Amun-Re, the sun-god. He was king of the gods and protector of the pharaoh. The Egyptians believed the sun god was responsible for all creation: people, animals, the fertility of the soil, the pharaoh’s journey [...]

The first pyramid in Egypt was built as the burial place of King Djoser in 2630 B.C. It is called the Step Pyramid because it rises in steps. It was designed as a giant stairway for Djoser to climb to the sun-god in the sky.
 
King Sneferu developed the Great Pyramid with sloping sides. It was [...]

The ancient Egyptians were led by a king, and occasionally, a queen. The king was known as the pharaoh. The pharaoh was more than the ruler of Egypt; the pharaoh was worshipped by the Egyptians as a god. The pharaoh wore a royal headcloth called the “nemes” with a crown of cobras on top. They [...]

After they died, the ancient Egyptians believed that they would go to an underworld beneath the Earth called Duat. A person’s spirit would have to pass through many dangers, such as lakes of fire and poisonous snakes, in order to reach the kingdom of Osiris. Osiris was exactly like Egypt was for the living, except [...]