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Primary Sources: Ancient/Medieval History

This guide will explain primary sources, give tips on using primary sources in your research, and link to online digital collections of primary sources.

 

Institute of Egyptian Art & Archeology 
  • A comprehensive bibliographic resource on Egyptology, selections from exhibits, a timeline of ancient Egypt beginning in 4300 BCE, a "color tour" of Egypt.
National Treasures Department of the Israel Antiquities 
  • Browse through a selection of published artifacts from the National Treasures Collection. 
Digital Scriptorium 
  •  a growing consortium of American libraries and museums committed to free online access to their collections of pre-modern manuscripts
Internet Ancient History Sourcebook 
  • Browse sources from ancient Mesopotamia to the Hellenistic World provided by Fordham University 
Perseus Digital Library 
  • Online resources for studying the ancient Greco-Roman world, including ancient texts with translations, maps, articles, essays, and images from over 70 museums around the world.
Texts for Ancient History Courses 
  • Translations of ancient historical texts presented by the University of Calgary Department of Greek, Latin, and Ancient History. 
Papyri. info 
  • The Papyrological Navigator (PN) supports searching, browsing, and aggregation of ancient papyrological documents and related materials.  The Papyrological Editor (PE) enables multi-author, version controlled, peer-reviewed scholarly curation of papyrological texts, translations, commentary, scholarly metadata, institutional catalog records, bibliography, and images. 
Internet Sacred Texts Archive
  • archive of electronic texts about religion, mythology, legends and folklore, and occult and esoteric topics. Texts are presented in English translation and, where possible, in the original language.
Silkroad Narratives
  • Narratives covering the discovery of the silk road by Roman, Byzantium, and Middle Eastern explorers.
Internet Classics Archive
  • English translations of 441 literary works from the pre-modern world, mainly covering the Greco-Roman period but includes select texts from Chinese and Persian history. 
SEAL: Sources of Early Akkadian Literature
  • aims to compile a complete and indexed corpus of Akkadian literary texts from the 3rd and 2nd Millennia BCE.

ancient/medieval images

 

Medieval Internet History Sourcebook 
  • Browse sources from the end of the Roman period to the Age of Exploration, provided by Fordham University.
Robbins Library Digital Projects 
  • Digital Projects ranging from Arthurian texts to Visualizing Chaucer presented by the University of Rochester.
British Library - Digitized Manuscripts 
  • Images of manuscripts, rare books, maps, archives and ephemera from the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford College libraries. 
Shakespeare Library 
  • The Folger Shakespeare Library has the world's largest collection of the printed works of William Shakespeare and is a primary repository for rare materials from the early modern period. 
De Re Militari: Society for the Study of Medieval Military History
  • Primary sources, articles, dissertations, and resources for the study of military actions, technology, and topics from the fall of the Roman period to the early 17th ce. 
Luminarium 
  • A comprehensive anthology and guide to English literature of the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Seventeenth Century, Restoration, and Eighteenth Century. 
NetSERF: Internet Collection for Medieval Resources
  • List of available Medieval Sources on the web including archaeological projects, legal sources, science, technology, and music.
Online Medieval & Classical Library 
  • Collection of many of the most important literary sources from Classical & Medieval civilization. 
Digital Witchcraft Collection 
  • Online access to Cornell University's Witchcraft Collection over 100+ titles related to witchcraft. 
Labyrinth Resources for Medieval Studies
  • Digital finding aid leading to documents, images, and services from the medieval period.