Reproduction of a press from Gutenberg's time The invention of the European printing press with moveable type in northern Europe in the late 1400s AD was no accident: publishers had set out to find [...]
Medieval Book (Cluny Museum, Paris) In the Early Middle Ages, as the Roman Empire was collapsing, the new power of Christianity inspired Augustine, in North Africa, and Pope Gregory the Great in Italy. They [...]
Shirij Madrassa, Fez, Morocco, about 1350 AD Who went to a madrassa? If you had done well at your maktab (elementary school), your parents might decide to send you on to a [...]
The poet Rumi (1200s AD) Arabic poetry has a long tradition in the Arabian peninsula even before the development of Islam. People composed and recited long poems that they remembered without writing down. [...]
Indian food: rice, chapatis, sauces, lentils A second poem: When to this self I was firmly attached, from me, hidden You were still staying. While I was seeking You, time [...]
Cotton bolls hanging from the plants I began as a bloom of cotton, outdoors. Then they brought me to a room where they washed me. Then the hard strokes of the [...]
Spinning thread in the garden, like Lalla Arifa (1400s AD) Lalla Arifa growing up Lalla Arifa lived in the 1300s AD, in Kashmir, in northern India. Most people in medieval Kashmir [...]
Sappho, from a red-figure vase Sappho is the only woman from archaic or classical Greece whose writing has survived. (She is not the earliest woman writer. That honor goes to [...]
Archilochus: a bronze statuette of a Spartan man in armor, from about 500 BC When did Archilochus live? Archilochus was a poet who wrote in the 600s BC. He was [...]
The priestess Meretites hugs her husband, the singer Kahai (Saqqara, Old Kingdom Egypt) First written poems in Egypt By the time the New Kingdom started, about 1500 BC, many Egyptian [...]
