Tax and Flax: Textile Manufacturing in Medieval Egypt

FORMAT: Hosted in-person at Robinson College in Cambridge, live streamed and recorded. TICKETS: Free to attend in-person and via live stream. Registration required. Lecture 2: Tax and Flax: Textile Manufacturing in Medieval Egypt Medieval Mediterranean paper was made from recycled rags. But where did all those textiles come from? Raw flax, linen textiles, and, eventually, paper made it across the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean, turning paper into one of the main materials on which merchants, officials, and scholars wrote the very texts that provide precious clues to what became a medieval writing revolution. This is the second lecture in the 2026 Sandars Lectures series titled: Flax to Folio: The Global Diffusion of Early Paper and the History of Textiles.