The Cairo Geniza (spelt also as Genizah ) is the name given to a collection of Jewish manuscript fragments that was discovered in Cairo. It is estimated that there are over 350000 individual...
For me, archaeologists do not discover the past; they work on what remains. Archaeology is about our relationships with what is left of the past. And more – archaeology is the discipline of things –...
There have been many books over the eras that promise other worldly powers to those that read it. Many people could not read so the words on the paper were inherently mysterious. The knowledge gained...
A mysterious collection of nearly 100 manuscripts have been discovered in an Afghan Cave. An analysis of the texts revealed that they were owned by a Jewish family that lived along the ancient Silk...
The Israel Antiquities Authority have initiated comprehensive archaeological excavations in the Judean Desert caves, in order to find the last Dead Sea Scrolls, which are among the earliest texts...
Exactly what music sounded like in the early Middle Ages is unknown, but some scholar-musicians from England performed a piece today that they reconstructed from an 11 th century manuscript. A page...
A recent auction has led to the discovery of one of Isaac Newton’s alchemy transcripts, which may just be one step towards creating the magical substance known as the philosopher’s stone. According...
2015 was another great year for archaeological and historical research. Amazing discoveries were made all over the world and provided more windows into the lives of our ancestors. Studies that...
A simple PVC eraser has helped an international team of scientists led by bioarchaeologists at the University of York to resolve the mystery surrounding the tissue-thin parchment used by medieval...
During the Middle Ages the phoenix rose from its ashes to be reborn, dangerous dragons battled elephants to the death, and the pelican tore out its own breast to feed its young with its life’s blood—...
Walter Kayo sat at his desk in the scriptorium, the cold chill of winter half broken by a flickering fire in the hearth. The velum page before him was still not finished, yet already his eyes felt...
The oldest known Egyptian leather manuscript, dating back some 4,000 years, has been rediscovered at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo after it was pulled from a dusty, old storage box, where it had been...
Recent tests conducted on the oldest known pages of the Quran in existence have determined they were written nearly 1,400 years ago, between 568 and 645 AD. Reports raise the possibility that the...
When Europeans arrived in the New World, they did not only kill people with war, slavery and disease, they also attempted to destroy the cultures of the native peoples. Among so many cultural...
The Book of Soyga , or the Aldaraia sive Soyga vocor, was written in the sixteenth century as a possible treatise on magic. The illustrious occultist John Dee of the court of Elizabeth I owned one of...
Considered an outlaw saga, the Gisla Saga survives in thirty-three manuscripts, first written in the 13 th century. It is notable for its psychological treatment of characters and its blatant...
The Sagas of the Icelanders have long been preserved as the most comprehensive specimen of the literary culture of the 13 th and 14 th centuries of Iceland. In writing these sagas, many attributes of...
The Arbatel de magia veterum ( Arbatel: Of the Magic of the Ancients ) is a Renaissance-period grimoire – a textbook of magic – and one of the most influential works of its kind. Unlike some other...
An ancient Egyptian codex written in Coptic and dating back 1,300 years had been deciphered for the first time, revealing that the 20-page book made of parchment contains a series of spells and...
The Picatrix is an ancient Arabian book of astrology and occult magic dating back to the 10 th or 11 th century, which has gained notoriety for the obscene natural of its magical recipes. The...
A 600-year-old astronomical document is now moving into the modern era, with a symposium at the Whipple Museum titled ‘The Equatorie of the Planetis: Manuscript, Models, and Digitisation’ on 28 th...
Buddhism was founded over two and a half millennia ago in India by Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha (Sanskrit for ‘awakened one’). Like the practitioners of Hinduism, Buddhists believe in the concept...
The Getty Museum is returning a 12th century illuminated New Testament to the Monastery of Dionysiou on Greece's Mount Athos after it came to light that it had been illegally removed from the...
We’ve got to hand it to the persistent and determined researchers who have not given up hope of decoding the enigmatic Voynich manuscript despite dozens of studies over the last few decades, many of...
