History DatedHistory / Antiquity

* Since [[Literature/TheHistories Herodotus]], historians generally assumed that the pyramids were built by slaves, because they couldn't imagine so many people working such a massive, back-breaking job voluntarily. This was exploded when archaeologists discovered contracts and other evidence showing that the pyramid builders were almost all free men. The pyramids were not just tombs but also public works projects intended to give underemployed farmers something to do in the off season, when the Nile fields were underwater. Virtually every fiction showing AncientEgypt (or a {{expy}}, like ''Film/{{Stargate}}'', ''Film/TenThousandBC'', ''[[Recap/FuturamaS3E17APharaohToRemember Futurama]]'', ''[[Recap/RecessS2E16PharaohBob Recess]]''...) gets this wrong.

* On the sacrifices themselves, ''Salammbô'' and ''Cabiria'' draw from the writings of Greco-Roman authors Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch to show mass, public sacrifices of children five-years-old and up, perpetrated by the Carthaginian priests, by burning them alive on a giant furnace inside a statue, while crowds play loud music and chants to drown out the cries of the victims and their families. However excavations at the Carthage ''tophet'' and elsewhere have found only remains of newborns that were burned and buried in individual shrines, suggesting that this was a private affair by the children's own parents. This in turn engendered a vivid, unsolved debate on the nature and meaning of the sacrifices; a revisionist school beginning in TheSeventies in Italy and Tunisia even argues that these aren't sacrifices at all, but tombs for stillbirths and young children dead from natural causes, and that claims of live sacrifice are Roman propaganda. Other researchers who believe that children were sacrificed concede that the most lurid, accusatory accounts like the above were written over a century after the fall of Carthage, while contemporary authors including Creator/{{Sophocles}} and Creator/{{Plato}} only mention the practice in passing, or as something they just considered [[BlueAndOrangeMorality weird]].

* In ''Literature/TheHistories'', Herodotus expresses his skepticism about a Phoenician expedition said to have been commissioned by Pharaoh Necho to sail around Africa, because the Phoenicians claimed that ''"as they sailed on a westerly course round the southern end of Libya (Africa), they had the sun on their right".'' Today this detail is the strongest evidence for the story being real, as this is indeed what would happen if they were in the Southern Hemisphere.

** Same mistake was made with other civilizations. ''The Egyptian'', ''Land of the Pharaohs'', ''[[Film/TheTenCommandments1956 The Ten Commandments]]'', ''Film/{{Cleopatra}}'' all were proudly shot on Ancient Egyptian locations or sets based on their presently ruined, sandy-colored condition instead of showing the brightly colored paintings they were covered in. For example, today we know thay the Sphynx used to be mostly painted red.

** The Roman building set in ''VideoGame/AgeOfEmpiresI'' (1997) is almost completely white, excluding a few decorative elements that change color with the player to indicate ownership; even the roofs are white (though not in the Greek building set's case, oddly enough). In the 2018 ''Definitive Edition'' remake, however, Roman buildings are much more colorful, with red tile roofing and painted columns among others.
** Same mistake was made with other civilizations. ''Film/TheEgyptian'', ''Land of the Pharaohs'', ''[[Film/TheTenCommandments1956 The Ten Commandments]]'', ''Film/{{Cleopatra}}'' all were proudly shot on Ancient Egyptian locations or sets based on their presently ruined, sandy-colored condition instead of showing the brightly colored paintings they were covered in. For example, the Sphynx would have been mostly painted red.
** The bare gray and black stone appearance of Mesoamerican buildings was also taken at face value, until it was discovered that they were originally covered in plaster and painted bright colors like red and white. Thus the {{Mayincatec}} building set of ''Videogame/AgeOfEmpiresII'', released in 2000 and based on Palenque, is fully made of bare stone and even has some vines growing on it despite representing inhabited and functional buildings. For the ''Definitive Edition'' remake in 2019, the makers kept the original appearance, but [[DevelopmentGag acknowledged the mistake]] by giving faded painted colors to the Aztec and Mayan Wonders and the new Fortified Towers. The Aztecs in ''Videogame/AgeOfEmpiresIII'' (2006), on the other hand, received a brightly colored set based on Aztec codices from the beginning.

* On the sacrifices themselves, ''Salammbô'' and ''Cabiria'' draw from the writings of Greco-Roman authors Diodorus Siculus and Plutarch to show mass, public sacrifices of children five-years-old and up, perpetrated by the Carthaginian priests, by burning them alive on a giant furnace inside a statue, while crowds play loud music and chants to drown out the cries of the victims and their families. However excavations at the Carthage ''tophet'' and elsewhere have found only remains of newborns that were burned and buried in individual shrines, suggesting that this was a private affair by the children's own parents. This in turn engendered a vivid, unsolved debate on the nature and meaning of the sacrifices; a revisionist school beginning in TheSeventies in Italy and Tunisia even argues that these aren't sacrifices at all, but tombs for stillbirths and young children dead from natural causes, and that claims of live sacrifice are Roman propaganda. Other researchers who believe that children were sacrificed concede that the most lurid, accusatory accounts like the above were written over a century after the fall of Carthage, while contemporary authors including Creator/{{Sophocles}} and Creator/{{Plato}} only mention the practice in passing, or as something that was, at most, [[BlueAndOrangeMorality weird]].

* In ''Literature/TheHistories'', Herodotus expresses his skepticism about a Phoenician expedition said to have been commissioned by Pharaoh Necho to sail around Africa, because the Phoenicians claimed that "as they sailed on a westerly course round the southern end of Libya (Africa), they had the sun on their right". Today this detail is the strongest evidence for the story being real, as this is indeed what would happen if they were in the Southern Hemisphere.

* Carthage was not salted after the Third Punic War, as its fertile lands were something the Roman elite were eager to get, and neither was Milan by Frederick Barbarossa over a thousand years later. The idea appears to come from confusion over a Medieval order calling for the city of Palestrina to be ploughed over "like Carthage", and ''also'' salted. Carthage itself was certainly ploughed over, but the idea of it being salted doesn't turn up until the 19th century.