Interior walls, at the 5,000 year old 

Ness of Brodgar have been found to incorporate individual

stones painted in yellows, reds, and oranges, using ochre pigment made of haematite mixed with
animal fat, milk or eggs.[7][8]
Ancient colored walls at Dendera, Egypt, which were exposed for years to the elements, still
possess their brilliant color, as vivid as when they were painted about 2,000 years ago. The
Egyptians mixed their colors with a gummy substance and applied them separately from each other
without any blending or mixture. They appear to have used six colors: white, black, blue, red, yellow,
and green. They first covered the area entirely with white, then traced the design in black, leaving
out the lights of the ground color. They used minium for red, generally of a dark tinge.

A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as

a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the Italian: novella for
"new", "news", or "short story of something new", itself from the Latin: novella, a singular noun use of
the neuter plural of novellus, diminutive of novus, meaning "new".[1]
Some novelists, including Nathaniel Hawthorne,[2] Herman Melville,[3] Ann Radcliffe,[4] John Cowper
Powys,[5] preferred the term "romance" to describe their novels.
Murasaki Shikibu's Tale of Genji, an early 11th-century Japanese text, has sometimes been
described as the world's first novel, but there is considerable debate over this — there were certainly
long fictional works that preceded it. Spread of printed books in China led to the appearance
of classical Chinese novels by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). An early example from Europe was
written in Muslim Spain by the Sufi writer Ibn Tufayl entitled Hayy ibn Yaqdhan.[14] Later
developments occurred after the invention of the printing press. Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don
Quixote (the first part of which was published in 1605), is frequently cited as the first significant

language in which the poet writes. Readers accustomed to identifying poetry

with Dante, Goethe, Mickiewicz, or Rumi may think of it as written in lines based on rhyme and
regular meter. There are, however, traditions, such as Biblical poetry, that use other means to create
rhythm and euphony. Much modern poetry reflects a critique of poetic tradition, [6] testing the principle
of euphony itself or altogether forgoing rhyme or set rhythm. [7][8] In an increasingly globalized world,
poets often adapt forms, styles, and techniques from diverse cultures and languages. Poets have
contributed to the evolution of the linguistic, expressive, and utilitarian qualities of their languages.
A Western cultural tradition (extending at least from Homer to Rilke) associates the production of
poetry with inspiration – often by a Muse (either classical or contemporary).