Grain: Did you mean...?

The Debate Between Sheep and Grain (c. 2000 BCE) is one of the best-known Sumerian literary debates in a genre that was popular entertainment by the late 3rd millennium BCE. In this piece, personifications of grain and sheep argue which is...

A 1922 painting by Ivan Vladimirov (1870-1947) showing the government requsitioning of grain during the Russian Civil War. This policy and the consequent peasant unrest was one of the reasons the Soviet government adopted Lenin's New Economic...

The Flour War refers to the series of approximately 300 riots that swept through France from April to May 1775, because of rising bread prices. The revolts only subsided after soldiers had been deployed, resulting in hundreds of arrests...

From the grave of Menna, the agricultural scribe of the Pharaoh. Scene: Threshing of grain. c. 1422-1411 BCE

This limestone statuette depicts a servant grinding grain on what appears to be a quern. Figurines and statuettes were placed insides tombs as early as the 1st Dynasty (3100-2890 BCE). The majority of them are doing bakery, brewery, butchery...

A c. 1930 photograph showing the use of horses to thresh grain across a threshing floor.

Model of a Roman grain ship, National Maritime Museum, Haifa, Israel.

The oak trunk about to be cut down was read by the Viking shipbuilder not only for its straightness but also for the degree of twist in its fibres. By looking at the bark, the builder could understand whether the wood had grown in a twisted...

The Mediterranean Sea was the economic focal point of the Roman Empire. Rome's armies first established an empire across these waters beginning back in the times of the Roman Republic. In 200 CE, the Mediterranean was still the channel that...

Ostia (or Ostia Antica) lies 15 km from the city of Rome for which it served as the city's principal port and harbour throughout antiquity. The name derives from 'os' or 'ostium' which means 'mouth' and refers to the city's location at the...