The Ptolemies made Alexandria the center of Greek learning. Its Library gathered scrolls from many lands, and on the island of Pharos rose a lighthouse more than 100 meters tall, one of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.
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In the Bible · c. AD 95 (by tradition) · Patmos, in the Aegean Sea
John on Patmos
On the small island of Patmos, off the coast of Asia Minor, John sees the visions written in the book of Revelation.
Deut 17:18–20
When he is seated on his royal throne, he must write for himself a copy of this instruction on a scroll in the presence of the Levitical priests. It is to remain with him, and he is to read from it all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the LORD his God by carefully observing all the words of this instruction and these statutes. Then his heart will not be exalted above his countrymen, and he will not turn aside from the commandment, to the right or to the left, in order that he and his sons may reign many years over his kingdom in Israel.At the same time in the world
After Alexander the Great, Egypt was ruled by the Ptolemies, Greek kings in Alexandria, and Greek became the common language of the eastern Mediterranean. The Septuagint (“the Seventy”) was for centuries the Bible of Greek-speaking Jews, and the New Testament writers often quote it. Here is the world of the 3rd century BC.
EgyptThe Library and the Lighthousec. 280 BC
Greece and RomeArchimedesc. 287–212 BC
In Syracuse on Sicily, Archimedes worked out the law of the lever and why things float, and calculated pi more closely than anyone before him. He was killed when the Romans took the city in 212 BC.
Greece and RomeHannibal against Rome218–201 BC
In the Second Punic War, Hannibal of Carthage crossed the Alps into Italy with an army and war elephants and defeated the Romans again and again. Rome won in the end and became the leading power of the western Mediterranean.
ChinaThe First Emperor221–210 BC
In 221 BC the king of Qin conquered the last rival states and became the First Emperor of a united China. He gave the whole land one script, one coinage and one set of weights, and was buried near today’s Xi’an with an army of life-size clay soldiers.
IndiaAshoka’s edictsreigned c. 268–232 BC
The Mauryan emperor Ashoka had edicts carved on rocks and pillars across India, urging non-violence and care for people and animals. One of them names Ptolemy II, the king under whom, by tradition, the Septuagint was begun.
The AmericasEl Miradorc. 300 BC – AD 150
In the forests of northern Guatemala, the Maya city of El Mirador raised La Danta, one of the largest pyramids in the world by volume, and linked itself to its neighbors with raised causeways.
Eastern Europe and the steppeScythian Neapolis3rd century BC
Pressed by the Sarmatians from the east, the Scythians withdrew into Crimea and built a new capital there, Scythian Neapolis, on the edge of today’s Simferopol.
