Images

A buncheong (punchong) bottle decorated with lotus flowers, a bird and fish. Joseon Dynasty, Korea, 15th-16th century CE. (Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka, Japan)

A celadon (greenware) ceramic kettle in the form of a mythical dragon-turtle creature. Korea, Goryeo dynasty, 918-1392. National Museum of Korea, Seoul.

The rebel Carausius (Marcus Aurelius Mausaeus Valerius Carausius) declared himself emperor, making Britain his base. Although he had no authority in Rome, he stressed his Roman identity by citing the poet Virgil on his coins. He also used...

Gold coins of the Sassanian, Kushanshah, and Kidarite Dynasties. 309-380 CE. From the Burnes, Cunningham, Hay, Parkes Weber, and Prinsep Collections. The British Museum, London.

This tablet lists purchases of land by a man named Tupsikka, with payments made in baskets of barley. One transaction reads "The price of the field is 90 gur-sag-gal 16 quarts of oil". Stone tablet, about 2400-2200 BCE. Excavated by Hormuzd...

Silver coin of "Abdalla ibn Khazim". From Merv (modern-day Turkmenistan), circa 684 CE. Found inside the Buddhist monument (called deposit A) at Manikyala, modern-day Pakistan. This shows that coins from several places all circulated at the...

Some Greek cities used images for their names, so "readers" did not have to be literate. Zancle, a city founded by Greek colonists in Sicily, incorporated the sickle-shaped harbor (sickle=zanklon). Silver third stater coin, circa 500 BCE...

Early Iron Age Celtic people copied Greek coins, often faithfully reproducing their designs and inscriptions. This suggests that Thracian die-engravers were illiterate, as legible Greek letters were gradually replaced by abstract patterns...

In ancient Egypt, many transactions were made in metal, measured using weights like this. Once coinage was introduced, a Greek system was combined with the Egyptian one. This quartzite weight was inscribed with the name of the Egyptian king...

This clay nail is inscribed with details of the wealth of Sin-Kashid, king of Uruk in Babylon. Excavated by Sir William Loftus at Uruk (Warka), Southern Mesopotamia, modern-say Iraq. Circa 1900 BCE. (The British Museum, London).