Ancient World Flashcards
What was the name of the mass extinction event about 65 million years ago, killed dinosaurs etc?
The K-T extinction event
“Southern ape from Afar”
Australopithecus Afarensis
“Handy Man”
Homo habilis
patron deity of the city of Babylon.
Marduk
Hawaii’s creation myths come from an oral poem called
The Kumulipo
What are we?
Homo sapiens sapiens
Where are the Atapuerca Mountains/Hills?
Spain
Where are the Skhul and Qafzeh Caves?
Israel
Where is Isturits?
In the Pyrenees in France
Early culture known for their Venus figurines
Gravettian culture
The Nazca culture (also Nasca) was the archaeological culture that flourished from c. 100 BC to 800 AD beside the arid, southern coast of
Peru
The Easter Island statues were made between
900 AD and 1600 AD
is an archaeological site in southern Chile, located near Puerto Montt, Southern Chile, which has been dated to as early as 18,500 cal BP (16,500 BC).
Monte Verde
The world’s first known _____ was produced around 10,500 BC b a group of hunters and fishers, known as the Inicipient Jomon, living on the islands of Japan.
Pottery
What is the Gravettian culture known for?
Venus figurines
The people of this culture, named for a town in New Mexico, hunted with spears equipped with a characteristic point, a fluted rock spear point that could be fastened to a wooden shaft.
Clovis
Tell El Sultan is better known as this
Jericho
was a very large Neolithic and Chalcolithic proto-city settlement in southern Anatolia, which existed from approximately 7500 BC to 5700 BC, and flourished around 7000 BC.[2] In July 2012, it was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.[3]
Catal Huyuk
What is bronze made up of
Copper and tin
The first known form of surgery to have been practiced on humans is
Trepanation
A skull from the Ensisheim burial site in France shows signs of this
Trepanation
The earliest known physical manifestation of the monitoring of celestial bodies comes form a circular cluster of standing megaliths erected sometime after 5000 BC at the site of ____ in the ____ of south Egypt.
Nabta Playa , Nubian Desert
This calendar had 365 days, 12 months, and three seasons called Inundation, Growth, and Drought
Egyptian calendar
The Koran says this creature shall be favoured above all other creatures, and shall fly without wings and conquer without sword
Horse
This people left humanity the oldest extant manual for the care and breeding of a horse, written in cuneiform about 1600 BC
Hittites (in Anatolia)
Alexander the Great’s horse
Bucephalus
A _____ is a large man-made upright stone, typically dating from the European middle Bronze Age.
menhir or standing stone
The earliest evidence of its domestication comes from middens in modern-day Ukraine, dated to about 4000 BC, and associated with semi-nomadic pastoralists known as the Kurgan.
Horse
Which two states is the Ouachita River in?
Louisiana and Arkansas
is an archaeological site in present-day Ouachita Parish, Louisiana, from the Archaic period. Dated to about 5400 years ago (approx. 3500 BCE), ______ is considered the oldest earthwork mound complex in North America.
Watson Brake
is a well-studied Late Preceramic site of the ancient Norte Chico civilization, located at the mouth of the Supe river on the north-central Peruvian coast.
Aspero
Where were Thebes, Memphis, and Heliopolis?
Egypt
_______ was a pharaoh of the Early Dynastic Period of ancient Egypt credited by classical tradition with having united Upper and Lower Egypt and as the founder of the First Dynasty.[8]
Menes (sometimes Narmer)
Sericulture is the farming of what?
Silk
What writing surface is created from a marsh reed?
Papyrus
First physician in recorded history and architect of the first pyramid
Imhotep
Who did Imhotep build the pyramid for?
Pharaoh Djoser
Aspero is a well-studied Late Preceramic site of the ancient Norte Chico civilization, located at the mouth of the Supe river on the north-central _____ coast
Peruvian
What instrument is the lyre like?
Harp
What instrument is the oud like?
Lute
What is the pyramid at Piza made from?
Limestone
Who is the Pyramid at Giza dedicated to?
Khufu
______ civilization, centred around the Indus River Valley in modern-day Pakistan, had by 2500 BC established two major urban centers.
Harappan
_____ meaning ‘Mound of the Dead Men, is an archaeological site in the province of Sindh, Pakistan. Built around 2500 BCE, it was one of the largest settlements of the ancient Indus Valley Civilisation, and one of the world’s earliest major cities, contemporaneous with the civilizations of ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Minoan Crete, and Norte Chico.
Mohenjo-Daro
What river were Harappa and Mohenjo-Daro centred around?
Indus River (in Pakistan)
Semilegendary king of the Mesopotamian City of Akkad
Sargon
The ______ dynasty is the first dynasty in traditional Chinese history.
Xia
The _____ and ______ were two groups of mythological rulers or deities in ancient northern China.
Three Sovereigns and Five Emperors
Chinese Dynasty c. 2070 – c. 1600 BC
Xia (1st)
Chinese Dynasty c. 1046 – 256 BC
Shang (2nd)
was the first dynasty of Imperial China,[2] lasting from 221 to 206 BC.
Qin
was the second imperial dynasty of China (206 BC–220 AD)
Han
was the tripartite division of China among the states of Wei, Shu, and Wu.[1] It started with the end of the Han dynasty and was followed by the Jin dynasty.
The Three Kingdoms
was a Chinese dynasty traditionally dated from 266 to 420
Jin Dynasty
_____ (c. 1600–1046 BC) is the first Chinese dynasty attested from written records. Archaeological excavations at the ruins of Yin, near the modern city of Anyang, uncovered the remains of a Chinese civilization from the Bronze Age. _____ dynasty writings are found on “oracle bones,” pieces of ox bone or turtle shell that were heated to produce a pattern of cracks that supposedly foretold the future.
Shang
(1046–256 BC) were chariot warriors who overthrew the Shang dynasty. Although the _____ruled for nearly 800 years, during much of the time period real power lay in the hands of feudal lords. The sacking of the _____ capital by barbarians in 771 BC marks the beginning of the Eastern ______ and the Spring and Autumn Period (771 BC – 476 BC). During the Spring and Autumn Period, the Hundred Schools of Thought (including Confucianism) flourished, and Sun Tzu wrote his Art of War. The end of the ______ era devolved into the Warring States period (476 BC – 221 BC), during which power coalesced into seven independent feudal states. The state of Qin eventually grew powerful and efficient enough that it was able to defeat the other six states and complete the unification of China.
Zhou
dynasty (221–206 BC), despite its short duration, is usually considered the origin of many of the institutions of imperial China. The founding emperor, ___ Shi Huangdi (usually shorted as ____Shi Huang), has gained an ill-deserved reputation in traditional Chinese historiography because he destroyed many Confucian texts in his infamous book burning. _____ Shi Huang also standardized weight measurements, unified the Chinese script, and used conscripts to build the Great Wall. After his death, the suicide of the crown prince led to a period of incompetent rule and revolts that caused the collapse of the _____ dynasty.
Qin
The ____ Dynasty is considered a golden age of Chinese civilization; its influence was so great that the majority ethnic group in China is still called the ____. Its founder, Liu Bang (later Emperor Gaozu), was born a peasant. Through resourceful recruitment of talented followers and strategic violation of ceasefire agreement with his rival Xiang Yu, Liu Bang managed to reunite China and established his capital at Chang’an (modern Xi’an). Instability in the early years of the _____ dynasty was caused by the depredations of the nomadic Xiongnu, a problem that was solved by its seventh emperor, Wudi. Emperor Wu, considered one of the greatest rulers of China, began a war of conquest against the Xiongnu and greatly expanded China’s frontiers. He also formalized China’s bureaucracy, sent envoys like Zhang Qian to Central Asia, and established Confucianism as the official state doctrine. Despite his success, his campaigns drained the treasury and his successors were unable to maintain the land he conquered. After a series of poor rulers, the Wang family — who claimed legitimacy through wives of various emperors — and their leader Wang Mang toppled the ______ dynasty. Wang Mang established the Xin (meaning “new”) dynasty and attempted to restore the ways of the Zhou dynasty, but he was unable to maintain power because of a catastrophic changing of the course of the Yellow River, which spawned peasant protest movements like the Red Eyebrows. Eventually, a scion of the Liu family — Liu Xiu — restored the _____dynasty, moving the capital to Luoyang and establishing the Eastern _______. Subsequent rebellions called the Yellow Turbans and the Five Pecks of Rice hastened the end of the ______ dynasty.
Han
The short and turbulent period of the ______ (AD 184–280) has had an enormous cultural impact thanks to the classic Chinese novel Romance of the ______. After a period of disunion, the lands of the former Han dynasty coalesced into three kingdoms: Cao Wei north of the Yangtze, Eastern Wu in the lower Yangtze, and Shu Han in the Sichuan region. The Battle of Red Cliffs (AD 208) was fought during this period. Under the leadership of the Sima family, Cao Wei managed to defeat the other two kingdoms. The reunification was, however, short-lived. For the next four centuries, China went through a period known as the Southern and Northern Dynasties.
Three Kingdoms
The ______ dynasty (618–907) is considered another golden age of Chinese culture: during the _____ period, important poets such as Li Bai (or Li Po) and Du Fu lived, and the printing press was invented. The ____ dynasty reunited China after the collapse of the short-lived Sui dynasty, was ruled by the Li family, and had its capital at Chang’an (modern day Xi’an). Its first ruler, like the founder of the Han Dynasty, used the title of Emperor Gaozu. Gaozu was forced by his second son, Li Shimin (later Emperor Taizong), to abdicate after Li Shimin killed two of his brothers in an ambush. Despite his bloody path to power, Taizong is considered to be one of the greatest rulers in Chinese history, subjugating much of what is now western China and parts of central Asia. After his death, power came to be concentrated in the hands of Empress Wu. Empress Wu (or Wu Zetian) was the only woman to become emperor of China, and called her rule the “Second Zhou dynasty.” Wu was a notable supporter of Buddhism and promoted the imperial examination, but succession troubles resulted in the premature end of her dynasty. During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong, the An Lushan rebellion (also called the An Shi rebellion) wrecked the foundations of the _____ dynasty. Although it was suppressed, the An Lushan rebellion concentrated power in the hands of regional military overlords. The dynasty had a tumultuous end in 907 that marked the beginning of the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period.
Tang
The _____ dynasty (960–1279) is known for its devotion to cultural activities instead of warfare and for the establishment of Neo-Confucianism as state doctrine, with the imperial examination as the primary way of recruiting talent. It was also during the ____ dynasty that gunpowder and the compass were discovered. The _____ dynasty, even in its early years, could not rule all of China proper and was forced to relinquish parts of northern China to the “barbarian” Liao dynasty, paying tribute for peace. Although like most dynasties, it began as the ventures of a military leader, its first ruler, Taizu, realized that his rival generals could take power from him. He then induced all his major commanders to retire, setting up the dominance of the scholarly elite over the military elite throughout the _____ dynasty. This policy was continued by his successors. In the north, however, the Liao dynasty was eventually replaced by the militaristic Jin dynasty, who captured the _____ capital, Kaifeng along with two Emperors. The remnants of the court fled across the Yangtze and established the Southern _____ with a new capital at Hangzhou, maintaining peace with the Jin through annual tribute. This state of affairs was brought to an end after the _____ dynasty aided the Mongols in crushing the Jin, only to discover that they themselves were the next target. Despite the might of the Mongol war machine, the _____ dynasty managed to repel major Mongol offensives for nearly 40 years, before it was finally defeated.
Song Dynasty
The ______ dynasty (1271–1368) was a short-lived dynasty established by the invading Mongols, who destroyed the Jin and Song states. Its most notable ruler was Kublai Khan, whose invasions of Japan were thwarted by typhoons that the Japanese called the kamikaze, or “divine wind.” _____ rulers were hostile to many Chinese institutions, and thus received minimal support from the Chinese elites. The Red Turban rebellion of the 1350s marked the beginning of the end for the ______.
Yuan
The ______ dynasty (1368–1644) was the last native dynasty of China; its rulers came from the Zhu family. The use of the word “china” to describe fine porcelain originated from this period, as the _____ were well-known for producing high-quality porcelain. Its founding ruler, Zhu Yuanzhang (Emperor Hongwu), was a peasant leader of the Red Turbans who helped expel the Mongol Yuan rulers from China. He was succeeded by his grandson, who quickly lost power to Zhu Di (Emperor Yongle). During the reign of the Yongle emperor, the eunuch Zheng He led treasure fleets on seven voyages to display Chinese greatness. Zhu Di moved China’s capital to Beijing. After his death, the _____ dynasty banned maritime commerce, which left the dynasty vulnerable to pirates. The _____ dynasty came to an end after the rebellion of Li Zicheng, which was caused by inadequate government response to inflation, famine, and floods. Simultaneously, the Manchu people — tributaries of the _____ from northeast China in what is now Manchuria — marched on the Great Wall. The Manchus suppressed Li Zicheng’s revolt and took power in Beijing themselves.
Ming
The invading Manchus established the _____dynasty (1644–1911), the last dynasty to rule imperial China. An important institution of the _____ dynasty was the banner system, which acted as a guaranteed welfare system for Manchus and gave them benefits in the imperial examination (positions were often duplicated, with one Han Chinese and one Manchu from the banners). The foundations of the ____ dynasty were established under its second ruler, the Kangxi Emperor, who put down the Revolt of the Three Feudatories. He is also famous for the Kangxi dictionary, which is known for popularizing the system of Chinese radicals. During the last century of _____ rule, China was weakened both by foreign attacks (the Opium Wars against Britain) and internal dissent (the devastating Taiping Rebellion of 1850–1864). Attempts to modernize _____ rule (the Self-Strengthening Movement and the Hundred Days’ Reform of 1898) proved inconclusive. _____ Dowager Express Cixi, who opposed the reformers, was implicated in the Boxer Rebellion, an anti-foreign uprising of 1900 that caused eight Western nations to send military forces to Beijing. China’s last emperor was Puyi, who came to the throne at the age of two in 1906. The 1911 Xinhai Revolution ended the _____ Dynasty and created the Republic of China.
Qing
first Chinese dynasty attested from written records
Shang
A work based on a historical king who ruled the Mesopotamian city of Uruk around 2700 BC.
Epic of Gilgamesh
An eruption on this island may have spawned the enigmatic legend of the lost city of Atlantis.
Thira
Where was Abraham born?
Ur
In 1876 the first ____ was set down in writing by Chinese astronomers
Eclipse
The Babylonians used a base ____ system for math
60
It states that the square of the hypotenuse (the side opposite the right angle) is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.
Pythagorean theorem
The work of _______ (1643–1727, English) in pure math includes generalizing the binomial theorem to non-integer exponents, doing the first rigorous manipulation with power series, and creating Newton’s method for finding roots of differentiable functions. He is best known, however, for a lengthy feud between British and Continental mathematicians over whether he or Gottfried Leibniz invented calculus (whose differential aspect Newton called the method of fluxions). It is now generally accepted that they both did, independently.
Isaac Newton
(c. 300 BC, Alexandrian Greek) is principally known for the Elements, a textbook on geometry and number theory, that has been used for over 2,000 years and which grounds essentially all of what is taught in modern high school geometry classes. The Elements includes five postulates that describe what is now called Euclidean space (the usual geometric space we work in); the fifth postulate — also called the parallel postulate — can be broken to create spherical and hyperbolic geometries, which are collectively called non-Euclidean geometries. The Elements also includes a proof that there are infinitely many prime numbers.
Euclid
(1777–1855, German) is considered the “Prince of Mathematicians” for his extraordinary contributions to every major branch of mathematics. His Disquisitiones Arithmeticae systematized number theory and stated the fundamental theorem of arithmetic (every integer greater than 1 has a prime factorization that is unique nonwithstanding the order of the factors). In his doctoral dissertation, he proved the fundamental theorem of algebra (every non-constant polynomial has at least one root in the complex numbers), though that proof is not considered rigorous enough for modern standards. He later proved the law of quadratic reciprocity, and the prime number theorem (that the number of primes less than n is is approximately n divided by the natural logarithm of n). Gauss may be most famous for the (possibly apocryphal) story of intuiting the formula for the summation of an arithmetic sequence when his primary-school teacher gave him the task — designed to waste his time — of adding the first 100 positive integers.
Carl Friedrich Gauss
(287–212 BC, Syracusan Greek) is best known for his “eureka” moment, in which he realized he could use density considerations to determine the purity of a gold crown; nonetheless, he was the preeminent mathematician of ancient Greece. He found the ratios between the surface areas and volumes of a sphere and a circumscribed cylinder, accurately estimated pi, and developed a calculus-like technique to find the area of a circle, his method of exhaustion.
Archimedes
(1646–1716, German) is known for his independent invention of calculus and the ensuing priority dispute with Isaac Newton. Most modern calculus notation, including the integral sign and the use of d to indicate a differential, originated with Leibniz. He also did work with the binary number system and did fundamental work in establishing boolean algebra and symbolic logic.
Gottfried Leibniz
(1601–1665, French) is remembered for his contributions to number theory including his little theorem, which states that if p is a prime number and a is any number at all, then ap – a will be divisible by p. He studied Fermat primes, which are prime numbers that can be written as 22n + 1 for some integer n, but is probably most famous for his “last theorem,” which he wrote in the margin of Arithmetica by the ancient Greek mathematician Diophantus with a note that “I have discovered a marvelous proof of this theorem that this margin is too small to contain.” The theorem states that there is no combination of positive integers x, y, z, and n, with n > 2, such that xn + yn = zn, and mathematicians struggled for over 300 years to find a proof until Andrew Wiles completed one in 1995. (It is generally believed that Fermat did not actually have a valid proof.) Fermat and Blaise Pascal corresponded about probability theory.
Pierre de Fermat
(1707–1783, Swiss) is known for his prolific output and the fact that he continued to produce seminal results even after going blind. He invented graph theory by solving the Seven Bridges of Königsberg problem, which asked whether there was a way to travel a particular arrangement of bridges so that you would cross each bridge exactly once. (He proved that it was impsosible to do so.) Euler introduced the modern notation for e, an irrational number about equal to 2.718, which is now called Euler’s number in his honor (but don’t confuse it for Euler’s constant, which is different); he also introduced modern notation for i, a square root of –1, and for trigonometric functions. He proved Euler’s formula, which relates complex numbers and trigonometric functions: ei x = cos x + i sin x, of which a special case is the fact that ei π = –1, which Richard Feynman called “the most beautiful equation in mathematics” because it links four of math’s most important constants.
Leonhard Euler
(1906–1978, Austrian) was a logician best known for his two incompleteness theorems, which state that if a formal logical system is powerful enough to express ordinary arithmetic, it must contain statements that are true yet unprovable. Gödel developed paranoia late in life and eventually refused to eat because he feared his food had been poisoned; he died of starvation.
Kurt Gödel
(1953–present, British) is best known for proving the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture that all rational semi-stable elliptic curves are modular forms. When combined with work already done by other mathematicians, this immediately implied Fermat’s last theorem (see above).
Andrew Wiles
(1805–1865, Irish) is known for a four-dimensional extension of complex numbers, with six square roots of –1 (±i, ±j, and ±k), called the quaternions.
William Rowan Hamilton
is an ancient Egyptian medical text, named after the dealer who bought it in 1862, and the oldest known surgical treatise[2] on trauma. This document, which may have been a manual of military surgery, describes 48 cases of injuries, fractures, wounds, dislocations and tumors.[
The Edwin Smith Papyrus
, is an Egyptian medical papyrus of herbal knowledge dating to circa 1550 BC. Among the oldest and most important medical papyri of ancient Egypt, it was purchased at Luxor (Thebes) in the winter of 1873–74. It is currently kept at the library of the University of Leipzig, in Germany.
The Ebers Papyrus
When did the Babylonian Empire end?
1595 BC
(1899–1977) was a Russian-American author. His 1955 novel Lolita depicts Humbert Humbert’s obsession with the adolescent Ramsdale resident Dolores Haze, whom Humbert nicknames “Lolita. Humbert becomes Lolita’s stepfather by marrying her mother Charlotte, who soon dies. Lolita and Humbert travel the U.S. before Humbert enrolls Lolita at the Beardsley School for Girls. There, Lolita is cast in a play written by Clare Quilty, and devises a plan of escape. In Nabokov’s highly meta-fictional novel Pale Fire, a 999-line poem of the same name by John Shade is the subject of a lengthy commentary by the scholar Charles Kinbote. However, Kinbote’s notes are more concerned with himself than with the poem, revealing that he thinks of himself as King Charles, the exiled monarch of the land of Zembla. Nabokov’s other books include the novels Ada, or Ardor, which recounts an incestuous relationship; Invitation to a Beheading, about the condemned prisoner Cincinnatus, and The Defense, a Russian-language novel about the chess player Aleksandr Luzhin. In his memoir Speak, Memory, Nabokov wrote about his wife Vera and his scientific interest in butterflies.
Vladimir Nabokov
(born 1975) is a British novelist. Her 2000 debut novel White Teeth depicts the Bengali Muslim Samad Iqbal and his English friend Archie Jones, who both live in London. Samad’s son Magid becomes an atheist scientist who joins Marcus Chalfen’s project to develop a genetically modified “FutureMouse,” while Magid’s twin brother Millat joins a Muslim fundamentalist group called KEVIN (Keepers of the Eternal and Victorious Islamic Nation). Both twins sleep with Archie’s daughter, Irie. Smith’s other novels include NW, which takes place in northwest London; Swing Time, which describes a troubled dancer named Tracey; and the academic novel On Beauty, which is loosely based on E. M. Forster’s novel Howards End.
Zadie Smith
(1962–2008) was an American author. His massive 1996 novel Infinite Jest depicts a future North America in which years are named after corporate products. The novel is set mainly at the Ennet House Drug and Alcohol Recovery House and the Enfield Tennis Academy (where Hal Incandenza is a student). Hal’s father, James, directs “the Entertainment,” a dangerously enthralling film sought by Quebeçois terrorists known as the Wheelchair Assassins. Wallace’s other novels are The Broom of the System and The Pale King, the latter of which was left unfinished at his 2008 suicide. Wallace is also known for his essay collections, including Consider the Lobster and A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again.
David Foster Wallace
(born 1947) is a novelist born in India, who holds British and American citizenship. Rushdie’s 1981 Booker Prize-winning novel Midnight’s Children follows Saleem Sinai, a man with an enormous nose who is born at precisely the moment that India becomes independent, giving him telepathic powers. Other members of the novel’s title group—the people born within an hour of independence—include Shiva, a child with enormous knees, and the magical Parvati-the-witch. Rushdie’s 1988 novel The Satanic Verses begins as the actors Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Chamcha are miraculously saved after their plane explodes over the English Channel. Upon being betrayed by Gibreel, Saladin seeks revenge by ruining Gibreel’s relationship with the mountaineer Allie Cone. The Satanic Verses was condemned in a fatwa, or religious decree, issued by Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini. The fatwa accused Rushdie of blasphemy, and ordered Muslims to kill Rushdie, his editors, and his publishers. In 1998, Iran agreed not to actively seek Rushdie’s death. Rushdie described his years of hiding in the memoir Joseph Anton; the title refers to the pseudonym that Rushdie adopted, which was inspired by the authors Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. Rushdie’s other novels include The Moor’s Last Sigh, which is narrated by the swiftly aging Moraes Zogoiby; The Ground Beneath Her Feet, which was loosely inspired by the legend of Orpheus; and the young adult books Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Luka and the Fire of Life.
Salman Rushdie
(born 1937) is a reclusive American novelist. His 1973 novel Gravity’s Rainbow follows Tyrone Slothrop, a lieutenant in World War II whose sexual encounters seem to predict the locations of future V-2 rocket strikes. A number of characters in the novel are trying to find the secret of a mysterious device called the Schwärzgerat, which is to be installed in a rocket with the serial number 00000. Pynchon also wrote The Crying of Lot 49, in which Oedipa Maas suspects that she has become entangled in an ancient conflict between the Thurn und Taxis and Trystero mail delivery services. Other Pynchon novels include V., in which Herbert Stencil searches for the mysterious title entity, and Inherent Vice, about the Los Angeles private investigator Doc Sportello.
Thomas Pynchon
(born 1936) is an American author. His 1985 breakout novel White Noise is narrated by Jack Gladney, a professor of “Hitler Studies” at a Midwestern college. After a chemical spill results in an “Airborne Toxic Event,” Jack’s wife Babette begins taking a mysterious drug called Dylar. Three years later DeLillo published Libra, a novel about assassin Lee Harvey Oswald’s participation in a fictional conspiracy against John F. Kennedy. DeLillo also wrote the 1997 novel Underworld, in which the waste management executive Nick Shay buys the baseball that was hit by New York Giants player Bobby Thomson in the 1951 “Shot Heard ’Round the World.”
Don DeLillo
(1923–1999) was an American novelist. He satirized Army bureaucracy in his novel Catch-22, which was based on his experiences as a bombardier on the Italian front during World War II. The novel is set in Rome and on the Mediterranean island of Pianosa, where John Yossarian is stationed with the 256th Squadron. “Catch-22” is a rule stating that airmen do not have to fly missions if they are insane, but that applying to be excused from flying missions is proof of sanity; consequently, there is no way to avoid the dangerous missions. Characters in the novel include the arch-capitalist mess officer Milo Minderbinder, who sets up a syndicate called M&M Enterprises, and Major Major Major, who is accidentally promoted to the rank of major because of his unusual name. The novel’s main antagonist is Colonel Cathcart, who continually raises the number of missions that airmen must fly before they are allowed to go home. In 1994 Heller wrote a sequel to Catch-22, titled Closing Time.
Joseph Heller
(1923–1985) was an Italian author. In his 1979 novel If on a winter’s night a traveler, the even-numbered sections are presented as the first chapters of a number of different books, each of which breaks off abruptly at a climactic moment. The odd-numbered sections are addressed in the second person to “You,” the reader of “Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler.” You and a fellow book-lover named Ludmilla investigate oddities in the novels you are reading, in the process encountering a best-selling author named Silas Flannery, the deceitful translator Ermes Marana, and a scholar of Cimmerian literature named Professor Uzzi-Tuzii. Calvino’s novel Invisible Cities is framed as a conversation between Kublai Khan and Marco Polo, who describes 55 fictional cities to the Mongol ruler. Calvino is also known for his fantastical short stories, some of which are collected in the volume Cosmicomics and narrated by an ancient being named Qfwfq.
Italo Calvino
(1922–2007) was an American novelist best known for the 1969 novel Slaughterhouse-Five. The novel centers on Billy Pilgrim, who experiences his life out of order after becoming “unstuck in time.” Like Vonnegut, Billy survives the firebombing of Dresden during World War II. Billy is also kidnapped by aliens called Tralfamadorians, and displayed in a zoo along with the actress Montana Wildhack. The Tralfamadorians have a fatalistic attitude towards mortality, which is mirrored in the novel’s repetition of the phrase “so it goes” after any mention of death. Vonnegut’s earlier novel Cat’s Cradle describes a fictional religion called Bokononism, which was founded on the Caribbean island of San Lorenzo. The plot of Cat’s Cradle partly focuses on ice-nine, a substance invented by Felix Hoenikker that has the power to destroy all life on Earth.
Kurt Vonnegut
(1899–1986) was an Argentine short story writer who often dealt with meta-fictional themes. His story “The Library of Babel” depicts an infinite library made up of hexagonal rooms, which contain every possible 410-page book. In “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote,” the fictional 20th-century author Pierre Menard writes a line-by-line reproduction of Cervantes’s Don Quixote, which is much more interesting than the original because of the historical context in which the new version was produced. Borges’s story “Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius” describes an imaginary realm, created by a secret society of intellectuals, that gradually intrudes into the world of the story. “The Aleph” is named after a point from which every other point in the universe can be perceived. Many of Borges’s best-known stories appeared in the collections Ficciones and Labyrinths, the latter of which is named after a common motif in Borges’s work. For example, in “The Garden of Forking Paths” the author Ts’ui Pên tries to create a metaphorical “labyrinth” by writing a novel in which every event is followed by every possible outcome. The story is narrated by Ts’ui Pên’s descendent, Dr. Yu Tsun, who kills the Sinologist Stephen Albert to convey a coded message to German forces during World War I.
Jorge Luis Borges BOR-hayss
(1941–1998) was a leader of the Pan-African movement and the Black Power movement, who popularized the use of the term “Black Power.” He replaced John Lewis as chair of SNCC; under his leadership, SNCC shifted from a policy of nonviolence to a more militant approach. He served as “honorary Prime Minister” of the Black Panther Party, but later distanced himself from that movement because he didn’t believe that white activists should be allowed to participate. He ended up changing his name to Kwame Ture (in honor of Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah and Guinean President Ahmed Sekou Touré) and moving to Guinea. Shirley Chisholm (1924–2005) was a Democratic politician from New York who achieved a number of firsts. In 1968, she was the first black woman elected to Congress. In 1972, she became both the first black major-party presidential candidate and the first woman to run for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. (Margaret Chase Smith had run for the Republican nomination in 1964.) In 1970, Chisholm gave an acclaimed speech in support of the Equal Rights Amendment.
Stokely Carmichael
(1862–1931) was an early investigative journalist and civil rights leader who helped found the NAACP. In the 1890s she investigated lynching, arguing that it was a form of controlling black communities rather than retribution for criminal acts. She documented the results of her research in pamphlets such as Southern Horrors and The Red Record. She accused Frances Willard, the president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, of turning a blind eye to lynching.
Ida B. Wells
(1954–) is a Baptist minister and community leader from New York City. He is also a perennial political candidate who has run for the U.S. Senate, mayor of New York City, and president of the U.S. Sharpton began his activism career working under Jesse Jackson as part of Operation Breadbasket. He has been at the center of many controversies. In 1987, he helped handle publicity for Tawana Brawley, who falsely accused four white men of having raped her. Sharpton was also accused of making anti-Semitic remarks during the 1991 Crown Heights riot, a racial riot in which Jews were attacked after two children were injured by the motorcade of the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
Al Sharpton
(1929–1968) was a Baptist minister and the most prominent leader of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and ’60s. He delivered the “I Have a Dream” speech at the 1963 March on Washington. As leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), he joined with members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to organize the Selma-to-Montgomery marches. His leadership of the Poor People’s Campaign was cut short in 1968 when James Earl Ray assassinated him at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.
Martin Luther King Jr.
(1925–1965) was a black Muslim civil rights activist who changed his name from Malcolm Little upon converting to the Nation of Islam. He later repudiated the Nation of Islam and became a mainstream Sunni Muslim, completing the hajj in 1964. He was known for rejecting nonviolent activism, arguing in his speech “The Ballot or the Bullet” that violence might be necessary if the government continued to suppress the rights of African Americans. In 1965, he was assassinated while preparing to give a speech at the Audubon Ballroom.
Malcolm X
(1941–) is a civil rights activist and politician who began as a protégé of Martin Luther King, Jr. He helped organize Operation Breadbasket, a department of the SCLC focused on economic issues. Jackson also worked on the Poor People’s Campaign after King’s assassination, but he clashed with King’s appointed successor, Ralph Abernathy. He founded the civil rights organizations Operation PUSH (People United to Save Humanity) and the National Rainbow Coalition, which later merged to form the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. He also ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988. His son Jesse Jackson Jr. was a congressman from Chicago before serving prison time for financial corruption.
Jesse Jackson Sr.
(1933–) became the first African-American person admitted to the University of Mississippi in 1962. Two people died in the riots sparked by his enrollment. In 1966, Meredith began the March Against Fear, planning to walk from Memphis to Jackson. On the second day, he was wounded by a sniper; thereafter, thousands of other civil rights activists completed the march in his name. Rosa Parks (1913–2005) was arrested for refusing to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, disobeying driver James F. Blake’s order to move to the “colored section” of the bus. She collaborated with Edgar Nixon and other leaders of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) to organize the Montgomery bus boycott, which lasted from December 1955 (four days after her arrest) until December 1956.
James Meredith
(1925–1963) was the NAACP’s field secretary for Mississippi, in which capacity he planned boycotts and grassroots civil rights organizations. He advocated ending segregation at the University of Mississippi; after Brown v. Board of Education ruled that segregated public schools were unconstitutional, he applied to law school there, but was rejected because he was black. In 1963, he was assassinated by Byron De La Beckwith, a member of the white supremacist network White Citizens’ Councils.
Medgar Evers
Which empire sacked the Babylonian Empire and ended it
The Hittites
Whose capital was Hattusa?
The Hittite Empire
from Arabic Khurnak meaning “fortified village”), comprises a vast mix of decayed temples, chapels, pylons, and other buildings near Luxor, in Egypt.
Karnak
As the site of the Ancient Egyptian city of Waset, known to the Greeks as Thebes, ______ has frequently been characterized as the “world’s greatest open-air museum”, as the ruins of the temple complexes at Karnak and Luxor stand within the modern city. Immediately opposite, across the River Nile, lie the monuments, temples and tombs of the West Bank Necropolis, which includes the Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens.
Luxor
Modern-day Thebes
Luxor
are two massive rock temples at Abu Simbel (Arabic: أبو سمبل), a village in Nubia, Upper Egypt, near the border with Sudan. They are situated on the western bank of Lake Nasser, about 230 km (140 mi) southwest of Aswan (about 300 km (190 mi) by road). The complex is part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site known as the “Nubian Monuments”,[1] which run from Abu Simbel downriver to Philae (near Aswan). The twin temples were originally carved out of the mountainside in the 13th century BC, during the 19th dynasty reign of the Pharaoh Ramesses II. They serve as a lasting monument to the king and his queen Nefertari, and commemorate his victory at the Battle of Kadesh. Their huge external rock relief figures have become iconic.
The complex was relocated in its entirety in 1968 under the supervision of a Polish archaeologist, Kazimierz Michałowski, on an artificial hill made from a domed structure, high above the Aswan High Dam reservoir. The relocation of the temples was necessary or they would have been submerged during the creation of Lake Nasser, the massive artificial water reservoir formed after the building of the Aswan High Dam on the Nile River.
The Abu Simbel Temples
She was the second historically-confirmed female pharaoh, the first being Sobekneferu.
Hatshepsut
is a prehistoric earthwork constructed by the Poverty Point culture. The Poverty Point site is located in present-day northeastern Louisiana though evidence of the Poverty Point culture extends throughout much of the Southeastern United States. The culture extended 100 miles (160 km) across the Mississippi Delta and south to the Gulf Coast. The Poverty Point site has been designated as a U.S. National Monument, a U.S. National Historic Landmark, and UNESCO World Heritage Site.[2] Located in the Southern United States, the site is 15.5 miles (24.9 km) from the current flow of the Mississippi River,[3] and is situated on the edge of Macon Ridge, near the village of Epps in West Carroll Parish, Louisiana.
Poverty Point
Who conquered the Minoans?
The Mycenaeans
is a syllabic script that was used for writing Mycenaean Greek, the earliest attested form of Greek.
Linear B
was a broad prehistoric period during which stone was widely used to make implements with an edge, a point, or a percussion surface. The period lasted roughly 3.4 million years[1] and ended between 8700 BCE and 2000 BCE with the advent of metalworking.
The Stone Age
is a historical period characterized by the use of bronze, and in some areas proto-writing, and other early features of urban civilization. The Bronze Age is the second principal period of the three-age Stone-Bronze-Iron system, as proposed in modern times by Christian Jürgensen Thomsen, for classifying and studying ancient societies.
An ancient civilization is defined to be in the Bronze Age either by producing bronze by smelting its own copper and alloying with tin, arsenic, or other metals, or by trading for bronze from production areas elsewhere. Bronze itself is harder and more durable than other metals available at the time, allowing Bronze Age civilizations to gain a technological advantage.
Copper-tin ores are rare, as reflected in the fact that 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 (such as Sub-Saharan Africa), the Iron Age intruded directly on the Neolithic.[1]
Bronze Age cultures differed in their development of the first writing. According to archaeological evidence, cultures in Mesopotamia (cuneiform script) and Egypt (hieroglyphs) developed the earliest viable writing systems.
The Bronze Age
is the final epoch of the three-age division of the prehistory and protohistory of humankind. It was preceded by the Stone Age (Paleolithic, Mesolithic, Neolithic, and Chalcolithic) and the Bronze Age. The concept has been mostly applied to Europe and the Ancient Near East, and, by analogy, also to other parts of the Old World.
The duration of the Iron Age varies depending on the region under consideration. It is defined by archaeological convention, and the mere presence of some cast or wrought iron is not sufficient to represent an Iron Age culture; rather, the “Iron Age” begins locally when the production of iron or steel has been brought to the point where iron tools and weapons superior to their bronze equivalents become widespread.[1] For example, Tutankhamun’s meteoric iron dagger comes from the Bronze Age. In the Ancient Near East, this transition takes place in the wake of the so-called Bronze Age collapse, in the 12th century BC. The technology soon spread throughout the Mediterranean Basin region and to South Asia. Its further spread to Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and Central Europe is somewhat delayed, and Northern Europe is reached still later, by about 500 BC.
The Iron Age is taken to end, also by convention, with the beginning of the historiographical record. This usually does not represent a clear break in the archaeological record; for the Ancient Near East the establishment of the Achaemenid Empire c. 550 BC (considered historical by virtue of the record by Herodotus) is usually taken as a cut-off date, and in Central and Western Europe the Roman conquests of the 1st century BC serve as marking for the end of the Iron Age. The Germanic Iron Age of Scandinavia is taken to end c. AD 800, with the beginning of the Viking Age.
In South Asia, the Iron Age is taken to begin with the ironworking Painted Gray Ware culture and to end with the reign of Ashoka (3rd century BC). The use of the term “Iron Age” in the archaeology of South, East and Southeast Asia is more recent, and less common, than for western Eurasia; at least in China prehistory had ended before iron-working arrived, so the term is infrequently used. The Sahel (Sudan region) and Sub-Saharan Africa are outside of the three-age system, there being no Bronze Age, but the term “Iron Age” is sometimes used in reference to early cultures practicing ironworking such as the Nok culture of Nigeria.
The Iron Age
are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed in Vedic Sanskrit, the texts constitute the oldest layer of Sanskrit literature and the oldest scriptures of Hinduism.[2][3] Hindus consider the Vedas to be apauruṣeya, which means “not of a man, superhuman”[4] and “impersonal, authorless”.[5][6][7]
Vedas are also called śruti (“what is heard”) literature,[8] distinguishing them from other religious texts, which are called smṛti (“what is remembered”). The Veda, for orthodox Indian theologians, are considered revelations seen by ancient sages after intense meditation, and texts that have been more carefully preserved since ancient times.[9][10] In the Hindu Epic the Mahabharata, the creation of Vedas is credited to Brahma.[11] The Vedic hymns themselves assert that they were skillfully created by Rishis (sages), after inspired creativity, just as a carpenter builds a chariot.[10][note 1]
According to tradition, Vyasa is the compiler of the Vedas, who arranged the four kinds of mantras into four Samhitas (Collections).[13][14] There are four Vedas: the Rigveda, the Yajurveda, the Samaveda and the Atharvaveda.[15][16] Each Veda has been subclassified into four major text types – the Samhitas (mantras and benedictions), the Aranyakas (text on rituals, ceremonies, sacrifices and symbolic-sacrifices), the Brahmanas (commentaries on rituals, ceremonies and sacrifices), and the Upanishads (texts discussing meditation, philosophy and spiritual knowledge).[15][17][18] Some scholars add a fifth category – the Upasanas (worship).[19][20]
The various Indian philosophies and denominations have taken differing positions on the Vedas. Schools of Indian philosophy which cite the Vedas as their scriptural authority are classified as “orthodox” (āstika).[note 2] Other śramaṇa traditions, such as Lokayata, Carvaka, Ajivika, Buddhism and Jainism, which did not regard the Vedas as authorities, are referred to as “heterodox” or “non-orthodox” (nāstika) schools.[22][23] Despite their differences, just like the texts of the śramaṇa traditions, the layers of texts in the Vedas discuss similar ideas and concepts.[22]
The Vedas
The Oldest Veda
Rig Veda
It is now often translated as Sea of Reeds - with several competing theories as to where this was.
The Red Sea
was a thalassocratic, ancient Semitic-speaking Mediterranean civilization that originated in the Levant, specifically Lebanon, in the west of the Fertile Crescent. Scholars generally agree that it was centered on the coastal areas of Lebanon and included northern Israel, and southern Syria reaching as far north as Arwad, but there is some dispute as to how far south it went, the furthest suggested area being Ashkelon.[4] Its colonies later reached the Western Mediterranean, such as Cádiz in Spain and most notably Carthage in North Africa, and even the Atlantic Ocean. The civilization spread across the Mediterranean between 1500 BC and 300 BC.
Phoenicia is an ancient Greek term used to refer to the major export of the region, cloth dyed Tyrian purple from the Murex mollusc, and referred to the major Canaanite port towns; not corresponding precisely to Phoenician culture as a whole as it would have been understood natively. Their civilization was organized in city-states, similar to those of ancient Greece,[5], centered in modern Lebanon, of which the most notable cities were Tyre, Sidon, Arwad, Berytus, Byblos, and Carthage.[6] Each city-state was a politically independent unit, and it is uncertain to what extent the Phoenicians viewed themselves as a single nationality. In terms of archaeology, language, lifestyle, and religion there was little to set the Phoenicians apart as markedly different from other residents of the Levant, such as their close relatives and neighbors, the Israelites.[7]
Around 1050 BC, a Phoenician alphabet was used for the writing of Phoenician.[8] It became one of the most widely used writing systems, spread by Phoenician merchants across the Mediterranean world, where it evolved and was assimilated by many other cultures, including the Roman alphabet used by Western civilization today.[9]
Phoenicia
The Phoenicians are called that by the Greeks, from the word “phoenix” meaning:
Purple
were the earliest known major civilization in Mesoamerica following a progressive development in Soconusco. They lived in the tropical lowlands of south-central Mexico, in the present-day states of Veracruz and Tabasco. It has been speculated that the Olmecs derive in part from neighboring Mokaya or Mixe–Zoque.
The Olmecs flourished during Mesoamerica’s formative period, dating roughly from as early as 1500 BCE to about 400 BCE. Pre-Olmec cultures had flourished in the area since about 2500 BCE, but by 1600–1500 BCE, early Olmec culture had emerged, centered on the San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán site near the coast in southeast Veracruz.[1] They were the first Mesoamerican civilization, and laid many of the foundations for the civilizations that followed.[2] Among other “firsts”, the Olmec appeared to practice ritual bloodletting and played the Mesoamerican ballgame, hallmarks of nearly all subsequent Mesoamerican societies. The aspect of the Olmecs most familiar now is their artwork, particularly the aptly named “colossal heads”.[3] The Olmec civilization was first defined through artifacts which collectors purchased on the pre-Columbian art market in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Olmec artworks are considered among ancient America’s most striking.[4]
The Olmecs
(August 23, 1572) was a series of murders carried out by Catholic mobs and the Swiss Guard against French Huguenots, an ethnic group of Protestants. It occurred a few days after the wedding of Margaret of Valois to the future King Henry IV. Catherine de’ Medici, the mother of then-king Charles IX, allegedly ordered the murders two days after an assassination attempt on Huguenot leader Gaspard de Coligny. It is likely that the signal to begin the attacks was given by the ringing of matins bells at the church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois in Paris. The name of the massacre comes from the day on which it occurred, the night before the feast day of Bartholomew the Apostle.
The St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre
(June 4, 1989) were a series of student-led pro-democracy protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square during the spring of 1989. One day after the death of former Politburo member Hu Yaobang, students gathered in the public square to demonstrate for greater political freedom. The students camped out in the square for over a month, and similar movements took place throughout China. One famous symbol of the protests was the Goddess of Democracy statue erected in the square. Within the Chinese government, Zhao Ziyang was sympathetic to the students’ demands, but the paramount leader Deng Xiaoping viewed the protests as a challenge to his authority. Martial law was declared on May 20, and the People’s Liberation Army began clearing the square late at night on June 3. The resulting massacre is sometimes known as the June 4 Incident. In an effort to circumvent Chinese censorship, some people also refer to the massacre using terms such as “May 35th” or “VIIV” (the Roman numerals for 6 and 4). A famous photograph, known as “Tank Man,” shows an anonymous protestor standing in front of a row of tanks.
The Tiananmen Square Protests
(May 4, 1970) took place during a nonviolent anti-war demonstration by students at Ohio’s Kent State University. The students were protesting the Nixon administration’s bombing of Cambodia during the Vietnam War. Ohio governor Jim Rhodes called in the National Guard, which fired into the crowd and killed four students: Jeffrey Miller, Allison Krause, William Schroeder, and Sandra Lee Scheur. A photograph taken by John Filo of Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller won the Pulitzer Prize. Ten days later, two students at the historically black Jackson State University in Mississippi were killed under similar circumstances, but those shootings received far less press attention. The protest song “Ohio” by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young was written shortly after the massacre.
The Kent State Shootings
(March 16, 1968) was a mass murder of at least 300 unarmed Vietnamese civilians in a hamlet codenamed “Pinkville” in Vietnam’s Quang Nai Province by U.S. troops during the Vietnam War. The only man convicted for his role in the massacre was William Calley, who defended himself by saying he was “just following orders” given by Ernest Medina. Helicopter pilot Hugh Thompson Jr. attempted to radio for help and later rescued a four-year-old girl, for which he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. Photographs of the massacre were taken by Ronald Haeberle. Seymour Hersh won a Pulitzer Prize for uncovering the events of the My Lai Massacre through extensive interviews with Calley. Hersh later broke the story of the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib Prison during the Iraq War.
The My Lai Massacre
(beginning December 13, 1937 and lasting six weeks) was a period of mass murder committed in Nanking (today generally spelled “Nanjing”) by the Japanese army early in the Second SinoJapanese War. At the time, Nanjing was the capital of the Republic of China. The Japanese troops were commanded by Prince Yasuhiko Asaka and Iwane Matsui. One famous anecdote from the massacre concerns a contest between two Japanese soldiers to kill 100 Chinese civilians with a sword. Since Japan was not yet at war with the various Western nations, Chinese civilians who were able to make their way into the “Nanking Safety Zone” around the foreign embassies were safe from harm. Episcopalian missionary John Magee extensively photographed the massacre. In 1997, the American-born Chinese author Iris Chang wrote a bestselling account of the massacre titled The Rape of Nanking.
The Rape of Nanking
(February 14, 1929) was the murder of seven members of Bugs Moran’s North Side Gang in Chicago. The murders were carried out by gangsters under the command of Al Capone. It is widely believed that former members of a gang known as Egan’s Rats, including Fred Burke, were the gunmen. The victims were lured to a warehouse in Lincoln Park with the promise of crates of stolen whiskey, which was especially valuable during Prohibition. The only survivor was a dog named Highball. Jack McGurn, one of the gunmen, avoided charges in the massacre thanks to the so-called “Blond Alibi” after taking the chief witness against him across state lines and marrying her. The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre turned public opinion against Capone and led to him being named “Public Enemy No. 1.”
The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
(January 22, 1905) is usually considered the first event of the Revolution of 1905 in Russia. The sequence of events leading up to the massacre began with the Putilov Incident, in which four ironworkers in St. Petersburg were fired because they were members of a labor movement. The resulting strike left St. Petersburg iwthout electricity. On January 22, Father Georgy Gapon of the Russian Orthodox Church led protestors on a march to the Winter Palace to petition Tsar Nicholas II for better working conditions and higher wages. The Imperial Guard fired on the protestors near the Narva Gate. The Revolution of 1905 ultimately led to the establishment of the Russian Duma (parliament) and the adoption of a new constitution. The term “Bloody Sunday” is also used for several other incidents, including several events in Ireland and Northern Ireland.
Bloody Sunday
(December 29, 1890) was the killing of 200 to 300 Lakota Sioux on the Lakota Pine Ridge Indian Reservation near Wounded Knee Creek in South Dakota. The massacre began when, during an observation of the Ghost Dance ritual, a deaf Lakota named Black Coyote refused to surrender his rifle to James Forsyth’s 7th U.S. Cavalry. After the rifle discharged, the cavalrymen opened fire. Miniconjou chief Spotted Elk was among those killed in the massacre, for which twenty soldiers were controversially awarded the Medal of Honor; despite frequent protests, those awards have not been rescinded by Congress. The day after the Wounded Knee Massacre, surviving Lakota confronted the soldiers in the Drexel Mission Fight. The historian Dee Brown titled his 1970 history of Native Americans in the West Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee.
The Wounded Knee Massacre
(August 16, 1819) was a massacre in St. Peter’s Field in Manchester, England during a protest led by Henry Hunt against the Corn Laws. Fourteen people were killed when British cavalry charged the crowd of tens of thousands. In the aftermath of the massacre, the government of Prime Minister Robert Jenkinson, the 2nd Earl of Liverpool, passed the Six Acts to curtail radical gatherings. The name given to the massacre alluded to Napoleon’s final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo four years earlier. The events in Manchester inspired the founding of the newspaper The Manchester Guardian, the predecessor to The Guardian, which is still widely read today. Plotters angry over the Peterloo Massacre and the Six Acts formed the Cato Street Conspiracy in 1820 in the hope of murdering Liverpool and his entire cabinet.
The Peterloo Massacre
(March 5, 1770) occurred when British troops stationed in Boston under Captain Thomas Preston opened fire on a crowd of civilians. Five men in the crowd were killed, including former slave Crispus Attucks. The crowd was originally upset that British private Hugh White had struck a wigmaker’s apprentice in the head earlier that day. Massachusetts governor Thomas Hutchinson ordered an inquiry into the event, which led to the arrest of thirteen people. Eight soldiers were defended at their trial by John Adams, and six were acquitted of murder charges. A notable engraving of the Boston Massacre was made by Boston silversmith Paul Revere. British sources often refer to the massacre as “The Incident on King Street.”
The Boston Massacre
What are the varnas
The castes
What is the term for a sub-caste
Jati
What are Dalits
Untouchables
technically the Narrow Bantu languages, as opposed to “Wide Bantu”, a loosely defined categorization which includes other “Bantoid” languages, are a large family of languages spoken by the Bantu peoples throughout Sub-Saharan Africa.
As part of the Southern Bantoid group, they are part of the Benue-Congo language family, which in turn is part of the large Niger–Congo phylum.
The total number of Bantu languages ranges in the hundreds, depending on the definition of “language” versus “dialect”, and is estimated at between 440 and 680 distinct languages.[2] The total number of Bantu speakers is in the hundreds of millions, estimated around 350 million in the mid-2010s (roughly 30% of the total population of Africa, or roughly 5% of world population).[3] Bantu languages are largely spoken east and south of Cameroon, throughout Central Africa, Southeast Africa and Southern Africa. About one sixth of the Bantu speakers, and about one third of Bantu languages, are found in the Democratic Republic of Congo alone (c. 60 million speakers as of 2015). See list of Bantu peoples.
The Bantu language with the largest total number of speakers is Swahili; however, the majority of its speakers use it as a second language (L1: c. 16 million, L2: 80 million, as of 2015).[4]
Other major Bantu languages include Zulu, with 27 million speakers (15.7 million L2), and Shona, with about 11 million speakers (if Manyika and Ndau are included).[5][6] Ethnologue separates the largely mutually intelligible Kinyarwanda and Kirundi, which, if grouped together, have 12.4 million speakers.[7]
The Bantu languages
is an archaeological site in Peru, containing ruins and artifacts constructed beginning at least by 1200 BCE and occupied by later cultures until around 400–500 BCE by the Chavín, a major pre-Inca culture. The site is located in the Ancash Region, 250 kilometers (160 mi) north of Lima, at an elevation of 3,180 meters (10,430 ft), east of the Cordillera Blanca at the start of the Conchucos Valley. Chavín de Huántar has been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Some of the Chavín relics from this archaeological site are on display in the Museo de la Nación in Lima and the Museo Nacional de Chavín in Chavin itself.
Chavin de Huantar
What is “The Book of Changes”
the I Ching (circa 800 BC)
also known as Classic of Changes or Book of Changes, is an ancient Chinese divination text and the oldest of the Chinese classics. Possessing a history of more than two and a half millennia of commentary and interpretation, the I Ching is an influential text read throughout the world, providing inspiration to the worlds of religion, psychoanalysis, literature, and art. Originally a divination manual in the Western Zhou period (1000–750 BC), over the course of the Warring States period and early imperial period (500–200 BC) it was transformed into a cosmological text with a series of philosophical commentaries known as the “Ten Wings”.[1] After becoming part of the Five Classics in the 2nd century BC, the I Ching was the subject of scholarly commentary and the basis for divination practice for centuries across the Far East, and eventually took on an influential role in Western understanding of Eastern thought.
The I Ching uses a type of divination called cleromancy, which produces apparently random numbers. Six numbers between 6 and 9 are turned into a hexagram, which can then be looked up in the I Ching book, arranged in an order known as the King Wen sequence. The interpretation of the readings found in the I Ching is a matter of centuries of debate, and many commentators have used the book symbolically, often to provide guidance for moral decision making as informed by Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. The hexagrams themselves have often acquired cosmological significance and paralleled with many other traditional names for the processes of change such as yin and yang and Wu Xing.
I Ching
Literally means “Sitting in front of”
Upanishads
a part of the Vedas, are ancient Sanskrit texts that contain some of the central philosophical concepts and ideas of Hinduism, some of which are shared with religious traditions like Buddhism and Jainism.[2][3][note 1][note 2] Among the most important literature in the history of Indian religions and culture, the Upanishads played an important role in the development of spiritual ideas in ancient India, marking a transition from Vedic ritualism to new ideas and institutions.[6] Of all Vedic literature, the Upanishads alone are widely known, and their central ideas are at the spiritual core of Hindus.[2][7]
The Upanishads are commonly referred to as Vedānta. Vedanta has been interpreted as the “last chapters, parts of the Veda” and alternatively as “object, the highest purpose of the Veda”.[8] The concepts of Brahman (ultimate reality) and Ātman (soul, self) are central ideas in all of the Upanishads,[9][10] and “know that you are the Ātman” is their thematic focus.[10][11] Along with the Bhagavad Gita and the Brahmasutra, the mukhya Upanishads (known collectively as the Prasthanatrayi)[12] provide a foundation for the several later schools of Vedanta, among them, two influential monistic schools of Hinduism.[note 3][note 4][note 5]
More than 200 Upanishads are known, of which the first dozen or so are the oldest and most important and are referred to as the principal or main (mukhya) Upanishads.[15][16] The mukhya Upanishads are found mostly in the concluding part of the Brahmanas and Aranyakas[17] and were, for centuries, memorized by each generation and passed down orally. The early Upanishads all predate the Common Era, five[note 6] of them in all likelihood pre-Buddhist (6th century BCE),[18] down to the Maurya period.[19] Of the remainder, 95 Upanishads are part of the Muktika canon, composed from about the last centuries of 1st-millennium BCE through about 15th-century CE.[20][21] New Upanishads, beyond the 108 in the Muktika canon, continued to be composed through the early modern and modern era,[22] though often dealing with subjects which are unconnected to the Vedas.[23]
With the translation of the Upanishads in the early 19th century they also started to attract attention from a western audience. Arthur Schopenhauer was deeply impressed by the Upanishads and called it “the production of the highest human wisdom”.[24] Modern era Indologists have discussed the similarities between the fundamental concepts in the Upanishads and major western philosophers.[25][26][27]
Upanishads, duh. : )
was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work The World as Will and Representation (expanded in 1844), wherein he characterizes the phenomenal world as the product of a blind and insatiable metaphysical will.[16][17] Proceeding from the transcendental idealism of Immanuel Kant, Schopenhauer developed an atheistic metaphysical and ethical system that has been described as an exemplary manifestation of philosophical pessimism,[18][19][20] rejecting the contemporaneous post-Kantian philosophies of German idealism.[21][22] Schopenhauer was among the first thinkers in Western philosophy to share and affirm significant tenets of Eastern philosophy (e.g., asceticism, the world-as-appearance), having initially arrived at similar conclusions as the result of his own philosophical work.[23][24]
Though his work failed to garner substantial attention during his life, Schopenhauer has had a posthumous impact across various disciplines, including philosophy, literature, and science. His writing on aesthetics, morality, and psychology influenced thinkers and artists throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. Those who cited his influence include Friedrich Nietzsche,[25] Richard Wagner, Leo Tolstoy, Ludwig Wittgenstein,[26] Erwin Schrödinger, Otto Rank, Gustav Mahler, Joseph Campbell, Albert Einstein,[27] Anthony Ludovici,[28] Carl Jung, Thomas Mann, Émile Zola, George Bernard Shaw,[29] Jorge Luis Borges and Samuel Beckett.[30]
Arthur Schopenhauer
are[1] an Indo-European[2] ethnolinguistic group of Europe identified by their use of Celtic languages and cultural similarities.[3] The history of pre-Celtic Europe and the exact relationship between ethnic, linguistic and cultural factors in the Celtic world remains uncertain and controversial.[4] The exact geographic spread of the ancient Celts is disputed; in particular, the ways in which the Iron Age inhabitants of Great Britain and Ireland should be regarded as Celts have become a subject of controversy.[3][4][5][6] According to one theory, the common root of the Celtic languages, the Proto-Celtic language, arose in the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture of Central Europe, which flourished from around 1200 BC.[7]
According to a theory proposed in the 19th century, the first people to adopt cultural characteristics regarded as Celtic were the people of the Iron Age Hallstatt culture in central Europe (c. 800–450 BC), named for the rich grave finds in Hallstatt, Austria.[7][8] Thus this area is sometimes called the “Celtic homeland”. By or during the later La Tène period (c. 450 BC to the Roman conquest), this Celtic culture was supposed to have expanded by trans-cultural diffusion or migration to the British Isles (Insular Celts), France and the Low Countries (Gauls), Bohemia, Poland and much of Central Europe, the Iberian Peninsula (Celtiberians, Celtici, Lusitanians and Gallaeci) and northern Italy (Golasecca culture and Cisalpine Gauls)[9] and, following the Celtic settlement of Eastern Europe beginning in 279 BC, as far east as central Anatolia (Galatians) in modern-day Turkey.[10]
The earliest undisputed direct examples of a Celtic language are the Lepontic inscriptions beginning in the 6th century BC.[11] Continental Celtic languages are attested almost exclusively through inscriptions and place-names. Insular Celtic languages are attested beginning around the 4th century in Ogham inscriptions, although they were clearly being spoken much earlier. Celtic literary tradition begins with Old Irish texts around the 8th century CE. Coherent texts of Early Irish literature, such as the Táin Bó Cúailnge (“Cattle Raid of Cooley”), survive in 12th-century recensions.
By the mid-1st millennium, with the expansion of the Roman Empire and migrating Germanic tribes, Celtic culture and Insular Celtic languages had become restricted to Ireland, the western and northern parts of Great Britain (Wales, Scotland, and Cornwall), the Isle of Man, and Brittany. Between the 5th and 8th centuries, the Celtic-speaking communities in these Atlantic regions emerged as a reasonably cohesive cultural entity. They had a common linguistic, religious and artistic heritage that distinguished them from the culture of the surrounding polities.[12] By the 6th century, however, the Continental Celtic languages were no longer in wide use.
Insular Celtic culture diversified into that of the Gaels (Irish, Scottish and Manx) and the Celtic Britons (Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons) of the medieval and modern periods.[13][14] A modern Celtic identity was constructed as part of the Romanticist Celtic Revival in Great Britain, Ireland, and other European territories, such as Portugal and Spanish Galicia.[15] Today, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh, and Breton are still spoken in parts of their historical territories, and Cornish and Manx are undergoing a revival.
Celts
were originally a festival, or celebration of and for Zeus; later, events such as a footrace, a javelin contest, and wrestling matches were added. The Olympic Games (Ancient Greek: Ὀλύμπια, Olympia,[1][2][3][4][5][6] “the Olympics”; also Ὀλυμπιάς, Olympias,[7][4][5][6] “the Olympiad”) were a series of athletic competitions among representatives of city-states and one of the Panhellenic Games of ancient Greece. They were held in honor of Zeus, and the Greeks gave them a mythological origin. The first Olympics is traditionally dated to 776 BC.[8] They continued to be celebrated when Greece came under Roman rule, until the emperor Theodosius I suppressed them in AD 393 as part of the campaign to impose Christianity as the State religion of Rome. The games were held every four years, or olympiad, which became a unit of time in historical chronologies.
During the celebration of the games, an Olympic Truce was enacted so that athletes could travel from their cities to the games in safety. The prizes for the victors were olive leaf wreaths or crowns. The games became a political tool used by city-states to assert dominance over their rivals. Politicians would announce political alliances at the games, and in times of war, priests would offer sacrifices to the gods for victory. The games were also used to help spread Hellenistic culture throughout the Mediterranean. The Olympics also featured religious celebrations. The statue of Zeus at Olympia was counted as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Sculptors and poets would congregate each olympiad to display their works of art to would-be patrons.
The ancient Olympics had fewer events than the modern games, and only freeborn Greek men were allowed to participate,[9] although there were victorious women chariot owners. As long as they met the entrance criteria, athletes from any Greek city-state and kingdom were allowed to participate, although the Hellanodikai, the officials in charge, allowed king Alexander I of Macedon to participate in the games only after he had proven his Greek ancestry.[10][11] The games were always held at Olympia rather than moving between different locations as is the practice with the modern Olympic Games.[12] Victors at the Olympics were honored, and their feats chronicled for future generations.
The Ancient Olympic Games
This was officially founded in 753 BC
Rome
is the modern name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany, south of the Arno river, western Umbria, northern and central Lazio,[1] with offshoots also to the north in the Po Valley, in the current Emilia-Romagna, south-eastern Lombardy and southern Veneto, and to the south, in some areas of Campania. As distinguished by its unique language, this civilization endured from before the time of the earliest Etruscan inscriptions (c. 700 BC)[2] until its assimilation into the Roman Republic, beginning in the late 4th century BC with the Roman–Etruscan Wars.[2]
Culture that is identifiably Etruscan developed in Italy after about 900 BC, approximately with the Iron Age Villanovan culture, regarded as the oldest phase of Etruscan civilization.[3][4][5][6][7]
The latter gave way in the 7th century BC to a culture that was influenced by Ancient Greek culture, during the Archaic (Orientalizing period), and later the Classical period. At its maximum extent, during the foundational period of Rome and the Roman Kingdom, Etruscan civilization flourished in three confederacies of cities: of Etruria (Tuscany, Latium and Umbria), of the Po Valley with the eastern Alps, and of Campania.[8][9] The league in northern Italy is mentioned in Livy.[10][11][12] The decline was gradual, but by 500 BC the political destiny of Italy had passed out of Etruscan hands.[13] The last Etruscan cities were formally absorbed by Rome around 100 BC.
Although the Etruscans developed a system of writing, the Etruscan language remains only partly understood, and only a handful of texts of any length survive, making modern understanding of their society and culture heavily dependent on much later and generally disapproving Roman and Greek sources. Politics was based on the small city and probably the family unit. In their heyday, the Etruscan elite grew very rich through trade with the Celtic world to the north and the Greeks to the south and filled their large family tombs with imported luxuries. Archaic Greece had a huge influence on their art and architecture, and Greek mythology was evidently very familiar to them.
Etruscan
sometimes referred to as the Song of Ilion or Song of Ilium) is an ancient Greek epic poem in dactylic hexameter, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy (Ilium) by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles.
Although the story covers only a few weeks in the final year of the war, the Iliad mentions or alludes to many of the Greek legends about the siege; the earlier events, such as the gathering of warriors for the siege, the cause of the war, and related concerns tend to appear near the beginning. Then the epic narrative takes up events prophesied for the future, such as Achilles’ imminent death and the fall of Troy, although the narrative ends before these events take place. However, as these events are prefigured and alluded to more and more vividly, when it reaches an end the poem has told a more or less complete tale of the Trojan War.
The Iliad is paired with something of a sequel, the Odyssey, also attributed to Homer. Along with the Odyssey, the Iliad is among the oldest extant works of Western literature, and its written version is usually dated to around the 8th century BC.[2] In the modern vulgate (the standard accepted version), the Iliad contains 15,693 lines; it is written in Homeric Greek, a literary amalgam of Ionic Greek and other dialects. According to Michael N. Nagler, the Iliad is a more complicated epic poem than the Odyssey.[3]
The Iliad
is the capital city and a special comune of Italy (named Comune di Roma Capitale). Rome also serves as the capital of the Lazio region. With 2,872,800 residents in 1,285 km2 (496.1 sq mi),[1] it is also the country’s most populated comune. It is the fourth most populous city in the European Union by population within city limits. It is the centre of the Metropolitan City of Rome, which has a population of 4,355,725 residents, thus making it the most populous metropolitan city in Italy.[2] Rome is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, within Lazio (Latium), along the shores of the Tiber. The Vatican City (the smallest country in the world)[3] is an independent country inside the city boundaries of Rome, the only existing example of a country within a city: for this reason Rome has been often defined as capital of two states.[4][5]
Rome’s history spans 28 centuries. While Roman mythology dates the founding of Rome at around 753 BC, the site has been inhabited for much longer, making it one of the oldest continuously occupied sites in Europe.[6] The city’s early population originated from a mix of Latins, Etruscans, and Sabines. Eventually, the city successively became the capital of the Roman Kingdom, the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, and is regarded by some as the first ever metropolis.[7] It was first called The Eternal City (Latin: Urbs Aeterna; Italian: La Città Eterna) by the Roman poet Tibullus in the 1st century BC, and the expression was also taken up by Ovid, Virgil, and Livy.[8][9] Rome is also called the “Caput Mundi” (Capital of the World). After the fall of the Western Empire, which marked the beginning of the Middle Ages, Rome slowly fell under the political control of the Papacy, and in the 8th century it became the capital of the Papal States, which lasted until 1870. Beginning with the Renaissance, almost all the popes since Nicholas V (1447–1455) pursued over four hundred years a coherent architectural and urban programme aimed at making the city the artistic and cultural centre of the world.[10] In this way, Rome became first one of the major centres of the Italian Renaissance,[11] and then the birthplace of both the Baroque style and Neoclassicism. Famous artists, painters, sculptors and architects made Rome the centre of their activity, creating masterpieces throughout the city. In 1871, Rome became the capital of the Kingdom of Italy, which, in 1946, became the Italian Republic.
Rome has the status of a global city.[12][13][14] In 2016, Rome ranked as the 14th-most-visited city in the world, 3rd most visited in the European Union, and the most popular tourist attraction in Italy.[15] Its historic centre is listed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.[16] The Vatican Museums are among the world’s most visited museums while the Colosseum was the most popular tourist attraction in the world with 7.4 million visitors in 2018.[17] Host city for the 1960 Summer Olympics, Rome is the seat of several specialized agencies of the United Nations, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). The city also hosts the Secretariat of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Union for the Mediterranean[18] (UfM) as well as the headquarters of many international business companies such as Eni, Enel, TIM, Leonardo S.p.A., and national and international banks such as Unicredit and BNL. Its business district, called EUR, is the base of many companies involved in the oil industry, the pharmaceutical industry, and financial services. Rome is also an important fashion and design centre thanks to renowned international brands centered in the city. Rome’s Cinecittà Studios have been the set of many Academy Award–winning movies.[19]
Rome
is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other Homeric epic. The Odyssey is fundamental to the modern Western canon; it is the second-oldest extant work of Western literature, while the Iliad is the oldest. Scholars believe the Odyssey was composed near the end of the 8th century BC, somewhere in Ionia, the Greek coastal region of Anatolia.[2]
The poem mainly focuses on the Greek hero Odysseus (known as Ulysses in Roman myths), king of Ithaca, and his journey home after the fall of Troy. It takes Odysseus ten years to reach Ithaca after the ten-year Trojan War.[3] In his absence, it is assumed Odysseus has died, and his wife Penelope and son Telemachus must deal with a group of unruly suitors, the Mnesteres (Greek: Μνηστῆρες) or Proci, who compete for Penelope’s hand in marriage.
The Odyssey continues to be read in the Homeric Greek and translated into modern languages around the world. Many scholars believe the original poem was composed in an oral tradition by an aoidos (epic poet/singer), perhaps a rhapsode (professional performer), and was more likely intended to be heard than read.[2] The details of the ancient oral performance and the story’s conversion to a written work inspire continual debate among scholars. The Odyssey was written in a poetic dialect of Greek—a literary amalgam of Aeolic Greek, Ionic Greek, and other Ancient Greek dialects—and comprises 12,110 lines of dactylic hexameter.[4][5] Among the most noteworthy elements of the text are its non-linear plot, and the influence on events of choices made by women and slaves, besides the actions of fighting men. In the English language as well as many others, the word odyssey has come to refer to an epic voyage.
The Odyssey has a lost sequel, the Telegony, which was not attributed to Homer. It was usually attributed in antiquity to Cinaethon of Sparta. In one source,[which?] the Telegony was said to have been stolen from Musaeus of Athens by either Eugamon or Eugammon of Cyrene (see Cyclic poets).
The Odyssey
is the legendary author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, two epic poems that are the central works of ancient Greek literature. The Iliad is set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek kingdoms. It focuses on a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles lasting a few weeks during the last year of the war. The Odyssey focuses on the ten-year journey home of Odysseus, king of Ithaca, after the fall of Troy. Many accounts of Homer’s life circulated in classical antiquity, the most widespread being that he was a blind bard from Ionia, a region of central coastal Anatolia in present-day Turkey. Modern scholars consider these accounts legendary.[2][3][4]
The Homeric Question – concerning by whom, when, where and under what circumstances the Iliad and Odyssey were composed – continues to be debated. Broadly speaking, modern scholarly opinion falls into two groups. One holds that most of the Iliad and (according to some) the Odyssey are the works of a single poet of genius. The other considers the Homeric poems to be the result of a process of working and reworking by many contributors, and that “Homer” is best seen as a label for an entire tradition.[4] It is generally accepted that the poems were composed at some point around the late eighth or early seventh century BC.[5]
The poems are in Homeric Greek, also known as Epic Greek, a literary language which shows a mixture of features of the Ionic and Aeolic dialects from different centuries; the predominant influence is Eastern Ionic.[6][7] Most researchers believe that the poems were originally transmitted orally.[8] From antiquity until the present day, the influence of the Homeric epics on Western civilization has been great, inspiring many of its most famous works of literature, music, art and film.[9] The Homeric epics were the greatest influence on ancient Greek culture and education; to Plato, Homer was simply the one who “has taught Greece” – ten Hellada pepaideuken.[10][11]
Homer
probably written in 1610–1611, and thought to be one of the last plays that Shakespeare wrote alone. After the first scene, which takes place on a ship at sea during a tempest, the rest of the story is set on a remote island, where the sorcerer Prospero, a complex and contradictory character, lives with his daughter Miranda, and his two servants — Caliban, a savage monster figure, and Ariel, an airy spirit. The play contains music and songs that evoke the spirit of enchantment on the island. It explores many themes including magic, betrayal, revenge, and family. In act four, a wedding masque serves as a play-within-the play, and contributes spectacle, allegory, and elevated language. Though The Tempest is listed in the First Folio as the first of Shakespeare’s comedies, it deals with both tragic and comic themes, and modern criticism has created a category of romance for this and others of Shakespeare’s late plays. The Tempest has been subjected to varied interpretations—from those that see it as a fable of art and creation, with Prospero representing Shakespeare, and Prospero’s renunciation of magic signaling Shakespeare’s farewell to the stage, to interpretations that consider it an allegory of European man colonizing foreign lands.
The Tempest (Shakespeare)
dramatises the reign of John, King of England (ruled 1199–1216), son of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine and father of Henry III of England. It is believed to have been written in the mid-1590s but was not published until it appeared in the First Folio in 1623.[1]
King John (Shakespeare)
is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1602. It was described by Frederick S. Boas as one of Shakespeare’s problem plays. The play ends on a very bleak note with the death of the noble Trojan Hector and destruction of the love between Troilus and Cressida. The work has in recent years “stimulated exceptionally lively critical debate”.[2]
Throughout the play, the tone lurches wildly between bawdy comedy and tragic gloom, and readers and theatre-goers have frequently found it difficult to understand how one is meant to respond to the characters. Several characteristic elements of the play (the most notable being its constant questioning of intrinsic values such as hierarchy, honour and love) have often been viewed as distinctly “modern”, as in the following remarks on the play by author and literary scholar Joyce Carol Oates:
Troilus and Cressida
is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1589 and 1593. It is considered by some to be Shakespeare’s first play,[a] and is often seen as showing his first tentative steps in laying out some of the themes and motifs with which he would later deal in more detail; for example, it is the first of his plays in which a heroine dresses as a boy. The play deals with the themes of friendship and infidelity, the conflict between friendship and love, and the foolish behaviour of people in love. The highlight of the play is considered by some to be Launce, the clownish servant of Proteus, and his dog Crab, to whom “the most scene-stealing non-speaking role in the canon” has been attributed.[1]
Two Gentlemen is often regarded as one of Shakespeare’s weakest plays.[2] It has the smallest named cast of any play by Shakespeare.[3]
Two Gentleman of Verona
is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in approximately 1595. It is based on the life of King Richard II of England (ruled 1377–1399) and is the first part of a tetralogy, referred to by some scholars as the Henriad, followed by three plays concerning Richard’s successors: Henry IV, Part 1; Henry IV, Part 2; and Henry V.
Although the First Folio (1623) edition of Shakespeare’s works lists the play as a history play, the earlier Quarto edition of 1597 calls it The tragedie of King Richard the second.
Richard the 2nd
is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1605 and 1608. The play is based on the life of the legendary Roman leader Caius Marcius Coriolanus. The tragedy is one of the last two tragedies written by Shakespeare, along with Antony and Cleopatra.
Coriolanus is the name given to a Roman general after his more than adequate military success against various uprisings challenging the government of Rome. Following this success, Coriolanus becomes active in politics and seeks political leadership. His temperament is unsuited for popular leadership and he is quickly deposed, whereupon he aligns himself to set matters straight according to his own will. The alliances he forges along the way result in his ultimate downfall.
Coriolanus
is a comedy by William Shakespeare first published in 1602, though believed to have been written in or before 1597. The Windsor of the play’s title is a reference to the town of Windsor, also the location of Windsor Castle, in Berkshire, England. Though nominally set in the reign of Henry IV, the play makes no pretense to exist outside contemporary Elizabethan era English middle class life. It features the character Sir John Falstaff, the fat knight who had previously been featured in Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2. It has been adapted for the opera on several occasions. The play is one of Shakespeare’s lesser-regarded works among literary critics.
The Merry Wives of Windsor
is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written no later than 1597. It is the second play in Shakespeare’s tetralogy dealing with the successive reigns of Richard II, Henry IV (two plays, including Henry IV, Part 2), and Henry V. Henry IV, Part 1 depicts a span of history that begins with Hotspur’s battle at Homildon in Northumberland against Douglas late in 1402 and ends with the defeat of the rebels at Shrewsbury in the middle of 1403.[1] From the start, it has been an extremely popular play both with the public and critics.[2]
Henry the 4th Part 1
is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1588 and 1593, probably in collaboration with George Peele. It is thought to be Shakespeare’s first tragedy and is often seen as his attempt to emulate the violent and bloody revenge plays of his contemporaries, which were extremely popular with audiences throughout the 16th century.[1]
The play is set during the latter days of the Roman Empire and tells the fictional story of Titus, a general in the Roman army, who is engaged in a cycle of revenge with Tamora, Queen of the Goths. It is Shakespeare’s bloodiest and most violent work, and traditionally was one of his least respected plays; although it was extremely popular in its day, by the later 17th century it had fallen out of favour. In the Victorian era, it was disapproved of primarily because of what was considered to be a distasteful use of graphic violence, but from around the middle of the 20th century its reputation began to improve.[2]
Titus Andronicus
is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604. Originally published in the First Folio of 1623, where it was listed as a comedy, the play’s first recorded performance occurred in 1604. The play’s main themes include justice, “morality and mercy in Vienna,” and the dichotomy between corruption and purity: “some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.” Mercy and virtue prevail, as the play does not end tragically, with virtues such as compassion and forgiveness being exercised at the end of the production. While the play focuses on justice overall, the final scene illustrates that Shakespeare intended for moral justice to temper strict civil justice: a number of the characters receive understanding and leniency, instead of the harsh punishment to which they, according to the law, could have been sentenced.[1]
Measure for Measure is often called one of Shakespeare’s problem plays. It continues to be classified as a comedy, albeit a dark one, though its tone may defy those expectations.[2]
Measure By Measure
is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written between 1596 and 1599. It is the third part of a tetralogy, preceded by Richard II and Henry IV, Part 1 and succeeded by Henry V.
The play is often seen as an extension of aspects of Henry IV, Part 1, rather than a straightforward continuation of the historical narrative, placing more emphasis on the highly popular character of Falstaff and introducing other comic figures as part of his entourage, including Ancient Pistol, Doll Tearsheet, and Justice Robert Shallow. Several scenes specifically parallel episodes in Part 1.
Henry the 4th Part 2
is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about two young star-crossed lovers whose deaths ultimately reconcile their feuding families. It was among Shakespeare’s most popular plays during his lifetime and along with Hamlet, is one of his most frequently performed plays. Today, the title characters are regarded as archetypal young lovers.
Romeo and Juliet belongs to a tradition of tragic romances stretching back to antiquity. The plot is based on an Italian tale translated into verse as The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet by Arthur Brooke in 1562 and retold in prose in Palace of Pleasure by William Painter in 1567. Shakespeare borrowed heavily from both but expanded the plot by developing a number of supporting characters, particularly Mercutio and Paris. Believed to have been written between 1591 and 1595, the play was first published in a quarto version in 1597. The text of the first quarto version was of poor quality, however, and later editions corrected the text to conform more closely with Shakespeare’s original.
Shakespeare’s use of his poetic dramatic structure (especially effects such as switching between comedy and tragedy to heighten tension, his expansion of minor characters, and his use of sub-plots to embellish the story) has been praised as an early sign of his dramatic skill. The play ascribes different poetic forms to different characters, sometimes changing the form as the character develops. Romeo, for example, grows more adept at the sonnet over the course of the play.
Romeo and Juliet has been adapted numerous times for stage, film, musical, and opera venues. During the English Restoration, it was revived and heavily revised by William Davenant. David Garrick’s 18th-century version also modified several scenes, removing material then considered indecent, and Georg Benda’s Romeo und Julie omitted much of the action and added a happy ending. Performances in the 19th century, including Charlotte Cushman’s, restored the original text and focused on greater realism. John Gielgud’s 1935 version kept very close to Shakespeare’s text and used Elizabethan costumes and staging to enhance the drama. In the 20th and into the 21st century, the play has been adapted in versions as diverse as George Cukor’s 1936 film Romeo and Juliet, Franco Zeffirelli’s 1968 version Romeo and Juliet, and Baz Luhrmann’s 1996 MTV-inspired Romeo + Juliet.
Romeo and Juliet
is one of William Shakespeare’s early plays. It is his shortest and one of his most farcical comedies, with a major part of the humour coming from slapstick and mistaken identity, in addition to puns and word play. The Comedy of Errors is, along with The Tempest, one of only two Shakespearean plays to observe the Aristotelian principle of unity of time—that is, that the events of a play should occur over 24 hours. It has been adapted for opera, stage, screen and musical theatre numerous times worldwide. In the centuries following its premiere, the play’s title has entered the popular English lexicon as an idiom for “an event or series of events made ridiculous by the number of errors that were made throughout”.[1]
Set in the Greek city of Ephesus, The Comedy of Errors tells the story of two sets of identical twins who were accidentally separated at birth. Antipholus of Syracuse and his servant, Dromio of Syracuse, arrive in Ephesus, which turns out to be the home of their twin brothers, Antipholus of Ephesus and his servant, Dromio of Ephesus. When the Syracusans encounter the friends and families of their twins, a series of wild mishaps based on mistaken identities lead to wrongful beatings, a near-seduction, the arrest of Antipholus of Ephesus, and false accusations of infidelity, theft, madness, and demonic possession.
The Comedy of Errors
is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written near 1599. It tells the story of King Henry V of England, focusing on events immediately before and after the Battle of Agincourt (1415) during the Hundred Years’ War. In the First Quarto text, it was titled The Cronicle History of Henry the fift,[1]:p.6 which became The Life of Henry the Fifth in the First Folio text.
The play is the final part of a tetralogy, preceded by Richard II, Henry IV, Part 1, and Henry IV, Part 2. The original audiences would thus have already been familiar with the title character, who was depicted in the Henry IV plays as a wild, undisciplined young man. In Henry V, the young prince has matured. He embarks on an expedition to France and, his army badly outnumbered, defeats the French at Agincourt.
Henry the 5th
is a play by William Shakespeare, probably written in collaboration with Thomas Middleton in about 1605–1606, which was published in the First Folio in 1623. It is about the fortunes of an Athenian named Timon (and probably influenced by the philosopher Timon of Phlius). The central character is a beloved citizen of Athens who through tremendous generosity spends his entire fortune on corrupt hangers-on only interested in getting the next payout.
The earliest-known production of the play was in 1674, when Thomas Shadwell wrote an adaptation under the title The History of Timon of Athens, The Man-hater.[1] Multiple other adaptations followed over the next century, by writers such as Thomas Hull, James Love and Richard Cumberland.[2] The straight Shakespearean text was performed at Smock Alley in Dublin in 1761, but adaptations continued to dominate the stage until well into the 20th century.[3][4]
Timon of Athens was originally grouped with the tragedies, but some scholars name it one of the problem plays.[5][6][7]
Timon of Athens
is a comedy by William Shakespeare thought to have been written in 1598 and 1599, as Shakespeare was approaching the middle of his career. The play was included in the First Folio, published in 1623.
By means of “noting” (which, in Shakespeare’s day, sounded similar to “nothing” as in the play’s title,[1][2] and which means gossip, rumour, and overhearing), Benedick and Beatrice are tricked into confessing their love for each other, and Claudio is tricked into rejecting Hero at the altar on the erroneous belief that she has been unfaithful. At the end, Benedick and Beatrice join forces to set things right, and the others join in a dance celebrating the marriages of the two couples.
Much Ado About Nothing
is a history play by William Shakespeare—possibly in collaboration with Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nashe—believed to have been written in 1591. It is set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England.
Whereas Henry VI, Part 2 deals with the King’s inability to quell the bickering of his nobles and the inevitability of armed conflict and Henry VI, Part 3 deals with the horrors of that conflict, Henry VI, Part 1 deals with the loss of England’s French territories and the political machinations leading up to the Wars of the Roses, as the English political system is torn apart by personal squabbles and petty jealousy.
Although the Henry VI trilogy may not have been written in chronological order, the three plays are often grouped together with Richard III to form a tetralogy covering the entire Wars of the Roses saga, from the death of Henry V in 1422 to the rise to power of Henry VII in 1485. It was the success of this sequence of plays that firmly established Shakespeare’s reputation as a playwright.
Some regard Henry VI, Part 1 as the weakest of Shakespeare’s plays.[1] Along with Titus Andronicus, it is generally considered one of the strongest candidates for evidence that Shakespeare collaborated with other dramatists early in his career.
Henry the 6th, Part 1
is a history play and tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1599. It is one of several plays written by Shakespeare based on true events from Roman history, which also include Coriolanus and Antony and Cleopatra.
Although the play is named Julius Caesar, Brutus speaks more than four times as many lines as the title character; and the central psychological drama of the play focuses on Brutus’ struggle between the conflicting demands of honour, patriotism, and friendship.
Julius Caesar
is one of William Shakespeare’s early comedies, believed to have been written in the mid-1590s for a performance at the Inns of Court before Queen Elizabeth I. It follows the King of Navarre and his three companions as they attempt to swear off the company of women for three years in order to focus on study and fasting. Their subsequent infatuation with the Princess of France and her ladies makes them forsworn. In an untraditional ending for a comedy, the play closes with the death of the Princess’s father, and all weddings are delayed for a year. The play draws on themes of masculine love and desire, reckoning and rationalisation, and reality versus fantasy.
Though first published in quarto in 1598, the play’s title page suggests a revision of an earlier version of the play. While there are no obvious sources for the play’s plot, the four main characters are loosely based on historical figures. The use of apostrophes in the play’s title varies in early editions, though it is most commonly given as Love’s Labour’s Lost.
Shakespeare’s audiences were familiar with the historical personages portrayed and the political situation in Europe relating to the setting and action of the play. Scholars suggest the play lost popularity as these historical and political portrayals of Navarre’s court became dated and less accessible to theatergoers of later generations. The play’s sophisticated wordplay, pedantic humour and dated literary allusions may also be cause for its relative obscurity, as compared with Shakespeare’s more popular works. Love’s Labour’s Lost was rarely staged in the 19th century, but it has been seen more often in the 20th and 21st centuries, with productions by both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre, among others. It has also been adapted as a musical, an opera, for radio and television and as a musical film.
Love’s Labour’s Lost features the longest scene (5.2), the longest single word ‘honorificabilitudinitatibus’ (5.1.39–40), and (depending on editorial choices) the longest speech (4.3.284–361) in all of Shakespeare’s plays (see “Date and Text” below).
Love’s Labour’s Lost
is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1591 and set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England. Whereas 1 Henry VI deals primarily with the loss of England’s French territories and the political machinations leading up to the Wars of the Roses, and 3 Henry VI deals with the horrors of that conflict, 2 Henry VI focuses on the King’s inability to quell the bickering of his nobles, the death of his trusted adviser Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the rise of the Duke of York and the inevitability of armed conflict. As such, the play culminates with the opening battle of the War, the First Battle of St Albans (1455).
Although the Henry VI trilogy may not have been written in chronological order, the three plays are often grouped together with Richard III to form a tetralogy covering the entire Wars of the Roses saga, from the death of Henry V in 1422 to the rise to power of Henry VII in 1485. It was the success of this sequence of plays that firmly established Shakespeare’s reputation as a playwright.
Henry VI, Part 2 has the largest cast of all Shakespeare’s plays[a] and is seen by many critics as the best of the Henry VI trilogy.[1]
Henry the 6th, Part 2
is a tragedy by William Shakespeare; it is thought to have been first performed in 1606.[a] It dramatises the damaging physical and psychological effects of political ambition on those who seek power for its own sake. Of all the plays that Shakespeare wrote during the reign of James I, who was patron of Shakespeare’s acting company, Macbeth most clearly reflects the playwright’s relationship with his sovereign.[1] It was first published in the Folio of 1623, possibly from a prompt book, and is Shakespeare’s shortest tragedy.[2]
A brave Scottish general named Macbeth receives a prophecy from a trio of witches that one day he will become King of Scotland. Consumed by ambition and spurred to action by his wife, Macbeth murders King Duncan and takes the Scottish throne for himself. He is then wracked with guilt and paranoia. Forced to commit more and more murders to protect himself from enmity and suspicion, he soon becomes a tyrannical ruler. The bloodbath and consequent civil war swiftly take Macbeth and Lady Macbeth into the realms of madness and death.
Shakespeare’s source for the story is the account of Macbeth, King of Scotland; Macduff; and Duncan in Holinshed’s Chronicles (1587), a history of England, Scotland, and Ireland familiar to Shakespeare and his contemporaries, although the events in the play differ extensively from the history of the real Macbeth. The events of the tragedy are usually associated with the execution of Henry Garnet for complicity in the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.[3]
In the backstage world of theatre, some believe that the play is cursed, and will not mention its title aloud, referring to it instead as “The Scottish Play”. Over the course of many centuries, the play has attracted some of the most renowned actors to the roles of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth. It has been adapted to film, television, opera, novels, comics, and other media.
Macbeth
is a comedy written by William Shakespeare in 1595/96. It portrays the events surrounding the marriage of Theseus, the Duke of Athens, to Hippolyta (the former queen of the Amazons). These include the adventures of four young Athenian lovers and a group of six amateur actors (the mechanicals) who are controlled and manipulated by the fairies who inhabit the forest in which most of the play is set. The play is one of Shakespeare’s most popular works for the stage and is widely performed across the world.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
is a history play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1591 and set during the lifetime of King Henry VI of England. Whereas 1 Henry VI deals with the loss of England’s French territories and the political machinations leading up to the Wars of the Roses and 2 Henry VI focuses on the King’s inability to quell the bickering of his nobles, and the inevitability of armed conflict, 3 Henry VI deals primarily with the horrors of that conflict, with the once stable nation thrown into chaos and barbarism as families break down and moral codes are subverted in the pursuit of revenge and power.
Although the Henry VI trilogy may not have been written in chronological order, the three plays are often grouped together with Richard III to form a tetralogy covering the entire Wars of the Roses saga, from the death of Henry V in 1422 to the rise to power of Henry VII in 1485. It was the success of this sequence of plays that firmly established Shakespeare’s reputation as a playwright.
Henry VI, Part 3 features the longest soliloquy in all of Shakespeare (3.2.124–195) and has more battle scenes (four on stage, one reported) than any other of Shakespeare’s plays.
Henry the 6th, Part 3
is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare sometime between 1599 and 1602. Set in Denmark, the play depicts Prince Hamlet and his revenge against his uncle, Claudius, who has murdered Hamlet’s father in order to seize his throne and marry Hamlet’s mother.
Hamlet is Shakespeare’s longest play and is considered among the most powerful and influential works of world literature, with a story capable of “seemingly endless retelling and adaptation by others”.[1] It was one of Shakespeare’s most popular works during his lifetime[2] and still ranks among his most performed, topping the performance list of the Royal Shakespeare Company and its predecessors in Stratford-upon-Avon since 1879.[3] It has inspired many other writers—from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Charles Dickens to James Joyce and Iris Murdoch—and has been described as “the world’s most filmed story after Cinderella”.[4]
The story of Shakespeare’s Hamlet was derived from the legend of Amleth, preserved by 13th-century chronicler Saxo Grammaticus in his Gesta Danorum, as subsequently retold by the 16th-century scholar François de Belleforest. Shakespeare may also have drawn on an earlier Elizabethan play known today as the Ur-Hamlet, though some scholars believe Shakespeare wrote the Ur-Hamlet, later revising it to create the version of Hamlet we now have. He almost certainly wrote his version of the title role for his fellow actor, Richard Burbage, the leading tragedian of Shakespeare’s time. In the 400 years since its inception, the role has been performed by numerous highly acclaimed actors in each successive century.
Three different early versions of the play are extant: the First Quarto (Q1, 1603); the Second Quarto (Q2, 1604); and the First Folio (F1, 1623). Each version includes lines and entire scenes missing from the others. The play’s structure and depth of characterisation have inspired much critical scrutiny. One such example is the centuries-old debate about Hamlet’s hesitation to kill his uncle, which some see as merely a plot device to prolong the action but which others argue is a dramatisation of the complex philosophical and ethical issues that surround cold-blooded murder, calculated revenge, and thwarted desire. More recently, psychoanalytic critics have examined Hamlet’s unconscious desires, while feminist critics have re-evaluated and attempted to rehabilitate the often-maligned characters of Ophelia and Gertrude.
Hamlet
is a 16th-century play written by William Shakespeare in which a merchant in Venice (Antonio) must default on a large loan provided by a Jewish moneylender, Shylock. It is believed to have been written between 1596 and 1599. Though classified as a comedy in the First Folio and sharing certain aspects with Shakespeare’s other romantic comedies, the play is most remembered for its dramatic scenes, and it is best known for Shylock and the famous “Hath not a Jew eyes?” speech on humanity. Also notable is Portia’s speech about “the quality of mercy”. Critic Harold Bloom listed it among Shakespeare’s great comedies.[1]
The Merchant of Venice
is a historical play by William Shakespeare believed to have been written around 1593. It depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of King Richard III of England.[1] The play is grouped among the histories in the First Folio and is most often classified as such. Occasionally, however, as in the quarto edition, it is termed a tragedy. Richard III concludes Shakespeare’s first tetralogy (also containing Henry VI parts 1–3).
It is the second longest play in the Shakespearean canon after Hamlet and is the longest of the First Folio, whose version of Hamlet is shorter than its Quarto counterpart. The play is often abridged; for example, certain peripheral characters are removed entirely. In such instances, extra lines are often invented or added from elsewhere in the sequence to establish the nature of characters’ relationships. A further reason for abridgment is that Shakespeare assumed that his audiences would be familiar with his Henry VI plays and frequently made indirect references to events in them, such as Richard’s murder of Henry VI or the defeat of Henry’s wife, Margaret.
Richard the 3rd
is a tragedy written by William Shakespeare. It depicts the gradual descent into madness of the title character, after he disposes of his kingdom by bequeathing his power and land to two of his three daughters in exchange for insincere declarations of love, bringing tragic consequences for all. Derived from the legend of Leir of Britain, a mythological pre-Roman Celtic king, the play has been widely adapted for the stage and motion pictures, with the title role coveted by many of the world’s most accomplished actors.
The first attribution to Shakespeare of this play, originally drafted in 1605 or 1606 at the latest with its first known performance on St. Stephen’s Day in 1606, was a 1608 publication in a quarto of uncertain provenance, in which the play is listed as a history; it may be an early draft or simply reflect the first performance text. The Tragedy of King Lear, a more theatrical revision, was included in the 1623 First Folio. Modern editors usually conflate the two, though some insist that each version has its own individual integrity that should be preserved.
After the English Restoration, the play was often revised with a happy, non-tragic ending for audiences who disliked its dark and depressing tone, but since the 19th century Shakespeare’s original version has been regarded as one of his supreme achievements. The tragedy is particularly noted for its probing observations on the nature of human suffering and kinship. George Bernard Shaw wrote, “No man will ever write a better tragedy than Lear.”[1]
King Lear
is a pastoral comedy by William Shakespeare believed to have been written in 1599 and first published in the First Folio in 1623. The play’s first performance is uncertain, though a performance at Wilton House in 1603 has been suggested as a possibility.
As You Like It follows its heroine Rosalind as she flees persecution in her uncle’s court, accompanied by her cousin Celia to find safety and, eventually, love, in the Forest of Arden. In the forest, they encounter a variety of memorable characters, notably the melancholy traveller Jaques who speaks many of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches (such as “All the world’s a stage”, “too much of a good thing” and “A fool! A fool! I met a fool in the forest”). Jaques provides a sharp contrast to the other characters in the play, always observing and disputing the hardships of life in the country.
Historically, critical response has varied, with some critics finding the play a work of great merit and some finding it to be of lesser quality than other Shakespearean works. The play remains a favourite among audiences and has been adapted for radio, film, and musical theatre. The piece has been a favourite of famous actors on stage and screen, notably Vanessa Redgrave, Juliet Stevenson, Maggie Smith, Rebecca Hall, Helen Mirren, and Patti LuPone in the role of Rosalind and Alan Rickman, Stephen Spinella, Kevin Kline, Stephen Dillane, and Ellen Burstyn in the role of Jaques.
As You Like It
is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written between 1590 and 1592.
The play begins with a framing device, often referred to as the induction,[a] in which a mischievous nobleman tricks a drunken tinker named Christopher Sly into believing he is actually a nobleman himself. The nobleman then has the play performed for Sly’s diversion.
The main plot depicts the courtship of Petruchio and Katherina, the headstrong, obdurate shrew. Initially, Katherina is an unwilling participant in the relationship; however, Petruchio “tames” her with various psychological torments, such as keeping her from eating and drinking, until she becomes a desirable, compliant, and obedient bride. The subplot features a competition between the suitors of Katherina’s younger sister, Bianca, who is seen as the “ideal” woman. The question of whether the play is misogynistic or not has become the subject of considerable controversy, particularly among modern scholars, audiences, and readers.
The Taming of the Shrew has been adapted numerous times for stage, screen, opera, ballet, and musical theatre; perhaps the most famous adaptations being Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate and the 1967 film of the play, starring Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. The 1999 high school comedy film 10 Things I Hate About You is also loosely based on the play.
The Taming of the Shrew
is a collaborative history play, written by William Shakespeare and John Fletcher, based on the life of King Henry VIII of England.[1] An alternative title, All Is True, is recorded in contemporary documents, the title Henry VIII not appearing until the play’s publication in the First Folio of 1623. Stylistic evidence indicates that individual scenes were written by either Shakespeare or his collaborator and successor, John Fletcher. It is also somewhat characteristic of the late romances in its structure. It is noted for having more stage directions than any of Shakespeare’s other plays.[2]
During a performance of Henry VIII at the Globe Theatre in 1613, a cannon shot employed for special effects ignited the theatre’s thatched roof (and the beams), burning the original Globe building to the ground.
Henry the 8th
is an Elizabethan play printed anonymously in 1596. It has frequently been claimed that it was at least partly written by William Shakespeare, a view that Shakespeare scholars have increasingly endorsed.[1] The rest of the play was probably written by someone else: Thomas Kyd, Christopher Marlowe, Michael Drayton, and George Peele among the top contenders, with recent scholars introducing Thomas Nashe to the fold.
The play contains several gibes at Scotland and the Scottish people, which has led some critics to think that it is the work that incited George Nicolson, Queen Elizabeth’s agent in Edinburgh, to protest against the portrayal of Scots on the London stage in a 1598 letter to William Cecil, Lord Burghley. This could explain why the play was not included in the First Folio of Shakespeare’s works, which was published after the Scottish King James had succeeded to the English throne in 1603.
Edward the 3rd
is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603. It is based on the story Un Capitano Moro (“A Moorish Captain”) by Cinthio, a disciple of Boccaccio, first published in 1565.[2] The story revolves around its two central characters: Othello, a Moorish general in the Venetian army and his unfaithful ensign, Iago. Given its varied and enduring themes of racism, love, jealousy, betrayal, revenge and repentance, Othello is still often performed in professional and community theatre alike, and has been the source for numerous operatic, film, and literary adaptations.
Othello
is a tragedy by William Shakespeare. The play was first performed, by the King’s Men, at either the Blackfriars Theatre or the Globe Theatre in around 1607;[1][2] its first appearance in print was in the Folio of 1623.
The plot is based on Thomas North’s 1579 English translation of Plutarch’s Lives (in Ancient Greek) and follows the relationship between Cleopatra and Mark Antony from the time of the Sicilian revolt to Cleopatra’s suicide during the Final War of the Roman Republic. The major antagonist is Octavius Caesar, one of Antony’s fellow triumvirs of the Second Triumvirate and the first emperor of the Roman Empire. The tragedy is mainly set in the Roman Republic and Ptolemaic Egypt and is characterized by swift shifts in geographical location and linguistic register as it alternates between sensual, imaginative Alexandria and a more pragmatic, austere Rome.
Many consider Shakespeare’s Cleopatra, whom Enobarbus describes as having “infinite variety”, as one of the most complex and fully developed female characters in the playwright’s body of work.[3]:p.45 She is frequently vain and histrionic enough to provoke an audience almost to scorn; at the same time, Shakespeare invests her and Antony with tragic grandeur. These contradictory features have led to famously divided critical responses.[4] It is difficult to classify Antony and Cleopatra as belonging to a single genre. It can be described as a history play (though it does not completely adhere to historical accounts), as a tragedy (though not completely in Aristotelian terms), as a comedy, as a romance, and according to some critics, such as McCarter,[5] a problem play. All that can be said with certainty is that it is a Roman play, and perhaps even a sequel to another of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Julius Caesar.
Antony and Cleopatra
is a play by William Shakespeare set in Ancient Britain (c. AD 10–14)[a] and based on legends that formed part of the Matter of Britain concerning the early Celtic British King Cunobeline. Although listed as a tragedy in the First Folio, modern critics often classify Cymbeline as a romance or even a comedy. Like Othello and The Winter’s Tale, it deals with the themes of innocence and jealousy. While the precise date of composition remains unknown, the play was certainly produced as early as 1611.[1]
Cymbeline
is a play by William Shakespeare, published in the First Folio in 1623, where it is listed among the comedies. There is a debate regarding the dating of the composition of the play, possible dates range from 1598 to 1608.[1][2]
The play is considered one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays”; a play that poses complex ethical dilemmas that require more than typically simple solutions.[3]
All’s Well That Ends Well
or What You Will is a comedy by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written around 1601–1602 as a Twelfth Night’s entertainment for the close of the Christmas season. The play centres on the twins Viola and Sebastian, who are separated in a shipwreck. Viola (who is disguised as Cesario) falls in love with Duke Orsino, who in turn is in love with Countess Olivia. Upon meeting Viola, Countess Olivia falls in love with her thinking she is a man.
The play expanded on the musical interludes and riotous disorder expected of the occasion,[1] with plot elements drawn from the short story “Of Apollonius and Silla” by Barnabe Rich, based on a story by Matteo Bandello. The first recorded public performance was on 2 February 1602, at Candlemas, the formal end of Christmastide in the year’s calendar. The play was not published until its inclusion in the 1623 First Folio.
Twelfth Night
is a play by William Shakespeare originally published in the First Folio of 1623. Although it was grouped among the comedies,[1] some modern editors have relabelled the play as one of Shakespeare’s late romances. Some critics consider it to be one of Shakespeare’s “problem plays” because the first three acts are filled with intense psychological drama, while the last two acts are comedic and supply a happy ending.[2]
The play has been intermittently popular, revived in productions in various forms and adaptations by some of the leading theatre practitioners in Shakespearean performance history, beginning after a long interval with David Garrick in his adaptation Florizel and Perdita (first performed in 1753 and published in 1756). The Winter’s Tale was revived again in the 19th century, when the fourth “pastoral” act was widely popular. In the second half of the 20th century, The Winter’s Tale in its entirety, and drawn largely from the First Folio text, was often performed, with varying degrees of success.
The Winter’s Tale
is a Jacobean play written at least in part by William Shakespeare and included in modern editions of his collected works despite questions over its authorship, as it was not included in the First Folio. Whilst various arguments support that Shakespeare is the sole author of the play (notably DelVecchio and Hammond’s Cambridge edition of the play), modern editors generally agree that Shakespeare is responsible for almost exactly half the play—827 lines—the main portion after scene 9 that follows the story of Pericles and Marina.[a] Modern textual studies indicate that the first two acts of 835 lines detailing the many voyages of Pericles were written by a collaborator, which strong evidence suggests to have been the victualler, panderer, dramatist and pamphleteer George Wilkins.[5]
Pericles, Prince of Tyre
is a Jacobean tragicomedy, first published in 1634 and attributed to John Fletcher and William Shakespeare. Its plot derives from “The Knight’s Tale” in Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, which had already been dramatised at least twice before.
Formerly a point of controversy, the dual attribution is now generally accepted by scholarly consensus.[1]
The Two Noble Kinsmen
is the collective name of a series of fortification systems generally built across the historical northern borders of China to protect and consolidate territories of Chinese states and empires against various nomadic groups of the steppe and their polities. Several walls were being built from as early as the 7th century BC by ancient Chinese states;[2] selective stretches were later joined together by Qin Shi Huang (220–206 BC), the first Emperor of China. Little of the Qin wall remains.[3] Later on, many successive dynasties have built and maintained multiple stretches of border walls. The most currently well-known of the walls were built by the Ming dynasty (1368–1644).
Apart from defense, other purposes of the Great Wall have included border controls, allowing the imposition of duties on goods transported along the Silk Road, regulation or encouragement of trade and the control of immigration and emigration. Furthermore, the defensive characteristics of the Great Wall were enhanced by the construction of watch towers, troop barracks, garrison stations, signaling capabilities through the means of smoke or fire, and the fact that the path of the Great Wall also served as a transportation corridor.
The frontier walls built by different dynasties have multiple courses. Collectively, they stretch from Liaodong in the east to Lop Lake in the west, from present-day Sino-Russian border in the north to Taohe River in the south; along an arc that roughly delineates the edge of Mongolian steppe. A comprehensive archaeological survey, using advanced technologies, has concluded that the walls built by the Ming dynasty measure 8,850 km (5,500 mi).[4] This is made up of 6,259 km (3,889 mi) sections of actual wall, 359 km (223 mi) of trenches and 2,232 km (1,387 mi) of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.[4] Another archaeological survey found that the entire wall with all of its branches measures out to be 21,196 km (13,171 mi).[5] Today, the defensive system of Great Wall is generally recognized as one of the most impressive architectural feats in history.[6]
The Great Wall of China
, “The Once and Future King,” was the son of Uther Pendragon and Lady Igraine. Uther disguised himself as Igraine’s husband Gorlois to sleep with her. Arthur wields the legendary sword Excalibur and rules the Britons from the castle of Camelot beside his wife, Queen Guinevere. The stories of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table are recounted by Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regnum Britanniae, works by Chrétien de Troyes, and Thomas Mallory’s Le Morte d’Arthur, among others. The different sources disagree on various details; for instance, some sources state that Arthur received Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake, while in others he pulls the sword from a stone. After the Battle of Camlann, King Arthur gives Excalibur to his marshal, Sir Bedivere, and is taken to the isle of Avalon to die.
King Arthur
is a character who goes by many other names, among them Nimue and Vivien. In many stories, the Lady of the Lake is responsible for bestowing Excalibur upon King Arthur. She also gave Merlin his powers of sorcery and raised Sir Lancelot after his father’s death. The Lady of the Lake is frequently associated with the isle of Avalon and is sometimes conflated with Morgan le Fay.
The Lady of the Lake
were a pair of lovers who predate the stories of King Arthur but nonetheless appear in the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles. Sir Tristan was a knight who brings Iseult the Fair back to Cornwall to marry his uncle King Mark after killing Morholt, an Irish knight extorting the king. During the return journey, the pair ingest a powerful potion and fall deeply in love with each other, but Iseult nevertheless marries Tristan’s uncle. The love potion, however, forces the pair to continuously seek one another out, and King Mark eventually discovers their affair. Tristan escapes his execution and later marries a different woman known as Iseult of the White Hands. Their story inspired Richard Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde.
Tristan and Iseult
is King Arthur’s illegitimate son by his half-sister Morgause (they were unaware of their shared parentage), possibly making him the rightful heir to Camelot. Mordred is best known as a traitorous figure who crowns himself King of the Britons while King Arthur is in Gaul fighting the mythical Emperor Lucius of Rome. Mordred is also frequently linked with Queen Guinevere: some accounts say that he reported the queen’s affair with Lancelot to Arthur, some say that Mordred took Guinevere as a concubine during his usurpation of Arthur’s throne, and some say that Mordred’s wife was Guinevere’s sister Gwenhwyfach. Arthur killed Mordred at the Battle of Camlann.
Mordred
is a Knight of the Round Table and the son of Morgause and King Lot of Orkney, making him the nephew of King Arthur. He is the hero of the Pearl Poet’s 14th-century romantic epic Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which Gawain’s loyalty and resolve are tested by the title Green Knight (secretly Lord Bertilak), who survives his beheading at the hands of Gawain and returns a year later to return the favor. Gawain’s brothers Gareth and Gaheris are killed during Lancelot’s rescue of Queen Guinevere, sending Gawain into a frenzy.
Sir Gawain
is a Knight of the Round Table who accompanies Sir Galahad and Sir Bors on the successful quest for the Holy Grail. Percival is one of the sons of King Pellinore. He was raised in the woods by his (unnamed) mother until he turned 15. Although Percival fails to identify the Holy Grail during an early encounter with the wounded Fisher King that involved a bleeding lance, he later heals the Fisher King’s wound at the end of the quest. In some stories, Percival loves a woman named Blanchefleur, and he is named as the father of Lohengrin in many Germanic sources.
Sir Percival
is a Knight of the Round Table renowned for his purity and honor. Galahad is the illegitimate son of Sir Lancelot and King Pelles’s daughter Lady Elaine of Corbenic. Sir Galahad is the only member of Arthur’s corps who can sit in the Siege Perilous, a seat at the Round Table set aside by Merlin for the knight who would complete the quest for the Holy Grail. Galahad’s quest for the Holy Grail, which he completed alongside Sir Percival and Sir Bors, ended when he encountered the Fisher King, who asked him to take the chalice to Sarras. Galahad is supposedly descended from the brother-in-law of Joseph of Arimathea, who later visits him and allows him to ascend to Heaven.
Sir Galahad
is the foremost among the Knights of the Round Table, an expert swordsman and jouster who is the primary figure of the Vulgate Cycle. The son of King Ban of Benwick, Lancelot was raised by the Lady of the Lake, which earned him the epithet “du Lac” or “of the Lake.” Another of his epithets is “Knight of the Cart,” which he earned for riding in a dwarf’s cart while searching for Guinevere after she was kidnapped. Aside from his adulterous affair with Queen Guinevere, Lancelot is known for fathering Sir Galahad with Elaine of Corbenic, who had tricked Lancelot into sleeping with her by disguising herself as Guinevere. After his betrayal of Arthur was revealed, Lancelot fled to France and was therefore not present during the Battle of Camlann.
Sir Lancelot
is the daughter of Leodegrance and the wife of King Arthur. In one story, Guinevere is abducted by Meleagant (or Melwas), a king of Somerset, and rescued by Lancelot, beginning an illicit affair between the two. After the affair is revealed to Arthur (in some sources by Mordred, in others by Agravain), Arthur orders her to be burned at the stake; she is rescued from that fate by Lancelot in a battle that results in the deaths of Sir Gareth and Sir Gaheris and the permanent exile of Lancelot. Some sources say that Guinevere spent her final days hiding in the Tower of London or in a nearby convent.
Queen Guinevere
is a powerful wizard who serves as Arthur’s chief advisor. When Merlin was a child, King Vortigern was told that the boy’s blood was necessary to keep his tower from constantly collapsing; however, Merlin identified a pool beneath the tower in which two dragons fought as the source of the instability. Some sources credit Merlin with constructing the Round Table as well as Stonehenge. Merlin’s primary apprentice is the sorceress Morgan le Fay, Arthur’s half-sister on his mother’s side. Some sources have Merlin wind up trapped in an enchanted tomb (possibly in a cave, possibly in a tree) by a figure identified as Vivien or Nimue (the Lady of the Lake). In other tales, Merlin dies and is buried in the legendary forest Brocéliande.
Merlin
The first true coinage was struck by the kingdom of ____, located in western Anatolia along the gold-bearing Pactolus River, around 650 BC.
Lydia
Capital of Assyria
Nineveh
Who sacked Nineveh when the Assyrian Empire fell?
The Scythians
When did the Assyrian Empire topple?
612 BC
were Eurasian nomads, probably mostly using Eastern Iranian languages, who were mentioned by the literate peoples to their south as inhabiting large areas of the western and central Eurasian Steppe from about the 9th century BC up until the 4th century AD.[2][3][4][5] The “classical Scythians” known to ancient Greek historians, agreed to be mainly Iranian in origin, were located in the northern Black Sea and fore-Caucasus region. Other Scythian groups documented by Assyrian, Achaemenid and Chinese sources show that they also existed in Central Asia, where they were referred to as the Iskuzai/Askuzai, Saka (Old Persian: Sakā; New Persian/Pashto: ساکا; Sanskrit: शक Śaka; Greek: Σάκαι; Latin: Sacae), and Sai (Chinese: 塞; Old Chinese: *sˤək), respectively.[6]
The relationships between the peoples living in these widely separated regions remains unclear, and the term is used in both a broad and narrow sense. The term “Scythian” is used by modern scholars in an archaeological context for finds perceived to display attributes of the wider “Scytho-Siberian” culture, usually without implying an ethnic or linguistic connotation.[7] The term Scythic may also be used in a similar way,[8] “to describe a special phase that followed the widespread diffusion of mounted nomadism, characterized by the presence of special weapons, horse gear, and animal art in the form of metal plaques”.[9] Their westernmost territories during the Iron Age were known to classical Greek sources as Scythia, and in the more narrow sense “Scythian” is restricted to these areas, where the Scythian languages were spoken. Different definitions of “Scythian” have been used, leading to a good deal of confusion.[10]
The Scythians were among the earliest peoples to master mounted warfare.[11] They kept herds of horses, cattle and sheep, lived in tent-covered wagons and fought with bows and arrows on horseback. They developed a rich culture characterised by opulent tombs, fine metalwork and a brilliant art style.[12] In the 8th century BC, they possibly raided Zhou China.[13] Soon after, they expanded westwards and dislodged the Cimmerians from power on the Pontic Steppe.[14] At their peak, Scythians came to dominate the entire steppe zone,[15][16] stretching from the Carpathian Mountains in the west to central China (Ordos culture) and the south Siberia (Tagar culture) in the east,[7][17] creating what has been called the first Central Asian nomadic empire, although there was little that could be called an organised state.[14][18]
Based in what is modern-day Ukraine, Southern European Russia and Crimea, the western Scythians were ruled by a wealthy class known as the Royal Scyths. The Scythians established and controlled the Silk Road, a vast trade network connecting Greece, Persia, India and China, perhaps contributing to the contemporary flourishing of those civilisations.[19] Settled metalworkers made portable decorative objects for the Scythians. These objects survive mainly in metal, forming a distinctive Scythian art.[20] In the 7th century BC, the Scythians crossed the Caucasus and frequently raided the Middle East along with the Cimmerians, playing an important role in the political developments of the region.[14] Around 650–630 BC, Scythians briefly dominated the Medes of the western Iranian Plateau,[21][22] stretching their power to the borders of Egypt.[11] After losing control over Media, the Scythians continued intervening in Middle Eastern affairs, playing a leading role in the destruction of the Assyrian Empire in the Sack of Nineveh in 612 BC. The Scythians subsequently engaged in frequent conflicts with the Achaemenid Empire. The western Scythians suffered a major defeat against Macedonia in the 4th century BC[11] and were subsequently gradually conquered by the Sarmatians, a related Iranian people from Central Asia.[23] The Eastern Scythians of the Asian Steppe (Saka) were attacked by the Yuezhi, Wusun and Xiongnu in the 2nd century BC, prompting many of them to migrate into South Asia,[24][25] where they became known as Indo-Scythians.[26] At some point, perhaps as late as the 3rd century AD after the demise of the Han dynasty and the Xiongnu, Eastern Scythians crossed the Pamir Mountains and settled in the western Tarim Basin, where the Scythian Khotanese and Tumshuqese languages are attested in Brahmi scripture from the 10th and 11th centuries AD.[25] The Kingdom of Khotan, at least partly Saka, was then conquered by the Kara-Khanid Khanate, which led to the Islamisation and Turkification of Northwest China. In Eastern Europe, by the early Medieval Ages, the Scythians and their closely related Sarmatians were eventually assimilated and absorbed (e.g. Slavicisation) by the Proto-Slavic population of the region.[27][28][29][30]
The Scythians
was a Mesopotamian kingdom and empire of the ancient Near East and the Levant. It existed as a state from perhaps as early as the 25th century BC (in the form of the Assur city-state[3]) until its collapse between 612 BC and 609 BC - spanning the periods of the Early to Middle Bronze Age through to the late Iron Age.[4][5] From the end of the seventh century BC (when the Neo-Assyrian state fell) to the mid-seventh century AD, it survived as a geopolitical entity,[6][7][8] for the most part ruled by foreign powers such as the Parthian[9][need quotation to verify] and early Sasanian Empires[10] between the mid-second century BC and late third century AD, the final part of which period saw Mesopotamia become a major centre of Syriac Christianity and the birthplace of the Church of the East.[11]
A largely Semitic-speaking realm, Assyria was centred on the Tigris in Upper Mesopotamia (modern northern Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and the northwestern fringes of Iran). The Assyrians came to rule powerful empires in several periods. Making up a substantial part of the greater Mesopotamian “cradle of civilization”, which included Sumer, the Akkadian Empire, and Babylonia, Assyria reached the height of technological, scientific and cultural achievements for its time. At its peak, the Neo-Assyrian Empire of 911 to 609 BC stretched from Cyprus and the East Mediterranean to Iran, and from present-day Armenia and Azerbaijan in the Caucasus to the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt and eastern Libya.[12]
The name “Assyria” originates with the Assyrian state’s original capital, the ancient city of Aššur, which dates to c. 2600 BC - originally one of a number of Akkadian-speaking city-states in Mesopotamia. In the 25th and 24th centuries BC, Assyrian kings were pastoral leaders. From the late 24th century BC, the Assyrians became subject to Sargon of Akkad, who united all the Akkadian- and Sumerian-speaking peoples of Mesopotamia under the Akkadian Empire, which lasted from c. 2334 BC to 2154 BC.[13] After the Assyrian Empire fell from power, the greater remaining part of Assyria formed a geopolitical region and province of other empires, although between the mid-2nd century BC and late 3rd century AD a patchwork of small independent Assyrian kingdoms arose in the form of Assur, Adiabene, Osroene, Beth Nuhadra, Beth Garmai and Hatra.
The region of Assyria fell under the successive control of the Median Empire of 678 to 549 BC, the Achaemenid Empire of 550 to 330 BC, the Macedonian Empire (late 4th century BC), the Seleucid Empire of 312 to 63 BC, the Parthian Empire of 247 BC to 224 AD, the Roman Empire (from 116 to 118 AD) and the Sasanian Empire of 224 to 651 AD. The Arab Islamic conquest of the area in the mid-seventh century finally dissolved Assyria (Assuristan) as a single entity, after which the remnants of the Assyrian people (by now Christians) gradually became an ethnic, linguistic, cultural and religious minority in the Assyrian homeland, surviving there to this day as an indigenous people of the region.[14][15][need quotation to verify]
Assyria
was an ancient Akkadian-speaking state and cultural area based in central-southern Mesopotamia (present-day Iraq). A small Amorite-ruled state emerged in 1894 BC, which contained the minor administrative town of Babylon.[1] It was merely a small provincial town during the Akkadian Empire (2335–2154 BC) but greatly expanded during the reign of Hammurabi in the first half of the 18th century BC and became a major capital city. During the reign of Hammurabi and afterwards, Babylonia was called “the country of Akkad” (Māt Akkadī in Akkadian), a deliberate archaism in reference to the previous glory of the Akkadian Empire.[2][3]
It was often involved in rivalry with the older state of Assyria to the north and Elam to the east in Ancient Iran. Babylonia briefly became the major power in the region after Hammurabi (fl. c. 1792–1752 BC middle chronology, or c. 1696–1654 BC, short chronology) created a short-lived empire, succeeding the earlier Akkadian Empire, Third Dynasty of Ur, and Old Assyrian Empire. The Babylonian Empire, however, rapidly fell apart after the death of Hammurabi and reverted to a small kingdom.
Like Assyria, the Babylonian state retained the written Akkadian language (the language of its native populace) for official use, despite its Northwest Semitic-speaking Amorite founders and Kassite successors, who spoke a language isolate, not being native Mesopotamians. It retained the Sumerian language for religious use (as did Assyria), but already by the time Babylon was founded, this was no longer a spoken language, having been wholly subsumed by Akkadian. The earlier Akkadian and Sumerian traditions played a major role in Babylonian and Assyrian culture, and the region would remain an important cultural center, even under its protracted periods of outside rule.
The earliest mention of the city of Babylon can be found in a clay tablet from the reign of Sargon of Akkad (2334–2279 BC), dating back to the 23rd century BC. Babylon was merely a religious and cultural centre at this point and neither an independent state nor a large city; like the rest of Mesopotamia, it was subject to the Akkadian Empire which united all the Akkadian and Sumerian speakers under one rule. After the collapse of the Akkadian Empire, the south Mesopotamian region was dominated by the Gutian people for a few decades before the rise of the Third Dynasty of Ur, which restored order to the region and which, apart from northern Assyria, encompassed the whole of Mesopotamia, including the town of Babylon.
Babylonia
was an ancient Greek historian who was born in Halicarnassus in the Persian Empire (modern-day Bodrum, Turkey). He is known for having written the book The Histories, a detailed record of his “inquiry” (ἱστορία historía) on the origins of the Greco-Persian Wars. He is widely considered to have been the first writer to have treated historical subjects using a method of systematic investigation—specifically, by collecting his materials and then critically arranging them into an historiographic narrative. On account of this, he is often referred to as “The Father of History”, a title first conferred on him by the first-century BC Roman orator Cicero.[1]
Despite Herodotus’ historical significance, little is known about his personal life. His Histories primarily deals with the lives of Croesus, Cyrus, Cambyses, Smerdis, Darius, and Xerxes and the battles of Marathon, Thermopylae, Artemisium, Salamis, Plataea, and Mycale; however, his many cultural, ethnographical, geographical, historiographical, and other digressions form a defining and essential part of the Histories and contain a wealth of information. Herodotus has been criticized for the fact that his book includes a large number of obvious legends and fanciful accounts. Many authors, starting with the late fifth-century BC historian Thucydides, have accused him of making up stories for entertainment. Herodotus, however, states that he is merely reporting what he has been told. A sizable portion of the information he provides has since been confirmed by historians and archaeologists.
Herodotus
or Mazdayasna, is one of the world’s oldest religions that remains active. It is a monotheistic faith (i.e. a single creator God), centered in a dualistic cosmology of good and evil and an eschatology predicting the ultimate destruction of evil.[1] Ascribed to the teachings of the Iranian-speaking prophet Zoroaster (also known as Zarathustra),[2] it exalts a deity of wisdom, Ahura Mazda (Wise Lord), as its Supreme Being.[3] Major features of Zoroastrianism, such as messianism, judgment after death, heaven and hell, and free will may have influenced other religious systems, including Second Temple Judaism, Gnosticism, Christianity, Islam,[4] and Buddhism.[5]
With possible roots dating back to the second millennium BCE, Zoroastrianism enters recorded history in the 5th century BCE.[3] Along with a Mithraic Median prototype and a Zurvanist Sassanid successor, it served as the state religion of the pre-Islamic Iranian empires for more than a millennium, from around 600 BCE to 650 CE. Zoroastrianism was suppressed from the 7th century onwards following the Muslim conquest of Persia of 633–654.[6] Recent estimates place the current number of Zoroastrians at around 190,000, with most living in India and in Iran; their number has been thought to be declining.[7][8][3][n 2] However, in 2015, there were reports of up to 100,000 converts in Iraqi Kurdistan.[9] Besides the Zoroastrian diaspora, the older Mithraic faith Yazdânism is still practised amongst Kurds.[n 3]
The most important texts of the religion are those of the Avesta, which includes the writings of Zoroaster known as the Gathas, enigmatic poems that define the religion’s precepts, and the Yasna, the scripture. The full name by which Zoroaster addressed the deity is: Ahura, The Lord Creator, and Mazda, Supremely Wise. The religious philosophy of Zoroaster divided the early Iranian gods of Proto-Indo-Iranian tradition, but focused on responsibility, and did not create a devil per se. Zoroaster proclaimed that there is only one God, the singularly creative and sustaining force of the Universe, and that human beings are given a right of choice. Because of cause and effect, they are responsible for the consequences of their choices. The contesting force to Ahura Mazda was called Angra Mainyu, or angry spirit. Post-Zoroastrian scripture introduced the concept of Ahriman, the Devil, which was effectively a personification of Angra Mainyu.[10][11]
Zoroastrianism’s creator Ahura Mazda, through the Spenta Mainyu (Good Spirit, “Bounteous Immortals”)[12] is an all-good “father” of Asha (Truth, “order, justice”),[13][14] in opposition to Druj (“falsehood, deceit”)[15][16] and no evil originates from “him”.[17] “He” and his works are evident to humanity through the six primary Amesha Spentas[18] and the host of other Yazatas, through whom worship of Mazda is ultimately directed. Spenta Mainyu adjoined unto “truth”,[19] oppose the Spirit’s opposite,[20][21] Angra Mainyu and its forces born of Akəm Manah (“evil thinking”).[22]
Zoroastrianism has no major theological divisions, though it is not uniform; modern-era influences having a significant impact on individual and local beliefs, practices, values and vocabulary, sometimes merging with tradition and in other cases displacing it.[23] In Zoroastrianism, the purpose in life is to “be among those who renew the world…to make the world progress towards perfection”. Its basic maxims include:
Humata, Hukhta, Huvarshta, which mean: Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds.
There is only one path and that is the path of Truth.
Do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, and then all beneficial rewards will come to you also.
Zoroastrianism
