Queen mother of the west: Did you mean...?

Queen Kubaba of Mesopotamia is known as the only queen who has been named on the Sumerian King List, which is unsurprisingly, a bit of a boy’s club. Kubaba is one of very few women who ruled Mesopotamia in her own right, and the surviving...

Lothaire Bluteau as Charles of West Francia in the TV series Vikings. The character is an amalgamation of the historical kings of West Francia, Charles the Bald, Charles the Simple and Charles the Fat. Photo by Bernard Walsh/HISTORY - ©...

The Koh-i-Noor diamond (also Koh-i-Nur or Kūh-e Nūr) is one of the largest and most famous cut diamonds in the world. It was most likely found in southern India between 1100 and 1300. The name of the stone is Persian meaning ‘Mountain of...

Olympias, born with the name Myrtle, was the daughter of Neoptolemus, the king of Epirus, which was a Greek kingdom southwest of Macedonia and became the second wife of Philip II of Macedon, and is probably best known as the mother of Alexander...

Records of Nero's reign portray him as a monster who orchestrated his own mother's death. But was it even possible? Experts try to re-create the circumstances by which Nero was alleged to have sun his mother Agrippina the Younger's ship as...

The Han Dynasty (202 BCE - 220 CE) was the second dynasty of Imperial China (the era of centralized, dynastic government, 221 BCE - 1912 CE) which established the paradigm for all succeeding dynasties up through 1912 CE. It succeeded the...

Queen Mary's Crown, part of the British Crown Jewels. The crown was created in 1911 CE. The central stone is the Koh-i-Noor diamond which is now part of the Crown of Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and which is sometimes removed for Elizabeth...

Ruins of the West Church found at the village of Umm el-Jimal in the north of Jordan, which was occupied between the 1st century CE (by the Kingdom of Nabatea) and the 9th century CE (during the Abbasid period). Inscriptions made by Tanukhid...

Chinese literature is among the most imaginative and interesting in the world. The precision of the language results in perfectly realized images whether in poetry or prose and, as with all great literature, the themes are timeless. The Chinese...

Boudicca (died 61 CE) was the Celtic Queen of the Iceni tribe who led a revolt against Roman occupation of what is now East Anglia, England. So charismatic was Boudicca that ancient sources record tribes joining her revolt which would not...