Madonna and child (Donatello) Medieval families The way people thought about each other in the Middle Ages, everyone was involved in complicated systems of relationships with each other. The first relationships [...]
Who was Charlemagne? This is Charlemagne, or possibly his grandson (now in the Louvre Museum) What's Charlemagne's real name? Charlemagne's name is really Charles le Magne, or Charles the Great. [...]
Medieval Islamic people: A plate from the Fatimid period (1000s AD), Egypt Children in the medieval Islamic world Children in the Islamic Empire generally did what their parents did (as many [...]
Mamluks: A Mamluk inn for merchants in Cairo Mamluks were enslaved soldiers The Mamluks were originally enslaved bodyguards of the Abbasid caliphs of the Islamic Empire (the word "mamluk" just means "slave" in Arabic). Starting around 850 [...]
Ghaznavids: A minaret in Ghazni (Afghanistan), from about 1000 AD Abbasid soldiers Beginning in the 850s AD, the Abbasid caliphs of the Islamic Empire were looking for soldiers they would be able to trust, who [...]
Dancing woman from Mohenjo Daro, in what is now Pakistan Slavery in ancient India There were probably always slaves in India, but until about 1000 AD there were only a few people who were enslaved, [...]
The Cassandra myth: Ajax the Lesser drags Cassandra away from the statue of Athena Apollo curses Cassandra Cassandra was a priestess of Apollo in Troy before the Trojan War. She was very [...]
Greek slaves: An enslaved woman playing a kithara. You can tell she is a slave because she has short hair. What did Greek slaves work at? In ancient Greece, most [...]
Greek schools: The students stand before the teachers. Did ancient Greek kids go to school? Most Greek children never went to school at all. Girls, to begin with, always stayed [...]
Ancient Greek people: boys playingknucklebones (ca. 440-430 BC, now in the Getty Museum, Los Angeles) Like other Indo-European people, the Greeks had a general tendency to divide the world into [...]
