Mojan+F.

Hi! Welcome to my page!

= Primary Source: Quarter Three = = The Astrolabe = The astrolabe is an astronomical calculating device used for measuring the height of a star using the back of the instrument.By knowing the latitude, one could find the time of night and the position of other stars. It was also used in classical antiquity the Islamic Golden Age, the European Middle Ages and Renaissance for guiding. In the Islamic world, it was also used to calculate the Qibla and to find the times for prayers. This particular astrolabe was made in Nuremberg, Germany, by George Hartman in 1537. An inscription on the inside of the instrument states that it once belonged to the Italian mathematician and astronomer Galileo Galilei. The influence and power of the Astrolabe was beyond finding the position of stars and the times for prayer; mechanical astronomical clocks were influenced by the astrolabe; in many ways they could be seen as clockwork astrolabes designed to produce a continual display of the current position of the sun, stars, and planets.

How cool! Where did the astrolabe originate? Nice job on the project! -ED

= School of Athens = =Zoroaster in the School of Athens =

[[image:http://www.apocalypticmagazine.com/images/zoroasterpainting.jpg]]
Zoroaster was a religious teacher and prophet of Ancient Persian from (628-551 B.C.E.), and the founder of Zoroastrianism. I mainly like this person because I am Zoroastrian and from Iran; so it is exciting to see a 'familiar face'. Zoroaster connects to the Renaissance because he was a man of knowledge. From this painting we can see the accumulation of the most knowledgeable men known to the people of the Renaissance. The fact that Zoroaster was seen as one of the most wise shows that he had a great influence over the people of the Renaissance. The ones trying to 're-learn' what was lost during the Middle Ages. In my opinion, it would have been an excellent idea to have put Cyrus the Great in this painting. Cyrus is the author of the first charter of human rights, and during the Renaissance, one of the main ideas was the 'humanization' of the Western European society. What better than to show what humans are capable of and what they should be allowed to do by nature's laws than a charter of human rights? The people of the Renaissance should have had great respect for someone who showed what humans are able to do. Of course.... :-)> Fun to have "family" in the classics eh? -SW

Primary Source: Quarter Two One of the Three Earliest Surviving Cookbooks

Made in the middle of the Old Babylonian period, this is one of the world’s oldest cookbooks, thought to be dated back to 1700 BCE. All that is left are broken and damaged passages in unknown vocabulary and technical language. In fact, some of the cooking ingredients are still completely unknown to us; and others, which have been identified, have passed from modern use, so we cannot appreciate what they really are. It is strange to think that there are natural ingredients that don't exist anymore. It makes us think about the other things that we cannot identify because of their age. Add to this the fact that the cooking procedures are not precise, and neither cooking times nor quantities of ingredients are given, making reproducing these foods incredibly difficult.

Primary Source: Quarter One Cyrus Cylinder This clay cylinder is inscribed in Babylonian cuneiform with an account by Cyrus, king of Persia (559-530 BC) of his conquest of Babylon in 539 BC and capture of Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king. Cyrus claims to have achieved this with help from Marduk, the god of Babylon. He then describes the relief he brought to the inhabitants of the city, and tells how he returned a number of images of gods, which Nabonidus had collected in Babylon, to their proper temples throughout Mesopotamia and western Iran. At the same time he arranged for the restoration of these temples, and organized the return to their homelands of a number of people who had been held in Babylonia by the Babylonian kings. This cylinder has sometimes been described as the 'first charter of human rights', but it in fact reflects a long tradition in Mesopotamia where, from as early as the third millennium BC, kings began their reigns with declarations of reforms. Class Starter  Was Troy Real? **//Hisarlik- place of fortresses //**

What is the Iliad?
"The Iliad" is an ancient Greek epic poem that is written by the famous poet, Homer. It talks about the last year of the ten-year siege upon Troy that we now know as the Trojan War. In the Greek poem The Iliad, Prince Paris of Troy steals the gorgeous Helen, of Greece, from her husband, King Menelaus. The act brings the two nations to war, and eventually, the Greeks led by the warrior Achilles lay siege to Troy. The book is generally thought to be part of a cycle, of which only "The Odyssey" and "The Iliad" remain. These two are thought to be some of the oldest works of Western literature, with the written version dating back to the 8th Century BC. Ancient Greeks believed that Troy existed and that the Trojan War was real, as told in “the Iliad”, occurring somewhere in the 11th or 12th Century BC. However, as years went on, the relevance of Troy faded and by the mid -19th century most historians believed that the city and battle described in Homer's famous Iliad was simply fiction. This changed when, in the mid-19th-century, an excavation unearthed a city that was undeniably Troy. Now, historians and archaeologists believe that Troy did exist, and that "the Iliad" likely describes many wars, political uprisings, and heroes from that era of history.

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=<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">Where was Troy Located? =

<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">It is believed that Troy was located in what is now modern-day Turkey. Huge walls were discovered under a hill called Hisarlik. In fact, there are nine consecutive layers of cities under Hisarlik, showing that Troy may have been burned down and rebuilt several times. The Troy referred to in mythology is known to historians as Troy VII. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">

<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">Most historians and archaeologists of the time believed that there never had been a real city of Troy. Of the few that did, most pointed to a hill named Bunarbashi located a few miles inland from the Aegean Sea as the location. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">In 1863 Heinrich Schliemann visited Bunarbashi, but it did not seem right to him. The Iliad mentioned that Mount Ida was visible from the walls of Troy. From Bunarbashi the mountain could not be seen. The Iliad also mentioned that the Greek warrior Achilles chased the Trojan Hector around the walls of the city three times. Bunarbashi had a steep drop on one side that made that impossible. The distance from the sea also seemed wrong. It was eight miles where Schliemann approximated from the text that it should not be more than four. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">Using geographic clues from his copy of the Iliad, Schliemann discovered another hill near the village of Hisarlik that seemed to fit the text. The distance from the sea was right, Mount Ida was visible, and the ground around the outcropping was flat so someone could run around the walls. Schliemann did some checking and found that a couple of other people had come to the same conclusion. In 1822 Charles Maclaren of Scotland published a book claiming Hisarlik as Troy. Frank Calvert, an Englishman living in Turkey, also believed the same thing. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">An agreement was obtained from the Turkish government that would allow Schliemann to dig at Hisarlik. The agreement stated that any treasure found must be divided with the government. Excavations started in 1871 with seventy local workers. Schliemann sunk shafts and trenches into the hillside. What he discovered was not the ruin of a city, but the remains of eleven cities, each one built on the ruins of the earlier settlements. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">The bottom-most city, which is referred to as Tory I, Schliemann thought must have been destroyed by an earthquake because of the cracks in the foundations. Since the Greeks had destroyed the city with fire according to Homer, this could not be the remains of the city mentioned in the Iliad. Troy II, the next layer up, had been burned. Schliemann decided that this must be the Troy of Homer's tale. The next season he hired 160 men to dig down to this layer of the hill. Scientific archaeology had not really come of age yet and unfortunately this work destroyed much of the later history of the city. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",Times,serif; font-size: 130%; line-height: 1.5;">In 1878 Schliemann returned to Troy and discovered two additional small treasure troves. In 1879 he took on an assistant, Wilhelm Dorpfeld. Dorpfeld would then later continue the work on exploring Troy after Schliemann died. Wilhelm Dorpfeld that Troy VI was really the city of Homer's poem. <span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">Wilhelm Dorpfeld would later change his mind when Carl Blegan examined the site in 1932. Carl Blegan unearthed convincing evidence that Troy VII was the Homeric city. Dorpfeld, in his eighties by that time, came to agree with him.

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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman",Times,serif; font-size: 130%;">Works Cited <span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">"Unearthing History: Ancient Troy and the Trojan War." //<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Unearthing History: Ancient Troy and the Trojan War //<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2013. <history.answers.com/ancient/unearthing-history-ancient-troy-and-the-trojan-war>.

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">"Is Troy True? The Evidence Behind Movie Myth ." //<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">Daily Nature and Science News and Headlines | National Geographic News //<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2013. <http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2

<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">"The UnMuseum - The Treasure of Troy." //<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">The Museum of UnNatural Mystery //<span style="background-color: #ffffff; color: #4d4d4d; font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 11px;">. N.p., n.d. Web. 22 Sept. 2013. <http://www.unmuseum.org/troy.htm>.