Hittites
The Hittites were an Ancient Anatolian people who established an empire centered on Hattusa in north-central Anatolia around 1600 BC. Between the 15th and 13th centuries BC the Hittite Empire came into conflict with the Egyptian Empire, Middle Assyrian Empire, the Assyrians eventually emerged as the dominant power and annexed much of the Hittite empire, while the remainder was sacked by Phrygian newcomers to the region. They referred to their land as Hatti. The conventional name Hittites is due to their identification with the Biblical Hittites in 19th century archaeology. Before the discoveries, the source of information about Hittites had been the Old Testament. Francis William Newman expressed the view, common in the early 19th century. Uriah was a captain in King Davids army and counted among one of his mighty men in 1 Chronicles 11, french scholar Félix Marie Charles Texier discovered the first Hittite ruins in 1834, but did not identify them as Hittite. The first archaeological evidence for the Hittites appeared in tablets found at the Assyrian colony of Kültepe, some names in the tablets were neither Hattic nor Assyrian, but clearly Indo-European.
The script on a monument at Boğazköy by a People of Hattusas discovered by William Wright in 1884 was found to match peculiar hieroglyphic scripts from Aleppo, in 1887, excavations at Tell El-Amarna in Egypt uncovered the diplomatic correspondence of Pharaoh Amenhotep III and his son Akhenaton. Shortly after this, Archibald Sayce proposed that Hatti or Khatti in Anatolia was identical with the kingdom of Kheta mentioned in these Egyptian texts, as well as with the biblical Hittites. Others, such as Max Müller, agreed that Khatti was probably Kheta, sayces identification came to be widely accepted over the course of the early 20th century, and the name Hittite has become attached to the civilization uncovered at Boğazköy. He proved that the ruins at Boğazköy were the remains of the capital of an empire that, at one point, under the direction of the German Archaeological Institute, excavations at Hattusa have been under way since 1907, with interruptions during the world wars. Kültepe was successfully excavated by Professor Tahsin Özgüç from 1948 until his death in 2005, the Hittites used Mesopotamian Cuneiform script.
The Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara, Turkey houses the richest collection of Hittite, the Hittite kingdom was centred on the lands surrounding Hattusa and Neša, known as the land Hatti. For example, the reward for the capture of a slave after he managed to flee beyond the Halys is higher than that for a slave caught before he could reach the river. To the west and south of the core territory lay the region known as Luwiya in the earliest Hittite texts and this terminology was replaced by the names Arzawa and Kizzuwatna with the rise of those kingdoms. Nevertheless, the Hittites continued to refer to the language originated in these areas as Luwian. Prior to the rise of Kizzuwatna, the heart of territory in Cilicia was first referred to by the Hittites as Adaniya
Lucan
Marcus Annaeus Lucanus, better known in English as Lucan, was a Roman poet, born in Corduba, in the Hispania Baetica. Despite his short life, he is regarded as one of the figures of the Imperial Latin period. His youth and speed of composition set him apart from other poets, Lucan was the son of Marcus Annaeus Mela and grandson of Seneca the Elder, he grew up under the tutelage of his uncle Seneca the Younger. Born into a family, he studied rhetoric at Athens and was probably provided with a philosophical. He found success under Nero, became one of the close friends and was rewarded with a quaestorship in advance of the legal age. In 60 AD, he won a prize for extemporizing Orpheus and Laudes Neronis at the quinquennial Neronia, during this time he circulated the first three books of his epic poem, which told the story of the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey. At some point, a feud began between Nero and Lucan, two very different accounts of the events have survived that both trivialize the feud.
According to Tacitus, Nero became jealous of Lucan and forbade him to publish his poems, according to Suetonius, Nero lost interest in Lucan and Lucan responded by writing insulting poems about Nero that Nero continued to ignore. Other works, point to a serious basis to the feud. Works by the grammarian Vacca and the poet Statius may support the claim that Lucan wrote insulting poems about Nero, Vacca mentions that one of Lucans works was entitled De Incendio Urbis. Statiuss ode to Lucan mentions that Lucan described how the flames of the criminal tyrant roamed the heights of Remus. Additionally, the books of Pharsalia are anti-Imperial and pro-Republic. This criticism of Nero and office of the Emperor may have been the cause of the ban. Lucan joined the 65 AD conspiracy of Gaius Calpurnius Piso against Nero. His treason discovered, he was obliged, at the age of 25, to suicide by opening a vein. According to Tacitus, as Lucan bled to death, recalled some poetry he had composed in which he had told the story of a soldier dying a similar kind of death.
His father was involved in the proscription but his mother escaped, statiuss poem about Lucan was addressed to his widow, Polla Argentaria, upon the occasion of his birthday during the reign of Domitian. Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 39, ideology in Cold Blood, A Reading of Lucans Civil War
Solar deity
A solar deity is a sky deity who represents the Sun, or an aspect of it, usually by its perceived power and strength. Solar deities and sun worship can be found throughout most of recorded history in various forms, the Sun is sometimes referred to by its Latin name Sol or by its Greek name Helios. The English word sun stems from Proto-Germanic *sunnǭ, the Neolithic concept of a solar barge is found in the myths of ancient Egypt, with Ra and Horus. Predynasty Egyptian beliefs attribute Atum as the sun-god and Horus as a god of the sky, as the Old Kingdom theocracy gained power, early beliefs were incorporated with the expanding popularity of Ra and the Osiris-Horus mythology. Atum became Ra-Atum, the rays of the setting sun, Osiris became the divine heir to Atums power on Earth and passes his divine authority to his son Horus. Early Egyptian myths imply the sun is within the lioness, Sekhmet, at night and is reflected in her eyes, or that it is within the cow, during the night, being reborn each morning as her son.
Mesopotamian Shamash plays an important role during the Bronze Age, South American cultures have a tradition of Sun worship, as with the Incan Inti. Proto-Indo-European religion has a chariot, the sun as traversing the sky in a chariot. In Germanic mythology this is Sol, in Vedic Surya, and in Greek Helios, svarog is the Slavic solar deity, represented as a spirit of fire. During the Roman Empire, a festival of the birth of the Unconquered Sun was celebrated on the winter solstice—the rebirth of the sun—which occurred on December 25 of the Julian calendar. In late antiquity, the centrality of the sun in some Imperial religious systems suggest a form of a solar monotheism. The religious commemorations on December 25 were replaced under Christian domination of the Empire with the birthday of Christ, the Tiv people consider the Sun to be the son of the supreme being Awondo and the Moon Awondos daughter. The Barotse tribe believes that the Sun is inhabited by the sky god Nyambi, some Sara people worship the sun.
Even where the sun god is equated with the supreme being, the Ancient Egyptian god of creation, Amun is believed to reside inside the sun. So is the Akan creator deity and the Dogon deity of creation, in Egypt, there was a religion that worshiped the sun directly, and was among the first monotheistic religions, Atenism. Sun worship was prevalent in ancient Egyptian religion, the earliest deities associated with the sun are all goddesses, Sekhmet, Nut, Bast and Menhit. First Hathor, and Isis, give birth to and nurse Horus, Hathor the horned-cow is one of the 12 daughters of Ra, gifted with joy and is a wet-nurse to Horus. From at least the 4th Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the sun was worshipped as the deity Re, and portrayed as a falcon headed god surmounted by the solar disk, and surrounded by a serpent
Zierscheibe
Zierscheibe in archaeology is the term for a kind of metal jewellery dating to the European Iron Age. They are found in graves and are thought to have been worn as pendants attached to the tunica. Early examples date to the Late Bronze Age and they develop into characteristic designs notably attested from Alamannic graves from the migration period
National Archaeological Museum (France)
The musée dArchéologie nationale is a major French archeology museum, covering pre-historic times to the Merovingian period. It is located in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye in the département of Yvelines, main article, Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye The château had been one of the most important French royal residences in the Paris region since the 12th century. Following the move of the court to Versailles, the castle housed the court of James II of England in exile, became a school in 1809. The château, which was in poor condition, was classified as a monument historique on 8 April 1863. The interior was a maze of cells, false floors, the exterior was dilapidated and covered in a black coating. In 1857 he reported that all the partitions forming the cells and dungeons had been demolished, construction work began in 1862 with the destruction of the West pavilion. Millets goal was to restore the building to its state as it was under Francis I of France, Eugène Millet died in Cannes on 24 February 1879.
The restoration was continued by Auguste Lafollye and Honoré Daumet, there was a great expansion of archaeology during the Second French Empire. The decree creating the Musée des antiquités celtiques et gallo-romaines was signed by Napoleon III on 8 March 1862. The first meeting of the set up to organize the museum was held on 1 April 1865 in the office of Count Émilien de Nieuwerkerke. Attendees included major figures in archaeology including Alexandre Bertrand, Édouard Lartet, Louis Félicien de Saulcy, the project was assigned to Bertrand, who became the first director, Jean-Baptiste Verchère de Reffye and Claude Rossignol. Bertrand adopted the arrangement of objects by age rather than by subject, the first seven rooms were inaugurated by the Emperor Napoleon III on 12 May 1867. In 1867 Arthur Rhoné joined the newly created Museum of Antiquities, by 190744 rooms were open to the public. These finds, discovered on the territory, are presented by chronological periods, Neolithic, Bronze Age, Iron Age, Roman period. A collection of archaeological and ethnological objects are presented in the comparative archeology room.
The paleolithic collections include objects related to the lithic inductry, and to the of bone, the museum introduces the evolution of the homo genus with castings of homo erectus skulls and neanderthal. Among the most notorious objects of the collections of the museum is the Venus of Brassempouy. Among the many objects Piette has housed in the museum, about 10000 are exhibited in a dedicated room, the room was restored and reopened in 2008, with the aim of restituting the original nineteenth century museology and can be visited with a guide
Danube
The Danube is Europes second-longest river, after the Volga River, and the longest river in the European Union region. It is located in Central and Eastern Europe, the Danube was once a long-standing frontier of the Roman Empire, and today flows through 10 countries, more than any other river in the world. Its drainage basin extends into nine more countries, the Latin name Dānuvius is one of a number of Old European river names derived from a Proto-Indo-European *dānu. Other river names from the root include the Dunajec, Dzvina/Daugava, Donets, Dniestr. In Rigvedic Sanskrit, dānu means fluid, drop, in Avestan, in the Rigveda, Dānu once appears as the mother of Vrtra. Known to the ancient Greeks as the Istros a borrowing from a Daco-Thracian name meaning strong, in Latin, the Danube was variously known as Danubius, Danuvius or as Ister. The Dacian/Thracian name was Donaris for the upper Danube and Istros for the lower Danube, the Thraco-Phrygian name was Matoas, the bringer of luck. The Latin name is masculine, as are all its Slavic names, the German Donau is feminine, as it has been re-interpreted as containing the suffix -ouwe wetland.
Classified as a waterway, it originates in the town of Donaueschingen, in the Black Forest of Germany, at the confluence of the rivers Brigach. The Danube flows southeast for about 2,800 km, passing through four capital cities before emptying into the Black Sea via the Danube Delta in Romania and its drainage basin extends into nine more. The highest point of the basin is the summit of Piz Bernina at the Italy–Switzerland border. The land drained by the Danube extends into other countries. Many Danubian tributaries are important rivers in their own right, navigable by barges, from its source to its outlet into the Black Sea, its main tributaries are, The Danube flows through many cities, including four national capitals, more than any other river in the world. Danube remains a mountain river until Passau, with average bottom gradient 0. 0012%. Middle Section, From Devín Gate to Iron Gate, at the border of Serbia and Romania, the riverbed widens and the average bottom gradient becomes only 0. 00006%.
Lower Section, From Iron Gate to Sulina, with average gradient as little as 0. 00003%, about 60 of its tributaries are navigable. In 1994 the Danube was declared one of ten Pan-European transport corridors, routes in Central, the amount of goods transported on the Danube increased to about 100 million tons in 1987. In 1999, transport on the river was difficult by the NATO bombing of three bridges in Serbia during the Kosovo War
Sun cross
A sun cross is the term for a symbol consisting of an equilateral cross inside a circle when considered as a solar symbol. The design is found in the symbolism of prehistoric cultures. The symbols ubiquity and apparent importance in prehistoric religion have given rise to its interpretation as a solar symbol, the same symbol is in use as a modern astronomical symbol representing the Earth rather than the Sun. The symbol can be depicted using Unicode as U+1F728, U+2295 or as U+2A01, the interpretation of the simple equilateral cross as a solar symbol in Bronze Age religion was widespread in 19th-century scholarship. The cross-in-a-circle was interpreted as a solar symbol derived from the interpretation of the disc of the Sun as the wheel of the chariot of the Sun god. Wieseler postulated an Gothic rune hvel representing the deity by the wheel symbol of a cross-in-a-circle. The English term Sun-Cross, on the hand, is comparatively recent, apparently loaned from German Sonnenkreuz. The German term Sonnenkreuz was used in 19th-century scholarly literature of any cross symbol interpreted as a solar symbol, Sonnenkreuz was used of the flag design of the Paneuropean Union in the 1920s.
In the 1930s, a version of the symbol with broken arms was popular as a link between Christianity and Germanic paganism in the völkisch German Faith Movement. Popular legend in Ireland says that the Celtic Christian cross was introduced by Saint Patrick or possibly Saint Declan and it has often been claimed that Patrick combined the symbol of Christianity with the sun cross to give pagan followers an idea of the importance of the cross. By linking it with the idea of the properties of the sun. Other interpretations claim that placing the cross on top of the circle represents Christs supremacy over the pagan sun, the original Coptic cross often includes a circle that is derived from the ankh, as the circles represent the sun god, Ra. Early Gnostic sects used a circle cross, the Bronze Age symbol has been connected with the spoked chariot wheel, which at the time was four-spoked. In the context of a culture that celebrated the Sun chariot, the same symbol represents the Earth in astronomical symbols, while the Sun is represented by a circle with a center point.
The Native Americans and other indigenous peoples using the solar cross on their symbolic. In modern music tablature, the solar cross denotes a change of a guitar tone distortion. The Sassanian Empire in Persia used a similar solar cross on their banner, the Norwegian party Nasjonal Samling used a golden sun cross on a red background as an official symbol from 1933 to 1945. The cross with the circle was attached to Olaf II of Norway, patron saint of Norway, several neo-Nazi groups use the solar cross to represent white supremacy
Thunder
Thunder is the sound caused by lightning. Depending on the distance and nature of the lightning, thunder can range from a sharp, loud crack to a long, the sudden increase in pressure and temperature from lightning produces rapid expansion of the air surrounding and within a bolt of lightning. In turn, this expansion of air creates a shock wave, similar to a sonic boom. The cause of thunder has been the subject of centuries of speculation, the first recorded theory is attributed to the Greek philosopher Aristotle in the fourth century BC, and an early speculation was that it was caused by the collision of clouds. Subsequently, numerous theories were proposed. By the mid-19th century, the theory was that lightning produced a vacuum. In the 20th century a consensus evolved that thunder must begin with a wave in the air due to the sudden thermal expansion of the plasma in the lightning channel. The average is about 20,400 K and this heating causes a rapid outward expansion, impacting the surrounding cooler air at a speed faster than sound would otherwise travel.
The resultant outward-moving pulse is a wave, similar in principle to the shock wave formed by an explosion. Experimental studies of simulated lightning have produced results consistent with this model. Other causes have proposed, relying on electrodynamic effects of the massive current acting on the plasma in the bolt of lightning. The shockwave in thunder is sufficient to cause injury, such as internal contusion, inversion thunder results when lightning strikes between cloud and ground occur during a temperature inversion. In such an inversion, the air near the ground is cooler than the higher air, the sound energy is prevented from dispersing vertically as it would in a non-inversion and is thus concentrated in the near-ground layer. Inversions often occur when warm moist air passes above a cold front, the d in Modern English thunder is epenthetic, and is now found as well in Modern Dutch donder. In Latin the term was tonare to thunder, the name of the Germanic god Thor comes from the Old Norse word for thunder.
The shared Proto-Indo-European root is *tón-r̥ or *tar-, found Gaulish Taranis, a flash of lightning, followed after some time by a rumble of thunder, illustrates the fact that sound travels significantly slower than light. Using this difference, one can estimate how far away the bolt of lightning is by timing the interval between seeing the flash and hearing thunder, the speed of sound in dry air is approximately 343 m/s or 1,127 ft/s or 768 mph at 20 °C. This translates to approximately 5 seconds per mile, the speed of light is high enough that it can be taken as infinite in this calculation because of the relatively small distance involved
Interpretatio graeca
It is thus a comparative methodology that looks for equivalencies and shared characteristics. Interpretatio romana is comparative discourse in reference to ancient Roman religion and myth, both the Romans and the Gauls reinterpreted Gallic religious traditions in relation to Roman models, particularly Imperial cult. …The meaning of a deity is his or her character as it unfolded in myths, rites. This character makes a deity comparable to other deities with similar traits, the similarity of gods makes their names mutually translatable. … The practice of translating the names of the created a concept of similarity. Pliny the Elder expressed the translatability of deities as different names to different peoples and this capacity made possible the religious syncretism of the Hellenistic era and the pre-Christian Roman Empire. Herodotus was one of the earliest authors to engage in this form of interpretation, in his observations regarding the Egyptians, he establishes Greco-Egyptian equivalents that endured into the Hellenistic era, including Amon/Zeus, Osiris/Dionysus, and Ptah/Hephaestus.
Some pairs of Greek and Roman gods, such as Zeus and Jupiter, are thought to derive from a common Indo-European archetype, some deities dating to Romes oldest religious stratum, such as Janus and Terminus, had no Greek equivalent. Other Greek divine figures, most notably Apollo, were adopted directly into Roman culture, the phrase interpretatio romana was first used by the Imperial-era historian Tacitus in the Germania. Tacitus reports that in a grove of the Nahanarvali, a priest adorned as a woman presides. Elsewhere, he identifies the god of the Germans as Mercury. Some information about the deities of the ancient Gauls, who left no written literature other than inscriptions, is preserved by Greco-Roman sources under the names of Greek, a large number of Gaulish theonyms or cult titles are preserved, for instance, in association with Mars. As with some Greek and Roman divine counterparts, the similarities between a Gallic and a Roman or Greek deity may reflect a common Indo-European origin.
Lugh was identified with Mercury, Nodens with Mars as healer and protector, in some cases, however, a Gallic deity is given an interpretatio romana by means of more than one god, varying among literary texts or inscriptions. These tendencies extended to cross-cultural identifications, in the Eastern empire, the Anatolian storm god with his double-headed axe became Jupiter Dolichenus, a favorite cult figure among soldiers. Roman scholars such as Varro interpreted the monotheistic god of the Jews into Roman terms as Caelus or Jupiter Optimus Maximus, some Greco-Roman authors seem to have understood the Jewish invocation of Yahweh Sabaoth as Sabazius. Interpretatio germanica is the practice by the Germanic peoples of identifying Roman gods with the names of Germanic deities, according to Rudolf Simek, this occurred around the 1st century of the common era, when both cultures came into closer contact. This is the case with Saturn in some West Germanic languages, such as the English Saturday, the West Frisian Saterdei, the Low German Saterdag and the Dutch zaterdag all meaning Saturns day
