Ancient History

Ancient history is the study of human civilisations from the earliest written records through to the fall of the western Roman Empire in the fifth century CE. Its geographical scope is the ancient Mediterranean world and its neighbours, from the Persian Gulf to Britain and from the Crimea to the Sahara, and its chronological range encompasses the archaic Greek city-states of the eighth century BCE, the Persian Empire, classical Athens, Hellenistic kingdoms, Republican and Imperial Rome, and the cultures of Carthage, Egypt, Judea and many others that interacted with and shaped these major powers. At the University of St Andrews, this four-year full-time MA programme explores this extraordinary span of history with scholarly depth and rigour.

You will engage with primary sources in translation alongside the scholarship that interprets them, developing the analytical and critical skills that historical inquiry demands. The programme draws on inscriptions, papyri, literary texts, coins and archaeological evidence alongside the more familiar written sources, giving you a genuine sense of the variety of ways in which knowledge of the ancient world is constructed. A year abroad is built into the programme, extending your academic formation and giving you the opportunity to engage with ancient history scholarship in a different national and academic context.

Ancient history graduates develop a set of intellectual skills, rigorous analysis, engagement with complex evidence, and the construction of persuasive written arguments, that are valued across a wide range of careers. Teaching, academic research, archaeology, heritage and museum work, law, journalism, the civil service, publishing and arts administration are all natural directions. Many graduates go on to postgraduate study in ancient history, classical archaeology, Greek or Latin, medieval history, or philosophy, where the analytical foundations of the undergraduate degree support serious and specialised advanced work.