1.
Khepera mobile robot
–
The Khepera is a small differential wheeled mobile robot that was developed at the LAMI laboratory of Prof. Jean-Daniel Nicoud at EPFL in the mid 90s. Franzi, Francesco Mondada, André Guignard and others, small, fast, and architectured around a Motorola 68331, it has served researchers for 10 years, widely used by over 500 universities worldwide. The Khepera was sold to a thousand research labs and featured on the cover of the 31 August 2000 issue of Nature and it appeared again in a 2003 article. A Google scholar search with khepera mobile robots returns 4800 hits, the Khepera helped in the emergence of evolutionary robotics. Diameter,55 mm Height,30 mm Empty weight,80 g Speed,0.02 to 1, in proceedings of First International Khepera Workshop, Paderborn, 10–11 December 1999. cfg – Khepera configuration file for Player Project robot simulator YAKS. – Yet Another Khepera Simulator Khepera III Toolbox – A software toolbox for the Khepera III robot KiKS is a Khepera Simulator – Matlab based Khepera/Khepera II simulator
2.
Scarab (artifact)
–
Scarabs were popular amulets and impression seals in Ancient Egypt. They survive in numbers and, through their inscriptions and typology, they are an important source of information for archaeologists. They also represent a significant body of ancient art, during that long period the function of scarabs repeatedly changed. Primarily amulets, they were inscribed for use as personal or administrative seals or were incorporated into jewelry. Some scarabs were apparently created for political or diplomatic purposes to commemorate or advertise royal achievements, by the early New Kingdom, heart scarabs had become part of the battery of amulets protecting mummies. From the middle Bronze Age, other ancient peoples of the Mediterranean, Scarabs were produced in vast numbers for many centuries and many thousands have survived. They were generally intended to be worn or carried by the living and they were typically carved or moulded in the form of a scarab beetle with varying degrees of naturalism but usually at least indicating the head, wing case and legs but with a flat base. The base was inscribed with designs and/or hieroglyphs to form an impression seal. Scarabs were usually drilled from end to end to them to be strung on a thread or incorporated into a swivel ring. The most common of sizes for scarabs is from 6mm to 4 cm, larger scarabs were made from time to time for particular purposes. Heart scarabs were made for a funerary purpose and should be considered separately. Scarabs were generally carved from stone or moulded from Egyptian faience. Once carved, they would typically be glazed blue or green and then fired, the most common stone used for scarabs was a form of steatite, a soft stone which becomes hard when fired. Hardstone scarabs were made and the stones most commonly used were green jasper, amethyst. In ancient Egyptian religion, the sun god Ra is seen to roll across the sky each day, transforming bodies and souls. Beetles of the Scarabaeidae family roll dung into a ball as food and as a chamber in which to lay eggs, this way. For these reasons the scarab was seen as a symbol of this heavenly cycle, the Egyptian god Khepri, Ra as the rising sun, was often depicted as a scarab beetle or as a scarab beetle-headed man. The ancient Egyptians believed that Khepri renewed the sun every day before rolling it above the horizon, then carried it through the world after sunset, only to renew it, again
3.
Egyptian hieroglyphs
–
Egyptian hieroglyphs were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt. It combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with a total of some 1,000 distinct characters, cursive hieroglyphs were used for religious literature on papyrus and wood. The later hieratic and demotic Egyptian scripts are derived from hieroglyphic writing, the writing system continued to be used throughout the Late Period, as well as the Persian and Ptolemaic periods. Late survivals of hieroglyphic use are found well into the Roman period, with the closing of pagan temples in the 5th century, knowledge of hieroglyphic writing was lost, and the script remained undeciphered throughout the medieval and early modern period. The decipherment of hieroglyphs would only be solved in the 1820s by Jean-François Champollion, the word hieroglyph comes from the Greek adjective ἱερογλυφικός, a compound of ἱερός and γλύφω, supposedly a calque of an Egyptian phrase mdw·w-nṯr gods words. The glyphs themselves were called τὰ ἱερογλυφικὰ γράμματα the sacred engraved letters, the word hieroglyph has become a noun in English, standing for an individual hieroglyphic character. As used in the sentence, the word hieroglyphic is an adjective. Hieroglyphs emerged from the artistic traditions of Egypt. For example, symbols on Gerzean pottery from c.4000 BC have been argued to resemble hieroglyphic writing, proto-hieroglyphic symbol systems develop in the second half of the 4th millennium BC, such as the clay labels of a Predynastic ruler called Scorpion I recovered at Abydos in 1998. The first full sentence written in hieroglyphs so far discovered was found on a seal found in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen at Umm el-Qaab. There are around 800 hieroglyphs dating back to the Old Kingdom, Middle Kingdom, by the Greco-Roman period, there are more than 5,000. However, given the lack of evidence, no definitive determination has been made as to the origin of hieroglyphics in ancient Egypt. Since the 1990s, and discoveries such as the Abydos glyphs, as writing developed and became more widespread among the Egyptian people, simplified glyph forms developed, resulting in the hieratic and demotic scripts. These variants were more suited than hieroglyphs for use on papyrus. Hieroglyphic writing was not, however, eclipsed, but existed alongside the other forms, especially in monumental, the Rosetta Stone contains three parallel scripts – hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek. Hieroglyphs continued to be used under Persian rule, and after Alexander the Greats conquest of Egypt, during the ensuing Ptolemaic and Roman periods. It appears that the quality of comments from Greek and Roman writers about hieroglyphs came about, at least in part. Some believed that hieroglyphs may have functioned as a way to distinguish true Egyptians from some of the foreign conquerors, another reason may be the refusal to tackle a foreign culture on its own terms, which characterized Greco-Roman approaches to Egyptian culture generally
4.
Heliopolis (ancient Egypt)
–
Heliopolis was a major city of ancient Egypt. It was the capital of the 13th or Heliopolite Nome of Lower Egypt and it is now located in Ayn Shams, a northeastern suburb of Cairo. Heliopolis was one of the oldest cities of ancient Egypt, occupied since the Predynastic Period and it greatly expanded under the Old and Middle Kingdoms but is today mostly destroyed, its temples and other buildings having been scavenged for the construction of medieval Cairo. Most information about the ancient city comes from surviving records, the major surviving remnant of Heliopolis is the obelisk of the Temple of Ra-Atum erected by Senusret I of Dynasty XII. It still stands in its position, now within Al-Masalla in Al-Matariyyah. The 21 m high red granite obelisk weighs 120 tons, Heliopolis is the latinized form of the Ptolemaic Greek name Hēlioúpolis, meaning City of the Sun. Helios, the personified and deified form of the sun, was identified by the Greeks with the native Egyptian gods Ra and Atum and its native name was I͗wnw, whose exact pronunciation is uncertain because ancient Egyptian recorded only consonantal values. Its traditional Egyptological transcription is Iunu but it appears in biblical Hebrew as Ôn and Āwen, variant transcriptions include Awnu and Annu. The city also appears in the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts as the House of Ra, in ancient Egypt, Heliopolis was a regional center from predynastic times. It was principally notable as the center of the sun god Atum. The primary temple of the city was known as the Great House or House of Atum and its priests maintained that Atum or Ra was the first being, rising self-created from the primeval waters. A decline in the importance of Ras cult during Dynasty V led to the development of the Ennead, the high priests of Ra are not as well documented as those of other deities, although the high priests of Dynasty VI have been discovered and excavated. During the Amarna Period of Dynasty XVIII, Pharaoh Akhenaten introduced a kind of worship of Aten. As part of his projects, he built a Heliopolitan temple named Elevating Aten. The cult of the Mnevis bull, another embodiment of the Sun, had its altar here as well and their personal formal burial ground was situated north of the city. The store-city Pithom is mentioned once in the Hebrew Bible, and according to one theory, ptolemy II had Manetho, the chief priest of Heliopolis, collect his history of the ancient kings of Egypt from its archives. By the 1st century BC, in fact, Strabo found the deserted. In Roman Egypt, Heliopolis belonged to the province Augustamnica, causing it to appear as Heliopolis in Augustamnica when it needed to be distinguished from Baalbek and its population probably contained a considerable Arabian element
5.
Beetle
–
Beetles are a group of insects that form the order Coleoptera, in the superorder Endopterygota. Their front pair of wings is hardened into wing-cases, elytra, the Coleoptera, with about 400,000 species, is the largest of all orders, constituting almost 40% of described insects and 25% of all known animal life-forms, new species are discovered frequently. The largest of all families, the Curculionidae with some 70,000 member species and they are found in almost every habitat except the sea and the polar regions. They interact with their ecosystems in several ways, beetles often feed on plants and fungi, break down animal and plant debris, and eat other invertebrates. Beetles typically have a hard exoskeleton including the elytra, though some such as the rove beetles have very short elytra while blister beetles have softer elytra. Some, such as, stag beetles have a sexual dimorphism. Many beetles are aposematic, with colours and patterns warning of their toxicity. Many beetles, including those that live in places, have effective camouflage. Beetles are prominent in human culture, from the sacred scarabs of ancient Egypt to beetlewing art and use as pets or fighting insects for entertainment, many beetle groups are brightly and attractively coloured making them objects of collection and decorative displays. Over 300 species are used as food, mostly as larvae, species widely consumed include mealworms, however, the major impact of beetles on human life is as agricultural, forestry, and horticultural pests. Serious pests include the boll weevil of cotton, the Colorado potato beetle, the coconut hispine beetle, most beetles, however, do not cause economic damage and many, such as the lady beetles and dung beetles are beneficial by helping to control insect pests. The name of the order, Coleoptera, comes from the Greek koleopteros, given to the group by Aristotle for their elytra, hardened shield-like forewings, from koleos, sheath. The English name beetle comes from the Old English word bitela, little biter, related to bītan, another Old English name for beetle is ceafor, chafer, used in names such as cockchafer, from the Proto-Germanic *kabraz-. Beetles are by far the largest order of insects, the roughly 400,000 species make up about 40% of all species so far described. The four estimates made use of host-specificity relationships, ratios with other taxa, plant, beetle ratios, and extrapolations based on body size by year of description. The heaviest beetle, indeed the heaviest insect stage, is the larva of the beetle, Goliathus goliatus, which can attain a mass of at least 115 g. Adult male goliath beetles are the heaviest beetle in its stage, weighing 70–100 g. Adult elephant beetles, Megasoma elephas and Megasoma actaeon often reach 50 g and 10 cm, the longest beetle is the Hercules beetle Dynastes hercules, with a maximum overall length of at least 16.7 cm including the very long pronotal horn
6.
Nymphaea caerulea
–
Nymphaea caerulea, known primarily as blue lotus, but also blue water lily, and sacred blue lily, is a water lily in the genus Nymphaea. Like other species in the genus, the plant contains the psychoactive alkaloid apomorphine and it was known to the Ancient Egyptian civilizations. Its original habitat may have been along the Nile and other parts of East Africa and it spread more widely in ancient times, including to the Indian subcontinent and Thailand. The leaves are rounded, 25–40 cm across, with a notch at the leaf stem. The flowers are 10–15 cm in diameter, in fact, the flower buds rise to the surface over a period of two to three days, and when ready, open around 9,30 am and close about 3,00 pm. The flowers and buds do not rise above the water in the morning, the flowers have pale bluish-white to sky-blue or mauve petals, smoothly changing to a pale yellow in the centre of the flower. Along with the lotus, Nymphaea lotus are also native to Egypt. The plant and flower are very frequently depicted in Egyptian art, N. caerulea was considered extremely significant in Egyptian mythology, regarded as a symbol of the sun, since the flowers are closed at night and open again in the morning. At Heliopolis, the origin of the world was taught to have been when the sun god Ra emerged from a flower growing in primordial waters. At night, he was believed to retreat into the flower again. Due to its colour, it was identified, in some beliefs, as having been the original container, in a manner to an egg, of Atum. As such, its properties form the origin of the variant of the Ogdoad cosmogeny. It was the symbol of the Egyptian deity Nefertem, some evidence indicates the clinical effects of plants including N. caerulea that contain the psychoactive alkaloid apomorphine were known to both the Mayans and the Ancient Egyptians. The mildly sedating effects of N. caerulea makes it a candidate for the lotus plant eaten by the mythical Lotophagi in Homers Odyssey. This lotus has been used to produce perfumes since ancient times, N. caerulea is illegal in Latvia since November 2009. Possession of quantities up to 1 gram are fined up to 280 euros, possession of larger quantities can be punished by up to 15 years in prison. N. caerulea was banned in Poland in March 2009, possession and distribution lead to a criminal charge. N. caerulea is illegal in Russia since April 2009 along with spice and related products, Salvia divinorum, Argyreia nervosa, and others
7.
Egyptian language
–
The language spoken in ancient Egypt was a branch of the Afroasiatic language family. The earliest known complete sentence in the Egyptian language has been dated to about 2690 BCE, making it one of the oldest recorded languages known. Egyptian was spoken until the seventeenth century in the form of Coptic. The national language of modern Egypt is Egyptian Arabic, which gradually replaced Coptic as the language of life in the centuries after the Muslim conquest of Egypt. Coptic is still used as the language of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. It has several hundred fluent speakers today, the Egyptian language belongs to the Afroasiatic language family. Of the other Afroasiatic branches, Egyptian shows its greatest affinities with Semitic, in Egyptian, the Proto-Afroasiatic voiced consonants */d z ð/ developed into pharyngeal ⟨ꜥ⟩ /ʕ/, e. g. Eg. Afroasiatic */l/ merged with Egyptian ⟨n⟩, ⟨r⟩, ⟨ꜣ⟩, and ⟨j⟩ in the dialect on which the language was based. Original */k g ḳ/ palatalize to ⟨ṯ j ḏ⟩ in some environments and are preserved as ⟨k g q⟩ in others, Egyptian has many biradical and perhaps monoradical roots, in contrast to the Semitic preference for triradical roots. Egyptian probably is more archaic in this regard, whereas Semitic likely underwent later regularizations converting roots into the triradical pattern, scholars group the Egyptian language into six major chronological divisions, Archaic Egyptian language Old Egyptian language Middle Egyptian language, characterizing Middle Kingdom. Demotic Coptic The earliest Egyptian glyphs date back to around 3300 BC and these early texts are generally lumped together under the general term Archaic Egyptian. They record names, titles and labels, but a few of them show morphological and syntactic features familiar from later, more complete, Old Egyptian is dated from the oldest known complete sentence, found in the tomb of Seth-Peribsen and dated to around 2690 BCE. It reads, dmḏ. n. f t3wj n z3. f nswt-bjt pr-jb. snj He has united the Two Lands for his son, extensive texts appear from about 2600 BCE. Demotic first appears about 650 BCE and survived as a written language until the fifth century CE and it probably survived in the Egyptian countryside as a spoken language for several centuries after that. Bohairic Coptic is still used by the Coptic Churches, Old, Middle, and Late Egyptian were all written using hieroglyphs and hieratic. Demotic was written using a script derived from hieratic, its appearance is similar to modern Arabic script and is also written from right to left. Coptic is written using the Coptic alphabet, a form of the Greek alphabet with a number of symbols borrowed from Demotic for sounds that did not occur in ancient Greek. Arabic became the language of Egypts political administration soon after the early Muslim conquests in the seventh century, today, Coptic survives as the sacred language of the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria and the Coptic Catholic Church
8.
Ancient Egyptian deities
–
Ancient Egyptian deities are the gods and goddesses worshipped in ancient Egypt. The beliefs and rituals surrounding these gods formed the core of ancient Egyptian religion, the gods complex characteristics were expressed in myths and in intricate relationships between deities, family ties, loose groups and hierarchies, and combinations of separate gods into one. Deities diverse appearances in art—as animals, humans, objects, and combinations of different forms—also alluded, through symbolism, to their essential features. In different eras, various gods were said to hold the highest position in society, including the solar deity Ra, the mysterious god Amun. The highest deity was usually credited with the creation of the world, some scholars have argued, based in part on Egyptian writings, that the Egyptians came to recognize a single divine power that lay behind all things and was present in all the other deities. Gods were assumed to be present throughout the world, capable of influencing natural events, people interacted with them in temples and unofficial shrines, for personal reasons as well as for larger goals of state rites. Egyptians prayed for help, used rituals to compel deities to act. Humans relations with their gods were a part of Egyptian society. The beings in ancient Egyptian tradition who might be labeled as deities are difficult to count, Egyptian texts list the names of many deities whose nature is unknown and make vague, indirect references to other gods who are not even named. The Egyptologist James P. Allen estimates that more than 1,400 deities are named in Egyptian texts, the Egyptian languages terms for these beings were nṯr, god, and its feminine form nṯrt, goddess. Scholars have tried to discern the nature of the gods by proposing etymologies for these words, but none of these suggestions has gained acceptance. The hieroglyphs that were used as ideograms and determinatives in writing these words show some of the traits that the Egyptians connected with divinity, the most common of these signs is a flag flying from a pole. Similar objects were placed at the entrances of temples, representing the presence of a deity, other such hieroglyphs include a falcon, reminiscent of several early gods who were depicted as falcons, and a seated male or female deity. The feminine form could also be written with an egg as determinative, connecting goddesses with creation and birth, or with a cobra, the Egyptians distinguished nṯrw, gods, from rmṯ, people, but the meanings of the Egyptian and the English terms do not match perfectly. The term nṯr may have applied to any being that was in some way outside the sphere of everyday life, Egyptian religious art also depicts places, objects, and concepts in human form. These personified ideas range from deities that were important in myth and ritual to obscure beings, only mentioned once or twice, confronting these blurred distinctions between gods and other beings, scholars have proposed various definitions of a deity. One widely accepted definition, suggested by Jan Assmann, says that a deity has a cult, is involved in some aspect of the universe, according to a different definition, by Dimitri Meeks, nṯr applied to any being that was the focus of ritual. From this perspective, gods included the king, who was called a god after his coronation rites, and deceased souls, likewise, the preeminence of the great gods was maintained by the ritual devotion that was performed for them across Egypt
9.
Ancient Egyptian religion
–
Ancient Egyptian religion was a complex system of polytheistic beliefs and rituals which were an integral part of ancient Egyptian society. It centered on the Egyptians interaction with many deities who were believed to be present in, and in control of, rituals such as prayers and offerings were efforts to provide for the gods and gain their favor. Formal religious practice centered on the pharaoh, the king of Egypt and he acted as the intermediary between his people and the gods and was obligated to sustain the gods through rituals and offerings so that they could maintain order in the universe. The state dedicated enormous resources to Egyptian rituals and to the construction of the temples, individuals could interact with the gods for their own purposes, appealing for their help through prayer or compelling them to act through magic. These practices were distinct from, but closely linked with, the formal rituals, the popular religious tradition grew more prominent in the course of Egyptian history as the status of the Pharaoh declined. Another important aspect was the belief in the afterlife and funerary practices, the Egyptians made great efforts to ensure the survival of their souls after death, providing tombs, grave goods, and offerings to preserve the bodies and spirits of the deceased. The religion had its roots in Egypts prehistory and lasted for more than 3,000 years, the details of religious belief changed over time as the importance of particular gods rose and declined, and their intricate relationships shifted. At various times, certain gods became preeminent over the others, including the sun god Ra, the creator god Amun, for a brief period, in the theology promulgated by the Pharaoh Akhenaten, a single god, the Aten, replaced the traditional pantheon. Ancient Egyptian religion and mythology left behind many writings and monuments, along with significant influences on ancient, the beliefs and rituals now referred to as ancient Egyptian religion were integral within every aspect of Egyptian culture. Their language possessed no single term corresponding to the modern European concept of religion, the characteristics of the gods who populated the divine realm were inextricably linked to the Egyptians understanding of the properties of the world in which they lived. The Egyptians believed that the phenomena of nature were divine forces in and these deified forces included the elements, animal characteristics, or abstract forces. The Egyptians believed in a pantheon of gods, which were involved in all aspects of nature and their religious practices were efforts to sustain and placate these phenomena and turn them to human advantage. This polytheistic system was complex, as some deities were believed to exist in many different manifestations. Conversely, many forces, such as the sun, were associated with multiple deities. The diverse pantheon ranged from gods with vital roles in the universe to minor deities or demons with very limited or localized functions. It could include gods adopted from foreign cultures, and sometimes humans, deceased Pharaohs were believed to be divine, and occasionally, distinguished commoners such as Imhotep also became deified. The depictions of the gods in art were not meant as representations of how the gods might appear if they were visible. Instead, these depictions gave recognizable forms to the deities by using symbolic imagery to indicate each gods role in nature
10.
Scarabaeus sacer
–
Scarabaeus sacer is a species of dung beetle belonging to the family Scarabaeidae. Scarabaeus sacer was described by Carl Linnaeus in his 1758 10th edition of Systema Naturae, Scarabaeus sacer occurs in coastal dunes and marshes around the Mediterranean Basin. It can be found across North Africa, southern Europe and parts of Asia, in the Camargue, the Scarabaeus sacer is almost exclusively a coastal species, living only in dunes and coastal marshes. The head of Scarabaeus sacer has an array of six projections. The projections are uniform with four more projections on each of the tibiae of the front legs, functionally the projections are adaptations for digging and for shaping the ball of dung. There is only a vestigial claw-like structure that might be of assistance in digging. The mid- and hind-legs of Scarabaeus have normal, well-developed 5-segmented tarsi, among the coprophagous species of beetles, Scarabaeus sacer is typical of those that collect dung into balls. Such a beetle rolls its ball to a location, where it digs an underground chamber in which it hides the ball. It then eats the ball itself, a process that may take several days, when the female is ready to breed she selects especially fine-textured dung to make her breeding ball, and digs an especially deep and large chamber for it. There she sculpts it into a pear-shape with a cavity in the narrow part. In that cavity she lays a large egg. She then seals the cavity and departs to repeat the process elsewhere, typically a successful female Scarabaeus sacer will produce only about half a dozen young in her life. The larva feeds on the ball of dung after the egg hatches, Scarabaeus sacer serves as the host for the phoretic mite Macrocheles saceri. Scarabaeus sacer is the most famous of the scarab beetles and they accordingly held the species to be sacred. From this, they drew parallels with their god Atum, who also begat children alone, Scarabaeus sacer was the species which first piqued the interest of William Sharp Macleay and drew him into a career in entomology. Scarab in Ancient Egypt Scarab Commemorative scarabs of Amenhotep III Media related to Scarabaeus sacer at Wikimedia Commons Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Scarab
Depiction of Khepri in the tomb of Nefertari
Media related to Khepri at Wikimedia Commons
