I know the western legal system was founded on the Roman ones. A court trial in the SPQR has a defense and a prosecution side.

Reading about the destruction of the ancient library in Alexandria was one of the saddest things I remember reading about growing up. Just thinking of all the knowledge destroyed or the ancient mathematical equations and scientific discoveries stored in that library lost forever is just so depressing. I once heard an Egyptologist claim that the destruction of the library set us back a 1000 years in terms of technological advancement.

But I’ve always wondered where the actual site of the destroyed Libary was. I mean even if it burned down wouldn’t there be a way to pinpoint the location? And considering how common it was for ancient Egyptians to bury valuable items in tomes....I’ve always wondered if copies or manuscripts were ever buried deep beneath the library. And considering how detailed the librarians of Alexandria were in cataloging various works I’d assume they would have considered creating a backup at some point for their more valuable scrolls.

Assuming a burnt down library would at some point either be rebuilt or have another building built on top of it....wouldn’t there be some record keeping of the construction process or bills related to the expenditure of rebuilding within that area during the aftermath of the fire?

I’ve been trying to search for the location of the library by looking through translations of Greek texts during that time to pinpoint any bills related to the reconstruction process but I think I’m looking at the wrong place. Since Egypt was under the jurisdiction of the Roman empire during the aftermath of the library’s destruction is it more likely that those records can be found in Rome and written in Latin instead of Greek? Does anyone here know of any Roman records of expenses for its reconstruction or maps they made of it’s location? Or even the name that the Romans used when referring to the library of Alexandria?

So I just recently discovered 'Henry VIII’s foot combat armour' which covers the entire body, including the joints and buttocks. Was this type of armor ever used on a mass scale?

If it wasn't, who else had this type of armor?

Reposting so that there's no spoiler in the title.

Spoilers:

!In Bill & Ted Face the Music, their daughters travel through time collecting musicians. Do we have any idea if Mozart would have ACTUALLY appreciated Jimi Hendrix's music? (I.e. how accepting were composers like Mozart of radically different musical styles than they were used to?)!<

What would happen if the raft didn’t light? Or especially, if it lit, charred a little, and then went out and floated back to shore? Did this have some religious significance? Was there a failsafe?

As far as I have read, I only know of one major Imperial German figure who strongly opposed the introduction of unrestricted submarine warfare during the First World War, chancellor von Bethmann-Hollweg. He reportedly stated “Germany is finished” when the practice was reintroduced in 1917. As the title asks, did anyone else feel that this naval strategy would bring about Germany’s defeat?

My understanding is that most religious practices in the Greco-Roman world were public and communal, ranging from small gestures of respect done to the spirits of hearth and home to the great festivals of the civic and state cults. Against this background, the privateness and seclusion of the mystery cults seems like an oddity. What purpose did secrecy serve for these cults and their members? Did they believe that the cult practices provided worldly power and thus hid their rituals to monopolize these powers? Did they think that the rituals held the key to scarce positions in the afterlife and so wanted to reserve them for themselves?

Recently I have been more and more interested in ancient history in the Bronze Age and have been wondering how did the written Hebrew language survive the Bronze Age Collapse?

I heard that the Dead Sea Scrolls from Washington museum are forgeries. Does that mean that all 100.000 Dead Sea Scrolls are fakes? Or only those from Washington?

For those who are not familiar, Xunzi was an early 3rd century BC Confucian who had a view of the world that's roughly comparable to naturalism - he believed all phenomena occured due to regular laws, and for example did not believe that the fall of dynasty was due to the will of Heaven, but because of poor governance. Due to (somewhat obscure) disagreements on the inherent moral nature of man with Mengzi, however, he was widely rejected in later centuries.

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However, people still clearly copied his works and considered them valuable enough to preserve that we have them today. How did that happen?

Does anyone know of any good books, documentaries, articles, or even YouTube videos about the history of the Franks. Particularly from their first contact with Rome up until Charlemagne. I can find a lot of stuff about Rome and it references early Franks and I can find a lot about the Frankish kingdom as it developed after the fall of the Western Empire but I am for some reason super interested in what they were up to prior to the fall. How do we go from Roman Gaul, to the decline of the west, and then to the Frankish kingdom. I know its quite niche but I'm just super interested.

In western culture, Hell is often imagined as an extremely hot place deep under the surface of the earth. Of course, we now know that there is an extremely hot place under the surface—the Earth's core.

My assumption is that the modern image of Hell predates detailed knowledge of the Earth's structure. Had people at the time discovered that "there's something hot under the surface," or was this all just a very lucky guess?

I know there's a lot of controversy regarding this part of the world. Going back to ancient Egypt some say they were black(sub-saharan) while others say they were a different group who looked similar to modern Egyptians in skin tone and were maybe some kind of caucasian or semitic people

The carthaginians also have this issue with some claiming they were indistinguishable from the romans insofar as they were both mediterranean people

There's an idea that the people in the mediterranean, the greeks, romans, palestinians, north africans, turks, are all mediterranean people with a basic similarity in hair and skin tone and that they're almost the same except for their culture

Then we get to the middle ages and the "moors" appear. What were they? wikipedia says they were muslims who expanded and some went to europe, if they're muslims then I assume they had contact with Arabs. Are they arabs? are they a mixture of Arabs and the previously mentioned mediterranean north africans?

wikipedia says the moors were originally indigenous berbers. zidane the soccer player is said to be a berber. berbers are not sub saharan according to pictures of modern berbers. then wikipedia mentions arabs. so if they were berbers and arabs how are they depicted as sub saharans?

There's a difference between palestinians and sub-saharan africans. If palestinians can be said to have lived there for centuries and are a product of arabs mixing with the indigenous population then if they are similar to old north africans then the north africans can't be sub saharan and so why are moors depicted as sub saharans? Doing a google search of "libyan people" shows people who look like arabs but then some pictures of sub saharans with headlines of articles about "african slaves" "african migrants" "african refugees" and one says "being black in libya". There was an article about a Sudanese man traveling but being stuck because of the lockdown. Looking at Morocco its more diverse with some arab looking people and some black looking people and some mixed. Searching for "algeria people" shows some looking like arabs. "tunisia people" also shows arab looking people and so does "egypt people" with some mixed people thrown in

So if the moors were sub saharans as commonly depicted then how is north africa now mostly arab looking? where did they go? If north africans/arabs took slaves from south of the sahara and brought them north then that explains why there are black people in north africa but not how there are now arabs/brown caucasians there. And further back in history how did carthaginians look? were they similar to palestinians? I was told the phoenicians who are from around palestine/lebanon founded carthage. what about ancient egypt? were they similar to palestinians?

and going into palestinians what did the indigenous population look like? if they had a culture of the "bronze age" that stretched from greece to babylon to egypt then they probably looked similar enough i guess but maybe i'm wrong in that assumption. if the indigenous palestinians were black then wouldn't the arab mixture have them looking mixed with varying degrees of blackness and such like is found in brazil? but they look mostly arab. I was told the indigenous palestinians the canaanites and such were semitic people much like the arabs are another kind of semitic people.

its all confusing with people saying the moors are black but that doesn't make much sense to me.