No- really!
No, they did not have a rocket that flies through the air.
The Chinese of the late Medieval Song Dynasty invented that.
But Hero of Alexandria's 'steam engine' used steam-driven nozzles operating on the principle of rocket power to make his 'steam engine' spin!
Hero of Alexandria did not invent the steam engine.
He invented the rocket!
Something to think about!
God loves you!
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson
P.S. but our modern rockets are descended from the fireworks rockets that actually fly through the air that Europe brought back from China! It is China that led us to land a man on the Moon! It is no coincidence that of all the countries that were unfallen in the late 19th Century, it was the one closest to China- Russia- that produced the scholar, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, that sent us into space in theory, leading others to send us into space in fact!