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Omek Tannou
''Omek tannou'', ''Ommk tangou'' or ''Amuk taniqu'' is an ancient Tunisian rainmaking ritual which was inherited from Punic and Berber traditions involving invocations of the goddess Tanit. It is now all but extinct. It features the ritual use of the sculpted head of a woman (somewhat resembling the head of a girl's doll), which is carried in procession between the houses of a village during periods of drought by children singing the refrain (Tunisian Latin script: ''Ommk tangou ya nsee, talbt rabbi ëla s'sctee'', ), "Oh women, Ommk tangou has asked God for rain". The song varies according to the region because the term ''shta'' designates rain only in certain urban areas. Each housewife then pours a little water on the statuette, invoking rain. In some villages, instead of the sculpted head, a stick is used. Each woman attaches a piece of clothing to this before giving some barley to the children in the procession, who then move off, while singing the refrain (transliterati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tunisia
Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares maritime borders with Italy through the islands of Sicily and Sardinia to the north and Malta to the east. It features the archaeological sites of Carthage dating back to the 9th century BC, as well as the Great Mosque of Kairouan. Known for its ancient architecture, Souks of Tunis, souks, and blue coasts, it covers , and has a population of 12.1 million. It contains the eastern end of the Atlas Mountains and the northern reaches of the Sahara desert; much of its remaining territory is arable land. Its of coastline includes the African conjunction of the western and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Basin. Tunisia is home to Africa's northernmost point, Cape Angela. Located on the northeastern coast, Tunis is the capital and List of cities ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rainmaking (ritual)
Rainmaking is a weather modification ritual that attempts to invoke rain. It is based on the belief that humans can influence nature, Spirit (animating force), spirits, or the Ancestor worship, ancestors who withhold or bring rain. Among the best known examples of weather modification rituals are North American rain dances, historically performed by many Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribes, particularly in the Southwestern United States. Some of these weather modification rituals are still implemented today. American Rainmakers Julia M. Buttree (the wife of Ernest Thompson Seton) describes the rain dance of the Zuni people, Zuni, along with other Native American dances, in her book ''The Rhythm of the Redman''. Feathers and turquoise, or other blue items, are worn during the ceremony to symbolize wind and rain respectively. Details on how best to perform the Rain Dance have been passed down by oral tradition. In an early sort of meteorology, Native Am ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Punic
The Punic people, usually known as the Carthaginians (and sometimes as Western Phoenicians), were a Semitic people who migrated from Phoenicia to the Western Mediterranean during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'', the Latin equivalent of the Greek-derived term ''Phoenician'', is exclusively used to refer to Phoenicians in the western Mediterranean, following the line of the Greek East and Latin West. The largest Punic settlement was Ancient Carthage, but there were 300 other settlements along the North African coast from Leptis Magna in modern Libya to Mogador in southern Morocco, as well as western Sicily, southern Sardinia, the southern and eastern coasts of the Iberian Peninsula, Malta, and Ibiza. Their language, Punic, was a variety of Phoenician, one of the Northwest Semitic languages originating in the Levant. Literary sources report two moments of Tyrian settlements in the west, the first in the 12th century BC (the cities Utica, Lixus ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Berbers
Berbers, or the Berber peoples, also known as Amazigh or Imazighen, are a diverse grouping of distinct ethnic groups indigenous to North Africa who predate the arrival of Arab migrations to the Maghreb, Arabs in the Maghreb. Their main connections are identified by their usage of Berber languages, most of them mutually unintelligible, which are part of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They are indigenous peoples, indigenous to the Maghreb region of North Africa, where they live in scattered communities across parts of Morocco, Algeria, Libya, and to a lesser extent Tunisia, Mauritania, northern Mali and northern Niger. Smaller Berber communities are also found in Burkina Faso and Egypt's Siwa Oasis. Descended from Stone Age tribes of North Africa, accounts of the Imazighen were first mentioned in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Ancient Egyptian writings. From about 2000 BC, Berber languages spread westward from the Nile, Nile Valley across the northern Sahara int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tanit
Tanit or Tinnit (Punic language, Punic: 𐤕𐤍𐤕 ''Tīnnīt'' (JStor)) was a chief deity of Ancient Carthage; she derives from a local Berber deity and the consort of Baal Hammon. As Ammon is a local Libyan deity, so is Tannit, who represents the Matriarchy, matriarchal aspect of Numidians, Numidian society, whom the Egyptians identify as Neith and the Ancient Greece, Greeks identify as Athena. She was the goddess of wisdom, civilization and the crafts; she is the defender of towns and homes where she is worshipped. Ancient North Africans used to put her sign on tombstones and homes to ask for protection her main temples in Sanctuary of Thinissut, Thinissut (Bir Bouregba, Tunisia), Cirta (Constantine, Algeria), Lambaesis (Batna (city), Batna, Algeria) and Theveste (Tébessa, Tebessa, Algeria). She had a yearly festival in Antiquity which persists to this day in many parts of North Africa but was banned by Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, who called it a pagan festival. Tannit was also ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sculpture
Sculpture is the branch of the visual arts that operates in three dimensions. Sculpture is the three-dimensional art work which is physically presented in the dimensions of height, width and depth. It is one of the plastic arts. Durable sculptural processes originally used carving (the removal of material) and modelling (the addition of material, as clay), in stone, metal, ceramic art, ceramics, wood and other materials but, since Modernism, there has been almost complete freedom of materials and process. A wide variety of materials may be worked by removal such as carving, assembled by welding or modelling, or Molding (process), moulded or Casting, cast. Sculpture in stone survives far better than works of art in perishable materials, and often represents the majority of the surviving works (other than pottery) from ancient cultures, though conversely traditions of sculpture in wood may have vanished almost entirely. In addition, most ancient sculpture was painted, which h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Doll
A doll is a physical model, model typically of a human or humanoid character, often used as a toy for children. Dolls have also been used in traditional religious rituals throughout the world. Traditional dolls made of materials such as clay and wood are found in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Europe. The earliest documented dolls go back to the ancient civilizations of Ancient Egypt, Egypt, Ancient Greece, Greece, and Ancient Rome, Rome. They have been made as crude, rudimentary playthings as well as elaborate art. Modern doll manufacturing has its roots in Germany, from the 15th century. With Industrialisation, industrialization and new materials such as porcelain and plastic, dolls were increasingly mass-produced. During the 20th century, dolls became increasingly popular as collectibles. History, types and materials Early history and traditional dolls The earliest dolls were made from available materials such as clay, stone, wood, bone, ivory, leather, or wax. Archaeology ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Drought
A drought is a period of drier-than-normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, and O. Zolina, 2021Water Cycle Changes. In Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Masson-Delmotte, V., P. Zhai, A. Pirani, S.L. Connors, C. Péan, S. Berger, N. Caud, Y. Chen, L. Goldfarb, M.I. Gomis, M. Huang, K. Leitzell, E. Lonnoy, J.B.R. Matthews, T.K. Maycock, T. Waterfield, O. Yelekçi, R. Yu, and B. Zhou (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom and New York, NY, USA, pp. 1055–1210, doi:10.1017/9781009157896.010. A drought can last for days, months or years. Drought often has large impacts on the ecosystems and agriculture of affected regions, and causes harm to the local economy. Annua ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barley
Barley (), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains; it was domesticated in the Fertile Crescent around 9000 BC, giving it nonshattering spikelets and making it much easier to harvest. Its use then spread throughout Eurasia by 2000 BC. Barley prefers relatively low temperatures and well-drained soil to grow. It is relatively tolerant of drought and soil salinity, but is less winter-hardy than wheat or rye. In 2023, barley was fourth among grains in quantity produced, 146 million tonnes, behind maize, rice, and wheat. Globally, 70% of barley production is used as animal feed, while 30% is used as a source of fermentable material for beer, or further distilled into whisky, and as a component of various foods. It is used in soups and stews and in barley bread of various cultures. Barley grains are commonly made into malt using a traditional and ancient method of preparatio ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Caloian
''Caloian'' (also ''Calian(i)'', ''Caloiță'', ''Scaloian'', ''Gherman'', or ''Iene'') was a rainmaking and fertility rite in Romania, similar in some ways to '' Dodola''. Its namesake is a clay effigy, whose sculpting, funeral, exhumation, and eventual destruction are centerpieces of the display. The source of this ritual, as is the case with those of many other local popular beliefs and practices, precedes the introduction of Christianity, although it came in time to be associated with Orthodox Easter or with the Feast of the Ascension. In some variants it was performed on a precisely calculated day two to three weeks after Easter, though local communities could also revive it at other times of the year, specifically during drought. The figurine was generally made from clay and most often by girls, though sometimes also by boys or married women; the ceremony itself would draw in the whole village community as spectators, and, in isolated cases, also had active participation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dodola
Dodola (also spelled ''Dodole'', ''Dodoli'', ''Dudola'', ''Dudula'' etc.) and Perperuna (also spelled ''Peperuda'', ''Preperuda'', ''Preperuša'', ''Prporuša'', ''Papaluga'' etc.) are rainmaking pagan customs widespread among different peoples in Southeast Europe until the 20th century, found in Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Hungary, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, and Serbia. It is still practiced in remote Albanian ethnographic regions, but only in rare events, when the summer is dry and without atmospheric precipitation. The ceremonial ritual is an analogical-imitative magic rite that consists of singing and dancing done by young girls or boys in processions following a main performer who is dressed with fresh branches, leaves and herbs, with the purpose of invoking rain, usually practiced in times of droughts, especially in the summer season, when drought endangers crops and pastures, even human life itself. According to one interpretation, th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
