1.
Geographic coordinate system
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A geographic coordinate system is a coordinate system used in geography that enables every location on Earth to be specified by a set of numbers, letters or symbols. The coordinates are chosen such that one of the numbers represents a vertical position. A common choice of coordinates is latitude, longitude and elevation, to specify a location on a two-dimensional map requires a map projection. The invention of a coordinate system is generally credited to Eratosthenes of Cyrene. Ptolemy credited him with the adoption of longitude and latitude. Ptolemys 2nd-century Geography used the prime meridian but measured latitude from the equator instead. Mathematical cartography resumed in Europe following Maximus Planudes recovery of Ptolemys text a little before 1300, in 1884, the United States hosted the International Meridian Conference, attended by representatives from twenty-five nations. Twenty-two of them agreed to adopt the longitude of the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, the Dominican Republic voted against the motion, while France and Brazil abstained. France adopted Greenwich Mean Time in place of local determinations by the Paris Observatory in 1911, the latitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle between the equatorial plane and the straight line that passes through that point and through the center of the Earth. Lines joining points of the same latitude trace circles on the surface of Earth called parallels, as they are parallel to the equator, the north pole is 90° N, the south pole is 90° S. The 0° parallel of latitude is designated the equator, the plane of all geographic coordinate systems. The equator divides the globe into Northern and Southern Hemispheres, the longitude of a point on Earths surface is the angle east or west of a reference meridian to another meridian that passes through that point. All meridians are halves of great ellipses, which converge at the north and south poles, the prime meridian determines the proper Eastern and Western Hemispheres, although maps often divide these hemispheres further west in order to keep the Old World on a single side. The antipodal meridian of Greenwich is both 180°W and 180°E, the combination of these two components specifies the position of any location on the surface of Earth, without consideration of altitude or depth. The grid formed by lines of latitude and longitude is known as a graticule, the origin/zero point of this system is located in the Gulf of Guinea about 625 km south of Tema, Ghana. To completely specify a location of a feature on, in, or above Earth. Earth is not a sphere, but a shape approximating a biaxial ellipsoid. It is nearly spherical, but has an equatorial bulge making the radius at the equator about 0. 3% larger than the radius measured through the poles, the shorter axis approximately coincides with the axis of rotation
2.
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
3.
Turkish language
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Outside of Turkey, significant smaller groups of speakers exist in Germany, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Northern Cyprus, Greece, the Caucasus, and other parts of Europe and Central Asia. Cyprus has requested that the European Union add Turkish as an official EU language, in 1928, as one of Atatürks Reforms in the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Ottoman Turkish alphabet was replaced with a Latin alphabet. The distinctive characteristics of Turkish are vowel harmony and extensive agglutination, the basic word order of Turkish is subject–object–verb. Turkish has no classes or grammatical gender. Turkish has a strong T–V distinction and usage of honorifics, Turkish uses second-person pronouns that distinguish varying levels of politeness, social distance, age, courtesy or familiarity toward the addressee. The plural second-person pronoun and verb forms are used referring to a person out of respect. Turkic languages belong to the Altaic language group, the Turkic family comprises some 30 living languages spoken across Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and Siberia. Turkish is a member of the Oghuz group of languages, a subgroup of the Turkic language family, there is a high degree of mutual intelligibility between Turkish and the other Oghuz Turkic languages, including Azerbaijani, Turkmen, Qashqai, Gagauz, and Balkan Gagauz Turkish. The earliest known Old Turkic inscriptions are the three monumental Orkhon inscriptions found in modern Mongolia, erected in honour of the prince Kul Tigin and his brother Emperor Bilge Khagan, these date back to the second Turk Kaghanate. The Seljuqs of the Oghuz Turks, in particular, brought their language, following the adoption of Islam c. Turkish literature during the Ottoman period, particularly Divan poetry, was influenced by Persian, including the adoption of poetic meters. One of the tasks of the newly established association was to initiate a reform to replace loanwords of Arabic. By banning the usage of imported words in the press, the association succeeded in removing several hundred words from the language. While most of the words introduced to the language by the TDK were newly derived from Turkic roots, owing to this sudden change in the language, older and younger people in Turkey started to differ in their vocabularies. While the generations born before the 1940s tend to use the terms of Arabic or Persian origin. The past few decades have seen the work of the TDK to coin new Turkish words to express new concepts and technologies as they enter the language. Many of these new words, particularly information technology terms, have received widespread acceptance, however, the TDK is occasionally criticized for coining words which sound contrived and artificial. Some earlier changes—such as bölem to replace fırka, political party—also failed to meet with popular approval, some words restored from Old Turkic have taken on specialized meanings, for example betik is now used to mean script in computer science
4.
Diana (mythology)
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In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt, the moon, and nature being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was eventually equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy, Diana was worshipped in ancient Roman religion and is revered in Roman Neopaganism and Stregheria. Diana was known to be the goddess of childbirth and women. She was one of the three goddesses, along with Minerva and Vesta, who swore never to marry. Oak groves were especially sacred to her as were deer, according to mythology, Diana was born with her twin brother, Apollo, on the island of Delos, daughter of Jupiter and Latona. She made up a triad with two other Roman deities, Egeria the water nymph, her servant and assistant midwife, and Virbius, the woodland god. Diana is a form developed from an ancient *divios, corresponding to later divus, dius, as in Dius Fidius, Dea Dia. It is rooted in Indoeuropean *dyw, meaning sky or daylight, from which also derived the name of Vedic god Dyaus and the Latin deus, dies. On the Tablets of Pylos a theonym διϝια is supposed as referring to a deity precursor of Artemis, Modern scholars mostly accept the identification. The ancient Latin writers Varro and Cicero considered the etymology of Dīāna as allied to that of dies, the persona of Diana is complex and contains a number of archaic features. According to Georges Dumézil it falls into a subset of celestial gods. Such gods, while keeping the original features of celestial divinities, the celestial character of Diana is reflected in her connection with light, inaccessibility, virginity, and her preference for dwelling on high mountains and in sacred woods. Diana therefore reflects the world in its sovereignty, supremacy, impassibility. At the same time, however, she is seen as active in ensuring the succession of kings and these functions are apparent in the traditional institutions and cults related to the goddess. This ever open succession reveals the character and mission of the goddess as a guarantor of kingly status through successive generations. Her function as bestower of authority to rule is also attested in the story related by Livy in which a Sabine man who sacrifices a heifer to Diana wins for his country the seat of the Roman empire. Diana was also worshipped by women who wanted to be pregnant or who, once pregnant and this form of worship is attested in archeological finds of votive statuettes in her sanctuary in the nemus Aricinum as well as in ancient sources, e. g. Ovid. According to Dumezil the forerunner of all gods is an Indian epic hero who was the image of the Vedic god Dyaus
5.
Ancient Greek temple
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Greek temples (Ancient Greek, Ναός, Naós dwelling, semantically distinct from Latin templum were structures built to house deity statues within Greek sanctuaries in ancient Greek religion. The temple interiors did not serve as meeting places, since the sacrifices, temples were frequently used to store votive offerings. They are the most important and most widespread building type in Greek architecture, in the Hellenistic kingdoms of Southwest Asia and of North Africa, buildings erected to fulfill the functions of a temple often continued to follow the local traditions. Even where a Greek influence is visible, such structures are not normally considered as Greek temples and this applies, for example, to the Graeco-Parthian and Bactrian temples, or to the Ptolemaic examples, which follow Egyptian tradition. Most Greek temples were oriented astronomically, stylistically, they were governed by the regionally specific architectural orders. Whereas the distinction was originally between the Doric and Ionic orders, an alternative arose in late 3rd century BC with the Corinthian order. A multitude of different ground plans were developed, each of which could be combined with the superstructure in the different orders. From the 3rd century BC onwards, the construction of temples became less common, after a short 2nd century BC flourish. Thereafter, only structures were newly begun, while older temples continued to be renovated or brought to completion if in an unfinished state. Greek temples were designed and constructed according to set proportions, mostly determined by the diameter of the columns or by the dimensions of the foundation levels. The nearly mathematical strictness of the basic designs thus reached was lightened by optical refinements, in spite of the still widespread idealised image, Greek temples were painted, so that bright reds and blues contrasted with the white of the building stones or of stucco. The more elaborate temples were equipped with rich figural decoration in the form of reliefs. The construction of temples was usually organised and financed by cities or by the administrations of sanctuaries, private individuals, especially Hellenistic rulers, could also sponsor such buildings. New temples now belonged to the tradition of Roman architecture, which, in spite of the Greek influence on it, aimed for different goals and followed different aesthetic principles. The Mycenaean Megaron was the precursor for later Archaic and Classical Greek temples, the basic principles for the development of Greek temple architecture have their roots between the 10th century BC and the 7th century BC. In its simplest form as a naos, the temple was a rectangular shrine with protruding side walls. Until the 8th century BC, there were also apsidal structures with more or less semi-circular back walls, by adding columns to this small basic structure, the Greeks triggered the development and variety of their temple architecture. The columns and superstructure were wooden, door openings and antae were protected with wooden planks, the mud brick walls were often reinforced by wooden posts, in a type of half-timbered technique
6.
Artemis
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Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Some scholars believe that the name, and indeed the goddess herself, was originally pre-Greek, Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron, Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals. The Arcadians believed she was the daughter of Demeter, in the classical period of Greek mythology, Artemis was often described as the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo. The deer and the cypress were sacred to her, in later Hellenistic times, she even assumed the ancient role of Eileithyia in aiding childbirth. The name Artemis is of unknown or uncertain origin and etymology although various ones have been proposed, for example, according to J. T. Jablonski, the name is also Phrygian and could be compared with the royal appellation Artemas of Xenophon. Anton Goebel suggests the root στρατ or ῥατ, to shake, babiniotis, while accepting that the etymology is unknown, states that the name is already attested in Mycenean Greek and is possibly of pre-Hellenic origin. It is believed that a precursor of Artemis was worshiped in Minoan Crete as the goddess of mountains and hunting, R. S. P. Beekes suggested that the e/i interchange points to a Pre-Greek origin. Artemis was venerated in Lydia as Artimus, various conflicting accounts are given in Classical Greek mythology of the birth of Artemis and her twin brother, Apollo. All accounts agree, however, that she was the daughter of Zeus and Leto, an account by Callimachus has it that Hera forbade Leto to give birth on either terra firma or on an island. Hera was angry with Zeus, her husband, because he had impregnated Leto, but the island of Delos disobeyed Hera, and Leto gave birth there. In ancient Cretan history Leto was worshipped at Phaistos and in Cretan mythology Leto gave birth to Apollo, a scholium of Servius on Aeneid iii. The myths also differ as to whether Artemis was born first, most stories depict Artemis as born first, becoming her mothers mid-wife upon the birth of her brother Apollo. The childhood of Artemis is not fully related in any surviving myth, the Iliad reduced the figure of the dread goddess to that of a girl, who, having been thrashed by Hera, climbs weeping into the lap of Zeus. She wished for no city dedicated to her, but to rule the mountains, Artemis believed that she had been chosen by the Fates to be a midwife, particularly since she had assisted her mother in the delivery of her twin brother, Apollo. All of her companions remained virgins, and Artemis closely guarded her own chastity and her symbols included the golden bow and arrow, the hunting dog, the stag, and the moon. Okeanus daughters were filled with fear, but the young Artemis bravely approached and asked for bow, Callimachus then tells how Artemis visited Pan, the god of the forest, who gave her seven bitches and six dogs. She then captured six golden-horned deer to pull her chariot, Artemis practiced with her bow first by shooting at trees and then at wild beasts. As a virgin, Artemis had interested many gods and men, Orion was accidentally killed either by Artemis or by Gaia
7.
Ephesus
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Ephesus was an ancient Greek city on the coast of Ionia, three kilometres southwest of present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey. It was built in the 10th century BC on the site of the former Arzawan capital by Attic, during the Classical Greek era it was one of the twelve cities of the Ionian League. The city flourished after it came under the control of the Roman Republic in 129 BC, the city was famed for the nearby Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Among many other buildings are the Library of Celsus. Ephesus was one of the seven churches of Asia that are cited in the Book of Revelation, the Gospel of John may have been written here. The city was the site of several 5th century Christian Councils, the city was destroyed by the Goths in 263, and although rebuilt, the citys importance as a commercial centre declined as the harbour was slowly silted up by the Küçükmenderes River. It was partially destroyed by an earthquake in 614 AD, the area surrounding Ephesus was already inhabited during the Neolithic Age, as was revealed by excavations at the nearby höyük of Arvalya and Cukurici. Excavations in recent years have unearthed settlements from the early Bronze Age at Ayasuluk Hill, according to Hittite sources, the capital of the Kingdom of Arzawa was Apasa. Some scholars suggest that this is the later Greek Ephesus, in 1954, a burial ground from the Mycenaean era with ceramic pots was discovered close to the ruins of the basilica of St. John. This was the period of the Mycenaean Expansion when the Achaioi settled in Asia Minor during the 14th and 13th centuries BC, Ephesus was founded as an Attic-Ionian colony in the 10th century BC on the Ayasuluk Hill, three kilometers from the centre of ancient Ephesus. The mythical founder of the city was a prince of Athens named Androklos, according to the legend, he founded Ephesus on the place where the oracle of Delphi became reality. Androklos drove away most of the native Carian and Lelegian inhabitants of the city and he was a successful warrior, and as a king he was able to join the twelve cities of Ionia together into the Ionian League. During his reign the city began to prosper and he died in a battle against the Carians when he came to the aid of Priene, another city of the Ionian League. Androklos and his dog are depicted on the Hadrian temple frieze, later, Greek historians such as Pausanias, Strabo and Herodotos and the poet Kallinos reassigned the citys mythological foundation to Ephos, queen of the Amazons. The Greek goddess Artemis and the great Anatolian goddess Kybele were identified together as Artemis of Ephesus, Pausanias mentions that the temple was built by Ephesus, son of the river god Caystrus, before the arrival of the Ionians. Of this structure, scarcely a trace remains, about 650 BC, Ephesus was attacked by the Cimmerians who razed the city, including the temple of Artemis. After the Cimmerians had been away, the city was ruled by a series of tyrants. Following a revolt by the people, Ephesus was ruled by a council and his signature has been found on the base of one of the columns of the temple
8.
Turkey
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Turkey, officially the Republic of Turkey, is a transcontinental country in Eurasia, mainly in Anatolia in Western Asia, with a smaller portion on the Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. Turkey is a democratic, secular, unitary, parliamentary republic with a cultural heritage. The country is encircled by seas on three sides, the Aegean Sea is to the west, the Black Sea to the north, and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. The Bosphorus, the Sea of Marmara, and the Dardanelles, Ankara is the capital while Istanbul is the countrys largest city and main cultural and commercial centre. Approximately 70-80% of the countrys citizens identify themselves as ethnic Turks, other ethnic groups include legally recognised and unrecognised minorities. Kurds are the largest ethnic minority group, making up approximately 20% of the population, the area of Turkey has been inhabited since the Paleolithic by various ancient Anatolian civilisations, as well as Assyrians, Greeks, Thracians, Phrygians, Urartians and Armenians. After Alexander the Greats conquest, the area was Hellenized, a process continued under the Roman Empire. The Seljuk Sultanate of Rûm ruled Anatolia until the Mongol invasion in 1243, the empire reached the peak of its power in the 16th century, especially during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. During the war, the Ottoman government committed genocides against its Armenian, Assyrian, following the war, the conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was partitioned into several new states. Turkey is a member of the UN, an early member of NATO. Turkeys growing economy and diplomatic initiatives have led to its recognition as a regional power while her location has given it geopolitical, the name of Turkey is based on the ethnonym Türk. The first recorded use of the term Türk or Türük as an autonym is contained in the Old Turkic inscriptions of the Göktürks of Central Asia, the English name Turkey first appeared in the late 14th century and is derived from Medieval Latin Turchia. Similarly, the medieval Khazar Empire, a Turkic state on the shores of the Black. The medieval Arabs referred to the Mamluk Sultanate as al-Dawla al-Turkiyya, the Ottoman Empire was sometimes referred to as Turkey or the Turkish Empire among its European contemporaries. The Anatolian peninsula, comprising most of modern Turkey, is one of the oldest permanently settled regions in the world, various ancient Anatolian populations have lived in Anatolia, from at least the Neolithic period until the Hellenistic period. Many of these peoples spoke the Anatolian languages, a branch of the larger Indo-European language family, in fact, given the antiquity of the Indo-European Hittite and Luwian languages, some scholars have proposed Anatolia as the hypothetical centre from which the Indo-European languages radiated. The European part of Turkey, called Eastern Thrace, has also been inhabited since at least forty years ago. It is the largest and best-preserved Neolithic site found to date, the settlement of Troy started in the Neolithic Age and continued into the Iron Age
9.
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
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Although the list, in its current form, did not stabilise until the Renaissance, the first such lists of seven wonders date from the 1st-2nd century BC. The original list inspired innumerable versions through the ages, often listing seven entries, of the original Seven Wonders, only one—the Great Pyramid of Giza, the oldest of the ancient wonders—remains relatively intact. The Colossus of Rhodes, the Lighthouse of Alexandria, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, the Temple of Artemis, the location and ultimate fate of the Hanging Gardens are unknown, and there is speculation that they may not have existed at all. The Greek conquest of much of the western world in the 4th century BC gave Hellenistic travellers access to the civilizations of the Egyptians, Persians. Impressed and captivated by the landmarks and marvels of the various lands, instead of wonders, the ancient Greeks spoke of theamata, which means sights, in other words things to be seen. Later, the word for wonder was used, hence, the list was meant to be the Ancient Worlds counterpart of a travel guidebook. The first reference to a list of seven such monuments was given by Diodorus Siculus, — Greek Anthology IX.58 Another 2nd century BC observer, who claimed to be the mathematician Philo of Byzantium, wrote a short account entitled The Seven Sights of the World. However, the surviving manuscript only covered six of the supposedly seven places. Earlier and later lists by the historian Herodotus and the architect Callimachus of Cyrene, housed at the Museum of Alexandria, survived only as references. The Colossus of Rhodes was the last of the seven to be completed, after 280 BC, hence, all seven existed at the same time for a period of less than 60 years. The list covered only the sculptural and architectural monuments of the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern regions, hence, extant sites beyond this realm were not considered as part of contemporary accounts. The primary accounts, coming from Hellenistic writers, also influenced the places included in the wonders list. Five of the seven entries are a celebration of Greek accomplishments in the arts, the seven wonders on Antipaters list won praises for their notable features, ranging from superlatives of the highest or largest of their types, to the artistry with which they were executed. Their architectural and artistic features were imitated throughout the Hellenistic world, the Greek influence in Roman culture, and the revival of Greco-Roman artistic styles during the Renaissance caught the imagination of European artists and travellers. Paintings and sculptures alluding to Antipaters list were made, while adventurers flocked to the sites to personally witness the wonders. Legends circulated to further complement the superlatives of the wonders, of Antipaters wonders, the only one that has survived to the present day is the Great Pyramid of Giza. Its brilliant white stone facing had survived intact until around 1300 AD, the existence of the Hanging Gardens has not been proven, although theories abound. Records and archaeology confirm the existence of the other five wonders, the Temple of Artemis and the Statue of Zeus were destroyed by fire, while the Lighthouse of Alexandria, Colossus, and tomb of Mausolus were destroyed by earthquakes
10.
Bronze Age
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The Bronze Age is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen. An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact there were no tin bronzes in Western Asia before trading in bronze began in the third millennium BC. Worldwide, the Bronze Age generally followed the Neolithic period, with the Chalcolithic serving as a transition, although the Iron Age generally followed the Bronze Age, in some areas, the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic. Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing, according to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia and Egypt developed the earliest viable writing systems. The overall period is characterized by use of bronze, though the place and time of the introduction. Human-made tin bronze technology requires set production techniques, tin must be mined and smelted separately, then added to molten copper to make bronze alloy. The Bronze Age was a time of use of metals. The dating of the foil has been disputed, the Bronze Age in the ancient Near East began with the rise of Sumer in the 4th millennium BC. Societies in the region laid the foundations for astronomy and mathematics, the usual tripartite division into an Early, Middle and Late Bronze Age is not used. Instead, a division based on art-historical and historical characteristics is more common. The cities of the Ancient Near East housed several tens of thousands of people, ur in the Middle Bronze Age and Babylon in the Late Bronze Age similarly had large populations. The earliest mention of Babylonia appears on a tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad in the 23rd century BC, the Amorite dynasty established the city-state of Babylon in the 19th century BC. Over 100 years later, it took over the other city-states. Babylonia adopted the written Semitic Akkadian language for official use, by that time, the Sumerian language was no longer spoken, but was still in religious use. Elam was an ancient civilization located to the east of Mesopotamia, in the Old Elamite period, Elam consisted of kingdoms on the Iranian plateau, centered in Anshan, and from the mid-2nd millennium BC, it was centered in Susa in the Khuzestan lowlands. Its culture played a role in the Gutian Empire and especially during the Achaemenid dynasty that succeeded it
11.
Callimachus
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Callimachus was a native of the Greek colony of Cyrene, Libya. He was a poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria and enjoyed the patronage of the Egyptian–Greek Pharaohs Ptolemy II Philadelphus. Although he was never made chief librarian, he was responsible for producing a survey based upon the contents of the Library. This, his Pinakes,120 volumes long, provided the foundation for work on the history of Greek literature. As one of the earliest critic-poets, he typifies Hellenistic scholarship, Callimachus was of Libyan Greek origin. He was named after his grandfather, an elder Callimachus, who was regarded by the Cyrenaean citizens and had served as a general. Callimachus married the daughter of a Greek man called Euphrates who came from Syracuse, however, it is unknown if they had children. In later years, he was educated in Athens, when he returned to North Africa, he moved to Alexandria. Elitist and erudite, claiming to abhor all common things, Callimachus is best known for his poems and epigrams. During the Hellenistic period, a trend in Greek-language poetry was to reject epics modelled after Homer. Big book, big evil is another saying attributed to him, often thought to be attacking long, Callimachus also wrote poems in praise of his royal patrons, and a wide variety of other poetic styles, as well as prose and criticism. Some classicists, including Peter Green, speculate that this contributed to the long feud. Though Callimachus was an opponent of big books, the Suda puts his number of works at 800, suggesting that he found large quantities of small works more acceptable. In the first three books at least, the formula appears to ask a question of the Muse, of the form, Why, on Paros, why, at Argos is a month named for lambs. Why, at Leucas, does the image of Artemis have a mortar on its head, a series of questions can be reconstituted from the fragments. One passage of the Aetia, the so-called Coma Berenices, has been reconstructed from papyrus remains, the extant hymns are extremely learned, and written in a style that some have criticised as labored and artificial. The epigrams are more widely respected, and several have been incorporated into the Greek Anthology, according to Quintilian he was the chief of the elegiac poets, his elegies were highly esteemed by the Romans, and imitated by Ovid, Catullus, and especially Sextus Propertius. Many modern classicists hold Callimachus in high regard for his influence on Latin poetry
12.
Amazons
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In Greek mythology, the Amazons were a tribe of women warriors. The Scythian women may have inspired the myth, apollonius Rhodius, at Argonautica, mention that Amazons were the daughters of Ares and Harmonia. They were brutal and aggressive, and their concern in life was war. Later, he says, they established Mitylene a little way beyond the Caïcus, Aeschylus, at Prometheus Bound, places the original home of the Amazons in the country about Lake Maeotis and they later moved to Themiscyra on the Thermodon. Homer tells that the Amazons were sought and found somewhere near Lycia, Diodorus mention that the Amazons traveled from the Libya under Queen Myrina. Amazon warriors were often depicted in battle with Greek warriors in amazonomachies in classical art, the Amazons have become associated with many historical people throughout the Roman Empire period and Late Antiquity. In Roman historiography, there are accounts of Amazon raids in Anatolia. From the early period, their name has become a term for female warriors in general. Greeks also used epithets for them. Herodotus used the Androktones and Androleteirai, in Iliad they also called Antianeirai and Aeschylus in his work, Prometheus Bound, the origin of the word is uncertain. Πέρσαι», where it appears together with the Indo-Iranian root *kar- make, alternatively, a Greek derivation from *ṇ-mṇ-gw-jon-es manless, without husbands has been proposed, an explanation deemed unlikely by Hjalmar Frisk. 19th century scholarship also connected the term to the ethnonym Amazigh, a further explanation proposes Iranian *ama-janah virility-killing as source. The Hittite researcher Friedrich Cornelius assumes that there had been the land Azzi with the capital Chajasa in the area of the Thermodon-Iris Delta on the coast of the Black Sea and he brings its residents in direct relation to the Amazons, namely based on its name and its customs. The location of land as well as his conclusions are controversial. There is no indication of such a practice in ancient works of art, adrienne Mayor suggests the origin of this myth was due to the words etymology. Herodotus and Strabo placed them on the banks of the Thermodon, later, he says, they established Mitylene a little way beyond the Caïcus. Aeschylus, at Prometheus Bound, places the home of the Amazons in the country about Lake Maeotis. According to Pseudo-Plutarch, the Amazons lived in and about the Tanais river, formerly called the Amazonian or Amazon river, the Amazons later moved to Themiscyra on the River Thermodon
13.
Architect
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An architect is someone who plans, designs, and reviews the construction of buildings. Etymologically, architect derives from the Latin architectus, which derives from the Greek, practical, technical, and academic requirements for becoming an architect vary by jurisdiction. The terms architect and architecture are used in the disciplines of landscape architecture, naval architecture. In most jurisdictions, the professional and commercial uses of the terms architect, throughout ancient and medieval history, most architectural design and construction was carried out by artisans—such as stone masons and carpenters, rising to the role of master builder. Until modern times, there was no distinction between architect and engineer. In Europe, the architect and engineer were primarily geographical variations that referred to the same person. It is suggested that various developments in technology and mathematics allowed the development of the gentleman architect. Paper was not used in Europe for drawing until the 15th century, pencils were used more often for drawing by 1600. The availability of both allowed pre-construction drawings to be made by professionals, until the 18th-century, buildings continued to be designed and set out by craftsmen with the exception of high-status projects. In most developed countries, only qualified people with appropriate license, certification, or registration with a relevant body, such licensure usually requires an accredited university degree, successful completion of exams, and a training period. To practice architecture implies the ability to independently of supervision. In many places, independent, non-licensed individuals may perform design services outside the professional restrictions, such design houses, in the architectural profession, technical and environmental knowledge, design and construction management, and an understanding of business are as important as design. However, design is the force throughout the project and beyond. An architect accepts a commission from a client, the commission might involve preparing feasibility reports, building audits, the design of a building or of several buildings, structures, and the spaces among them. The architect participates in developing the requirements the client wants in the building, throughout the project, the architect co-ordinates a design team. Structural, mechanical, and electrical engineers and other specialists, are hired by the client or the architect, the architect hired by a client is responsible for creating a design concept that meets the requirements of that client and provides a facility suitable to the required use. In that, the architect must meet with and question the client to ascertain all the requirements, often the full brief is not entirely clear at the beginning, entailing a degree of risk in the design undertaking. The architect may make proposals to the client which may rework the terms of the brief
14.
Croesus
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Croesus was the king of Lydia who, according to Herodotus, reigned for 14 years, from 560 BC until his defeat by the Persian king Cyrus the Great in 546 BC. Croesus was renowned for his wealth, Herodotus and Pausanias noted that his gifts were preserved at Delphi, the fall of Croesus made a profound impact on the Greeks, providing a fixed point in their calendar. By the fifth century at least, J. A. S, evans has remarked, Croesus had become a figure of myth, who stood outside the conventional restraints of chronology.1, and Ctesias, whose account is also an encomium of Cyrus. Croesus is a descendant of Gyges, of the Myrmnadae Clan, born about 595 BC, Croesus received tribute from the Ionian Greeks but was friendlier to the Hellenes than his father had been. Croesus is credited with issuing the first true gold coins with a standardised purity for general circulation, however, they were quite crude, and were made of electrum, a naturally occurring pale yellow alloy of gold and silver. The composition of these first coins was similar to alluvial deposits found in the silt of the Pactolus river, later coins, including some in the British Museum, were made from gold purified by heating with common salt to remove the silver. King Croesus gold coins follow the first silver coins that had been minted by King Pheidon of Argos around 700 BC, in Greek and Persian cultures the name of Croesus became a synonym for a wealthy man. Croesus wealth remained proverbial beyond classical antiquity, in English, expressions such as rich as Croesus or richer than Croesus are used to great wealth to this day. According to Herodotus, Croesus encountered the Greek sage Solon and showed him his enormous wealth, Solon goes on to explain that Croesus cannot be the happiest man because the fickleness of fortune means that the happiness of a mans life cannot be judged until after his death. The interview is in the nature of a philosophical disquisition on the subject Which man is happy and it is legendary rather than historical. Thus the happiness of Croesus is presented as an exemplum of the fickleness of Tyche. The story was retold and elaborated by Ausonius in The Masque of the Seven Sages, in the Suda. According to Herodotus, Croesus desired to discover which of the well known oracles of his time gave trustworthy omens. Then on the 100th day the envoys entered the oracle of Delphi in order to ask for the omen, the Pythia answered in verse, I know the sands number, I understand the mute and hear him though he does not speak. The smell has come to my senses of a hard-shelled tortoise Being cooked in bronze together with meat, There is bronze beneath it. The envoys wrote down the answer and returned to Sardis, Croesus read all the answers brought by his envoys from all the oracles. As soon as he read the answer of the Pythia he bowed, because he was persuaded that it was the only real oracle, along with that of Amphiaraus. Indeed, on the specific date Croesus had put pieces of a tortoise and lamb to boil together in a bronze cauldron, then, Croesus wanted to thank and take on his side the oracle of Delphi
15.
Lydia
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Lydia was an Iron Age kingdom of western Asia Minor located generally east of ancient Ionia in the modern western Turkish provinces of Uşak, Manisa and inland İzmir. Its population spoke an Anatolian language known as Lydian, at its greatest extent, the Kingdom of Lydia covered all of western Anatolia. Lydia was a satrapy of the Achaemenid Persian Empire, with Sardis as its capital, tabalus, appointed by Cyrus the Great, was the first satrap. Lydia was later the name of a Roman province, coins are said to have been invented in Lydia around the 7th century BC. The endonym Śfard survives in bilingual and trilingual stone-carved notices of the Achaemenid Empire and these in the Greek tradition are associated with Sardis, the capital city of King Gyges, constructed during the 7th century BC. The region of the Lydian kingdom was during the 15th-14th centuries part of the Arzawa kingdom, the Lydian language is not part of the Luwian subgroup. An Etruscan/Lydian association has long been a subject of conjecture, however, recent decipherment of Lydian and its classification as an Anatolian language mean that Etruscan and Lydian were not even part of the same language family. The boundaries of historical Lydia varied across the centuries and it was bounded first by Mysia, Caria, Phrygia and coastal Ionia. Later, the power of Alyattes II and Croesus expanded Lydia. Lydia never again shrank back into its original dimensions, the Lydian language was an Indo-European language in the Anatolian language family, related to Luwian and Hittite. It used many prefixes and grammatical particles, Lydian finally became extinct during the 1st century BC. Lydia developed after the decline of the Hittite Empire in the 12th century BC, in Hittite times, the name for the region had been Arzawa. According to Greek source, the name of the Lydian kingdom was Maionia, or Maeonia. Homer describes their capital not as Sardis but as Hyde, Hyde may have been the name of the district in which Sardis was located. Later, Herodotus adds that the Meiones were renamed Lydians after their king Lydus, son of Atys and this etiological eponym served to account for the Greek ethnic name Lydoi. During Biblical times, the Lydian warriors were famous archers, some Maeones still existed during historical times in the upland interior along the River Hermus, where a town named Maeonia existed, according to Pliny the Elder and Hierocles. In Greek myth, Lydia had also adopted the symbol, that also appears in the Mycenaean civilization. Omphale, daughter of the river Iardanos, was a ruler of Lydia, all three heroic ancestors indicate a Lydian dynasty claiming Heracles as their ancestor
16.
Herostratus
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Herostratus — or That Who Is Not Lawful To Mention — was a 4th-century BC Greek arsonist, who sought notoriety by destroying the Temple of Artemis, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. His acts prompted the creation of a damnatio memoriae law, forbidding anyone to mention his name, nevertheless, his name has become a metonym for someone who commits a criminal act in order to become noted. The sculpted bases of the pillars contained life-sized carvings and the roof opened to the sky around a staute of Artemis. The second temple was included on an early list of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World by Herodotus in the 5th century BC, and was well known to many people in the ancient world. Little is known about the life of Herostratus, though it is thought he may have someone of low social standing. According to tradition, the fire destroyed the second temple was set on the day Alexander the Great was born,21 July 356 BC. Herostratus was then captured and tortured on the rack, where he confessed to having committed the arson in an attempt to immortalize his name, however, the ancient historian Theopompus mentions the name of Herostratus in his Philippic, and it appears again later in the works of Strabo. Herostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it, who knows whether the best of men be known. Or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot, than any that stand remembred in the account of time. Work on a temple at the site began in 323 BC, resulting in a larger. Herostratuss name lived on in literature and has passed into modern languages as a term for someone who commits a criminal act in order to achieve notoriety. The term Herostratic fame refers to Herostratus and means fame at any cost, chaucer makes reference to Herostratus in The House of Fame, I am that ylke shrewe, ywis, / That brende the temple of Ysidis / In Athenes, loo, that citee. / And wherfor didest thou so, / By my thrift, quod he, madame, / I wolde fayn han had a fame, / As other folk hadde in the toun. Many authors from sixteenth and seventeenth-century Spain refer to Herostratus to represent someone who will do anything to gain notoriety and he is discussed in Chapter 8 of the second part of Cervantess Don Quixote, along with Julius Caesar and Hernán Cortés among others. Don García, the protagonist of Ruiz de Alarcóns La verdad sospechosa, in the chapter titled Dreams in Herman Melvilles Mardi, and a Voyage Thither, the protagonist states, hoso stones me, shall be as Erostratus, who put torch to the temple. Jaroslav Hašek in the preface of his last novel, The Good Soldier Švejk, compared Herostratus to Švejk, the protagonist of the 1967 film Herostratus hires a marketing company to turn his suicide-by-jumping into a mass-media spectacle. In Gore Vidals 1970 novel Two Sisters the real-life story of Herostratus appears as a sub-plot, jean-Paul Sartres short story Erostratus is directly based on the story of Herostratus. Andrei Tarkovskys 1979 film Stalker makes reference to Herostratus, streisand effect HEROSTRATUS in Smith, William, ed
17.
Arson
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Arson is a crime of intentionally, deliberately and maliciously setting fire to buildings, wildland areas, abandoned homes, vehicles or other property with the intent to cause damage. It may be distinguished from other such as spontaneous combustion, accidental fires. Arson often involves fires deliberately set to the property of another or to own property in order to collect insurance compensation. A person who commits this crime is called an arsonist, more often than not, arsonists use accelerants to ignite, propel and directionalize fires. It is not required that the defendant acted intentionally or willfully for the purpose of burning a dwelling, burning – at common law charring to any part of dwelling was sufficient to satisfy this element. No significant amount of damage to the dwelling was required, any injury or damage to the structure caused by exposure to heat or flame is sufficient. Of the dwelling – dwelling refers to a place of residence, the destruction of an unoccupied building was not considered arson, since arson protected habitation, the burning of an unoccupied house did not constitute arson. Dwelling includes structures and outbuildings within the curtilage, dwellings were not limited to houses. A barn could be the subject of arson if it was occupied as a dwelling, moreover, for purposes of common law arson, possession or occupancy rather than title determines whose dwelling the structure is. Thus a tenant who sets fire to his house would not be guilty of common law arson. In many states, arson is divided into degrees, depending sometimes on the value of the property but more commonly on its use, first-degree arson – The act in which the arsonist sets fire to an occupied domain or building such as a school. Second-degree arson – The act in which the arsonist sets fire to a building such as an empty barn. Third-degree arson – The act in which the arsonist sets fire to a building or an abandoned area of space such as a field. Many statutes vary the degree of the according to the criminal intent of the accused. In the United States, the common law elements of arson are often varied in different jurisdictions, for example, the element of dwelling is no longer required in most states, and arson occurs by the burning of any real property without consent or with unlawful intent. Arson is prosecuted with attention to degree of severity in the alleged offense, first degree arson generally occurs when persons are harmed or killed in the course of the fire, while second degree arson occurs when significant destruction of property occurs. While usually a felony, arson may also be prosecuted as a misdemeanor, criminal mischief, burglary also occurs, if the arson involved a breaking and entering. A person may be sentenced to death if arson occurred as a method of homicide, as was the case in California of Raymond Lee Oyler, in New York, arson is charged in five degrees
18.
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
19.
Statue of Zeus at Olympia
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The Statue of Zeus at Olympia was a giant seated figure, about 13 m tall, made by the Greek sculptor Phidias around 435 BC at the sanctuary of Olympia, Greece, and erected in the Temple of Zeus there. A sculpture of ivory plates and gold panels over a framework, it represented the god Zeus sitting on an elaborate cedar wood throne ornamented with ebony, ivory, gold. The statue of Zeus was commissioned by the Eleans, custodians of the Olympic Games, seeking to outdo their Athenian rivals, the Eleans employed the renowned sculptor Phidias, who had previously made the massive statue of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon. The great seated statue as fashioned by Phidias occupied half the width of the aisle of the temple built to house it and it seems that if Zeus were to stand up, the geographer Strabo noted early in the 1st century BC, he would unroof the temple. The Zeus was a sculpture, made with ivory and gold panels on a wooden substructure. No copy in marble or bronze has survived, though there are recognizable but only approximate versions on coins of nearby Elis and on Roman coins, in the 2nd century AD, the geographer and traveler Pausanias gave a detailed description. The statue was crowned with a wreath of olive sprays. In its right hand was a small statue of crowned Nike. Its left hand held a scepter inlaid with many metals, supporting an eagle, the throne featured painted figures and wrought images and was decorated in gold, precious stones, ebony, and ivory. Zeus golden sandals rested upon a footstool decorated with an Amazonomachy in relief, the passage underneath the throne was restricted by painted screens. Pausanias also recounts that the statue was kept constantly coated with oil to counter the harmful effect on the ivory caused by the marshiness of the Altis grove. The floor in front of the image was paved with tiles and surrounded by a raised rim of marble. This reservoir acted as a pool which doubled the apparent height of the statue. He spoke, the son of Cronos, and nodded his head with the dark brows, and the immortally anointed hair of the great god swept from his divine head, and all Olympos was shaken. According to Pausanias, when the image was quite finished Pheidias prayed the god to show by a sign whether the work was to his liking. Immediately, runs the legend, a fell on that part of the floor where down to the present day the bronze jar stood to cover the place. In 391 AD the Roman emperor Theodosius I banned participation in pagan cults, the sanctuary at Olympia fell into disuse. The circumstances of the eventual destruction are unknown
20.
Hanging Gardens of Babylon
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The Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, is the only one whose location has not been definitively established. The Hanging Gardens were described as a feat of engineering, an ascending series of tiered gardens containing all manner of trees, shrubs. The gardens were said to have looked like a green mountain constructed of mud bricks. Traditionally they were said to have built in the ancient city of Babylon, near present-day Hillah, Babil province. The Babylonian priest Berossus, writing in about 290 BC and quoted later by Josephus, attributed the gardens to the Neo-Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II, there are no extant Babylonian texts which mention the gardens, and no definitive archaeological evidence has been found in Babylon. According to one legend, Nebuchadnezzar II built the Hanging Gardens for his Median wife, Queen Amytis, because she missed the green hills and he also built a grand palace that came to be known as The Marvel of the Mankind. If it did indeed exist, it was destroyed sometime after the first century AD, there are five principal writers whose descriptions of Babylon are extant in some form today. These writers concern themselves with the size of the Hanging Gardens, their design and means of irrigation. Josephus quotes a description of the gardens by Berossus, a Babylonian priest of Marduk writing circa 290 BC, Berossus described the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II, and is the only source to credit that king with the construction of the Hanging Gardens. This he did to gratify his queen, because she had brought up in Media. For his description of the gardens, Diodorus Siculus seems to have consulted the 4th century BC texts of both Cleitarchus and Ctesias of Cnidus, Diodorus ascribes the construction to a Syrian king. Furthermore, the walls, which had constructed at great expense, were twenty-two feet thick. Now this park, as I have said, was a later construction, the next account is from Quintus Curtius Rufus, who probably drew on the same sources as Diodorus. The Babylonians also have a citadel twenty stades in circumference, the foundations of its turrets are sunk thirty feet into the ground and the fortifications rise eighty feet above it at the highest point. On its summit are the gardens, a wonder celebrated by the fables of the Greeks. They are as high as the top of the walls and owe their charm to the shade of many tall trees and it has a substructure of walls twenty feet thick at eleven foot intervals, so that from a distance one has the impression of woods overhanging their native mountains. Tradition has it that it is the work of a Syrian king who ruled from Babylon and he built it out of love for his wife who missed the woods and forests in this flat country and persuaded her husband to imitate natures beauty with a structure of this kind. The garden is quadrangular in shape, and each side is four plethra in length and it consists of arched vaults, which are situated, one after another, on checkered, cube-like foundations
21.
Colossus of Rhodes
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The Colossus of Rhodes /roʊdz/ was a statue of the Greek titan-god of the sun Helios, erected in the city of Rhodes, on the Greek island of the same name, by Chares of Lindos in 280 BC. One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, it was constructed to celebrate Rhodes victory over the ruler of Cyprus, Antigonus I Monophthalmus and it was destroyed during the earthquake of 226 BC, and never rebuilt. As of 2015, there are plans to build a new Colossus at Rhodes Harbour. In the late 4th century BC, Rhodes, allied with Ptolemy I of Egypt, prevented a mass invasion staged by their common enemy, Antigonus I Monophthalmus. In 304 BC a relief force of ships sent by Ptolemy arrived, to celebrate their victory, the Rhodians sold the equipment left behind for 300 talents and decided to use the money to build a colossal statue of their patron god, Helios. Construction was left to the direction of Chares, a native of Lindos in Rhodes and his teacher, the sculptor Lysippos, had constructed a 22-metre-high bronze statue of Zeus at Tarentum. Ancient accounts, which differ to some degree, describe the structure as being built with iron tie bars to which brass plates were fixed to form the skin. The interior of the structure, which stood on a 15-metre high white marble pedestal near the Mandraki harbour entrance, was filled with stone blocks as construction progressed. Other sources place the Colossus on a breakwater in the harbour, according to most contemporary descriptions, the statue itself was about 70 cubits, or 33 metres tall. Upper portions were built with the use of an earthen ramp. During the building, workers would pile mounds of earth on the sides of the colossus, upon completion all of the earth was removed and the colossus was left to stand alone. After twelve years, in 280 BC, the statue was completed, preserved in Greek anthologies of poetry is what is believed to be the genuine dedication text for the Colossus. To you, O Sun, the people of Dorian Rhodes set up this bronze statue reaching to Olympus, not only over the seas but also on land did they kindle the lovely torch of freedom and independence. For to the descendants of Herakles belongs dominion over sea and land, the base pedestal was said to be at least 18 metres in diameter, and either circular or octagonal. The feet were carved in stone and covered with bronze plates riveted together. Eight forged iron bars set in a horizontal position formed the ankles. Individually cast curved bronze plates 60 inches square with turned-in edges were joined together by rivets through holes formed during casting to form a series of rings, the statue snapped at the knees and fell over onto the land. Ptolemy III offered to pay for the reconstruction of the statue, but the oracle of Delphi made the Rhodians afraid that they had offended Helios, and they declined to rebuild it
22.
Egyptian pyramids
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The Egyptian pyramids are ancient pyramid-shaped masonry structures located in Egypt. As of November 2008, sources cite either 118 or 138 as the number of identified Egyptian pyramids, most were built as tombs for the countrys pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods. The earliest known Egyptian pyramids are found at Saqqara, northwest of Memphis, the earliest among these is the Pyramid of Djoser which was built during the third dynasty. This pyramid and its surrounding complex were designed by the architect Imhotep, the most famous Egyptian pyramids are those found at Giza, on the outskirts of Cairo. Several of the Giza pyramids are counted among the largest structures ever built, the Pyramid of Khufu at Giza is the largest Egyptian pyramid. It is the one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World still in existence. By the time of the Early Dynastic Period, those with sufficient means were buried in bench-like structures known as mastabas, the second historically-documented Egyptian pyramid is attributed to the architect Imhotep, who planned what Egyptologists believe to be a tomb for the pharaoh Djoser. Imhotep is credited with being the first to conceive the notion of stacking mastabas on top of each other, the result was the Pyramid of Djoser, which was designed to serve as a gigantic stairway by which the soul of the deceased pharaoh could ascend to the heavens. Such was the importance of Imhoteps achievement that he was deified by later Egyptians, the most prolific pyramid-building phase coincided with the greatest degree of absolutist rule. It was during this time that the most famous pyramids, the Giza pyramid complex, were built. Long after the end of Egypts own pyramid-building period, a burst of pyramid-building occurred in what is present-day Sudan, al-Aziz Uthman tried to destroy the Giza pyramid complex. He gave up after damaging the Pyramid of Menkaure because the task proved too huge, the shape of Egyptian pyramids is thought to represent the primordial mound from which the Egyptians believed the earth was created. Pyramids were often named in ways that referred to solar luminescence. For example, the name of the Bent Pyramid at Dahshur The Southern Shining Pyramid. While it is agreed that pyramids were burial monuments, there is continued disagreement on the particular theological principles that might have given rise to them. One suggestion is that they were designed as a type of resurrection machine, the Egyptians believed the dark area of the night sky around which the stars appear to revolve was the physical gateway into the heavens. One of the shafts that extend from the main burial chamber through the entire body of the Great Pyramid points directly towards the center of this part of the sky. This suggests the pyramid may have designed to serve as a means to magically launch the deceased pharaohs soul directly into the abode of the gods
23.
Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
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The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus or Tomb of Mausolus was a tomb built between 353 and 350 BC at Halicarnassus for Mausolus, a satrap in the Persian Empire, and his sister-wife Artemisia II of Caria. The structure was designed by the Greek architects Satyros and Pythius of Priene, the Mausoleum was approximately 45 m in height, and the four sides were adorned with sculptural reliefs, each created by one of four Greek sculptors—Leochares, Bryaxis, Scopas of Paros and Timotheus. The finished structure of the mausoleum was considered to be such a triumph that Antipater of Sidon identified it as one of his Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was destroyed by successive earthquakes from the 12th to the 15th century, the word mausoleum has now come to be used generically for an above-ground tomb. In the 4th century BC, Halicarnassus was the capital of a regional kingdom within the Achaemenid Empire on the western coast of Asia Minor. In 377 BC, the ruler of the region, Hecatomnus of Milas, died and left the control of the kingdom to his son. Hecatomnus, a local satrap under the Persians, took control of several of the neighboring cities, after Artemisia and Mausolus, he had several other daughters and sons, Ada, Idrieus and Pixodarus. Mausolus extended its territory as far as the southwest coast of Anatolia, Artemisia and Mausolus ruled from Halicarnassus over the surrounding territory for 24 years. Mausolus, although descended from people, spoke Greek and admired the Greek way of life. He founded many cities of Greek design along the coast and encouraged Greek democratic traditions, Mausolus decided to build a new capital, one as safe from capture as it was magnificent to be seen. He chose the city of Halicarnassus, Artemisia and Mausolus spent huge amounts of tax money to embellish the city. They commissioned statues, temples and buildings of gleaming marble, in 353 BC, Mausolus died, leaving Artemisia to rule alone. As the Persian satrap, and as the Hecatomnid dynast, Mausolus had planned for himself an elaborate tomb, when he died the projects was continued by his siblings. The tomb became so famous that Mausoluss name is now the eponym for all stately tombs, Artemisia lived for only two years after the death of her husband. The urns with their ashes were placed in the yet unfinished tomb. As a form of sacrifice ritual the bodies of a number of dead animals were placed on the stairs leading to the tomb. It is likely that Mausollos started to plan the tomb before his death, as part of the works in Halicarnassus. Artemisia spared no expense in building the tomb and she sent messengers to Greece to find the most talented artists of the time
24.
Renaissance
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The Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe. This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science, Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, the word Renaissance, literally meaning Rebirth in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word also occurs in Jules Michelets 1855 work, Histoire de France, the word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism, however, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were back from Byzantium to Western Europe. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe life as it really was. Others see more competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand, Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia, silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa, unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity, Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily and this work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history
25.
Maarten van Heemskerck
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Maerten van Heemskerck or Marten Jacobsz Heemskerk van Veen was a Dutch portrait and religious painter, who spent most of his career in Haarlem. He was a pupil of Jan van Scorel, and adopted his teachers Italian-influenced style and he spent the years 1532–6 in Italy. He produced many designs for engravers, and is known for his depictions of the Wonders of the World. Heemskerck was born in the village of Heemskerk, North Holland and he was the son of a farmer called Jacob Willemsz. According to his biography by Karel van Mander, he began his training with the painter Cornelius Willemsz in Haarlem. Heemskerck then went to lodge at the home of the curate of the Sint-Bavokerk. They knew each other because Foppesz owned land in Heemskerk, the artist painted him in a now famous family portrait, considered the first of its kind in a long line of Dutch family paintings. His other works for Foppesz included two life size figures symbolising the Sun and the Moon on a bedstead, and a picture of Adam and his next home was in the house of a goldsmith, Justus Cornelisz, on the edge of Haarlem. Before setting off for Italy on a Grand Tour in 1532 and he travelled around the whole of northern and central Italy, stopping at Rome, where he had letters of introduction from van Scorel to the influential Dutch cardinal William of Enckenvoirt. Giorgio Vasari, who saw the battle-pieces which Heemskerk then produced, said they were well composed, while in Rome where he made numerous drawings of classical sculpture and architecture, many of which survive in two sketchbooks now in the Kupferstichkabinett Berlin. He was to use them as source material throughout the rest of his career, among these are the Capitoline Brutus, van Heemskerck being the first known artist to make a sketch of this now famous bust. On his return to the Netherlands in 1536, he settled back at Haarlem, where he became president of the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke, married twice, the alteration in his style, brought about by his experience of Italy was not universally admired. According to van Mander, in the opinion of some of the best judges he had not improved it, except in one particular and he painted large altarpieces for his friend, the art maecenas and later martyr of the Protestant Reformation, Cornelis Muys. Muys had returned from a period in France to the Netherlands in 1538 and this lucrative and high-profile work in Delft earned Heemskerck a commission for an altarpiece in the Nieuwe Kerk for their Guild of St. Luke. In 1553 he became curate of the Sint-Bavokerk, where he served for 22 years, in 1572 he left Haarlem for Amsterdam, to avoid the siege of Haarlem which the Spaniards laid to the place. He was one of the first Netherlandish artists to make drawings specifically for reproduction by commercial printmakers and he employed a technique incorporating cross-hatching and stippling, intended to aid the engraver. Heemskerck produced designs for a set of engravings, showing eight and they were engraved by Philip Galle and published in 1572. Many works by van Heemskerck survive, an altar-piece executed for the St
26.
Pausanias (geographer)
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Pausanias was a Greek traveler and geographer of the 2nd century AD, who lived in the time of Roman emperors Hadrian, Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius. He is famous for his Description of Greece, a work that describes ancient Greece from his first-hand observations. This work provides crucial information for making links between classical literature and modern archaeology, andrew Stewart assesses him as, A careful, pedestrian writer. interested not only in the grandiose or the exquisite but in unusual sights and obscure ritual. He is occasionally careless, or makes unwarranted inferences, and his guides or even his own notes sometimes mislead him, yet his honesty is unquestionable, before visiting Greece, he had been to Antioch, Joppa and Jerusalem, and to the banks of the River Jordan. In Egypt, he had seen the pyramids, while at the temple of Ammon, in Macedonia, he appears to have seen the alleged tomb of Orpheus in Libethra. Crossing over to Italy, he had something of the cities of Campania. He was one of the first to write of seeing the ruins of Troy, Alexandria Troas, Pausanias Description of Greece is in ten books, each dedicated to some portion of Greece. He begins his tour in Attica, where the city of Athens, subsequent books describe Corinthia, Laconia, Messenia, Elis, Achaea, Arcadia, Boetia, Phocis and Ozolian Locris. He famously leaves out key portions of Greece such as Crete, the project is more than topographical, it is a cultural geography. Pausanias digresses from description of architectural and artistic objects to review the mythological and historical underpinnings of the society that produced them and his work bears the marks of his attempt to navigate that space and establish an identity for Roman Greece. He is not a naturalist by any means, though he does from time to comment on the physical realities of the Greek landscape. He notices the pine trees on the sandy coast of Elis, the deer and the boars in the oak woods of Phelloe. Pausanias is most at home in describing the art and architecture of Olympia. Yet, even in the most secluded regions of Greece, he is fascinated by all kinds of depictions of gods, holy relics, Pausanias has the instincts of an antiquary. Some magnificent and dominating structures, such as the Stoa of King Attalus in the Athenian Agora or the Exedra of Herodes Atticus at Olympia are not even mentioned. While he never doubts the existence of the gods and heroes, he criticizes the myths. His descriptions of monuments of art are plain and unadorned and they bear the impression of reality, and their accuracy is confirmed by the extant remains. He is perfectly frank in his confessions of ignorance, when he quotes a book at second hand he takes pains to say so
27.
Didyma
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Didyma was an ancient Greek sanctuary on the coast of Ionia. It contained a temple and oracle of Apollo, the Didymaion, in Greek didyma means twin, but the Greeks who sought a twin at Didyma ignored the Carian origin of the name. Next to Delphi, Didyma was the most renowned oracle of the Hellenic world and its establishment preceded literacy and even the Hellenic colonization of Ionia. Mythic genealogies of the origins of the Branchidae line of priests, designed to capture the origins of Didyma as a Hellenic tradition, date to the Hellenistic period. The ruins of Didyma are located a distance to the northwest of modern Didim in Aydin Province, Turkey. Didyma was the largest and most significant sanctuary on the territory of the classical city Miletus. To approach it, visitors would follow the Sacred Way to Didyma, along this route were ritual waystations, and statues of male and female members of the Branchidae family, as well as animal figures. Some of these statues, dating to the 6th century BC, are now in the British Museum, also, as Wilamowitz suggested, there may be a connection to Cybele Dindymene, the Cybele of Mount Dindymon. Excavations by German archaeologists have uncovered a major sanctuary dedicated to Artemis, the 6th century Didymaion, dedicated to Apollo, enclosed a smaller temple that was its predecessor, which archaeologists have identified. Its treasury was enriched by gifts from Croesus, Apollo was worshipped in nearby Miletus under the name Delphinius. At Didyma, he was worshipped as Didymeus and his other names in the area were Philesios, and Carinus. Until its destruction by the Persians in 494 BC, Didymas sanctuary was administered by the family of the Branchidae, who claimed descent from an eponymous Branchos, the priestess, seated above the sacred spring, gave utterances that were interpreted by the Branchidae. Both Herodotus and Pausanias dated the origins of the oracle at Didyma before the Ionian colonization of this coast, though the sanctuaries of Delphi and Ephesus were swiftly rebuilt, Didyma remained a ruin until the first steps of restoration were undertaken in 334 BC. After his capture of Miletus in 334 BC, Alexander the Great reconsecrated the oracle and placed its administration in the hands of the city, where the priest in charge was annually elected. Vitruvius recorded a tradition that the architects were Paeonius of Ephesus, whom Vitruvius credited with the rebuilding of the Temple of Artemis there, the peripteral temple was surrounded by a double file of Ionic columns. With a pronaos of three rows of four columns, the approaching visitor passed through a regularized grove formed of columns. The door usually leading to a cella was replaced by a wall with a large upper opening through which one could glimpse the upper part of the naiskos in the inner court. This was the location of an ancient spring, the naiskos—which was itself a small temple, containing in its own small cella the bronze image of the god—and a grove of laurels
28.
Pindar
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Pindar was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes. Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved and his poems can also, however, seem difficult and even peculiar. The Athenian comic playwright Eupolis once remarked that they are reduced to silence by the disinclination of the multitude for elegant learning. His poetry, while admired by critics, still challenges the casual reader, Pindar was the first Greek poet to reflect on the nature of poetry and on the poets role. A dream of a shadow Is our mortal being, but when there comes to men A gleam of splendour given of heaven, Then rests on them a light of glory And blessed are their days. His poetry illustrates the beliefs and values of Archaic Greece at the dawn of the classical period, five ancient sources contain all the recorded details of Pindars life. One of them is a short biography discovered in 1961 on an Egyptian papyrus dating from at least 200 AD and it has been claimed that biographical interpretations of the poems are due to a fatal conjunction of historicism and Romanticism. In other words, we know almost nothing about Pindars life based on traditional sources or his own poems. However, the pendulum of fashion has begun to change direction again. He was probably born in 522 BC or 518 BC in Cynoscephalae and his fathers name is variously given as Daiphantus, Pagondas or Scopelinus, and his mothers name was Cleodice. It is reported that he was stung on the mouth by a bee in his youth, Pindar was about twenty years old in 498 BC when he was commissioned by the ruling family in Thessaly to compose his first victory ode. He studied the art of poetry in Athens, where his tutor was Lasos of Hermione. The early-to-middle years of Pindars career coincided with the Persian invasions of Greece in the reigns of Darius and it is possible that Pindar spent much of this time at Aegina. Thrasybulus had driven the winning chariot and he and Pindar were to form a lasting friendship, Pindar seems to have used his odes to advance his, and his friends, personal interests. In 462 BC he composed two odes in honour of Arcesilas, king of Cyrene, pleading for the return from exile of a friend, Demophilus. In the latter ode Pindar proudly mentions his own ancestry, which he shared with the king, as an Aegeid or descendent of Aegeus, the historian Herodotus considered the clan important enough to deserve mention. Pindar might not actually claim to be an Aegeid since his I statements do not necessarily refer to himself. He was possibly the Theban proxenos or consul for Aegina and/or Molossia, as indicated in another of his odes, Nemean 7, in which he glorifies Neoptolemus, a national hero of Aegina and Molossia
29.
Tacitus
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Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and an historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero, and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors. These two works span the history of the Roman Empire from the death of Augustus, in AD14, to the years of the First Jewish–Roman War, There are substantial lacunae in the surviving texts, including a gap in the Annals that is four books long. Tacitus is considered to be one of the greatest Roman historians, details about his personal life are scarce. What little is known comes from scattered hints throughout his work, the letters of his friend and admirer Pliny the Younger, and an inscription found at Mylasa in Caria. Tacitus was born in 56 or 57 to an equestrian family, one scholars suggestion of Sextus has gained no approval. Most of the aristocratic families failed to survive the proscriptions which took place at the end of the Republic. The claim that he was descended from a freedman is derived from a speech in his writings which asserts that many senators and knights were descended from freedmen, but this is generally disputed. His father may have been the Cornelius Tacitus who served as procurator of Belgica and Germania, Pliny the Elder mentions that Cornelius had a son who aged rapidly, which implies an early death. There is no mention of Tacitus suffering such a condition, the friendship between the younger Pliny and Tacitus leads some scholars to conclude that they were both the offspring of wealthy provincial families. The province of his birth remains unknown, though various conjectures suggest Gallia Belgica, Gallia Narbonensis and his marriage to the daughter of Narbonensian senator Gnaeus Julius Agricola implies that he came from Gallia Narbonensis. Tacitus dedication to Fabius Iustus in the Dialogus may indicate a connection with Spain, no evidence exists, however, that Plinys friends from northern Italy knew Tacitus, nor do Plinys letters hint that the two men had a common background. Pliny Book 9, Letter 23 reports that, when he was asked if he was Italian or provincial, he gave an unclear answer, since Pliny was from Italy, some infer that Tacitus was from the provinces, probably Gallia Narbonensis. His ancestry, his skill in oratory, and his depiction of barbarians who resisted Roman rule have led some to suggest that he was a Celt. This belief stems from the fact that the Celts who had occupied Gaul prior to the Roman invasion were famous for their skill in oratory, and had been subjugated by Rome. As a young man, Tacitus studied rhetoric in Rome to prepare for a career in law and politics, like Pliny, in 77 or 78, he married Julia Agricola, daughter of the famous general Agricola. Little is known of their life, save that Tacitus loved hunting. He started his career under Vespasian, but entered political life as a quaestor in 81 or 82 under Titus
30.
David George Hogarth
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David George Hogarth CMG was a British archaeologist and scholar associated with T. E. Lawrence and Arthur Evans. D. G. Hogarth was the son of Reverend George Hogarth, Vicar of Barton-upon-Humber and he had a sister three years younger, Janet E. Courtney, an author and feminist. In one of his works, Hogarth claimed to be an antiquary who was made so. He said, nothing disposed me to my trade in early years and those years included a secondary education, 1876–1880, at Winchester College, which claims to be, and was labelled by Hogarth as, our oldest Public School. Between 1887 and 1907, Hogarth travelled to excavations in Cyprus, Crete, Egypt, Syria, Melos, on the island of Crete, he excavated Zakros and Psychro Cave. Hogarth was named director of the British School at Athens in 1897 and he was the keeper of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford from 1909 until his death in 1927. Professor Hogarth was appointed the director of the Arab Bureau. Hogarth was close with T. E. Lawrence and worked with Lawrence to plan the Arab Revolt and he was appointed a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George in the 1918 New Year Honours for his efforts during the First World War. The Arabists rejected this proposal vehemently, Sykes taking Hogarths research as evidence of the different situation in the protectorate. The archaeologists knew it was clear that the Raj had no understanding of the different conditions, from 1925 to 1927 he was President of the Royal Geographical Society. On 7 November 1894, Hogarth married Laura Violet Uppleby, daughter of George Charles Uppleby and his wife and mother shared a common great great grandfather, one John Uppleby of Wootton, Lincolnshire. Laura Violet was 26 at the time, David George,32 and they had one son, William David Hogarth. Gertrude Bell Mr. Dryden Hogarth, David George, devia Cypria, notes of an archaeological journey in Cyprus in 1888. The wandering scholar in the Levant, philip and Alexander of Macedon, two essays in biography. The penetration of Arabia, a record of the development of Western knowledge concerning the Arabian peninsula, the Archaic Artemisia of Ephesus ——. Ionia and the East, six lectures delivered before the University of London, the Ancient East The Balkans ——. Hittite seals, with reference to the Ashmolean collection. Arabia Kings of the Hittites The Life of Charles M. Doughty Authority and Archaeology – Sacred and Profane – Essays on the relation of monuments to Biblical and Classical Literature Graves, Robert
31.
Geometric art
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Geometric art is a phase of Greek art, characterized largely by geometric motifs in vase painting, that flourished towards the end of the Greek Dark Ages, circa 900 BC –700 BC. Its centre was in Athens, and from there the style spread amongst the cities of the Aegean. In the Early Geometric period, the height of the vessels had been increased, the remaining surface is covered by a thin layer of clay, which during the cooking takes a dark, shiny, metallic color. That was the period when the theme of the meander was added to the pottery design. One of the examples of the Late Geometric style is an oldest surviving signed work of a Greek potter Aristonothos. The vase was found at Cerveteri in Italy and illustrates the blinding of Polyphemus by Odysseus, – that led to the Orientalizing Period style, in which the pottery style of Corinth distinguished. Vases in the Geometric style are characterized by horizontal bands about the circumference covering the entire vase. Between these lines the geometric artist used a number of decorative motifs such as the zigzag, the triangle, the meander. Besides abstract elements, painters of this era introduced stylized depictions of humans, linear designs were the principal motif used in this period. The meander pattern was often placed in bands and used to frame the now larger panels of decoration, the first human figures appeared around 770 BC on the handles of vases. The male was depicted with a torso, an ovoid head with a blob for a nose and long cylindrical thighs. Their long hair was depicted as a series of lines, as were their breasts, new York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Geometric Art in Ancient Greece Greek Geometric period
32.
Peripteros
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Peripteros is the special name given to a type of ancient Greek or Roman temple surrounded by a portico with columns. It refers to the element for the architectural definition of buildings surrounded around their outside by a colonnade on all four sides of the cella. By extension, it means simply the perimeter of a building. The term is used of buildings in the Doric order. The peripteros can be a portico, a kiosk or a chapel, if it made up of four columns, it is tetrastyle, of 6, hexastyle, of 8, octastyle, of 10, decastyle, and of 12, dodecastyle. If the columns are fitted into the wall instead of standing alone, it is called a pseudo-peripteros
33.
Griffin
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The griffin, griffon, or gryphon is a legendary creature with the body, tail, and back legs of a lion, the head and wings of an eagle, and an eagles talons as its front feet. Because the lion was considered the king of the beasts and the eagle the king of birds. The griffin was thought of as king of all creatures. Griffins are known for guarding treasure and priceless possessions, in Greek and Roman texts, griffins and Arimaspeans were associated with gold. Indeed, in later accounts, griffins were said to lay eggs in burrows on the grounds, in antiquity it was a symbol of divine power and a guardian of the divine. The derivation of this remains uncertain. It could be related to the Greek word γρυπός, meaning curved, also, this could have been an Anatolian loan word, compare Akkadian karūbu, and similar to Cherub. A related Hebrew word is כרוב, Most statuary representations of griffins depict them with bird-like talons, although in some older illustrations griffins have a lions forelimbs, they generally have a lions hindquarters. Its eagles head is given prominent ears, these are sometimes described as the lions ears, but are often elongated. Infrequently, a griffin is portrayed without wings, or a wingless eagle-headed lion is identified as a griffin, in 15th-century and later heraldry, such a beast may be called an alce or a keythong. In heraldry, a griffin always has forelegs like an eagles hind-legs, there is evidence of representations of griffins in Ancient Iranian and Ancient Egyptian art dating back to before 3000 BC. In Egypt, a griffin can be seen in a cosmetic palette from Hierakonpolis, known as the Two Dog Palette, which is dated to ca. In Iran, griffins appeared on seals from Susa as early as 3000 BC. Griffin depictions appear in the Levant, Syria. Early depictions of griffins in Ancient Greek art are found in the 15th century BC frescoes in the Throne Room of the Bronze Age Palace of Knossos and it continued being a favored decorative theme in Archaic and Classical Greek art. In Central Asia, the griffin appears about a years after Bronze Age Crete, in the 5th–4th centuries BC. The Achaemenids considered the griffin a protector from evil, witchcraft, the modern generalist calls it the lion-griffin, as for example, Robin Lane Fox, in Alexander the Great,1973,31 and notes p. The Pisa Griffin is a bronze sculpture that has been in Pisa in Italy since the Middle Ages. It is the largest bronze medieval Islamic sculpture known, at three feet tall, and was probably created in the 11th century in Al-Andaluz
34.
Tree of life
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The concept of a tree of life is a widespread mytheme or archetype in the worlds mythologies, related to the concept of sacred tree more generally, and hence in religious and philosophical tradition. The expression Tree of Life was used as a metaphor for the tree of common descent in the evolutionary sense in a famous passage by Charles Darwin. Various trees of life are recounted in folklore, culture and fiction and they had their origin in religious symbolism. The Eternal Banyan Tree is located on the bank of the Yamuna inside the courtyard of Allahabad Fort near the confluence of the Yamuna, the eternal and divine nature of this tree has been documented at length in the scriptures. During the cyclic destruction of creation when the earth was enveloped by waters. It is on the leaves of tree that Lord Krishna rested in the form of a baby when land was no longer visible. And it is here that the sage, Markandeya, received the cosmic vision of the Lord. It is under this tree that Buddha meditates eternally, legend also has it that the Bodi tree at Gaya is a manifestation of this tree. In pre-Islamic Persian mythology, the Gaokerena world tree is a large, ahriman created a frog to invade the tree and destroy it, aiming to prevent all trees from growing on the earth. As a reaction, God created two kar fish staring at the frog to guard the tree, the two fishes are always staring at the frog and stay ready to react to it. The sacred plant haoma and the drink made from it, the preparation of the drink from the plant by pounding and the drinking of it are central features of Zoroastrian ritual. Haoma is also personified as a divinity and it bestows essential vital qualities—health, fertility, husbands for maidens, even immortality. The source of the haoma plant is a shining white tree that grows on a paradisiacal mountain. Sprigs of this white haoma were brought to earth by divine birds, Haoma is the Avestan form of the Sanskrit soma. The near identity of the two in ritual significance is considered by scholars to point to a salient feature of an Indo-Iranian religion antedating Zoroastrianism. Another related issue in ancient mythology of Iran is the myth of Mashyа and Mashyane and this myth can be considered as a prototype for the creation myth where living beings are created by Gods. To the Ancient Egyptians, the Tree of Life represented the hierarchical chain of events that brought everything into existence, the spheres of the Tree of Life demonstrate the order, process, and method of creation. In Egyptian mythology, in the Ennead system of Heliopolis, the first couple, apart from Shu and Tefnut and Geb and Nut, are Isis and Osiris
35.
Xoanon
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A xoanon was an Archaic wooden cult image of Ancient Greece. Classical Greeks associated such cult objects, whether aniconic or effigy, many such cult images were preserved into historical times, though none are known to have survived to the modern day, except where their image was copied in stone or marble. In the 2nd century CE, Pausanias described numerous xoana in his Description of Greece, the statue of Samian Hera, as Aethilos says, was a wooden beam at first, but afterwards, when Prokles was ruler, it was humanized in form. In Pausanias travels he never mentions seeing a xoanon of a mortal man, a different type of cult figure in which the face, hands, and feet were carved of marble and the rest of the body made of wood is called acrolith. The wooden part was covered either with cloth or gold leaf. All the works of this artist, though somewhat uncouth to look at, of the works of Daidalos there are two in Boeotia, a Herakles in Thebes and the Trophonios at Lebadeia. There are also two other xoana in Crete, a Britomartis at Olous and an Athena at Knossos, at Delos, too, there is a small xoanon of Aphrodite, its right hand damaged by time, and instead of feet its lower part is square. I am persuaded that Ariadne got this image from Daidalos, similar xoana were ascribed by the Greeks to the contemporary of Daedalus, the equally legendary Smilis. Such figures were clothed in real textiles, such as the peplos that was woven. The wood of which a xoanon was carved was often symbolic, olivewood, pearwood, Vitex, in Athens, in the Erechtheum, an ancient olivewood effigy of Athena was preserved. The Athenians believed it had fallen to earth from the heavens, as a gift to Athens, on the island of Icaria a rustic piece of wood was venerated for the spirit of Artemis it contained or represented. Ovid in Metamorphoses describes how in the cave of Cybele numerous wooden images are to be seen, such an archaic image of wood of the Tauric goddess was stolen by Iphigeneia and Orestes in Iphigeneia in Tauris. The importance of the xoanon in local cult ensured that it would be carefully copied when colonies were founded, strabo reports that the metropolis Massilia was founded by Phocaeans. So the cult image of the Lady of Ephesus, identified as Artemis in Greek understanding, was established as Diana Aventina at Rome, palladion Daidala Andrew Stewart, One Hundred Greek Sculptors, Their Careers and Extant Works, passim. James George Frazer, Pausanias, Description of Greece, translation and commentary, II, a. A. Donohue, Xoana and the Origins of Greek Sculpture,1988
36.
Heraclitus
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Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, and a native of the city of Ephesus, then part of the Persian Empire. Little is known about his life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught. Heraclitus was famous for his insistence on ever-present change as being the essence of the universe, as stated in the famous saying. This position was complemented by his commitment to a unity of opposites in the world, stating that the path up and down are one. Through these doctrines Heraclitus characterized all existing entities by pairs of contrary properties and this, along with his cryptic utterance that all entities come to be in accordance with this Logos has been the subject of numerous interpretations. Diogenes said that Heraclitus flourished in the 69th Olympiad, 504–501 BC, All the rest of the evidence — the people Heraclitus is said to have known, or the people who were familiar with his work — confirms the floruit. His dates of birth and death are based on a span of 60 years. Heraclitus was born to a family in Ephesus, in the Persian Empire, in what is now called present-day Efes. His father was named either Blosôn or Herakôn, how much power the king had is another question. Ephesus had been part of the Persian Empire since 547 and was ruled by a satrap, two extant letters between Heraclitus and Darius I, quoted by Diogenes, are undoubtedly later forgeries. With regard to education, Diogenes says that Heraclitus was wondrous from childhood, Diogenes relates that Sotion said he was a hearer of Xenophanes, which contradicts Heraclitus statement that he had taught himself by questioning himself. Burnet states in any case that, Xenophanes left Ionia before Herakleitos was born. Diogenes relates that as a boy Heraclitus had said he knew nothing and his statement that he heard no one but questioned himself, can be placed alongside his statement that the things that can be seen, heard and learned are what I prize the most. Diogenes relates that Heraclitus had an opinion of human affairs. He believed that Hesiod and Pythagoras lacked understanding though learned and that Homer, laws needed to be defended as though they were city walls. Timon is said to have called him a mob-reviler, Heraclitus hated the Athenians and his fellow Ephesians, wishing the latter wealth in punishment for their wicked ways. Says Diogenes, Finally, he became a hater of his kind, making his diet of grass and herbs. Heraclitus life as a philosopher was interrupted by dropsy, the physicians he consulted were unable to prescribe a cure
37.
Cella
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A cella or naos is the inner chamber of a temple in classical architecture, or a shop facing the street in domestic Roman architecture, such as a domus. Its enclosure within walls has given rise to extended meanings, of a hermits or monks cell, in Ancient Greek and Roman temples the cella is a room at the centre of the building, usually containing a cult image or statue representing the particular deity venerated in the temple. In addition the cella may contain a table or plinth to receive votive offerings such as statues, precious and semi-precious stones, helmets, spear and arrow heads, swords. The accumulated offerings made Greek and Roman temples virtual treasuries, the cella is typically a simple, windowless, rectangular room with a door or open entrance at the front behind a colonnaded portico facade. In larger temples, the cella was divided by two colonnades into a central nave flanked by two aisles. A cella may contain an adyton, an inner area restricted to access by the priests—in religions that had a consecrated priesthood—or by the temple guard. With very few exceptions Greek buildings were of a design that placed the cella in the center of the plan, such as the Parthenon. The Romans favoured pseudoperipteral buildings with a portico offsetting the cella to the rear, the pseudoperipteral plan uses engaged columns embedded along the side and rear walls of the cella. The Temple of Venus and Roma built by Hadrian in Rome had two cellae arranged back-to-back enclosed by a single outer peristyle, according to Vitruvius, the Etruscan type of temples had three cellae, side by side, conjoined by a double row of columns on the facade. The cella, also called the naos, holds many box-like shrines, the Greek word naos has been extended by archaeologists to describe the central room of the pyramids. Towards the end of the Old Kingdom, naos construction went from being subterranean to being directly into the pyramid. The naos was surrounded by different paths and rooms, many used to confuse and divert thieves. In early Christian and Byzantine architecture, the cella or naos is an area at the centre of the reserved for performing the liturgy. In later periods a small chapel or monks cell was also called a cella, list of Greco-Roman roofs This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, Chisholm, Hugh, ed. Cella. Trachtenberg and Hyman, Architecture, From Prehistory to Post Modernity Vitruvius, De architectura, Book IV. ch 7, translation, plans and reconstructions of Tuscan cellae
38.
Cult image
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In the practice of religion, a cult image is a human-made object that is venerated or worshipped for the deity, spirit or daemon that it embodies or represents. Cultus, the outward religious formulas of cult, often centers upon the treatment of cult images, religious images cover a wider range of all types of images made with a religious purpose, subject, or connection. In many contexts cult image specifically means the most important image in a temple, kept in an inner space, as opposed to what may be many other images decorating the temple. The term idol is often synonymous with cult image, but may be used especially of an image believed not just to depict or represent a deity or spirit. Sometimes the image is believed to have its own powers, to grant wishes or otherwise affect the world, in cultures where idolatry is not viewed negatively, the word idol is not generally seen as pejorative, such as in Indian English. Cult of images is the practice of worshipping or venerating religious or cult images representing divine figures, common in a number of ancient religions, the practice continues most prominently today in Hinduism. Assertions by others outside the group concerned that such beliefs are held by the group are however common. Cult images were a presence in Ancient Egypt, and still are in modern-day Kemetism. A common example of an image in ancient Egypt was the Apis Bull. The term is confined to the relatively small images, typically in gold. These images usually showed the god in their sacred barque or boat, the Parthenon contained a cult image of Athena, the Greek goddess of civilization and the noble side of war. This cult image, known as Athena Parthenos, was created by Phidias and this cult image was used for religious sacrifices at this Athenian temple. Hinduism allows for many forms of worship and therefore it neither prescribes nor proscribes worship of images, in Hinduism, a murti typically refers to an image that expresses a Divine Spirit. Meaning literally embodiment, a murti is a representation of a divinity, made usually of stone, wood, or metal, hindus consider a murti worthy of serving as a focus of divine worship only after the divine is invoked in it for the purpose of offering worship. The depiction of the divinity must reflect the gestures and proportions outlined in religious tradition, members of Abrahamic religions identify cult images as idols and their worship as idolatry, the worship of hollow forms. The avoidance of such a degrading paradox was expressed in the early Christian idea of miraculous icons that were not made by human hands, acheiropoietoi. Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians make an exception for the veneration of image of saints, the word idol entered Middle English in the 13th century from Old French idole adapted in Ecclesiastical Latin from the Greek eidolon. Greek eidos was employed by Plato and the Platonists to signify perfect immutable forms, the local tribes, of the Arabian peninsula, came to this centre of commerce to place their idols in the Kaaba, in the process being charged tithes
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Naiskos
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The naiskos is a small temple in classical order with columns or pillars and pediment. Often applied as a motif, it is not rare in ancient art. Although such naiskoi often draw portraits of men who died, they lack columns and are properly grave stelae in English-language scholarship, there also exist naiskos-type figurines or other types of temples formed in terracotta, examples abound at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The naiskos everywhere has a background, relating especially to Greek funerary cult. A similar style, called the Aedicula, is observed in Roman art, the Funerary Stele of a Woman is in the form of a naiskos. It is a sculpture made from Pentelic marble and dates back to approximately 325 –320 BCE. Originating from Attica, a region in southern Greece, as many naiskoi and it features a seated young woman on the right of the stele. Next to her is another woman, who is presumed to be a maidservant based on her clothing, standing with a jewelry box. Both of these women are sculpted in relief, but between them in a lower relief are remnants of a third standing figure. Only the two figures has been well preserved. A large portion in the middle is missing, the stele functioned as a funerary monument during the Late Classical period of the 4th century. Funerary reliefs were produced in quantities and typically featured reoccurring images of the maid-and-mistress motif. Eine heroisierende Fiktion im unteritalischen Vasenbild, in Christine Schmitz, Anja Bettenworth, Menschen - Heros - Gott, Weltentwürfe und Lebensmodelle im Mythos der Vormoderne, richard T. Neer, Greek Art and Archaeology, A New History, c. Media related to Naiskoi at Wikimedia Commons Bochum von Johannes Bergemann - Die Datenbank der attischen Grabreliefs
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Electrum
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Electrum is a naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver, with trace amounts of copper and other metals. It has also been produced artificially, and is known as green gold. The ancient Greeks called it gold or white gold, as opposed to refined gold and its colour ranges from pale to bright yellow, depending on the proportions of gold and silver. This suggests that one reason for the invention of coinage in that area was to increase the profits from seigniorage by issuing currency with a gold content than the commonly circulating metal. Electrum was used as early as the third millennium BC in Old Kingdom of Egypt, sometimes as a coating to the pyramidions atop ancient Egyptian pyramids. It was also used in the making of ancient drinking vessels, the first metal coins ever made were of electrum and date back to the end of the 7th century or the beginning of the 6th century BC. For several decades, the medals awarded with the Nobel Prize have been made of gold-plated green gold, the name electrum was also used to denote German ‘silver’, mainly for its use in making technical instruments. The name electrum is the Latinized form of the Greek word ἤλεκτρον, electrum was often referred to as white gold in ancient times, but could be more accurately described as pale gold, as it is usually pale yellow or yellowish-white in colour. The modern use of the white gold usually concerns gold alloyed with any one or a combination of nickel, silver. Electrum consists primarily of gold and silver but is found with traces of platinum, copper. The name is mostly applied informally to compositions between about 20-80% gold and 20-80% silver atoms, but these are called gold or silver depending on the dominant element. Analysis of the composition of electrum in ancient Greek coinage dating from about 600 BC shows that the content was about 55. 5% in the coinage issued by Phocaea. In the early period, the gold content of electrum ranged from 46% in Phokaia to 43% in Mytilene. In later coinage from these areas, dating to 326 BC, in the Hellenistic period, electrum coins with a regularly decreasing proportion of gold were issued by the Carthaginians. In the later Eastern Roman Empire controlled from Constantinople, the purity of the coinage was reduced. Electrum is mentioned in an account of an expedition sent by Pharaoh Sahure of the Fifth dynasty of Egypt and it is also discussed by Pliny the Elder in his Naturalis Historia. Electrum is possibly referred to three times in the Bible, in all three instances it is used to describe a type of glow seen in visions by the prophet Ezekiel. Electrum is believed to have used in coins circa 600 BC in Lydia under the reign of Alyattes II
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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
