Handbags have been popular for millennia, but usually we don't find them all in one piece.
By Mary Beth Griggs
Smithsonian Magazine
February 24, 2014
A handbag of brass, inlaid with gold and silver has been identified as one of the earliest surviving examples of a woman’s purse, the BBC reports. The elaborate handbag was made in Mosul, Iraq, around 1,300 A.D.