In 1811, a plantation owner in Spanish East Florida signed a manumission paper, officially freeing his 18-year-old wife, a Senegalese woman. He assured Spanish authorities of her “nicety and fidelity” as well as her “good qualities." Her name was Anna Kingsley. Captured in the endemic violence of west Africa, Anna lived an extraordinary life.
One of the great questions of antiquity is what ancient knowledge might have been lost with the destruction of the famed Great Library of Alexandria. We can only guess at the answer, but the question itself reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of the library- what it was, where it was, why its was, and what happened to it.
In the US alone souvenir shops sold more than 21 billion dollars of merchandise in 2022. It is human nature to try and preserve memories, and one of the many ways we do that is to purchase keepsakes, mementos, or souvenirs - that remind us of where we’ve been. And evidence of that human instinct goes way back, well before anyone “exited through the gift shop”.