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An era

Ancient

before 500 AD

From the earliest written history to the fall of the western Roman empire.

72 stories in this era.

The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Deir el-Bahri

The 18th-Dynasty Egyptian Queen Who Ruled as Pharaoh for Two Decades and Whose Name Her Stepson Ordered Chiselled Off Every Monument Twenty Years After Her Death

Hatshepsut ruled Egypt as pharaoh from approximately 1479 to 1458 BCE, the longest reign of any female ruler of ancient Egypt. About twenty years after her death her stepson Thutmose III ordered her cartouches systematically chiselled out of the public monuments she had built. Most of the erasures missed inaccessible interior surfaces, which is how Egyptologists reconstructed her reign in the 19th century.

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The Cabinet July 25, 2026 · Nineveh (Kuyunjik), Mosul, Iraq

The Library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, Preserved by the Fire That Destroyed It

The Assyrian king Ashurbanipal assembled at Nineveh the greatest library of the ancient Near East — some 30,000 clay tablets. When Nineveh burned in 612 BC, the fire that ended Assyria baked the clay hard and buried it safe. Dug up from 1849, the tablets yielded the Epic of Gilgamesh — and a flood story older than Genesis that stunned Victorian Britain.

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The Footnote June 27, 2026 · Varanasi

The Sanskrit Surgical Treatise From Around 600 BCE That Describes the Forehead-Flap Nose Reconstruction Eighteenth-Century English Surgeons Then Brought Home

The *Sushruta Samhita*, a Sanskrit surgical treatise compiled around 600 BCE, describes 1,120 illnesses and 300 surgical procedures, including a forehead-flap rhinoplasty technique used to reconstruct noses cut off as judicial punishment. The 1794 *Gentleman's Magazine* of London published an account of the same procedure performed in Pune, observed by two British East India Company surgeons. Modern plastic surgery traces its lineage to that 1794 report.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Thermopylae

The 300 Spartans Who Held the Pass at Thermopylae for Three Days in 480 BCE and Were Killed to a Man When Their Position Was Outflanked

King Leonidas I of Sparta and approximately 7,000 allied Greek troops held the narrow pass of Thermopylae against the Persian invasion army of Xerxes I for three days in August 480 BCE. A Greek defector named Ephialtes showed the Persians a flanking mountain path on the evening of the second day. Leonidas dismissed most of the allied troops on the third morning. The 300 Spartans, plus about 700 Thespians and 400 Thebans who refused to retreat, were killed at the pass.

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The Footnote June 27, 2026 · Dardanelles

The Persian Emperor Who Ordered His Engineers Beheaded and the Sea Itself Flogged After a Storm Broke His Pontoon Bridge in 480 BCE

Xerxes I of Persia ordered the Hellespont — the strait between Europe and Asia at modern Dardanelles — to be bridged in spring 480 BCE for his invasion of Greece. A storm destroyed the first bridge. Xerxes had the engineers beheaded, ordered the sea given 300 lashes, and had a pair of fetters thrown into the water. The second bridge held.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Gaugamela, northern Iraq

The Battle East of the Tigris on 1 October 331 BCE That Ended the Persian Empire When Alexander the Great Defeated Darius III

Alexander the Great's Macedonian army of approximately 47,000 defeated Darius III's Persian army of approximately 100,000 east of the Tigris river on 1 October 331 BCE. Darius fled the field. The Persian Empire that had existed for two centuries collapsed within months. Darius was murdered by his own satrap nine months later. Alexander died of fever at Babylon four years after that.

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The Footnote July 25, 2026 · Temple of Artemis, Ephesus

Herostratus, Who Burned the Temple of Artemis in 356 BC So That His Name Would Be Remembered

On a July night in 356 BC a man named Herostratus set fire to the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus — one of the Seven Wonders — and confessed under torture that he had done it purely to make his name immortal. The Ephesians executed him and made speaking his name a capital offence. It didn't work: one historian wrote it down, and the arsonist got exactly what he wanted.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Bjældskovdal, Jutland

The Iron Age Man Found in a Danish Peat Bog in 1950 With the Rope That Hanged Him Still Around His Neck

Tollund Man was discovered in the Bjældskovdal bog in Jutland on 6 May 1950, his face so well preserved that the finders called the police. He had been hanged with a braided leather noose around 405-380 BCE, aged about 40, and buried face-down in the bog. His last meal was barley-and-flax porridge, eaten 12 to 24 hours before death.

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The Footnote June 27, 2026 · Syracuse, Sicily

The Syracusan Mathematician Who Ran Naked Through the Streets in About 250 BCE Shouting Eureka After Working Out the Principle of Displacement in His Bath

Archimedes was asked by King Hiero II of Syracuse to determine whether a goldsmith had fraudulently substituted silver for some of the gold in a royal crown. The principle of displacement — that a submerged body displaces a volume of water equal to its own volume — occurred to Archimedes in the public bath. He reportedly ran home shouting "Eureka!" without dressing. The first surviving record of the story is Vitruvius, two centuries later.

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The Coroner’s Report July 25, 2026 · Cannae, Apulia, Italy

The Battle of Cannae in 216 BC, Where Hannibal Killed a Roman Army in an Afternoon

On 2 August 216 BC, Hannibal's outnumbered army enveloped and destroyed the largest force Rome had ever fielded — ancient figures run to 50,000-70,000 dead in a day. Rome refused to negotiate, armed slaves, and fought on. Cannae remains the model of the battle of annihilation, still taught at every war college; winning it did not win the war.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Zama, Tunisia

The Carthaginian Elephants That Crossed the Alps Did Not Win the War, and the Carthaginian Elephants That Stayed Home Lost It

Hannibal Barca crossed the Alps in October 218 BCE with 37 war elephants. All but one were dead within four months. At the Battle of Zama in 202 BCE, Hannibal's 80 fresh African elephants panicked at Roman trumpet signals, turned, and trampled their own infantry. The defeat ended the Second Punic War and Carthaginian power.

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The Coroner’s Report June 27, 2026 · Argos, Peloponnese

The Hellenistic King Who Was Killed at the Siege of Argos in 272 BCE by a Roof Tile Thrown by an Old Woman From Her Window

Pyrrhus of Epirus — the king whose costly victories produced the term "Pyrrhic victory" — was killed in street fighting at Argos in 272 BCE. He was stunned by a roof tile thrown by an elderly woman defending her son inside her house and was decapitated by a Macedonian soldier moments later. He was approximately 47.

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The Cabinet July 25, 2026 · Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang, Lintong, Shaanxi

The Unopened Tomb of Qin Shi Huang, Its Terracotta Army, and Its Rivers of Mercury

China's First Emperor was buried in 210 BC beneath a man-made mountain near Xi'an, guarded — the historian Sima Qian wrote — by crossbow traps, with rivers of mercury flowing across a model of his empire. In 1974 farmers digging a well found his terracotta army. The burial chamber itself has never been opened — and the soil above it really is laced with mercury.

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The Coroner’s Report July 25, 2026 · Actium, Ambracian Gulf, Greece

The Battle of Actium in 31 BC, the Sea Fight That Ended the Roman Republic and Doomed Cleopatra

On 2 September 31 BC, off western Greece, the fleets of Octavian and of Antony and Cleopatra met at Actium. Cleopatra's squadron broke out mid-battle and Antony followed her, abandoning his fleet and army — which surrendered. Within a year both were dead in Alexandria, Egypt was a Roman province, and Octavian was on his way to becoming Augustus.

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The Footnote June 27, 2026 · Rubicon river

The Roman General Who Crossed a Small Italian River With One Legion on 10 January 49 BCE and Started a Five-Year Civil War

Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon — a small river marking the southern boundary of his Cisalpine Gaul governorship — on the night of 10-11 January 49 BCE with the XIII Gemina legion. The crossing was technically treason. It triggered the Roman civil war of 49-45 BCE, the defeat of Pompey, and the foundation of Caesarian autocracy. He reportedly said "alea iacta est" — "the die is cast" — as he crossed.

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The Coroner’s Report June 27, 2026 · Royal Palace, Alexandria

The Last Ptolemaic Queen of Egypt Who Killed Herself at Alexandria in August 30 BCE With Either an Asp or a Mixture of Hemlock, Aconitum, and Opium

Cleopatra VII killed herself at Alexandria on approximately 10 August 30 BCE, eleven days after her partner Mark Antony's suicide and three weeks after the city's fall to Octavian. The conventional account of the Egyptian cobra concealed in a basket of figs is first attested by Plutarch a century later. A 2010 reanalysis by Christoph Schaefer argued for a self-administered poison mixture as the more plausible cause of death.

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The Coroner’s Report June 27, 2026 · Theatre of Pompey, Rome

The 23 Stab Wounds That Killed Julius Caesar in the Theatre of Pompey on 15 March 44 BCE and Started a 14-Year Civil War

Julius Caesar was stabbed 23 times by approximately 60 Roman senators in the curia attached to the Theatre of Pompey on the morning of 15 March 44 BCE. The post-mortem examination concluded that only one of the 23 wounds — the second, to the chest — was independently fatal. The assassination triggered the 14-year political-military struggle that produced Augustus's monarchy and ended the Roman Republic.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Mount Vesuvius region

The Thracian Gladiator Who Led 70,000 Slaves Through Italy for Two Years and Was Killed Without His Body Being Found in 71 BCE

Spartacus and 70 other gladiators escaped a Capua training school in 73 BCE. The revolt grew to approximately 70,000 escaped slaves and was the most serious internal threat to the Roman Republic between the Hannibalic War and the Civil Wars. Crassus defeated Spartacus's army at the Battle of the Siler River in spring 71 BCE. Spartacus's body was not identified after the battle.

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The Footnote June 23, 2026 · Point Glyphadia, Antikythera island, Greek archipelago

The Other Things on the Antikythera Wreck

The Antikythera mechanism was not the only thing on the 60 BC Greek shipwreck. Spongers in 1900 brought up four life-size bronze sculptures and a marble youth that nobody could date. Then they found the planetary computer. The other finds have been quietly upstaged for a century.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Londinium

The Icenian Queen Who Burned Roman Colchester London and St Albans to the Ground in 60-61 CE Before Being Defeated by Suetonius Paulinus on the Watling Street

Boudicca, queen of the Iceni in eastern Britain, led a revolt against the Roman province of Britannia in 60-61 CE after the Roman procurator had her flogged and her daughters raped. Her army burned Camulodunum, Londinium, and Verulamium and killed an estimated 80,000 colonists and Romanised Britons. She was defeated at the Battle of the Watling Street by Suetonius Paulinus's army of 10,000 against approximately 100,000 Britons.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Palatine Hill, Rome

The Roman Emperor Who Reportedly Planned to Make His Favourite Racehorse a Consul of Rome Before His Praetorian Guard Stabbed Him in a Palace Corridor in 41 CE

Caligula ruled Rome from March 37 CE to January 41 CE. He kept his favourite racehorse Incitatus in an ivory stall with marble fittings and is reported by Suetonius to have considered appointing him consul. He was assassinated on 24 January 41 CE by officers of his Praetorian Guard.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Circus Maximus, Rome

The Six-Day Roman Fire of July 64 CE That Destroyed Ten of the City's Fourteen Districts and Was Almost Certainly Not Started by the Emperor

A fire began in the wooden Circus Maximus shops in Rome on the night of 18-19 July 64 CE. It burned for six days and destroyed three of Rome's fourteen districts completely, with substantial damage to seven more. Emperor Nero was at his villa in Antium when the fire began and returned to Rome to organise relief. The story that he "fiddled" while it burned was a hostile reconstruction recorded by Suetonius decades later.

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The Footnote June 26, 2026 · Stabiae, Bay of Naples

The Roman Admiral Who Sailed Toward the Erupting Volcano to Rescue People and Died on the Beach

Pliny the Elder commanded the Roman naval fleet at Misenum on 24 August 79 AD when Vesuvius erupted. He ordered the fleet to evacuate civilians from the affected shore. He died on the beach at Stabiae approximately twenty hours later, probably of a heart attack triggered by inhaled volcanic gas. His nephew Pliny the Younger wrote the eyewitness account.

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The Footnote June 25, 2026 · Amaseia, Pontus

The Greek Geographer Who Preserved Most of What We Know About Eratosthenes by Citing Him to Disagree With Him

Strabo of Amaseia wrote the seventeen-book *Geographika* between approximately 20 BC and 23 AD. The work was substantially the last great Hellenistic geographical synthesis. Strabo disagreed with most of Eratosthenes's specific positions on geographical method, but cited him so extensively in the process of disagreeing that Strabo is now the principal surviving source for Eratosthenes's lost work.

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The Coroner’s Report July 25, 2026 · Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest in 9 AD, Where Rome Lost Three Legions and Stopped at the Rhine

In September of 9 AD the Roman-trained Cheruscan noble Arminius led Varus's three legions into an ambush in the German forests and annihilated them — some 15,000-20,000 dead. Augustus reportedly cried 'Varus, give me back my legions!'; their numbers were never used again, and the Rhine hardened into Rome's permanent frontier. The battlefield itself was lost until 1987.

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The Cabinet June 18, 2026 · Pompeii, Campania (modern Italy)

The Eighteen Hours That Stopped Pompeii

On 24 October 79 AD Vesuvius opened above the Bay of Naples and buried two Roman towns under twenty feet of pumice and ash. The people who died in Pompeii were killed in the first wave of the second day, by a cloud of superheated gas at six hundred degrees Celsius.

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The Cabinet June 24, 2026 · Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum

The Only Classical Library That Survived Antiquity Was Buried Intact at Herculaneum

When [Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD](/articles/vesuvius-pompeii-79), it buried a Roman seaside villa at Herculaneum under 25 metres of pyroclastic debris. Inside the villa was a working library of about 1,800 papyrus scrolls — the only intact classical library that has ever been recovered. The scrolls were carbonised by the heat. Modern X-ray imaging is finally reading them.

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The Cabinet June 24, 2026 · Alexandria

The Astronomy Book That Synthesised Three Centuries of Greek Observation and Ruled Europe for Fourteen Centuries

Claudius Ptolemy's *Mathēmatikē Syntaxis* — known to Europe as the *Almagest* through its 9th-century Arabic translation — was the single dominant astronomical reference work of the Western world from approximately 150 AD to 1543. Most of its observational content was inherited from Hipparchus of Rhodes three centuries earlier.

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The Footnote June 24, 2026 · Mandraki Harbour, Rhodes

The Greek Sculptor Who Built the Colossus of Rhodes and May Have Killed Himself When It Cracked

Chares of Lindos was the Rhodian sculptor who built the 33-metre bronze Colossus of Rhodes between approximately 292 and 280 BC. He had been a pupil of Lysippos. Late-antique tradition claims he killed himself when he discovered a substantial computational error in the statue's stress profile. The Colossus stood for 54 years and was knocked down by an earthquake in 226 BC.

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The Cabinet June 25, 2026 · Syracuse, Sicily

The Roman General Who Wept When He Saw the City His Army Had Just Sacked and Personally Mourned the Mathematician It Had Killed

Marcus Claudius Marcellus took Syracuse in 212 BC after a two-year siege. He had ordered Archimedes spared. He arrived at the mathematician's house to find him dead by a Roman soldier's spear. Marcellus had the killer executed, gave Archimedes a state funeral, and is recorded as having wept publicly at the destruction of the captured city.

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The Footnote June 24, 2026 · Rhodes harbour

The 226 BC Earthquake That Knocked Down the Colossus of Rhodes and Triggered the First Documented International Disaster Relief Effort

An earthquake struck Rhodes in approximately 226 BC, knocking down the Colossus, damaging substantial portions of the city walls, and producing widespread Aegean damage. The Hellenistic kings of Egypt, Macedon, Syria, and Pergamon all sent substantial financial and material aid — the first known case of coordinated international disaster diplomacy.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Milvian Bridge, Rome

The Roman Emperor Who Reportedly Saw a Cross in the Sky Before the Battle of the Milvian Bridge in 312 CE and Made Christianity a Tolerated Religion the Following Year

Constantine I defeated his rival Maxentius at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge outside Rome on 28 October 312 CE. The contemporary Christian writer Lactantius records that Constantine had ordered the Chi-Rho symbol painted on his soldiers' shields after a vision. Constantine issued the Edict of Milan with co-emperor Licinius the following February, legalising Christianity throughout the empire.

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The Footnote June 24, 2026 · Pompey's Pillar, Alexandria

The 27-Metre Granite Column in Alexandria That Has Almost Nothing to Do With Pompey

The 27-metre red granite column that stands on the Alexandrian acropolis where the [Serapeum once was](/articles/serapeum-destruction-391) is the largest free-standing ancient column in the Mediterranean world. The Crusaders gave it the name "Pompey's Pillar" in the 14th century. It was actually erected in 297 AD as a victory monument for the Roman emperor Diocletian, 350 years after Pompey was dead.

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The Cabinet June 24, 2026 · Patriarchate of Alexandria

The Patriarch Who Destroyed the Serapeum and Whose Nephew Would Preside Over Hypatia's Murder

Theophilus of Alexandria served as patriarch from 385 to 412. He was the principal Christian figure behind the 391 destruction of the Serapeum, was substantially responsible for the systematic dismantling of Alexandrian Hellenistic-pagan religious institutions, and was succeeded by his nephew Cyril — under whose patriarchate Hypatia was murdered in 415.

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The Coroner’s Report June 27, 2026 · Hungarian Plain

The Hunnic Emperor Who Died on His Wedding Night in 453 CE of a Nosebleed Inside His Own Pavilion in Pannonia

Attila the Hun married a young woman named Ildico on a date in early 453 CE. He was found dead the next morning in his pavilion with blood on his face. The contemporary Roman ambassador Priscus of Panium recorded the death as accidental haemorrhage during drunken sleep. Several later sources propose poisoning. The Hunnic empire collapsed within a decade.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Great Palace, Constantinople

The Constantinople Circus Performer Who Became Empress of the Eastern Roman Empire and Talked Her Husband Out of Fleeing the Nika Riots in 532

Theodora was the daughter of a Constantinople circus bear-keeper. By approximately 522 she had been a stage performer and possibly a sex worker. In 525 she married the future emperor Justinian over imperial-court opposition. In January 532, when the Nika riots threatened to overthrow the imperial government, she persuaded Justinian to stay and fight with a speech preserved by Procopius: "The purple is the noblest shroud."

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The Coroner’s Report June 27, 2026 · Constantinople

The First Recorded Bubonic Plague Pandemic in Europe That Killed Up to Half the Population of the Eastern Roman Empire Between 541 and 549 CE

The Plague of Justinian reached Constantinople in spring 542 CE from Egypt and Pelusium. Procopius records a peak mortality of about 5,000 deaths per day in Constantinople. Modern genetic analysis of plague burials at Aschheim in Bavaria confirmed in 2013 that the pathogen was Yersinia pestis — the same bacterium that caused the 14th-century Black Death. The empire-wide death toll is estimated at 25-50 percent of population.

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The Footnote June 25, 2026 · Ctesiphon, Sasanian Persia

The Persian Sasanian King Who Gave Refuge to the Last Pagan Philosophers of Athens

When the Emperor Justinian closed the Athenian Academy in 529 AD, the surviving senior pagan philosophers led by Damascius migrated east to the court of the Sasanian Persian king Khusrau I. Khusrau received them with substantial honour, supported their philosophical work for several years, and eventually negotiated their safe return to the Roman Empire in 532.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Saint Catherine's Monastery, Sinai

The German Theologian Who Found a 4th-Century Greek Bible Manuscript in a Wastebasket at Saint Catherine's Monastery in May 1844

Constantin von Tischendorf visited Saint Catherine's Monastery at the foot of Mount Sinai in May 1844 looking for old biblical manuscripts. He spotted 43 vellum leaves of an unfamiliar Greek script in a wastebasket of materials the monks were preparing to burn for fuel. The leaves were 4th-century — the oldest substantially complete Christian Bible manuscript known. He took 43 leaves home. A second 1859 visit secured the rest.

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The Cabinet June 27, 2026 · Qumran, West Bank

The Bedouin Shepherd Who Threw a Stone Into a Cave Above the Dead Sea in Spring 1947 and Heard Pottery Break

A young Bedouin shepherd named Muhammed edh-Dhib threw a stone into a cliffside cave above the western shore of the Dead Sea in spring 1947 looking for a lost goat. He heard pottery break. The cave contained seven 2,000-year-old leather scrolls. The discovery of approximately 25,000 fragments from 11 caves over the next decade fundamentally changed the modern reconstruction of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity.

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