Images

A traditional holly wreath.

The Christmas tradition of preparing the Yule log at Hever Castle, to be burnt over the twelve days of Christmas, painting by Robert Alexander Hillingford, 19th century.

A 1310-1320 CE manuscript illustration of the Nativity. Made in East Anglia. (National Library of Wales)

This fragment from a bronze belt was reused as a belt end. The embossed or chased design is divided by discs and scroll-crosses into panels with discs above stylised trees. A deity stands on a bull. The holes around the edge are for nails...

This bell has a suspension ring in the form of a fist. Bells are said to have been a Chinese invention, which reached the Middle East in about 800 BCE. However, Chinese bells are struck on the exterior while the Urartian ones have a clapper...

This is a bronze furniture-fitting (probably of a corner of a throne or bed). A god wearing a fringed robe stands on a recumbent bull. It was originally inlaid and gilded. From Toprakkale, Eastern Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey. Urartian...

A cover of the Lindisfarne Gospels, produced in the Kingdom of Northumbria 8-10th century CE. (British Library, London)

A map of the Kingdom of Northumbria (c. 604-954 CE) in the northeast of Britain c. 802 CE.

"Flame" pots, such as this, are just one type of a long ceramic tradition that continued for some 13,000 years during the Jomon period in Japan. They were made in the Middle Jomon period (3500-2500 BCE) in the area that is now modern Niigata...

A tablet, discovered in 2015 CE, with a passage from the Gilgamesh epic. CUNES 48-07-173. (Photographs by Prof. David I. Owen, Rosen Collection, Cornell University. Used with permission)