Tram
A tram is a rail vehicle which runs on tramway tracks along public urban streets. The lines or networks operated by tramcars are called tramways; the term electric street railways was used in the United States. In the United States, the term tram has sometimes been used for rubber-tyred trackless trains, which are unrelated to other kinds of trams. Tram vehicles are lighter and shorter than main line and rapid transit trains. Today, most trams use electrical power fed by a pantograph sliding on an overhead line. In some cases by a contact shoe on a third rail is used. If necessary, they may have dual power systems—electricity in city streets, diesel in more rural environments. Trams carry freight. Trams are now included in the wider term "light rail", which includes grade-separated systems; some trams, known as tram-trains, may have segments that run on mainline railway tracks, similar to interurban systems. The differences between these modes of rail transport are indistinct, a given system may combine multiple features.
One of the advantages over earlier forms of transit was the low rolling resistance of metal wheels on steel rails, allowing the trams to haul a greater load for a given effort. Problems included the fact that any given animal could only work so many hours on a given day, had to be housed, groomed and cared for day in and day out, produced prodigious amounts of manure, which the streetcar company was charged with disposing of. Electric trams replaced animal power in the late 19th and early 20th century. Improvements in other forms of road transport such as buses led to decline of trams in mid 20th century. Trams have seen resurgence in recent years; the English terms tram and tramway are derived from the Scots word tram, referring to a type of truck used in coal mines and the tracks on which they ran. The word tram derived from Middle Flemish trame; the identical word la trame with the meaning "crossbeam" is used in the French language. Etymologists believe that the word tram refers to the wooden beams the railway tracks were made of before the railroad pioneers switched to the much more wear-resistant tracks made of iron and steel.
The word Tram-car is attested from 1873. Although the terms tram and tramway have been adopted by many languages, they are not used universally in English; the term streetcar is first recorded in 1840, referred to horsecars. When electrification came, Americans began to speak of trolleycars or trolleys. A held belief holds the word to derive from the troller, a four-wheeled device, dragged along dual overhead wires by a cable that connected the troller to the top of the car and collected electrical power from the overhead wires. "Trolley" and variants refer to the verb troll, meaning "roll" and derived from Old French, cognate uses of the word were well established for handcarts and horse drayage, as well as for nautical uses. The alternative North American term'trolley' may speaking be considered incorrect, as the term can be applied to cable cars, or conduit cars that instead draw power from an underground supply. Conventional diesel tourist buses decorated to look like streetcars are sometimes called trolleys in the US.
Furthering confusion, the term tram has instead been applied to open-sided, low-speed segmented vehicles on rubber tires used to ferry tourists short distances, for example on the Universal Studios backlot tour and, in many countries, as tourist transport to major destinations. The term may apply to an aerial ropeway, e.g. the Roosevelt Island Tramway. Although the use of the term trolley for tram was not adopted in Europe, the term was associated with the trolleybus, a rubber-tyred vehicle running on hard pavement, which draws its power from pairs of overhead wires; these electric buses, which use twin trolley poles, are called trackless trolleys, or sometimes trolleys. The New South Wales, government has decided to use the term "light rail" for their trams; the history of trams, streetcars or trolley systems, began in early nineteenth century. It can be divided up into several discrete periods defined by the principal means of motive power used; the world's first passenger train or tram was the Swansea and Mumbles Railway, in Wales, UK.
The Mumbles Railway Act was passed by the British Parliament in 1804, horse-drawn service started in 1807. The service was restarted in 1860, again using horses, it was worked by steam from 1877, from 1929, by large electric tramcars, until closure in 1961. The Swansea and Mumbles Railway was something of a one-off however, no street tramway would appear in Britain until 1860 when one was built in Birkenhead by the American George Francis Train. Street railways developed in America before Europe due to the poor paving of the streets in American cities which made them unsuitable for horsebuses, which were common on the well-paved streets of European cities. Running the horsecars on rails allowed for a much smoother ride. There are records of a street railway running in Baltimore as early as 1828, however the first authenticated streetcar in America, was the New York and Harle
Slot machine
A slot machine, known variously as a fruit machine, the slots, poker machine/pokies, or slot, is a casino gambling machine which creates a game of chance for its customers. Its standard layout is a display with three or more reels which rotate when a lever is pulled or button pushed. Slot machines are known as one-armed bandits because they were operated by pulling upon a large mechanical lever on the side of the machine, because of their ability to empty a player's pockets and wallet as a thief would. Many modern machines are still equipped with a legacy lever in addition to the button. Slot machines include one or more currency detectors that validate the form of payment, whether coin, cash, or token; the machine pays off according to patterns of symbols appearing on its display. Slot machines are the most popular gambling method in casinos and constitute about 70 percent of the average US casino's income. Digital technology has resulted in variations on the original slot machine concept. Since the player is playing a video game, manufacturers are able to offer more interactive elements, such as advanced bonus rounds and more varied video graphics.
The "slot machine" term derives from the slots on the machine for retrieving coins. "Fruit machine" comes from the traditional fruit images on the spinning reels, such as lemons and cherries. Sittman and Pitt of Brooklyn, New York, U. S. developed a gambling machine in 1891, a precursor to the modern slot machine. It contained five drums holding a total of 50 card was based on poker; this machine proved popular and soon many bars in the city had one or more of the machines. Players would insert a nickel and pull a lever, which would spin the drums and the cards they held, the player hoping for a good poker hand. There was no direct payout mechanism, so a pair of kings might get the player a free beer, whereas a royal flush could pay out cigars or drinks, the prizes wholly dependent on what was on offer at the local establishment. To make the odds better for the house, two cards were removed from the deck: the ten of spades and the jack of hearts, which doubles the odds against winning a royal flush.
The drums could be rearranged to further reduce a player's chance of winning. Due to the vast number of possible wins with the original poker card-based game, it proved impossible to come up with a way to make a machine capable of making an automatic payout for all possible winning combinations. Somewhere between 1887 and 1895, Charles Fey of San Francisco, California, U. S. devised a much simpler automatic mechanism with three spinning reels containing a total of five symbols – horseshoes, spades, a Liberty Bell. The bell gave the machine its name. By replacing ten cards with five symbols and using three reels instead of five drums, the complexity of reading a win was reduced, allowing Fey to devise an effective automatic payout mechanism. Three bells in a row produced ten nickels. Liberty Bell spawned a thriving mechanical gaming device industry; when the use of these gambling devices was banned in his home state after a few years, Fey still could not keep up with demand for the game elsewhere.
The Liberty Bell machine was so popular. Thus in 1907, manufacturer Herbert Mills from Chicago produced a slot machine called the Operator Bell. By 1908 lots of "bell" machines were installed in most cigar stores, bowling alleys and barber shops. Early machines, including an 1899 "Liberty Bell", are now part of the Nevada State Museum's Fey Collection. Other early machines, such as the trade stimulator, gave out winnings in the form of fruit-flavoured chewing gums with pictures of the flavours as symbols on the reels; the popular cherry and melon symbols derive from this machine. The BAR symbol now common in slot machines was derived from an early logo of the Bell-Fruit Gum Company; the payment of food prizes was a used technique to avoid laws against gambling in a number of states, for this reason a number of gumball and other vending machines were regarded with mistrust by the courts. The two Iowa cases of State v. Ellis and State v. Striggles are both used in classes on criminal law to illustrate the concept of reliance upon authority as it relates to the axiomatic ignorantia juris non excusat.
In these cases, a mint vending machine was declared to be a gambling device because by chance the machine would give the next user a number of tokens exchangeable for more candy. Despite the fact that the result of the next use would be displayed on the machine, the courts ruled that "he machine appealed to the player's propensity to gamble, and, vice."In 1963, Bally developed the first electromechanical slot machine, called Money Honey. The electromechanical approach of the 1960s allowed Money Honey to be the first slot machine with a bottomless hopper and automatic payout of up to 500 coins without the help of an attendant; the popularity of this machine led to the increasing predominance of electronic games, the side lever soon became vestigial. The first true video slot machine was developed in 1976 in Kearny Mesa, California by the Las-Vegas based Fortune Coin Co; this slot machine used
Nevada
Nevada is a state in the Western United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th most extensive, the 32nd most populous, but the 9th least densely populated of the U. S. states. Nearly three-quarters of Nevada's people live in Clark County, which contains the Las Vegas–Paradise metropolitan area where three of the state's four largest incorporated cities are located. Nevada's capital, however, is Carson City. Nevada is known as the "Silver State" because of the importance of silver to its history and economy, it is known as the "Battle Born State", because it achieved statehood during the Civil War. Nevada is desert and semi-arid, much of it within the Great Basin. Areas south of the Great Basin are within the Mojave Desert, while Lake Tahoe and the Sierra Nevada lie on the western edge. About 86% of the state's land is managed by various jurisdictions of the U. S. federal government, both civilian and military.
Before European contact, Native Americans of the Paiute and Washoe tribes inhabited the land, now Nevada. The first Europeans to explore the region were Spanish, they called the region Nevada because of the snow. The area formed part of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, became part of Mexico when it gained independence in 1821; the United States annexed the area in 1848 after its victory in the Mexican–American War, it was incorporated as part of Utah Territory in 1850. The discovery of silver at the Comstock Lode in 1859 led to a population boom that became an impetus to the creation of Nevada Territory out of western Utah Territory in 1861. Nevada became the 36th state on October 31, 1864, as the second of two states added to the Union during the Civil War. Nevada has a reputation for its libertarian laws. In 1940, with a population of just over 110,000 people, Nevada was by far the least-populated state, with less than half the population of the next least-populated state. However, legalized gambling and lenient marriage and divorce laws transformed Nevada into a major tourist destination in the 20th century.
Nevada is the only U. S. state where prostitution is legal, though it is illegal in Clark County, Washoe County and Carson City. The tourism industry remains Nevada's largest employer, with mining continuing as a substantial sector of the economy: Nevada is the fourth-largest producer of gold in the world; the name "Nevada" comes from meaning "snow-covered", after the Sierra Nevada. Most Nevadans pronounce the second syllable of their state name using the TRAP vowel. Many from outside the Western United States pronounce it with the PALM vowel. Although the latter pronunciation is closer to the Spanish pronunciation, it is not the pronunciation preferred by most Nevadans. State Assemblyman Harry Mortenson proposed a bill to recognize the alternate pronunciation of Nevada, though the bill was not supported by most legislators and never received a vote; the Nevadan pronunciation is the de facto official one, since it is the one used by the state legislature. At one time, the state's official tourism organization, TravelNevada, stylized the name of the state as "Nevăda", with a breve mark over the a indicating the locally preferred pronunciation, available as a license plate design.
Nevada is entirely within the Basin and Range Province, is broken up by many north-south mountain ranges. Most of these ranges have endorheic valleys between them, which belies the image portrayed by the term Great Basin. Much of the northern part of the state is within the Great Basin, a mild desert that experiences hot temperatures in the summer and cold temperatures in the winter. Moisture from the Arizona Monsoon will cause summer thunderstorms; the state's highest recorded temperature was 125 °F in Laughlin on June 29, 1994. The coldest recorded temperature was −52 °F set in San Jacinto in 1972, in the northeastern portion of the state; the Humboldt River crosses the state from east to west across the northern part of the state, draining into the Humboldt Sink near Lovelock. Several rivers drain from the Sierra Nevada eastward, including the Walker and Carson rivers. All of these rivers are endorheic basins, ending in Walker Lake, Pyramid Lake, the Carson Sink, respectively. However, not all of Nevada is within the Great Basin.
Tributaries of the Snake River drain the far north, while the Colorado River, which forms much of the boundary with Arizona, drains much of southern Nevada. The mountain ranges, some of which have peaks above 13,000 feet, harbor lush forests high above desert plains, creating sky islands for endemic species; the valleys are no lower in elevation than 3,000 feet, while some in central Nevada are above 6,000 feet. The southern third of the state, where the Las Vegas area is situated, is within the Mojave Desert; the area is closer to the Arizona Monsoon in the summer. The terrain is lower below 4,000 feet, creating conditions for hot summer days and cool to chilly winter nights. Nevada and California have by far the longest diagonal line as a state boundary at just over 400 miles; this line begins in Lake Tahoe nearly
Nile
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa, is the longest river in Africa and in the world, though some sources cite the Amazon River as the longest. The Nile, about 6,650 km long, is an "international" river as its drainage basin covers eleven countries, Tanzania, Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Republic of the Sudan and Egypt. In particular, the Nile is the primary water source of Sudan; the river Nile has the White Nile and Blue Nile. The White Nile is considered to be the headwaters and primary stream of the Nile itself; the Blue Nile, however, is the source of most of the silt. The White Nile is longer and rises in the Great Lakes region of central Africa, with the most distant source still undetermined but located in either Rwanda or Burundi, it flows north through Tanzania, Lake Victoria and South Sudan. The Blue Nile flows into Sudan from the southeast; the two rivers meet just north of the Sudanese capital of Khartoum. The northern section of the river flows north entirely through the Sudanese desert to Egypt ends in a large delta and flows into the Mediterranean Sea.
Egyptian civilization and Sudanese kingdoms have depended on the river since ancient times. Most of the population and cities of Egypt lie along those parts of the Nile valley north of Aswan, nearly all the cultural and historical sites of Ancient Egypt are found along river banks. In the ancient Egyptian language, the Nile is called Ḥ'pī or Iteru, meaning "river". In Coptic, the word ⲫⲓⲁⲣⲱ, pronounced piaro or phiaro, means "the river", comes from the same ancient name. In Egyptian Arabic, the Nile is called en-Nīl while in Standard Arabic. In Biblical Hebrew: הַיְאוֹר, Ha-Ye'or or הַשִׁיחוֹר, Ha-Shiḥor; the English name Nile and the Arabic names en-Nîl and an-Nîl both derive from the Latin Nilus and the Ancient Greek Νεῖλος. Beyond that, the etymology is disputed. Hesiod at his Theogony refers that Nilus was one of son of Oceanus and Tethys. Another derivation of Nile might be related to the term Nil, which refers to Indigofera tinctoria, one of the original sources of indigo dye. Another possible etymology derives it from a Semitic Nahal, meaning "river".
The standard English names "White Nile" and "Blue Nile", to refer to the river's source, derive from Arabic names applied only to the Sudanese stretches which meet at Khartoum. With a total length of about 6,650 km between the region of Lake Victoria and the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile is the longest river on the African continent; the drainage basin of the Nile covers about 10 % of the area of Africa. Compared to other major rivers, the Nile carries little water; the Nile basin is complex, because of this, the discharge at any given point along the mainstem depends on many factors including weather, diversions and evapotranspiration, groundwater flow. Above Khartoum, the Nile is known as the White Nile, a term used in a limited sense to describe the section between Lake No and Khartoum. At Khartoum the river is joined by the Blue Nile; the White Nile starts in equatorial East Africa, the Blue Nile begins in Ethiopia. Both branches are on the western flanks of the East African Rift; the source of the Nile is sometimes considered to be Lake Victoria, but the lake has feeder rivers of considerable size.
The Kagera River, which flows into Lake Victoria near the Tanzanian town of Bukoba, is the longest feeder, although sources do not agree on, the longest tributary of the Kagera and hence the most distant source of the Nile itself. It is either the Ruvyironza, which emerges in Bururi Province, Burundi, or the Nyabarongo, which flows from Nyungwe Forest in Rwanda; the two feeder rivers meet near Rusumo Falls on the Rwanda-Tanzania border. In 2010, an exploration party went to a place described as the source of the Rukarara tributary, by hacking a path up steep jungle-choked mountain slopes in the Nyungwe forest found an appreciable incoming surface flow for many kilometres upstream, found a new source, giving the Nile a length of 6,758 km. Gish Abay is the place where the "holy water" of the first drops of the Blue Nile develop; the Nile leaves Lake Nyanza at Ripon Falls near Uganda, as the Victoria Nile. It flows north for some 130 kilometers, to Lake Kyoga; the last part of the 200 kilometers river section starts from the western shores of the lake and flows at first to the west until just south of Masindi Port, where the river turns north makes a great half circle to the east and north until Karuma Falls.
For the remaining part it flows westerly through the Murchison Falls until it reaches the northern shores of Lake Albert where it forms a significant river delta. The lake itself is on the border of DR Congo. After leaving Lake Albert, the river is known as the Albert Nile; the Nile river flows into South Sudan just south of Nimule. Just south of the town it has the confluence with the Achwa River; the Bahr al Ghazal, itself 716 kilometers (44
Esports
Esports is a form of competition using video games. Most esports takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions between professional players, individually or as teams. Although organized online and offline competitions have long been a part of video game culture, these were between amateurs until the late 2000s, when participation by professional gamers and spectatorship in these events through live streaming saw a large surge in popularity. By the 2010s, esports was a significant factor in the video game industry, with many game developers designing toward a professional esports subculture; the most common video game genres associated with esports are multiplayer online battle arena, first-person shooter, digital collectible card games, battle royale games and real-time strategy. Popular esports titles include MOBA games such as, League of Legends, Dota 2 and Smite, FPS titles such as Counter-Strike and Call of Duty, CrossFire and Rainbow Six Siege which are in the FPS sub-genre of tactical shooters, Overwatch, in the FPS sub-genre of hero shooter, fighting games such as Street Fighter, Super Smash Bros.
Mortal Kombat and Soulcalibur, Beat'em up such as Dungeon Fighter Online, digital collectible card games such as Hearthstone, Battle royale games such as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Fortnite Battle Royale, RTS titles StarCraft. Tournaments such as the League of Legends World Championship, Dota 2's The International, the fighting games-specific Evolution Championship Series, the Intel Extreme Masters provide live broadcasts of the competition and prize money to competitors. Many competitions use a series of promotion and relegation play with sponsored teams, such as the League of Legends World Championship, but more competitions structured similar to American professional sports, with salaried players and regular season and play-off series, have emerged, such as the Overwatch League; the legitimacy of esports as a sports competition remains in question. By 2019, it is estimated; the increasing availability of online streaming media platforms Panda.tv, YouTube, Twitch have become central to the growth and promotion of esports competitions.
Demographically, Major League Gaming has reported viewership, 85% male and 15% female, with a majority of viewers between the ages of 18 and 34. Despite this, several female personalities within esports are hopeful about the increasing presence of female gamers. South Korea has several established esports organizations, which have licensed pro gamers since the year 2000. Recognition of esports competitions outside of South Korea has come somewhat slower. Along with South Korea, most competitions take place in North America and China. Despite its large video game market, esports in Japan is underdeveloped, this has been attributed to its broad anti-gambling laws which prohibit paid professional gaming tournaments; the global esports market generated US$325 million of revenue in 2015 and was expected to make $493 million in 2016. The global esports audience in 2015 was 226 million people. According to a Newzoo report in April 2017, 42% of the gaming market belongs to the mobile industry, mobile is projected to claim more than 50% the market by 2020.
The esports industry is expanding beyond PC and console, as developer Super Evil Megacorp created Vainglory, the first mobile multiplayer online battle arena game, companies like Skillz bring esports tournaments to mobile games. The earliest known video game competition took place on 19 October 1972 at Stanford University for the game Spacewar. Stanford students were invited to an "Intergalactic spacewar olympics" whose grand prize was a year's subscription for Rolling Stone, with Bruce Baumgart winning the five-man-free-for-all tournament and Tovar and Robert E. Maas winning the Team Competition; the Space Invaders Championship held by Atari in 1980 was the earliest large scale video game competition, attracting more than 10,000 participants across the United States, establishing competitive gaming as a mainstream hobby. In the summer of 1980, Walter Day founded a high score record keeping organization called Twin Galaxies; the organization went on to help promote video games and publicize its records through publications such as the Guinness Book of World Records, in 1983 it created the U.
S. National Video Game Team; the team was involved in competitions, such as running the Video Game Masters Tournament for Guinness World Records and sponsoring the North American Video Game Challenge tournament. During the 1970s and 1980s, video game players and tournaments began being featured in well-circulated newspapers and popular magazines including Life and Time. One of the most well known classic arcade game players is Billy Mitchell, credited with the records for high scores in six games including Pac-Man and Donkey Kong in the 1985 issue of the Guinness Book of World Records; some of those records would be removed in 2018 amid allegations of fraud. Televised esports events aired during this period included the American show Starcade which ran between 1982 and 1984 airing a total of 133 episodes, on which contestants would attempt to beat each other's high scores on an arcade game. A video game tournament was included as part of TV show That's Incredible!, tournaments were featured as part of the plot of various films, including 1982's Tron.
In the UK, the BBC game show First Class i
Ancient Egypt
Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient North Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in the place, now the country Egypt. Ancient Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3100 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under Menes; the history of ancient Egypt occurred as a series of stable kingdoms, separated by periods of relative instability known as Intermediate Periods: the Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age, the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age and the New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age. Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power in the New Kingdom, ruling much of Nubia and a sizable portion of the Near East, after which it entered a period of slow decline. During the course of its history Egypt was invaded or conquered by a number of foreign powers, including the Hyksos, the Libyans, the Nubians, the Assyrians, the Achaemenid Persians, the Macedonians under the command of Alexander the Great; the Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom, formed in the aftermath of Alexander's death, ruled Egypt until 30 BC, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province.
The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture. The predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, social development and culture. With resources to spare, the administration sponsored mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding desert regions, the early development of an independent writing system, the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with surrounding regions, a military intended to assert Egyptian dominance. Motivating and organizing these activities was a bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, administrators under the control of a pharaoh, who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the context of an elaborate system of religious beliefs; the many achievements of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying and construction techniques that supported the building of monumental pyramids and obelisks.
Ancient Egypt has left a lasting legacy. Its art and architecture were copied, its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world, its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of writers for centuries. A new-found respect for antiquities and excavations in the early modern period by Europeans and Egyptians led to the scientific investigation of Egyptian civilization and a greater appreciation of its cultural legacy; the Nile has been the lifeline of its region for much of human history. The fertile floodplain of the Nile gave humans the opportunity to develop a settled agricultural economy and a more sophisticated, centralized society that became a cornerstone in the history of human civilization. Nomadic modern human hunter-gatherers began living in the Nile valley through the end of the Middle Pleistocene some 120,000 years ago. By the late Paleolithic period, the arid climate of Northern Africa became hot and dry, forcing the populations of the area to concentrate along the river region.
In Predynastic and Early Dynastic times, the Egyptian climate was much less arid. Large regions of Egypt were traversed by herds of grazing ungulates. Foliage and fauna were far more prolific in all environs and the Nile region supported large populations of waterfowl. Hunting would have been common for Egyptians, this is the period when many animals were first domesticated. By about 5500 BC, small tribes living in the Nile valley had developed into a series of cultures demonstrating firm control of agriculture and animal husbandry, identifiable by their pottery and personal items, such as combs and beads; the largest of these early cultures in upper Egypt was the Badari, which originated in the Western Desert. The Badari was followed by the Amratian and Gerzeh cultures, which brought a number of technological improvements; as early as the Naqada I Period, predynastic Egyptians imported obsidian from Ethiopia, used to shape blades and other objects from flakes. In Naqada II times, early evidence exists of contact with the Near East Canaan and the Byblos coast.
Over a period of about 1,000 years, the Naqada culture developed from a few small farming communities into a powerful civilization whose leaders were in complete control of the people and resources of the Nile valley. Establishing a power center at Nekhen, at Abydos, Naqada III leaders expanded their control of Egypt northwards along the Nile, they traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the western desert to the west, the cultures of the eastern Mediterranean and Near East to the east, initiating a period of Egypt-Mesopotamia relations. The Naqada culture manufactured a diverse selection of material goods, reflective of the increasing power and wealth of the elite, as well as societal personal-use items, which included combs, small statuary, painted pottery, high quality decorative stone vases, cosmetic palettes, jewelry made of gold and ivory, they developed a ceramic glaze known as faience, used well into the Roman Per
Thebes, Egypt
Thebes, known to the ancient Egyptians as Waset, was an ancient Egyptian city located along the Nile about 800 kilometers south of the Mediterranean. Its ruins lie within the modern Egyptian city of Luxor. Thebes was the main city of the fourth Upper Egyptian nome and was the capital of Egypt during the Middle Kingdom and the New Kingdom, it was close to the Eastern Desert, with its valuable mineral resources and trade routes. It was the most venerated city of ancient Egypt during its heyday; the site of Thebes includes areas on both the eastern bank of the Nile, where the temples of Karnak and Luxor stand and the city proper was situated. The Egyptian name for Thebes was wꜣs.t, "City of the wꜣs", the sceptre of the pharaohs, a long staff with an animal's head and a forked base. From the end of the New Kingdom, Thebes was known in Egyptian as niwt-'imn, the "City of Amun", the chief of the Theban Triad of deities whose other members were Mut and Khonsu; this name of Thebes appears in the Bible as the "Nōʼ ʼĀmôn" in the Book of Nahum and as "No" mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel and Jeremiah.
Thebes is the latinised form of Koine Greek: Θῆβαι, the hellenized form of the Demotic Egyptian ta Pe, from earlier ta Opet. This was the local name not for the city itself but for the Karnak temple complex on the northeast bank of the city; as early as Homer's Iliad, the Greeks distinguished the Egyptian Thebes as "Thebes of the Hundred Gates" or "Hundred-Gated Thebes", as opposed to the "Thebes of the Seven Gates" in Boeotia, Greece. In the interpretatio graeca, Amun was rendered as Zeus Ammon; the name was therefore translated into Greek as Diospolis, "City of Zeus". To distinguish it from the numerous other cities by this name, it was known as the "Great Diospolis"; the Greek names came into wider use after the conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great, when the country came to be ruled by the Macedonian Ptolemaic dynasty. Thebes was located along the banks of the Nile River in the middle part of Upper Egypt about 800 km from the Delta, it was built on the alluvial plains of the Nile Valley which follows a great bend of the Nile.
As a natural consequence, the city was laid in a northeast-southwest axis parallel to the contemporary river channel. Thebes had an area of 93 km2 which included parts of the Theban Hills in the west that culminates at the sacred 420-meter al-Qurn. In the east lies the mountainous Eastern Desert with its wadis draining into the valley. Significant among these wadis is Wadi Hammamat near Thebes, it was used as an overland trade route going to the Red Sea coast. In the fourth Upper Egyptian nome, Thebes was found to have neighboring towns such as Per-Hathor, Djerty, Iuny and Imiotru. According to George Modelski, Thebes had about 40,000 inhabitants in 2000 BC. By 1800 BC, the population of Memphis was down to about 30,000, making Thebes the largest city in Egypt at the time. Historian Ian Morris estimated that by 1500 BC, Thebes may have grown to be the largest city in the world, with a population of about 75,000, a position which it held until about 900 BC, when it was surpassed by Nimrud; the archaeological remains of Thebes offer a striking testimony to Egyptian civilization at its height.
The Greek poet Homer extolled the wealth of Thebes in the Iliad, Book 9: "... in Egyptian Thebes the heaps of precious ingots gleam, the hundred-gated Thebes." More than sixty annual festivals were celebrated in Thebes. The major festivals among these according to the Edfu Geographical Text were: the Beautiful Feast of Opet, the Khoiak, Festival of I Shemu, Festival of II Shemu. Another popular festivity was the halloween-like Beautiful Festival of the Valley. Thebes was inhabited from around 3200 BC, it was the eponymous capital of the fourth Upper Egyptian nome. At this time it was still a small trading post while Memphis served as the royal residence of Old Kingdom pharaohs. Although no buildings survive in Thebes older than the portions of the Karnak temple complex, which may date from the Middle Kingdom, the lower part of a statue of Pharaoh Nyuserre of the 5th Dynasty has been found in Karnak. Another statue, dedicated by the 12th Dynasty king Senusret may have been usurped and re-used, since the statue bears a cartouche of Nyuserre on its belt.
Since seven rulers of the 4th to 6th Dynasties appear on the Karnak king list at the least there was a temple in the Theban area which dated to the Old Kingdom. By 2160 BC, a new line of pharaohs consolidated Lower Egypt and northern parts of Upper Egypt from their capital in Herakleopolis Magna. A rival line based at Thebes ruled the remaining part of Upper Egypt; the Theban rulers were descendants of the prince of Thebes, Intef the Elder. His probable grandson Intef I was the first of the family to claim in life a partial pharaonic titulary, though his power did not extend much further than the general Theban region. By c. 2050 BC, Intef III's son Mentuhotep II, took the Herakleopolitans by force and reunited Egypt once again under one ruler, thereby starting the period now known as the Middle Kingdom. Mentuhotep II ruled for 51 years and built the first mortuary temple at Deir el-Bahri, which most served as the inspiration for the and larger temple built next to it by Hat
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