Suecia Antiqua et Hodierna
Suecia Antiqua et Hodierna is a collection of engravings collected by Erik Dahlbergh during the middle of the 17th century. Suecia Antiqua et Hodierna can be described as a grand vision of Sweden during its period as a great power. Dahlberg's direct source of inspiration was the topographical publications issued by the Swiss publisher Matthäus Merian. In 1661 Dahlberg was granted a royal privilege enabling him to realize his plans, which kept him occupied for a good decade, a work that would not be printed until after his death. In its final state Suecia Antiqua et Hodierna comprised three volumes containing 353 plates. Media related to Suecia antiqua et hodierna at Wikimedia Commons Suecia Antiqua et Hodierna at the Royal Library of Sweden Suecia Antiqua et Hodierna at the World Digital Library
Admiral
Admiral is one of the highest ranks in some navies, in many navies is the highest rank. It is abbreviated to "Adm" or "ADM"; the rank is thought to have originated in Sicily from a conflation of Arabic: أمير البحر, amīr al-baḥr, "commander of the sea", with Latin admirabilis or admiratus, although alternative etymologies derive the word directly from Latin, or from the Turkish military and naval rank miralay. The French version – amiral without the additional d – tends to add evidence for the Arab origin. In the Commonwealth and the U. S. a "full" admiral is equivalent to a "full" general in the army, is above vice admiral and below admiral of the fleet. In NATO, admirals have a rank code of OF-9 as a four-star rank; the word admiral in Middle English comes from Anglo-French amiral, "commander", from Medieval Latin admiralis, admirallus. These themselves come from Arabic amīr, or amīr al-, "commander of", as in amīr al-baḥr, "commander of the sea"; the term was in use for the Greco-Arab naval leaders of Norman Sicily, ruled by Arabs, at least by the early 11th century.
The Norman Roger II of Sicily, employed a Greek Christian known as George of Antioch, who had served as a naval commander for several North African Muslim rulers. Roger styled George in Abbasid fashion as Amir of Amirs, i.e. "Commander of Commanders", with the title becoming Latinized in the 13th century as ammiratus ammiratorum. The Sicilians and Genoese took the first two parts of the term and used them as one word, from their Aragon opponents; the French and Spanish gave their sea commanders similar titles while in Portuguese the word changed to almirante. As the word was used by people speaking Latin or Latin-based languages it gained the "d" and endured a series of different endings and spellings leading to the English spelling admyrall in the 14th century and to admiral by the 16th century; the word "admiral" has today come to be exclusively associated with the highest naval rank in most of the world's navies, equivalent to the army rank of general. However, this wasn't always the case.
The rank of admiral has been subdivided into various grades, several of which are extinct while others remain in use in most present day navies. The Royal Navy used colours to indicate seniority of its admirals until 1864; the generic term for these naval equivalents of army generals is flag officer. Some navies have used army-type titles for them, such as the Cromwellian "general at sea"; the rank insignia for an admiral involves four stars or similar devices and/or 3 stripes over a broad stripe, but as one can see below, there are many cases where the insignia do not involve four stars or similar devices. Admiral is a German Navy OF-9 four-star flag officer rank, equivalent to the German Army and German Air Force rank of General. Post-WWII rank is Bakurocho taru kaishō or Admiral serve as Chief of Staff, Joint Staff（幕僚長たる海将） with limited function as an advisory staff to Minister of Defense, compared to Gensui during 1872–1873 and 1898–1945. Admiral of Castile was a post with a important history in Spain.
Comparative military ranks Laksamana, native title for naval leaders in Indonesia and Malaysia Ranks and insignia of officers of NATO Navies Admiralty Nebraska admiral "Admiral". Encyclopædia Britannica. 1911. "Admiral". New International Encyclopedia. 1905
Carl Hårleman
Baron Carl Hårleman was a Swedish architect. Hårleman was born in Stockholm, son of the garden architect and head of the royal parks and gardens Johan Hårleman, ennobled in 1698, he began his architectural training under Göran Josua Adelcrantz. After receiving a state scholarship, he left Sweden for studies abroad in 1721, first going to Paris, where he spent four years as a student at the Royal French Academy of Architecture and the French Academy of Art, he continued to Italy and was called back to Sweden while in Venice in 1727. In 1728, upon the death of Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, Hårleman was appointed court intendant and subsequently in 1741, after Tessin's son Carl Gustaf Tessin had been made a member of the privy council, his successor as court superintendent, he was elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1744, was created a baron in 1747 and appointed Master of Ceremonies of the Royal Orders in 1748. Hårleman completed the Royal Palace in Stockholm, begun by Nicodemus Tessin the younger after fire had destroyed the medieval castle, in 1697.
He was responsible for the interiors and employed a large number of qualified artisans for the work. The work on the interiors of the palace had a beneficial effect on the state of furniture-making and other crafts in Sweden and helped introduce the rococo style to the country. Hårleman restored Uppsala Cathedral and parts of Uppsala Castle, both of, damaged in the Uppsala city fire of 1702, with the ruins of the castle having been used as a quarry for the palace project in Stockholm. On behalf of Uppsala University, he built the Consistory House and the conservatory building for the botanical garden of Linnaeus. Among his other works are Fredrikshovs house, the Orangery, Linnaean Garden, the main tower of the Holmentornet industrial works, Norrköping, the Sätuna manor near Uppsala, the Stockholm Observatory, the Orangery, Linnaean Garden, Uppsala, Hörningsholm Castle in Mörkö in the Södertälje Municipality, the "King's Gate", Tureholm Castle in Trosa Municipality, Åkerö manor house in Södermanland, the royal entrance to the Sveaborg island fortress off Helsinki, in Finland, and, featured on the Finnish 1000 FIM banknote issued in 1986.
Hårlemanska malmgård, or Hårleman House, at 88A Drottninggatan street in central Stockholm was the Hårleman family house. The property was owned in the late 1600s by Carl Hårleman's father Johan Harleman; the house was rebuilt and fitted with a new interior in 1748 by Carl Harleman in connection with his wedding. Hårleman is buried in the Klara Church in Stockholm, his last great work, made in the year of his death, was to design the new church in Landskrona named Sofia Albertina Church. Göran Alm, Carl Hårleman och den svenska rokokon, Lund: Signum, 1993. Riitta Koskinen, Suomalainen kartano, Helsinki: SKS, 2013. Runeberg.org - Svenskt biografiskt handlexikon - Carl Hårleman
Charles XII of Sweden
Charles XII, sometimes Carl or Latinized to Carolus Rex, was the King of Sweden from 1697 to 1718. He belonged to the House of a branch line of the House of Wittelsbach. Charles was the only surviving son of Ulrika Eleonora the Elder, he assumed power, at the age of fifteen. In 1700, a triple alliance of Denmark–Norway, Saxony–Poland–Lithuania and Russia launched a threefold attack on the Swedish protectorate of Holstein-Gottorp and provinces of Livonia and Ingria, aiming to draw advantage as the Swedish Empire was unaligned and ruled by a young and inexperienced king, thus initiating the Great Northern War. Leading the Swedish army against the alliance Charles won multiple victories despite being significantly outnumbered. A major victory over a Russian army some three times the size in 1700 at the Battle of Narva compelled Peter the Great to sue for peace which Charles rejected. By 1706 Charles, now 24 years old, had forced all of his foes into submission including, in that year, a decisively devastating victory by Swedish forces under general Carl Gustav Rehnskiöld over a combined army of Saxony and Russia at the Battle of Fraustadt.
Russia was now the sole remaining hostile power. Charles' subsequent march on Moscow met with initial success as victory followed victory, the most significant of, the Battle of Holowczyn where the smaller Swedish army routed a Russian army twice the size; the campaign ended with disaster when the Swedish army suffered heavy losses to a Russian force more than twice its size at Poltava. Charles had been incapacitated by a wound prior to the battle; the defeat was followed by the Surrender at Perevolochna. Charles spent the following years in exile in the Ottoman Empire before returning to lead an assault on Norway, trying to evict the Danish king from the war once more in order to aim all his forces at the Russians. Two campaigns met with frustration and ultimate failure, concluding with his death at the Siege of Fredriksten in 1718. At the time, most of the Swedish Empire was under foreign military occupation, though Sweden itself was still free; this situation was formalized, albeit moderated in the subsequent Treaty of Nystad.
The result was the end of the Swedish Empire, of its organized absolute monarchy and war machine, commencing a parliamentary government unique for continental Europe, which would last for half a century until royal autocracy was restored by Gustav III. Charles was an exceptionally skilled military leader and tactician as well as an able politician, credited with introducing important tax and legal reforms; as for his famous reluctance towards peace efforts, he is quoted by Voltaire as saying upon the outbreak of the war. With the war consuming more than half his life and nearly all his reign, he never married and fathered no children, he was succeeded by his sister Ulrika Eleonora, who in turn was coerced to hand over all substantial powers to the Riksdag of the Estates and opted to surrender the throne to her husband, who became King Frederick I of Sweden. Charles, like all kings, was styled by a royal title, which combined all his titles into one single phrase; this was: We Charles, by the Grace of God King of Sweden, the Goths and the Vends, Grand Prince of Finland, Duke of Scania, Estonia and Karelia, Lord of Ingria, Duke of Bremen and Pomerania, Prince of Rügen and Lord of Wismar, Count Palatine by the Rhine, Duke in Bavaria, Count of Zweibrücken–Kleeburg, as well as Duke of Jülich and Berg, Count of Veldenz and Ravensberg and Lord of Ravenstein.
The fact that Charles was crowned as Charles XII does not mean that he was the 12th king of Sweden by that name. Swedish kings Erik XIV and Charles IX gave themselves numerals after studying a mythological history of Sweden, he was the 6th King Charles. The non-mathematical numbering tradition continues with the current King of Sweden, Carl XVI Gustaf, being counted as the equivalent of Charles XVI. Around 1700, the monarchs of Denmark–Norway and Russia united in an alliance against Sweden through the efforts of Johann Reinhold Patkul, a Livonian nobleman who turned traitor when the "great reduction" of Charles XI in 1680 stripped much of the nobility of lands and properties. In late 1699 Charles sent a minor detachment to reinforce his brother-in-law Duke Frederick IV of Holstein-Gottorp, attacked by Danish forces the following year. A Saxon army invaded Swedish Livonia and in February 1700 invested Riga, the most populous city of the Swedish Empire. Russia declared war, but stopped short of an attack on Swedish Ingria until September 1700.
Charles's first campaign was against Denmark–Norway, ruled by his cousin Frederick IV of Denmark, For this campaign Charles secured the support of England and the Netherlands, both maritime powers concerned with Denmark's threats to close the Sound. Leading a force of 8,000 and 43 ships in an invasion of Zealand, Charles compelled the Danes to submit to the Peace of Travendal in August 1700, which indemnified Holstein. Having forced Denmark–Norway to make peace within months, King Charles turned his attention upon the two other powerful neighbors, King August II and Peter the Great of Russia, who had entered the war against him on the same day that Denmark came to terms. Russia had opened their part of the war by inv
Neptune (mythology)
Neptune was the god of freshwater and the sea in Roman religion. He is the counterpart of the Greek god Poseidon. In the Greek-influenced tradition, Neptune was the brother of Pluto. Salacia was his wife. Depictions of Neptune in Roman mosaics those of North Africa, are influenced by Hellenistic conventions. Neptune was associated with fresh water springs before the sea. Like Poseidon, Neptune was worshipped by the Romans as a god of horses, under the name Neptunus Equester, a patron of horse-racing; the etymology of Latin Neptunus is unclear and disputed. The ancient grammarian Varro derived the name from nuptus i.e. "covering", with a more or less explicit allusion to the nuptiae, "marriage of Heaven and Earth". Among modern scholars Paul Kretschmer proposed a derivation from IE *neptu- "moist substance". Raymond Bloch supposed it might be an adjectival form in -no from *nuptu-, meaning "he, moist". Georges Dumézil though remarked words deriving root *nep- are not attested in IE languages other than Vedic and Avestan.
He proposed an etymology that brings together Neptunus with Vedic and Avestan theonyms Apam Napat, Apam Napá and Old Irish theonym Nechtan, all meaning descendant of the waters. By using the comparative approach the Indo-Iranian and Irish figures would show common features with the Roman historicised legends about Neptune. Dumézil thence proposed to derive the nouns from IE root *nepot-, "descendant, sister's son". More in his lectures delivered on various occasions in the 1990s, German scholar Hubert Petersmann proposed an etymology from IE rootstem *nebh- related to clouds and fogs, plus suffix -tu denoting an abstract verbal noun, adjectival suffix -no which refers to the domain of activity of a person or his prerogatives. IE root *nebh-, having the original meaning of "damp, wet", has given Sanskrit nábhah, Hittite nepis, Latin nubs, German Nebel, Slavic nebo etc; the concept would be close to that expressed in the name of Greek god Όυράνος, derived from IE root *h2wórso-, "to water, irrigate" and *h2worsó-, "the irrigator".
This etymology would be more in accord with Varro's. A different etymology grounded in the legendary history of Latium and Etruria was proposed by Preller and Müller-Deeke: Etruscan Nethunus, Nethuns would be an adjectival form of toponym Nepe, town of the ager Faliscus near Falerii; the district was traditionally connected to the cult of the god: Messapus and Halesus, the eponymous hero of Falerii, were believed to be his own sons. Messapus led others to war in the Aeneid. Nepi and Falerii have been famed since antiquity for the excellent quality of the water of their springs, scattered in meadows. Nepet is considered a hydronymic toponym of pre-Indo-European origin widespread in Europe and from an appellative meaning "damp wide valley, plain", cognate with pre-Greek νάπη, "wooded valley"; the theology of Neptune may only be reconstructed to some degree, as since early times he was identified with the Greek god Poseidon: his presence in the lectisternium of 399 BC is a testimony to the fact.
Such an identification may well be grounded in the strict relationship between the Latin and Greek theologies of the two deities. It has been argued that Indo-European people, having no direct knowledge of the sea as they originated from inland areas, reused the theology of a deity either chthonic or wielding power over inland freshwaters as the god of the sea; this feature has been preserved well in the case of Neptune, a god of springs and rivers before becoming a god of the sea, as is testified by the numerous findings of inscriptions mentioning him in the proximity of such locations. Servius the grammarian explicitly states Neptune is in charge of all the rivers and waters, he is the lord of horses because he worked with Minerva to make the chariot. He may find a parallel in Irish god Nechtan, master of the well from which all the rivers of the world flow out and flow back to. Poseidon on the other hand underwent the process of becoming the main god of the sea at a much earlier time, as is shown in the Iliad.
In the earlier times it was the god Portunus or Fortunus, thanked for naval victories, but Neptune supplanted him in this role by at least the first century BC when Sextus Pompeius called himself "son of Neptune." For a time he was paired with the goddess of the salt water. Neptune was considered the legendary progenitor god of a Latin stock, the Faliscans, who called themselves Neptunia proles. In this respect he was the equivalent of Mars, Janus and Jupiter among Latin tribes. Salacia would represent the virile force of Neptune; the Neptunalia was the festival of Neptune at the height of summer. The date and the construction of tree-branch shelters suggest a primitive role for Neptune as god of water sources in the summer's drought and heat; the most ancient Roman calendar set the feriae of Neptunus on July 23, two days after the Lucaria of July 19 and 21 and two days before the Furrinalia of July 25. Georg Wissowa had remarked that festivals falling in a range of three days are complementary.
Dumézil elaborated that these festivals in some way were all related to the importance of water during the period of summer heat and drought, when river and spring waters are at their lowest. Founding his analysis on the works of Palladius and Columella Dumézil argues that while the Lucaria were devoted to the dressing of woods, clearing the undergrown bushes by cutting on the 19 by uprooting and burning on the 21, the Neptunalia were devoted to works
Fountain
A fountain is a piece of architecture which pours water into a basin or jets it into the air to supply drinking water and/or for a decorative or dramatic effect. Fountains were purely functional, connected to springs or aqueducts and used to provide drinking water and water for bathing and washing to the residents of cities and villages; until the late 19th century most fountains operated by gravity, needed a source of water higher than the fountain, such as a reservoir or aqueduct, to make the water flow or jet into the air. In addition to providing drinking water, fountains were used for decoration and to celebrate their builders. Roman fountains were decorated with stone masks of animals or heroes. In the Middle Ages and Muslim garden designers used fountains to create miniature versions of the gardens of paradise. King Louis XIV of France used fountains in the Gardens of Versailles to illustrate his power over nature; the baroque decorative fountains of Rome in the 17th and 18th centuries marked the arrival point of restored Roman aqueducts and glorified the Popes who built them.
By the end of the 19th century, as indoor plumbing became the main source of drinking water, urban fountains became purely decorative. Mechanical pumps replaced gravity and allowed fountains to recycle water and to force it high into the air; the Jet d'Eau in Lake Geneva, built in 1951, shoots water 140 metres in the air. The highest such fountain in the world is King Fahd's Fountain in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, which spouts water 260 metres above the Red Sea. Fountains are used today to decorate city squares. A Splash pad or spray pool allows city residents to get wet and cool off in summer; the musical fountain combines moving jets of water, colored lights and recorded music, controlled by a computer, for dramatic effects. Fountains can themselves be musical instruments played by obstruction of one or more of their water jets. Drinking fountains provide clean drinking water in public buildings and public spaces. Ancient civilizations built stone basins to hold precious drinking water. A carved stone basin, dating to around 2000 BC, was discovered in the ruins of the ancient Sumerian city of Lagash in modern Iraq.
The ancient Assyrians constructed a series of basins in the gorge of the Comel River, carved in solid rock, connected by small channels, descending to a stream. The lowest basin was decorated with carved reliefs of two lions; the ancient Egyptians had ingenious systems for hoisting water up from the Nile for drinking and irrigation, but without a higher source of water it was not possible to make water flow by gravity, no Egyptian fountains or pictures of fountains have been found. The ancient Greeks used gravity-powered fountains to distribute water. According to ancient historians, fountains existed in Athens and other ancient Greek cities in the 6th century BC as the terminating points of aqueducts which brought water from springs and rivers into the cities. In the 6th century BC, the Athenian ruler Peisistratos built the main fountain of Athens, the Enneacrounos, in the Agora, or main square, it had spouts, which supplied drinking water to local residents. Greek fountains were made of stone or marble, with water flowing through bronze pipes and emerging from the mouth of a sculpted mask that represented the head of a lion or the muzzle of an animal.
Most Greek fountains flowed by simple gravity, but they discovered how to use principle of a siphon to make water spout, as seen in pictures on Greek vases. The Ancient Romans built an extensive system of aqueducts from mountain rivers and lakes to provide water for the fountains and baths of Rome; the Roman engineers used lead pipes instead of bronze to distribute the water throughout the city. The excavations at Pompeii, which revealed the city as it was when it was destroyed by Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD, uncovered free-standing fountains and basins placed at intervals along city streets, fed by siphoning water upwards from lead pipes under the street; the excavations of Pompeii showed that the homes of wealthy Romans had a small fountain in the atrium, or interior courtyard, with water coming from the city water supply and spouting into a small bowl or basin. Ancient Rome was a city of fountains. According to Sextus Julius Frontinus, the Roman consul, named curator aquarum or guardian of the water of Rome in 98 AD, Rome had nine aqueducts which fed 39 monumental fountains and 591 public basins, not counting the water supplied to the Imperial household and owners of private villas.
Each of the major fountains was connected to two different aqueducts, in case one was shut down for service. The Romans were able to make fountains jet water into the air, by using the pressure of water flowing from a distant and higher source of water to create hydraulic head, or force. Illustrations of fountains in gardens spouting water are found on wall paintings in Rome from the 1st century BC, in the villas of Pompeii; the Villa of Hadrian in Tivoli featured a large swimming basin with jets of water. Pliny the Younger described the banquet room of a Roman villa where a fountain began to jet water when visitors sat on a marble seat; the water flowed into a basin, where the courses of a banquet were served in floating dishes shaped like boats. Roman engineers built fountains throughout the Roman Empire. Examples can be found today in the ruins of Roman towns in Vaison-la-Romaine and Glanum in France, in Augst and other sites. During the Middle Ages, Roman aqueducts were wrecked or fell into decay, many fountains throughout Europ
Cornice
A cornice is any horizontal decorative molding that crowns a building or furniture element – the cornice over a door or window, for instance, or the cornice around the top edge of a pedestal or along the top of an interior wall. A simple cornice may be formed just with a crown; the function of the projecting cornice of a building is to throw rainwater free of the building’s walls. In residential building practice, this function is handled by projecting gable ends, roof eaves, gutters. However, house eaves may be called "cornices" if they are finished with decorative molding. In this sense, while most cornices are eaves, not all eaves are considered cornices – eaves are functional and not decorative, a cornice has a decorative aspect to it; the projecting cornice of a building may appear to be heavy and hence in danger of falling on commercial buildings, but it may be light, made of pressed metal. In Ancient Greek architecture and its successors using the classical orders in the tradition of classical architecture, the cornice is the topmost element of the entablature which consists of the cornice, the frieze, the architrave.
A rake is an architectural term for an eave or cornice which runs along the gable of the roof of a modern residential structure. It may be called a sloping cornice, a raking cornice; the trim and rafters at this edge are called rake-, verge-, or barge-board or verge- or barge-rafter. It is a sloped timber on the outside facing edge of a roof running between the eave. On a typical house, any gable will have one on each sloped side; the rakes are supported by a series of lookouts and may be enclosed with a rake fascia board on the outside facing edge and a rake soffit along the bottom. The cornices of a modern residential building will be one of three types: a box cornice, a close or closed cornice, or an open cornice. Box cornices enclose the cornice of the building with what is a long narrow box. A box cornice may further be divided into either the narrow box cornice or the wide box cornice type. A narrow box cornice is one in which "the projection of the rafter serves as a nailing surface for the soffit board as well as the fascia trim."
This is possible if the slope of the roof is steep and the width of the eave narrow. A wide box cornice, common practice on houses with gentle roof slopes and wide eaves, requires the use of lookouts to give it support and to provide a surface to which to securely attach the soffits. Box cornices have ventilation screens laid over openings cut in the soffits in order to allow air to circulate within the cornice. A close, closed, or snub cornice is one in which there is no projection of the rafters beyond the walls of the building, therefore no soffit and no fascia; this type of cornice is easy to construct, but provides little aid in dispersing water away from the building and lacks aesthetic value. In an open cornice, the shape of the cornice is similar to that of a wide box cornice except that both the lookouts and the soffit are absent, it is a lower-cost treatment that requires fewer materials, may have no fascia board, but lacks the finished appearance of a box cornice. Ancient Egyptian architectural tradition made special use of large cavetto mouldings as a cornice, with only a short fillet above, a torus moulding below.
This cavetto cornice is sometimes known as an "Egyptian cornice", "hollow and roll" or "gorge cornice", has been suggested to be a reminiscence in stone architecture of the primitive use of bound bunches of reeds as supports for buildings, the weight of the roof bending their tops out. The cavetto cornice forming less than a quarter-circle, influenced Eygpt's neighbours and as well as appearing in early Ancient Greek architecture, it is seen in Syria and ancient Iran, for example at the Tachara palace of Darius I at Persepolis, completed in 486 BC. Inspired by this precedent, it was revived by Ardashir I, the founder of the Sasanian dynasty; the cavetto took the place of the cymatium in many Etruscan temples painted with vertical "tongue" patterns, combined with the distinctive "Etruscan round moulding" painted with scales. Additional more-obscure varieties of cornice include the architrave cornice, bracketed cornice, modillion cornice. A cornice return is an architectural detail that occurs where the horizontal cornice of a roof connects to the rake of a gable.
It is a short horizontal extension of the cornice that occurs on each side of the gable end of the building. The two most common types of cornice return are the soffit return; the former includes a sloped hip-shape on the inside of the cornice under the eaves, sheathed or shingled like the rest of the roof above it and is considered attractive. The term cornice may be used to describe a form of hard window treatment along the top edge of a window; when used in this context, a cornice represents a board placed above the window to conceal the mechanism for opening and closing drapes. If covered in a layer of cloth and given padding, it is sometimes called a soft cornice rather than a hard cornice. Geison Eaves Window cornice Media related to Cornices at Wikimedia Commons
