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Libation Table - Memphis - Serapeum (Egypt) -
A libation is a ritual pouring of a liquid as an offering to a deity or spirit, or in memory of the dead. It was common in many religions of antiquity and continues to be offered in cultures today. Various substances have been used for libations, most commonly wine or other alcoholic drinks, olive oil, honey, and in India, ghee. The vessels used in the ritual, including the patera, often had a significant form which differentiated them from secular vessels. The libation could be poured onto something of religious significance, such as an altar, or into the earth. On the other hand, one or more libations began most meals and occasions when wine was drunk in Greco-Roman and other ancient societies, mostly using normal cups or jugs. Etymology The English word "libation" derives from the Latin ', an act of pouring, from the verb ', "to taste, sip; pour out, make a libation" (Indo-European root , "pour, make a libation"). Religious practice Antiquity Ancient Sumer The Sumeria ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Girsu
Girsu ( Sumerian ; cuneiform ) was a city of ancient Sumer, situated some northwest of Lagash, at the site of what is now Tell Telloh in Dhi Qar Governorate, Iraq. As the religious center of the kingdom of Lagash, it contained significant temples to the god Ningirsu ( E-ninnu) and his wife Bau and hosted multi-day festivals in their honor. History Girsu was possibly inhabited in the Ubaid period (5300-4800 BC), but significant levels of activity began in the Early Dynastic period (2900-2335 BC). At the time of Gudea, during the Second Dynasty of Lagash, Girsu became the capital of the Lagash kingdom and continued to be its religious center after political power had shifted to the city of Lagash. During the Ur III period, Girsu was a major administrative center for the empire. After the fall of Ur, Girsu declined in importance, but remained inhabited until . A 4th century BC bilingual Greek/Aramaic inscription was found there. Archaeology The site consists of two ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Greek Religion
Religious practices in ancient Greece encompassed a collection of beliefs, rituals, and Greek mythology, mythology, in the form of both popular public religion and Cult (religious practice), cult practices. The application of the modern concept of "religion" to ancient cultures has been questioned as anachronistic. The Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks did not have a word for 'religion' in the modern sense. Likewise, no Greek writer is known to have classified either the gods or the cult practices into separate 'religions'. Instead, for example, Herodotus speaks of the Hellenes as having "common shrines of the gods and sacrifices, and the same kinds of customs". Most ancient Greeks recognized the Twelve Olympians, twelve major Olympian gods and goddesses—Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Ares, Aphrodite, Apollo, Artemis, Hephaestus, Hermes, and either Hestia or Dionysus—although philosophies such as Stoicism and some forms of Platonism used language that seems to assume a s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bell-krater Sacrifice Pothos Painter Louvre G496
A krater or crater (, ; , ) was a large two-handled type of vase in Ancient Greek pottery and metalwork, mostly used for the mixing of wine with water. Form and function At a Greek symposium, kraters were placed in the center of the room. They were quite large, so they were not easily portable when filled. Thus, the wine-water mixture would be withdrawn from the krater with other vessels, such as a (: ), an amphora (: ), or a (: ). In fact, Homer's ''Odyssey'' describes a steward drawing wine from a krater at a banquet and then running to and fro pouring the wine into guests' drinking cups. The modern Greek word now used for undiluted wine, (), originates from the (, ) of wine and water in kraters. Pottery kraters were glazed on the interior to make the surface of the clay more impervious for holding water, and possibly for aesthetic reasons, since the interior could easily be seen. The exterior of kraters often depicted scenes from Greek life, such as the Attic Late 1 K ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nile
The Nile (also known as the Nile River or River Nile) is a major north-flowing river in northeastern Africa. It flows into the Mediterranean Sea. The Nile is the longest river in Africa. It has historically been considered the List of river systems by length, longest river in the world, though this has been contested by research suggesting that the Amazon River is slightly longer.Amazon Longer Than Nile River, Scientists Say Of the world's major rivers, the Nile has one of the lowest average annual flow rates. About long, its drainage basin covers eleven countries: the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, South Sudan, Sudan, and Egypt. In pa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Stele
A stele ( ) or stela ( )The plural in English is sometimes stelai ( ) based on direct transliteration of the Greek, sometimes stelae or stelæ ( ) based on the inflection of Greek nouns in Latin, and sometimes anglicized to steles ( ) or stelas ( ). is a stone or wooden slab, generally taller than it is wide, erected in the ancient world as a monument. The surface of the stele often has text, ornamentation, or both. These may be inscribed, carved in relief, or painted. Stelae were created for many reasons. Grave stelae were used for funerary or commemorative purposes. Stelae as slabs of stone would also be used as ancient Greek and Roman government notices or as boundary markers to mark borders or property lines. Stelae were occasionally erected as memorials to battles. For example, along with other memorials, there are more than half-a-dozen steles erected on the battlefield of Waterloo at the locations of notable actions by participants in battle. A traditional Wester ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Meroë
Meroë (; also spelled ''Meroe''; Meroitic: ; and ; ) was an ancient city on the east bank of the Nile about 6 km north-east of the Kabushiya station near Shendi, Sudan, approximately 200 km north-east of Khartoum. Near the site is a group of villages called Bagrawiyah (). This city was the capital of the Kingdom of Kush for several centuries from around 590 BC, until its collapse in the 4th century AD. The Kushitic Kingdom of Meroë gave its name to the "Island of Meroë", which was the modern region of Butana, a region bounded by the Nile (from the Atbarah River to Khartoum), the Atbarah and the Blue Nile. The city of Meroë was on the edge of Butana. There were two other Meroitic cities in Butana: Musawwarat es-Sufra and Naqa. The first of these sites was given the name Meroë by the Persian king Cambyses, in honor of his sister who was called by that name. The city had originally borne the ancient appellation ''Saba'', named after the country's original foun ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philae Temple Complex
The Philae temple complex (; , , Egyptian: ''p3-jw-rķ' or 'pA-jw-rq''; , ) is an island-based temple complex in the reservoir of the Aswan Low Dam, downstream of the Aswan Dam and Lake Nasser, Egypt. Originally, the temple complex was located on Philae Island, near the expansive First Cataract of the Nile in Upper Egypt. These rapids and the surrounding area have been variously flooded since the initial construction of the Aswan Low Dam in 1902. With the construction of the modern dam in Aswan (1960 - 1970) a few kilometers upstream, this temple was going to face total flooding and was initially omitted from the Nubia Campaign project to rescue all temples in the area and avoid what had previously happened with the Aswan Low Dam and the Temple of Philae. However, the importance of the monumental complex, formerly known as the Pearl of the Nile, remembered for the description by Pierre Loti in his literary work Mort de Philae, led to further commitment from UNESCO membe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Osiris
Osiris (, from Egyptian ''wikt:wsjr, wsjr'') was the ancient Egyptian deities, god of fertility, agriculture, the Ancient Egyptian religion#Afterlife, afterlife, the dead, resurrection, life, and vegetation in ancient Egyptian religion. He was classically depicted as a green-skinned deity with a Pharaoh, pharaoh's beard, partially mummy-wrapped at the legs, wearing a distinctive atef crown and holding a symbolic crook and flail. He was one of the first to be associated with the mummy wrap. When his brother Set (deity), Set cut him to pieces after killing him, with her sister Nephthys, Osiris' sister-wife, Isis, searched Egypt to find each part of Osiris. She collected all but one – Osiris’s genitalia. She then wrapped his body up, enabling him to return to life. Osiris was widely worshipped until the decline of ancient Egyptian religion during the Christianization of the Roman Empire, rise of Christianity in the Roman Empire. Osiris was at times considered the eldest son of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ayi Kwei Armah
Ayi Kwei Armah (born 28 October 1939) is a Ghanaian writer best known for his novels including '' The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born'' (1968), '' Two Thousand Seasons'' (1973) and '' The Healers'' (1978). He is also an essayist, as well as having written poetry, short stories, and books for children. Early life and education Ayi Kwei Armah was born in the port city of Sekondi-Takoradi in Ghana to Fante-speaking parents, descending on his father's side from a royal family in the Ga nation. From 1953 to 1958, Armah attended Prince of Wales College (now known as Achimota School), and won a scholarship to study in the United States, where he was between 1959 and 1963. Siga Fatima Jagne and Pushpa Naidu Parekh (eds), "Ayi Kwei Armah (1939–)", in ''Postcolonial African Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook'', Routledge, 1998, p. 45. He attended Groton School in Groton, MA, and then Harvard University, where he received a degree in sociology. He then moved to Algeri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ancient Egyptian
Ancient Egypt () was a cradle of civilization concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in Northeast Africa. It emerged from prehistoric Egypt around 3150BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology), when Upper and Lower Egypt were amalgamated by Menes, who is believed by the majority of List of Egyptologists, Egyptologists to have been the same person as Narmer. The history of ancient Egypt unfolded as a series of stable kingdoms interspersed by the "Periodization of ancient Egypt, Intermediate Periods" of relative instability. These stable kingdoms existed in one of three periods: the Old Kingdom of Egypt, Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age; the Middle Kingdom of Egypt, Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age; or the New Kingdom of Egypt, New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age. The pinnacle of ancient Egyptian power was achieved during the New Kingdom, which extended its rule to much of Nubia and a considerable portion of the Levant. After this period, Egypt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Palmyra
Palmyra ( ; Palmyrene dialect, Palmyrene: (), romanized: ''Tadmor''; ) is an ancient city in central Syria. It is located in the eastern part of the Levant, and archaeological finds date back to the Neolithic period, and documents first mention the city in the early second millennium BCE. Palmyra changed hands on a number of occasions between different empires before becoming a subject of the Roman Empire in the first century CE. The city grew wealthy from caravan (travellers), trade caravans; the Palmyrenes became renowned as merchants who established colonies along the Silk Road and operated throughout the Roman Empire. Palmyra's wealth enabled the construction of monumental projects, such as the Great Colonnade at Palmyra, Great Colonnade, the Temple of Bel, and the distinctive tower tombs. Ethnically, the Palmyrenes combined elements of Amorites, Arameans, and Arabs. Socially structured around kinship and clans, Palmyra's inhabitants spoke Palmyrene Aramaic, a variety of A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
