Images

Portrait of Catherine de' Medici (1519-1589), oil on canvas by Germain Le Mannier, c. 1547-1559. Uffizi, Florence.

A section of the fortification walls of the Inca Sacsayhuaman (also Saqsawaman) fortress-temple complex of northern Cusco, 13th-15th century CE.

The Grafenstein inscription. Noric language recorded on a tile from the 2nd century CE, discovered in a gravel pit in 1977 in Grafenstein, Austria.

An early 17th-century illustration by Felipe Guáman Poma de Ayala showing the coronation of the new Inca ruler, Manco Inca Yupanqui on 16 November 1533. Manco Inca was a puppet ruler of the conquistadors but he rose up in rebellion and led...

The Lezoux plate, a ceramic plate found in 1970 at Lezoux, Puy-de-Dôme, France. The engraved text is one of the longest ones in the Gaulish language, in a Gallo-Latin cursive script. Prefectural Museum of Ceramics, Lezoux

Fragments of the Larzac Tablet, a lead curse tablet dated to c. 100 CE. Musée de Millau, France.

Title page of the Index of Prohibited Books (Index Librorum Prohibitorum), published in Rome, 1711. National Library of Slovenia, Ljubljana.

The voyage of Aeneas, the Trojan prince and hero of The Aeneid, belongs to Rome’s foundational myth-making rather than historical record. Composed by Virgil between 29–19 BCE, during the reign of Augustus (reign 27 BCE–14 CE), the epic reimagines...

Map of East Frisia by the Dutch Johannes Florianus (1522-1585) for the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum, one of the first accurate modern atlas, 1595.

Seal of the Upstalsboom, the place where envoys from all Frisian areas met. The seal dates from 1324 and resembles St. Mary as the protector of Frisia. The Latin text translates: "Through this sign, the whole of Friesland, to which the Virgin...