Does anybody know the origin of the Curse of the Mummy/Pharaoh? Links to secondary peer reviewed sources or to primary sources please!!!!

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As far as I count trace it was back to Louisa May Alcott's The Curse of the Mummy, but I don't know what she based that on or where the myth originated itself.

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Hello r/AskHistorians, I'm currently a junior in college who has decided to switch up his future life plans. My whole life I have been on the route to go to medical school, but I've recently realized that that may just not be for me. Before coming to this realization, I never gave it much thought to what I'd do if I didn't become a doctor.

However, I have always been passionate about two things: science and history. I'm currently a biochemistry major with a minor in history (I wanted to do a double major but decided not to destroy myself) and I've recently been thinking about jobs/careers where these two subjects meet. For example, I know there is a great deal of chemistry involved in art restoration.

So, my question are: are there more careers out there where chemistry, biology, etc and history intertwine? What are they and how do you get there? Are you personally in that field, and if so, what do you think of it? Are there other degrees out there that can direct me towards those careers?

Thank you in advance for your answers!

Why didn't China be a part of the Warsaw Pact in 1955 since it was a communist nation. I know about the Sino-Soviet split in 1956 but this was before it.

Another follow up question- Why other countries could potentially be a part of the Pact in 1955 but didn't, also tell why please.

Danke. :)

The Norman invasion is often taught as a distinct stage in English history, one that caps off the Saxon period, but the Saxon culture continued to exist after the Normans, indeed a guerrilla war prompted the Normans to treat murder against their number with the harshest severity.
Even after the period of instability there still seems to be a disconnect between the Saxons and their Norman overlords, I've had people tell me before that England was merely a resource pool for the defence of the French territories, and a famous saying goes "English on the field, French on the table." referring to the disconnected words for livestock and their meats, and right the way up to Civil War there was a notion that the Normans were still the corrupted upper class gentry, and that they should be overthrown by rightful Saxons.
My question is; is the English culture we know today Norman with Saxon influences tied into it, or Saxon with Norman aspects?

As the title says. I'm doing research into Rome, and can see evidently that Rome saw them as savages, courageous, but without the valor to achieve much. I can't find much on whether their conversion changed this view. Sources would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

Were they seen as "Norwegians/Swedes with a pastoral lifestyle", or did nationalist thinkers retroactively re-classify them as foreigners/outsiders?

While Ireland was never really united into a consistent, stable polity in the Middle Ages, there were occasional high kings of Ireland and I was wondering if there is any evidence as to what the other monarchies of Europe thought of them? Would they have been considered equal, at least in rank, to other kings? Would they have had similar educations and spoken similar ‘diplomatic’ languages as other courts?

Asking this for an article I plan to write, couldn't find anything on Google.

By making I mean production in a factory, or something similar.

Edit: I would like a complete list, If possible.

Many eligible voting age adults were overseas during the elections of 1942 and 1944. What impact did this have on voter turnout, and what steps were taken to mitigate this?

So I'm interested in how a wealthy person from the 19th century would go about getting foreign currency. Without the internet and speedy transportation it feels like this would be more difficult to come by. What's more, Germany was still not united in the 1840s, and I want to know if every different state had a different currency.

I don't think you can't immagine a pirate ship without the iconic flag of a Skull with a black background. But were these actually commonly used?

I had a teacher one time remark that there were towns/provinces of the former Roman Empire in Europe that believed they were still a part of the empire for decades or even centuries after its collapse. Some, he said, even attempted to continue to pay taxes.

I've never come across any evidence of this but its a fascinating idea to me. Has anyone heard of this before?

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After watching Charlie Chaplin’s film The Great Dictator I decided I should read Hitler’s Mein Kampf so I added it to my reading list. I now have the book traveling to my library and I have started to get concerned with experiencing kneejerk reactions to the content and judging it without taking context into account. I have been reading some of the Method Monday posts on this reddit and the one on empathy particularly stood out to me. What do you think would be some facts about the content or tips to keep in mind when reading such a contentious historical document?

I've been reading more about how soldiers will often aim to scare off enemies than outright kill them, as it is human nature to avoid killing each other. I learned of an anecdote where a line of 500 riflemen (revolutionary war period if I recall correctly) fired at a long cloth representing a line of enemies, scoring several hundred hits; however during battle their hit rate was in low single digit percentage.

Many modern soldiers involved in firefights will say that while they are trained to aim center mass, they rarely aim and fire their weapons there.

I'm wondering if ancient soldiers were more desensitized to the act of killing since it was more up close and personal, i.e. hand to hand combat.

If anyone has any insight into this or reading material on the topic I'd love to see it. Thanks!

Edit: Since archers fired in an arc with many others, could that have taken away from the personal connection to the killing itself? My thought here is that since with rifles you aim directly and it is clear when your shot did the kill, making it more "personal".

The more I'm reading about historical events, the more doubts I have about various things, especially concerning size of ancient armies. Recently I stumbled on Wiki article about Battle of Thermopylae, and dubiometer gone off the scale when I saw estimates of Persian army. Hungreds of thousands?

"No real consensus exists; even the most recent estimates by academics vary between 120,000 and 300,000. As Holland puts it, "in short...we will never know.""

It seems to me that it just can't be right, even the lowest counts. How the army of this sheer size would be fed this far from home?

Wiki gives estimates of 300,000–500,000 for a full Persian invasion force. I tried to thought about it rationally. As far as I know, cavalry was an important part of Persian army. But even if ratio was something like 30 infantryman to 1 cavalry, it's still 10000 horses, who need to be fed at least 10-15 kg of food everyday, and drink, like, A LOT of water. Forgetting about horses, presumedly it's still hungreds of thousands of people who are not working, they need to be supported by state, so there's a need in a strong economy. If we put those numbers into perspective, they are roughly comparable with Napoleonic era, but nations of that era were far more advanced in logistics and medicine, and undoubtedly more productive at home. I find it impossible to believe that Persians managed to assemble army similar to Napoleon, but 2300 years before Napoleon.

Out of interest I've checked later conflicts in the region. Battles of Peloponnesian War are count in hungreds or thousands, which seems pretty reasonable to me. Then there was campaign of Alexander the Great, who presumedly assembled about 50 thousands man - a very big figure, but not as ridiculous. I have my doubts that Persia managed to create an army tenth of this size a century ago - and ultimately failed.

So, to the quick of the matter. If we're forgetting about ancient accounts, which in my understanding are tending to overestimate the figures, after all researches, can we now say that Persian army was really that big?

And a follow up question. Does modern historians take into account circumstantial evidence about, for example, size of ancient armies? Like, counting how much average soldier and horse would eat, researching the landscape where could they eat, or how a country can actually support all those troops. And can this method be actually used in historiography, or it couldn't be more than just a series of wild guesses?