1.
Merenptah
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Merneptah or Merenptah was the fourth ruler of the Nineteenth Dynasty of Ancient Egypt. He may have born in 1273 BC, ruling Egypt for almost ten years from late July or early August 1213 BC until his death on May 2,1203 BC. He was the son of Ramesses II and only came to power because all his older brothers. By the time he ascended to the throne he was almost sixty years old and his throne name was Ba-en-re Mery-netjeru, which means The Soul of Ra, Beloved of the Gods. It is presumed that Merneptah also was married to Queen Takhat and one of their sons would become the later Nineteenth Dynasty pharaoh, Seti II. They also were the parents of prince Merenptah and possibly the usurper, Amenmesse, Merneptah had to carry out several military campaigns during his reign. In year 5 he fought against the Libyans, who—with the assistance of the Sea Peoples—were threatening Egypt from the West, Merneptah led a victorious six-hour battle against a combined Libyan and Sea People force at the city of Perire, probably located on the western edge of the Delta. Later in the inscription Merneptah receives news of the attack and he has brought his wife and his children--leaders of the camp, and he has reached the western boundary in the fields of Perire. In the Athribis Stele, in the garden of Cairo Museum, it states His majesty was enraged at their report, like a lion, assembled his court and gave a rousing speech. Later he dreamed he saw Ptah handing him a sword and saying Take thou, when the bowmen went forth, says the inscription, Amun was with them as a shield. After six hours the surviving Nine Bows threw down their weapons, abandoned their baggage and dependents, Merneptah states that he defeated the invasion, killing 6,000 soldiers and taking 9,000 prisoners. its seed is no more. This is the first recognised ancient Egyptian record of the existence of Israel--not as a country or city, Merneptah was already an elderly man in his late 60s, if not early 70s, when he assumed the throne. Merneptah moved the center of Egypt from Piramesse, his fathers capital, back to Memphis. This palace was excavated in 1915 by the University of Pennsylvania Museum, merneptahs successor, Seti II, was a son of Queen Isetnofret. Seti was able to reassert his authority over Thebes in his fifth year and it is possible that before seizing Upper Egypt, Amenmesse had been known as Messuwy and had been viceroy of Kush. Merneptah suffered from arthritis and atherosclerosis and died an old man after a reign which lasted for nearly a decade, Merneptah was originally buried within tomb KV8 in the Valley of the Kings, but his mummy was not found there. In 1898 it was located along with eighteen other mummies in the mummy found in the tomb of Amenhotep II by Victor Loret. Merneptahs mummy was taken to Cairo and eventually unwrapped by Dr. G. Elliott Smith on July 8,1907, Dr Smith notes that, The body is that of an old man and is 1 meter 714 millimeters in height
2.
Constantinople
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Constantinople was the capital city of the Roman/Byzantine Empire, and also of the brief Latin, and the later Ottoman empires. It was reinaugurated in 324 AD from ancient Byzantium as the new capital of the Roman Empire by Emperor Constantine the Great, after whom it was named, Constantinople was famed for its massive and complex defences. The first wall of the city was erected by Constantine I, Constantinople never truly recovered from the devastation of the Fourth Crusade and the decades of misrule by the Latins. The origins of the name of Byzantion, more known by the later Latin Byzantium, are not entirely clear. The founding myth of the city has it told that the settlement was named after the leader of the Megarian colonists, Byzas. The later Byzantines of Constantinople themselves would maintain that the city was named in honour of two men, Byzas and Antes, though this was likely just a play on the word Byzantion. During this time, the city was also called Second Rome, Eastern Rome, and Roma Constantinopolitana. As the city became the remaining capital of the Roman Empire after the fall of the West, and its wealth, population, and influence grew. In the language of other peoples, Constantinople was referred to just as reverently, the medieval Vikings, who had contacts with the empire through their expansion in eastern Europe used the Old Norse name Miklagarðr, and later Miklagard and Miklagarth. In Arabic, the city was sometimes called Rūmiyyat al-kubra and in Persian as Takht-e Rum, in East and South Slavic languages, including in medieval Russia, Constantinople was referred to as Tsargrad or Carigrad, City of the Caesar, from the Slavonic words tsar and grad. This was presumably a calque on a Greek phrase such as Βασιλέως Πόλις, the modern Turkish name for the city, İstanbul, derives from the Greek phrase eis tin polin, meaning into the city or to the city. In 1928, the Turkish alphabet was changed from Arabic script to Latin script, in time the city came to be known as Istanbul and its variations in most world languages. In Greece today, the city is still called Konstantinoúpolis/Konstantinoúpoli or simply just the City, apart from this, little is known about this initial settlement, except that it was abandoned by the time the Megarian colonists settled the site anew. A farsighted treaty with the emergent power of Rome in c.150 BC which stipulated tribute in exchange for independent status allowed it to enter Roman rule unscathed. The site lay astride the land route from Europe to Asia and the seaway from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and had in the Golden Horn an excellent and spacious harbour. He would later rebuild Byzantium towards the end of his reign, in which it would be briefly renamed Augusta Antonina, fortifying it with a new city wall in his name, Constantine had altogether more colourful plans. Rome was too far from the frontiers, and hence from the armies and the imperial courts, yet it had been the capital of the state for over a thousand years, and it might have seemed unthinkable to suggest that the capital be moved to a different location. Constantinople was built over 6 years, and consecrated on 11 May 330, Constantine divided the expanded city, like Rome, into 14 regions, and ornamented it with public works worthy of an imperial metropolis
3.
IX monogram
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The IX monogram or XI monogram is a type of early Christian monogram looking like the spokes of a wheel, sometimes within a circle. The IX monogram is formed by the combination of the letter I or Iota for IHSOYS, the spokes can also be stand-alone, without the circle. These monograms can often be found as ancient burial inscriptions
4.
Cadaver
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A cadaver, also called corpse in medical, literary, and legal usage, or when intended for dissection, is a deceased body. Observation of the stages of decomposition can help determine how long a body has been dead. The first stage is autolysis, more known as self-digestion. However, these enzymes are released into the cells because of active processes ceasing in the cells, as a result of autolysis, liquid is created that gets between the layers of skin and makes the skin peel off. During this stage, flies start to lay eggs in the openings of the body, eyes, nostrils, mouth, ears, open wounds, hatched larvae, of blowflies, subsequently get under the skin and start to eat the body. This bloating occurs largely in the abdomen, and sometimes in the mouth and this usually happens in about the second week of decomposition. Gas accumulation and bloating will continue until the body is decomposed sufficiently for the gas to escape and it is the last and longest stage. Putrefaction is where the structures of the body break down. The digestive organs, the brain, and lungs are the first to disintegrate, under normal conditions, the organs are unidentifiable after three weeks. The muscles can be eaten by bacteria or devoured by animals, eventually, sometimes after several years, all that remains is the skeleton. In acid-rich soils, the skeleton will eventually dissolve into its base chemicals, the rate of decomposition depends on many factors including temperature and the environment. The warmer and more humid the environment, the faster the body is broken down, greek physicians Herophilus and Erasistratus were among the first on record to have dissected bodies. Andreas Vesalius, author of De humani corporis fabrica, who was able to dispel many misconceptions by dissecting human cadavers, is regarded as the father of human anatomy. The tradition of dissecting criminals was carried up into the eighteenth and nineteenth century when anatomy schools became popular in England and Scotland, at that time, a greater percentage of Christians believed in the literal raising from the dead. Because the souls of dissected bodies could not go to heaven, criminals who were executed for their crimes were used as the first cadavers. From the 16th century until 1832, and the passage of the Anatomy Act, the demand for cadavers increased when the number of criminals being executed decreased. Since corpses were in high demand, it became commonplace to steal bodies from graves in order to keep the market supplied. The methods of preserving cadavers have changed over the last 200 years, at that time, cadavers had to be used immediately because there were no adequate methods to keep the body from quickly decaying
5.
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
6.
Limestone
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Limestone is a sedimentary rock, composed mainly of skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral, forams and molluscs. Its major materials are the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate, about 10% of sedimentary rocks are limestones. The solubility of limestone in water and weak acid solutions leads to karst landscapes, most cave systems are through limestone bedrock. The first geologist to distinguish limestone from dolomite was Belsazar Hacquet in 1778, like most other sedimentary rocks, most limestone is composed of grains. Most grains in limestone are skeletal fragments of organisms such as coral or foraminifera. Other carbonate grains comprising limestones are ooids, peloids, intraclasts and these organisms secrete shells made of aragonite or calcite, and leave these shells behind when they die. Limestone often contains variable amounts of silica in the form of chert or siliceous skeletal fragment, some limestones do not consist of grains at all, and are formed completely by the chemical precipitation of calcite or aragonite, i. e. travertine. Secondary calcite may be deposited by supersaturated meteoric waters and this produces speleothems, such as stalagmites and stalactites. Another form taken by calcite is oolitic limestone, which can be recognized by its granular appearance, the primary source of the calcite in limestone is most commonly marine organisms. Some of these organisms can construct mounds of rock known as reefs, below about 3,000 meters, water pressure and temperature conditions cause the dissolution of calcite to increase nonlinearly, so limestone typically does not form in deeper waters. Limestones may also form in lacustrine and evaporite depositional environments, calcite can be dissolved or precipitated by groundwater, depending on several factors, including the water temperature, pH, and dissolved ion concentrations. Calcite exhibits a characteristic called retrograde solubility, in which it becomes less soluble in water as the temperature increases. Impurities will cause limestones to exhibit different colors, especially with weathered surfaces, Limestone may be crystalline, clastic, granular, or massive, depending on the method of formation. Crystals of calcite, quartz, dolomite or barite may line small cavities in the rock, when conditions are right for precipitation, calcite forms mineral coatings that cement the existing rock grains together, or it can fill fractures. Travertine is a banded, compact variety of limestone formed along streams, particularly there are waterfalls. Calcium carbonate is deposited where evaporation of the leaves a solution supersaturated with the chemical constituents of calcite. Tufa, a porous or cellular variety of travertine, is found near waterfalls, coquina is a poorly consolidated limestone composed of pieces of coral or shells. During regional metamorphism that occurs during the building process, limestone recrystallizes into marble
7.
Worms, Germany
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Worms is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, situated on the Upper Rhine about 60 kilometres south-southwest of Frankfurt-am-Main. It had approximately 85,000 inhabitants as of 2016, Worms has been a Roman Catholic bishopric since at least 614, and was an important palatinate of Charlemagne. Worms Cathedral is one of the Imperial Cathedrals and among the finest examples of Romanesque architecture in Germany, Worms prospered in the High Middle Ages as an Imperial Free City. Among more than a hundred Imperial Diets held at Worms, the Diet of 1521 ended with the Edict of Worms in which Martin Luther was declared a heretic, today, the city is an industrial centre and is famed as the origin of Liebfraumilch wine. Other industries include chemicals and metal goods, Worms is located on the west bank of the Rhine River between the cities of Ludwigshafen and Mainz. On the northern edge of the city the Pfrimm flows into the Rhine, Worms has 13 boroughs around the city centre. They are as follows, The climate in the Rhine River Valley is very temperate in winter, rainfall is below average for the surrounding areas. Winter snow accumulation is very low and often melts quickly, Worms was anciently a Celtic city named Borbetomagus, perhaps meaning water meadow. Later it was conquered by the Germanic Vangiones, in 14 BC, Romans under the command of Drusus captured and fortified the city, and henceforth a small troop of infantry and cavalry were garrisoned there. The Romans knew the city as Augusta Vangionum, after the then-emperor and the local tribe, the garrison grew into a small town with the regular Roman street plan, a forum, and temples for the main gods Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, and Mars. Roman inscriptions, altars, and votive offerings can be seen in the archaeological museum, local potters worked in the towns south quarter. Fragments of amphoras contain traces of oil from Hispania Baetica, doubtless transported by sea. The city became the capital of the Burgundian kingdom under Gunther, few remains of this early Burgundian kingdom survive, because in 436 it was all but destroyed by a combined army of Romans and Huns, a belt clasp found at Worms-Abenheim is a museum treasure. Provoked by Burgundian raids against Roman settlements, the combined Romano-Hunnic army destroyed the Burgundian army at the Battle of Worms and it is said that 20,000 were killed. The Romans led the survivors southwards to the Roman district of Sapaudia, the story of this war later inspired the Nibelungenlied. The city appears on the Peutinger Map, dated to the 4th century, Worms has been a Roman Catholic bishopric since at least 614, with an earlier mention in 346. In the Frankish Empire, the city was the location of an important palatinate of Charlemagne, the bishops administered the city and its territory. The most famous of the medieval bishops was Burchard of Worms
8.
Hagia Triada sarcophagus
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The Hagia Triada sarcophagus is a late Bronze Age 137 cm-long limestone sarcophagus. It was originally dated to 1400 BC and was rediscovered in Hagia Triada on Crete in 1903, the sarcophagus is on display in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum. It is the limestone sarcophagus of its era discovered to date. It was originally used for the burial of a prince, the painted frieze around the sarcophagus shows all the stages of the sacred ceremony which was performed at the burial of important personages. In the centre of one of the sides of the sarcophagus is a scene with bull sacrifice. On the left of the long side a woman wearing a crown is carrying two vessels. By her side a man dressed in a long robe is playing a seven string lyre and this is the earliest picture of the lyre known in classical Greece. In front of another woman is emptying the contents of a vessel-perhaps the blood of the sacrificed bull-into a second vessel. On the right three men holding animals and a boat are approaching a male figure without arms and legs and it is possible that they believed that the dead was living in a different state and he could probably reappear. Some miniature sculpture found in places of Crete during this period are connected with the worship of the dead. Funereal cults were not common in Crete, but they were practised in certain instances, at the tombs of kings, or possibly of higher officials. The position of the throat of sacrificial animal, the bull, is down indicating the sacrifice is for the chthonioi or chthonic deity, the high altar is reserved for the ouranioi, deities of the heavens. Above the low altar, chthonic altar, are two objects, a jug of water and a basket of fruits of the earth, the jug of water is for purification of the sacrifice participants who wash their hands before sacrificing the bull. In Classical Greece the offering of fruits of the earth was made to a chthonic deity just as on the Hagia Triada Sarcophagus, on the high altar, altar for the ouranioi, are the horns of consecration and a tree with seven branches. Most often, but not always, the horns of consecration are found in places in Minoan religious art indicating they related to the ouranioi. The tree, with seven branches, may be a tree representing regeneration, there are seven participants in the sacrifice scene with hands down palms down possibly indicating a forceful prayer or invocation of the chthonic deity behind the low altar in epiphany. The time of day of the sacrifice is night because chthonic rituals took place during the night, the action of both the sacrifice scene and the libation scene moves from left to right. In Egyptian religion, the left was the side of death, the libation scene has seven participants giving force to the offering
9.
Fresco
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Fresco is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting. Buon fresco pigment mixed with water of temperature on a thin layer of wet, fresh plaster, for which the Italian word for plaster. Because of the makeup of the plaster, a binder is not required, as the pigment mixed solely with the water will sink into the intonaco. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster, after a number of hours, many artists sketched their compositions on this underlayer, which would never be seen, in a red pigment called sinopia, a name also used to refer to these under-paintings. Later, new techniques for transferring paper drawings to the wall were developed. The main lines of a drawing made on paper were pricked over with a point, the paper held against the wall, if the painting was to be done over an existing fresco, the surface would be roughened to provide better adhesion. This area is called the giornata, and the different day stages can usually be seen in a large fresco, buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster. Once a giornata is dried, no more buon fresco can be done, if mistakes have been made, it may also be necessary to remove the whole intonaco for that area—or to change them later, a secco. An indispensable component of this process is the carbonatation of the lime, the eyes of the people of the School of Athens are sunken-in using this technique which causes the eyes to seem deeper and more pensive. Michelangelo used this technique as part of his trademark outlining of his central figures within his frescoes, in a wall-sized fresco, there may be ten to twenty or even more giornate, or separate areas of plaster. After five centuries, the giornate, which were nearly invisible, have sometimes become visible, and in many large-scale frescoes. Additionally, the border between giornate was often covered by an a secco painting, which has fallen off. One of the first painters in the period to use this technique was the Isaac Master in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. A person who creates fresco is called a frescoist, a secco or fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster. The pigments thus require a medium, such as egg. Blue was a problem, and skies and blue robes were often added a secco, because neither azurite blue nor lapis lazuli. By the end of the century this had largely displaced buon fresco
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Sarcophagus". Encyclopædia Britannica. 24 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 209.
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "