Lee Lawrence

Opulent pieces found from some 700 years ago are now understood to be made of a common metal alloy that, in the 12th century CE, metalsmiths in the Turkic Seljuk dynasty transformed into luxury ware. Today, such pieces are as iconic of Islamic art as lavishly illustrated manuscripts or tilework tessellated with arabesques and geometry.

Stimulated most recently by nutrition studies and marketing, pistachios are more available worldwide than ever. But today’s efforts are possible only thanks to patient bioengineering some 3,000 years ago.

For more than 4,000 years. people have adopted, adapted and adjusted the lute, resulting in its countless variations. Along the way. some innovations have proved both consequential and simple.

The black eyeliner known widely today as kohl was used much by both men and women in Egypt from around 2000 BCE—and not just for beauty or to invoke the the god Horus. It turns out kohl was also good for the health of the eyes, and the cosmetic’s manufacture relied on the world’s first known example of “wet chemistry”—the use of water to induce chemical reactions.

In Arts of South Asia: Cultures of Collecting, coeditors Allysa B. Peyton and Katherine Ann Paul draw us into the personal, institutional and political dynamics surrounding objects that have journeyed from South Asia India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Bhutan to museums abroad and, in one case, undergone repatriation.

Four thousand years ago she was a princess and high priestess in the Sumerian city of Ur in modern-day Iraq. She was also a poet whose verses scribes wrote down in cuneiform on clay tablets and then did something new: They attributed the work to her by name—and now Enheduanna is more famous than ever.