The Xiongnu or the Hun? From China to Rome to Ancient Egypt

In the previous episode we discussed the many wars that Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty fought against the Xiongnu, or the Hun, a nomadic people who occupied China's northern borderlands for centuries. But were the "Xiongnu" described in Chinese sources truly the same people as the "Hun" that Roman sources later reported as ravaging Europe? French scholar Joseph de Guignes proposed this identification in 1757, and Edward Gibbon adopted it in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," making...