The Church of England uses ancient canon laws to govern the use of church property and its internal workings.

ECONOMIST: Faith, law and democracy: Defining the limits of exceptionalism | The

Mr. Carpenter, who was appointed curator of Japanese art in July 2011, devotes about a fifth of the permanent exhibition space to ancient artifacts and Buddhist art and uses the remaining galleries to stage six-month-long installations, each illustrating an aspect of Japanese art.

WSJ: Flights of Feathered Fancy | Birds in the Art of Japan | Metropolitan Museum of Art | By Lee Lawrence

She uses dozens of beasts from the mythological canon and establishes new myths with matter-of-fact ease. (The idea of a Parselmouth a person who can speak to snakes seems ancient and fully formed.) She uses plot devices that could each fuel countless romantic comedies: a truth serum, transfiguration, time travel, invisibility, immortality, alchemy.

NEWYORKER: Mugglemarch

Now, a team of researches from the University of Oxford and the University of Southampton in the UK has developed what they are calling the "Reflectance Transformation Imaging system, " which uses 76 lights to illuminate different sections of the ancient artifacts, one at a time, while an image is taken.

ENGADGET: Alt-week 27.10.12: ancient texts, super-Earths and special-ops mice