Section II (Ancient Societies): Spartan Society to the Battle of Leuctra 371 BC

Spartan art, architecture, and economy. Archaic bronze, ivory, lead votives and exported black-figure pottery, the debated "austerity turn", the Amyklaion and Persian Stoa, the kleros, iron currency, and the Hodkinson/Cartledge revision of the Spartan "mirage" of self-sufficiency.

Athens' relations with other Greek states under Pericles. The Delian League's transformation into empire, tribute, cleruchies, the 454 BC treasury transfer, the road to the 431 BC Peloponnesian War, and the historiographical debate over democracy, empire, and the problems of hostile, elite evidence.

How Minoan influence spread through the Aegean and to Egypt and the Levant, the Thera eruption dating debate, the Late Minoan IB destructions and the Mycenaean takeover of Knossos, and how historians evaluate Evans's "Minoan" construct, the "Pax Minoica" myth and the limits of an undeciphered script.

The HSC Ancient History dot point on New Kingdom Egyptian death, burial and funerary texts to the death of Amenhotep III: the ka, ba and akh, the weighing of the heart, mummification's 70-day process, the Book of the Dead and the Amduat, and the shift to Valley of the Kings tombs.

New Kingdom Egypt to Amenhotep III: the funerary/temple survival bias, and the modern debates over the 'obsession' with death (Assmann, Taylor, Kemp) and the extent of slavery (Eyre, Loprieno, Hawass).

Spartan religion. The cults of Artemis Orthia, Apollo Karneios and Hyakinthios, and Athena Chalkioikos; the Karneia, Hyacinthia, and Gymnopaidiai; the kings' priesthood, the Pythioi, and Delphi; funerary custom; and the verdicts of Parker, Cartledge, and Kennell.

Spartan decline: Pausanias's disgrace, the Ithome Helot revolt, Sphacteria (425 BC) and the Peloponnesian War, oliganthropia and the Cinadon conspiracy, Agesilaus II, and the Battle of Leuctra (371 BC).

Geographical setting of Sparta: the Eurotas valley, Mt Taygetus and the Parnon range, the port of Gytheion, conquered Messenia, natural resources, and how geography shaped Spartan isolationism and the Helot system.

New Kingdom Egypt's context: the Nile, the Two Lands and Nubia's resources, the Eighteenth Dynasty from Ahmose I to the death of Amenhotep III, and the range and limits of sources from temple reliefs to the earliest Amarna letters.

Persia's context: the Iranian plateau and the Achaemenid empire's extent, Cyrus II to Darius I's accession via the Bisitun inscription, and the range and limits of sources from Herodotus to the Persepolis tablets.

Spartan army and the agoge. The stages of state education from age 7, the syssitia, hoplite equipment and the phalanx, the morai and the hippeis royal guard, Thermopylae and Sphacteria as evidence, and the verdicts of Cartledge and Kennell on the sources.

Spartan political system. The dual kings, the 28-member gerousia's probouleutic and judicial roles, the five annually elected ephors and their oversight of the kings, the apella's acclamation vote, and the ancient and modern debate over Sparta's "mixed constitution."

Spartan social structure. The Spartiates (Homoioi) as the citizen-warrior class, the Perioikoi as free non-citizens, the Helot serfs of Messenia and Laconia, the Krypteia, and the verdicts of Cartledge and Hodkinson.

Han government. The Three Lords and Nine Ministers, the junguo system and its reduction after the 154 BC rebellion, xiaolian recruitment and the Imperial University (124 BC), Dong Zhongshu's Confucian orthodoxy fused with Legalist practice, and the tension between the emperor, bureaucracy and consort clans.

Israelite art, architecture and writing. The Samaria ivories and Phoenician style, ashlar masonry and proto-Aeolic capitals at the royal acropolis of Omri and Ahab, the gates of Megiddo, Hazor and Gezer, the Samaria Ostraca, the Gezer Calendar, seals and bullae, and the Siloam Inscription.

Everyday life and women in Han China. Peasant and elite housing, food and dress, health and medicine from the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon and the Mawangdui texts, marriage and the family, and women's status from Ban Zhao's Confucian ideal to Empress Lu, Empress Dowager Dou and sericulture.

Cultural life - palace architecture (ashlar masonry, down-tapering columns, light-wells, drainage), the Knossos and Akrotiri frescoes, the Evans/Gilliéron reconstruction problem, Kamares ware and Marine Style pottery, faience, sealstones and the Vaphio cups.

Everyday life in Minoan Crete. Housing at Gournia and Palaikastro, food and cooking, water supply and sanitation, the flounced skirt and jewellery, crafts, bull-leaping and board games, and the debate over women's prominence in art and the "Pax Minoica" matriarchy/gynocracy hypothesis.

Minoan administration and writing: the palace-based archive system, the three Cretan scripts (hieroglyphic, Linear A and Linear B), sealstones and sealings, standardised weights, the Phaistos Disc, and why Linear A's undeciphered status limits reconstruction.

Minoan palaces and social organisation. The multifunctional palace at Knossos (central court, magazines, shrines, the Grand Staircase), Evans's "priest-king" hypothesis against modern corporate/factional readings, officials and artisans, and the settlement hierarchy from palaces to villas and towns such as Gournia.

Persian palace art. The Apadana, tribute reliefs and Gate of All Nations at Persepolis, Cyrus's tomb and palace at Pasargadae, Darius's palace and Foundation Charter at Susa, the tombs at Naqsh-e Rustam, glyptic art, the Oxus Treasure, and the imperial style as propaganda for unity.

Han dynasty economy. Agriculture, iron ploughs and the ever-normal granary, Emperor Wu's salt, iron and liquor monopolies debated in the Discourses on Salt and Iron (81 BC), the wuzhu coin (118 BC), markets and merchants, taxation and corvee, and Silk Road trade.

Economy of Israel from Solomon to the fall of Samaria. Agriculture and the Gezer calendar, industry and crafts, trade with Judah and tribute to Assyria, and fortified cities including Megiddo's silo, the 'stables' debate, the water systems, and six-chambered gates.

The HSC Ancient History dot point on the Ramesside economy: Nile-fed agriculture, taxation and tribute, the Report of Wenamun on declining trade prestige, the Amun estate's wealth in the Wilbour and Great Harris papyri, building and irrigation technology, and the grain-price inflation and strikes recorded at Deir el-Medina.

Spartan women, education, property, marriage customs including capture-marriage and husband-doubling, the "shield or on it" mother ideal, Gorgo and Cynisca, the all-male source problem, and the verdicts of Pomeroy and Cartledge.

Han social structure. The emperor and imperial clan, the shi gentry and recommendation-based office, peasants, artisans and restricted merchants, slaves, the Confucian family and filial piety, and the status of women including Ban Zhao and Empress Lu.

The HSC Ancient History dot point on Ramesside cultural life: writing and literature (The Tale of Two Brothers, The Report of Wenamun, love poetry, the Kadesh Poem and Bulletin, instruction texts) and the colossal monumental style of Karnak's Hypostyle Hall, the Ramesseum, Medinet Habu, Abu Simbel and Pi-Ramesses, and the shift to sunk relief.

Israelite kingship. Davidic kingship, the Omride dynasty of Omri, Ahab and Jezebel, the dynasty of Jehu, the bureaucracy and social classes, royal and non-royal women, and the army, weighing the hostile Biblical portrayal against archaeology.

Persian government under Darius and Xerxes. Darius I's reorganisation into about 20 satrapies, the satrap, the hazarapatis and King's Eye as checks on satrapal power, standardised law, coinage and weights, the Royal Road and angareion relay, and the administration of subject peoples.

Persian economy under Darius and Xerxes. Agriculture and crafts, the satrapal tribute system (Herodotus 3.89-95), the daric and siglos coinage, the royal treasuries at Susa, Persepolis and Ecbatana, and technology, including qanats and the Royal Road.

Persian social and political organisation under Darius and Xerxes. The king's role and image as Ahura Mazda's agent, the status of royal women Atossa and Amestris, the Seven noble houses, the satrapal bureaucracy, and the hierarchy down to the Persepolis kurtash labourers.

Ramesside kingship and Ma'at, Ramesses II's warrior-king image and deification, the viziers of north and south, the rising Amun priesthood, and the army's divisions, chariotry and Sherden mercenaries at Kadesh (c. 1274 BC) and against the Sea Peoples.

Han art, technology and culture. Papermaking and Cai Lun, Zhang Heng's seismograph and armillary sphere, the crossbow trigger, the wheelbarrow, water-powered ironworking, Mawangdui lacquerware, the Flying Horse of Gansu, jade burial suits, the fu rhapsody, Sima Qian and Ban Gu, and Han music.

Social structure in Ramesside Egypt: royal women (Nefertari, Tuya, Tausret), non-royal women's legal rights, the Deir el-Medina scribes and crew, agricultural workers, and the strikes, tomb robbery and corruption of the later New Kingdom.

Religion in Periclean Athens: Athena Polias and the Olympian gods, the Great Panathenaia and the City Dionysia, the Eleusinian Mysteries, priesthoods and oracles, and the demosion sema and Pericles' Funeral Oration (Thucydides 2.34-46) as evidence.

Minoan religious ideology and practice. Household shrines, peak sanctuaries and sacred caves, the debated "Mother Goddess"/snake-goddess figurines, the bull cult and horns of consecration, the double axe, priestesses, and the contested evidence for human sacrifice at Anemospilia and Knossos.

Persia's army and navy under Darius and Xerxes. The multi-ethnic levy, the 10,000 Immortals, cavalry, the Phoenician, Ionian, Egyptian and Cypriot navy, command structure, and the management of subject peoples through satraps, hostages and local elites, with Herodotus's Greek bias flagged throughout.

Periclean Athens: the geography of Attica, Athens and the Piraeus, the Pentekontaetia after the Persian Wars, the rise of Pericles from 461 BC, and the nature, range and limits of the sources - Thucydides, the Old Oligarch, Aristotle, Plutarch, comedy, inscriptions and archaeology.

Economy of Periclean Athens: the Laurion silver mines and mining slavery, the owl tetradrachm, the Piraeus and Black Sea grain trade, the agora, liturgies (trierarchy, choregia), and how tribute (phoros) funded the city.

The HSC Ancient History dot point on Ramesside religion: Amun-Re's dominance and his increasingly independent Theban priesthood, the state pantheon of Ptah, Ra and Seth, the distinctive rise of personal piety (votive stelae, hearing-ear chapels, the Amenhotep I oracle, household magic) and the Opet, Valley and Heb-Sed festivals.

Athens under Pericles: the sovereign ekklesia, the boule of 500 and dikasteria (both filled by lot), jury pay, the elected strategoi, ostracism, the graphe paranomon, Pericles' reforms, and the critique of the Old Oligarch, Plato and Aristotle.

Athenian social structure under Pericles: the citizen body and the 451/0 BC citizenship law, the Cleisthenic tribes and demes, the residual Solonian property classes, metics, the scale of slavery including Laurion, and social mobility for non-citizens.

Helot economy and the krypteia. The kleros and syssitia, Tyrtaeus and Plutarch on Helot rents, Thucydides 4.80 on Spartan fear, the ephors' declaration of war, the 464 BC revolt, and the verdicts of de Ste Croix, Cartledge, Hodkinson, Figueira and Whitby.

Prophets in Israelite society. Elijah and Elisha's clash with the Baal cult under the Omrides, Amos and Hosea's warnings before the 722 BC fall of Samaria, the social structure of landowners, merchants and the rural poor they expose, and how to read the prophetic books as sources.

The HSC Ancient History dot point on New Kingdom Egyptian social structure to the death of Amenhotep III: royal women (the Great Royal Wife, the God's Wife of Amun, Ahmose-Nefertari and Tiye), non-royal women's legal rights and work, the prestige of scribes, the Deir el-Medina artisans, agricultural workers, and the debated extent of slavery.

Israel's context: the geography and resources of the southern Levant, the United Monarchy under Solomon, the division into Israel and Judah, the Omride dynasty, the fall of Samaria in 722 BC, and the range and limits of the Hebrew Bible, archaeology and Assyrian annals.

Athenian women under Pericles, covering legal status and seclusion, the oikos, marriage and dowry, childbirth and children, boys' and girls' education, housing, food, the symposium and hetairai, health and medicine, and the source problem.

The HSC Ancient History Section II context dot point on Ramesside Egypt: the Delta-to-Nubia geography, the 19th-20th Dynasty framework from Seti I to Ramesses XI (c. 1292-1069 BC) and Pi-Ramesses, and the unusually rich Deir el-Medina source base, with its uses and limits.

Great Rhetra and the Lycurgan reforms: the Rhetra's clauses, the eunomia, the historicity question, and the ancient source base (Plutarch, Herodotus, Tyrtaeus, Xenophon, Aristotle).

New Kingdom Egypt's government: the pharaoh's roles and images, Ma'at, royal titulary, the vizier (Rekhmire, Ramose), the High Priest of Amun, treasury officials, the viceroy of Kush, and the professionalising Eighteenth Dynasty army under Amenhotep III.

Minoan Crete: the geography of the island, the Prepalatial-Protopalatial-Neopalatial chronology and Evans's EM/MM/LM system, the palace sites of Knossos, Phaistos, Malia and Zakros, Evans's excavations from 1900, and the sources' nature, range and limits, including Linear A/B, frescoes, myth and Keftiu.

New Kingdom religious ideology and practice to the death of Amenhotep III. Amun-Re, the Theban triad, the sun cults of Re, the wealth of the Amun priesthood, the Opet festival, the Beautiful Feast of the Valley, Amenhotep III's Heb-Sed jubilees, and the architecture of Karnak and Luxor.

Persian religious policy under Darius and Xerxes. Ahura Mazda and royal ideology, the contested dating of Zoroaster, Xerxes's daiva inscription, the Magi and fire ritual, the rock tombs at Naqsh-e Rustam, and the tolerance of Marduk and Yahweh worship.

Israel from Solomon to the fall of Samaria: the value and limits of the Hebrew Bible as a source, the minimalist/low-chronology (Finkelstein, Thompson) versus maximalist/traditional (Dever, Mazar) debate over the 'Solomonic' buildings, monotheism, and everyday life.

Cultural life - the Periclean building program (the Parthenon 447-432 BC, Propylaea, Erechtheion, Athena Promachos), Phidias's sculpture, red-figure pottery, tragedy and comedy, and the funding controversy in Plutarch's Life of Pericles 12-14.

Religious ideology and practice in Israel, Solomon to the fall of Samaria. Polytheism, the worship of Ba'al and Yahweh, the Kuntillet Ajrud inscriptions and household figurines, the roles of priests and prophets, and the Jerusalem Temple, Bethel, Dan and the high places.

Han foreign relations. The Xiongnu confederation, heqin appeasement then Emperor Wu's wars, Zhang Qian's missions opening the Silk Road, the tributary system's spread into Central Asia, Korea and the south, and the evaluation of the Shiji, Hanshu and the "golden age"/Rome debate.

Han China's context: the geography of the Han heartland, Liu Bang's founding of the dynasty in 202 BC, the Western Han, Wang Mang's interregnum, Emperor Wu's reign, and the range and limits of sources from Sima Qian and Ban Gu to the Mawangdui tombs.

Death and burial in Ramesside Egypt: ka, ba and akh, the weighing of the heart, mummification at its technical peak, the Book of the Dead, Amduat, Book of Gates and Book of Caverns, and the tombs of Seti I (KV17), Nefertari (QV66) and Deir el-Medina.

New Kingdom Egyptian culture to Amenhotep III: wisdom literature, hymns, tales and love poetry, the medical Papyrus Ebers, hieroglyphic and hieratic scripts and scribal training, the canon of proportion, and Amenhotep III's monumental art including the Colossi of Memnon.

Everyday and cultural life in Achaemenid Persia under Darius I and Xerxes, dress, food, education, the status of royal and non-royal women, and court luxury, plus the Evaluation group: the Greek-lens distortion of Persia versus the revisionist Achaemenid History school (Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Briant, Kuhrt) and the limits of the evidence.

Minoan economic activities. The Mediterranean triad, craft specialisation, the palace redistributive economy of Knossos's magazines and pithoi, overseas contacts, and the debated Minoan thalassocracy.

Economy of New Kingdom Egypt to the death of Amenhotep III. The Nile's inundation and farming year, taxation, booty and tribute from Nubia and the Levant, the Punt trading tradition, the redistributive temple and state economy without coinage, and technology including shadufs and canals.

Ramesside Egypt: the distortion risk of the exceptionally rich Deir el-Medina evidence, survival bias toward temple and funerary sources, the Kadesh 'victory' exposed by the peace treaty, and the historiographical debates over death, slavery and decline.

Han religious ideology and practice - ancestor worship and filial piety, the Mandate of Heaven and state sacrifice, Confucian orthodoxy, Daoism and immortality, yin-yang and the Five Phases, funerary belief from Mawangdui, and the arrival of Buddhism.