Michael Wood travels through Syria and Iraq to uncover the story of Alexander the Great's decisive battle against the might of the Persian Empire in 331 BCE. Ancient writers agreed that it was fought somewhere near the city of Irbil in northern Iraq, but the exact location has never been discovered. Using dramatic new finds in the UK - a cuneiform clay tablet in the British Museum and a papyrus dug up in Egypt - Michael sheds new light on the course of events. Then to reconstruct the campaign, he follows Alexander's route through Damascus and Aleppo to the river Euphrates in Syria and travels into Northern Iraq with the British and US military.

Friends, contemporaries and even enemies of Alexander the Great gather in a tent to tell his tale th...

Dr Glenn Godenho goes on the hunt for the tomb of Cleopatra.

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This historical drama tells the story of Qin Shihuang, who unified China's vast territory and declar...

What is true and what is false in the hideous stories spread about the controversial figure of the R...

Eminent classical historian Robin Lane Fox embarks on a journey in search of the origins of the Gree...

5000 years ago the ancient Elamites established a glorious civilization that lasted about three mill...

On April 12th, 1864, at an insignificant little fort, several hundred black Union soldiers fought a ...

This is the true and astounding saga of the Spartans at Thermopylae. It is among the greatest tales ...

Who invented time, who invented the clock? Why 1 hour, why 60 minutes, why 60 seconds? Since prehist...

The discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb is revealed for the first time in color, thanks to colorization ...

Benedict Arnold is not the villain of American history most people were taught to believe. New facts...

This program presents the stories of the works of architecture regarded by the Greeks and Romans as ...

Papyrology expert Margaret Mountford goes in search of the truth behind the legend of Sappho, the mo...

Alexander, a student of the brilliant philosopher Aristotle, worshiped the god Amun which he believe...

Follows an international archaeological team exploring Saudi Arabia's Black Desert and Jordan, inves...

Maya legend tells us that there is a hidden underground cave below Chichen Itza, now high tech archa...
Virginia Woolf said that Homer's epic poem the Odyssey was 'alive to every tremor and gleam of exist...