Travel literature: Did you mean...?

The literature of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt (2040-1782 BCE) is justly famous as some of the best the culture ever produced. Great works like The Tale of the Shipwrecked Sailor and The Tale of Sinuhe stand among the great literary masterpieces...

The arrival in Europe of the printing press with moveable metal type in the 1450s CE was an event which had enormous and long-lasting consequences. The German printer Johannes Gutenberg (c. 1398-1468 CE) is widely credited with the innovation...

Mesopotamian education was invented by the Sumerians following the creation of writing c. 3500 BCE. The earliest schools were attached to temples but later established in separate buildings in which the scribes of ancient Mesopotamia learned...

The Garden of Eden is the biblical earthly paradise created by God to be inhabited by his first human creation - Adam and Eve. Some claim that the name “Eden” derives from the Akkadian term edinu, which means 'plain'. In the biblical tradition...

Love, sex, and marriage in ancient Greece are portrayed in Greek literature as distinct, yet closely intertwined, elements of life. For many upper-class men, marriages did not take place for love, and other relationships, be it with men or...

The Dialogue of Pessimism (c. 1000 BCE) is a Babylonian poem featuring a master and his slave in ten exchanges during which the master proposes an action, and the slave gives reasons for and against its pursuit. The piece has been interpreted...

The Instructions of Shuruppag (c. 2000 BCE) is the most famous work of the genre of Sumerian wisdom literature whose purpose was to encourage proper behavior in conformity with cultural values and standards. It is among the oldest works of...

The Graf Zeppelin was the most successful of all Zeppelin airships, making several hundred trips across the Atlantic between Europe and the Americas. In 1929, a new age of air travel dawned when the Graf Zeppelin flew around the world in...

The manticore, derived from the Early Middle Persian merthykhuwar or martiora, meaning "man-eater" (also known as a mantichora or a martichore), is a fearsome hybrid creature found in classical and medieval literature. It has the body of...

A text known as The Lay of the Harper, dating from the Middle Kingdom (2040-1782 BCE) encourages its audience to make the most of the time because death is a certainty: Make a holiday! And do not tire of playing! For no one is allowed to...