1.
Solar System
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The Solar System is the gravitationally bound system comprising the Sun and the objects that orbit it, either directly or indirectly. Of those objects that orbit the Sun directly, the largest eight are the planets, with the remainder being significantly smaller objects, such as dwarf planets, of the objects that orbit the Sun indirectly, the moons, two are larger than the smallest planet, Mercury. The Solar System formed 4.6 billion years ago from the collapse of a giant interstellar molecular cloud. The vast majority of the mass is in the Sun. The four smaller inner planets, Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, are terrestrial planets, being composed of rock. The four outer planets are giant planets, being more massive than the terrestrials. All planets have almost circular orbits that lie within a flat disc called the ecliptic. The Solar System also contains smaller objects, the asteroid belt, which lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, mostly contains objects composed, like the terrestrial planets, of rock and metal. Beyond Neptunes orbit lie the Kuiper belt and scattered disc, which are populations of trans-Neptunian objects composed mostly of ices, within these populations are several dozen to possibly tens of thousands of objects large enough that they have been rounded by their own gravity. Such objects are categorized as dwarf planets, identified dwarf planets include the asteroid Ceres and the trans-Neptunian objects Pluto and Eris. In addition to two regions, various other small-body populations, including comets, centaurs and interplanetary dust clouds. Six of the planets, at least four of the dwarf planets, each of the outer planets is encircled by planetary rings of dust and other small objects. The solar wind, a stream of charged particles flowing outwards from the Sun, the heliopause is the point at which pressure from the solar wind is equal to the opposing pressure of the interstellar medium, it extends out to the edge of the scattered disc. The Oort cloud, which is thought to be the source for long-period comets, the Solar System is located in the Orion Arm,26,000 light-years from the center of the Milky Way. For most of history, humanity did not recognize or understand the concept of the Solar System, the invention of the telescope led to the discovery of further planets and moons. The principal component of the Solar System is the Sun, a G2 main-sequence star that contains 99. 86% of the known mass. The Suns four largest orbiting bodies, the giant planets, account for 99% of the mass, with Jupiter. The remaining objects of the Solar System together comprise less than 0. 002% of the Solar Systems total mass, most large objects in orbit around the Sun lie near the plane of Earths orbit, known as the ecliptic
2.
Venus
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Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. It has the longest rotation period of any planet in the Solar System and it is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty. It is the second-brightest natural object in the sky after the Moon, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6. Because Venus orbits within Earths orbit it is a planet and never appears to venture far from the Sun. Venus is a planet and is sometimes called Earths sister planet because of their similar size, mass, proximity to the Sun. It is radically different from Earth in other respects and it has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets, consisting of more than 96% carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure at the surface is 92 times that of Earth. Venus is by far the hottest planet in the Solar System, with a surface temperature of 735 K. Venus is shrouded by an layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid. It may have had water oceans in the past, but these would have vaporized as the temperature rose due to a greenhouse effect. The water has probably photodissociated, and the hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field. Venuss surface is a dry desertscape interspersed with rocks and is periodically resurfaced by volcanism. As one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus has been a fixture in human culture for as long as records have existed. It has been sacred to gods of many cultures, and has been a prime inspiration for writers and poets as the morning star. Venus was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as the closest planet to Earth, Venus has been a prime target for early interplanetary exploration. It was the first planet beyond Earth visited by a spacecraft, Venuss thick clouds render observation of its surface impossible in visible light, and the first detailed maps did not emerge until the arrival of the Magellan orbiter in 1991. Plans have been proposed for rovers or more missions. Venus is one of the four planets in the Solar System
3.
Atmosphere of Venus
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The atmosphere of Venus is the layer of gases surrounding Venus. It is composed primarily of carbon dioxide and is denser and hotter than that of Earth. The temperature at the surface is 740 K, and the pressure is 93 bar, the Venusian atmosphere supports opaque clouds made of sulfuric acid, making optical Earth-based and orbital observation of the surface impossible. Information about the topography has been obtained exclusively by radar imaging, aside from carbon dioxide, the other main component is nitrogen. Other chemical compounds are present only in trace amounts, aside from the very surface layers, the atmosphere is in a state of vigorous circulation. The upper layer of troposphere exhibits a phenomenon of super-rotation, in which the circles the planet in just four Earth days. The winds supporting super-rotation blow as fast as 100 m/s, winds move at up to 60 times the speed of the planets rotation, while Earths fastest winds are only 10% to 20% rotation speed. On the other hand, the wind speed becomes increasingly slower as the elevation from the surface decreases, near the poles are anticyclonic structures called polar vortices. Each vortex is double-eyed and shows a characteristic S-shaped pattern of clouds, above there is an intermediate layer of mesosphere which separates the troposphere from the thermosphere. Unlike Earth, Venus lacks a magnetic field and its ionosphere separates the atmosphere from outer space and the solar wind. This ionised layer excludes the solar field, giving Venus a distinct magnetic environment. This is considered Venuss induced magnetosphere, lighter gases, including water vapour, are continuously blown away by the solar wind through the induced magnetotail. It is speculated that the atmosphere of Venus up to around 4 billion years ago was more like that of the Earth with liquid water on the surface. A runaway greenhouse effect may have been caused by the evaporation of the surface water, on January 29,2013, ESA scientists reported that the ionosphere of the planet Venus streams outwards in a manner similar to the ion tail seen streaming from a comet under similar conditions. The atmosphere of Venus is composed of 96. 5% carbon dioxide,3. 5% nitrogen, the atmosphere contains a range of interesting compounds in small quantities, including some based on hydrogen, such as hydrogen chloride and hydrogen fluoride. There is carbon monoxide, water vapour and atomic oxygen as well, hydrogen is in relatively short supply in the Venusian atmosphere. A large amount of the hydrogen is theorised to have been lost to space, with the remainder being mostly bound up in sulfuric acid. The loss of significant amounts of hydrogen is proved by a very high D–H ratio measured in the Venusian atmosphere, the ratio is about 0. 015–0.025, which is 100–150 times higher than the terrestrial value of 1. 6×10−4
4.
Babylon
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Babylon was a major city of ancient Mesopotamia in the fertile plain between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. The city was built upon the Euphrates and divided in parts along its left and right banks. Babylon was originally a small Semitic Akkadian city dating from the period of the Akkadian Empire c.2300 BC, the town attained independence as part of a small city-state with the rise of the First Amorite Babylonian Dynasty in 1894 BC. Babylon grew and South Mesopotamia came to be known as Babylonia, the empire quickly dissolved after Hammurabis death and Babylon spent long periods under Assyrian, Kassite and Elamite domination. After being destroyed and then rebuilt by the Assyrians, Babylon became the capital of the Neo-Babylonian Empire from 609 to 539 BC, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. After the fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the city came under the rule of the Achaemenid, Seleucid, Parthian, Roman, and Sassanid empires. It has been estimated that Babylon was the largest city in the world from c.1770 to 1670 BC and it was perhaps the first city to reach a population above 200,000. Estimates for the extent of its area range from 890 to 900 hectares. The remains of the city are in present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq, about 85 kilometres south of Baghdad, comprising a large tell of broken mud-brick buildings, the English Babylon comes from Greek Babylṓn, a transliteration of the Akkadian Babili. The Babylonian name in the early 2nd millennium BC had been Babilli or Babilla, by the 1st millennium BC, it had changed to Babili under the influence of the folk etymology which traced it to bāb-ili. The Gate of God or Gate of El being from the Aramaic Hebrew Bab for Gate and El for God and this being similar to the Hebrew word for confusion Balal. In the Bible, the name appears as Babel, interpreted in the Hebrew Scriptures Book of Genesis to mean confusion, the modern English verb, to babble, or to speak meaningless words, is popularly thought to derive from this name, but there is no direct connection. The remains of the city are in present-day Hillah, Babil Governorate, Iraq, about 85 kilometers south of Baghdad, comprising a large tell of broken mud-brick buildings and debris. The site at Babylon consists of a number of mounds covering an area of about 2 by 1 kilometer, oriented north to south, along the Euphrates to the west. Originally, the river roughly bisected the city, but the course of the river has since shifted so that most of the remains of the western part of the city are now inundated. Some portions of the city wall to the west of the river also remain, remains of the city include, Kasr—also called Palace or Castle, it is the location of the Neo-Babylonian ziggurat Etemenanki and lies in the center of the site. Amran Ibn Ali—the highest of the mounds at 25 meters, to the south and it is the site of Esagila, a temple of Marduk which also contained shrines to Ea and Nabu. Homera—a reddish colored mound on the west side, most of the Hellenistic remains are here
5.
Cuneiform script
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Cuneiform script, one of the earliest systems of writing, was invented by the Sumerians. It is distinguished by its wedge-shaped marks on clay tablets, made by means of a blunt reed for a stylus, the name cuneiform itself simply means wedge shaped. Emerging in Sumer in the fourth millennium BC, cuneiform writing began as a system of pictograms. In the third millennium, the pictorial representations became simplified and more abstract as the number of characters in use grew smaller, the system consists of a combination of logophonetic, consonantal alphabetic and syllabic signs. Cuneiform writing was replaced by the Phoenician alphabet during the Neo-Assyrian Empire. By the second century CE, the script had become extinct, between half a million and two million cuneiform tablets are estimated to have been excavated in modern times, of which only approximately 30,000 –100,000 have been read or published. Most of these have lain in these collections for a century without being translated, studied or published, the cuneiform writing system was in use for more than three millennia, through several stages of development, from the 34th century BC down to the second century CE. Ultimately, it was replaced by alphabetic writing in the course of the Roman era. It had to be deciphered as an unknown writing system in 19th-century Assyriology. Successful completion of its deciphering is dated to 1857, the cuneiform script was developed from pictographic proto-writing in the late 4th millennium BC. Mesopotamias proto-literate period spans roughly the 35th to 32nd centuries, the first documents unequivocally written in Sumerian date to the 31st century at Jemdet Nasr. Originally, pictographs were either drawn on clay tablets in vertical columns with a reed stylus or incised in stone. This early style lacked the characteristic shape of the strokes. Proper names continued to be written in purely logographic fashion. The earliest known Sumerian king whose name appears on contemporary cuneiform tablets is Enmebaragesi of Kish, from about 2900 BC, many pictographs began to lose their original function, and a given sign could have various meanings depending on context. The sign inventory was reduced from some 1,500 signs to some 600 signs, determinative signs were re-introduced to avoid ambiguity. Cuneiform writing proper thus arises from the more primitive system of pictographs at about that time, by adjusting the relative position of the tablet to the stylus, the writer could use a single tool to make a variety of impressions. Cuneiform tablets could be fired in kilns to provide a permanent record, many of the clay tablets found by archaeologists were preserved because they were fired when attacking armies burned the building in which they were kept
6.
Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa
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The Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa refers to the record of astronomical observations of Venus, as preserved in numerous cuneiform tablets dating from the first millennium B. C. It is believed that this record was first compiled during the reign of King Ammisaduqa. Thus, the origins of text should probably be dated to around the mid-seventeenth century B. C. The tablet recorded the times of Venus and its first and last visibility on the horizon before or after sunrise. These observations are recorded for a period of 21 years and this Venus tablet is part of Enuma anu enlil, a long text dealing with Babylonian astrology, which mostly consists of omens interpreting celestial phenomena. The earliest copy of this tablet to be published, a 7th-century BC cuneiform and it was first published in 1870 by Henry Creswicke Rawlinson and George Smith as Enuma Anu Enlil Tablet 63, in Tablet of Movements of the Planet Venus and their Influences. As many as 20 copies of text are currently on record, many of them fragmentary. The oldest of these copies is believed to be Source B and it was copied from a tablet written at Babylon while Sargon II was King of Assyria between 720 and 704 BCE. Several dates for the observations, as contained in the tablet, were proposed early in the 20th century. The following dates, corresponding to the High, Middle, Low and Ultra-Low Chronologies, were inferred for the beginning of the Venus observations,1702 BC,1646 BC,1582 BC,1550 BC, respectively. Since then, this 7th-century BC copy has been interpreted to support several chronologies in the 2nd millennium BC. Many uncertainties remain about the interpretation of the record of observations of Venus. Problems of atmospheric refraction were addressed by Vahe Gurzadyan in a 2003 publication, sachs, Abraham, Astronomical dating of Babylon I and Ur III, Undena Publications, ISBN 978-0-89003-045-5 Reiner, Erica and David Pingree 1975. The fundamental edition, superseding Langdon et al, notes on the Venus Tablet of Ammisaduqa, Journal of Cuneiform Studies 36.1 pp. 64–66. On the Astronomical Records and Babylonian Chronology, Akkadica, vol. 119-120, roaf, M. Cuneiform tablet with observations of Venus. Bibliography, in context of Mesopotamian astronomy
7.
Ishtar
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Ishtar is the Mesopotamian East Semitic goddess of fertility, love, war, sex, and power. She is the counterpart to the earlier attested Sumerian Inanna, and the cognate for the later attested Northwest Semitic Aramean goddess Astarte, and the Armenian goddess Astghik. Ishtar was an important deity in Mesopotamian religion which was extant from c.3500 BCE, Ishtar symbolizes love, including that between human and animals, its power, and its danger. Ishtar was the daughter of Anu and she was particularly worshipped in the Upper Mesopotamian kingdom of Assyria, particularly at the cities of Nineveh, Ashur and Arbela, and also in the south Mesopotamian city of Uruk. Besides the lions on her gate, her symbol is an eight-pointed star, in the Babylonian pantheon, she was the divine personification of the planet Venus. Ishtar had many lovers, however, as Guirand notes, Woe to him whom Ishtar had honoured, the fickle goddess treated her passing lovers cruelly, and the unhappy wretches usually paid dearly for the favours heaped on them. Animals, enslaved by love, lost their native vigour, they fell into traps laid by men or were domesticated by them, thou has loved the lion, mighty in strength, says the hero Gilgamesh to Ishtar, and thou hast dug for him seven and seven pits. Thou hast loved the steed, proud in battle, and destined him for the halter, the goad, even for the gods Ishtars love was fatal. In her youth the goddess had loved Tammuz, god of the harvest and her cult may have involved sacred prostitution, though this is debatable. Guirand referred to her holy city Uruk as the town of the sacred courtesans, one of the most famous myths about Ishtar describes her descent to the underworld. I will bring up the dead to eat the living, and the dead will outnumber the living. The gatekeeper hurried to tell Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, Ereshkigal told the gatekeeper to let Ishtar enter, but according to the ancient decree. The gatekeeper let Ishtar into the underworld, opening one gate at a time, at each gate, Ishtar had to shed one article of clothing. When she finally passed the seventh gate, she was naked, in a rage, Ishtar threw herself at Ereshkigal, but Ereshkigal ordered her servant Namtar to imprison Ishtar and unleash sixty diseases against her. After Ishtar descended to the underworld, all activity ceased on earth. The god Papsukal reported the situation to Ea, the king of the gods, Ea created an intersex being called Asu-shu-namir and sent them to Ereshkigal, telling them to invoke the name of the great gods against her and to ask for the bag containing the waters of life. Ereshkigal was enraged when she heard Asu-shu-namirs demand, but she had to them the water of life. Asu-shu-namir sprinkled Ishtar with this water, reviving her, then, Ishtar passed back through the seven gates, getting one article of clothing back at each gate, and was fully clothed as she exited the last gate
8.
Ancient Mesopotamian religion
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The religious development of Mesopotamia and Mesopotamian culture in general was not particularly influenced by the movements of the various peoples into and throughout the area. Rather, Mesopotamian religion was a consistent and coherent tradition which adapted to the needs of its adherents over millenia of development. The earliest undercurrents of Mesopotamian religious thought date to the 4th millennium BCE, in the 3rd millennium BCE objects of worship were personified and became an expansive cast of divinities with particular functions. Mesopotamian religion finally declined with the spread of Iranian religions during the Achaemenid Empire, as with most dead religions, many aspects of the common practices and intricacies of the doctrine have been lost and forgotten over time. Mesopotamian religion is thought to have been an influence on subsequent religions throughout the world, including Canaanite, Aramean, Mesopotamian religion has the oldest body of recorded literature of any religious tradition. Other artifacts can also be useful when reconstructing Mesopotamian religion, as is common with most ancient civilizations, the objects made of the most durable and precious materials, and thus more likely to survive, were associated with religious beliefs and practices. It has also inspired various contemporary Neo-pagan groups, in the fourth millennium BCE, the first evidence for what is recognisably Mesopotamian religion can be seen with the invention in Mesopotamia of writing circa 3500 BCE. The people of Mesopotamia originally consisted of two groups, Akkadian speakers and the people of Sumer, who spoke a language isolate and these peoples were members of various city-states and small kingdoms. The Sumerians left the first records, although it is not known if they migrated into the area in prehistory or whether they were its original inhabitants and they resided in southern Mesopotamia, which was known as Sumer, and had considerable influence on the Akkadian speakers and their culture. Akkadian names first appear in the lists of these states circa 2800 BCE. They created the first city-states such as Uruk, Ur, Lagash, Isin, Kish, Umma, Eridu, Adab, Akshak, Sippar, Nippur and Larsa, each of them ruled by an ensí. The Akkadian Empire endured for two centuries before collapsing due to decline, internal strife and attacks from the north east by the Gutian people. Following a brief Sumerian revival with the Third Dynasty of Ur, Assyria asserted itself in the north circa 2100 BCE in the Old Assyrian Empire and southern Mesopotamia fragmented into a number of kingdoms, the largest being Isin, Larsa and Eshnunna. In 1894 BCE the initially minor city-state of Babylon was founded in the south by invading West Semitic-speaking Amorites and it was rarely ruled by native dynasties throughout its history. Some time after this period, the Sumerians disappeared, becoming absorbed into the Akkadian-speaking population. Assyrian kings are attested from the late 25th century BCE and dominated northern Mesopotamia and parts of Anatolia, the Amorite dynasty was deposed in 1595 BCE after attacks from mountain-dwelling people known as the Kassites from the Zagros Mountains, who went on to rule Babylon for over 500 years. Assyria defeated the Hittites and Mitanni, and its growing power forced the New Kingdom of Egypt to withdraw from the Near East, the Middle Assyrian Empire at its height stretched from the Caucasus to modern Bahrain and from Cyprus to western Iran. During the Neo-Assyrian Empire, Mesopotamian Aramaic became the lingua franca of the empire, the last written records in Akkadian were astrological texts dating from 78 CE discovered in Assyria
9.
Inanna
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Inanna was the Sumerian goddess of love, beauty, sexual desire, fertility, knowledge, wisdom, war, and combat. She was also the goddess of the E-Anna temple at the city of Uruk. She was one of the most widely venerated deities in the ancient Sumerian pantheon and her Akkadian and Babylonian equivalent was the goddess Ishtar. Several of her most important myths involve the story of her descent into and return from Kur, Inanna was the most prominent female deity in ancient Mesopotamia. As early as the Uruk period, Inanna was associated with the city of Uruk. The famous Uruk Vase depicts a row of naked men carrying various objects, bowls, vessels, and baskets of farm products and this figure was ornately dressed for a divine marriage, and attended by a servant. Especially in the Uruk period, the symbol of a ring-headed doorpost is associated with Inanna, seal impressions from the Jemdet Nasr period show a fixed sequence of city symbols including those of Ur, Larsa, Zabalam, Urum, Arina, and probably Kesh. It is likely that this list reflects the report of contributions to Inanna at Uruk from cities supporting her cult and they had been used to lock storerooms to preserve materials set aside for her cult. Inannas primary temple of worship was the Eanna, located in Uruk and her temple, the Eanna would also seem to have been taken from Anu, the head of the Sumerian pantheon, prior to the rise of Enlil of Nippur. Inannas name derives from Lady of Heaven, the cuneiform sign of Inanna, however, is not a ligature of the signs lady and sky. The view that there was a Proto-Euphratean substrate language in Southern Iraq before Sumerian is not widely accepted by modern Assyriologists, Inanna was one of the most widely venerated deities in the Sumerian pantheon. Many shrines and temples dedicated to Inanna were built along the Tigris, the deity of this fourth-millennium city was probably originally An. After its dedication to Inanna the temple seems to have housed priestesses of the goddess, a Sacred Marriage to Inanna may have conferred legitimacy on a number of rulers of Uruk. Gilgamesh is reputed to have refused marriage to Inanna, on the grounds of her misalliance with such kings as Lugalbanda, Inannas symbol is an eight-pointed star or a rosette. She was associated with lions – even then a symbol of power – and was depicted standing on the backs of two lionesses. Her cuneiform ideogram was a twisted knot of reeds, representing the doorpost of the storehouse. Inanna was associated with the planet Venus, which at time was regarded as two stars, the morning star and the evening star. There are hymns to Inanna as her astral manifestation and it also is believed that in many myths about Inanna, including Inannas Descent to the Underworld and Inanna and Shukaletuda, her movements correspond with the movements of Venus in the sky
10.
Ashurbanipal
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Ashurbanipal, also spelled Assurbanipal or Ashshurbanipal, was an Assyrian king, the son of Esarhaddon and the last strong king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire. He is famed for amassing a significant collection of documents for his royal palace at Nineveh. This collection, known as the Library of Ashurbanipal, is now housed at the British Museum, in the Hebrew Bible he is called Asenappar. Ashurbanipal was born toward the end of a 1500-year period of Assyrian ascendancy and his father, Esarhaddon, the youngest son of Sennacherib, had become heir when the crown prince, Ashur-nadin-shumi, was deposed by rebels from his position as vassal for Babylon. Esarhaddon was the son not of Sennacheribs queen, Tashmetum-sharrat, but of the palace woman Zakutu, there are some suggestions Zakutu may have been an Israelite or Aramean concubine, while others point to her family origins being in the northern Assyrian city of Harran. The only queen known for Esarhaddon was Ashur-hamat, who died in 672 BC, Ashurbanipal grew up in the small palace called Bit Reduti, built by his grandfather Sennacherib when he was crown prince in the northern quadrant of Nineveh. In 694 BC, Sennacherib had completed the Palace Without Rival at the southwest corner of the acropolis, the House of Succession had become the palace of Esarhaddon, the crown prince. In this house, Ashurbanipals grandfather was assassinated by uncles identified only from the account as Adrammelech, Abimlech. From this conspiracy, Esarhaddon emerged as king in 681 BC and he proceeded to rebuild as his residence the Bit Masharti. The House of Succession was left to his mother and the younger children, the names of five brothers and one sister are known. Sin-iddin-apli, the crown prince, died prior to 672 BC. According to legend, Ashurbanipal was the only Assyrian king who learned how to read, Ashurbanipal succeeded his father Esarhaddon 681-669 BC as king of Assyria and ruler of the Assyrian Empire in 668 BC. Esarhaddon had prepared for the accession of his son by imposing a treaty upon his Persian, Median and Parthian subjects. He had also rebuilt Babylon and set up another of his sons Shamash-shum-ukin to rule there, despite being a popular king among his subjects, he was also known for his cruelty to his enemies. Some pictures depict him putting a dog chain through the jaw of a defeated Arab king, Ashurbanipal inherited from Esarhaddon not only the throne of the empire but also the ongoing war in Egypt with Kush/Nubia. His father had ended Egyptian interference in the Near East, destroyed the Kushite Empire, driven the Kushites/Nubians from Egypt, however the Nubians still had ambitions to regain control of Egypt and resurrect their empire. Ashurbanipal sent an army against them in 667 BC that defeated the Nubian king Taharqa, near Memphis, at the same time some Egyptian vassals rebelled and were also defeated. All of the vanquished leaders save one were sent to Nineveh, only Necho I, the native Egyptian Prince of Sais, convinced the Assyrians of his loyalty and was sent back to become the Assyrian puppet Pharaoh of Egypt
11.
Sumer
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Living along the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, Sumerian farmers were able to grow an abundance of grain and other crops, the surplus of which enabled them to settle in one place. Proto-writing in the dates back to c.3000 BC. The earliest texts come from the cities of Uruk and Jemdet Nasr and date back to 3300 BC, modern historians have suggested that Sumer was first permanently settled between c.5500 and 4000 BC by a West Asian people who spoke the Sumerian language, an agglutinative language isolate. These conjectured, prehistoric people are now called proto-Euphrateans or Ubaidians, some scholars contest the idea of a Proto-Euphratean language or one substrate language. Reliable historical records begin much later, there are none in Sumer of any kind that have dated before Enmebaragesi. Juris Zarins believes the Sumerians lived along the coast of Eastern Arabia, todays Persian Gulf region, Sumerian civilization took form in the Uruk period, continuing into the Jemdet Nasr and Early Dynastic periods. During the 3rd millennium BC, a cultural symbiosis developed between the Sumerians, who spoke a language isolate, and Akkadian-speakers, which included widespread bilingualism. The influence of Sumerian on Akkadian is evident in all areas, from lexical borrowing on a scale, to syntactic, morphological. This has prompted scholars to refer to Sumerian and Akkadian in the 3rd millennium BC as a Sprachbund, Sumer was conquered by the Semitic-speaking kings of the Akkadian Empire around 2270 BC, but Sumerian continued as a sacred language. Native Sumerian rule re-emerged for about a century in the Neo-Sumerian Empire or Third Dynasty of Ur approximately 2100-2000 BC, the term Sumerian is the common name given to the ancient non-Semitic-speaking inhabitants of Mesopotamia, Sumer, by the East Semitic-speaking Akkadians. The Sumerians referred to themselves as ùĝ saĝ gíg ga, phonetically /uŋ saŋ gi ga/, literally meaning the black-headed people, the Akkadian word Shumer may represent the geographical name in dialect, but the phonological development leading to the Akkadian term šumerû is uncertain. Hebrew Shinar, Egyptian Sngr, and Hittite Šanhar, all referring to southern Mesopotamia, in the late 4th millennium BC, Sumer was divided into many independent city-states, which were divided by canals and boundary stones. Each was centered on a dedicated to the particular patron god or goddess of the city. The Sumerian city-states rose to power during the prehistoric Ubaid and Uruk periods, classical Sumer ends with the rise of the Akkadian Empire in the 23rd century BC. Following the Gutian period, there is a brief Sumerian Renaissance in the 21st century BC, the Amorite dynasty of Isin persisted until c.1700 BC, when Mesopotamia was united under Babylonian rule. The Sumerians were eventually absorbed into the Akkadian population, 2500–2334 BC Akkadian Empire period, c. 2218–2047 BC Ur III period, c, 2047–1940 BC The Ubaid period is marked by a distinctive style of fine quality painted pottery which spread throughout Mesopotamia and the Persian Gulf. It appears that this culture was derived from the Samarran culture from northern Mesopotamia and it is not known whether or not these were the actual Sumerians who are identified with the later Uruk culture
12.
Akkadian Empire
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The empire united all the Akkadian and Sumerian speakers under one rule. The Akkadian Empire controlled Mesopotamia, the Levant, and eastern and southern parts of Anatolia and Iran, sending military expeditions as far south as Dilmun and Magan in the Arabian Peninsula. During the 3rd millennium BC, there developed an intimate cultural symbiosis between the Sumerians and the Akkadians, which included widespread bilingualism. Akkadian gradually replaced Sumerian as a spoken language somewhere between the 3rd and the 2nd millennia BC, the Akkadian Empire reached its political peak between the 24th and 22nd centuries BC, following the conquests by its founder Sargon of Akkad. Under Sargon and his successors, the Akkadian language was imposed on neighboring conquered states such as Elam. Akkad is sometimes regarded as the first empire in history, though there are earlier Sumerian claimants, the Bible refers to Akkad in Genesis 10,10, which states that the beginning of Nimrods kingdom was in the land of Akkad. Nimrod is a Hebrew name not attested in Mesopotamians sources, many have pointed out similarities with the legend of Gilgamesh who founded Uruk, which is said to be the city Nimrod came to power. Today, some 7,000 texts from the Akkadian period alone are known, many later texts from the successor states of Assyria and Babylonia also deal with the Akkadian Empire. Understanding of the Akkadian Empire continues to be hampered by the fact that its capital Akkad has not yet been located, likewise, material that is thought to be Akkadian continues to be in use into the Ur III period. Many of the recent insights on the Akkadian Empire have come from excavations in the Upper Khabur area in modern northeastern Syria which was to become a part of Assyria after the fall of Akkad. For example, excavations at Tell Mozan brought to light a sealing of Taram-Agade, an unknown daughter of Naram-Sin. The excavators at nearby Tell Leilan have used the results from their investigations to argue that the Akkadian Empire came to an end due to a sudden drought, the so-called 4.2 kiloyear event. The impact of this event on Mesopotamia in general, and on the Akkadian Empire in particular. The Akkadian Period is contemporary with, EB IV, EB IVA and EJ IV, the absolute dates of their reigns are approximate. The Akkadian Empire takes its name from the region and city of Akkad, although the city of Akkad has not yet been identified on the ground, it is known from various textual sources. Among these is at least one text predating the reign of Sargon, together with the fact that the name Akkad is of non-Akkadian origin, this suggests that the city of Akkad may have already been occupied in pre-Sargonic times. Sargon of Akkad defeated and captured Lugal-Zage-Si in the Battle of Uruk, the earliest records in the Akkadian language date to the time of Sargon. Sargon was claimed to be the son of Laibum or Itti-Bel, a humble gardener, One legend related of Sargon in Assyrian times says that My mother was a changeling, my father I knew not
13.
Chinese language
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Chinese is a group of related, but in many cases mutually unintelligible, language varieties, forming a branch of the Sino-Tibetan language family. Chinese is spoken by the Han majority and many ethnic groups in China. Nearly 1.2 billion people speak some form of Chinese as their first language, the varieties of Chinese are usually described by native speakers as dialects of a single Chinese language, but linguists note that they are as diverse as a language family. The internal diversity of Chinese has been likened to that of the Romance languages, There are between 7 and 13 main regional groups of Chinese, of which the most spoken by far is Mandarin, followed by Wu, Min, and Yue. Most of these groups are mutually unintelligible, although some, like Xiang and certain Southwest Mandarin dialects, may share common terms, all varieties of Chinese are tonal and analytic. Standard Chinese is a form of spoken Chinese based on the Beijing dialect of Mandarin. It is the language of China and Taiwan, as well as one of four official languages of Singapore. It is one of the six languages of the United Nations. The written form of the language, based on the logograms known as Chinese characters, is shared by literate speakers of otherwise unintelligible dialects. Of the other varieties of Chinese, Cantonese is the spoken language and official in Hong Kong and Macau. It is also influential in Guangdong province and much of Guangxi, dialects of Southern Min, part of the Min group, are widely spoken in southern Fujian, with notable variants also spoken in neighboring Taiwan and in Southeast Asia. Hakka also has a diaspora in Taiwan and southeast Asia. Shanghainese and other Wu varieties are prominent in the lower Yangtze region of eastern China, Chinese can be traced back to a hypothetical Sino-Tibetan proto-language. The first written records appeared over 3,000 years ago during the Shang dynasty, as the language evolved over this period, the various local varieties became mutually unintelligible. In reaction, central governments have sought to promulgate a unified standard. Difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, in addition, many of the smaller languages are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach, and are often also sensitive border zones. Without a secure reconstruction of proto-Sino-Tibetan, the structure of the family remains unclear. A top-level branching into Chinese and Tibeto-Burman languages is often assumed, the earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BCE in the late Shang dynasty
14.
Shukra
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Shukra is a Sanskrit word that means lucid, clear, bright. It also has other meanings, such as the name of an ancient sage who counseled Asuras in Vedic mythology, in medieval mythology and Hindu astrology, the term refers to the planet Venus, one of the Navagrahas. In one mythology, Shukra is the name of a son of Bhrigu, of the third Manu and he was the guru of Daityas / Asuras, and is also referred to as Shukracharya or Asuracharya in various Hindu texts. In another mythology, found in the Mahabharata, Shukra divided himself into two, one becoming the knowledge source for the Devas and the other half being the knowledge source of the Asuras. In the Mahabharata, Shukracharya is mentioned as one of the mentors of Bhishma and these texts present Shukra as one of the planets and estimate the characteristics of the respective planetary motion. Other texts such as Surya Siddhanta dated to have been sometime between the 5th century and 10th century present their chapters on various planets with deity mythologies. The manuscripts of texts exist in slightly different versions, present Shukras motion in the skies. ShukraVar is found in most Indian languages, and Shukara Graha is driven by the planet Venus in Hindu astrology, the word Friday in the Greco-Roman and other Indo-European calendars is also based on planet Venus. The zodiac and naming system of Hindu astrology likely developed in the centuries after the arrival of Greek astrology with Alexander the Great, in Buddhist and Hindu astrology, Shukra is a part of the medieval astrological explanations offered for various ailments. In his iconography, he is of white complexion, middle-aged and he is described variously as mounted on a camel, horse or crocodile. He holds a stick, beads and a lotus and sometimes a bow and arrow, varuna Asura Ahura Mazda Venus Venus Pingree, David. The Mesopotamian Origin of Early Indian Mathematical Astronomy, journal for the History of Astronomy
15.
Hindu astrology
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Jyotisha is the traditional Hindu system of astrology, also known as Hindu astrology, Indian astrology, and more recently Vedic astrology. Vedanga Jyotisha is one of the earliest texts about astronomy within the Vedas, however, some authors have claimed that the horoscopic astrology in the Indian subcontinent came from Hellenistic influences, post-dating the Vedic period. Following a judgement of the Andhra Pradesh High Court in 2001, Jyotiṣa is one of the Vedāṅga, the six auxiliary disciplines used to support Vedic rituals. Early jyotiṣa is concerned with the preparation of a calendar to fix the date of sacrificial rituals, there are mentions of eclipse causing demons in the Atharvaveda and Chāndogya Upaniṣad, the Chāndogya mentioning Rāhu. In fact the term graha, which is now taken to mean planet, the Ṛigveda also mentions an eclipse causing demon, Svarbhānu, however the specific term of graha becomes applied to Svarbhānu in the later Mahābhārata and Rāmāyaṇa. The foundation of Hindu astrology is the notion of bandhu of the Vedas, Hindu astrology includes several nuanced sub-systems of interpretation and prediction with elements not found in Hellenistic astrology, such as its system of lunar mansions. It was only after the transmission of Hellenistic astrology that the order of planets in India was fixed in that of the seven-day week, Hellenistic astrology and astronomy also transmitted the twelve zodiacal signs beginning with Aries and the twelve astrological places beginning with the ascendant. The first evidence of the introduction of Greek astrology to India is the Yavanajātaka which dates to the early centuries CE, however the only version that survives is the later verse version of Sphujidhvaja which dates to AD270. The first Indian astronomical text to define the weekday was the Āryabhaṭīya of Āryabhaṭa, the astronomical texts of these 300 years are lost. The later Pañcasiddhāntikā of Varāhamihira summarizes the five known Indian astronomical schools of the sixth century and it is interesting to note that Indian astronomy preserved some of the older pre-Ptolemaic elements of Greek astronomy. The main texts upon which classical Indian astrology is based are early medieval compilations, notably the Bṛhat Parāśara Horāśāstra, and Sārāvalī by Kalyāṇavarma. The Horāshastra is a work of 71 chapters, of which the first part dates to the 7th to early 8th centuries. The Sārāvalī likewise dates to around 800 CE, english translations of these texts were published by N. N. Choudhari in 1963 and 1961, respectively, Astrology remains an important facet in the lives of many Hindus. Astrology retains a position among the sciences in modern India, following a judgement of the Andhra Pradesh High Court in 2001, some Indian universities offer advanced degrees in astrology. Astrology remains an important facet of Hindu folk belief in contemporary India, many Hindus believe that heavenly bodies, including the planets, have an influence throughout the life of a human being, and these planetary influences are the fruit of karma. The Navagraha, planetary deities, are considered subordinate to Ishvara, i. e. the Supreme Being, thus, these planets can influence earthly life. The decision was backed up by the Andhra Pradesh High Court, despite protests from the scientific community in India
16.
Sanskrit
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Sanskrit is the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, a philosophical language of Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism, and a literary language and lingua franca of ancient and medieval South Asia. As a result of transmission of Hindu and Buddhist culture to Southeast Asia and parts of Central Asia, as one of the oldest Indo-European languages for which substantial written documentation exists, Sanskrit holds a prominent position in Indo-European studies. The body of Sanskrit literature encompasses a rich tradition of poetry and drama as well as scientific, technical, philosophical, the compositions of Sanskrit were orally transmitted for much of its early history by methods of memorization of exceptional complexity, rigor, and fidelity. Thereafter, variants and derivatives of the Brahmi script came to be used, Sanskrit is today one of the 22 languages listed in the Eighth Schedule of the Constitution of India, which mandates the Indian government to develop the language. It continues to be used as a ceremonial language in Hindu religious rituals and Buddhist practice in the form of hymns. The Sanskrit verbal adjective sáṃskṛta- may be translated as refined, elaborated, as a term for refined or elaborated speech, the adjective appears only in Epic and Classical Sanskrit in the Manusmṛti and the Mahabharata. The pre-Classical form of Sanskrit is known as Vedic Sanskrit, with the language of the Rigveda being the oldest and most archaic stage preserved, Classical Sanskrit is the standard register as laid out in the grammar of Pāṇini, around the fourth century BCE. Sanskrit, as defined by Pāṇini, evolved out of the earlier Vedic form, the present form of Vedic Sanskrit can be traced back to as early as the second millennium BCE. Scholars often distinguish Vedic Sanskrit and Classical or Pāṇinian Sanskrit as separate dialects, although they are quite similar, they differ in a number of essential points of phonology, vocabulary, grammar and syntax. Vedic Sanskrit is the language of the Vedas, a collection of hymns, incantations and theological and religio-philosophical discussions in the Brahmanas. Modern linguists consider the metrical hymns of the Rigveda Samhita to be the earliest, for nearly 2000 years, Sanskrit was the language of a cultural order that exerted influence across South Asia, Inner Asia, Southeast Asia, and to a certain extent East Asia. A significant form of post-Vedic Sanskrit is found in the Sanskrit of Indian epic poetry—the Ramayana, the deviations from Pāṇini in the epics are generally considered to be on account of interference from Prakrits, or innovations, and not because they are pre-Paninian. Traditional Sanskrit scholars call such deviations ārṣa, meaning of the ṛṣis, in some contexts, there are also more prakritisms than in Classical Sanskrit proper. There were four principal dialects of classical Sanskrit, paścimottarī, madhyadeśī, pūrvi, the predecessors of the first three dialects are attested in Vedic Brāhmaṇas, of which the first one was regarded as the purest. In the 2001 Census of India,14,035 Indians reported Sanskrit to be their first language, in India, Sanskrit is among the 14 original languages of the Eighth Schedule to the Constitution. The state of Uttarakhand in India has ruled Sanskrit as its official language. In October 2012 social activist Hemant Goswami filed a petition in the Punjab. More than 3,000 Sanskrit works have been composed since Indias independence in 1947, much of this work has been judged of high quality, in comparison to both classical Sanskrit literature and modern literature in other Indian languages
17.
Indonesian language
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Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. It is a register of Malay, an Austronesian language that has been used as a lingua franca in the multilingual Indonesian archipelago for centuries. Indonesia is the fourth most populous nation in the world, of its large population, the majority speak Indonesian, making it one of the most widely spoken languages in the world. However, most formal education, and nearly all national mass media, governance, administration, judiciary, the Indonesian name for the language is Bahasa Indonesia or sometimes simplified as Bahasa. This term is occasionally found in English and other languages. Indonesian is a register of Riau Malay, which despite its common name is not the Malay dialect native to Riau. Originally spoken in Northeast Sumatra, Malay has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for half a millennium and it might be attributed to its ancestor, the Old Malay language. The Kedukan Bukit Inscription is the oldest surviving specimen of Old Malay, trade contacts carried on by various ethnic peoples at the time were the main vehicle for spreading the Old Malay language, which was the main communications medium among the traders. Ultimately, the Old Malay language became a lingua franca and was spoken widely by most people in the archipelago, Indonesian is essentially the same language as the official Malaysian, Singaporean and Brunei standards of Malay. However, it does differ from Malaysian in several respects, with differences in pronunciation and these differences are due mainly to the Dutch and Javanese influences on Indonesian. Indonesian was also influenced by the Melayu pasar, which was the lingua franca of the archipelago in colonial times, and thus indirectly by other spoken languages of the islands. Malaysian Malay claims to be closer to the classical Malay of earlier centuries, even though modern Malaysian has been influenced, in lexicon as well as in syntax. The question of whether High Malay or Low Malay was the parent of the Indonesian language is still in debate. Some linguists have argued that it was the more common Low Malay that formed the base of the Indonesian language, however, the language had never been dominant among the population of the Indonesian archipelago as it was limited to mercantile activity. The VOC adopted the Malay language as the language of their trading outpost in the east. Following the bankruptcy of the VOC the Dutch crown took control of the colony in 1799 and it was then that education in. Even then, Dutch administrators were reluctant to promote the use of Dutch compared to other colonial regimes. Dutch thus remained the language of a elite, in 1940
18.
Malay language
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Malay is a major language of the Austronesian family. It has a status in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia. As the Bahasa Kebangsaan or Bahasa Nasional of several states, Standard Malay has various official names, in Singapore and Brunei it is called Bahasa Melayu, in Malaysia, Bahasa Malaysia, and in Indonesia, Bahasa Indonesia and is designated the Bahasa Persatuan/Pemersatu. However, in areas of central to southern Sumatra where the language is indigenous, Indonesians refer to it as Bahasa Melayu and consider it one of their regional languages. There are also several Malay trade and creole languages which are based on a lingua franca derived from Classical Malay, as well as Macassar Malay, Malay historical linguists agree on the likelihood of the Malay homeland being in western Borneo stretching to the Bruneian coast. A form known as Proto-Malay language was spoken in Borneo at least by 1000 BCE and was, it has been argued, the ancestral language of all subsequent Malayan languages. The history of the Malay language can be divided into five periods, Old Malay, the Transitional Period, the Malacca Period, Late Modern Malay and it is not clear that Old Malay was actually the ancestor of Classical Malay, but this is thought to be quite possible. Old Malay was influenced by Sanskrit literary language of Classical India, Sanskrit loanwords can be found in Old Malay vocabulary. Batenburg on November 29,1920 at Kedukan Bukit, South Sumatra, on the banks of the Tatang and it is a small stone of 45 by 80 centimetres. The earliest surviving manuscript in Malay is the Tanjong Tanah Law in post-Pallava letters and this 14th-century pre-Islamic legal text produced in the Adityawarman era of Dharmasraya, a Hindu-Buddhist kingdom that arose after the end of Srivijayan rule in Sumatra. The laws were for the Minangkabau people, who still live in the highlands of Sumatra. The Malay language came into use as the lingua franca of the Malacca Sultanate. During this period, the Malay language developed rapidly under the influence of Islamic literature, the development changed the nature of the language with massive infusion of Arabic, Malayalam and Sanskrit vocabularies, called Classical Malay. Under the Sultanate of Malacca the language evolved into a form recognisable to speakers of modern Malay, however, there is no connection between Malaccan Malay as used on Riau and the Riau vernacular. One of the oldest surviving letters written in Malay is a letter from Sultan Abu Hayat of Ternate, Maluku Islands in present-day Indonesia, the letter is addressed to the king of Portugal, following contact with Portuguese explorer Francisco Serrão. The letters show sign of non-native usage, the Ternateans used the unrelated Ternate language, Malay was used solely as a lingua franca for inter-ethnic communications. Malay is a member of the Austronesian family of languages, which includes languages from Southeast Asia, malagasy, a geographic outlier spoken in Madagascar in the Indian Ocean, is also a member of this language family. Although each language of the family is mutually unintelligible, their similarities are rather striking, many roots have come virtually unchanged from their common ancestor, Proto-Austronesian language
19.
Chinese culture
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Chinese culture is one of the worlds oldest cultures, tracing back to thousands of years ago. The area in which the culture is dominant covers a geographical region in eastern Asia with customs. Important components of Chinese culture include ceramics, architecture, music, literature, martial arts, cuisine, visual arts, philosophy, there are 56 officially labelled ethnic groups in China. In terms of numbers however, Han Chinese is by far the largest group, throughout history, many groups have merged into neighboring ethnicities or disappeared. At the same time, many within the Han identity have maintained distinct linguistic, the term Zhonghua Minzu has been used to describe the notion of Chinese nationalism in general. Much of the traditional identity within the community has to do with distinguishing the family name and they were located on the Yellow and Yangtze River. Traditional Chinese Culture covers large geographical territories, where region is usually divided into distinct sub-cultures. Each region is represented by three ancestral items. For example, Guangdong is represented by chenpi, aged ginger, others include ancient cities like Linan, which include tea leaf, bamboo shoot trunk, and hickory nut. Such distinctions give rise to the old Chinese proverb, 十里不同風, 百里不同俗/十里不同风, 百里不同俗, literally the praxis vary within ten li, since the Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors period, some form of Chinese monarch has been the main ruler above all. Different periods of history have different names for the various positions within society, conceptually each imperial or feudal period is similar, with the government and military officials ranking high in the hierarchy, and the rest of the population under regular Chinese law. From the late Zhou Dynasty onwards, traditional Chinese society was organized into a system of socio-economic classes known as the four occupations. However, this system did not cover all groups while the distinctions between all groups became blurred ever since the commercialization of Chinese culture in the Song Dynasty. This led to the creation of a meritocracy, although success was only to males who could afford test preparation. Imperial examinations required applicants to write essays and demonstrate mastery of the Confucian classics and those who passed the highest level of the exam became elite scholar-officials known as jinshi, a highly esteemed socio-economic position. A major mythological structure developed around the topic of the mythology of the imperial exams, trades and crafts were usually taught by a shifu. The female historian Ban Zhao wrote the Lessons for Women in the Han Dynasty and outlined the four women must abide to, while scholars such as Zhu Xi. Chinese marriage and Taoist sexual practices are some of the rituals, most social values are derived from Confucianism and Taoism
20.
Culture of Japan
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Japanese is the official and primary language of Japan. Japanese is relatively small but has a lexically distinct pitch-accent system, early Japanese is known largely on the basis of its state in the 8th century, when the three major works of Old Japanese were compiled. The earliest attestation of the Japanese language is in a Chinese document from 252 AD, Japanese is written with a combination of three scripts, hiragana, derived from the Chinese cursive script, katakana, derived as a shorthand from Chinese characters, and kanji, imported from China. The Latin alphabet, rōmaji, is often used in modern Japanese, especially for company names and logos, advertising. The Hindu-Arabic numerals are used for numbers, but traditional Sino-Japanese numerals are also very common. Early works of Japanese literature were influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature. Indian literature also had an influence through the spread of Buddhism throughout Japan, eventually, Japanese literature developed into a separate style in its own right as Japanese writers began writing their own works about Japan. Since Japan reopened its ports to Western trading and diplomacy in the 19th century, Western and Eastern literature have strongly affected each other, the music of Japan includes a wide array of performers in distinct styles both traditional and modern. The word for music in Japanese is 音楽, combining the kanji 音 on with the kanji 楽 gaku. Japan is the second largest music market in the world, behind the United States, and the largest in Asia, local music often appears at karaoke venues, which is on lease from the record labels. Traditional Japanese music is different from Western Music and is based on the intervals of human breathing rather than mathematical timing. In 1873, a British traveler claimed that Japanese music, exasperates beyond all endurance the European breast. Painting has been an art in Japan for a long time, the brush is a traditional writing and painting tool. Japanese painters are often categorized by what they painted, as most of them constrained themselves solely to subjects such as animals, landscapes, Chinese papermaking was introduced to Japan around the 7th century. Later, washi was developed from it, native Japanese painting techniques are still in use today, as well as techniques adopted from continental Asia and from the West. Famous Japanese painters include Kanō Sanraku, Maruyama Ōkyo, and Tani Bunchō, the flowing, brush-drawn Japanese rendering of text itself is seen as a traditional art form as well as a means of conveying written information. The written work can consist of phrases, poems, stories, the style and format of the writing can mimic the subject matter, even to the point of texture and stroke speed. In some cases, it can take one hundred attempts to produce the desired effect of a single character
21.
Culture of Korea
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The traditional culture of Korea refers to the shared cultural heritage of the Korean Peninsula. Since the mid-20th century, the peninsula has been split politically between and, resulting in a number of cultural differences, before Joseon Dynasty, the practice of Korean shamanism was deeply rooted in the Korean culture. Music, there is a distinction between court dance and folk dance, common court dances are jeongjaemu performed at banquets, and ilmu, performed at Korean Confucian rituals. Jeongjaemu is divided into native dances and forms imported from Central Asia, ilmu are divided into civil dance and military dance. Many mask dramas and mask dances are performed in regional areas of Korea. The traditional clothing is the genja, it is a kind of dress that women wear on festivals. It is pink with multiple symbols around the neck area, traditional choreography of court dances is reflected in many contemporary productions. Taekkyeon, a traditional Korean martial art, is central to the classic Korean dance, taekkyeon, being a complete system of integrated movement, found its core techniques adaptable to mask, dance and other traditional artforms of Korea. The earliest paintings found on the Korean peninsula are petroglyphs of prehistoric times, with the arrival of Buddhism from India via China, different techniques were introduced. These techniques quickly established themselves as the techniques, but indigenous techniques still survived. There is a tendency towards naturalism with subjects such as landscapes, flowers. Ink is the most common material used, and it is painted on paper or silk. In the 18th century indigenous techniques were advanced, particularly in calligraphy, Arts are both influenced by tradition and realism. For example, Han’s near-photographic Break Time at the Ironworks shows muscular men dripping with sweat, jeong Son’s Peak Chonnyo of Mount Kumgang is a classical Korean landscape of towering cliffs shrouded by mists. There is a set of handicrafts produced in Korea. Most of the handicrafts are created for an everyday use. Traditionally, metal, wood, fabric, lacquerware, and earthenware were the materials used. Ancient handicrafts, such as red and black pottery, share similarities with pottery of Chinese cultures along the Yellow River, the relics found of the Bronze Age, however, are distinctive and more elaborate
22.
Wu Xing
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The Five Phases are Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, and Water. This order of presentation is known as the generation sequence. In the order of mutual overcoming, they are Wood, Earth, Water, Fire, the system of five phases was used for describing interactions and relationships between phenomena. The system is used as a reference in some forms of complementary and alternative medicine. Xing of Wu Xing means moving, a planet is called a star in Chinese. Wu Xing originally refers to the five planets that create five dimensions of earth life. Wu Xing is also translated as Five Elements and this is used extensively by many including practitioners of Five Element acupuncture. This translation arose by analogy with the Western system of the four elements. By the same token, Mù is thought of as Tree rather than Wood, the word element is thus used within the context of Chinese medicine with a different meaning to its usual meaning. It should be recognized that the phase, although commonly preferred, is not perfect. Phase is a translation for the five seasons mentioned below. Manfred Porkert attempts to resolve this by using Evolutive Phase for 五行 Wǔ Xíng and Circuit Phase for 五運 Wǔ Yùn, some of the Mawangdui Silk Texts also present the Wu Xing as five virtues or types of activities. Within Chinese medicine texts the Wu Xing are also referred to as Wu Yun or a combination of the two characters these emphasise the correspondence of five elements to five seasons, another tradition refers to the Wǔ Xíng as Wǔ Dé, the Five Virtues. Wood parts Earth Earth dams Water Water extinguishes Fire Fire melts Metal Metal chops Wood This cycle might also be called controls, according to Wu Xing theory, the structure of the cosmos mirrors the five phases. Each phase has a series of associations with different aspects of nature. In the ancient Chinese form of known as Feng Shui practitioners all based their art. All of these phases are represented within the trigrams, associated with these phases are colors, seasons and shapes, all of which are interacting with each other. Based on a directional energy flow from one phase to the next
23.
Ancient Egypt
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Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. It is one of six civilizations to arise independently, Egyptian civilization followed prehistoric Egypt and coalesced around 3150 BC with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh Narmer. In the aftermath of Alexander the Greats death, one of his generals, Ptolemy Soter and this Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom ruled Egypt until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province. The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture, the predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world and its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for centuries. The Nile has been the lifeline of its region for much of human history, nomadic modern human hunter-gatherers began living in the Nile valley through the end of the Middle Pleistocene some 120,000 years ago. By the late Paleolithic period, the climate of Northern Africa became increasingly hot and dry. In Predynastic and Early Dynastic times, the Egyptian climate was less arid than it is today. Large regions of Egypt were covered in treed savanna and traversed by herds of grazing ungulates, foliage and fauna were far more prolific in all environs and the Nile region supported large populations of waterfowl. Hunting would have been common for Egyptians, and this is also the period when many animals were first domesticated. The largest of these cultures in upper Egypt was the Badari, which probably originated in the Western Desert, it was known for its high quality ceramics, stone tools. The Badari was followed by the Amratian and Gerzeh cultures, which brought a number of technological improvements, as early as the Naqada I Period, predynastic Egyptians imported obsidian from Ethiopia, used to shape blades and other objects from flakes. In Naqada II times, early evidence exists of contact with the Near East, particularly Canaan, establishing a power center at Hierakonpolis, and later at Abydos, Naqada III leaders expanded their control of Egypt northwards along the Nile. They also traded with Nubia to the south, the oases of the desert to the west. Royal Nubian burials at Qustul produced artifacts bearing the oldest-known examples of Egyptian dynastic symbols, such as the crown of Egypt. They also developed a ceramic glaze known as faience, which was used well into the Roman Period to decorate cups, amulets, and figurines. During the last predynastic phase, the Naqada culture began using written symbols that eventually were developed into a system of hieroglyphs for writing the ancient Egyptian language. The Early Dynastic Period was approximately contemporary to the early Sumerian-Akkadian civilisation of Mesopotamia, the third-century BC Egyptian priest Manetho grouped the long line of pharaohs from Menes to his own time into 30 dynasties, a system still used today
24.
Ancient Greece
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Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th-9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity. Immediately following this period was the beginning of the Early Middle Ages and this was followed by the period of Classical Greece, an era that began with the Greco-Persian Wars, lasting from the 5th to 4th centuries BC. Due to the conquests by Alexander the Great of Macedonia, Hellenistic civilization flourished from Central Asia to the end of the Mediterranean Sea. Classical Greek culture, especially philosophy, had a influence on ancient Rome. For this reason Classical Greece is generally considered to be the culture which provided the foundation of modern Western culture and is considered the cradle of Western civilization. Classical Antiquity in the Mediterranean region is considered to have begun in the 8th century BC. Classical Antiquity in Greece is preceded by the Greek Dark Ages and this period is succeeded, around the 8th century BC, by the Orientalizing Period during which a strong influence of Syro-Hittite, Jewish, Assyrian, Phoenician and Egyptian cultures becomes apparent. The end of the Dark Ages is also dated to 776 BC. The Archaic period gives way to the Classical period around 500 BC, Ancient Periods Astronomical year numbering Dates are approximate, consult particular article for details The history of Greece during Classical Antiquity may be subdivided into five major periods. The earliest of these is the Archaic period, in which artists made larger free-standing sculptures in stiff, the Archaic period is often taken to end with the overthrow of the last tyrant of Athens and the start of Athenian Democracy in 508 BC. It was followed by the Classical period, characterized by a style which was considered by observers to be exemplary, i. e. classical, as shown in the Parthenon. This period saw the Greco-Persian Wars and the Rise of Macedon, following the Classical period was the Hellenistic period, during which Greek culture and power expanded into the Near and Middle East. This period begins with the death of Alexander and ends with the Roman conquest, Herodotus is widely known as the father of history, his Histories are eponymous of the entire field. Herodotus was succeeded by authors such as Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Plato, most of these authors were either Athenian or pro-Athenian, which is why far more is known about the history and politics of Athens than those of many other cities. Their scope is limited by a focus on political, military and diplomatic history, ignoring economic. In the 8th century BC, Greece began to emerge from the Dark Ages which followed the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, literacy had been lost and Mycenaean script forgotten, but the Greeks adopted the Phoenician alphabet, modifying it to create the Greek alphabet. The Lelantine War is the earliest documented war of the ancient Greek period and it was fought between the important poleis of Chalcis and Eretria over the fertile Lelantine plain of Euboea. Both cities seem to have suffered a decline as result of the long war, a mercantile class arose in the first half of the 7th century BC, shown by the introduction of coinage in about 680 BC
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Hesperus
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In Greek mythology, Hesperus /ˈhɛspərᵿs/ is the Evening Star, the planet Venus in the evening. He is the son of the dawn goddess Eos and is the half-brother of her other son, Hesperus father was Cephalus, a mortal, while Phosphorus was the star god Astraios. Hesperus is the personification of the star, the planet Venus in the evening. Heosphoros in the Greek Septuagint and Lucifer in Jeromes Latin Vulgate were used to translate the Hebrew Helel, there is a tendency to conclude that the ancient Greeks thought that Eosphorus and Hesperos, because of the distinction in the names, were two different celestial objects. Thereby the Greeks dedicated the wandering star to Aphrodite, as the equivalent of Ishtar and this order of influence is not backed by scholars, nor any historical documents. Rather the two mythological explanations seem to have existed simultaneously and interchangably, eosphorus/Hesperus was said to be the father of Ceyx and Daedalion. In some sources, he is said to be the father of the Hesperides. In the philosophy of language, Hesperus is Phosphorus is a sentence in relation to the semantics of proper names. Saul Kripke used the sentence to demonstrate that the knowledge of something necessary could be rather than knowable a priori. Earendel Hesperides Lucifer, the Latin name for the Morning Star The Wreck of the Hesperus Aspect of Venus Hesperus
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Phosphorus (morning star)
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Phosphorus is the Morning Star, the planet Venus in its morning appearance. Φαοσφόρος and Φαεσφόρος are forms of the name in some Greek dialects. Another Greek name for the Morning Star is Heosphoros, meaning Dawn-Bringer, the form Eosphorus is sometimes met in English, as if from Ἠωσφόρος, which is not actually found in Greek literature, but would be the form that Ἑωσφόρος would have in some dialects. As a translation of the same Hebrew word the King James Version gave Lucifer, modern translations of the same passage render the Hebrew word instead as morning star, daystar, shining one or shining star. The morning star is an appearance of the planet Venus, an inferior planet, Venus is the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and the Moon, outshining the planets Jupiter and Saturn but, while these rise high in the sky, Venus never does. This may lie behind myths about deities associated with the morning star proudly striving for the highest place among the gods, in Greek mythology, Hesiod calls Phosphorus a son of Astraeus and Eos, but other say of Cephalus and Eos, or of Atlas. The Latin poet Ovid, speaking of Phosphorus and Hesperus as identical, Ovid also makes him the father of Ceyx, while the Latin grammarian Servius makes him the father of the Hesperides or of Hesperis. Halbertal and Margalit interpret this as indicating that they did not identify the star with the god or gods of mythology embodied in the star, in the philosophy of language, Hesperus is Phosphorus is a famous sentence in relation to the semantics of proper names. Saul Kripke used the sentence to demonstrate that the knowledge of something necessary — in this case the identity of Hesperus and Phosphorus — could be rather than known a priori. The Latin word corresponding to Greek Phosphorus is Lucifer and it is used in its astronomical sense both in prose and poetry. Poets sometimes personify the star, placing it in a mythological context, earendel Lucifer Photine or Photini/Photina of Samarita Aspect of Venus
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Hellenistic period
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It is often considered a period of transition, sometimes even of decadence or degeneration, compared to the enlightenment of the Greek Classical era. The Hellenistic period saw the rise of New Comedy, Alexandrian poetry, the Septuagint, Greek science was advanced by the works of the mathematician Euclid and the polymath Archimedes. The religious sphere expanded to include new gods such as the Greco-Egyptian Serapis, eastern deities such as Attis and Cybele, the Hellenistic period was characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization which established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa. This resulted in the export of Greek culture and language to new realms. Equally, however, these new kingdoms were influenced by the cultures, adopting local practices where beneficial, necessary. Hellenistic culture thus represents a fusion of the Ancient Greek world with that of the Near East, Middle East and this mixture gave rise to a common Attic-based Greek dialect, known as Koine Greek, which became the lingua franca through the Hellenistic world. Scholars and historians are divided as to what event signals the end of the Hellenistic era, Hellenistic is distinguished from Hellenic in that the first encompasses the entire sphere of direct ancient Greek influence, while the latter refers to Greece itself. The word originated from the German term hellenistisch, from Ancient Greek Ἑλληνιστής, from Ἑλλάς, Hellenistic is a modern word and a 19th-century concept, the idea of a Hellenistic period did not exist in Ancient Greece. Although words related in form or meaning, e. g, the major issue with the term Hellenistic lies in its convenience, as the spread of Greek culture was not the generalized phenomenon that the term implies. Some areas of the world were more affected by Greek influences than others. The Greek population and the population did not always mix, the Greeks moved and brought their own culture. While a few fragments exist, there is no surviving historical work which dates to the hundred years following Alexanders death. The works of the major Hellenistic historians Hieronymus of Cardia, Duris of Samos, the earliest and most credible surviving source for the Hellenistic period is Polybius of Megalopolis, a statesman of the Achaean League until 168 BC when he was forced to go to Rome as a hostage. His Histories eventually grew to a length of forty books, covering the years 220 to 167 BC, another important source, Plutarchs Parallel Lives though more preoccupied with issues of personal character and morality, outlines the history of important Hellenistic figures. Appian of Alexandria wrote a history of the Roman empire that includes information of some Hellenistic kingdoms, other sources include Justins epitome of Pompeius Trogus Historiae Philipicae and a summary of Arrians Events after Alexander, by Photios I of Constantinople. Lesser supplementary sources include Curtius Rufus, Pausanias, Pliny, in the field of philosophy, Diogenes Laertius Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers is the main source. Ancient Greece had traditionally been a collection of fiercely independent city-states. After the Peloponnesian War, Greece had fallen under a Spartan hegemony, in which Sparta was pre-eminent but not all-powerful
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Aphrodite
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Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation. She is identified with the planet Venus, and her Roman equivalent is the goddess Venus, as with many ancient Greek deities, there is more than one story about her origins. According to Hesiods Theogony, she was born when Cronus cut off Uranuss genitals and threw them into the sea, according to Homers Iliad, she is the daughter of Zeus and Dione. In Plato, these two origins are said to be of hitherto separate entities, Aphrodite Ourania and Aphrodite Pandemos, Aphrodite had many lovers—both gods, such as Ares, and men, such as Anchises. She played a role in the Eros and Psyche legend, and was lover and surrogate mother of Adonis. Many lesser beings were said to be children of Aphrodite, Aphrodite is also known as Cytherea and Cypris after the two cult sites, Cythera and Cyprus, which claimed to be her place of birth. Myrtle, roses, doves, sparrows and swans were sacred to her, the ancient Greeks identified her with the Ancient Egyptian goddess Hathor. Aphrodite had many names such as Acidalia and Cerigo, each used by a different local cult of the goddess in Greece. The Greeks recognized all of these names as referring to the single goddess Aphrodite, despite the differences in what these local cults believed the goddess demanded of them. The Attic philosophers of the 4th century, however, drew a distinction between a celestial Aphrodite of transcendent principles, and a separate, common Aphrodite who was the goddess of the people, hesiod derives Aphrodite from aphrós sea-foam, interpreting the name as risen from the foam. Michael Janda, accepting this as genuine, claims the birth myth as an Indo-European mytheme. Likewise, Witczak proposes an Indo-European compound *abʰor- very and *dʰei- to shine and it has been argued that etymologies based on comparison with Eos are unlikely since Aphrodites attributes are entirely different from those of Eos or the Vedic deity Ushas. A number of improbable non-Greek etymologies have suggested in scholarship. One Semitic etymology compares Aphrodite to the Assyrian barīrītu, the name of a demon that appears in Middle Babylonian. Hammarström looks to Etruscan, comparing prϑni lord, an Etruscan honorific loaned into Greek as πρύτανις and this would make the theonym in origin an honorific, the lady. Hjalmar Frisk and Robert Beekes reject this etymology as implausible, especially since Aphrodite actually appears in Etruscan in the borrowed form Apru, the medieval Etymologicum Magnum offers a highly contrived etymology, deriving Aphrodite from the compound habrodíaitos, she who lives delicately, from habrós and díaita. The alteration from b to ph is explained as a characteristic of Greek obvious from the Macedonians. Aphrodite is usually said to have been born near her chief center of worship, Paphos, on the island of Cyprus, however, other versions of her myth have her born near the island of Cythera, hence another of her names, Cytherea
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Astarte
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Astarte or Ashtoreth is the Hellenized form of the Middle Eastern goddess Ishtar, worshipped from the Bronze Age through classical antiquity. The name is associated with her worship in the ancient Levant among the Canaanites. She was also celebrated in Egypt following the importation of Levantine cults there, the name Astarte is sometimes also applied to her cults in Mesopotamian cultures like Assyria and Babylonia. Astarte is one of a number of associated with the chief goddess or female divinity of those peoples. She is recorded in Akkadian as As-dar-tu, the form of Ishtar. The name appears in Ugaritic as ʻAthtart or ʻAṭtart, in Phoenician as Ashtart or Aštart, the Hebrews also referred to the Ashtarot or Astartes in the plural. The Etruscan Pyrgi Tablets record the name Uni-Astre, Astarte was connected with fertility, sexuality, and war. Her symbols were the lion, the horse, the sphinx, the dove, pictorial representations often show her naked. She has been known as the deified morning and/or evening star, Astarte was worshipped in Syria and Canaan beginning in the first millennium BC and was first mentioned in texts from Ugarit. She came from the same Semitic origins as the Mesopotamian goddess Ishtar, and her worship spread to Cyprus, where she may have been merged with an ancient Cypriot goddess. This merged Cypriot goddess may have been adopted into the Greek pantheon in Mycenaean, other major centers of Astartes worship were the Phoenician city states of Sidon, Tyre, and Byblos. Coins from Sidon portray a chariot in which a globe appears and she was often depicted on Sidonian coins as standing on the prow of a galley, leaning forward with right hand outstretched, being thus the original of all figureheads for sailing ships. In Sidon, she shared a temple with Eshmun, coins from Beirut show Poseidon, Astarte, and Eshmun worshipped together. Other centers were Cythera, Malta, and Eryx in Sicily from which she became known to the Romans as Venus Erycina, a bilingual inscription on the Pyrgi Tablets dating to about 500 BC found near Caere in Etruria equates Astarte with Etruscan Uni-Astre, that is, Juno. At Carthage Astarte was worshipped alongside the goddess Tanit, the Aramean goddess Atargatis may originally have been equated with Astarte, but the first element of the name Atargatis appears to be related to the Ugaritic form of Asherahs name, Athirat. In the Baʿal Epic of Ugarit, Athirat, the consort of the god El, Astarte arrived in ancient Egypt during the 18th dynasty along with other deities who were worshipped by northwest Semitic people. She was especially worshipped in her aspect as a warrior goddess, in the Contest Between Horus and Set, these two goddesses appear as daughters of Ra and are given as allies to the god Set, here identified with the Semitic name Hadad. Plutarch, in his On Isis and Osiris, indicates that the King and Queen of Byblos, in the description of the Phoenician pantheon ascribed to Sanchuniathon, Astarte appears as a daughter of Epigeius and Ge, and sister of the god Elus
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Greek language
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Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, native to Greece and other parts of the Eastern Mediterranean. It has the longest documented history of any living language, spanning 34 centuries of written records and its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the major part of its history, other systems, such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary, were used previously. The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin, Cyrillic, Armenian, Coptic, Gothic and many other writing systems. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world, during antiquity, Greek was a widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world and many places beyond. It would eventually become the official parlance of the Byzantine Empire, the language is spoken by at least 13.2 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey, and the Greek diaspora. Greek roots are used to coin new words for other languages, Greek. Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around the 3rd millennium BC, the earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the worlds oldest recorded living language. Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now extinct Anatolian languages, the Greek language is conventionally divided into the following periods, Proto-Greek, the unrecorded but assumed last ancestor of all known varieties of Greek. The unity of Proto-Greek would have ended as Hellenic migrants entered the Greek peninsula sometime in the Neolithic era or the Bronze Age, Mycenaean Greek, the language of the Mycenaean civilisation. It is recorded in the Linear B script on tablets dating from the 15th century BC onwards, Ancient Greek, in its various dialects, the language of the Archaic and Classical periods of the ancient Greek civilisation. It was widely known throughout the Roman Empire, after the Roman conquest of Greece, an unofficial bilingualism of Greek and Latin was established in the city of Rome and Koine Greek became a first or second language in the Roman Empire. The origin of Christianity can also be traced through Koine Greek, Medieval Greek, also known as Byzantine Greek, the continuation of Koine Greek in Byzantine Greece, up to the demise of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century. Much of the written Greek that was used as the language of the Byzantine Empire was an eclectic middle-ground variety based on the tradition of written Koine. Modern Greek, Stemming from Medieval Greek, Modern Greek usages can be traced in the Byzantine period and it is the language used by the modern Greeks, and, apart from Standard Modern Greek, there are several dialects of it. In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia, the historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of the Greek language is often emphasised. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than a foreign language and it is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, Homeric Greek is probably closer to demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English, Greek is spoken by about 13 million people, mainly in Greece, Albania and Cyprus, but also worldwide by the large Greek diaspora. Greek is the language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population
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Latin
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Latin is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. The Latin alphabet is derived from the Etruscan and Greek alphabets, Latin was originally spoken in Latium, in the Italian Peninsula. Through the power of the Roman Republic, it became the dominant language, Vulgar Latin developed into the Romance languages, such as Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, French, and Romanian. Latin, Italian and French have contributed many words to the English language, Latin and Ancient Greek roots are used in theology, biology, and medicine. By the late Roman Republic, Old Latin had been standardised into Classical Latin, Vulgar Latin was the colloquial form spoken during the same time and attested in inscriptions and the works of comic playwrights like Plautus and Terence. Late Latin is the language from the 3rd century. Later, Early Modern Latin and Modern Latin evolved, Latin was used as the language of international communication, scholarship, and science until well into the 18th century, when it began to be supplanted by vernaculars. Ecclesiastical Latin remains the language of the Holy See and the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church. Today, many students, scholars and members of the Catholic clergy speak Latin fluently and it is taught in primary, secondary and postsecondary educational institutions around the world. The language has been passed down through various forms, some inscriptions have been published in an internationally agreed, monumental, multivolume series, the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum. Authors and publishers vary, but the format is about the same, volumes detailing inscriptions with a critical apparatus stating the provenance, the reading and interpretation of these inscriptions is the subject matter of the field of epigraphy. The works of several hundred ancient authors who wrote in Latin have survived in whole or in part and they are in part the subject matter of the field of classics. The Cat in the Hat, and a book of fairy tales, additional resources include phrasebooks and resources for rendering everyday phrases and concepts into Latin, such as Meissners Latin Phrasebook. The Latin influence in English has been significant at all stages of its insular development. From the 16th to the 18th centuries, English writers cobbled together huge numbers of new words from Latin and Greek words, dubbed inkhorn terms, as if they had spilled from a pot of ink. Many of these words were used once by the author and then forgotten, many of the most common polysyllabic English words are of Latin origin through the medium of Old French. Romance words make respectively 59%, 20% and 14% of English, German and those figures can rise dramatically when only non-compound and non-derived words are included. Accordingly, Romance words make roughly 35% of the vocabulary of Dutch, Roman engineering had the same effect on scientific terminology as a whole
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Ancient Rome
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In its many centuries of existence, the Roman state evolved from a monarchy to a classical republic and then to an increasingly autocratic empire. Through conquest and assimilation, it came to dominate the Mediterranean region and then Western Europe, Asia Minor, North Africa and it is often grouped into classical antiquity together with ancient Greece, and their similar cultures and societies are known as the Greco-Roman world. Ancient Roman civilisation has contributed to modern government, law, politics, engineering, art, literature, architecture, technology, warfare, religion, language and society. Rome professionalised and expanded its military and created a system of government called res publica, the inspiration for modern republics such as the United States and France. By the end of the Republic, Rome had conquered the lands around the Mediterranean and beyond, its domain extended from the Atlantic to Arabia, the Roman Empire emerged with the end of the Republic and the dictatorship of Augustus Caesar. 721 years of Roman-Persian Wars started in 92 BC with their first war against Parthia and it would become the longest conflict in human history, and have major lasting effects and consequences for both empires. Under Trajan, the Empire reached its territorial peak, Republican mores and traditions started to decline during the imperial period, with civil wars becoming a prelude common to the rise of a new emperor. Splinter states, such as the Palmyrene Empire, would divide the Empire during the crisis of the 3rd century. Plagued by internal instability and attacked by various migrating peoples, the part of the empire broke up into independent kingdoms in the 5th century. This splintering is a landmark historians use to divide the ancient period of history from the pre-medieval Dark Ages of Europe. King Numitor was deposed from his throne by his brother, Amulius, while Numitors daughter, Rhea Silvia, because Rhea Silvia was raped and impregnated by Mars, the Roman god of war, the twins were considered half-divine. The new king, Amulius, feared Romulus and Remus would take back the throne, a she-wolf saved and raised them, and when they were old enough, they returned the throne of Alba Longa to Numitor. Romulus became the source of the citys name, in order to attract people to the city, Rome became a sanctuary for the indigent, exiled, and unwanted. This caused a problem for Rome, which had a large workforce but was bereft of women, Romulus traveled to the neighboring towns and tribes and attempted to secure marriage rights, but as Rome was so full of undesirables they all refused. Legend says that the Latins invited the Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, leading to the integration of the Latins, after a long time in rough seas, they landed at the banks of the Tiber River. Not long after they landed, the men wanted to take to the sea again, one woman, named Roma, suggested that the women burn the ships out at sea to prevent them from leaving. At first, the men were angry with Roma, but they realized that they were in the ideal place to settle. They named the settlement after the woman who torched their ships, the Roman poet Virgil recounted this legend in his classical epic poem the Aeneid
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Venus (mythology)
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Venus is the Roman goddess whose functions encompassed love, beauty, desire, sex, fertility, prosperity and victory. In Roman mythology, she was the mother of the Roman people through her son, Aeneas, Julius Caesar claimed her as his ancestor. Venus was central to religious festivals, and was revered in Roman religion under numerous cult titles. The Romans adapted the myths and iconography of her Greek counterpart Aphrodite for Roman art, in the later classical tradition of the West, Venus becomes one of the most widely referenced deities of Greco-Roman mythology as the embodiment of love and sexuality. It has connections to venerari and venia through a common root in an Indo-European *wenes- or *u̯enis. Their common Proto-Indo-European root is assumed as *wen- or *u̯en- to strive for, wish for, desire, Venus has been described as perhaps the most original creation of the Roman pantheon, and an ill-defined and assimilative native goddess, combined with a strange and exotic Aphrodite. The ambivalence of her persuasive functions has been perceived in the relationship of the root *venes- with Latin venenum, in the sense of a charm, in myth, Venus-Aphrodite was born of sea-foam. Roman theology presents Venus as the yielding, watery female principle, essential to the generation and her male counterparts in the Roman pantheon, Vulcan and Mars, are active and fiery. Venus absorbs and tempers the male essence, uniting the opposites of male and female in mutual affection and she is essentially assimilative and benign, and embraces several otherwise quite disparate functions. She can give military victory, sexual success, good fortune, in one context, she is a goddess of prostitutes, in another, she turns the hearts of men and women from sexual vice to virtue. Images of Venus have been found in murals, mosaics. Petronius, in his Satyricon, places an image of Venus among the Lares of the freedman Trimalchios lararium, prospective brides offered Venus a gift before the wedding, the nature of the gift, and its timing, are unknown. Some Roman sources say that girls who come of age offer their toys to Venus, it is unclear where the offering is made, in dice-games, a popular pastime among Romans of all classes, the luckiest, best possible roll was known as Venus. Venus signs were for the most part the same as Aphrodites, Venus statues, and her worshipers, wore myrtle crowns at her festivals. Likewise, Roman folk-etymology transformed the ancient, obscure goddess Murcia into Venus of the Myrtles, myrtle was thought a particularly potent aphrodisiac. The female pudendum, particularly the clitoris, was known as murtos, as goddess of love and sex, Venus played an essential role at Roman prenuptial rites and wedding nights, so myrtle and roses were used in bridal bouquets. Marriage itself was not a seduction but a condition, under Junos authority. Venus was also a patron of the ordinary, everyday wine drunk by most Roman men and women, in the rites to Bona Dea, a goddess of female chastity, Venus, myrtle and anything male were not only excluded, but unmentionable
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Pliny the Elder
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In the latter number will be my uncle, by virtue of his own and of your compositions. Pliny is referring to the fact that Tacitus relied on his uncles now missing work on the History of the German Wars. The wind caused by the sixth and largest pyroclastic surge of the eruption would not allow his ship to leave the shore, and Pliny probably died during this event. Plinys dates are pinned to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD79 and a statement of his nephew that he died in his 56th year, Pliny was the son of an equestrian, Gaius Plinius Celer, and his wife, Marcella. Neither the younger nor the elder Pliny mention the names and their ultimate source is a fragmentary inscription found in a field in Verona and recorded by the 16th century Augustinian monk Onofrio Panvinio at Verona. The reading of the inscription depends on the reconstruction, but in all cases the names come through, whether he was an augur and whether she was named Grania Marcella are less certain. Jean Hardouin presents a statement from a source that he claims was ancient, that Pliny was from Verona. Hardouin also cites the conterraneity of Catullus, additional efforts to connect Celer and Marcella with other gentes are highly speculative. Hardouin is the scholar to use his unknown source. He kept statues of his ancestors there, a statue of Pliny on the facade of the Duomo of Como celebrates him as a native son. He had a sister, Plinia, who married into the Caecilii and was the mother of his nephew, Pliny the Younger, whose letters describe his work and study regimen in detail. In one of his letters to Tacitus, Pliny the Younger details how his uncles breakfasts would be light and simple following the customs of our forefathers. This shows that Pliny the Younger wanted it to be conveyed that Pliny the Elder was a good Roman and this statement would have pleased Tacitus. Two inscriptions identifying the hometown of Pliny the Younger as Como take precedence over the Verona theory, one commemorates the youngers career as imperial magistrate and details his considerable charitable and municipal expenses on behalf of the people of Como. Another identifies his father Lucius village as Fecchio near Como and it is likely therefore that Plinia was a local girl and Pliny the Elder, her brother, was from Como. Gaius was a member of the Plinii gens and he did not take his fathers cognomen, Celer, but assumed his own, Secundus. As his adopted son took the same cognomen, Pliny founded a branch, no earlier instances of the Plinii are known. In 59 BC, only about 82 years before Plinys birth, Julius Caesar founded Novum Comum as a colonia to secure the region against the Alpine tribes, whom he had been unable to defeat
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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
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Pre-Columbian era
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For this reason the alternative terms of Precontact Americas, Pre-Colonial Americas or Prehistoric Americas are also in use. In areas of Latin America the term used is Pre-Hispanic. Other civilizations were contemporary with the period and were described in European historical accounts of the time. A few, such as the Maya civilization, had their own written records, because many Christian Europeans of the time viewed such texts as heretical, men like Diego de Landa destroyed many texts in pyres, even while seeking to preserve native histories. Only a few documents have survived in their original languages, while others were transcribed or dictated into Spanish, giving modern historians glimpses of ancient culture. Indigenous American cultures continue to evolve after the pre-Columbian era, many of these peoples and their descendants continue traditional practices, while evolving and adapting new cultural practices and technologies into their lives. Now, the study of pre-Columbian cultures is most often based on scientific. Asian nomads are thought to have entered the Americas via the Bering Land Bridge, now the Bering Strait, genetic evidence found in Amerindians maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA supports the theory of multiple genetic populations migrating from Asia. Over the course of millennia, Paleo-Indians spread throughout North and South America, exactly when the first group of people migrated into the Americas is the subject of much debate. One of the earliest identifiable cultures was the Clovis culture, with sites dating from some 13,000 years ago, however, older sites dating back to 20,000 years ago have been claimed. Some genetic studies estimate the colonization of the Americas dates from between 40,000 and 13,000 years ago, the chronology of migration models is currently divided into two general approaches. The first is the short chronology theory with the first movement beyond Alaska into the New World occurring no earlier than 14, 000–17,000 years ago, followed by successive waves of immigrants. The second belief is the long chronology theory, which proposes that the first group of people entered the hemisphere at an earlier date, possibly 50. In that case, the Eskimo peoples would have arrived separately and at a later date, probably no more than 2,000 years ago. The North American climate was unstable as the ice age receded and it finally stabilized by about 10,000 years ago, climatic conditions were then very similar to todays. Within this timeframe, roughly pertaining to the Archaic Period, numerous archaeological cultures have been identified, the unstable climate led to widespread migration, with early Paleo-Indians soon spreading throughout the Americas, diversifying into many hundreds of culturally distinct tribes. The paleo-indians were hunter-gatherers, likely characterized by small, mobile bands consisting of approximately 20 to 50 members of an extended family and these groups moved from place to place as preferred resources were depleted and new supplies were sought. During much of the Paleo-Indian period, bands are thought to have subsisted primarily through hunting now-extinct giant land animals such as mastodon, Paleo-Indian groups carried a variety of tools
37.
Dresden Codex
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The Dresden Codex is the oldest surviving book from the Americas, dating to the thirteenth or fourteenth century. The codex was rediscovered in the city of Dresden and is how the Maya book received its present name and it is located in the museum of the Saxon State Library in Dresden, Germany. The book received serious damage during World War II. The pages are 8 inches high and can be folded accordion-style and it has Mayan hieroglyphs and refers to an original text of some three or four hundred years earlier, describing local history and astronomical tables. The Dresden Codex contains 78 pages with decorative board covers on the front, most pages have writing on both sides. They have a border of red paint, although many have lost this framing due to age deterioration, the pages are generally divided into three sections, students of the codex have arbitrary labeled these sections a, b, and c. Some pages have just two sections, while one has four and another five sections. The individual sections with their own theme are generally separated by a red vertical line, sections are generally divided into two to four columns. The Dresden Codex is one of four hieroglyphic Maya codices that survived the Spanish Inquisition in the New World, three, the Dresden, Madrid, and Paris codices, are named after the city where they were ultimately rediscovered. The fourth is the Grolier Codex, located at the Grolier Club in New York City, the Dresden Codex is held by the Saxon State and University Library Dresden in Dresden, Germany. The Maya codices all have about the same pages, with a height of about 20 centimetres. The pictures and glyphs were painted by skilled craftsmen using thin brushes, black and red were the main colors used for many of the pages. Some pages have detailed backgrounds in shades of yellow, green, the codex was written by eight different scribes, who all had their own writing style, glyph designs, and subject matter. The Dresden Codex is described by historian J. Eric S. Thompson as writings of the people of the Yucatán Peninsula in southeastern Mexico. Maya historians Peter J. Schmidt, Mercedes de la Garza, Thompson further narrows the probable origin of the Dresden Codex to the area of Chichen Itza, because certain picture symbols in the codex are only found on monuments in that location. He also argues that the tables would support this as the place of origin. British historian Clive Ruggles suggests, based on the analyses of several scholars, Thompson narrows the date closer to 1200 to 1250. Maya archaeologist Linton Satterthwaite puts the date when it was made as no later than 1345 and it is the oldest surviving book from the Americas
38.
Persian mythology
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Persian mythology are traditional tales and stories of ancient origin, all involving extraordinary or supernatural beings. Myths play a part in Iranian culture and our understanding of them is increased when we consider them within the context of Iranian history. The geography of this region, with its mountain ranges. This pottery, light grey to black in colour, appeared around 1400 BC and it is called Early Grey Ware or Iron I, the latter name indicating the beginning of the Iron Age in this area. The central collection of Persian mythology is the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, the characters of Persian mythology almost always fall into one of two camps. They are either good, or they are evil, the most famous legendary character in the Persian epics and mythology is Rostam. On the other side of the fence is Zahhak, a symbol of despotism who was, finally, Zahhak was guarded by two vipers which grew out from both of his shoulders. No matter how many times they were beheaded, new heads grew on them to guard him. The snake, like in other mythologies, was a symbol of evil, but many other animals and birds appear in Iranian mythology, and, especially. Most famous of these is Simorgh, a beautiful and powerful bird, and Homa. Published by Echo of Iran, Tehran 1965, Iranian Mythology by Albert J. Carnoy Indo-Iranian Mythology Iran Almanac 2006
39.
Anahita
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Aredvi Sura Anahita is Ardwisur Anahid or Nahid in Middle- and Modern Persian, Anahit or Anaheed in Armenian. The Greek and Roman historians of classical antiquity refer to her either as Anaïtis or identified her with one of the divinities from their own pantheons,270 Anahita, a silicaceous S-type asteroid is named after her. Only Arədevī is specific to the divinity and it might have been derived from Arya devi The words sūra and anāhīta are generic Avestan language adjectives, and respectively mean mighty and pure. Both adjectives also appear as epithets of other divinities or divine concepts such as Haoma, both adjectives are also attested in Vedic Sanskrit. In its old Iranian form *Harahvatī, her name was given to the region, rich in rivers and it might have been derived from the Goddess Sarasvati. In the Persian texts of the Sassanid and later eras, Arədvī Sūra Anāhīta appears as Ardwisur Anāhīd, the evidence suggest a western Iranian origin of Anāhīta. She shares characteristics with Mat Zemlya in Slavic mythology and it was moreover the association with the planet Venus, it seems, which led Herodotus to record that the learnt to sacrifice to the heavenly goddess from the Assyrians and Arabians. Ishtar also apparently gave Aredvi Sura Anahita the epithet Banu, the Lady and it is completely unknown in the texts of the Avesta, but evident in Sassanid-era middle Persian inscriptions and in a middle Persian Zend translation of Yasna 68.13. Also in Zoroastrian texts from the post-conquest epoch, the divinity is referred to as Anahid the Lady, Ardwisur the Lady, according to Boyce, it is probable that there was once a Perso–Elamite divinity by the name of *Anahiti. It is then likely that it was this divinity that was an analogue of Ishtar, and that it is this divinity with which Aredvi Sura Anahita was conflated. The cosmological qualities of the river are alluded to in Yasht 5, but properly developed only in the Bundahishn. In both texts, Aredvi Sura Anahita is not only a divinity, but also the source of the world river and the world river itself. This source is at the top of the world mountain Hara Berezaiti, High Hara, around which the sky revolves and that is at the center of Airyanem Vaejah, the first of the lands created by Mazda. The water, warm and clear, flows through a hundred thousand golden channels towards Mount Hugar, on the summit of that mountain is Lake Urvis, the Turmoil, into which the waters flow, becoming quite purified and exiting through another golden channel. Another portion runs down to Vourukasha, the sea upon which the earth rests. In yet other chapters, the text equates the two, as in Ardwisur who is Anahid, the father and mother of the Waters and this legend of the river that descends from Mount Hara appears to have remained a part of living observance for many generations. A Greek inscription from Roman times found in Asia Minor reads the great goddess Anaïtis of high Hara, on Greek coins of the imperial epoch, she is spoken of as Anaïtis of the sacred water. Aredvi Sura Anahita is principally addressed in Yasht 5, also known as the Aban Yasht, Yasna 65 is the third of the hymns recited at the Ab-Zohr, the offering to the waters that accompanies the culminating rites of the Yasna service
40.
Pahlavi scripts
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Pahlavi or Pahlevi denotes a particular and exclusively written form of various Middle Iranian languages. The essential characteristics of Pahlavi are the use of a specific Aramaic-derived script, the Pahlavi script, Pahlavi compositions have been found for the dialects/ethnolects of Parthia, Persis, Sogdiana, Scythia, and Khotan. Independent of the variant for which the Pahlavi system was used, Pahlavi is then an admixture of written Imperial Aramaic, from which Pahlavi derives its script, logograms, and some of its vocabulary. Spoken Middle Iranian, from which Pahlavi derives its terminations, symbol rules, Pahlavi may thus be defined as a system of writing applied to a specific language group, but with critical features alien to that language group. It has the characteristics of a language, but is not one. It is a written system, but much Pahlavi literature remains essentially an oral literature committed to writing. If this etymology is correct, Parthav presumably became pahlaw through a semivowel glide rt change to l, the term has been traced back further to Avestan pərəthu- broad, also evident in Sanskrit pŗthvi- earth and parthivi of the earth. Common to all Indo-Iranian languages is a connotation of mighty, the earliest attested use of Pahlavi dates to the reign of Arsaces I of Parthia in early Parthian coins with Pahlavi scripts. There are also several Pahlavi texts written during the reign of Mithridates I, such fragments, as also the rock inscriptions of Sassanid kings, which are datable to the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, do not, however, qualify as a significant literary corpus. It is in an archaic script than Book Pahlavi. After the Muslim conquest of Persia, the Pahlavi script was replaced by the Arabic script, except in Zoroastrian sacred literature, the replacement of the Pahlavi script with the Arabic script in order to write the Persian language was done by the Tahirids in 9th century Khurasan. In the present-day, Pahlavi is frequently identified with the dialect of south-west Iran, formerly and properly called Pārsi. This practice can be dated to the immediately following the Islamic conquest. Tables showing the letters and their names or pronunciations are available on line, the Pahlavi script is one of the two essential characteristics of the Pahlavi system. Its origin and development occurred independently of the various Middle Iranian languages for which it was used, the Pahlavi script is derived from the Aramaic script as it was used under the Achaemenids, with modifications to support the phonology of the Iranian languages. It is essentially a typical abjad, where, in general, only vowels are marked with matres lectionis. In addition to this, during much of its later history, similarly, certain words continued to be spelt with postvocalic ⟨s⟩ and ⟨t⟩ even after the consonants had been debuccalized to ⟨h⟩ in the living language. The Pahlavi script consisted of two widely used forms, Inscriptional Pahlavi and Book Pahlavi, a third form, Psalter Pahlavi, is not widely attested
41.
Bundahishn
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Bundahishn, meaning Primal Creation, is the name traditionally given to an encyclopædiaic collections of Zoroastrian cosmogony and cosmology written in Book Pahlavi. The original name of the work is not known, although the Bundahishn draws on the Avesta and develops ideas alluded to in those texts, it is not itself scripture. The content reflects Zoroastrian scripture, which in turn reflects both ancient Zoroastrian and pre-Zoroastrian beliefs, in some cases, the text alludes to contingencies of post-7th century Islamic Iran, and yet in other cases reiterates scripture even though science had by then determined otherwise. The traditionally given name seems to be an adoption of the word from the first sentence of the younger of the two recensions. Most of the chapters of the date to the 8th and 9th centuries, roughly contemporary with the oldest portions of the Denkard. The later chapters are several centuries younger than the oldest ones, the oldest existing copy dates to the mid-16th century. The Bundahishn survives in two recensions, a shorter was found in India, and is thus known as the Lesser Bundahishn, or Indian Bundahishn. A copy of this version was brought to Europe by Abraham Anquetil-Duperron in 1762, a longer version was brought to India from Iran by T. D. Anklesaria around 1870, and is thus known as the Greater Bundahishn or Iranian Bundahishn or just Bundahishn. The greater recension is about twice as long as the lesser, the two recensions derive from different manuscript traditions, and in the portions available in both sources, vary in content. The greater recension is also the older of the two, and was dated by West to around 1540, the lesser recension dates from about 1734. Traditionally, chapter-verse pointers are in Arabic numerals for the lesser recension, the two series are not synchronous since the lesser recension was analyzed before the extent of the greater recension was known. The chapter order is also different, the Bundahishn is the concise view of the Zoroastrianisms creation myth, and of the first battles of the forces of Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu for the hegemony of the world. According to the text, in the first 3,000 years of the year, Ahura Mazda created the Fravashis. He used the insensible and motionless Void as a weapon against Angra Mainyu, the Bundahishn finally recounts the creation of the primordial bovine, Ewagdad, and Gayomard, the primordial human. Following MacKenzie, the chapter names in quotation marks reflect the original titles. Those without quotation marks are summaries of chapters that have no title, the chapter/section numbering scheme is based on that of B. T. Anklesaria for the greater recension, and that of West for the lesser recension, excerpt from Chapter 2, - On the formation of the luminaries. Ohrmazd produced illumination between the sky and the earth, the stars and those also not of the constellations, then the moon
42.
Avesta
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The Avesta /əˈvɛstə/ is the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the otherwise unrecorded Avestan language. The Avesta texts fall into different categories, arranged either by dialect. The principal text in the group is the Yasna, which takes its name from the Yasna ceremony, Zoroastrianisms primary act of worship. The most important portion of the Yasna texts are the five Gathas and these hymns, together with five other short Old Avestan texts that are also part of the Yasna, are in the Old Avestan language. The remainder of the Yasnas texts are in Younger Avestan, which is not only from a stage of the language. Extensions to the Yasna ceremony include the texts of the Vendidad, the Visperad extensions consist mainly of additional invocations of the divinities, while the Vendidad is a mixed collection of prose texts mostly dealing with purity laws. Even today, the Vendidad is the liturgical text that is not recited entirely from memory. Some of the materials of the extended Yasna are from the Yashts, unlike the Yasna, Visperad and Vendidad, the Yashts and the other lesser texts of the Avesta are no longer used liturgically in high rituals. Aside from the Yashts, these lesser texts include the Nyayesh texts, the Gah texts, the Siroza. Together, these texts are conventionally called Khordeh Avesta or Little Avesta texts. When the first Khordeh Avesta editions were printed in the 19th century, the term Avesta is from the 9th/10th-century works of Zoroastrian tradition in which the word appears as Zoroastrian Middle Persian abestāg, Book Pahlavi ʾpstʾkʼ. In that context, abestāg texts are portrayed as received knowledge, the literal meaning of the word abestāg is uncertain, it is generally acknowledged to be a learned borrowing from Avestan, but none of the suggested etymologies have been universally accepted. The surviving texts of the Avesta, as they exist today and that master copy, now lost, is known as the Sassanian archetype. The oldest surviving manuscript of an Avestan language text is dated 1323 CE, summaries of the various Avesta texts found in the 9th/10th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition suggest that about three-quarters of the corpus has since been lost. A pre-Sasanian history of the Avesta, if it had one, is in the realm of legend, the oldest surviving versions of these tales are found in the ninth to 11th century texts of Zoroastrian tradition. The legends run as follows, The twenty-one nasks of the Avesta were created by Ahura Mazda, supposedly, Vishtaspa or another Kayanian, Daray, then had two copies made, one of which was stored in the treasury, and the other in the royal archives. Following Alexanders conquest, the Avesta was then supposedly destroyed or dispersed by the Greeks after they translated the scientific passages that they could make use of, the Denkard also transmits another legend related to the transmission of the Avesta. In that story, credit for collation and recension is given to the early Sasanian-era priest Tansar, who had the works collected
43.
Yasht
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The Yashts are a collection of twenty-one hymns in the Younger Avestan language. Each of these hymns invokes a specific Zoroastrian divinity or concept, Yasht chapter and verse pointers are traditionally abbreviated as Yt. The word yasht derives from Avestan yešti, for venerate, since these are a part of the primary litury, they do not count among the twenty-one hymns of the Yasht collection. Most of the yazatas that the individual Yashts praise also have a dedication in the Zoroastrian calendar, the exceptions are Drvaspa and Vanant. The twenty-one yashts of the collection, Notes
44.
Mithra
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Mithra is the Zoroastrian angelic Divinity of Covenant and Oath. In addition to being the Divinity of Contracts, Mithra is also a figure, an all-seeing Protector of Truth, and the Guardian of Cattle. The Romans attributed their Mithraic mysteries to Persian sources relating to Mithra, since the early 1970s the dominant scholarship has noted dissimilarities, and the mysteries are now considered a distinct Roman product formed, at most, by Roman perceptions of Zoroastrian ideas. Together with the Vedic common noun mitra, the Avestan common noun miθra derives from proto-Indo-Iranian *mitra, from the root mi- to bind, thus, etymologically mitra/miθra means that which causes binding, preserved in the Avestan word for Covenant, Contract, Oath. In Middle Iranian languages, miθra became mihr, from which New Persian مهر mihr, Wanetsi and Wazirwola mērə/myer, as a member of the Iranian ahuric triad, a feature that only Ahura Mazda and Ahura Berezaiti also have, Mithra is an exalted figure. Together with Rashnu Justice and Sraosha Obedience, Mithra is one of the three judges at the Chinvat Bridge, the Bridge of Separation that all Souls must cross, unlike Sraosha, Mithra is not however a Psychopomp, a guide of souls to the place of the dead. Should the Good Thoughts, Words and Deeds outweigh the Bad, as the Divinity of Contract, Mithra is undeceivable, infallible, eternally watchful, and never-resting. Mithra is additionally the protector of cattle, and his epithet is of Wide Pastures. He is Guardian of the waters and ensures that those pastures receive enough of it, the lack of Mithras presence in the texts was once a cause of some consternation amongst Iranists. An often repeated speculation of the first half of the 20th century was that the lack of any mention of Mithra in these texts implied that Zoroaster had rejected Mithra and this ex silentio speculation is no longer followed. The Avestan Hymn to Mithra is the longest, and one of the best preserved, Mithra is described in the Zoroastrian Avesta scriptures as Mithra of Wide Pastures, of the Thousand Ears, and of the Myriad Eyes, the Lofty, and the Everlasting. We sacrifice to Mithra, The Lord of all countries, Whom Ahura Mazda created the most glorious, Of the Supernatural Yazads. So may there come to us for Aid, Both Mithra and Ahura, Mithra is invoked in the inscriptions of two Achaemenid emperors. Boyce suggests that the reason for this was that Artaxerxes had chosen Anahita, Mithra is invoked again in the single known inscription of Artaxerxes III, A3Pa, found at Persepolis. In that inscription, that emperor too appeals to Ahuramazda and the God Mithra preserve me, my country, in the Zoroastrian calendar, the sixteenth day of the month and the seventh month of the year are dedicated to, and under the protection of, Mithra. The day on which the day-name and month-name dedications intersect is dedicated to the divinity of that day/month, in the case of Mithra, this was Jashan-e Mihragan, or just Mihragan in short. In Zoroastrian scripture, Mithra is distinct from the divinity of the Sun, however, in Zoroastrian tradition, Mithra evolved from being an all-seeing figure into a divinity co-identified with the Sun itself, effectively taking over Hvare. khshaetas role. How or when or why this occurred is uncertain, but it is attributed to conflation with Babylonian Shamash and/or Greek Apollo
45.
Persian language
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Persian, also known by its endonym Farsi, is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European language family. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan and it is mostly written in the Persian alphabet, a modified variant of the Arabic script. Its grammar is similar to that of many contemporary European languages, Persian gets its name from its origin at the capital of the Achaemenid Empire, Persis, hence the name Persian. A Persian-speaking person may be referred to as Persophone, there are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, with the language holding official status in Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan. For centuries, Persian has also been a cultural language in other regions of Western Asia, Central Asia. It also exerted influence on Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic. Persian is one of the Western Iranian languages within the Indo-European family, other Western Iranian languages are the Kurdish languages, Gilaki, Mazanderani, Talysh, and Balochi. Persian is classified as a member of the Southwestern subgroup within Western Iranian along with Lari, Kumzari, in Persian, the language is known by several names, Western Persian, Parsi or Farsi has been the name used by all native speakers until the 20th century. Since the latter decades of the 20th century, for reasons, in English. Tajiki is the variety of Persian spoken in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan by the Tajiks, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term Persian as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century. Native Iranian Persian speakers call it Fārsi, Farsi is the Arabicized form of Pārsi, subsequent to Muslim conquest of Persia, due to a lack of the phoneme /p/ in Standard Arabic. The origin of the name Farsi and the place of origin of the language which is Fars Province is the Arabicized form of Pārs, in English, this language has historically been known as Persian, though Farsi has also gained some currency. Farsi is encountered in some literature as a name for the language. In modern English the word Farsi refers to the language while Parsi describes Zoroastrians, some Persian language scholars such as Ehsan Yarshater, editor of Encyclopædia Iranica, and University of Arizona professor Kamran Talattof, have also rejected the usage of Farsi in their articles. The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code fa, as its system is mostly based on the local names. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name Persian for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan and this consists of the individual languages Dari and Iranian Persian. Currently, Voice of America, BBC World Service, Deutsche Welle, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty also includes a Tajik service and an Afghan service. This is also the case for the American Association of Teachers of Persian, The Centre for Promotion of Persian Language and Literature, Persian is an Iranian language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European family of languages
Tyazhely Sputnik
Mariner 1
Venus Express
Shin'en
ISRO Venusian orbiter mission[53]
Venera-D[54]
