Jean-François Champollion
Jean-François Champollion was a French scholar and orientalist, known as the decipherer of Egyptian hieroglyphs and a founding figure in the field of Egyptology. A child prodigy in philology, he gave his first public paper on the decipherment of Demotic in 1806, as a young man held many posts of honor in scientific circles, spoke Coptic and Arabic fluently. During the early 19th-century, French culture experienced a period of'Egyptomania', brought on by Napoleon's discoveries in Egypt during his campaign there which brought to light the trilingual Rosetta Stone. Scholars debated the age of Egyptian civilization and the function and nature of hieroglyphic script, which language if any it recorded, the degree to which the signs were phonetic or ideographic. Many thought that the script was only used for sacred and ritual functions, that as such it was unlikely to be decipherable since it was tied to esoteric and philosophical ideas, did not record historical information; the significance of Champollion's decipherment was that he showed these assumptions to be wrong, made it possible to begin to retrieve many kinds of information recorded by the ancient Egyptians.
Champollion lived in a period of political turmoil in France which continuously threatened to disrupt his research in various ways. During the Napoleonic Wars, he was able to avoid conscription, but his Napoleonic allegiances meant that he was considered suspect by the subsequent Royalist regime, his own actions, sometimes brash and reckless, did not help his case. His relations with important political and scientific figures of the time, such as Joseph Fourier and Silvestre de Sacy helped him, although in some periods he lived exiled from the scientific community. In 1820, Champollion embarked in earnest on the project of decipherment of hieroglyphic script, soon overshadowing the achievements of British polymath Thomas Young who had made the first advances in decipherment before 1819. In 1822, Champollion published his first breakthrough in the decipherment of the Rosetta hieroglyphs, showing that the Egyptian writing system was a combination of phonetic and ideographic signs – the first such script discovered.
In 1824, he published a Précis in which he detailed a decipherment of the hieroglyphic script demonstrating the values of its phonetic and ideographic signs. In 1829, he traveled to Egypt where he was able to read many hieroglyphic texts that had never before been studied, brought home a large body of new drawings of hieroglyphic inscriptions. Home again he was given a professorship in Egyptology, but only lectured a few times before his health, ruined by the hardships of the Egyptian journey, forced him to give up teaching, he died in Paris in 1832, 41 years old. His grammar of Ancient Egyptian was published posthumously. During his life as well as long after his death intense discussions over the merits of his decipherment were carried out among Egyptologists; some faulted him for not having given sufficient credit to the early discoveries of Young, accusing him of plagiarism, others long disputed the accuracy of his decipherments. But subsequent findings and confirmations of his readings by scholars building on his results led to general acceptance of his work.
Although some still argue that he should have acknowledged the contributions of Young, his decipherment is now universally accepted, has been the basis for all further developments in the field. He is regarded as the "Founder and Father of Egyptology". Jean-François Champollion was born the last of seven children, he was raised in humble circumstances. His father was a notorious drunk, his mother, Jeanne-Françoise Gualieu, seems to have been an absent figure in the life of young Champollion, raised by his older brother Jacques-Joseph. One biographer, Andrew Robinson speculated that Champollion was not in fact the son of Jacques Champollion's wife but the result of an extramarital affair. Towards the end of March 1801, Jean-François left Figeac for Grenoble, which he reached on the 27th of March, where Jacques-Joseph lived in a two-room flat on the rue Neuve. Jacques-Joseph was working as an assistant in the import-export company Chatel and Rif, yet taught his brother to read, supported his education.
His brother may have been part of the source of Champollion's interest in Egypt, since as a young man he wanted to join Napoleon's Egyptian expedition, regretted not being able to go. Known as the younger brother of better known Jacques-Joseph, Jean-François was called Champollion le Jeune; when his brother became the more famous of the two, Jacques added the town of his birth as a second surname and hence is referred to as Champollion-Figeac, in contrast to his brother Champollion. Although studious and self-educated, Jacques did not have Jean-François' genius for language. Given the difficulty of the task of educating his brother while earning a living, Jacques-Joseph decided to send his younger brother to the well-regarded school of the Abbé Dussert in November 1802, where Champollion would stay until the summer of 1804. During this period, his gift for languages first became evident: he started out learning Latin and Greek, but progressed to Hebrew and other Semitic languages such as Ethiopic, Arabic and Chaldean.
It
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. Part of Warwickshire, Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 12th largest in the United Kingdom, it is the second largest city in the West Midlands region, after Birmingham. Coventry is 19 miles east-southeast of Birmingham, 24 miles southwest of Leicester, 11 miles north of Warwick and 94 miles northwest of London. Coventry is the most central city in England, being only 11 miles south-southwest of the country's geographical centre in Leicestershire; the current Coventry Cathedral was built after the majority of the 14th century cathedral church of Saint Michael was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in the Coventry Blitz of 14 November 1940. Coventry motor companies have contributed to the British motor industry; the city has two universities, Coventry University in the city centre and the University of Warwick on the southern outskirts. On 7 December 2017, the city won the title of UK City of Culture 2021, after beating Paisley, Stoke-on-Trent and Sunderland to the title.
They will be the third title holder, of the quadrennial award which began in 2013. The Romans founded a settlement in Baginton, next to the River Sowe, another formed around a Saxon nunnery, founded c. AD 700 by St Osburga, left in ruins by King Canute's invading Danish army in 1016. Earl Leofric of Mercia and his wife Lady Godiva built on the remains of the nunnery and founded a Benedictine monastery in 1043 dedicated to St Mary. In time, a market was established at the settlement expanded. Coventry Castle was a bailey castle in the city, it was built in the early 12th century by 4th Earl of Chester. Its first known use was during The Anarchy when Robert Marmion, a supporter of King Stephen, expelled the monks from the adjacent priory of Saint Mary in 1144, converted it into a fortress from which he waged a battle against the Earl. Marmion perished in the battle, it was demolished in the late 12th century and St Mary's Guildhall was built on part of the site. It is assumed. By the 14th century, Coventry was an important centre of the cloth trade, throughout the Middle Ages was one of the largest and most important cities in England.
The bishops of Lichfield were referred to as bishops of Coventry and Lichfield, or Lichfield and Coventry. Coventry claimed the status of a city by ancient prescriptive usage, was granted a charter of incorporation in 1345, in 1451 became a county in its own right; the plays that William Shakespeare witnessed in Coventry during his boyhood or'teens' may have influenced how his plays, such as Hamlet, came about. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Coventry became one of the three main British centres of watch and clock manufacture and ranked alongside Prescot, in Lancashire and Clerkenwell in London; as the industry declined, due to competition from Swiss Made clock and watch manufacturers, the skilled pool of workers proved crucial to the setting up of bicycle manufacture and the motorbike, machine tool and aircraft industries. In the late 19th century, Coventry became a major centre of bicycle manufacture; the industry energised by the invention by James Starley and his nephew John Kemp Starley of the Rover safety bicycle, safer and more popular than the pioneering penny-farthing.
The company became Rover. By the early 20th century, bicycle manufacture had evolved into motor manufacture, Coventry became a major centre of the British motor industry; the research and design headquarters of Jaguar Cars is in the city at their Whitley plant and although vehicle assembly ceased at the Browns Lane plant in 2004, Jaguar's head office returned to the city in 2011, is sited in Whitley. Jaguar is owned by Tata Motors. With many of the city's older properties becoming unfit for habitation, the first council houses were let to their tenants in 1917. With Coventry's industrial base continuing to soar after the end of the Great War a year numerous private and council housing developments took place across the city in the 1920s and 1930s; the development of a southern by-pass around the city, starting in the 1930s and being completed in 1940, helped deliver more urban areas to the city on rural land. Coventry suffered severe bomb damage during the Second World War. There was a massive Luftwaffe air raid that the Germans called Operation Moonlight Sonata, part of the "Coventry Blitz", on 14 November 1940.
Firebombing on this date led to severe damage to large areas of the city centre and to Coventry's historic cathedral, leaving only a shell and the spire. More than 4,000 houses were damaged or destroyed, along with around three quarters of the city's industrial plants. More than 800 people were killed, with thousands injured and homeless. Aside from London and Plymouth, Coventry suffered more damage than any other British city during the Luftwaffe attacks, with huge firestorms devastating most of the city centre; the city was targeted due to its high concentration of armaments, munitions and aero-engine plants which contributed to the British war effort, although there have been claims that Hitler launched the attack as revenge for the bombing of Munich by the RAF six days before the Coventry Blitz and chose the Midlands city because its medieval heart was regarded as one of the finest in Britain. Following the raids, the majority of Coventry's historic buildings could not be saved as they were in ruinous states or were deemed unsafe for any future use.
Several structures were demolished to make way for
Louvre
The Louvre, or the Louvre Museum, is the world's largest art museum and a historic monument in Paris, France. A central landmark of the city, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement. 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are exhibited over an area of 72,735 square metres. In 2018, the Louvre was the world's most visited art museum; the museum is housed in the Louvre Palace built as the Louvre castle in the late 12th to 13th century under Philip II. Remnants of the fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to the urban expansion of the city, the fortress lost its defensive function and, in 1546, was converted by Francis I into the main residence of the French Kings; the building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace. In 1682, Louis XIV chose the Palace of Versailles for his household, leaving the Louvre as a place to display the royal collection, from 1692, a collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture. In 1692, the building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons.
The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nation's masterpieces; the museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings, the majority of the works being royal and confiscated church property. Because of structural problems with the building, the museum was closed in 1796 until 1801; the collection was increased under Napoleon and the museum was renamed Musée Napoléon, but after Napoleon's abdication many works seized by his armies were returned to their original owners. The collection was further increased during the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X, during the Second French Empire the museum gained 20,000 pieces. Holdings have grown through donations and bequests since the Third Republic; the collection is divided among eight curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities. The Louvre Palace, which houses the museum, was begun as a fortress by Philip II in the 12th century to protect the city from English soldiers which were in Normandy.
Remnants of this castle are still visible in the crypt. Whether this was the first building on that spot is not known. According to the authoritative Grand Larousse encyclopédique, the name derives from an association with wolf hunting den. In the 7th century, St. Fare, an abbess in Meaux, left part of her "Villa called Luvra situated in the region of Paris" to a monastery.. The Louvre Palace was altered throughout the Middle Ages. In the 14th century, Charles V converted the building into a residence and in 1546, Francis I renovated the site in French Renaissance style. Francis acquired what would become the nucleus of the Louvre's holdings, his acquisitions including Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa. After Louis XIV chose Versailles as his residence in 1682, constructions slowed. Four generations of Boulle were granted Royal patronage and resided in the Louvre in the following order: Pierre Boulle, Jean Boulle, Andre-Charles Boulle and his four sons, after him. André-Charles Boulle is the most famous French cabinetmaker and the preeminent artist in the field of marquetry known as "Inlay".
Boulle was "the most remarkable of all French cabinetmakers". He was commended to Louis XIV of France, the "Sun King", by Jean-Baptiste Colbert as being "the most skilled craftsman in his profession". Before the fire of 1720 destroyed them, André-Charles Boulle held priceless works of art in the Louvre, including forty-eight drawings by Raphael'. By the mid-18th century there were an increasing number of proposals to create a public gallery, with the art critic La Font de Saint-Yenne publishing, in 1747, a call for a display of the royal collection. On 14 October 1750, Louis XV agreed and sanctioned a display of 96 pieces from the royal collection, mounted in the Galerie royale de peinture of the Luxembourg Palace. A hall was opened by Le Normant de Tournehem and the Marquis de Marigny for public viewing of the Tableaux du Roy on Wednesdays and Saturdays, contained Andrea del Sarto's Charity and works by Raphael. Under Louis XVI, the royal museum idea became policy; the comte d'Angiviller broadened the collection and in 1776 proposed conversion of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre – which contained maps – into the "French Museum".
Many proposals were offered for the Louvre's renovation into a museum. Hence the museum remained incomplete until the French Revolution. During the French Revolution the Louvre was transformed into a public museum. In May 1791, the Assembly declared that the Louvre would be "a place for bringing together monuments of all the sciences and arts". On 10 August 1792, Louis XVI was imprisoned and the royal collection i
Stratford-upon-Avon
Stratford-upon-Avon known as just Stratford, is a market town and civil parish in the Stratford-on-Avon District, in the county of Warwickshire, England, on the River Avon, 91 miles north west of London, 22 miles south east of Birmingham, 8 miles south west of Warwick. The estimated population in 2007 was 25,505. Stratford was inhabited by Anglo-Saxons and remained a village before the lord of the manor, John of Coutances, set out plans to develop it into a town in 1196. In that same year, Stratford was granted a charter from King Richard I to hold a weekly market in the town, giving it its status as a market town; as a result, Stratford experienced an increase in commerce as well as urban expansion. The town is a popular tourist destination owing to its status as birthplace of English playwright and poet William Shakespeare, receives 2.5 million visitors a year. The Royal Shakespeare Company resides in Stratford's Royal Shakespeare Theatre; the name is a combination of the Old English strǣt, meaning'street', indicating a shallow part of a river or stream, allowing it to be crossed by walking or driving and avon, the Celtic word for river.
The ` street' was a Roman road. The ford, used as a crossing since Roman times became the location of Clopton Bridge. A survey of 1251-52 uses the name Stratford for the first time to identify Old Stratford and the newer manors; the name was used after that time to describe the area surrounding the Holy Trinity Church and the street of Old Town. The settlement which became known as Stratford was first inhabited by Anglo-Saxons following their 7th-century invasion of what would become known as Warwickshire; the land was owned by the church of Worcester and it remained a village until the late 12th century when it was developed into a town by lord of the manor, John of Coutances. John laid out a new town plan in 1196 based on a grid system to expand Stratford and allow people to rent property in order to trade within the town. Additionally, a charter was granted to Stratford by King Richard I in 1196 which allowed a weekly market to be held in the town, giving it its status as a market town; these two charters, which formed the foundations of Stratford's transformation from a village to a town, make the town of Stratford over 800 years old.
John's plans to develop Stratford into a town meant Stratford became a place of work for tradesmen and merchants. By 1252 the town had 240 burgages, as well as shops and other buildings. Stratford's new workers established a guild known as the Guild of the Holy Cross for their business and religious requirements. Many of the town's earliest and most important buildings are located along what is known as Stratford's Historic Spine, once the main route from the town centre to the parish church; the route of the Historic Spine begins at Shakespeare's Birthplace in Henley Street. It continues through Henley Street to the top end of Bridge Street and into High Street where many Elizabethan buildings are located, including Harvard House; the route carries on through Chapel Street where Nash's New Place are sited. The Historic Spine continues along Church Street where Guild buildings are located dating back to the 15th century, as well as 18th- and 19th-century properties; the route finishes in Old Town, which includes Hall's Croft and the Holy Trinity Church.
During Stratford's early expansion into a town, the only access across the River Avon into and out of the town was over a wooden bridge, thought to have been constructed in 1318. However, the bridge could not be crossed at times due to the river rising and was described by antiquarian John Leland as "a poor bridge of timber and no causey to it, whereby many poor folks and other refused to come to Stratford when Avon was up, or coming thither stood in jeopardy of life." In 1480, a new masonry arch bridge was built to replace it called Clopton Bridge, named after Hugh Clopton who paid for its construction. The new bridge made it easier for people to trade within Stratford and for passing travellers to stay in the town; the Cotswolds, located close to Stratford, was a major sheep-producing area up until the latter part of the 19th century, with Stratford one of its main centres for the processing and distribution of sheep and wool. Stratford became a centre for tanning during the 15th–17th centuries.
Both the river and the Roman road served as trade routes for the town. Despite Stratford's increase in trade, it grew between the middle of the 13th century and the end of the 16th century, with a survey of the town showing 217 houses belonged to the lord of the manor in 1590. Growth continued to be slow throughout the 17th century, with hearth tax returns showing that at most there were 429 houses in the town by 1670. However, more substantial expansion began following several enclosure acts in the late 18th century, with the first and largest development by John Payton who developed land on the north side of the old town, creating several streets including John Street and Payton Street. Before the dominance of road and rail, Stratford was the gateway to the network of British canals. In 1769, the actor David Garrick staged a major Shakespeare Jubilee over three days which saw the construction of a large rotunda and the influx of many visitors; this contributed to the growing phenomenon of Bardolatry.
Stratford-upon-Avon is within the Stratford-on-Avon parliament constituency, represented by Nadhim Zahawi since 2010. Stratford is within the West Midlands Region
Karnak
The Karnak Temple Complex known as Karnak, comprises a vast mix of decayed temples, chapels and other buildings near Luxor, in Egypt. Construction at the complex began during the reign of Senusret I in the Middle Kingdom and continued into the Ptolemaic period, although most of the extant buildings date from the New Kingdom; the area around Karnak was the ancient Egyptian Ipet-isut and the main place of worship of the eighteenth dynasty Theban Triad with the god Amun as its head. It is part of the monumental city of Thebes; the Karnak complex gives its name to the nearby, surrounded, modern village of El-Karnak, 2.5 kilometres north of Luxor. The complex includes the Karnak Open Air Museum, it is believed to be the second most visited historical site in Egypt. It consists of four main parts, of which only the largest is open to the general public; the term Karnak is understood as being the Precinct of Amun-Ra only, because this is the only part most visitors see. The three other parts, the Precinct of Mut, the Precinct of Montu, the dismantled Temple of Amenhotep IV, are closed to the public.
There are a few smaller temples and sanctuaries connecting the Precinct of Mut, the Precinct of Amun-Re, the Luxor Temple. The Precinct of Mut is ancient, being dedicated to an Earth and creation deity, but not yet restored; the original temple was destroyed and restored by Hatshepsut, although another pharaoh built around it in order to change the focus or orientation of the sacred area. Many portions of it may have been carried away for use in other buildings; the key difference between Karnak and most of the other temples and sites in Egypt is the length of time over which it was developed and used. Construction of temples continued into Ptolemaic times. Thirty pharaohs contributed to the buildings, enabling it to reach a size and diversity not seen elsewhere. Few of the individual features of Karnak are unique, but the size and number of features are overwhelming; the deities represented range from some of the earliest worshiped to those worshiped much in the history of the Ancient Egyptian culture.
Although destroyed, it contained an early temple built by Amenhotep IV, the pharaoh who would celebrate a near monotheistic religion he established that prompted him to move his court and religious center away from Thebes. It contains evidence of adaptations, using buildings of the Ancient Egyptians by cultures for their own religious purposes. One famous aspect of Karnak is the Hypostyle Hall in the Precinct of Amun-Re, a hall area of 50,000 sq ft with 134 massive columns arranged in 16 rows. 122 of these columns are 10 meters tall, the other 12 are 21 meters tall with a diameter of over three meters. The architraves on top of these columns are estimated to weigh 70 tons; these architraves may have been lifted to these heights using levers. This would be an time-consuming process and would require great balance to get to such great heights. A common alternative theory regarding how they were moved is that large ramps were constructed of sand, brick or stone and that the stones were towed up the ramps.
If stone had been used for the ramps, they would have been able to use much less material. The top of the ramps would have employed either wooden tracks or cobblestones for towing the megaliths. There is an unfinished pillar in an out-of-the-way location that indicates how it would have been finished. Final carving was executed after the drums were put in place so that it was not damaged while being placed. Several experiments moving megaliths with ancient technology were made at other locations – some of them are listed here. In 2009 UCLA launched a website dedicated to virtual reality digital reconstructions of the Karnak complex and other resources; the sun god's shrine has light focused upon it during the winter solstice. The history of the Karnak complex is the history of Thebes and its changing role in the culture. Religious centers varied by region, when a new capital of the unified culture was established, the religious centers in that area gained prominence; the city of Thebes does not appear to have been of great significance before the Eleventh dynasty and previous temple building there would have been small, with shrines being dedicated to the early deities of Thebes, the Earth goddess Mut and Montu.
Early building was destroyed by invaders. The earliest known artifact found in the area of the temple is a small, eight-sided column from the Eleventh Dynasty, which mentions Amun-Re. Amun was long the local tutelary deity of Thebes, he was identified with the goose. The Egyptian meaning of Amun is, "hidden" or, the "hidden god". Major construction work in the Precinct of Amun-Re took place during the Eighteenth dynasty when Thebes became the capital of the unified Ancient Egypt; every pharaoh of that dynasty added something to the temple site. Thutmose I erected an enclosure wall connecting the Fourth and Fifth pylons, which comprise the earliest part of the temple still standing in situ. Hatshepsut had monuments constructed and restored the original Precinct of Mut, the ancient great goddess of Egypt, ravaged by the foreign rulers during the Hyksos occupation, she had at the time the tallest in the world, erected at the entrance to the temple. One still stands, as the tallest surviving ancient obelisk on Earth.
Another of her projects at the site, Karnak's Red C
Aida
Aida is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni. Set in the Old Kingdom of Egypt, it was commissioned by Cairo's Khedivial Opera House and had its première there on 24 December 1871, in a performance conducted by Giovanni Bottesini. Today the work holds a central place in the operatic canon, receiving performances every year around the world. Ghislanzoni's scheme follows a scenario attributed to the French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, but Verdi biographer Mary Jane Phillips-Matz argues that the source is Temistocle Solera. Isma'il Pasha, Khedive of Egypt, commissioned Verdi to write an opera for performance to celebrate the opening of the Khedivial Opera House, paying him 150,000 francs, but the premiere was delayed because of the Siege of Paris, during the Franco-Prussian War, when the scenery and costumes were stuck in the French capital, Verdi's Rigoletto was performed instead. Aida premiered in Cairo in late 1871. Contrary to popular belief, the opera was not written to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, for which Verdi had been invited to write an inaugural hymn, but had declined.
The plot bears striking, though unintentional, similarities to Metastasio's libretto La Nitteti. Verdi chose to write a brief orchestral prelude instead of a full overture for the opera, he composed an overture of the "potpourri" variety to replace the original prelude. However, in the end he decided not to have the overture performed because of its—his own words—"pretentious insipidity"; this overture, never used today, was given a rare broadcast performance by Arturo Toscanini and the NBC Symphony Orchestra on 30 March 1940, but was never commercially issued. Aida met with great acclaim when it opened in Cairo on 24 December 1871; the costumes and accessories for the premiere were designed by Auguste Mariette, who oversaw the design and construction of the sets, which were made in Paris by the Opéra's scene painters Auguste-Alfred Rubé and Philippe Chaperon and Édouard Desplechin and Jean-Baptiste Lavastre, shipped to Cairo. Although Verdi did not attend the premiere in Cairo, he was most dissatisfied with the fact that the audience consisted of invited dignitaries and critics, but no members of the general public.
He therefore considered the Italian premiere, held at La Scala, Milan on 8 February 1872, a performance in which he was involved at every stage, to be its real premiere. Verdi had written the role of Aida for the voice of Teresa Stolz, who sang it for the first time at the Milan premiere. Verdi had asked her fiancé, Angelo Mariani, to conduct the Cairo premiere, but he declined, so Giovanni Bottesini filled the gap; the Milan Amneris, Maria Waldmann, was his favourite in the role and she repeated it a number of times at his request. Aida was received with great enthusiasm at its Milan premiere; the opera was soon mounted at major opera houses throughout Italy, including the Teatro Regio di Parma, the Teatro di San Carlo, La Fenice, the Teatro Regio di Torino, the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, the Teatro Costanzi among others. Details of important national and other premieres of Aida follow: Argentina: 4 October 1873, at the original Teatro Colón, Buenos Aires, located at Rivadavia and Reconquista replaced by the headquarters of the Bank of the Argentine Nation.
United States: 26 November 1873, Academy of Music in New York City, with Ostava Torriani in the title role, Annie Louise Cary as Amneris, Italo Campanini as Radamès, Victor Maurel as Amonasro, Evasio Scolara as the King Germany: 20 April 1874, Berlin State Opera, with Mathilde Mallinger as Aida, Albert Niemann as Radamès, Franz Betz as Amonasro Austria: 29 April 1874, Vienna State Opera, with Amalie Materna as Amneris Hungary: 10 April 1875, Hungarian State Opera House, Budapest France: 22 April 1876, Théâtre-Lyrique Italien, Salle Ventadour, with the same cast as the Milan premiere, but with Édouard de Reszke making his debut as the King. United Kingdom: 22 June 1876, Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, with Adelina Patti as Aida, Ernesto Nicolini as Radamès, Francesco Graziani as Amonasro Australia: 6 September 1877, Royal Theatre, Melbourne Munich: 1877, Bavarian State Opera, with Josephine Schefsky as Amneris Stockholm: 16 February 1880, Royal Swedish Opera in Swedish, with Selma Ek in the title role Palais Garnier, Paris: 22 March 1880, sung in French, with Gabrielle Krauss as Aida, Rosine Bloch as Amnéris, Henri Sellier as Radamès, Victor Maurel as Amonasro, Georges-François Menu as the King, Auguste Boudouresque as Ramphis.
Metropolitan Opera, New York: 12 November 1886, conducted by Anton Seidl, with Therese Herbert-Förster in the title role, Carl Zobel as Radamès, Marianne Brandt as Amneris, Adolf Robinson as Amonasro, Emil Fischer as Ramfis, Georg Sieglitz as the King. Rio de Janeiro: 30 June 1886, Theatro Lyrico Fluminense. During rehearsals at the Theatro Lyrico there was an ongoing quarrel between the performers of the Italian touring opera company and the local inept conductor, with the result that substitute conductors were rejected by the audience. Arturo Toscanini, at the time a 19-year-old cellist, assistant chorus master, was persuaded to take up the baton for the performance. Toscanini conducted the entire opera with great success; this would be the start of a promising career. A compl
Sudan
Sudan or the Sudan the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northeast Africa. It is bordered by Egypt to the north, the Red Sea to the northeast, Eritrea to the east, Ethiopia to the southeast, South Sudan to the south, the Central African Republic to the southwest, Chad to the west, Libya to the northwest, it has a population of 39 million people and occupies a total area of 1,886,068 square kilometres, making it the third-largest country in Africa. Sudan's predominant religion is Islam, its official languages are Arabic and English; the capital is Khartoum, located at the confluence of the White Nile. Since 2011, Sudan is the scene of ongoing military conflict in its regions South Kordofan and Blue Nile. Sudan's history goes back to the Pharaonic period, witnessing the kingdom of Kerma, the subsequent rule of the Egyptian New Kingdom and the rise of the kingdom of Kush, which would in turn control Egypt itself for nearly a century. After the fall of Kush the Nubians formed the three Christian kingdoms of Nobatia and Alodia, with the latter two lasting until around 1500.
Between the 14th and 15th centuries much of Sudan was settled by Arab nomads. From the 16th–19th centuries and eastern Sudan were dominated by the Funj sultanate, while Darfur ruled the west and the Ottomans the far north; this period saw Arabization. From 1820 to 1874 the entirety of Sudan was conquered by the Muhammad Ali dynasty. Between 1881 and 1885 the harsh Egyptian reign was met with a successful revolt led by the self-proclaimed Mahdi Muhammad Ahmad, resulting in the establishment of the Caliphate of Omdurman; this state was destroyed in 1898 by the British, who would govern Sudan together with Egypt. The 20th century saw the growth of Sudanese nationalism and in 1953 Britain granted Sudan self-government. Independence was proclaimed on January 1, 1956. Since independence, Sudan has been ruled by a series of unstable parliamentary governments and military regimes. Under Gaafar Nimeiry, Sudan instituted Islamic law in 1983; this exacerbated the rift between the Islamic north, the seat of the government and the animists and Christians in the south.
Differences in language and political power erupted in a civil war between government forces influenced by the National Islamic Front and the southern rebels, whose most influential faction was the Sudan People's Liberation Army concluding in the independence of South Sudan in 2011. In April 2019, following contentious protests that faced fierce resistance from the Omar al-Bashir regime, the Sudanese military, under the command of Ahmed Awad Ibn Auf, took control of the nation and established a Transitional Military Council; this move dissolved the constitution. The country's place name Sudan is a name given to a geographical region to the south of the Sahara, stretching from Western Africa to eastern Central Africa; the name derives from the Arabic bilād as-sūdān, or "the lands of the Blacks". The name is one of several toponyms sharing similar etymologies meaning "land of the blacks" or similar meanings, in reference to the dark skin of the inhabitants; the term "Sudanese" had a negative connotation in Sudan due to its association with black African slaves.
The idea of "Sudanese" nationalism goes back to the 1930s and 1940s, when it was popularized by young intellectuals. By the eighth millennium BC, people of a Neolithic culture had settled into a sedentary way of life there in fortified mudbrick villages, where they supplemented hunting and fishing on the Nile with grain gathering and cattle herding. During the fifth millennium BC, migrations from the drying Sahara brought neolithic people into the Nile Valley along with agriculture; the population that resulted from this cultural and genetic mixing developed a social hierarchy over the next centuries which became the Kingdom of Kush at 1700 BC. Anthropological and archaeological research indicate that during the predynastic period Nubia and Nagadan Upper Egypt were ethnically, culturally nearly identical, thus evolved systems of pharaonic kingship by 3300 BC; the Kingdom of Kush was an ancient Nubian state centered on the confluences of the Blue Nile and White Nile, the Atbarah River and the Nile River.
It was established after the Bronze Age collapse and the disintegration of the New Kingdom of Egypt, centered at Napata in its early phase. After King Kashta invaded Egypt in the eighth century BC, the Kushite kings ruled as pharaohs of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt for a century before being defeated and driven out by the Assyrians. At the height of their glory, the Kushites conquered an empire that stretched from what is now known as South Kordofan all the way to the Sinai. Pharaoh Piye attempted to expand the empire into the Near East, but was thwarted by the Assyrian king Sargon II; the Kingdom of Kush is mentioned in the Bible as having saved the Israelites from the wrath of the Assyrians, although disease among the besiegers was the main reason for the failure to take the city. The war that took place between Pharaoh Taharqa and the Assyrian king Sennacherib was a decisive event in western history, with the Nubians being defeated in their attempts to gain a foothold in the Near East by Assyria.
Sennacherib's successor Esarhaddon went further, invaded Egypt itself, deposing Taharqa and driving the Nubians from Egypt entirely. Taharqa fled back to his homeland. Egypt became an Assyrian colony.
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One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Mariette, Auguste Ferdinand François". Encyclopædia Britannica. 17 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 716.
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the 
