Hands down, a unique find

An undated image shows preserved, coloured hands discovered near the throne room of a royal palace, in present-day Tell el-Dab’a, Egypt, in 2011. The site was once known as the city of Avaris. Archaeologists have offered a new explanation for one of the century’s grislier finds, the discovery described as particularly unsettling, of a carefully gathered collection of hands in a 3,500-year-old temple. — The New York Times

ARISTOTLE called the hand the “tool of tools”; Immanuel Kant, “the visible part of the brain.”

The earliest works of art were handprints on the walls of caves.