A reading list for anyone who wants to go further than the essays, organised by civilisation. Each entry is a book I’ve read, or used and referenced at some point, where I have included a brief line on what the book does, or what it could be used for, aside from existing for entertainment value for those of us that like to explore history.

This isn’t a bibliography of everything I’ve ever read or cited in my time, and it certainly is not a canon. Some of these are what I would consider the standard reference in their field, ones you may encounter heavily within academia or further education. I feel like some of these are simply the best way into a topic, and where a section is thin, this reflects what I have found useful so far rather than what exists, as again, this list is far from exhaustive.

Greece

I would recommend you start with Pomeroy for the narrative, followed by Burkert for the religion. Gantz is not a book you read through in my opinion and is more of a reference book.

• Sarah B. Pomeroy, A Brief History of Ancient GreeceA survey by the scholar whose Goddesses, Whores, Wives, and Slaves (1975) effectively founded the study of women in antiquity.
• Walter Burkert, Greek Religion (1985)The dominant modern account, and unusually honest about how much Greek religion owes the Near East.
• Timothy Gantz, Early Greek Myth (1993)Source-by-source, every variant of every myth. Indispensable and not remotely readable cover to cover.
• Richard Buxton, Imaginary Greece (1994)Myth read through the society that told it rather than as a closed system of stories.
• Sarah B. Pomeroy, Spartan Women (2002)The women who owned two-fifths of Sparta, and why Aristotle found that alarming.
• Helen Morales, Classical Mythology: A Very Short IntroductionShort, and good on why myth stays useful to people who no longer believe it.
• Jennifer March, Dictionary of Classical MythologyThe reference behind most of the mythology writing here.

Rome

Woolf is a great start for what an empire was, and Wallace-Hadrill for what the empire looked like on the ground.

• Greg Woolf, Rome: An Empire’s StoryEmpire as something Romans kept having to explain to themselves, not a thing they simply possessed.
• Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (1994)How domestic space encodes status. The book that made Roman houses legible.
• Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, Rome’s Cultural Revolution (2008)A city rebuilt as an argument about who now held power.
• Anthony Birley, Hadrian: The Restless Emperor (1997)The essential modern biography of the emperor who decided where Rome would stop.
• Penelope Allison, Pompeian Households (2004)Spatial analysis asking who was inside the room.
• Sara Elise Phang, The Marriage of Roman Soldiers (2001)Marriage law against the reality of soldiers’ families.
• David M. Gwynn, The Roman Republic: A Very Short Introduction (2012)The constitutional machinery, compressed.
• Marcus Aurelius, MeditationsWritten in Greek, by a Roman emperor, for nobody.
• Cassius Dio, Roman HistoryA Greek senator writing Rome’s history in his own language, and the only source for a good deal of it.
• Ovid, MetamorphosesThe reason many classical myths survive in the shape we know them.
• The Vindolanda TabletsInk on shaved wood from the northern frontier, because papyrus was too expensive to waste on soldiers.

Egypt

• Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses of Ancient Egypt (2003)The standard illustrated reference to a pantheon that resists being tidied.
• Geraldine Pinch, Magic in Ancient Egypt (1994)Magic treated as a working technology rather than a curiosity.

Nubia and Kush

• Laszlo Torok, The Kingdom of Kush (1997)The most detailed modern synthesis of a state that ruled Egypt and then outlived it.
• Derek Welsby, The Kingdom of Kush (1996)The archaeological account, from the British Museum’s excavator in the Sudan.
• David Edwards, The Nubian Past (2004)Nubia on its own terms rather than as Egypt’s southern problem.

West Africa

• Nehemia Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali (1973)Still the starting point for the gold-and-salt empires.

Mesopotamia

• Marc Van De Mieroop, A History of the Ancient Near East (2015)3rd edition. The standard textbook, and the one to read first.
• Thorkild Jacobsen, The Treasures of Darkness (1976)Mesopotamian religion as a metaphor that changed shape over three thousand years.

The Hittites

• Volkert Haas, Geschichte der hethitischen Religion (1994)The standard history of Hittite religion. German only.
• Piotr Taracha, Religions of Second Millennium AnatoliaThe accessible English survey.

Persia

• Touraj Daryaee, Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (2009)The empire that fought Rome to a standstill for four centuries and is barely taught.

Carthage

• Serge Lancel, Carthage: A History (1995)By the archaeologist who excavated it, which shows.

India

• Gavin Flood, An Introduction to Hinduism (1996)The standard scholarly introduction.
• Wendy Doniger, The Hindus: An Alternative History (2009)As controversial in India as it is influential outside it, and it helps to know why.
• Wendy Doniger, Hindu Myths (1975)The Penguin selection, well translated.

China

• Mark Edward Lewis, The Early Chinese Empires: Qin and Han (2007)The best single volume on the period, and the one this site leans on most.
• Michael Loewe, The Government of the Qin and Han Empires (2006)How the bureaucracy actually worked.
• Anne Birrell, Chinese Mythology: An Introduction (1993)The standard English gateway to the material.

Japan

• Donald L. Philippi, Kojiki (1968)The standard annotated English translation.
• W. G. Aston, Nihongi (1896)Old, and still the standard English Nihon Shoki.

The Norse world

• Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology (1993)The reference to own if you own one.
• John Lindow, Norse Mythology: A Guide (2001)The most used English guide, and the more readable of the two.
• E. O. G. Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North (1964)Older, and still unmatched on the religion as practised.

The Mongols

• David Morgan, The Mongols (2007)2nd edition. The standard short history.

Mesoamerica

• Miguel Leon-Portilla, Aztec Thought and Culture (1963)The foremost interpretation of Nahua thought from indigenous sources. Romanticised in places, and still essential.
• Camilla Townsend, Fifth Sun (2019)The Aztec past rewritten from Nahuatl annals rather than Spanish accounts. The best recent book on this list.
• Alfredo Lopez Austin, The Human Body and Ideology (1988)Nahua conceptions of body, soul and afterlife.
• Michael E. Smith, The Aztecs (2003)Urbanism and everyday life, from the archaeology.
• Robert Sharer, The Ancient Maya (2006)With Loa Traxler. The comprehensive single-volume Maya reference.

The Andes

• Terence D’Altroy, The Incas (2002)The standard single-volume account of the Inca state.
• Sabine MacCormack, Religion in the Andes (1991)Memory, vision and religion in early colonial Peru.

This list grows. If something obvious is missing, or you want a recommendation on where to start with a period that is not here yet, send it through and I will add it.