QCE Ancient History exam 2026Exam: Tue 27 Oct · QCAA timetable
Your QCE Ancient History exam:
When and how long
- Ancient HistoryAfternoon session2 h plus 15 min perusal or planning time
QCAA's timetable sets the day and the morning (AM) or afternoon (PM) session, not a start time: your school tells you when to arrive. Durations are working time plus perusal or planning time.
Source: QCAA external assessment timetable 2026 (QCAA), checked Wednesday 23 September 2026. Where a start time, reading time or duration isn't shown, the timetable doesn't publish it: check your personal timetable and the front of your paper.
What the exam covers
We don't have past-paper frequency data for this exam, so here is the course, module by module. Make sure every module is covered.
Night-before and exam-morning checklists
The night before
- QCAA's timetable fixes the day and the AM or PM session only: confirm the start time and venue with your school.[2]
- Check your calculator is on QCAA's approved list for the subject.[1]
- Pack a clear plastic container or zip-lock bag: black or blue pens, pencils, eraser, sharpener, a highlighter.[1]
- An ordinary watch only if you want one (no smart watch or fitness tracker); it goes on the desk.[1]
- Pack a water bottle (it stays on the floor).[1]
Exam morning
- Arrive at least 30 minutes before the start.[1]
- Switch your phone off and leave it in your bag outside the room.[1]
- More than 40 minutes late needs permission, and you lose perusal and planning time.[1]
- During perusal and planning time, don't write in the response book or touch your calculator.[1]
- You can't leave in the first 40 minutes or the last 10 minutes.[1]
Exam-week survival kit: The last 7 days · The night before and exam morning · What to bring, and what's banned · How to use reading time · If you're sick or something goes wrong · Handling exam-week stress.
Last-week revision
QCE Ancient History cram sheet
Key formulas, definitions and facts copied from our Ancient History syllabus pages. One page when printed.
Unit 3: Reconstructing the ancient world (Cities of Vesuvius: Pompeii and Herculaneum)
Eumachia, a public priestess, financed a large building on the Pompeii forum and was honoured with an inscribed statue set up by the fullers. She is direct evidence that elite women in a Roman town could hold religious office and act as public benefactors, even though they could not vote or hold magistracies.
Giuseppe Fiorelli, director from 1863, both professionalised excavation (introducing the region-insula-house numbering still used) and invented the plaster-cast technique by pouring plaster into the cavities left by decomposed bodies, turning the victims into the most recognisable evidence of the disaster.
Unit 4: People, power and authority (Julius Caesar)
Caesar's own Commentarii de Bello Gallico is our fullest source for the conquest of Gaul, yet it is also self-promotion: written in the detached third person to seem objective, it justifies the war and magnifies Caesar's role. Strong answers use it for detail while flagging its bias.
Octavian declared war in 32 BC on Cleopatra alone, not on Antony. By framing the conflict as a foreign war against an Egyptian queen rather than a civil war between Romans, he both legitimised his cause and created the enduring propaganda image of Cleopatra as a foreign threat.
Caesar's name became a title. After his deification and the rise of his heir Augustus, Caesar passed into the imperial titulature, and from it derive the later words Kaiser and Tsar. The man who never took the title king gave the European languages their word for emperor.