1.
Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt
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The Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt was the last native dynasty to rule Egypt before the Persian conquest in 525 BC. The dynastys reign is called the Saite Period after the city of Sais, where its pharaohs had their capital. This dynasty traced its origins to the 24th Dynasty, Psamtik I was probably a descendant of Bakenrenef, and following the Assyrians invasions during the reigns of Taharqa and Tantamani, he was recognized as sole king over all of Egypt. With the help of Greek mercenaries, Apries was able to hold back Babylonian attempts to conquer Egypt and their king, Cambyses II, captured and later executed Psamtik III. The 26th Dynasty may be related to the 24th Dynasty, Manetho begins the dynasty with, Ammeris the Nubian,12 years Stephinates,7 years Nechepsos,6 years Necho,8 years. When the Nubian King Shabaka defeated Bakenrenef, son of Tefnakht and this may be the man named Ammeris. Stephinates may be a descendant of Bakenrenef and he is sometimes referred to as Tefnakht II in the literature. Nechepsos has been identified with a king named Nekauba. Manethos Necho is King Necho I, Manetho gives his reign as 8 years, Necho was killed during a conflict with the Nubian king Tanutamun. Psamtik I fled to Nineveh – capital of the Assyrian Empire – and returned to Egypt when Assurbanipal defeated Tanutamun, scholars now start the 26th Dynasty with the reign of Psamtik I. Sextus Julius Africanus states in his often accurate version of Manethos Epitome that the dynasty numbered 9 pharaohs, beginning with a Stephinates, Africanus also notes that Psamtik I and Necho I ruled for 54 and 8 years respectively. History of Ancient Egypt Twenty-sixth Dynasty Family Tree Twenty-sixth Dynasty Timeline Late Period of ancient Egypt Achaemenid Empire Saite Oracle Papyrus Aidan Dodson, the Complete Royal Families of Ancient Egypt. The American University in Cairo Press, London 2004 Kenneth Kitchen, The Third Intermediate Period in Egypt,1986 ISBN 978-0-85668-298-8 Karl Jansen-Winkeln, Bild und Charakter der ägyptischen 26
2.
Ancient Egypt
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Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. It is one of six civilizations to arise independently, Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh Narmer. In the aftermath of Alexander the Greats death, one of his generals, Ptolemy Soter and this Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom ruled Egypt until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province. The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture, the predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world and its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for centuries. The Nile has been the lifeline of its region for much of human history, nomadic modern human hunter-gatherers began living in the Nile valley through the end of the Middle Pleistocene some 120,000 years ago. By the late Paleolithic period, the climate of Northern Africa became increasingly hot and dry. In Predynastic and Early Dynastic times, the Egyptian climate was less arid than it is today. Large regions of Egypt were covered in treed savanna and traversed by herds of grazing ungulates, foliage and fauna were far more prolific in all environs and the Nile region supported large populations of waterfowl. Hunting would have been common for Egyptians, and this is also the period when many animals were first domesticated. The largest of these cultures in upper Egypt was the Badari, which probably originated in the Western Desert, it was known for its high quality ceramics, stone tools. The Badari was followed by the Amratian and Gerzeh cultures, which brought a number of technological improvements, as early as the Naqada I Period, predynastic Egyptians imported obsidian from Ethiopia, used to shape blades and other objects from flakes. In Naqada II times, early evidence exists of contact with the Near East, particularly Canaan, establishing a power center at Hierakonpolis, and later at Abydos, Naqada III leaders expanded their control of Egypt northwards along the Nile. They also traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the desert to the west. Royal Nubian burials at Qustul produced artifacts bearing the oldest-known examples of Egyptian dynastic symbols, such as the crown of Egypt. They also developed a ceramic glaze known as faience, which was used well into the Roman Period to decorate cups, amulets, and figurines. During the last predynastic phase, the Naqada culture began using written symbols that eventually were developed into a system of hieroglyphs for writing the ancient Egyptian language. The Early Dynastic Period was approximately contemporary to the early Sumerian-Akkadian civilisation of Mesopotamia, the third-century BC Egyptian priest Manetho grouped the long line of pharaohs from Menes to his own time into 30 dynasties, a system still used today
3.
Achaemenid Empire
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The Achaemenid Empire, also called the Persian Empire, was an empire based in Western Asia, founded by Cyrus the Great. The empires successes inspired similar systems in later empires and it is noted in Western history as the antagonist of the Greek city-states during the Greco-Persian Wars and for the emancipation of the Jewish exiles in Babylon. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was built in a Hellenistic style in the empire as well. By the 7th century BC, the Persians had settled in the portion of the Iranian Plateau in the region of Persis. From this region, Cyrus the Great advanced to defeat the Medes, Lydia, Alexander, an avid admirer of Cyrus the Great, conquered the empire in its entirety by 330 BC. Upon his death, most of the former territory came under the rule of the Ptolemaic Kingdom and Seleucid Empire. The Persian population of the central plateau reclaimed power by the second century BC under the Parthian Empire, the historical mark of the Achaemenid Empire went far beyond its territorial and military influences and included cultural, social, technological and religious influences as well. Many Athenians adopted Achaemenid customs in their lives in a reciprocal cultural exchange. The impact of Cyruss edict is mentioned in Judeo-Christian texts, the empire also set the tone for the politics, heritage and history of modern Iran. Astronomical year numbering Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details Due to the duration of their reigns, Smerdis, Xerxes II. The Persian nation contains a number of tribes as listed here, the Pasargadae, Maraphii, and Maspii, upon which all the other tribes are dependent. Of these, the Pasargadae are the most distinguished, they contain the clan of the Achaemenids from which spring the Perseid kings. Other tribes are the Panthialaei, Derusiaei, Germanii, all of which are attached to the soil, the Achaemenid Empire was created by nomadic Persians. The Achaemenid Empire was not the first Iranian empire, as by 6th century BC another group of ancient Iranian peoples had established the short lived Median Empire. The Iranian peoples had arrived in the region of what is today Iran c.1000 BC and had for a number of centuries fallen under the domination of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, based in northern Mesopotamia. However, the Medes and Persians, Cimmerians, Persians and Chaldeans played a role in the overthrow of the Assyrian empire. The term Achaemenid means of the family of the Achaemenis/Achaemenes, despite the derivation of the name, Achaemenes was himself a minor seventh-century ruler of the Anshan in southwestern Iran, and a vassal of Assyria. At some point in 550 BC, Cyrus rose in rebellion against the Medes, eventually conquering the Medes and creating the first Persian empire
4.
Herodotus
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Herodotus was a Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus in the Persian Empire and lived in the fifth century BC, a contemporary of Socrates. The Histories is the work which he is known to have produced. Despite Herodotus historical significance, little is known of his personal life and his place in history and his significance may be understood according to the traditions within which he worked. His work is the earliest Greek prose to have survived intact, of these only fragments of Hecataeuss work survive yet they allow us glimpses into the kind of tradition within which Herodotus wrote his own Histories. In his introduction to Hecataeus’s work, Genealogies, This points forward to the ‘folksy’ yet ‘international’ outlook typical of Herodotus. Yet, one scholar has described the work of Hecataeus as “a curious false start to history” since despite his critical spirit. It is possible that Herodotus borrowed much material from Hecataeus, as stated by Porphyry in a recorded by Eusebius. But Hecataeus did not record events that had occurred in living memory, unlike Herodotus, Herodotus claims to be better informed than his predecessors by relying on empirical observation to correct their excessive schematism. For example, He argues for continental asymmetry as opposed to the theory of a perfectly circular earth with Europe. Yet, he retains idealizing tendencies, as in his notions of the Danube. His debt to previous authors of prose ‘histories’ might be questionable, however, this point is one of the most contentious issues in modern scholarship. It is on account of the strange stories and the folk-tales he reported that his critics in early modern times branded him “The Father of Lies”. Even his own contemporaries found reason to scoff at his achievement, similarly, the Athenian historian Thucydides dismissed Herodotus as a “logos-writer”. Moreover, Thucydides developed a historical topic more in keeping with the Greek world-view, the interplay of civilizations was more relevant to Greeks living in Anatolia, such as Herodotus himself, for whom life within a foreign civilization was a recent memory. Modern scholars generally turn to Herodotus’s own writing for reliable information about his life, supplemented with ancient yet much later sources, modern accounts of his life typically go something like this, Herodotus was born at Halicarnassus around 484 BC. His name is not mentioned later in the tribute list of the Athenian Delian League, the epic poet Panyassis – a relative of Herodotus – is reported to have taken part in a failed uprising. Herodotus expresses affection for the island of Samos, and this is an indication that he might have lived there in his youth. So it is possible that his family was involved in an uprising against Lygdamis, leading to a period of exile on Samos, Herodotus wrote his Histories in the Ionian dialect, yet he was born in Halicarnassus, which was a Dorian settlement
5.
Cyrene, Libya
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Cyrene was an ancient Greek and Roman city near present-day Shahhat, Libya. It was the oldest and most important of the five Greek cities in the region and it gave eastern Libya the classical name Cyrenaica that it has retained to modern times. Cyrene lies in a valley in the Jebel Akhdar uplands. The city was named after a spring, Kyre, which the Greeks consecrated to Apollo and it was also the seat of the Cyrenaics, a famous school of philosophy in the 3rd century BC, founded by Aristippus, a disciple of Socrates. It was then nicknamed the Athens of Africa, Grinus, son of Aesanius a descendant of Theras, and king of the island of Thera, had visited the Oracle and offered a hecatomb to the Oracle on sundry matters. The Oracle had offered the advice to found a new city in Libya, many years had passed and the advice was not taken, and Thera had succumbed to a horrific drought and all of the crops and trees had perished. Not knowing how to get to Libya they sent a messenger to Crete to find someone to lead them on their journey and they found a dealer in purple dyes named Corobius. He had once traveled to an island across from Libya called Platea, Grinus and Corobius sailed to Platea, when they reached their destination they left Corobius with months of supplies and Grinus went back to Thera to collect men to settle the newly made colony. After two years of settling the colony they had success and went back to the Oracle to get advice. The Oracle had repeated her advice to move directly to the country of Libya instead of across from Libya, so they moved to a place called Aziris. They settled there for six years, and were successful until the Libyans visited the settlement of Aziris to convince the people to move further inland. They were swayed by the Libyans to move and settled into what is now Cyrene, traditional details concerning the founding of the city are contained in Herodotus Histories IV. Cyrene promptly became the town of ancient Libya and established commercial relations with all the Greek cities. Soon after 460 BC it became a republic, in 413 BC, during the Peloponnesian War, Cyrene supplied Spartan forces with two triremes and pilots. After the death of Alexander the Great of Macedon, the Cyrenian republic became subject to the Ptolemaic dynasty, ophelas, the general who occupied the city in Ptolemy Is name, ruled the city almost independently until his death, when Ptolemys son-in-law Magas received governorship of the territory. In 276 BC Magas crowned himself king and declared de facto independence, the invasion was unsuccessful and in 250 BC, after Magas death, the city was reabsorbed into Ptolemaic Egypt. Cyrenaica became part of the Ptolemaic empire controlled from Alexandria, in 74 BC the territory was formally transformed into a Roman province. The inhabitants of Cyrene at the time of Sulla were divided into four classes, citizens, farmers, resident aliens, the ruler of the town, Ptolemy Apion, bequeathed it to the Romans, but it kept its self-government
6.
Mercenary
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A mercenary is a person who takes part in an armed conflict who is not a national or party to the conflict and is motivated to take part in the hostilities by desire for private gain. Mercenaries fight for money or other recompense instead of fighting for ideological interests, in the last century, and as reflected in the Geneva Convention, mercenaries have increasingly come to be seen as less entitled to protections by rules of war than non-mercenaries. However, whether or not a person is a mercenary may be a matter of degree, Protocol Additional GC1977 is a 1977 amendment protocol to the Geneva Conventions. Article 47 of the protocol provides the most widely accepted definition of a mercenary, though not endorsed by some countries. The Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, a mercenary shall not have the right to be a combatant or a prisoner of war. All the criteria must be met, according to the Geneva Convention, according to the GC III, a captured soldier must be treated as a lawful combatant and, therefore, as a protected person with prisoner-of-war status until facing a competent tribunal. That tribunal, using criteria in APGC77 or some equivalent domestic law, may decide that the soldier is a mercenary. The only possible exception to GC IV Art 5 is when he is a national of the authority imprisoning him, if, after a regular trial, a captured soldier is found to be a mercenary, then he can expect treatment as a common criminal and may face execution. As mercenary soldiers may not qualify as PoWs, they cannot expect repatriation at wars end, the four mercenaries sentenced to death were shot by a firing squad on 10 July 1976. The legal status of civilian contractors depends upon the nature of their work, on 4 December 1989, the United Nations passed resolution 44/34, the International Convention against the Recruitment, Use, Financing and Training of Mercenaries. It entered into force on 20 October 2001 and is known as the UN Mercenary Convention. Article 1 contains the definition of a mercenary, Article 1.1 is similar to Article 47 of Protocol I, however Article 1. – under Article 1.2 a person does not have to take a part in the hostilities in a planned coup détat to be a mercenary. Critics have argued that the convention and APGC77 Art,47 are designed to cover the activities of mercenaries in post-colonial Africa and do not address adequately the use of private military companies by sovereign states. While the United States governed Iraq, no U. S. citizen working as a guard could be classified as a mercenary because he was a national of a Party to the conflict. S. However, those who acknowledge the United States and other forces as continuing parties to the conflict might insist that U. S. armed guards cannot be called mercenaries. The laws of countries forbid their citizens to fight in foreign wars unless they are under the control of their own national armed forces. If a person is proven to have worked as a mercenary for any other country while retaining Austrian citizenship, in 2003, France criminalized mercenary activities, as defined by the protocol to the Geneva convention for French citizens, permanent residents and legal entities
7.
Walters Art Museum
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The Walters Art Museum, located in Mount Vernon-Belvedere, Baltimore, Maryland, is a public art museum founded and opened in 1934. It holds collections established during the mid-19th Century, located across the back alley, a block south of the Walters mansion on West Monument Street/Mount Vernon Place, on the northwest corner of North Charles Street at West Centre Street. The following year, The Walters reopened its original building after a dramatic three-year physical renovation and replacement of internal utilities. The Archimedes Palimpsest was on loan to the Walters Art Museum from a collector for conservation. This was one of the largest and most comprehensive such releases made by any museum, the Walters collection of ancient art includes examples from Egypt, Nubia, Greece, Rome, Etruria and the Near East. In 1911, Henry Walters purchased almost 100 gold artifacts from the Chiriqui region of western Panama in Central America, the museum owns the oldest surviving Chinese wood-and-lacquer image of the Buddha. It is exhibited in a gallery dedicated solely to this work, the Museum holds one of the largest and finest collections of Thai bronze, scrolls, and banner paintings in the world. Islamic art in all media is represented at the Walters, the Walters Museum owns an array of Islamic manuscripts. Walters Art Museum, MS W.613 contains five Mughal miniatures from a very important Khamsa of Nizami made for the Emperor Akbar, Henry Walters assembled a collection of art produced during the Middle Ages in all the major artistic media of the period. This forms the basis of the Walters medieval collection, for which the Museum is best known internationally. Considered one of the best collections of art in the United States, the Museums holdings include examples of metalwork, sculpture, stained glass, textiles, icons. Sculpted heads from the royal Abbey of St. Denis are rare surviving examples of sculptures that are directly connected with the origins of Gothic art in 12th Century France. An ivory casket covered with scenes of jousting knights is one of about a dozen such objects to survive in the world, many of these works are on display in the Museums galleries. Works in the collection are the subject of active research by the curatorial and conservation departments of the museum. The collection of European Renaissance and Baroque art features holdings of paintings, sculpture, furniture, ceramics, metal work, arms, the museum has one of ten surviving examples of the Sèvres pot-pourri vase in the shape of a ship from the 1750s and 1760s. William and Henry Walters collected works by late 19th Century French academic masters, Henry Walters was particularly interested in the courtly arts of 18th Century France. The museum’s collection of Sèvres porcelain includes a number of pieces that were made for members of the Royal Bourbon Court at Versailles Palace outside of Paris. Portrait miniatures and the examples of works, especially snuffboxes and watches, are displayed in the Treasury, along with some exceptional 19th-
8.
Cyrus the Great
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Cyrus II of Persia, commonly known as Cyrus the Great and also called Cyrus the Elder by the Greeks, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. From the Mediterranean Sea and Hellespont in the west to the Indus River in the east, under his successors, the empire eventually stretched at its maximum extent from parts of the Balkans and Eastern Europe proper in the west, to the Indus Valley in the east. His regal titles in full were The Great King, King of Persia, King of Anshan, King of Media, King of Babylon, King of Sumer and Akkad, the reign of Cyrus the Great lasted between 29 and 31 years. Cyrus built his empire by conquering first the Median Empire, then the Lydian Empire, either before or after Babylon, he led an expedition into central Asia, which resulted in major campaigns that were described as having brought into subjection every nation without exception. Cyrus did not venture into Egypt, as he died in battle. He was succeeded by his son, Cambyses II, who managed to add to the empire by conquering Egypt, Nubia, Cyrus the Great respected the customs and religions of the lands he conquered. This became a successful model for centralized administration and establishing a government working to the advantage. In fact, the administration of the empire through satraps and the principle of forming a government at Pasargadae were the works of Cyrus. Cyrus the Great is also recognized for his achievements in human rights, politics. Having originated from Persis, roughly corresponding to the modern Iranian province of Fars and this view has been criticized by some historians as a misunderstanding of the Cylinders generic nature as a traditional statement that new monarchs make at the beginning of their reign. The name Cyrus is a Latinized form derived from the Greek Κῦρος, Kỹros, the name and its meaning has been recorded in ancient inscriptions in different languages. This may also point to a relationship to the mythological first king of Persia, Jamshid. Karl Hoffmann has suggested a translation based on the meaning of an Indo-European-root to humiliate, in the Persian language and especially in Iran, Cyruss name is spelled as کوروش. In the Bible, he is known as Koresh, the Persian domination and kingdom in the Iranian plateau started by an extension of the Achaemenid dynasty, who expanded their earlier domination possibly from the 9th century BC onward. The eponymous founder of dynasty was Achaemenes. Achaemenids are descendants of Achaemenes as Darius the Great, the king of the dynasty, traces his genealogy to him. Ancient documents mention that Teispes had a son called Cyrus I, Cyrus I had a full brother whose name is recorded as Ariaramnes. In 600 BC, Cyrus I was succeeded by his son, Cambyses I, Cyrus the Great was a son of Cambyses I, who named his son after his father, Cyrus I
9.
Lydia
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Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern western Turkish provinces of Uşak, Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian, at its greatest extent, the Kingdom of Lydia covered all of western Anatolia. Lydia was a satrapy of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, with Sardis as its capital, tabalus, appointed by Cyrus the Great, was the first satrap. Lydia was later the name of a Roman province, coins are said to have been invented in Lydia around the 7th century BC. The endonym Śfard survives in bilingual and trilingual stone-carved notices of the Achaemenid Empire and these in the Greek tradition are associated with Sardis, the capital city of King Gyges, constructed during the 7th century BC. The region of the Lydian kingdom was during the 15th-14th centuries part of the Arzawa kingdom, the Lydian language is not part of the Luwian subgroup. An Etruscan/Lydian association has long been a subject of conjecture, however, recent decipherment of Lydian and its classification as an Anatolian language mean that Etruscan and Lydian were not even part of the same language family. The boundaries of historical Lydia varied across the centuries and it was bounded first by Mysia, Caria, Phrygia and coastal Ionia. Later, the power of Alyattes II and Croesus expanded Lydia. Lydia never again shrank back into its original dimensions, the Lydian language was an Indo-European language in the Anatolian language family, related to Luwian and Hittite. It used many prefixes and grammatical particles, Lydian finally became extinct during the 1st century BC. Lydia developed after the decline of the Hittite Empire in the 12th century BC, in Hittite times, the name for the region had been Arzawa. According to Greek source, the name of the Lydian kingdom was Maionia, or Maeonia. Homer describes their capital not as Sardis but as Hyde, Hyde may have been the name of the district in which Sardis was located. Later, Herodotus adds that the Meiones were renamed Lydians after their king Lydus, son of Atys and this etiological eponym served to account for the Greek ethnic name Lydoi. During Biblical times, the Lydian warriors were famous archers, some Maeones still existed during historical times in the upland interior along the River Hermus, where a town named Maeonia existed, according to Pliny the Elder and Hierocles. In Greek myth, Lydia had also adopted the symbol, that also appears in the Mycenaean civilization. Omphale, daughter of the river Iardanos, was a ruler of Lydia, all three heroic ancestors indicate a Lydian dynasty claiming Heracles as their ancestor
10.
Nabonidus
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Nabonidus was the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, reigning from 556–539 BC. Modern perceptions of Nabonidus reign have been colored by accounts written well after his reign as king of Babylon, most notably by the Persians. As a result, Nabonidus has often described in very negative terms in both modern and contemporaneous scholarship. However, an accumulation of evidence and a reassessment of existing material has caused opinions on Nabonidus and he said in his inscriptions that he was of unimportant origins. Similarly, his mother Addagoppe, who lived to an old age and may have connected to the temple of the moon-god Sîn in Harran. He certainly did not belong to the ruling dynasty, the Chaldeans. He came to the throne in 556 BC by overthrowing the young king Labashi-Marduk, Nabonidus took an interest in Babylons past, excavating ancient buildings and displaying his archeological discoveries in a museum. In most ancient accounts, he is depicted as a royal anomaly and he left the capital for the desert oasis of Tayma in Arabia early in his reign, from which he only returned after many years. In the meantime, his son Belshazzar ruled from Babylon, Nabonidus is most revered and is known as the first archaeologist. He was also the first to date an archaeological artifact in his attempt to date Naram-Sins temple during his search for it. Even though his estimate was inaccurate by about 1500 years, it was still a good one considering the lack of accurate dating technology at the time. ). Although Nabonidus personal preference for Sîn is clear, the strength of this preference divides scholars, in any case, there is no sign of the civil unrest during his reign that would have been indicative of trouble. Part of the propaganda issued by both the Marduk priesthood and Cyrus is the story of Nabonidus taking the most important cultic statues from southern Mesopotamia hostage in Babylon, till the end of the month Ulûlu all the gods of Akkad -those from above and those from below- entered Babylon. The gods of Borsippa, Cutha, and Sippar did not enter, however, modern scholarship has provided an explanation for this action. In Mesopotamia, gods were supposed to be housed inside their statues, but this only happened if they received the right kind of attention. So Nabonidus took special care of these statues and made sure that their personnel had to come along with him. Assyrian and Babylonian sources of the first millennium frequently allude to the removal of statues from the temples as the result of a city being conquered. Spoliated statues were carried off to the land of the victorious power where they remained in captivity until a turn of events would allow them to be restored to their shrines
11.
Eunuch
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The term eunuch generally refers to a man who has been castrated, typically early enough in his life for this change to have major hormonal consequences. In some ancient texts, eunuch may also refer to a man who is not castrated but who is impotent, celibate, or otherwise not inclined to marry, in Latin, the words eunuchus, spado, and castratus were used to denote eunuchs. Castration was typically carried out on the soon-to-be eunuch without his consent in order that he perform a specific social function. The earliest records for intentional castration to produce eunuchs are from the Sumerian city of Lagash in the 21st century BC. Eunuchs would usually be servants or slaves who had been castrated in order to make them reliable servants of a court where physical access to the ruler could wield great influence. Similar instances are reflected in the origins and etymology of many high offices. Because their condition usually lowered their status, they could also be easily replaced or killed without repercussion. In cultures that had both harems and eunuchs, eunuchs were sometimes used as servants or seraglio guards. Eunuch comes from the Greek word eunoukhos, first attested in a fragment of Hipponax, the acerbic poet describes a certain lover of fine food having consumed his estate dining lavishly and at leisure every day on tuna and garlic-honey cheese paté like a Lampsacene eunoukhos. For instance, Lucian suggests two methods to determine whether someone is a eunuch, physical inspection of the body, or scrutiny of his ability to perform sexually with females, the earliest surviving etymology of the word is from late antiquity. The 12th century Etymologicum Magnum essentially repeats the entry from Orion, in the late 12th century, Eustathius of Thessalonica offered an original derivation of the word from eunis + okheuein, deprived of mating. The early 17th century scholar and theologian Gerardus Vossius therefore explains that the originally designated an office. He says the word came to be applied to castrated men in general because such men were the usual holders of that office. Still, Vossius notes the alternate etymologies offered by Eustathius and others, modern etymologists have followed Orions first option. As an alpha-declension noun, eunē features the stem-vowel -a-, all words that are formed by adding onto eunē have an a-sound or long e-sound in the combined syllable, as in eunater or eunēter, eunaios or eunēthen. By analogy, a compound between eunē and ekhein would be expected to come out as eunēkhos, or in English eunech, on the other hand, the etymology offered by Eustathius would work only if eunis contributes an e-sound or o-sound to the compound. Unfortunately, there are no known compounds of eunis to use for comparison, consequently, the rules of Greek vowel contraction at any rate favor the derivation from eunoos and ekhein. And in fact, other words that have the same ending -oukhos feature a stem-vowel o in the first word of the compound, be that as it may, virtually all modern reference works cite the derivation from eunē and ekhein
12.
Ancient Greece
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Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th-9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and this was followed by the period of Classical Greece, an era that began with the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting from the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Due to the conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the end of the Mediterranean Sea. Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a influence on ancient Rome. For this reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Classical Antiquity in the Mediterranean region is considered to have begun in the 8th century BC. Classical Antiquity in Greece is preceded by the Greek Dark Ages and this period is succeeded, around the 8th century BC, by the Orientalizing Period during which a strong influence of Syro-Hittite, Jewish, Assyrian, Phoenician and Egyptian cultures becomes apparent. The end of the Dark Ages is also dated to 776 BC. The Archaic period gives way to the Classical period around 500 BC, Ancient Periods Astronomical year numbering Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details The history of Greece during Classical Antiquity may be subdivided into five major periods. The earliest of these is the Archaic period, in which artists made larger free-standing sculptures in stiff, the Archaic period is often taken to end with the overthrow of the last tyrant of Athens and the start of Athenian Democracy in 508 BC. It was followed by the Classical period, characterized by a style which was considered by observers to be exemplary, i. e. classical, as shown in the Parthenon. This period saw the Greco-Persian Wars and the Rise of Macedon, following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period, during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East. This period begins with the death of Alexander and ends with the Roman conquest, Herodotus is widely known as the father of history, his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato, most of these authors were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, which is why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than those of many other cities. Their scope is limited by a focus on political, military and diplomatic history, ignoring economic. In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. The Lelantine War is the earliest documented war of the ancient Greek period and it was fought between the important poleis of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Both cities seem to have suffered a decline as result of the long war, a mercantile class arose in the first half of the 7th century BC, shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Griffith, Francis Llewellyn (1911). "Amasis s.v. Amasis II.". In Chisholm, Hugh. Encyclopædia Britannica. 1 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 782. This cites:
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the 