1.
Faras
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Faras was a major city in Lower Nubia. The site of the city, on the border between modern Egypt and Sudan at Wadi Halfa Salient, was flooded by Lake Nasser in the 1960s and is now permanently underwater. Before this flooding, extensive work was conducted by a Polish archeological team led by professor Kazimierz Michałowski. Dating back to the A-Group period, the town was a centre during the Meroitic period. During the period of ancient Egyptian control over Nubia, Faras became an Egyptian administrative centre and, located upriver from Abu Simbel, the city reached its height during the Christian period of Nubia, when Faras was the capital of the Basiliskos Silko of Nobadia. When Nobatia was absorbed into Makuria, it remained the most prominent center in the north, one of the most important discoveries from the Christian period was the towns cathedral. The cathedral had been filled with sand which preserved a large number of intricate paintings on its walls. These paintings are the best surviving examples of Christian Nubian art and depict portraits of monarchs and bishops of Faras, Christian saints. These paintings were salvaged and are today on display in the Polish National Museum in Warsaw, in addition, a major pottery works was found. In the turbulent later years of Christian Nubia, Faras seems to have declined, coptic Diocese of Faras Faras Gallery in the National Museum in Warsaw Exhibition on Faras, Vienna 2002 Medieval Nubia
2.
Medieval Greek
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From the 7th century onwards, Greek was the only language of administration and government in the Byzantine Empire. This stage of language is described as Byzantine Greek. The study of the Medieval Greek language and literature is a branch of Byzantine Studies, or Byzantinology, however, this approach is rather arbitrary as it is more an assumption of political as opposed to cultural and linguistic developments. Indeed, by time the spoken language, particularly pronunciation, had already shifted towards modern forms. Medieval Greek is the link between this vernacular, known as Koine Greek, and the Modern Greek language. With the transfer of the Roman imperial court to Byzantium between 324 and 330, the centre of the Roman Empire was moved into an area where Greek was the dominant language. At first, Latin remained the language of both the court and the army and it was used for documents, but its influence soon waned. From the beginning of the 6th century, amendments to the law were written in Greek. Furthermore, parts of the Roman Corpus Iuris Civilis were gradually translated into Greek, under the rule of Emperor Heraclius, who also assumed the Greek title Basileus in 629, Greek became the official language of the Eastern Roman Empire. This was in spite of the fact that the inhabitants of the empire still considered themselves Romaioi until its end in 1453, the number of those who were able to communicate in Greek may have been far higher. In any case, all cities of the Eastern Roman Empire were strongly influenced by the Greek language, alexandria, a center of Greek culture and language, fell to the Arabs in 642. During the seventh and eighth centuries, Greek was replaced by Arabic as a language in conquered territories such as Egypt. Thus, the use of Greek declined early on in Syria, Egypt, from the late 11th century onwards, the interior of Anatolia was invaded by Seljuq Turks, who advanced westwards. Language varieties after 1453 are referred to as Modern Greek, as early as in the Hellenistic period, there was a tendency towards a state of diglossia between the Attic literary language and the constantly developing vernacular Koiné. By late antiquity, the gap had become impossible to ignore, written literature reflecting this demotic Greek begins to appear around 1100. Among the preserved literature in the Attic literary language, various forms of historiography take a prominent place and they comprise chronicles as well as classicist, contemporary works of historiography, theological documents, and saints lives. Poetry can be found in the form of hymns and ecclesiastical poetry, many of the Byzantine emperors were active writers themselves and wrote chronicles or works on the running of the Byzantine state and strategic or philological works. Furthermore, letters, legal texts, and numerous registers and lists in Medieval Greek exist and these are influenced by the vernacular language of their time in choice of words and idiom, but largely follow the models of written Koine in their morphology and syntax
3.
Isis
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Isis is a goddess from the polytheistic pantheon of Egypt. She was first worshiped in ancient Egyptian religion, and later her worship spread throughout the Roman Empire, Isis was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the patroness of nature and magic. She was the friend of slaves, sinners, artisans and the downtrodden, Isis is often depicted as the mother of Horus, the falcon-headed deity associated with king and kingship. Isis is also known as protector of the dead and goddess of children, as the personification of the throne, she was an important representation of the pharaohs power. The pharaoh was depicted as her child, who sat on the throne she provided. Her cult was popular throughout Egypt, but her most important temples were at Behbeit El Hagar in the Nile delta, and, beginning in the reign with Nectanebo I, on the island of Philae in Upper Egypt. In the typical form of her myth, Isis was the first daughter of Geb, god of the Earth, and Nut, goddess of the Sky and she married her brother, Osiris, and she conceived Horus with him. Isis was instrumental in the resurrection of Osiris when he was murdered by Set, using her magical skills, she restored his body to life after having gathered the body parts that had been strewn about the earth by Set. This myth became very important during the Greco-Roman period, for example, it was believed that the Nile River flooded every year because of the tears of sorrow which Isis wept for Osiris. Osiriss death and rebirth was relived each year through rituals, the worship of Isis eventually spread throughout the Greco-Roman world, continuing until the suppression of paganism in the Christian era. The popular motif of Isis suckling her son Horus, however, the Greek name version of Isis is close to her original, Egyptian name spelling. Isis name was written with the signs of a throne seat. The grammar, spelling and used signs of Isis name never changed during time in any way, however, the symbolic and metaphoric meaning of Isis name remains unclear. The throne seat sign in her name might point to a role as a goddess of kingship. Thus, her name could mean she of the kings throne, but all other Egyptian deities have names that point to clear cosmological or nature elemental roles, thus the name of Isis shouldnt be connected to the king himself. The throne seat symbol might alternatively point to a meaning as throne-mother of the gods and this in turn would supply a very old existence of Isis, long before her first mentioning during the late Old Kingdom, but this hypothesis remains unproven. A third possible meaning might be hidden in the egg-symbol, that was used in Isis name. The egg-symbol always represented motherhood, implying a role of Isis
4.
Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria
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The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria is the largest Christian Church in Egypt, Northeast Africa and the Middle East. According to tradition, the Church was established by Saint Mark, the head of the Church and the See of Alexandria is the Patriarch of Alexandria on the Holy See of Saint Mark, who also carries the title of Coptic Pope. The See of Alexandria is titular, and today the Coptic Pope presides from Saint Marks Coptic Orthodox Cathedral in the Abbassia District in Cairo. The precise Christological differences that caused the split with the Coptic Christians are still disputed, highly technical, the foundational roots of the Coptic Church are based in Egypt, but it has a worldwide following. Isaiah the prophet, in Chapter 19, Verse 19 says In that day there will be an altar to the LORD in the midst of the land of Egypt, the first Christians in Egypt were common people who spoke Egyptian Coptic. There were also Alexandrian Jews such as Theophilus, whom Saint Luke the Evangelist addresses in the chapter of his gospel. When the church was founded by Saint Mark during the reign of the Roman emperor Nero, in the 2nd century, Christianity began to spread to the rural areas, and scriptures were translated into the local languages, namely Coptic. The Catechetical School of Alexandria is the oldest catechetical school in the world, St. Jerome records that the Christian School of Alexandria was founded by Saint Mark himself. Origen wrote over 6,000 commentaries of the Bible in addition to his famous Hexapla, many scholars such as Jerome visited the school of Alexandria to exchange ideas and to communicate directly with its scholars. The scope of this school was not limited to subjects, science, mathematics. The question-and-answer method of commentary began there, and 15 centuries before Braille, wood-carving techniques were in use there by blind scholars to read, the Theological college of the catechetical school was re-established in 1893. Many Egyptian Christians went to the desert during the 3rd century, by the end of the 5th century, there were hundreds of monasteries, and thousands of cells and caves scattered throughout the Egyptian desert. A great number of these monasteries are still flourishing and have new vocations to this day, countless pilgrims have visited the Desert Fathers to emulate their spiritual, disciplined lives. In the 4th century, an Alexandrian presbyter named Arius began a dispute about the nature of Christ that spread throughout the Christian world and is now known as Arianism. We confess one Baptism for the remission of sins and we look for the resurrection of the dead, as a consequence of this, he denied the title Mother of God to the Virgin Mary, declaring her instead to be Mother of Christ Christotokos. When reports of this reached the Apostolic Throne of Saint Mark, Pope Saint Cyril I of Alexandria acted quickly to correct this breach with orthodoxy, when he would not, the Synod of Alexandria met in an emergency session and a unanimous agreement was reached. Pope Cyril I of Alexandria, supported by the entire See and this epistle drew heavily on the established Patristic Constitutions and contained the most famous article of Alexandrian Orthodoxy, The Twelve Anathemas of Saint Cyril. In these anathemas, Cyril excommunicated anyone who followed the teachings of Nestorius, for example, Anyone who dares to deny the Holy Virgin the title Theotokos is Anathema
5.
Monarchy
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The actual power of the monarch may vary from purely symbolic, to partial and restricted, to completely autocratic. Traditionally and in most cases, the monarchs post is inherited and lasts until death or abdication, occasionally this might create a situation of rival claimants whose legitimacy is subject to effective election. Finally, there have been cases where the term of a reign is either fixed in years or continues until certain goals are achieved. Thus there are widely divergent structures and traditions defining monarchy, Monarchy was the most common form of government until the 19th century, but it is no longer prevalent. Currently,47 sovereign nations in the world have monarchs acting as heads of state,19 of which are Commonwealth realms that recognise Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state. The monarchs of Cambodia, Japan, and Malaysia reign, the word monarch comes from the Greek language word μονάρχης, monárkhēs which referred to a single, at least nominally absolute ruler. In current usage the word usually refers to a traditional system of hereditary rule. Depending on the held by the monarch, a monarchy may be known as a kingdom, principality, duchy, grand duchy, empire, tsardom, emirate, sultanate, khaganate. The form of societal hierarchy known as chiefdom or tribal kingship is prehistoric, the Greek term monarchia is classical, used by Herodotus. The monarch in classical antiquity is often identified as king, the Chinese, Japanese and Nepalese monarchs continued to be considered living Gods into the modern period. Since antiquity, monarchy has contrasted with forms of democracy, where power is wielded by assemblies of free citizens. In antiquity, monarchies were abolished in favour of such assemblies in Rome, much of 19th century politics was characterised by the division between anti-monarchist Radicalism and monarchist Conservativism. Many countries abolished the monarchy in the 20th century and became republics, advocacy of republics is called republicanism, while advocacy of monarchies is called monarchism. In the modern era, monarchies are more prevalent in small states than in large ones, most monarchs, both historically and in the modern day, have been born and brought up within a royal family, the centre of the royal household and court. Growing up in a family, future monarchs are often trained for the responsibilities of expected future rule. Different systems of succession have been used, such as proximity of blood, primogeniture, and agnatic seniority. While most monarchs have been male, many female monarchs also have reigned in history, rule may be hereditary in practice without being considered a monarchy, such as that of family dictatorships or political families in many democracies. The principal advantage of hereditary monarchy is the continuity of leadership
6.
Late antiquity
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Late antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from classical antiquity to the Middle Ages in mainland Europe, the Mediterranean world, and the Near East. The development of the periodization has generally been accredited to historian Peter Brown, precise boundaries for the period are a continuing matter of debate, but Brown proposes a period between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Generally, it can be thought of as from the end of the Roman Empires Crisis of the Third Century to, in the East, the early Islamic period, following the Muslim conquests in the mid–7th century. In the West the end was earlier, with the start of the Early Medieval period typically placed in the 6th century, beginning with Constantine the Great, Christianity was made legal in the Empire, and a new capital was founded at Constantinople. The resultant cultural fusion of Greco-Roman, Germanic and Christian traditions formed the foundations of the subsequent culture of Europe, the term Spätantike, literally late antiquity, has been used by German-speaking historians since its popularization by Alois Riegl in the early 20th century. Concurrently, some migrating Germanic tribes such as the Ostrogoths and Visigoths saw themselves as perpetuating the Roman tradition, Constantine confirmed the legalization of the religion through the so-called Edict of Milan in 313, jointly issued with his rival in the East, Licinius. Monasticism was not the only new Christian movement to appear in Late Antiquity, notable in this regard is the topic of the Fifty Bibles of Constantine. Within the recently legitimized Christian community of the 4th century, a division could be distinctly seen between the laity and an increasingly celibate male leadership. Celibate and detached, the clergy became an elite equal in prestige to urban notables. The Late Antique period also saw a transformation of the political and social basis of life in. The later Roman Empire was in a sense a network of cities, archaeology now supplements literary sources to document the transformation followed by collapse of cities in the Mediterranean basin. Burials within the urban precincts mark another stage in dissolution of traditional urbanistic discipline, overpowered by the attraction of saintly shrines, in Roman Britain, the typical 4th- and 5th-century layer of black earth within cities seems to be a result of increased gardening in formerly urban spaces. A similar though less marked decline in population occurred later in Constantinople. In Europe there was also a decline in urban populations. As a whole, the period of antiquity was accompanied by an overall population decline in almost all Europe. Long-distance markets disappeared, and there was a reversion to a degree of local production and consumption, rather than webs of commerce. The degree and extent of discontinuity in the cities of the Greek East is a moot subject among historians. In the western Mediterranean, the new cities known to be founded in Europe between the 5th and 8th centuries were the four or five Visigothic victory cities
7.
Early Middle Ages
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The Early Middle Ages marked the start of the Middle Ages of European history, lasting from the 6th to the 10th century CE. The Early Middle Ages followed the decline of the Western Roman Empire, the Early Middle Ages largely overlap with Late Antiquity. The term Late Antiquity is used to emphasize elements of continuity with the Roman Empire, the period saw a continuation of trends begun during late classical antiquity, including population decline, especially in urban centres, a decline of trade, and increased immigration. The period has been labelled the Dark Ages, a characterization highlighting the relative scarcity of literary and cultural output from this time, especially in Northwestern Europe. However, the Eastern Roman Empire, or Byzantine Empire, continued to survive, many of these trends were reversed later in the period. In 800 the title of emperor was revived in Western Europe by Charlemagne, whose Carolingian Empire greatly affected later European social structure, Europe experienced a return to systematic agriculture in the form of the feudal system, which introduced such innovations as three-field planting and the heavy plow. Barbarian migration stabilized in much of Europe, although Northern Europe was greatly affected by the Viking expansion, starting in the 2nd century, various indicators of Roman civilization began to decline, including urbanization, seaborne commerce, and population. Archaeologists have identified only 40 percent as many Mediterranean shipwrecks from the 3rd century as from the first, estimates of the population of the Roman Empire during the period from 150 to 400 suggest a fall from 65 million to 50 million, a decline of more than 20 percent. Some scholars have connected this de-population to the Dark Ages Cold Period, Early in the 3rd century Germanic peoples migrated south from Scandinavia and reached the Black Sea, creating formidable confederations which opposed the local Sarmatians. In Dacia and on the north of the Black Sea the Goths. The arrival of the Huns in 372–375 ended the history of these kingdoms, the Huns, a confederation of central Asian tribes, founded an empire with a Turkic-speaking aristocracy. They had mastered the art of shooting composite recurve bows from horseback. The Goths sought refuge in Roman territory, agreeing to enter the Empire as unarmed settlers, however many bribed the Danube border-guards into allowing them to bring their weapons. The discipline and organization of a Roman legion made it a fighting unit. The Romans preferred infantry to cavalry because infantry could be trained to retain the formation in combat, while cavalry tended to scatter when faced with opposition. While a barbarian army could be raised and inspired by the promise of plunder, the legions required a government and taxation to pay for salaries, constant training, equipment. The decline in agricultural and economic activity reduced the empires taxable income, in the Gothic War, the Goths revolted and confronted the main Roman army in the Battle of Adrianople. The general decline in discipline also led to the use of smaller shields, not wanting to share the glory, Eastern Emperor Valens ordered an attack on the Therving infantry under Fritigern without waiting for Western Emperor Gratian, who was on the way with reinforcements
8.
Kingdom of Kush
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The Kingdom of Kush or Kush was an ancient Nubian kingdom situated on the confluences of the Blue Nile, White Nile and River Atbara in what is now Sudan and South Sudan. The Kushite era of rule in Nubia was established after the Bronze Age collapse and the disintegration of the New Kingdom of Egypt, during Classical antiquity, the Kushite imperial capital was at Meroe. In early Greek geography, the Meroitic kingdom was known as Aethiopia, by the 1st century AD, the Kushite capital had been captured by the Beja Dynasty, who tried to revive the empire. The Kushite kingdom with its capital at Meroe persisted until the 4th century AD, the Kushite capital was eventually captured and burnt to the ground by the Kingdom of Axum. It is also a term for the native population who initiated the kingdom of Kush. The term is also displayed in the names of Kushite persons, geographically, Kush referred to the region south of the first cataract in general. Kush also was the home of the rulers of the 25th dynasty, the name Kush, since at least the time of Josephus, has been connected with the biblical character Cush, in the Hebrew Bible, son of Ham. Ham had four sons named, Cush, Put, Canaan, according to the Bible, Nimrod, a son of Cush, was the founder and king of Babylon, Erech, Akkad and Calneh, in Shinar. The Bible also makes reference to someone named Cush who is a Benjamite, some modern scholars, such as Friedrich Delitzsch, have suggested that the biblical Cush might be linked to the Kassites of the Zagros Mountains. Mentuhotep II is recorded to have undertaken campaigns against Kush in the 29th and this is the earliest Egyptian reference to Kush, the Nubian region had gone by other names in the Old Kingdom. During the New Kingdom of Egypt, Nubia was an Egyptian colony, with the disintegration of the New Kingdom around 1070 BC, Kush became an independent kingdom centered at Napata in modern northern Sudan. The Kushites buried their monarchs along with all their courtiers in mass graves, archaeologists refer to these practices as the Pan-grave culture. This was given its due to the way in which the remains are buried. They would dig a pit and put stones around them in a circle, Kushites also built burial mounds and pyramids, and shared some of the same gods worshiped in Egypt, especially Ammon and Isis. With the worshiping of these gods the Kushites began to some of the names of the gods as their throne names. The Kush rulers were regarded as guardians of the religion and were responsible for maintaining the houses of the gods. Some scholars believe the economy in the Kingdom of Kush was a redistributive system, the state would collect taxes in the form of surplus produce and would redistribute to the people. Others believe that most of the society worked on the land and required nothing from the state, northern Kush seemed to be more productive and wealthier than the Southern area
9.
Makuria
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The Kingdom of Makuria was a kingdom located in what is today Northern Sudan and Southern Egypt. Makuria originally covered the area along the Nile River from the Third Cataract to somewhere between the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts and it also had control over the trade routes, mines, and oases to the east and west. Its capital was Dongola, and the kingdom is known by the name of its capital. By the end of the 6th century it had converted to Christianity, but in the 7th century Egypt was conquered by the Islamic armies, and Nubia was cut off from the rest of Christendom. In 651 an Arab army invaded, but it was repulsed, Makuria expanded, annexing its northern neighbour Nobatia either at the time of the Arab conquest or during the reign of King Merkurios. The period from roughly 750 to 1150 saw the stable and prosperous. Increased aggression from Egypt, and internal discord led to the collapse in the 14th century. Makuria is much better known than its neighbor Alodia to the south, the most important source for the history of the area is various Arab travelers and historians who passed through Nubia during this period. These accounts are often problematic as many of the Arab writers were biased against their Christian neighbours and these works generally focus on only the military conflicts between Egypt and Nubia. One exception is Ibn Selim el-Aswani, an Egyptian diplomat who traveled to Dongola when Makuria was at the height of its power in the 10th century, the Nubians were a literate society, and a fair body of writing survives from the period. These documents were written in the Old Nubian language in a variety of the Greek alphabet extended with some Coptic symbols. Written in a language that is related to the modern Nobiin tongue. However, the vast majority of them are dealing with religion or legal records that are of little use to historians. The largest known collection, found at Qasr Ibrim, does contain some valuable governmental records, the construction of the Aswan High Dam in 1964 promised to flood what had once been the northern half of Makuria. In 1960, UNESCO launched an effort to do as much archaeological work as possible before the flooding occurred. Thousands of experts were brought from around the world over the few years. All of these sites are in what was Nobatia, the major archaeological site in Makuria itself is the partial exploration of the capital at Old Dongola. The origins of Makuria are uncertain, ptolemy mentions a Nubian people known as the Makkourae, who might be ancestors to the Makurians
10.
Sudan
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Sudan, also known as North Sudan since South Sudans independence and officially the Republic of the Sudan, is a country in Northern Africa. It is the third largest country in Africa, the River Nile divides the country into eastern and western halves. Before the Sudanese Civil War, South Sudan was part of Sudan, Sudan was home to numerous ancient civilizations, such as the Kingdom of Kush, Kerma, Nobatia, Alodia, Makuria, Meroë and others, most of which flourished along the Nile. During the pre-dynastic period Nubia and Nagadan Upper Egypt were identical, by virtue of its proximity to Egypt, the Sudan participated in the wider history of the Near East inasmuch as it was Christianized by the 6th century, and Islamized in the 15th. As a result of Christianization, the Old Nubian language stands as the oldest recorded Nilo-Saharan language, Sudan was the largest country in Africa and the Arab world until 2011, when South Sudan separated into an independent country, following an independence referendum. Sudan is now the third largest country in Africa and also the third largest country in the Arab world and its capital is Khartoum, the political, cultural and commercial centre of the nation. It is a representative democratic federal republic. The politics of Sudan are regulated by an organization called the National Assembly. The Sudanese legal system is based on Islamic law, the countrys place name Sudan is a name given to a geographical region to the south of the Sahara, stretching from Western Africa to eastern Central Africa. The name derives from the Arabic bilād as-sūdān, or the lands of the Blacks, during the fifth millennium BC migrations from the drying Sahara brought neolithic people into the Nile Valley along with agriculture. The population that resulted from this cultural and genetic mixing developed social hierarchy over the centuries become the Kingdom of Kush at 1700 BC. The Kingdom of Kush was an ancient Nubian state centered on the confluences of the Blue Nile and White Nile, and the Atbarah River and it was established after the Bronze Age collapse and the disintegration of the New Kingdom of Egypt, centered at Napata in its early phase. After King Kashta invaded Egypt in the eighth century BC, the Kushite kings ruled as pharaohs of the Twenty-fifth Dynasty of Egypt for a century before being defeated and driven out by the Assyrians. At the height of their glory, the Kushites conquered an empire that stretched from what is now known as South Kordofan all the way to the Sinai, pharaoh Piye attempted to expand the empire into the Near East, but was thwarted by the Assyrian king Sargon II. Sennacheribs successor Esarhaddon went further, and invaded Egypt itself, deposing Taharqa, Taharqa fled back to his homeland where he died two years later. Egypt became an Assyrian colony, however, king Tantamani, after succeeding Taharqa, Esarhaddon died while preparing to leave the Assyrian capital of Nineveh in order to eject him. However, his successor Ashurbanipal sent an army into southern Egypt and routed Tantamani. During Classical Antiquity, the Nubian capital was at Meroë, in ancient Greek geography, the Meroitic kingdom was known as Ethiopia
11.
Egypt
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Egypt, officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia by a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. Egypt is a Mediterranean country bordered by the Gaza Strip and Israel to the northeast, the Gulf of Aqaba to the east, the Red Sea to the east and south, Sudan to the south, and Libya to the west. Across the Gulf of Aqaba lies Jordan, and across from the Sinai Peninsula lies Saudi Arabia, although Jordan and it is the worlds only contiguous Afrasian nation. Egypt has among the longest histories of any country, emerging as one of the worlds first nation states in the tenth millennium BC. Considered a cradle of civilisation, Ancient Egypt experienced some of the earliest developments of writing, agriculture, urbanisation, organised religion and central government. One of the earliest centres of Christianity, Egypt was Islamised in the century and remains a predominantly Muslim country. With over 92 million inhabitants, Egypt is the most populous country in North Africa and the Arab world, the third-most populous in Africa, and the fifteenth-most populous in the world. The great majority of its people live near the banks of the Nile River, an area of about 40,000 square kilometres, the large regions of the Sahara desert, which constitute most of Egypts territory, are sparsely inhabited. About half of Egypts residents live in areas, with most spread across the densely populated centres of greater Cairo, Alexandria. Modern Egypt is considered to be a regional and middle power, with significant cultural, political, and military influence in North Africa, the Middle East and the Muslim world. Egypts economy is one of the largest and most diversified in the Middle East, Egypt is a member of the United Nations, Non-Aligned Movement, Arab League, African Union, and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation. Miṣr is the Classical Quranic Arabic and modern name of Egypt. The name is of Semitic origin, directly cognate with other Semitic words for Egypt such as the Hebrew מִצְרַיִם, the oldest attestation of this name for Egypt is the Akkadian
12.
Specials (Unicode block)
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Specials is a short Unicode block allocated at the very end of the Basic Multilingual Plane, at U+FFF0–FFFF. Of these 16 codepoints, five are assigned as of Unicode 9, U+FFFD � REPLACEMENT CHARACTER used to replace an unknown, unrecognized or unrepresentable character U+FFFE <noncharacter-FFFE> not a character. FFFE and FFFF are not unassigned in the sense. They can be used to guess a texts encoding scheme, since any text containing these is by not a correctly encoded Unicode text. The replacement character � is a found in the Unicode standard at codepoint U+FFFD in the Specials table. It is used to indicate problems when a system is unable to render a stream of data to a correct symbol and it is usually seen when the data is invalid and does not match any character, Consider a text file containing the German word für in the ISO-8859-1 encoding. This file is now opened with an editor that assumes the input is UTF-8. The first and last byte are valid UTF-8 encodings of ASCII, therefore, a text editor could replace this byte with the replacement character symbol to produce a valid string of Unicode code points. The whole string now displays like this, f�r, a poorly implemented text editor might save the replacement in UTF-8 form, the text file data will then look like this, 0x66 0xEF 0xBF 0xBD 0x72, which will be displayed in ISO-8859-1 as f�r. Since the replacement is the same for all errors this makes it impossible to recover the original character, a better design is to preserve the original bytes, including the error, and only convert to the replacement when displaying the text. This will allow the text editor to save the original byte sequence and it has become increasingly common for software to interpret invalid UTF-8 by guessing the bytes are in another byte-based encoding such as ISO-8859-1. This allows correct display of both valid and invalid UTF-8 pasted together, Unicode control characters UTF-8 Mojibake Unicodes Specials table Decodeunicodes entry for the replacement character
13.
Koine Greek
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It was based mainly on Attic and related Ionic speech forms, with various admixtures brought about through dialect levelling with other varieties. Koine Greek displayed a wide spectrum of different styles, ranging from more conservative literary forms to the vernaculars of the time. As the dominant language of the Byzantine Empire, it developed further into Medieval Greek, Koine Greek remained the court language of the Byzantine Empire until its dissolution in 1453, while Medieval and eventually Modern Greek were the everyday language. Literary Koine was the medium of much of post-classical Greek literary and scholarly writing, such as the works of Plutarch, Koine is also the language of the Christian New Testament, of the Septuagint, and of most early Christian theological writing by the Church Fathers. In this context, Koine Greek is also known as Biblical, New Testament and it continues to be used as the liturgical language of services in the Greek Orthodox Church. The word koinē is the Greek word for common, and is understood as referring to the common dialect. The word is pronounced /kɔɪˈneɪ/, /ˈkɔɪneɪ/ or /kiːˈniː/ in US English, the pronunciation of the word in Koine gradually changed from Greek pronunciation, to Greek pronunciation. Its pronunciation in Modern Greek is, the term was applied in several different senses by ancient scholars. Others chose to refer to Koine as the Alexandrian dialect or the dialect of Alexandria, the former was often used by modern classicists. Koine Greek arose as a dialect within the armies of Alexander the Great. Under the leadership of Macedon, their newly formed common variety was spoken from the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt to the Seleucid Empire of Mesopotamia and it replaced existing ancient Greek dialects with an everyday form that people anywhere could understand. The passage into the period, known as Medieval Greek. The post-Classical period of Greek thus refers to the creation and evolution of Koine Greek throughout the entire Hellenistic, the linguistic roots of the Common Greek dialect had been unclear since ancient times. During the Hellenistic period, most scholars thought of Koine as the result of the mixture of the four main Ancient Greek dialects, ἡ ἐκ τῶν τεττάρων συνεστῶσα. The view accepted by most scholars today was given by the Greek linguist Georgios Hatzidakis, who showed that, despite the composition of the Four, the stable nucleus of Koine Greek is Attic. In other words, Koine Greek can be regarded as Attic with the admixture of elements especially from Ionic, the degree of importance of the non-Attic linguistic elements on Koine can vary depending on the region of the Hellenistic World. The literary Koine of the Hellenistic age resembles Attic in such a degree that it is mentioned as Common Attic. Koine Greek was therefore considered a form of Greek which was not worthy of attention
14.
Nubians
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Nubians are an ethnic group that originated in present-day Sudan and Egypt. Today, people of Nubian descent primarily live in Sudan, a significant number of Nubians, estimated at 100,000, live in Kenya. The main Nubian groups from north to south are the Halfaweyen, Sikut, Mahas and they speak a variety of Nilo-Saharan languages in the Nubian language family. Nubian people have a history dating back to dynastic Egypt. Nubians founded a dynasty that ruled upper and lower Egypt during the 8th century BCE, Ancient Nubians were famous for their skill and precision with the bow. The Nubian people historically inhabited the south of Egypt, known today as Sudan. They were noted for their horsemanship, riding their horses bareback and they were light, mobile and efficient this way, and became valued for cavalry duties in later years. They speak Nubian language, an Eastern Sudanic language that is part of the Nilo-Saharan phylum, the Old Nubian language is attested from the 8th century, and is the oldest recorded language of Africa outside of the Afro-Asiatic group. Nobadia was converted to Miaphysitism by the Orthodox priest Julian and Bishop Longinus of Constantinople, the name Nubia or Nubian has a contested origin. It may originate with an ancient Egyptian noun, nebu, meaning gold, another etymology claims that it originates with the name of a distinct group of people, the Noubai, living in the area that would become known as Nubia. Scholars may also refer to Nubians as Kushites, a reference to the Kush and it may originate with the Greek historian Strabo, who referred to the Nubas people. The earliest history of ancient Nubia comes from the Paleolithic Era of 300,000 years ago, by around 6000 BCE, the Nubians had developed an agricultural economy and had contact with Egypt. The Nubians began using a system of writing relatively late in their history, the Nile river and its valley lay in the north and central parts of Nubia, allowing farming using irrigation. The western Sudan had a mixture of peasant agriculture and nomadism, Eastern Sudan had primarily nomadism, with a few areas of irrigation and agriculture. Finally, there was the fertile region of the south. Nubia was dominated by kings from clans that controlled the gold mines, trade in exotic goods from other parts of Africa—ivory, animal skins—passed to Egypt through Nubia. The descendants of the ancient Nubians still inhabit the area of what was ancient Nubia. Today, they live in what is called the former Old Nubia, Nubians have been resettled in large numbers away from southern Egypt since the 1960s, when the Aswan High Dam was built on the Nile, flooding ancestral lands
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Alodia
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Alodia, also referred to as Alwa or Aloa, was a Medieval Nubian kingdom in what is now Sudan. Its capital was Soba, located near the confluence of the Blue, compared to its two Nubian cousins in the north, Nobatia and Makuria, Alodia is still rather badly understood. This is mostly due to the scarcity of sources as well as the limited amount of fieldwork undertaken in its territory. Long before the kingdom of Alodia becomes tangible several similar-sounding variations of its name appear in various sources, the earliest reference to Alodia might be a Kushitic stela from the reign of Nastasen, which mentions a region called Alut. It is however not yet possible to connect named Alut with any region or town. A reference made by Pliny the Elder is more interesting, He not only includes Alwa on his list of towns in Meroitic Kush, sadly, Pliny does not give us any concrete details about its location. Therefore, we can guess that his Alwa is related to the later kingdom. The last ancient source which should be noted is the most important one and we are dealing with a Geez inscription of the Aksumite king Ezana, who lived in the mid 4th century AD. This inscription mentions a city named Alwa. It is however assumed that this Alwa has to be located near the confluence of the Nile, not all towns were in the hands of Kushites though. Instead, the account makes it clear that in fact, the heartland of the Kingdom of Kush was partially occupied by the Nubians. Be it as it may, it doesnt seem as if Aksums presence in the Middle Nile Valley was overly long-lasting and this era of transformation is known as the Post-Meroitic period. While the formation of Nobatia and Makuria are both fairly well studied and understood, same cant be said for Alodia, what seems clear is that several aspects of Meroitic culture were largely dismissed during that period, like pyramids and mastabas, wheel-made pottery and faiences. When Alodia came into existence is unknown, just as much as when, archaeology suggests that Soba was already settled during the Meroitic period, but it was not until the later post-Meroitic period, perhaps during the 6th century that it became a major urban center. This dating coincides with the first mention of Alodia and its conversion to Christianity, as the southernmost of the three Nubian kingdoms, Alodia was the last to be converted to Christianity. If we can believe John, the Alodian king was aware of the baptisms of Nobadia in 543. He describes how the Alodian king sent a delegation to the king of Nobadia, requesting a bishop to be sent to him to instruct his people, the request was granted in 580, leading to the baptism of the king, his family and the local nobility. This event marked the end of the period and the dawn of the Medieval or Christian period of central Sudan
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Blemmyes
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The Blemmyes were a nomadic Beja tribal kingdom that existed from at least 600 BC to the 3rd century AD in Nubia. They also became fictionalized as a race of acephalous monsters who had eyes. The Greek geographer Strabo describes the Blemmyes as a people living in the Eastern Desert near Meroe. In 250, the Roman Emperor Decius put in effort to defeat an invading army of Blemmyes. A few years later, in 253, they attacked Lower Aegyptus again but were quickly defeated. In 265, they were defeated again by the Roman Prefect Firmus, who later in 273 would rebel against the Empire, the Roman general Marcus Aurelius Probus took some time to defeat the usurpers with his allies but couldnt prevent the occupation of Thebais by the Blemmyes. That meant another war and almost an entire destruction of the Blemmyes army, during the reign of Diocletian, the province of Upper Aegyptus, Thebaid, was again occupied by the Blemmyes. In 298, Diocletian made peace with the Nobatae and Blemmyes tribes, agreeing that Rome would move its borders north to Philae, the Blemmyes occupied a considerable region in what is modern day Sudan. There were several important cities such as Faras, Kalabsha, Ballana, all were fortified with walls and towers of a mixture of Egyptian, Hellenic, Roman and Nubian elements. Blemmyes culture had also the influence of the Meroitic culture and their religion was centered in the temples of Kalabsha and Philae. The former edifice was a local architectural masterpiece, where a solar. Philae was a place of pilgrimage, with temples for Isis, Mandulis. It was where the Roman Emperors Augustus and Trajan made many contributions with new temples, plazas, shakespeare alludes to the myths surrounding Blemmyes as headless beings, And of the Cannibals that each other eat, The Anthropophagi, and men whose headsDo grow beneath their shoulders. -Shakespeare, Othello Who would believe that there were mountaineers Dew-lappd like bulls, or that there were such men Whose heads stood in their breasts. -Shakespeare, The Tempest Blemmyes appeared in the 2000 novel The Amazing Voyage of Azzam by Kelly Godel and they use clubs, spears, and blow darts as weapons. The Blemmyae also appear in Valerio Manfredis novel The Tower, where they are portrayed as the murderous desert guardians of an ancient, a Blemmye appears in Bruce Sterlings 2005 short story The Blemmyes Strategem. The Blemmyae appear in The Monstrumologist a young adult novel by Rick Yancey. The Blemmyae also appear in Umberto Ecos novel Baudolino as residents of Prester Johns Kingdom, cyclopædia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences
17.
Cataracts of the Nile
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In some places, these stretches are punctuated by whitewater, while at others the water flow is smoother, but still shallow. Counted going upstream, In Egypt, The First Cataract cuts through Aswan and its former location was selected for the construction of Aswan Low Dam, the first dam built across the Nile. However, none of the Niles six primary cataracts could be described as waterfalls, and given a broader definition. Geologists indicate that the region of the northern Sudan is tectonically active, the Nubian Swell has diverted the rivers course to the west, while keeping its depth shallow and causing the formation of the cataracts. Even as the bed is worn down by erosion, the land mass is lifted. The geological distinction between two portions of the river is considerable. This created a vast canyon that is now filled by the sediment, for more information, see the Eonile as well as the Messinian salinity crisis. Despite these characteristics, some of the cataracts which are impassable by boat because of the shallow water have become navigable during the flood season. Eratosthenes gave a description of the Cataract-Nile, “It has a similar shape to a backwards letter N. Then it makes another turn, and flows northward 5300 stadia to the cataract, curving slightly to the east, then 1200 stadia to the smaller cataract at Syene. Cataract photos links, First Cataract Second Cataract & Second Cataract Third Cataract & Third Cataract & Third Cataract Fifth Cataract
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Libyan Desert
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The Libyan Desert forms the northern and eastern part of the Sahara Desert. The Libyan Desert is one of the driest, harshest and most remote parts of the greater Sahara and this extended desert country is barren, bone dry and rainless. Modern Libya is divided into the regions of Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, the country covers an area of 1,760,000 square kilometres. Most of which is desert save for a coastal strip to the north on the shore of the Mediterranean. Like most of the Sahara, this desert is primarily sand, Sand plains, dunes, ridges, and some depressions typify the endorheic region, with no rivers draining into or out of the desert. The desert features a diversity of landscapes including mountains, oases. To the south lie the main ranges, from the Jebel Uweinat, on the Libya-Egypt-Sudan border, the Tibesti to the south, on the border with Chad. The main oases are Jaghbub and Jalo in east, in Cyrenaica, Kufra in the southeast, the sand seas lie in a ring around the border of Libya. To the south-east lies the Rebiana Sand Sea, near the border with Sudan, to the south west is the Idehan Murzuq, bordering Chad, and to west lies the Idehan Ubari, bordering Algeria. The sand seas contain dunes up to 512 meters in height, to the southeast, between Kufra and the Libya-Egypt-Sudan border, lies the Jebel Arkenu, with the associated Arkenu structures, thought to be caused by meteorite strikes. North of the Gilf Kebir plateau, among the shallow peripheral dunes of the southern Great Sand Sea, is a field of Libyan desert glass and this is thought to be associated with a meteorite impact, marked by the Kebira crater, on the Libya-Egypt border. A specimen of the glass was used in a piece of Tutankhamuns ancient jewellery. The Libyan Desert is barely populated apart from the settlements at oases of the lower Cyrenaica region in southeastern Libya. The indigenous population are Bisharin tribe, Mahas, and Berber, where the desert extends into Egypt and no longer in Libya, it is generally known as the Western Desert. The term Western Desert contrasts with the Eastern Desert to the east of the Nile River, the Libyan desert is said to be one of the least hospitable regions on Earth. Its climate is variable, being hot in summer, with average daytime temperatures of 50 °C and above. In winter days are cool, with temperastures averaging 27 °C, at these times the formation of hoar frost is not uncommon, and are known as White Nights. Contrariwise, at Aziziya a daytime temperature of 58 °C was seen in 1922, in the north, along the Mediterranean shore, cool onshore winds blow inland, while further south, hot, dry winds, known as Ghibli, blow from the interior, creating blinding sand-storms
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Diocletian
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Diocletian, born Diocles, was a Roman emperor from 284 to 305. Born to a family of low status in the Roman province of Dalmatia, after the deaths of Carus and his son Numerian on campaign in Persia, Diocletian was proclaimed emperor. The title was claimed by Carus other surviving son, Carinus. Diocletians reign stabilized the empire and marks the end of the Crisis of the Third Century and he appointed fellow officer Maximian as Augustus, co-emperor, in 286. Diocletian delegated further on 1 March 293, appointing Galerius and Constantius as Caesars, under this tetrarchy, or rule of four, each emperor would rule over a quarter-division of the empire. Diocletian secured the borders and purged it of all threats to his power. He defeated the Sarmatians and Carpi during several campaigns between 285 and 299, the Alamanni in 288, and usurpers in Egypt between 297 and 298, Galerius, aided by Diocletian, campaigned successfully against Sassanid Persia, the empires traditional enemy. In 299 he sacked their capital, Ctesiphon, Diocletian led the subsequent negotiations and achieved a lasting and favorable peace. He established new centres in Nicomedia, Mediolanum, Antioch. Building on third-century trends towards absolutism, he styled himself an autocrat, elevating himself above the masses with imposing forms of court ceremonies. Bureaucratic and military growth, constant campaigning, and construction increased the states expenditures. From at least 297 on, imperial taxation was standardized, made more equitable, not all of Diocletians plans were successful, the Edict on Maximum Prices, his attempt to curb inflation via price controls, was counterproductive and quickly ignored. Weakened by illness, Diocletian left the office on 1 May 305. He lived out his retirement in his palace on the Dalmatian coast and his palace eventually became the core of the modern-day city of Split in Croatia. Diocletian was born near Salona in Dalmatia, some time around 244 and his parents gave him the Greek name Diocles, or possibly Diocles Valerius. The modern historian Timothy Barnes takes his official birthday,22 December, other historians are not so certain. Diocles parents were of low status, and writers critical of him claimed that his father was a scribe or a freedman of the senator Anullinus, the first forty years of his life are mostly obscure. The Byzantine chronicler Joannes Zonaras states that he was Dux Moesiae, the often-unreliable Historia Augusta states that he served in Gaul, but this account is not corroborated by other sources and is ignored by modern historians of the period
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Eastern Desert
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The Eastern Desert is the section of Sahara Desert east of the Nile River, between the river and the Red Sea. It extends from Egypt in the north to Eritrea in the south, other notable ecological areas are Wadi Gamal National Park and Gebel Elba. The Eastern Desert is a setting for safaris and other excursions. Libyan/Western Desert Geography of Egypt Anthony the Great National Parks of Egypt
21.
Oriental Orthodoxy
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Oriental Orthodoxy has approximately 84 million adherents worldwide. Oriental Orthodox Churches uphold their own ancient ecclesiastic traditions of apostolic succession and these Churches rejected the definition of the two natures of Christ, known as the Chalcedonian Definition, which was issued by the Council of Chalcedon in 451. The Eastern Orthodox maintain numerous theological and ecclesiological similarities with the Oriental Orthodox, the Oriental Orthodox Churches are in full communion with each other, but not with the Eastern Orthodox Church, despite the similar name. The schism between Oriental Orthodoxy and the Great Church was based on differences in Christology, the First Council of Nicaea, in 325, declared that Jesus Christ is God, that is to say, consubstantial with the Father. Later, the ecumenical council, the Council of Ephesus, declared that Jesus Christ, though divine as well as human, is only one being. Thus, the Council of Ephesus explicitly rejected Nestorianism, the Christological doctrine that Christ was two distinct beings, one divine and one human, who happened to inhabit the same body. The Churches that later became Oriental Orthodoxy were firmly anti-Nestorian, and those who opposed Chalcedon saw this as a concession to Nestorianism, or even as a conspiracy to convert the Church to Nestorianism by stealth. As a result, over the decades, they gradually separated from communion with the Great Church. Monophysitism was condemned as heretical alongside Nestorianism, and to accuse a church of being Monophysite is to accuse it of falling into the opposite extreme from Nestorianism, however, the Oriental Orthodox themselves reject this description as inaccurate, having officially condemned the teachings of both Nestorius and Eutyches. They define themselves as Miaphysite instead, holding that Christ has one nature, the schism between the Oriental Orthodox and the rest of Christendom occurred in the 5th century. They would accept only of or from two natures but not in two natures and it is not entirely clear that Nestorius himself was a Nestorian. The Oriental Orthodox churches were often called Monophysite, although they reject this label, as it is associated with Eutychian Monophysitism. It was not until 518 that the new Byzantine Emperor, Justin I, Justin ordered the replacement of all non-Chalcedonian bishops, including the patriarchs of Antioch and Alexandria. The extent of the influence of the Bishop of Rome in this demand has been a matter of debate, Justinian I also attempted to bring those monks who still rejected the decision of the Council of Chalcedon into communion with the greater church. The exact time of event is unknown, but it is believed to have been between 535 and 548. St Abraham of Farshut was summoned to Constantinople and he chose to bring with him four monks, upon arrival, Justinian summoned them and informed them that they would either accept the decision of the Council or lose their positions. Abraham refused to entertain the idea, theodora tried to persuade Justinian to change his mind, seemingly to no avail. Abraham himself stated in a letter to his monks that he preferred to remain in exile rather than subscribe to a faith which he believed to be contrary to that of Athanasius of Alexandria
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Muslim
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A Muslim is someone who follows or practices Islam, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion. Muslims consider the Quran, their book, to be the verbatim word of God as revealed to the Islamic prophet. They also follow the teachings and practices of Muhammad as recorded in traditional accounts, Muslim is an Arabic word meaning one who submits. Most Muslims will accept anyone who has publicly pronounced Shahadah as a Muslim, the shahadah states, There is no god but the God and Muhammad is the last messenger of the God. The testimony authorized by God in the Quran that can found in Surah 3,18 states, There is no god except God, which in Arabic, is the exact testimony which God Himself utters, as well as the angels and those who possess knowledge utter. The word muslim is the active participle of the verb of which islām is a verbal noun, based on the triliteral S-L-M to be whole. A female adherent is a muslima, the plural form in Arabic is muslimūn or muslimīn, and its feminine equivalent is muslimāt. The Arabic form muslimun is the stem IV participle of the triliteral S-L-M, the ordinary word in English is Muslim. It is sometimes transliterated as Moslem, which is an older spelling, the word Mosalman is a common equivalent for Muslim used in Central Asia. Until at least the mid-1960s, many English-language writers used the term Mohammedans or Mahometans, although such terms were not necessarily intended to be pejorative, Muslims argue that the terms are offensive because they allegedly imply that Muslims worship Muhammad rather than God. Other obsolete terms include Muslimite and Muslimist, musulmán/Mosalmán is a synonym for Muslim and is modified from Arabic. In English it was sometimes spelled Mussulman and has become archaic in usage, the Muslim philosopher Ibn Arabi said, A Muslim is a person who has dedicated his worship exclusively to God. Islam means making ones religion and faith Gods alone. The Quran states that men were Muslims because they submitted to God, preached His message and upheld His values. Thus, in Surah 3,52 of the Quran, Jesus disciples tell him, We believe in God, and you be our witness that we are Muslims. In Muslim belief, before the Quran, God had given the Tawrat to Moses, the Zabur to David and the Injil to Jesus, who are all considered important Muslim prophets. The most populous Muslim-majority country is Indonesia, home to 12. 7% of the worlds Muslims, followed by Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Egypt. About 20% of the worlds Muslims lives in the Middle East and North Africa, Sizable minorities are found in India, China, Russia, Ethiopia. The country with the highest proportion of self-described Muslims as a proportion of its population is Morocco
23.
Old Dongola
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Old Dongola is a deserted town in Sudan located on the east bank of the Nile opposite the Wadi Howar. An important city in medieval Nubia, and the point for caravans west to Darfur and Kordofan. The urban center of the population moved downstream 50 miles to the side of the Nile during the nineteenth century. A Polish archaeological team has been excavating the town since 1964, Old Dongola was founded in the fifth century as a fortress, but a town soon evolved around it. Later with the arrival of Christianity it became the capital of Makuria and these include, to use the names contemporary archeologists have given them, Building X and the Church with the Stone Pavement. These two structures were erected about 100 meters apart from the town centre, indicating that at this time the town already extended over the original walls of the fortress. Building X was soon replaced by the Old Church, in the middle of the seventh century, the two main churches were destroyed, but rebuilt soon after. Building material was taken from the Old Church and used to repair the city walls, archeologists believe this destruction is evidence of the First and Second Battles of Dongola. At the end of the seventh Century, the Church of the Granite Columns was erected over the Old Church, adorned with 16 granite columns, each with richly decorated granite capitals, the Church of the Granite Columns perhaps was the cathedral of Old Dongola. The heyday of old Dongola was in the century, Old Dongola. The Church of the Stone Pavements was replaced with the Cruciform Church at this time, other buildings in use in Old Dongola at this time include many other churches, at least two palaces, and a sizable monastery on its north side. Several houses were equipped and had bath rooms and wall paintings. However, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the town was in decline and it was attacked by Arabs several times, and the throne room of the palace was converted to a mosque. Under the Funj, Old Dongola became the capital of the Northern provinces, the traveller C. J. Poncet visited the city in 1699, and in his memoirs he described it as located on the slope of a sandy hill. His description of Old Dongola continues, The houses are ill built, the castle is in the very center of the town. It is large and spacious, but the fortifications are inconsiderable and it keeps in awe the Arabians, who are masters of the open country
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Qasr Ibrim
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Qasr Ibrim is an archaeological site in Lower Nubia, located in the modern country of Egypt. The name is derived from the village of Ibrim, on the east bank of the Nile. The site has a history of occupation, ranging from as early as the eighth century BC to 1813 AD, and was an economic, political. Originally it was a major city perched on a cliff above the Nile, Qasr Ibrim is the only major archaeological site in Lower Nubia to have survived the Nile floods. Both prior to and after the Nile floods, it has remained a site for archaeological investigations. Human habitation at the dates from the Late Period of ancient Egypt, but it reached its greatest prominence in the Middle Ages. Qasr Ibrim is the source of the largest collection of Old Nubian documents ever found, the site was occupied until 1811. Today the island is closed to all but archaeologists, egypts influence in Nubia began around 2,000 BC, when they invaded and claimed sovereignty over the area. Many Egyptian artifacts and evidence of Egyptian architecture have found at Qasr Ibrim. The earliest inscription at the site is a stela, a stone or wooden slab, the stela was found in a now-ruined Christian Byzantine cathedral at Qasr Ibrim where it had been reused in one of the churchs crypts. The stela is now located in the British Museum, the site was partly built under the prefecture of Gaius Petronius during Augustus reign. Qasr Ibrim played a key role in Romes defense of the Aswan region, the fortress, constructed by Roman military engineers, was the strongest in the Nile Valley at this time. During Roman times the town was one of the last bastions of paganism and it then became one of the main Christian centers in Lower Nubia. Christianity first came to Qasr Ibrim in the 6th century, but had little effect and it wasnt until the city became part of the kingdom of Makuria, in the early 8th century, that Qasr Ibrim became a center for Christianity. This continued even through the century when the Makurian kingdom became Islamic. The city held out against Islam until the 16th century, when a unit of Bosnian soldiers, part of the Ottoman army, the Bosnian soldiers stayed on and eventually married into the local Nubian community, using part of the cathedral as a mosque. Two churches remain on the site, the Taharqa Church was most likely built between 542-580 AD, this would make it one of Nubias earliest churches. Like many of the first churches in Nubia, it would have been constructed within the walls of the already present temples, Qasr Ibrims cathedral was built later, though the date of construction in unclear
25.
Arabic
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Arabic is a Central Semitic language that was first spoken in Iron Age northwestern Arabia and is now the lingua franca of the Arab world. Arabic is also the language of 1.7 billion Muslims. It is one of six languages of the United Nations. The modern written language is derived from the language of the Quran and it is widely taught in schools and universities, and is used to varying degrees in workplaces, government, and the media. The two formal varieties are grouped together as Literary Arabic, which is the language of 26 states. Modern Standard Arabic largely follows the standards of Quranic Arabic. Much of the new vocabulary is used to denote concepts that have arisen in the post-Quranic era, Arabic has influenced many languages around the globe throughout its history. During the Middle Ages, Literary Arabic was a vehicle of culture in Europe, especially in science, mathematics. As a result, many European languages have borrowed many words from it. Many words of Arabic origin are found in ancient languages like Latin. Balkan languages, including Greek, have acquired a significant number of Arabic words through contact with Ottoman Turkish. Arabic has also borrowed words from languages including Greek and Persian in medieval times. Arabic is a Central Semitic language, closely related to the Northwest Semitic languages, the Ancient South Arabian languages, the Semitic languages changed a great deal between Proto-Semitic and the establishment of the Central Semitic languages, particularly in grammar. Innovations of the Central Semitic languages—all maintained in Arabic—include, The conversion of the suffix-conjugated stative formation into a past tense, the conversion of the prefix-conjugated preterite-tense formation into a present tense. The elimination of other prefix-conjugated mood/aspect forms in favor of new moods formed by endings attached to the prefix-conjugation forms, the development of an internal passive. These features are evidence of descent from a hypothetical ancestor. In the southwest, various Central Semitic languages both belonging to and outside of the Ancient South Arabian family were spoken and it is also believed that the ancestors of the Modern South Arabian languages were also spoken in southern Arabia at this time. To the north, in the oases of northern Hijaz, Dadanitic and Taymanitic held some prestige as inscriptional languages, in Najd and parts of western Arabia, a language known to scholars as Thamudic C is attested
26.
Ptolemaic Kingdom
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The Ptolemaic Kingdom was a Hellenistic kingdom based in Egypt. Alexandria became the city and a major center of Greek culture. To gain recognition by the native Egyptian populace, they named themselves the successors to the Pharaohs, the later Ptolemies took on Egyptian traditions by marrying their siblings, had themselves portrayed on public monuments in Egyptian style and dress, and participated in Egyptian religious life. The Ptolemies had to fight native rebellions and were involved in foreign and civil wars led to the decline of the kingdom. Hellenistic culture continued to thrive in Egypt throughout the Roman and Byzantine periods until the Muslim conquest. The era of Ptolemaic reign in Egypt is one of the most well documented periods of the Hellenistic Era. In 332 BC, Alexander the Great, King of Macedon invaded the Achaemenid satrapy of Egypt and he visited Memphis, and traveled to the oracle of Amun at the Oasis of Siwa. The oracle declared him to be the son of Amun, the wealth of Egypt could now be harnessed for Alexanders conquest of the rest of the Persian Empire. Early in 331 BC he was ready to depart, and led his forces away to Phoenicia and he left Cleomenes as the ruling nomarch to control Egypt in his absence. Following Alexanders death in Babylon in 323 BC, a crisis erupted among his generals. Perdiccas appointed Ptolemy, one of Alexanders closest companions, to be satrap of Egypt, Ptolemy ruled Egypt from 323 BC, nominally in the name of the joint kings Philip III and Alexander IV. However, as Alexander the Greats empire disintegrated, Ptolemy soon established himself as ruler in his own right, Ptolemy successfully defended Egypt against an invasion by Perdiccas in 321 BC, and consolidated his position in Egypt and the surrounding areas during the Wars of the Diadochi. In 305 BC, Ptolemy took the title of King, as Ptolemy I Soter, he founded the Ptolemaic dynasty that was to rule Egypt for nearly 300 years. All the male rulers of the dynasty took the name Ptolemy, while princesses and queens preferred the names Cleopatra, Arsinoe and Berenice. Because the Ptolemaic kings adopted the Egyptian custom of marrying their sisters, many of the kings ruled jointly with their spouses and this custom made Ptolemaic politics confusingly incestuous, and the later Ptolemies were increasingly feeble. The only Ptolemaic Queens to officially rule on their own were Berenice III, Cleopatra V did co-rule, but it was with another female, Berenice IV. Cleopatra VII officially co-ruled with Ptolemy XIII Theos Philopator, Ptolemy XIV, and Ptolemy XV, upper Egypt, farthest from the centre of government, was less immediately affected, even though Ptolemy I established the Greek colony of Ptolemais Hermiou to be its capital. But within a century Greek influence had spread through the country, nevertheless, the Greeks always remained a privileged minority in Ptolemaic Egypt
27.
Philae
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Philae is currently an island in the reservoir of the Aswan Low Dam downstream of the Aswan Dam and Lake Nasser, Egypt. Philae was originally located near the expansive First Cataract of the Nile in Upper Egypt and was the site of an Egyptian temple complex and these rapids and the surrounding area have been variously flooded since the initial construction of the Aswan Low Dam in 1902. Philae is mentioned by ancient writers, including Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, Ptolemy, Seneca. It was, as the name indicates, the appellation of two small islands situated in latitude 24° north, just above the First Cataract near Aswan. Groskurd computes the distance between these islands and Aswan at about 100 km, despite being the smaller island, Philae proper was, from the numerous and picturesque ruins formerly there, the more interesting of the two. Prior to the inundation, it was not more than 380 metres long and it is composed of syenite, its sides are steep and on their summits a lofty wall was built encompassing the island. Since Philae was said to be one of the burying-places of Osiris and it was deemed profane for any but priests to dwell there and was accordingly sequestered and denominated the Unapproachable. It was reported too that neither birds flew over it nor fish approached its shores, in the nineteenth century, William John Bankes took the Philae obelisk on which this petition was engraved to England. When its Egyptian hieroglyphs were compared with those of the Rosetta Stone, the islands of Philae were not, however, merely sacerdotal abodes, they were the centres of commerce also between Meroë and Memphis. For the rapids of the cataracts were at most seasons impracticable, Philae also was remarkable for the singular effects of light and shade resulting from its position near the Tropic of Cancer. The most conspicuous feature of islands was their architectural wealth. Monuments of various eras, extending from the Pharaohs to the Caesars, the principal structures, however, lay at the south end of the smaller island. The most ancient was a temple for Isis, built in the reign of Nectanebo I during 380-362 BC, nekhtnebef was his ancient Egyptian royal titulary and he became the founding pharaoh of the Thirtieth and last native dynasty when he deposed and killed Nepherites II. In front of the propyla were two lions in granite, behind which stood a pair of obelisks, each 13 metres high. The propyla were pyramidal in form and colossal in dimensions, one stood between the dromos and pronaos, another between the pronaos and the portico, while a smaller one led into the sekos or adyton. At each corner of the adytum stood a shrine, the cage of a sacred hawk. Of these shrines one is now in the Louvre, the other in the Museum at Florence, the story of Osiris is everywhere represented on the walls of this temple, and two of its inner chambers are particularly rich in symbolic imagery. Upon the two great propyla are Greek inscriptions intersected and partially destroyed by Egyptian figures cut across them
28.
Mysteries of Isis
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The mysteries of Isis were religious initiation rites performed in the cult of the goddess Isis in the Greco-Roman world. They were modeled on other rites, particularly the Eleusinian Mysteries in honor of the Greek goddess Demeter. Despite their mainly Hellenistic origins, the mysteries did allude to beliefs from ancient Egyptian religion, by undergoing the mystery rites, initiates signaled their dedication to Isis, although they were not required to worship her exclusively. The rites were seen as a death and rebirth, and they may have been thought to guarantee that the initiates soul, with the goddesss help. Many texts from the Roman Empire refer to the mysteries of Isis, but the source to describe them is a work of fiction. In it, the initiate undergoes elaborate ritual purification before descending into the innermost part of Isiss temple, some aspects of the mysteries of Isis and of other mystery cults, particularly their connection with the afterlife, resemble important elements of Christianity. In contrast, Apuleiuss account has had effects in modern times. Some of them involved cryptic symbolism, initiates were not supposed to discuss some of the details of what they experienced in the mysteries, and modern understanding of these rites is limited by this secrecy. They centered on Demeters search for her daughter Persephone in Greek mythology, Eleusinian initiates passed into a dark hall, the Telesterion, and were subjected to terrifying sights, followed by a fiery light and a shout from the hierophant who presided over the ceremony. By this light the initiates saw objects that represented Demeters power over fertility, such as a sheaf of wheat, and perhaps other images that referred to the myth of Persephone. In the mysteries of the god Dionysus, which were performed in places across the Greek world, participants celebrated in a frenzy at night. Dionysian celebrations were connected in some way with Orphism, a group of beliefs about the nature of the afterlife. Isis was originally a goddess in ancient Egyptian religion, which did not include Greek-style mysteries, some Egyptian rituals were performed exclusively by priests, out of public view, but ordinary Egyptians were never permitted to join in. The Greeks interpreted these myth-based rituals as mysteries, the historian Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BCE, was the first to do so. He referred to Egyptian rites reenacting the myth of the murder of Osiris as mysteries and he further said that the Greek worship of Dionysus was influenced by the worship of Osiris in Egypt. Various Greek writers who came after Herodotus viewed Egypt and its priests as the source of all mystical wisdom and they claimed that many elements of Greek philosophy and culture came from Egypt, including the mystery cults. The imagery of the found in the mystery cults may thus have been influenced by that in Egyptian afterlife beliefs. Under the influence of Greco-Roman tradition, some of these cults, including that of Isis, the mysteries of Isis could have emerged as far back as the early third century BCE, after the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty had taken control of Egypt
29.
Nike (mythology)
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In ancient Greek religion, Nike was a goddess who personified victory. She was variously described as the daughter of the Titan Pallas and the goddess Styx, and the sister of Kratos, Bia, the word νίκη nikē is of uncertain etymology. R. S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin, Nike and her siblings were close companions of Zeus, the dominant deity of the Greek pantheon. According to classical myth, Styx brought them to Zeus when the god was assembling allies for the Titanomachy against the older deities, Nike assumed the role of the divine charioteer, a role in which she often is portrayed in Classical Greek art. Nike flew around rewarding the victors with glory and fame. Nike is seen with wings in most statues and paintings, with one of the most famous being the Winged Victory of Samothrace, most other winged deities in the Greek pantheon had shed their wings by Classical times. Nike is the goddess of strength, speed, and victory, Nike was a very close acquaintance of Athena, and is thought to have stood in Athenas outstretched hand in the statue of Athena located in the Parthenon. Nike is also one of the most commonly portrayed figures on Greek coins, the sports equipment company Nike, Inc. is named after the Greek goddess Nike. Project Nike, an American anti-aircraft missile system is named after the goddess Nike, a figure of Nike with a vessel was the design of the first FIFA World Cup trophy, known also as the Jules Rimet trophy. Since Giuseppe Cassiolis design for the 1928 Summer Olympics, the face of every Olympic medal bears Nikes figure holding a palm frond in her right hand. The goddess appears on the emblem of the University of Melbourne, spirit of Ecstasy, the hood ornament used by the automobile manufacturer Rolls-Royce was inspired by Nike. The Titanic Engineers Memorial, Southampton depicts Nike blessing the engineers of the RMS Titanic for staying at their post as the ship sank, the Honda motorcycle companys logo is inspired by the goddess Nike. Winged Victory of Samothrace Altar of Victory Nike of Paeonius Ángel de la Independencia Smith, William, A Dictionary of Greek, online version at the Perseus Digital Library. Media related to Nike at Wikimedia Commons The dictionary definition of Nike at Wiktionary Theoi Project, Nike Goddess Nike
30.
Bow shape
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In archery, the shape of the bow is usually taken to be the view from the side. It is the product of the relationship of material stresses. This shape, viewing the limbs, is designed to take account the construction materials, the performance required. There are many different kinds of bow shapes, however, most fall into three main categories, straight, recurve and compound. Straight and recurve are considered traditional bows, if a limb is straight its effective length remains the same as the bow is drawn. That is, the string directly to the nock in the strung position. The materials must withstand these stresses, store the energy, many bows, especially traditional self bows, are made approximately straight in side-view profile. Longbows as used by English Archers in the Middle Ages at such battles as Crecy, a recurve bow has tips that curve away from the archer when the bow is strung. By definition, the difference between recurve and other bows is that the string touches a section of the limb when the bow is strung. Recurve bows made out of materials were used by, among other groups, the Persians, Scythians, Hyksos, Magyars, Huns, Turks, Mongols. If a limb is straight its effective length remains the same as the bow is drawn and that is, the string goes directly to the nock in the strung position. When the limb is recurved, the string touches the limb before it gets to the nock, the effective length of the limb, as the draw commences, is therefore shorter. However, as the bow is drawn, the recurve unwinds, the limb becomes effectively longer, counter to this, stresses are building up in the materials of the limbs. The belly of the bow is in compression, the back is in tension, the materials must withstand these stresses, store the energy, and rapidly give back that energy efficiently. The amount of energy stored is determined by the stresses withstood, many bows, especially traditional self bows, are made approximately straight in side-view profile. They are generally referred to as straight, despite the minor curves of natural wood, when the archer commences the draw, mechanical advantage is at its greatest and the bow limbs are only pre-stressed to the strung position, therefore drawing weight is at a minimum. However, the weight rapidly increases because mechanical advantage reduces and stresses are building up in the limbs. On release, the reverse happens, the arrow is accelerated by maximum force, hence, the arrow must be sturdy enough to withstand such acceleration and, as the string may decelerate, it is possible for the arrow to leave the string prematurely, which is inefficient
31.
Longbow
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A longbow is a type of bow that is tall—roughly equal to the height of the user, allowing the archer a fairly long draw, at least to the jaw. A longbow is not significantly recurved and its limbs are relatively narrow so that they are circular or D-shaped in cross section. Flatbows can be just as long, the difference is that, in cross-section, the historical longbow was a self bow made of wood, but modern longbows may also be made from modern materials or by gluing different timbers together. According to the British Longbow Society, the English longbow is made so that its thickness is at least ⅝ of its width, as in Victorian longbows and this differs from the Medieval longbow, which had a thickness between 33% and 75% of the width. Also, the Victorian longbow does not bend throughout the entire length, longbows have been used for hunting and warfare, by many cultures around the world. The earliest known example of a longbow was found in 1991 in the Ötztal Alps with a natural mummy known as Ötzi and his bow was made from yew and 1.82 metres long, the body has been dated to around 3,300 BC. Forty longbows have been discovered in a bog at Nydam in Denmark which date from the 4th century AD. The dominance of the longbow on the battlefield continued until the French began to use cannon to break the formations of English archers at the Battle of Formigny and the Battle of Castillon. Their use continued in the Wars of the Roses however and survived as a weapon of war in England well beyond the introduction of effective firearms, the average length of arrow shafts recovered from the 1545 sinking of the Mary Rose is 75 cm/30 in. The first book in English about longbow archery was Toxophilus by Roger Ascham, first published in London in 1545, although firearms supplanted bows in warfare, wooden or fibreglass laminated longbows continue to be used by traditional archers and some tribal societies for recreation and hunting. A longbow has practical advantages compared to a recurve or compound bow, it is usually lighter, quicker to prepare for shooting. However, other things being equal, the bow will shoot a faster arrow more accurately than the longbow. The Battle of Flodden was a landmark in the history of archery, the Battle of Tippermuir, in Scotland, may have been the last battle involving the longbow in significant numbers. The last recorded use of the longbow in war was by British Lt. Col. Jack Churchill, because the longbow can be made from a single piece of wood, it can be crafted relatively easily and quickly. One of the simpler longbow designs is known as the self bow, Traditional English longbows are self bows made from yew wood. The bowstave is cut from the radius of the tree so that sapwood becomes the back and forms one third of the total thickness. Yew sapwood is good only in tension, while the heartwood is good in compression, however, compromises must be made when making a yew longbow, as it is difficult to find perfect unblemished yew. The demand for yew bowstaves was such that by the late 16th century mature yew trees were almost extinct in northern Europe, in other desirable woods such as Osage orange and mulberry the sapwood is almost useless and is normally removed entirely
32.
Middle Kingdom of Egypt
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Some scholars also include the Thirteenth Dynasty of Egypt wholly into this period as well, in which case the Middle Kingdom would finish c. 1650, while others only include it until Merneferre Ay c.1700 BC, during the Middle Kingdom period, Osiris became the most important deity in popular religion. The period comprises two phases, the 11th Dynasty, which ruled from Thebes and the 12th Dynasty onwards which was centered on el-Lisht, after the collapse of the Old Kingdom, Egypt entered a period of weak Pharaonic power and decentralization called the First Intermediate Period. Towards the end of period, two rival dynasties, known in Egyptology as the Tenth and Eleventh, fought for power over the entire country. The Theban 11th Dynasty only ruled southern Egypt from the first cataract to the Tenth Nome of Upper Egypt, to the north, Lower Egypt was ruled by the rival 10th Dynasty from Herakleopolis. The struggle was to be concluded by Mentuhotep II, who ascended the Theban throne in 2055 B. C, during Mentuhotep IIs fourteenth regnal year, he took advantage of a revolt in the Thinite Nome to launch an attack on Herakleopolis, which met little resistance. After toppling the last rulers of the 10th Dynasty, Mentuhotep began consolidating his power over all Egypt, for this reason, Mentuhotep II is regarded as the founder of the Middle Kingdom. Mentuhotep II commanded military campaigns south as far as the Second Cataract in Nubia and he also restored Egyptian hegemony over the Sinai region, which had been lost to Egypt since the end of the Old Kingdom. He also sent the first expedition to Punt during the Middle Kingdom, by means of ships constructed at the end of Wadi Hammamat, Mentuhotep III was succeeded by Mentuhotep IV, whose name significantly is omitted from all ancient Egyptian king lists. The Turin Papyrus claims that after Mentuhotep III came seven kingless years, despite this absence, his reign is attested from a few inscriptions in Wadi Hammamat that record expeditions to the Red Sea coast and to quarry stone for the royal monuments. The leader of expedition was his vizier Amenemhat, who is widely assumed to be the future pharaoh Amenemhet I. Mentuhotep IVs absence from the king lists has prompted the theory that Amenemhet I usurped his throne, while there are no contemporary accounts of this struggle, certain circumstantial evidence may point to the existence of a civil war at the end of the 11th dynasty. Inscriptions left by one Nehry, the Haty-a of Hermopolis, suggest that he was attacked at a place called Shedyet-sha by the forces of the reigning king, but his forces prevailed. Khnumhotep I, an official under Amenemhet I, claims to have participated in a flotilla of 20 ships to pacify Upper Egypt, donald Redford has suggested these events should be interpreted as evidence of open war between two dynastic claimants. What is certain is that, however he came to power, from the 12th dynasty onwards, pharaohs often kept well-trained standing armies, which included Nubian contingents. These formed the basis of larger forces which were raised for defence against invasion, however, the Middle Kingdom was basically defensive in its military strategy, with fortifications built at the First Cataract of the Nile, in the Delta and across the Sinai Isthmus. Early in his reign, Amenemhet I was compelled to campaign in the Delta region, in addition, he strengthened defenses between Egypt and Asia, building the Walls of the Ruler in the East Delta region. Perhaps in response to this perpetual unrest, Amenemhat I built a new capital for Egypt in the north, known as Amenemhet Itj Tawy, or Amenemhet, the location of this capital is unknown, but is presumably near the citys necropolis, the present-day el-Lisht
33.
Composite bow
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A composite bow is a traditional bow made from horn, wood, and sinew laminated together, cf. laminated bow. The horn is on the belly, facing the archer, when the bow is drawn, the sinew and horn store more energy than wood for the same length of bow. The strength can be similar to that of all-wood self bows, with similar draw-length. However, making a bow requires more varieties of material than a self bow, its construction takes much more time. Composite bows have been known from archaeology and art since the second millennium BCE and they originated among Asiatic pastoralists who used them as daily necessities, classically for mounted archery although they can also be used on foot. The use of horn in a bow was even remarked on in Homers epic, The Odyssey, the details of manufacture varied between the various cultures that used them. Initially the tips of the limbs were made to bend when the bow was drawn. Later, the tips were stiffened with bone or antler laths, post-classical bows usually have stiff tips, known as siyahs, like other bows, they lost importance with the introduction and increasing accuracy of guns. In some areas composite bows were used and were further developed for leisure purposes. Later Turkish bows are specialized for flight archery, Composite bows are still made and used in Korea and in China, and the tradition has been revived elsewhere. Modern replicas are available, often made with fiberglass bellies and backs with a natural or man-made core, the wooden core gives the bow its shape and dimensional stability. It is often made of pieces, joined with animal glue in V-splices. Pieced construction allows the sharp bends that many designs require, the wood of the bending part of the limb must endure intense shearing stress, and denser woods such as hard maples are normally used in Turkish bows. Bamboo, and wood of the family, are traditional in China. Some composite bows have nonbending tips, which need to be stiff and light, a thin layer of horn is glued onto what will be the belly of the bow, the side facing the archer. Water buffalo horn is very suitable, as is horn of several such as gemsbok, oryx, ibex. Goat and sheep horn can also be used, most forms of cow horn are not suitable, as they soon delaminate with use. The horn can store more energy than wood in compression, the sinew, soaked in animal glue, is then laid in layers on the back of the bow, the strands of sinew are oriented along the length of the bow
34.
Mounted archery
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A horse archer is a cavalryman armed with a bow, able to shoot while riding from horseback. Archery has occasionally been used from the backs of other riding animals, in large open areas, it was a highly successful technique for hunting, for protecting the herds, and for war. By the expansion of peoples, the practice also spread to Eastern Europe, to Mesopotamia. In East Asia, horse archery came to be honoured in the samurai tradition of Japan. The term mounted archer occurs in medieval English sources to describe a type of troop who rode to battle and it is a useful term to distinguish this type of troop from horse archers proper who shot from the saddle. Horse archery developed separately among the peoples of the South American pampas and the North American prairies, since using a bow requires the rider to let go of the reins with both hands, horse archers need superb equestrian skills if they are to shoot on the move. The natives of large grassland areas used mounted archery for hunting, for protecting their herds, horse archery was for many groups a basic survival skill, and additionally made each able-bodied man, at need, a highly-mobile warrior. The buffalo hunts of the North American prairies may be the examples of bowhunting by mounted archers. In battle, light horse archers were typically skirmishers, lightly armed missile troops capable of moving swiftly to close combat or to deliver a rapid blow to the flanks or rear of the foe. Captain Robert G. Carter described the experience of facing Quanah Parkers forces, while advancing, to the right or left, and as rapidly concentrating. In the centre. and their back in the same manner. all was most puzzling to our. Due to the speed of mounted archers, troops under attack from horse archers were unable to respond to the threat if they did not have ranged weapons of their own. Constant harassment would result in casualties, morale drop and disruption of the formation, any attempts to charge the archers would also slow the entire army down. An example of these comes from an attack on Comanche horse archers by a group of Texas Rangers. Fifty Rangers armed with guns met about 20 Comanche hunters who were hunting buffalo, the Comanches fled, easily keeping clear of the Rangers, for several miles across the open prairie. They led the Rangers into a force of two hundred. The Rangers immediately retreated, only to discover they had committed an error in fighting mounted archers. The Rangers found a ravine where they could shoot at the Comanche from cover, the horse archers did not charge, but kept the Rangers under siege until seven of them were dead or dying, whereupon the Rangers retreated but claimed victory
35.
Self bow
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A self bow or simple bow is a bow made from a single piece of wood. Extra material such as horn nocks on the ends, or built-up handles, some modern authorities would also accept a bow spliced together in the handle from two pieces of wood. An effective self bow can be made widely available local material in most inhabited parts of the world, with limited tools whose functions include chopping, shaving. A day of work may be needed, starting with a seasoned stave, self bows must be the height of the archer if they are to allow a long draw, and they are less efficient in the specialized art of flight archery. Well-designed composite bows of high draw-weight give higher arrow velocity, however, for infantry use the self bow is in no way inferior to the composite bow, for example the famed English longbow are self bows. At the weights more usual for amateurs, the greater density of horn. The first bow artifacts, the Stellmoor and Holmegaard artifacts of Northern Europe, are self bows, the Stellmoor bow was made from the heartwood of a Scots pine while the oldest Holmegaard bows were carved from small-diameter elms. In primitive flight archery competitions, bows inspired by the design of the Holmegaard bows perform very well because of their light, in most inhabited areas, common timbers can be made into high-quality self bows. The pieces must be enough, and the grain must be sufficiently straight. In Europe and North America, common woods such as maple, ash, elm, and oak make excellent flat bows, the fibres on the back of a self bow must be, so far as possible, continuous. The density of timber correlates well with its ability to store energy as it is bent, denser timbers can make narrower bows. The same design for less dense timbers results in the bow taking excessive set-string follow, however, equally effective bows may be made from less dense timber by making them wider near the centre. The mass of equivalent bows is closely similar whatever the density of wood, the overall length of bending wood must be about 2.3 times the draw length. Narrow bows can bend in the handle, wider bows must be narrow in the handle if they are to be practical, but the handle must be made thicker so as not to bend, and the complete bow will therefore tend to be longer. Self bows may be of any side-view profile, moderate recurving can often be achieved with heat, crossbow Cable-backed bow Compound bow Laminated bow The Traditional Bowyers Bible Volume 1. ISBN 1-58574-085-3 The Traditional Bowyers Bible Volume 2, ISBN 1-58574-086-1 The Traditional Bowyers Bible Volume 3. ISBN 1-58574-087-X The Traditional Bowyers Bible Volume 4
36.
Bowstring
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A bowstring joins the two ends of the bow stave and launches the arrow. Desirable properties include light weight, strength, resistance to abrasion, mass has most effect at the center of the string,1 gram of extra mass in the middle of the string slows the arrow about as much as 3.5 grams at the ends. Most bowstrings may be described as simple, reverse-twisted, or looped. Simple strings may be made of any fiber, twisted into a single cord, such strings have been used in many parts of the world and are still effective and fairly quick to make. However, they tend to be weaker for their weight, and they are normally secured to the bow by a knot/round turn and two half-hitches at each end. Reverse-twisted strings are traditional in Europe and North America for most natural materials, linen and hemp fiber have been widely used. The form is used for modern materials. A reverse-twisted string is made of bundles, each bundle individually twisted in one direction. The result tends to be stronger for its weight than a simple or looped string, unlike some looped strings, the full thickness of the string passes around the nocks on the ends of the bow, where wear is usually greatest. Additional threads may also be laid in at the points for the bow stave and for the arrow. The string may be secured to the bow by a knot at each end, usually a timber hitch, the traditional Flemish string has a laid-in loop at one end, which is easier than most knots to fit over the nock of the bow when stringing and unstringing. It is more trouble to make, the length, towards one end. The ends of each bundle are then laid into the length of the bundles. The Japanese bowstring is made by reverse-twisting in different directions in the core, looped strings are made of one or more continuous loops of material. Modern strings are made as a single continuous loop, this is then served to give the final form. Disadvantages include the amount of fiber at the ends, where wear is most likely. In many parts of Asia, traditional strings have a loop in the center. This design allows extra fiber to be used at the ends, traditional materials include linen, hemp, other vegetable fibers, sinew, silk, and rawhide
37.
Thumb ring
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A thumb ring is a piece of equipment designed to protect the thumb during archery. This is a ring of leather, stone, horn, wood, bone, antler, ivory, metal, ceramics, plastic, or glass which fits over the end of the thumb, coming to rest at the outer edge of the outer joint. Typically a flat area extends from the ring to protect the pad of the thumb from the bowstring, when drawing a bow using a thumb draw, the thumb is hooked around the bowstring just beneath the arrow and its grip reinforced with the first finger. The bowstring rests against the pad of the archers thumb. The bowstring rests against the flat of the ring when the bow is drawn, today, thumb rings are used by archers practicing styles from most of Asia and some regions of northern Africa. Ishi, the last wild American Indian, used a thumb draw, thumb rings have been in use in Asia since the Neolithic period. The first examples were made of leather, but artifacts made entirely of leather do not last thousands of years. Surviving artifact rings are made of bone, horn, or stone, comparison with historical and modern rings shows little functional change over the millennia. In the cemetery of the small Rui state at Liangdaicun near Hancheng on the Yellow River and his grave goods included two thumb rings, made of gold but of an entirely modern pattern. The author of Arab Archery refers to rings as being made of leather. A thumb tip or thumb ring which is called kustubān by the Persian and khayta‘ah by the Arabs, possibly, most ordinary archers historically used tabs of leather, much cheaper and easier to make, but such rings are not likely to survive. Metal thumb rings of silver or bronze were thought to be too inflexible in use, many surviving historic thumbrings are hardstone carvings in jade and other gemstones, or are made of precious metal. Most are very practical but some have the surface so ornamented as to be unusable. The rings could be displayed on a cord from the belt, or, in China, in the 16th century court of the Ottoman Empire they had the extra function of being used when executing disgraced officials to tighten a handkerchief wound round the throat. In territories of the Qing dynasty, Manchurian cylindrical thumb rings gradually displaced more thumb pad shaped thumb rings and these cylindrical thumb rings would go over the primary thumb joint, hooking the draw string around the base of the cylinder. Media related to Archer’s rings at Wikimedia Commons A collection of thumbrings at the University of Missouri Museum of Anthropology How do I use a Thumb-ring with a Mongolian Draw
38.
Crossbow
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A crossbow, also known as horizontal bow, is a type of weapon based on the bow and consisting of a horizontal bow-like assembly mounted on a stock. It shoots projectiles called bolts or quarrels, the medieval crossbow was called by many names, most of which were derived from the word ballista, a torsion siege engine resembling a crossbow. Historically, crossbows played a significant role in the warfare of East Asia, Europe, the introduction of the crossbow in ancient China caused a major shift in the role of projectile weaponry. The traditional bow and arrow had long been a weapon that required a considerable training, physical strength. A crossbow is a bow mounted on a stick with a mechanism in it that holds the bow string. The earliest designs featured a slot in the stock, down into which the string was placed, to shoot this design, a vertical rod is thrust up through a hole in the bottom of the notch, forcing the string out. This rod is attached perpendicular to a rear-facing lever called a trigger or tickler. A later design implemented a rolling cylindrical pawl called a nut to retain the string and this nut has a perpendicular center slot for the bolt, and an intersecting axial slot for the string, along with a lower face or slot against which the internal trigger sits. They often also have some form of strengthening internal sear or trigger face and these roller nuts were either free-floating in their close-fitting hole across the stock, tied in with a binding of sinew or other strong cording, or mounted on a metal axle or pins. Removable or integral plates of wood, ivory, or metal on the sides of the stock kept the nut in place laterally, nuts were made of antler, bone, or metal. Bows could be kept taut and ready to shoot for some time with little effort, the bow of early crossbows was made of a single piece of wood, usually ash or yew. Composite bows are made from layers of different material, often wood, horn and these composite bows made of several layers are much stronger and more efficient in releasing energy than simple wooden bows. As steel became more available in Europe around the 14th century. The crossbow prod is very short compared to ordinary bows, resulting in a draw length. This leads to a draw weight in order to store the same amount of energy. Furthermore, the thick prods are a bit less efficient at releasing energy, traditionally, the prod was often lashed to the stock with rope, whipcord, or other strong cording. This cording is called the bridle, the strings for a crossbow are typically made of strong fibers that would not tend to fray. Whipcord was very common, however linen, hemp, and sinew were used as well, in wet conditions, twisted mulberry root was occasionally used
39.
Halberd
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A halberd is a two-handed pole weapon that came to prominent use during the 14th and 15th centuries. The word halberd may come from the German words Halm, in modern-day German, the weapon is called a Hellebarde. In HEMA, professional halberd practitioners are referred to as halberdiers, the halberd consists of an axe blade topped with a spike mounted on a long shaft. It always has a hook or thorn on the side of the axe blade for grappling mounted combatants. It is very similar to forms of the voulge in design. The halberd was usually 1.5 to 1.8 metres long, the halberd was inexpensive to produce and very versatile in battle. A Swiss peasant used a halberd to kill Charles the Bold, researchers suspect that a halberd or a bill sliced through the back of King Richard IIIs skull at the Battle of Bosworth. The halberd was the weapon of the early Swiss armies in the 14th. The German Landsknechte, who imitated Swiss warfare methods, also used the pike, the halberd all but disappeared as a rank-and-file weapon in these formations by the middle of the sixteenth century. The halberd has been used as a court bodyguard weapon for centuries, and is still the ceremonial weapon of the Swiss Guard in the Vatican, the halberd was one of the polearms sometimes carried by lower-ranking officers in European infantry units in the 16th through 18th centuries. In the British army, sergeants continued to carry halberds until 1793, the 18th century halberd had, however, become simply a symbol of rank with no sharpened edge and insufficient strength to use as a weapon. It did, however, ensure that infantrymen drawn up in ranks stood correctly aligned with each other, bardiche, a type of two-handed battle axe known in the 16th and 17th centuries in Eastern Europe Bill, similar to a halberd but with a hooked blade form. 74–94, Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, brandtherm, Dirk & OFlaherty, Ronan, Prodigal sons, two halberds in the Hunt Museum, Limerick, from Cuenca, Spain and Beyrǔt, Syria, pp. 56–60, JRSAI Vol.131. R. E. Oakeshott, European weapons and armour, From the Renaissance to the industrial revolution, 44–48
40.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
Sudan
Egypt
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