Bettany Hughes is one of our best-known writers and broadcasters about all things to do with the ancient world. The historian has presented over 50 TV and radio programmes on the subject, including her most recent, Lost Worlds: Dawn of Civilisations on Channel 4, in which she journeys across ancient Anatolia, modern day Turkey, exploring the archeological discoveries, culture and landscape that have shaped culture for millennia.
Her latest book, There Was An Egyptian in Your School, is a children’s guide to what education looked like thousands of years ago – and is designed to ignite a love of classical civilisation in budding historians everywhere. But which are Hughes’s own favourite books about the ancient world? Here, she shares her top five.
If Not, Winter: The Complete Fragments of Sappho by Anne Carson
“Sappho’s poems should be read in all schools. The works of the 7th-century poet from the island of Lesbos are acute, inspiring and teach about the impact of early love – both how beautiful it is and how disruptive. Sappho was the first to describe love as bittersweet – although, enjoyably, she says it is sweet and then bitter.”
The Iliad by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson
“I read this whenever I can, along with Homer’s and , another ancient poem linked to the Trojan War, which is supposedly by the poet Stasinus. The relationship between translators and their texts is a very intimate one – I enjoyed the freshness Emily Wilson brought to . But each of the texts are transporting in so many ways – they are all slightly different takes on the epic stories of the Aegean Bronze and Iron Ages. One of my favourite pursuits is to try to match archaeological evidence with the history-by-accident concealed within the verses.”
The Amazons by Adrienne Mayor
“A revolutionary book that turns on its head the misogyny that has coloured our ideas of the Amazons for thousands of years. Tracing their story in myth and archaeology, Mayor proved that there were indeed individual warrior women who fought in battle from the Bronze Age onwards. I have seen the graves of some of these women, the skeletons showing cut marks to their arms, heads, and legs – and some with obsidian arrow tips still lodged in their bones. The Amazons lived!”
Egeria’s Travels, translated by John Wilkinson
“Either a lay sister or part of a community of nuns from Spain, Portugal or Southern France, Egeria travelled solo through the Holy Land as she perceived it in the 4th century AD. Here, her eyewitness accounts in letter form are still in print – and they provide a unique historical record. They give us fascinating insights into Constantinople, Southern Turkey, Syria and Egypt – where she tells the world the pyramids were the ‘granaries’ of the biblical First Testament patriarch, Joseph.”
Pericles by Paul Cartledge
“An expansive, exacting and epic study of one of the most fascinating characters from Ancient Greek history. For me, one of the geniuses of Pericles was the inspiration he took from his courtesan consort Aspasia. A reminder that even though women were second-class citizens in ancient Athens – and Aspasia was a foreigner so enjoyed even fewer rights – they could nonetheless have status and standing in one of the most influential epochs of world history.”
‘There Was An Egyptian in Your School’ by Bettany Hughes is published by Puffin, £8.99