Glossary
The working words of the ancient world
Job titles, trades and terms from the series, each defined from the published archaeology and linked to the episode where the job is lived first-person.
bārû
Baru: the Mesopotamian diviner who read sheep livers. What the word means, how extispicy worked, and the clay liver models that survive.
Babylonia · c. 600 BC
aquarius (plural aquarii)
Aquarii: the water-men of ancient Rome. Who they were, what Frontinus's crews did inside the aqueducts, and the tombstone that names one.
Rome · c. AD 97
mulio (plural muliones)
Muliones: Rome's muleteers. The word, the daytime wagon ban that made their work nocturnal, and the Pompeii wall where they endorse a candidate.
Rome · 1st century BC law, staged c. 1st century AD
ālik Tilmun
Alik Tilmun means 'one who goes to Dilmun': the Gulf-going copper merchants of Old Babylonian Ur, including the much-reviewed Ea-nasir.
Mesopotamia · Old Babylonian, c. 1750 BC
kommerkiarios (plural kommerkiarioi)
Kommerkiarioi: Byzantium's customs officials. What the title meant, the lead seals they left, and the ambassador whose silks they took in 968.
Byzantium · 968 AD
fire gilding
Fire gilding explained: gold dissolved in mercury, painted onto bronze, and driven on with heat. How it worked and what it cost the gilder.
Viking Age · c. 900 AD
gokenin
Gokenin: the housemen of the Kamakura shogunate. The service-for-land bargain, and why the samurai of the documents is a litigant.
Japan · c. 1280 AD
Tyrian purple
Tyrian purple: the murex dye behind 'born to the purple'. The chemistry, the 12,000-snail arithmetic, and why emperors guarded the colour.
Carthage · c. 300 BC