Buddhism
Buddhism is the world's fourth-largest religion with over 520 million followers, or over 7% of the global population, known as Buddhists. Buddhism encompasses a variety of traditions and spiritual practices based on original teachings attributed to the Buddha and resulting interpreted philosophies. Buddhism originated in ancient India as a Sramana tradition sometime between the 6th and 4th centuries BCE, spreading through much of Asia. Two major extant branches of Buddhism are recognized by scholars: Theravada and Mahayana. Most Buddhist traditions share the goal of overcoming suffering and the cycle of death and rebirth, either by the attainment of Nirvana or through the path of Buddhahood. Buddhist schools vary in their interpretation of the path to liberation, the relative importance and canonicity assigned to the various Buddhist texts, their specific teachings and practices. Observed practices include taking refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha, observance of moral precepts, monasticism and the cultivation of the Paramitas.
Theravada Buddhism has a widespread following in Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia such as Myanmar and Thailand. Mahayana, which includes the traditions of Pure Land, Nichiren Buddhism and Tiantai, is found throughout East Asia. Vajrayana, a body of teachings attributed to Indian adepts, may be viewed as a separate branch or as an aspect of Mahayana Buddhism. Tibetan Buddhism, which preserves the Vajrayana teachings of eighth-century India, is practiced in the countries of the Himalayan region and Kalmykia. Buddhism is an Indian religion attributed to the teachings of the Buddha born Siddhārtha Gautama, known as the Tathāgata and Sakyamuni. Early texts have his personal name as "Gautama" or "Gotama" without any mention of "Siddhārtha," which appears to have been a kind of honorific title when it does appear; the details of Buddha's life are mentioned in many Early Buddhist Texts but are inconsistent, his social background and life details are difficult to prove, the precise dates uncertain. The evidence of the early texts suggests that he was born as Siddhārtha Gautama in Lumbini and grew up in Kapilavasthu, a town in the plains region of the modern Nepal-India border, that he spent his life in what is now modern Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.
Some hagiographic legends state that his father was a king named Suddhodana, his mother was Queen Maya, he was born in Lumbini gardens. However, scholars such as Richard Gombrich consider this a dubious claim because a combination of evidence suggests he was born in the Shakyas community – one that gave him the title Shakyamuni, the Shakya community was governed by a small oligarchy or republic-like council where there were no ranks but where seniority mattered instead; some of the stories about Buddha, his life, his teachings, claims about the society he grew up in may have been invented and interpolated at a time into the Buddhist texts. According to the Buddhist sutras, Gautama was moved by the innate suffering of humanity and its endless repetition due to rebirth, he set out on a quest to end this repeated suffering. Early Buddhist canonical texts and early biographies of Gautama state that Gautama first studied under Vedic teachers, namely Alara Kalama and Uddaka Ramaputta, learning meditation and ancient philosophies the concept of "nothingness, emptiness" from the former, "what is neither seen nor unseen" from the latter.
Finding these teachings to be insufficient to attain his goal, he turned to the practice of asceticism. This too fell short of attaining his goal, he turned to the practice of dhyana, which he had discovered in his youth, he famously sat in meditation under a Ficus religiosa tree now called the Bodhi Tree in the town of Bodh Gaya in the Gangetic plains region of South Asia. He gained insight into the workings of karma and his former lives, attained enlightenment, certainty about the Middle Way as the right path of spiritual practice to end suffering from rebirths in Saṃsāra; as a enlightened Buddha, he attracted followers and founded a Sangha. Now, as the Buddha, he spent the rest of his life teaching the Dharma he had discovered, died at the age of 80 in Kushinagar, India. Buddha's teachings were propagated by his followers, which in the last centuries of the 1st millennium BCE became over 18 Buddhist sub-schools of thought, each with its own basket of texts containing different interpretations and authentic teachings of the Buddha.
The Four Truths express the basic orientation of Buddhism: we crave and cling to impermanent states and things, dukkha, "incapable of satisfying" and painful. This keeps us caught in saṃsāra, the endless cycle of repeated rebirth and dying again, but there is a way to liberation from this endless cycle to the state of nirvana, namely following the Noble Eightfold Path. The truth of dukkha is the basic insight that life in this mundane world, with its clinging and craving to impermanent states and things is dukkha, unsatisfactory. Dukkha can be translated as "incapable of satisfying," "the unsatisfactory nature and the general insecurity of all conditioned phenomena". Dukkha is most translated as "suffering," but this is inaccurate, since it refers not to episodic suffering, but to the intrinsically unsat
Dovecote
A dovecote or dovecot or doocot is a structure intended to house pigeons or doves. Dovecotes may be free-standing structures in a variety of shapes, or built into the end of a house or barn, they contain pigeonholes for the birds to nest. Pigeons and doves were an important food source in Western Europe and were kept for their eggs and dung. In some cultures Medieval Europe, the possession of a dovecote was a symbol of status and power and was regulated by law. Only nobles had this special privilege known as droit de colombier. Many ancient manors in France and the United Kingdom have a dovecote in one section of the manorial enclosure or in nearby fields. Examples include Château de Kerjean in Brittany, Houchin, Bodysgallen Hall in Wales, Muchalls Castle and Newark Castle in Scotland; the oldest dovecotes are thought to have been the fortified dovecotes of Upper Egypt, the domed dovecotes of Iran. In dry regions, the droppings were prized by farmers and were thus collected for fertilizing their arid fields.
The presence of dovecotes is not noted in France before the Roman invasion of Gaul by Caesar. The pigeon farm was a passion in Rome: the Roman round, columbarium had its interior covered with a white coating of marble powder. Varro and Pliny the Elder wrote about pigeon farms and dovecote construction. In the city of Rome in the time of the Republic and the Empire the internal design of the banks of pigeonholes was adapted for the purpose of disposing of cremated ashes after death: these columbaria were constructed underground; the French word for dovecote is colombier. In some French provinces Normandy, the dovecotes were built of wood in a stylized way. Stone was the other popular building material for these old dovecotes; these stone structures were built in circular and octagonal form. Some of the medieval French abbeys had large stone dovecotes on their grounds. In Brittany, the dovecote was sometimes built directly into the upper walls of the farmhouse or manor-house. In rare cases, it was built into the upper gallery of the lookout tower.
Dovecotes of this type are called tour-fuie in French. Some of the larger château-forts, such as the Château de Suscinio in Morbihan, still have a complete dovecote standing on the grounds, outside the moat and walls of the castle. In France, it was called a colombier or fuie from the 13th century onwards and pigeonnier until the 19th century; the dovecote interior, the space granted to the pigeons, is divided into a number of boulins. Each boulin is the lodging of a pair of pigeons; these boulins can be in rock, brick or cob and installed at the time of the construction of the dovecote or be in pottery, in braided wicker in the form of a basket or of a nest. It is the number of boulins; the one at the chateau d'Aulnay with its 2,000 boulins and the one at Port-d'Envaux with its 2,400 boulins of baked earth are among the largest ones in France. In the Middle Ages in France, the possession of a colombier à pied, constructed separately from the corps de logis of the manor-house, was a privilege of the seigneurial lord.
He was granted permission by his overlord to build two on his estate lands. For the other constructions, the dovecote rights varied according to the provinces, they had to be in proportion to the importance of the property, placed in a floor above a henhouse, a kennel, a bread oven a wine cellar. The aviaries were integrated into a stable, a barn or a shed, were permitted to use no more than 1 hectares of arable land. Although they produced an excellent fertilizer, the lord's pigeons were seen as a nuisance by the nearby peasant farmers, in particular when sowing new crops. In numerous regions where the right to possess a dovecote was reserved for the nobility, the complaint rolls frequently recorded formal requests for the suppression of this privilege and a law for its abolition, ratified on 4 August 1789 in France. Dovecotes were included in several of the villa designs of Andrea Palladio; as an integral part of the World Heritage Site "Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of the Veneto", dovecotes such as those at Villa Barbaro enjoy a high level of protection.
Dovecotes in Belgium are associated with pigeon racing. They have special features, such as trap doors that allow pigeons to fly in, but not out; the Flemish word for dovecote is "duivenkot". Dovecotes in Spain are known as a Palomares; these structures are popular in the Tierra de Campos region and has a scale model of this type of building at a Theme Park located in the Mudéjar de Olmedo. Other good examples are located at Museums located in Castroverde de Campos, Villafáfila and the famous "Palomar de la Huerta Noble" in the municipality of Isla Cristina, built in the 18th century to house 36,000 pigeons; the Szekely people of Transylvania incorporate a dovecote into the design of their famous gates. These intricately carved wooden structures feature a large arch with a slatted door, meant to admit drivers of carriages and wagons, a smaller arch with a similar door for pedestrians. Across the top of the gate is
Beit Guvrin National Park
For the history of the site see in chronological order Maresha, Beit Guvrin, Bethgibelin, Bayt Jibrin, Kibbutz Beit Guvrin and Beit Guvrin National ParkBeit Guvrin-Maresha National Park is a national park in central Israel, 13 kilometers from Kiryat Gat, encompassing the ruins of Maresha, one of the important towns of Judah during the time of the First Temple, Beit Guvrin, an important town in the Roman era, when it was known as Eleutheropolis. Archaeological artifacts unearthed at the site include a large Jewish cemetery, a Roman-Byzantine amphitheater, a Byzantine church, public baths and burial caves; the earliest written record of Maresha was as a city in ancient Judah. The Hebrew Bible mentions among other episodes. After the destruction of the Kingdom of Judah the city of Maresha became part of the Edomite kingdom. In the late Persian period a Sidonian community settled in Maresha, the city is mentioned in the Zenon Papyri. During the Maccabean Revolt, Maresha was a base for attacks against Judea and suffered retaliation from the Maccabees.
After Hasmonean king, John Hyrcanus I captured and destroyed Maresha in 112 BCE, the region of Idumea remained under Hasmonean control. In 40 BC the Parthians devastated the "strong cite", after which it was never rebuilt. Beth Gabra or Beit Guvrin succeeded Maresha as the main town of the area. Conquered by the Roman general Vespasian during the Jewish War and destroyed during the Bar Kochba revolt, it was re-established as a Roman colony and in the year 200 it received the title of a city and the ius italicum, under the new name of "Eleutheropolis",'city of freemen'. Sources from the Byzantine Period mention both Christian and Jewish personalities living in the city. Maresha was first excavated in 1898-1900 by Bliss and Macalister, who uncovered a planned and fortified Hellenistic city encircled by a town wall with towers. Two Hellenistic and one Israelite stratum were identified by them on the mound. Many of the ancient city's olive presses and water cisterns can still be seen. Both Maresha and Beit Guvrin/Eleutheropolis were excavated after 1989 and 1992 by the Israeli archaeologist Amos Kloner.
Important finds at the latter site were the amphitheatre built by the Roman army units stationed there, a large Roman bath house, from the Crusader period a fortress integrating the walls of the Roman amphitheatre and bath house, as well as an attached church. The Sidonian burial caves were the family tomb of Apollophanes, the leader of the Sidonian community in Beit Guvrin; the Sidonian caves are the only ones. The caves were burial caves for the Greek and Edumite inhabitants of Beit Guvrin; the first and largest cave has paintings of animals and mythic, above the niches where the corpses were laid. A cock crows to scare away demons; the Tomb of the Musicians is decorated with a painting showing a man playing the flute and a woman playing the harp. There are about 800 bell-shaped caves located in the area. Many of the caves are linked via an underground network of passageways that connect groups of 40–50 caves; the largest bell caves are in the east part of the park. They were dug during the Early Arab Period for chalk to cover roads.
The walls are beige-colored limestone. There are numerous bell caves within the park events are held in one of them, they are large and accessible. Saint Anne's church was first built in the Byzantine period and rebuilt by the Crusaders in the 12th century; the ruin is known in Arabic as Khirbet Sandahanna, the nearby tell of Maresha being called Tell Sandahanna. The freestanding remains of the apse are well preserved; the remains of a Roman amphitheater were uncovered in the mid-1990s. The amphitheater was built on the northwestern outskirts of Beit Guvrin; this amphitheater, in which gladiatorial contests took place, could seat about 3,500 spectators. It had a walled arena of packed earth, with subterranean galleries; the arena was surrounded by a series of connected barrel vaults, which formed a long, circular corridor and supported the stone seats above it. It was built for the Roman troops stationed in the region after the suppression of the Bar Kochba rebellion; the amphitheater is an elliptical structure built of large rectangular limestone ashlars.
It was in use until destroyed in the Galilee earthquake of 363. Byzantine mosaics depicting birds and animals were discovered on the hilltop in 1924. Bayt Jibrin for the history of the area Eleutheropolis Kibbutz Beit Guvrin Maresha National Parks of Israel Videos and discussion of the unique sounds in the Bell Caves Shuli Levinboim, Re-reconstruction of the Bird Mosaic, Antiquities Site - Conservation Department
Mausoleum
A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or people. A monument without the interment is a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be considered a type of tomb, or the tomb may be considered to be within the mausoleum; the word derives from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the grave of King Mausolus, the Persian satrap of Caria, whose large tomb was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Mausolea were, still may be, large and impressive constructions for a deceased leader or other person of importance. However, smaller mausolea soon became popular with the nobility in many countries. In the Roman Empire, these were ranged in necropoles or along roadsides: the via Appia Antica retains the ruins of many private mausolea for miles outside Rome. However, when Christianity became dominant, mausoleums were out of use. Mausolea became popular in Europe and its colonies during the early modern and modern periods.
A single mausoleum may be permanently sealed. A mausoleum encloses a burial chamber either wholly above ground or within a burial vault below the superstructure; this contains the body or bodies within sarcophagi or interment niches. Modern mausolea may act as columbaria with additional cinerary urn niches. Mausolea may be located on private land. In the United States, the term may be used for a burial vault below a larger facility, such as a church; the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, for example, has 6,000 sepulchral and cinerary urn spaces for interments in the lower level of the building. It is known as the "crypt mausoleum". In Europe, these underground vaults are sometimes called catacombs. Mausoleum of Mohammed V Bourguiba mausoleum El Alia Cemetery, Mausoleum of the Late President, Algeria; the Dr. John Garang De Mabior mausoleum in South Sudan. Mastabas dating from ancient Egypt. Agostinho Neto's Mausoleum in Angola. Mausolée du Président Mathieu Kerekou, Benin. Omar Bongo's Mausoleum in Gabon.
Léon M'ba's Memorial Mausoleum in Gabon. Kwame Nkrumah Mausoleum Mausoleum of Late President Levy Mwanawasa, Frederick Chiluba and Michael Sata at Embassy Park in Lusaka, Zambia. Domoni Mosque Mausoleum Indoor inside first president of Comoros, Ahmed Abdallah's Mausoleum. Marien Ngouabi's mausoleum and Pierre Savorgnan de Brazza's mausoleum in Brazzaville, The Republic of Congo. Mausoleum of the late president Felix Houphouet-Boigny in Yamoussoukro, Côte d'Ivoire. Laurent Kabila's mausoleum in Kinshasa, The Democratic Republic of Congo; the pyramids of ancient Egypt and Nubian pyramids are types of mausolea. Gamal Abdel Nasser Mosque, is the Mausoleum of Gamal Abdel Nasser, in Egypt. Unknown Soldier Memorial Royal Mausoleum of Mauretania Al Hussein Mosque, Cairo – Holy Shrine and mausoleum, purported grave of the Islamic prophet Muhammad's grandson. Qalawun Mausoleum is the Mausoleum of Qalawun, Located in Cairo, Egypt, it was regarded by scholars as the second most beautiful medieval mausoleum to be built.
Jedars - thirteen ancient monumental Berber mausoleums located south of Tiaret. Palm Grove Cemetery, Liberia. National Hall, Mausoleum of the Late President William Tubman in Monrovia, Liberia. Late President Eyadema's Family Mausoleum in Togo. Kamuzu Banda Mausoleum, in Lilongwe, Malawi. Dr. Bingu wa Mutharika, President of Malawi built a mausoleum in which his late first wife and Bingu himself are buried. Meles Zenawi's grave in Holy Trinity Cathedral, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. King Sobhuza II Memorial Park, Swaziland. Julius Nyerere's mausoleum in Tanzania. Amilcar Cabral's mausoleum in Guinea-Bissau. Mausoleum of the Late President of Kenya Mzee Jomo Kenyatta in Nairobi, Kenya. Camayanne Mausoleum and contains the tombs of Guinea national hero Samori Ture, Sekou Toure and Alfa Yaya. Nnamdi Azikiwe's Burial Site In Onitsha, Nigeria. Abubakar Tafawa Balewa's tomb, Nigeria. Mausoleum of Obafemi Awolowo, Ogun State, Nigeria. Mausoleum of Sani Abacha, Nigeria. National Heroes Acre in Harare, Zimbabwe. Taj Mahal at Agra, India Qutb Shahi Tombs at Hyderabad, India Gol Gumbaz at Bijapur, India Humayun's Tomb at Delhi, India Mausoleum of the First Qin Emperor biggest underground mausoleum The pyramids of ancient China are types of mausolea.
Qianling Mausoleum in China, houses the remains of Emperor Gaozong of Tang and the ruling Empress Wu Zetian, along with 17 others in auxiliary tombs. Mausoleum of Genghis Khan in Ordos City, Inner Mongolia. Thirteen Imperial Mausoleums of Ming Dynasty Emperors, Beijing Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum, Nanjing Fuling Tomb, Shenyang Zhao Mausoleum Eastern Qing Tombs Western Qing Tombs Tomb of Jahangir at Shahdara, near Lahore, Pakistan. Mazar-e-Quaid at Karachi, Pakistan Data Durbar at Lahore, Pakistan Mausoleum of Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in Gopalganj, Bangladesh. Bandaranaike family Estate in Horagolla Bandaranaike Samadhi, Sri Lanka Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum, Hanoi Kumsusan Palace of the Sun or Kim Il-sung Mausoleum, Democratic People's Republic of Korea Mausoleum of Mao Zedong, Beijing. Sun Yat-sen Mausoleum, Nanjing. National Dr. Sun Yat-sen Memorial Hall, Taipei. National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall, Taipei. Mausoleum of Late President Lord Chiang Kai-shek, Taoyuan. Mausoleum of Late President Chiang Ching-kuo, Taoyuan.
Astana Giribangun Suharto family complex in traditional Javanese architectural style in Matesih, Karanganyar Regency, Central Java Imogiri co
Columbidae
Pigeons and doves constitute the animal family Columbidae and the order Columbiformes, which includes about 42 genera and 310 species. They are stout-bodied birds with short necks, short slender bills that in some species feature fleshy ceres, they feed on seeds and plants. Pigeons and doves are the most common birds in the world; the distinction between "doves" and "pigeons" in English is not consistent, does not exist in most other languages. In everyday speech, "dove" indicates a pigeon, white or nearly white. In contrast, in scientific and ornithological practice, "dove" tends to be used for smaller species and "pigeon" for larger ones, but this is in no way applied; the common names for these birds involve a great deal of variation between the terms. The species most referred to as "pigeon" is the species known by scientists as the rock dove, one subspecies of which, the domestic pigeon, is common in many cities as the feral pigeon. Pigeon is a French word that derives from the Latin pipio, for a "peeping" chick, while dove is a Germanic word that refers to the bird's diving flight.
The English dialectal word "culver" appears to derive from Latin columba. Doves and pigeons build flimsy nests using sticks and other debris, which may be placed on trees, ledges, or the ground, depending on species, they lay one or two eggs at a time, both parents care for the young, which leave the nest after 7–28 days. Unlike most birds, both sexes of doves and pigeons produce "crop milk" to feed to their young, secreted by a sloughing of fluid-filled cells from the lining of the crop. Young doves and pigeons are called "squabs"; the family Columbidae was introduced by the English zoologist William Elford Leach in a guide to the contents of the British Museum published in 1820. Columbidae is the only living family in the order Columbiformes; the sandgrouses were placed here, but were moved to a separate order Pteroclidiformes based on anatomical differences. Recent phylogenomic studies support the grouping of pigeons and sandgrouse together, along with mesites, forming the sister taxon to Mirandornithes.
The Columbidae are divided into five subfamilies inaccurately. For example, the American ground and quail doves, which are placed in the Columbinae, seem to be two distinct subfamilies; the order presented here follows al. with some updates. The arrangement of genera and naming of subfamilies is in some cases provisional because analyses of different DNA sequences yield results that differ radically, in the placement of certain genera; this ambiguity caused by long branch attraction, seems to confirm the first pigeons evolved in the Australasian region, that the "Treronidae" and allied forms represent the earliest radiation of the group. The family Columbidae also contained the family Raphidae, consisting of the extinct Rodrigues solitaire and the dodo; these species are in all likelihood part of the Indo-Australian radiation that produced the three small subfamilies mentioned above, with the fruit doves and pigeons. Therefore, they are here included as a subfamily Raphinae, pending better material evidence of their exact relationships.
Exacerbating these issues, columbids are not well represented in the fossil record. No primitive forms have been found to date; the genus Gerandia has been described from Early Miocene deposits in France, but while it was long believed to be a pigeon, it is now considered a sandgrouse. Fragmentary remains of a "ptilinopine" Early Miocene pigeon were found in the Bannockburn Formation of New Zealand and described as Rupephaps. Apart from that, all other fossils belong to extant genera. Taxonomy based on the work by John H. Boyd, III, a professor of economics. Pigeons and doves exhibit considerable variation in size, ranging in length from 15 to 75 centimetres, in weight from 30 g to above 2,000 g; the largest species is the crowned pigeon of New Guinea, nearly turkey-sized, at a weight of 2–4 kg. The smallest is the New World ground dove of the genus Columbina, the same size as a house sparrow, weighing as little as 22 g. With a total length of more than 50 cm and weight of 1 kg, the largest arboreal species is the Marquesan imperial pigeon, while the dwarf fruit dove, which may measure as little as 13 cm, has a marginally smaller total length than any other species from this family.
Overall, the Columbidae tend to have short legs, short bills with a fleshy cere, small heads on large, compact bodies. In a series of experiments in 1975 by Dr. Mark B. Friedman, using doves, their characteristic head bobbing was shown to be due to their natural desire to keep their vision constant, it was shown yet again in a 1978 experiment by Dr. Barrie J. Frost, in which pigeons were placed on treadmills; the wings are large, have eleven primary feathers, low wing loading.
Ossuary
An ossuary is a chest, building, well, or site made to serve as the final resting place of human skeletal remains. They are used where burial space is scarce. A body is first buried in a temporary grave after some years the skeletal remains are removed and placed in an ossuary; the reduced space taken up by an ossuary means that it is possible to store the remains of many more people in a single tomb than if the original coffins were left as is. In Persia, the Zoroastrians used a deep well for this function from the earliest times and called it astudan. There are many regulations in the Zoroastrian faith concerning the astudans. Many examples of ossuaries are found within Europe, including the Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini in Rome, Italy; the village of Wamba in the province of Valladolid, has an impressive ossuary of over a thousand skulls inside the local church, dating from between the 12th and 18th centuries. A more recent example is the Douaumont ossuary in France, which contains the remains of more than 130,000 French and German soldiers that fell at the Battle of Verdun during World War I.
The Catacombs of Paris represents another famous ossuary. The catacombs beneath the Monastery of San Francisco in Lima, Peru contains an ossuary; the use of ossuaries is a longstanding tradition in the Orthodox Church. The remains of an Orthodox Christian are treated with special reverence, in conformity with the biblical teaching that the body of a believer is a "temple of the Holy Spirit", having been sanctified and transfigured by Baptism, Holy Communion and the participation in the mystical life of the Church. In Orthodox monasteries, when one of the brethren dies, his remains are buried for one to three years, disinterred and gathered into the monastery's charnel house. If there is reason to believe that the departed is a saint, the remains may be placed in a reliquary; the remains of an abbot may be placed in a separate ossuary made out of metal. The use of ossuaries is found among the laity in the Greek Orthodox Church; the departed will be buried for one to three years and often on the anniversary of death, the family will gather with the parish priest and celebrate a parastas, after which the remains are disinterred, washed with wine and placed in a small ossuary of wood or metal, inscribed with the name of the departed, placed in a room in or near the church, dedicated to this purpose.
During the time of the Second Temple, Jewish burial customs included primary burials in burial caves, followed by secondary burials in ossuaries placed in smaller niches of the burial caves. Some of the limestone ossuaries that have been discovered around the Jerusalem area, include intricate geometrical patterns and inscriptions identifying the deceased. Among the best-known Jewish ossuaries of this period are: an ossuary inscribed'Simon the Temple builder' in the collection of the Israel Museum, another inscribed'Elisheba wife of Tarfon', one inscribed'Yehohanan ben Hagkol' that contained an iron nail in a heel bone suggesting crucifixion, another inscribed'James son of Joseph, brother of Jesus', the authenticity of, opposed by some and supported by others, ten ossuaries recovered from the Talpiot Tomb in 1980, several of which are reported to have names from the New Testament. During the Second Temple period, Jewish sages debated whether the occasion of the gathering of a parent's bones for a secondary burial was a day of sorrow or rejoicing.
The custom of secondary burial in ossuaries did not persist among Jews past the Second Temple period nor appear to exist among Jews outside the land of Israel. The skeletal remains of six million people lie, neatly arranged, in subterranean catacombs beneath the streets of Paris, France; the city is riddled with an estimated 300 km of tunnels and pathways, of which 11,000 square meters are packed with the bones of those re-interred from the city's overflowing cemeteries in the late 1700s. See Catacombs of Paris. Aircraft boneyard Boneyard, Arizona Catacomb Charnel house Columbarium Crypt Grave James Ossuary Mausoleum Reliquary Tomb Tzompantli
Old Town Square
Old Town Square is a historic square in the Old Town quarter of Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. It is located between Charles Bridge; the square features buildings belonging to various architectural styles, including the Gothic Church of Our Lady before Týn, the main church of this part of the city since the 14th century. Its characteristic towers are 80 m high; the Baroque St. Nicholas Church is another church located in the square. Prague Orloj is a medieval astronomical clock mounted on the Old Town Hall; the clock was first installed in 1410, making it the third-oldest astronomical clock in the world and the oldest one still in operation. The tower of the Old Town Hall offers panoramic views of the Old Town. An art museum of the Czech National Gallery is located in the Kinský Palace; the square's center is home to a statue of religious reformer Jan Hus, burned at the stake for his beliefs in Constance. This led to the Hussite Wars; the statue known as the Jan Hus Memorial was erected on 6 July 1915 to mark the 500th anniversary of his death.
In front of the Old Town Hall, there is a memorial to martyrs beheaded on that spot during the Old Town Square execution by Habsburgs, after the Battle of White Mountain. Twenty-seven crosses mark the pavement in their honour; the crosses were installed during the repairs of the Old Town Hall after the WW2, while a nearby plaque which lists the names of all 27 victims dates from 1911. On 3 November 1918, a Marian Column, erected in the square shortly after the Thirty Years' War was demolished in celebration of independence from the Habsburg empire. At Christmas and Easter, markets are held on the square. A tall decorated tree and a musical stage are set up; the Christmas Markets in Old Town Square are the largest Christmas markets in the Czech Republic and are visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors from the Czech Republic and abroad Germans, Russians and Britons. In 2016, CNN ranked Prague’s Christmas Markets among the 10 best ones worldwide. Old Town Square execution Photos of Old Town Square and Background Information Old Town Square Live WebCam
. New International Encyclopedia. 1905.