Olifant (instrument)
Olifant (also known as oliphant) was the name applied in the Middle Ages to a type of carved ivory hunting horn created from elephant tusks. Olifants were most prominently used in Europe from roughly the tenth to the sixteenth century, although there are later examples. The surviving inventories of Renaissance treasuries and armories document that Europeans, especially in France, Germany and England, owned trumpets in a variety of media that were used to signal, both in war and hunting. They were manufactured primarily in Italy (from either African or Indian elephant tusk), but towards the end of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, they were also made in Africa for a European market. Typically, they were made with relief carvings that showed animal and human combat scenes, hunting scenes, fantastic beasts, and European heraldry. About seventy-five ivory hunting horns survive and about half can be found in museums and church treasuries, while others are in private colle ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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India
India, officially the Republic of India ( Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the south, the Arabian Sea on the southwest, and the Bay of Bengal on the southeast, it shares land borders with Pakistan to the west; China, Nepal, and Bhutan to the north; and Bangladesh and Myanmar to the east. In the Indian Ocean, India is in the vicinity of Sri Lanka and the Maldives; its Andaman and Nicobar Islands share a maritime border with Thailand, Myanmar, and Indonesia. Modern humans arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa no later than 55,000 years ago., "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by modern humans originating in Africa. ... Coalescence dates for most non-European populations average to between 73–55 ka.", "Modern human beings—''Homo sapiens''—originated in Africa. Th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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João I Of Kongo
Nzinga-a-Nkuwu João I (né Nzinga-a-Nkuwu), was the 5th ManiKongo of the Kingdom of Kongo (Kongo-dia-Ntotila in Kikongo language) between 1470 and 1509. He voluntarily converted to Roman Catholicism. He was baptized on 3 May 1491 and took the Christian name of ''João''. Soon after, ManiKongo Nzinga-a-Nkuwu João I abandoned the new faith for a number of reasons, one of them being the Roman Catholic Church requirement of monogamy. Politically, the king could not afford to abandon polygamy and embrace monogamy, a cultural shift that the king could not contemplate as power in Kongo was elective, rather than hereditary as in Europe. Kongo culture followed a matrilineality structure, where the elder son of the king is not automatically the next king. Early reign King Nzinga-a-Nkuwu was the fifth ruler of Kongo. He was married to Queen Nzinga a Nlaza, a first cousin.Thornton, John: "Elite Women in the Kingdom of Kongo: Historical Perspectives on Women's Political Power", page 442. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Palazzo Pitti
The Palazzo Pitti (), in English sometimes called the Pitti Palace, is a vast, mainly Renaissance, palace in Florence, Italy. It is situated on the south side of the River Arno, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio. The core of the present palazzo dates from 1458 and was originally the town residence of Luca Pitti, an ambitious Florentine banker. The palace was bought by the Medici family in 1549 and became the chief residence of the ruling families of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany. It grew as a great treasure house as later generations amassed paintings, plates, jewelry and luxurious possessions. In the late 18th century, the palazzo was used as a power base by Napoleon and later served for a brief period as the principal royal palace of the newly united Italy. The palace and its contents were donated to the Italian people by King Victor Emmanuel III in 1919. The palazzo is now the largest museum complex in Florence. The principal palazzo block, often in a building of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Terminus Ante Quem
''Terminus post quem'' ("limit after which", sometimes abbreviated to TPQ) and ''terminus ante quem'' ("limit before which", abbreviated to TAQ) specify the known limits of dating for events or items.. A ''terminus post quem'' is the earliest date the event may have happened or the item was in existence, and a ''terminus ante quem'' is the latest. An event may well have both a ''terminus post quem'' and a ''terminus ante quem'', in which case the limits of the possible range of dates are known at both ends, but many events have just one or the other. Similarly, ''terminus ad quem'' ("limit to which") is the latest possible date of a non-punctual event (period, era, etc.), while ''terminus a quo'' ("limit from which") is the earliest. The concepts are similar to those of upper and lower bounds in mathematics. These terms are often used in archaeological and historical studies, such as dating layers in excavated sites, coins, historical events, authors, inscriptions or texts wher ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vikings
Vikings ; non, víkingr is the modern name given to seafaring people originally from Scandinavia (present-day Denmark, Norway and Sweden), who from the late 8th to the late 11th centuries raided, pirated, traded and settled throughout parts of Europe.Roesdahl, pp. 9–22. They also voyaged as far as the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean, North Africa, Volga Bulgaria, the Middle East, and Greenland, North America. In some of the countries they raided and settled in, this period is popularly known as the Viking Age, and the term "Viking" also commonly includes the inhabitants of the Scandinavian homelands as a collective whole. The Vikings had a profound impact on the Early Middle Ages, early medieval history of Scandinavia, the History of the British Isles, British Isles, France in the Middle Ages, France, Viking Age in Estonia, Estonia, and Kievan Rus'. Expert sailors and navigators aboard their characteristic longships, Vikings established Norse settlem ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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York Minster
The Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Saint Peter in York, commonly known as York Minster, is the cathedral of York, North Yorkshire, England, and is one of the largest of its kind in Northern Europe. The minster is the seat of the Archbishop of York, the third-highest office of the Church of England (after the monarch as Supreme Governor and the Archbishop of Canterbury), and is the mother church for the Diocese of York and the Province of York. It is run by a dean and chapter, under the Dean of York. The title " minster" is attributed to churches established in the Anglo-Saxon period as missionary teaching churches, and serves now as an honorific title; the word ''Metropolitical'' in the formal name refers to the Archbishop of York's role as the Metropolitan bishop of the Province of York. Services in the minster are sometimes regarded as on the High Church or Anglo-Catholic end of the Anglican continuum. The minster was completed in 1472 after several centuries ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Cleveland Museum Of Art
The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian art, the museum houses a diverse permanent collection of more than 61,000 works of art from around the world. The museum provides general admission free to the public. With a $755 million endowment, it is the fourth-wealthiest art museum in the United States. With about 770,000 visitors annually (2018), it is one of the most visited art museums in the world. History Beginnings The Cleveland Museum of Art was founded as a trust in 1913 with an endowment from prominent Cleveland industrialists Hinman Hurlbut, John Huntington, and Horace Kelley. The neoclassical, white Georgian Marble, Beaux-Arts building was constructed on the southern edge of Wade Park, at the cost of $1.25 million. Wade Park and the museum were designed by the lo ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Canterbury Cathedral
Canterbury Cathedral in Canterbury, Kent, is one of the oldest and most famous Christianity, Christian structures in England. It forms part of a World Heritage Site. It is the cathedral of the Archbishop of Canterbury, currently Justin Welby, leader of the Church of England and symbolic leader of the worldwide Anglican Communion. Its formal title is the Cathedral and Metropolitical Church of Christ at Canterbury. Founded in 597, the cathedral was completely rebuilt between 1070 and 1077. The east end was greatly enlarged at the beginning of the 12th century and largely rebuilt in the Gothic style following a fire in 1174, with significant eastward extensions to accommodate the flow of pilgrims visiting the shrine of Thomas Becket, the archbishop who was murdered in the cathedral in 1170. The Norman nave and transepts survived until the late 14th century when they were demolished to make way for the present structures. Before the English Reformation the cathedral was part of a B ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Saint Roland
Saint Roland was the third abbot of a Cistercian monastery founded in 1140 in Chézery, France, in what is now the Diocese of Belley-Ars. According to local tradition, he was born in 1150 in England or Ireland. In 1186 he succeeded the Abbot Guillaume at Chézery. St. Roland died there around 1200. His feast day is on September 15. Relics of St. Roland are housed in the altar of the parish church of Chézery. Prayers for St. Roland's intercession are said to be effective for curing eye, head and stomach ailments, and for alleviating drought. A local legend has St. Roland encountering a thirsty reaper along the road to Lélex on a hot day. He offers the reaper a choice of wine or water. The reaper replies that wine is not made for the lips of the poor, and he is very poor. St. Roland strikes the ground with his walking stick, and up springs fresh water. Today the "Oratory of the Blessed Fountain" stands over the site. Locals will often comment: "If only the peasant had asked for wi ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Matchlock
A matchlock or firelock is a historical type of firearm wherein the gunpowder is ignited by a burning piece of rope that is touched to the gunpowder by a mechanism that the musketeer activates by pulling a lever or trigger with his finger. Before the invention of the matchlock mechanism, the musketeer or an assistant had to apply the match directly to gunpowder by hand, much like a cannon. The matchlock mechanism allowed the musketeer to apply the match himself without losing his concentration. Description The classic matchlock gun held a burning slow match in a clamp at the end of a small curved lever known as the ''serpentine''. Upon the pull of a lever (or in later models a trigger) protruding from the bottom of the gun and connected to the serpentine, the clamp dropped down, lowering the smoldering match into the flash pan and igniting the priming powder. The flash from the primer traveled through the touch hole, igniting the main charge of propellant in the gun barre ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Banu Hud
The Banu Hud ( ar, بنو هود ', the Hudid dynasty) were an Arab dynasty that ruled the ' of Zaragoza from 1039 until 1110. In 1039, under the leadership of Al-Mustain I, Sulayman ibn Hud al-Judhami, the Bani Hud seized control of Zaragoza from a rival clan, the Banu Tujib. His heirs, particularly Ahmad I al-Muqtadir (1046–1081), Yusuf al-Mutamin (1081–1085), and Al-Mustain II, Ahmad ibn Yusuf (1085–1110), were patrons of culture and the arts. The Aljafería, the royal residence erected by Ahmad I, is practically the only palace from that period to have survived almost in its entirety. Despite their independence, the Banu Hud were forced to recognize the superiority of the kingdom of Castile and pay ' to it as early as 1055. In 1086, they led the smaller kingdoms in their resistance to the Almoravids, who did not succeed in conquering Zaragoza until May 1110. The conquest represented the end of the dynasty. The last of the Banu Hud, Imad al-Dawl Abd al-Malik (Abdelm ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |