Topic description and stories

Discarded history: Cairo Genizah treasures

31 May 2022

How the discovery and study of ancient deeds, fables, letters, magical amulets, contracts and lists in a sacred storeroom created unparalleled...

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Cambridge and Heidelberg announce major project to digitise treasured medieval manuscripts

27 Mar 2019

Centuries-old manuscripts feature the works of Plato, Aristotle, Sophocles and Euripides.

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Decorative detail on the Billingford Hutch

The Billingford Hutch and the moonwort fern – a medieval mystery solved

10 Dec 2017

A heavy oak chest in the Parker Library (Corpus Christi College) was used to store objects left as collateral for loans of money. Its ironwork...

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Codex Forster III folio 72r

Study reveals Leonardo da Vinci’s “irrelevant” scribbles mark the spot where he first recorded the laws of friction

21 Jul 2016

A new detailed study of notes and sketches by Leonardo da Vinci has identified a page of scribbles in a tiny notebook as the place where Leonardo...

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Detail from the Cambridge Songs manuscript leaf that was stolen from and then recovered by Cambridge University Library.

First performance in 1,000 years: ‘lost’ songs from the Middle Ages are brought back to life

23 Apr 2016

An ancient song repertory will be heard for the first time in 1,000 years this week after being ‘reconstructed’ by a Cambridge researcher and a world...

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From Pulp to Fiction: our love affair with paper

17 Mar 2016

It may seem strange to describe paper as technology, but its arrival in England in about 1300 was a pivotal moment in cultural history. That story is...

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A fakir presents a white elephant to the King, from Kalila wa Dimna by Abdu llah ibn al-Mugaffa

Elephants and humans: a love affair over 1300 years

01 Jul 2015

The Cambridge Animal Alphabet series celebrates Cambridge's connections with animals through literature, art, science and society. Here, E is for...

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Folio 13 verso, a representation of the goddess Prajñāpāramitā

The 1,000-year-old manuscript and the stories it tells

09 May 2015

One of the greatest treasures of Cambridge University Library is a Buddhist manuscript that was produced in Kathmandu exactly 1,000 years ago. The...

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Rupert Brooke and Rugby Cadet Corps c.1906

“When you are in it, war is hateful and utterly horrible.” A major Rupert Brooke collection comes to Cambridge

23 Apr 2015

On the centenary of the death of Rupert Brooke, King’s College announces the acquisition of a major collection of materials relating to one of the...

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Music in the tree of life

Music in the tree of life

18 Mar 2015

Modern scientific methods for mapping the evolution of species are being applied to centuries-old hand-copied music, providing new inspiration for...

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Earliest known piece of polyphonic music discovered

17 Dec 2014

New research has uncovered the earliest known practical piece of polyphonic music, an example of the principles that laid the foundations of European...

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Image from a 14th century manuscript of the Romance of the rose, one of the best-known texts of the Middle Ages

Conquering a continent: how the French language circulated in Britain and medieval Europe

22 Jan 2014

A 13th-century manuscript of Arthurian legend once owned by the Knights Templar is one of the star attractions of a new exhibition opening today at...

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