Tax and Flax: Textile Manufacturing in Medieval Egypt

A free public lecture on how flax and linen textiles supplied the rag paper that fuelled medieval writing, part of the 2026 Sandars Lectures.

This is the second lecture in the 2026 Sandars Lectures series, 'Flax to Folio: The Global Diffusion of Early Paper and the History of Textiles'. It explores where the textiles used to make medieval Mediterranean paper came from, tracing raw flax and linen as they moved across the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean until paper became a key writing material for merchants, officials and scholars. The hour-long lecture is hosted in person at Robinson College and is also live streamed and recorded; free registration is required.