Battles BC | |
---|---|
Genre | Documentary |
Directed by | David Padrusch |
Country of origin | United States |
Original language | English |
No. of seasons | 1 |
No. of episodes | 8 |
Production | |
Executive producer | Gabriel Gornell |
Running time | 60 minutes |
Original release | |
Release | March 9 – May 1, 2009 |
Battles BC is a 2009 documentary series looking at key battles in ancient history. The show was known for its very gritty nature, visual effects similar to the film 300 and its highly choreographed fight scenes with various weapons [1]
The eight episode series was created and produced by Four In Hand Entertainment Group for the History Channel led by Executive Producers Gabriel Gornell and David Padrusch. [2] Title graphics, Motion design and graphics were produced by the team at Motive NYC led by creative director Chris Valentino for the History Channel marketing and programming departments. [3]
Original Airdate: 3/09/2009
This episode follows the career of Hannibal. It focuses on his hatred of Rome and his three dramatic victories at Trebia, Trasimene, and Cannae.
Original Airdate: 3/16/2009
This episode follows the story of the Jewish King David's rise from obscurity to greatness. "Giant Slayer" is not only a reference to Goliath, but also to the great odds David faced throughout his life. It uses the Bible as a main source of material.
Original Airdate: 3/23/2009
This episode follows the story of the Joshua as he leads the Israelite people back to the Promised Land. It tells of the sieges and subsequent massacres at Ai and Jericho. It also gives a theoretical explanation for the destruction of the Walls of Jericho.
Original Airdate: 3/30/2009
This episode focuses on the Battle of Alesia. It describes the famous double-sided fortifications created by Julius Caesar that besieged Vercingetorix's forces on one side and protected Caesar's flanks from reinforcements.
Original Airdate: 4/13/2009
This episode follows the story of the Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt. The episode describes the Israelites not as slaves, but as a warrior class within Egypt. It uses the Bible and historical documents as a main source of material.
Original Airdate: 4/19/2009
This episode focuses on the Indian campaigns of Alexander the Great. It goes into great detail of Battle of the Hydaspes.
Original Airdate: 4/26/2009
This episode focuses on the clash between Egyptian Pharaoh Ramesses II and the Hittite Emperor Muwatalli II at the Battle of Kadesh.
Original Airdate: 5/01/2009
This episode focuses on the Battle of Marathon, the ill-fated invasion of Greece by Persian king Darius I.
Ammon was an ancient Semitic-speaking kingdom occupying the east of the Jordan River, between the torrent valleys of Arnon and Jabbok, in present-day Jordan. The chief city of the country was Rabbah or Rabbat Ammon, site of the modern city of Amman, Jordan's capital. Milcom and Molech are named in the Hebrew Bible as the gods of Ammon. The people of this kingdom are called Children of Ammon or Ammonites.
The Ark of the Covenant, also known as the Ark of the Testimony or the Ark of God, is believed to have been the most sacred religious relic of the Israelites. It is described as a wooden chest coated in pure gold and topped off by an elaborate golden lid known as the mercy seat. According to the Book of Exodus and First Book of Kings in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, the Ark contained the Tablets of the Law, by which God delivered the Ten Commandments to Moses at Mount Sinai. According to the Book of Exodus, the Book of Numbers, and the Epistle to the Hebrews in the New Testament, it also contained Aaron's rod and a pot of manna.
The Book of Chronicles is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books in the Christian Old Testament. Chronicles is the final book of the Hebrew Bible, concluding the third section of the Jewish Tanakh, the Ketuvim ("Writings"). It contains a genealogy starting with Adam and a history of ancient Judah and Israel up to the Edict of Cyrus in 539 BC.
The Book of Joshua is the sixth book in the Hebrew Bible and the Old Testament, and is the first book of the Deuteronomistic history, the story of Israel from the conquest of Canaan to the Babylonian exile. It tells of the campaigns of the Israelites in central, southern and northern Canaan, the destruction of their enemies, and the division of the land among the Twelve Tribes, framed by two set-piece speeches, the first by God commanding the conquest of the land, and, at the end, the second by Joshua warning of the need for faithful observance of the Law (torah) revealed to Moses.
The Book of Numbers is the fourth book of the Hebrew Bible and the fourth of five books of the Jewish Torah. The book has a long and complex history; its final form is possibly due to a Priestly redaction of a Yahwistic source made sometime in the early Persian period. The name of the book comes from the two censuses taken of the Israelites.
The Book of Kings is a book in the Hebrew Bible, found as two books in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. It concludes the Deuteronomistic history, a history of ancient Israel also including the books of Joshua, Judges, and Samuel.
Marcus Antonius, commonly known in English as Mark Antony, was a Roman politician and general who played a critical role in the transformation of the Roman Republic from a constitutional republic into the autocratic Roman Empire.
The Philistines were an ancient people who lived on the south coast of Canaan during the Iron Age in a confederation of city-states generally referred to as Philistia.
Goliath is a Philistine warrior in the Book of Samuel. Descriptions of Goliath's immense stature vary among biblical sources, with the Masoretic Text describing him as 9 feet 9 inches (2.97 m) tall. According to the text, Goliath issued a challenge to the Israelites, daring them to send forth a champion to engage him in single combat; he was ultimately defeated by the young shepherd David, employing a sling and stone as a weapon. The narrative signified King Saul's unfitness to rule, as Saul himself should have fought for Israel.
Canaan was a Semitic-speaking civilization and region of the Southern Levant in the Ancient Near East during the late 2nd millennium BC. Canaan had significant geopolitical importance in the Late Bronze Age Amarna Period as the area where the spheres of interest of the Egyptian, Hittite, Mitanni, and Assyrian Empires converged or overlapped. Much of present-day knowledge about Canaan stems from archaeological excavation in this area at sites such as Tel Hazor, Tel Megiddo, En Esur, and Gezer.
Cleopatra VII Thea Philopator was Queen of the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt from 51 to 30 BC, and its last active ruler. A member of the Ptolemaic dynasty, she was a descendant of its founder Ptolemy I Soter, a Macedonian Greek general and companion of Alexander the Great. Her first language was Koine Greek, and she is the only Ptolemaic ruler known to have learned the Egyptian language. After her death, Egypt became a province of the Roman Empire, marking the end of the last Hellenistic-period state in the Mediterranean, a period which had lasted since the reign of Alexander.
The New Chronology is an alternative chronology of the ancient Near East developed by English Egyptologist David Rohl and other researchers beginning with A Test of Time: The Bible - from Myth to History in 1995. It contradicts mainstream Egyptology by proposing a major revision of the established Egyptian chronology, in particular by re-dating Egyptian kings of the Nineteenth through Twenty-fifth Dynasties, bringing forward conventional dating by up to 350 years. Rohl asserts that the New Chronology allows him to identify some of the characters in the Hebrew Bible with people whose names appear in archaeological finds.
Herod Archelaus was the ethnarch of Samaria, Judea, and Idumea, including the cities Caesarea and Jaffa, for nine years. He was the son of Herod the Great and Malthace the Samaritan, brother of Herod Antipas, and half-brother of Herod II. Archelaus came to power after the death of his father Herod the Great in 4 BC, and ruled over one-half of the territorial dominion of his father. Archelaus was removed by the Roman emperor Augustus when Judaea province was formed under direct Roman rule, at the time of the Census of Quirinius.
Bryant G. Wood is an American biblical archaeologist and Young Earth creationist. Wood is known for arguing that the destruction of Jericho could be accorded with the biblical literalist chronology of c. 1400 BC. This date is some 150 years later than the accepted date of c. 1550 BC, first determined by Kathleen Kenyon and subsequently confirmed with radiocarbon dating.
The Battle of Jericho, as described in the Biblical Book of Joshua, was the first battle fought by the Israelites in the course of the conquest of Canaan. According to Joshua 6:1–27, the walls of Jericho fell after the Israelites marched around the city walls once a day for six days, seven times on the seventh day, with the priests blowing their horns daily and the people shouting on the last day. Excavations at Tell es-Sultan, the biblical Jericho, have failed to find any traces of a city at the relevant time, which has led to a consensus among scholars that the story has its origins in the nationalist propaganda of much later kings of Judah and their claims to the territory of the Kingdom of Israel. The lack of archaeological evidence and the composition, history and theological purposes of the Book of Joshua have led archaeologists like William G. Dever to characterise the story of the fall of Jericho as "invented out of whole cloth".
The Bible makes reference to various pharaohs of Egypt. These include unnamed pharaohs in events described in the Torah, as well as several later named pharaohs, some of whom were historical or can be identified with historical pharaohs.
The Shepherd King is a 1923 American silent biblical epic film directed by J. Gordon Edwards and starring Violet Mersereau, Nerio Bernardi, and Guido Trento. It is a film adaptation of a 1904 Broadway play by Wright Lorimer and Arnold Reeves. The film depicts the biblical story of David (Bernardi), a shepherd prophesied to replace Saul (Trento) as king. David is invited into Saul's court, but eventually betrayed. He assembles an army that defeats the Philistines, becomes king after Saul's death in battle, and marries Saul's daughter Michal (Mersereau).
War in the Hebrew Bible concerns any military engagement narrated or discussed in the Hebrew Bible, also known as the Tanakh or Old Testament of the Bible. Texts about war in the Hebrew Bible are part of the broader topic of The Bible and violence. They cover a wide range of topics from detailed battle reports including weapons and tactics used, numbers of combatants involved, and casualties experienced, to discussions of motives and justifications for war, the sacred and secular aspects of war, descriptions and considerations of what in modern times would be considered war crimes such as genocide or wartime sexual violence, and reflections on wars that have happened, or predictions, visions or imaginations of wars that are yet to come.
Joshua 3 is the third chapter of the Book of Joshua in the Hebrew Bible or in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. According to Jewish tradition, the book was attributed to the Joshua, with additions by the high priests Eleazar and Phinehas, but modern scholars view it as part of the Deuteronomistic History, which spans the books of Deuteronomy to 2 Kings, attributed to nationalistic and devotedly Yahwistic writers during the time of the reformer Judean king Josiah in 7th century BCE. This chapter focuses on the Israelites crossing the Jordan River westward into the land of Canaan under the leadership of Joshua, a part of a section comprising Joshua 1:1–5:12 about the entry to the land of Canaan.
Joshua 9 is the ninth chapter of the Book of Joshua in the Hebrew Bible or in the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. According to Jewish tradition the book was attributed to the Joshua, with additions by the high priests Eleazar and Phinehas, but modern scholars view it as part of the Deuteronomistic History, which spans the books of Deuteronomy to 2 Kings, attributed to nationalistic and devotedly Yahwistic writers during the time of the reformer Judean king Josiah in 7th century BC. This chapter focuses on the deception by the people of Gibeon to avoid annihilation by having a treaty with the people of Israel under the leadership of Joshua, a part of a section comprising Joshua 5:13–12:24 about the conquest of Canaan.