BAR takes a look back at some important events in history that happened during
the months of July and August.
July 2–4, 1187 C.E. Saladin defeats the Crusaders at the Battle of the Horns of Hattin in a decisive victory that soon brought about the end of the Second Crusade.
July 15, 1799 Capt. Bouchard, an officer of Napoleon, discovers the Rosetta Stone near the Nile River in Egypt.
July 21, 1993 Gila Cook finds fragment A of the Tel Dan stela, including an inscription about the “House of David,” at the Tel Dan excavations led by Avraham Biran.
July 30, 634 C.E. A decisive battle of the Arab conquest occurs when Byzantine and Islamic forces fight at the Battle of Ajnadain between Jerusalem and Gaza.
August 2, 47 B.C.E. Julius Caesar defeats Pharnaces, king of Pontus, at Zela. His dispatch to the Roman Senate was the now-famous line: Veni, vidi, vici (“I came, I saw, I conquered!”).
9 Av (August 3, in 2006) Traditional date of the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem (by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C.E. and by the Romans under Titus in 70 C.E.).
August 10, 30 B.C.E. Cleopatra, distraught over the suicide of her lover, Marc Antony, and the onslaught of Octavian (Augustus), takes her own life, reputedly by the bite from a venomous asp.
August 24, 79 C.E. Mount Vesuvius erupts, destroying the Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum and killing Pliny the Elder.
