The Magna Carta is a durable document; this year, throughout the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere, the Magna Carta’s 800th anniversary is being celebrated.

It began as a template for a specific treaty between a group of mistreated barons and the even-now controversial King John. Yet the ink that was hand-lettered by the King’s scribes onto that 18 inch square of sheepskin flowed through centuries to become a source document of the U.S. Constitution.