Language ↓ Family ↓ Ethnologue (2005 estimate)[1] ↓ Encarta estimate[2] ↓ Other estimates ↓ Ranking by Ethnologue estimate ↓
Mandarin Sino-Tibetan, Chinese 873,000,000 1,210,000,000†[2] 982,000,000 native, 179,000,000 second language = 1,151,000,000 total[3]
†Encarta estimate includes all Chinese dialects 1
Hindi Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan 366,000,000[4] 366,000,000 Standard Hindi 325,000,000; A total of 650,000,000 including Urdu and secondary speakers, does not include Maithili. All Hindi dialects are mutually intelligible. 2
Spanish Indo-European, Italic, Romance 322,300,000[5] 322,200,000[6] Total of 417 million including second-language speakers (1999).[7][8] 3
English Indo-European, Germanic, West 309,350,000[9] 341,000,000 Over 1,500,000,000 worldwide.[10] Also see List of countries by English-speaking population which numbers 850,000,000 worldwide (as a total of first and additional language spoken). 4
Arabic Afro-Asiatic, Semitic 206,000,000[11] 422,000,000
It is also one of the six official languages of the United Nations.[12]
5
Portuguese Indo-European, Italic, Romance 177,500,000 176,000,000 215 million native, 20 million second language = 235 million total[citation needed] 6
Bengali Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan 171,000,000 207,000,000 196 million native (2004 CIA) (includes 14 million Chittagonian and 10.3 million Sylheti). 7
Russian Indo-European, Slavic, East 145,000,000 167,000,000 165 million native, 110 million second language = 275 million total 8
Japanese Considered either language isolate or Altaic 122,400,000 125,000,000 130 million native, 2 million second language = 132 million total 9
German Indo-European, Germanic, West 95,400,000 100,100,000 101 million native (88 million Standard German, 5 million Swiss German, 8 million Austrian German), 60 million second language in EU[13] + 5–20 million worldwide. 10
Punjabi Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan 88,000,000 57,000,000 61–62 million (2000 WCD) (taken together with Eastern Punjabi (28 million) and Siraiki (14 million): 104 million total) 11
French Indo-European, Italic, Romance 78,000,000[14]
78,000,000
113 million “native and real speakers”[15] (includes 64,473,140 French people), 250 million second language (worldwide including Africa and North Africa) = 363 million (as a total of first and additional language spoken) and up to 500 million total with significant knowledge of the language (2008).[16] 12
Wu Sino-Tibetan, Chinese 77,200,000 — 77 million native 13
Javanese Austronesian, Malayo-Polynesian, Sunda-Sulawesi 75,500,000 75,600,000 70–75 million 14
Telugu Dravidian, South Central 69,700,000 69,700,000 70 million native, 5 million second language = 75 million total (2001)[17] 15
Marathi Indo-European, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan 68,000,000 68,000,000 68 million native, 3 million second language = 71 million total 16
Vietnamese Austro-Asiatic, Mon-Khmer, Vietic 67,400,000 68,000,000 70 million native, perhaps up to 16 million second language, = ~86 million total 17
Korean Considered either language isolate or Altaic 67,000,000 77,000,000 79 million if including secondary and non-native speakers.[18] 18
Tamil Dravidian, Southern 68,000,000 68,000,000 69 million native, 10 million second language = 79 million total[17] 19
Italian Indo-European, Italic, Romance 61,500,000 62,000,000
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Portuguese language - 200(240) M worldwide #6 lang
Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes once called Portuguese \"the sweet language\", while Brazilian writer Olavo Bilac poetically described it as a última flor do Lácio, inculta e bela: \"the last flower of Latium, wild and beautiful\".
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Cursus Nederlands taal leren voor beginners en buitenlanders
3.7 Saturday at the van Dam's
ZATERDAG BIJ DE VAN DAMS
Meneer Van Dam werkt in een kantoor. Zijn kantoor is in de stad. Vandaag werkt hij niet: het is zaterdag. Gisteren heeft hij wel gewerkt. Mevrouw Van Dam werkt niet buitenshuis. Ze is vanmorgen naar de winkel geweest. De kinderen zijn vandaag niet naar school geweest. Hannie is met haar moeder naar de winkel geweest. Zij heeft ook getekend. Zij houdt van tekenen. Zij heeft vanmorgen een mooi huis getekend. Wim houdt van fietsen. Hij heeft verleden jaar duizenden kilometers gefietst. Eerst is hij naar Belgie en Duitsland gefietst. Toen is hij naar Frankrijk en Zwitserland gefietst. Henk houdt niet van fietsen. Hij houdt van muziek. Hij speelt piano. Hij oefent elke dag. Hij heeft vanmorgen twee en een half uur geoefend. Moeder houdt niet zo veel van huiswerk. Zij houdt van koken. Zij kookt heerlijk. Gisteren heeft zij groente en aard- appelen gekookt. Het smaakte heerlijk.
Mr. van Dam works in an office. His office is in the city. He is not working today: it is Saturday. Yesterday he worked. Mrs. van Dam doesn’t work outside the house. She was at the shop this morning. The children were not at school today. Hannie was at the shop with her mother. She also drew. She likes to draw. She drew a pretty house this morning. Wim likes cycling. He cycled thousands of kilometers last year. First he cycled to Belgium and Germany. Then he cycled to France and Switzerland. Henk doesn’t like cycling. He likes music. He plays piano. He practices every day. He practiced for two and a half hours this morning. Mother doesn’t like housework so much. She likes to cook. She cooks deliciously. Yesterday she cooked vegetables and potatoes. It tasted delicious.
Exercise 38. Vertaal de bovenstaande zinnen.
1
Meneer van Dam werkt in een kantoor.
Mr. van Dam works in an office.
2
Zijn kantoor is in de stad.
His office is in the city.
3
Nee, hij heeft vandaag niet gewerkt.
No, he didn’t work today.
4
Ja, hij heeft gisteren gewerkt.
Yes, he worked yesterday.
5
Vandaag is Mevrouw van Dam naar de winkel geweest.
Today Mrs. van Dam was at the shop.
6
Ja, zij heeft gewinkeld.
Yes, she went shopping.
7
Ja, Hannie heeft ook gewinkeld.
Yes, Hannie also went shopping.
8
Nee, Wim heeft niet gewinkeld.
No, Wim did not go shopping.
9
Verleden jaar heeft Wim duizenden kilometers gefietst.
Last year Wim cycled thousands of kilometres.
10
Vanmorgen heeft Henk op de piano geoefend.
Henk practiced the piano this morning.
Exercise 39. Beantwoord de vragen:
1. Waar werkt meneer Van Dam?
2. Waar is zijn kantoor?
3. Heeft meneer Van Dam vandaag gewerkt?
4. Heeft hij gisteren gewerkt?
5. Wat heeft mevrouw Van Dam vanmorgen gedaan?
6. Heeft ze gewinkeld?
7. Heeft Hannie ook gewinkeld?
8. Heeft Wim ook gewinkeld?
9. Wat heeft Wim verleden jaar gedaan?
10. Wat heeft Henk vanmorgen gedaan?
1. Werk jij in een kantoor?
2. Heb je vanmorgen gestudeerd?
3. Heb je gisteren gewerkt?
4. Houd je van fietsen?
5. Houd je van muziek?
6. Houd je van winkelen?
7. Heb je gisteravond gewinkeld?
8. Heb je zaterdag gewinkeld?
9. Houd je van koken?
10. Heb je gisteren gekookt?
ZATERDAG BIJ DE VAN DAMS
Meneer Van Dam werkt in een kantoor. Zijn kantoor is in de stad. Vandaag werkt hij niet: het is zaterdag. Gisteren heeft hij wel gewerkt. Mevrouw Van Dam werkt niet buitenshuis. Ze is vanmorgen naar de winkel geweest. De kinderen zijn vandaag niet naar school geweest. Hannie is met haar moeder naar de winkel geweest. Zij heeft ook getekend. Zij houdt van tekenen. Zij heeft vanmorgen een mooi huis getekend. Wim houdt van fietsen. Hij heeft verleden jaar duizenden kilometers gefietst. Eerst is hij naar Belgie en Duitsland gefietst. Toen is hij naar Frankrijk en Zwitserland gefietst. Henk houdt niet van fietsen. Hij houdt van muziek. Hij speelt piano. Hij oefent elke dag. Hij heeft vanmorgen twee en een half uur geoefend. Moeder houdt niet zo veel van huiswerk. Zij houdt van koken. Zij kookt heerlijk. Gisteren heeft zij groente en aard- appelen gekookt. Het smaakte heerlijk.
Mr. van Dam works in an office. His office is in the city. He is not working today: it is Saturday. Yesterday he worked. Mrs. van Dam doesn’t work outside the house. She was at the shop this morning. The children were not at school today. Hannie was at the shop with her mother. She also drew. She likes to draw. She drew a pretty house this morning. Wim likes cycling. He cycled thousands of kilometers last year. First he cycled to Belgium and Germany. Then he cycled to France and Switzerland. Henk doesn’t like cycling. He likes music. He plays piano. He practices every day. He practiced for two and a half hours this morning. Mother doesn’t like housework so much. She likes to cook. She cooks deliciously. Yesterday she cooked vegetables and potatoes. It tasted delicious.
Exercise 38. Vertaal de bovenstaande zinnen.
1
Meneer van Dam werkt in een kantoor.
Mr. van Dam works in an office.
2
Zijn kantoor is in de stad.
His office is in the city.
3
Nee, hij heeft vandaag niet gewerkt.
No, he didn’t work today.
4
Ja, hij heeft gisteren gewerkt.
Yes, he worked yesterday.
5
Vandaag is Mevrouw van Dam naar de winkel geweest.
Today Mrs. van Dam was at the shop.
6
Ja, zij heeft gewinkeld.
Yes, she went shopping.
7
Ja, Hannie heeft ook gewinkeld.
Yes, Hannie also went shopping.
8
Nee, Wim heeft niet gewinkeld.
No, Wim did not go shopping.
9
Verleden jaar heeft Wim duizenden kilometers gefietst.
Last year Wim cycled thousands of kilometres.
10
Vanmorgen heeft Henk op de piano geoefend.
Henk practiced the piano this morning.
Exercise 39. Beantwoord de vragen:
1. Waar werkt meneer Van Dam?
2. Waar is zijn kantoor?
3. Heeft meneer Van Dam vandaag gewerkt?
4. Heeft hij gisteren gewerkt?
5. Wat heeft mevrouw Van Dam vanmorgen gedaan?
6. Heeft ze gewinkeld?
7. Heeft Hannie ook gewinkeld?
8. Heeft Wim ook gewinkeld?
9. Wat heeft Wim verleden jaar gedaan?
10. Wat heeft Henk vanmorgen gedaan?
1. Werk jij in een kantoor?
2. Heb je vanmorgen gestudeerd?
3. Heb je gisteren gewerkt?
4. Houd je van fietsen?
5. Houd je van muziek?
6. Houd je van winkelen?
7. Heb je gisteravond gewinkeld?
8. Heb je zaterdag gewinkeld?
9. Houd je van koken?
10. Heb je gisteren gekookt?
De familie van Dam
Meneer Van Dam is een man. Hij heeft een vrouw. Zijn vrouw is mevrouw Van Dam. Meneer en mevrouw Van Dam hebben drie kinderen. Henk is de broer van Wim. Hannie is hun zusje; zij is 15. Hannie is geen jongen; zij is een meisje. De familie Van Dam heeft een huis. Het is een mooi huis.
æ Mr. Van Dam is a man. He has a wife. His wife is Mrs. van Dam. Mr. and Mrs. van Dam have three children. Henk is Wim’s brother. Hannie is their little sister; she is 15. Hannie is not a boy; she is a girl. The van Dam family has a house. It is a beautiful house.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Saturday, March 14, 2009
melo-, mel-, -melia + (Greek: <I>melos</I>, limb, body extremity or member; a condition of the limbs or extremities of a body [arms, hands, fingers, legs, feet, toes]).
melo-, mel-, -melia +
(Greek: melos, limb, body extremity or member; a condition of the limbs or extremities of a body [arms, hands, fingers, legs, feet, toes])
(Greek: melos, limb, body extremity or member; a condition of the limbs or extremities of a body [arms, hands, fingers, legs, feet, toes])
Saturday, March 7, 2009
Internet Archive: Details: Grateful Dead Live at Madison Square Garden on 1979-09-04
Like I told you, Steal your face right off your head
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Jezebel, King Ahab, Jehu, Shalmaneser, Bible, Archaeology, Inscriptions
King Jehu is also named on Shalmaneser's Obelisk
2 Kings 9:22 And it came to pass, when Joram saw Jehu, that he said, Is it peace, Jehu? And he answered, What peace, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother Jezebel and her witchcrafts are so many?
King Ahab's father Omri is listed on the Moabite Stone.
Scriptures
1 Kings 21:8 So she (Jezebel) wrote letters in Ahab's name, and sealed them with his seal, and sent the letters unto the elders and to the nobles that were in his city, dwelling with Naboth.
1 Kings 16:29 And in the thirty and eighth year of Asa king of Judah began Ahab the son of Omri to reign over Israel: and Ahab the son of Omri reigned over Israel in Samaria twenty and two years.
1 Kings 21:25 But there was none like unto Ahab, which did sell himself to work wickedness in the sight of the LORD, whom Jezebel his wife stirred up.
The Similarity in the Deaths of Domitian & Jezebel - Rome & Babylon
The Harlot of Revelation and The Origins of Rome
King Mesha Moabite Stone Omri King of Israel Bible Archaeology
Translation of the Moabite StoneFrom Ancient Near East - Volume I - ANET
"I am Mesha, son of Chemosh, King of Moab the Dibonite my father had reigned over Moab thirty years. As for Omri, King of Israel, he humbled Moab many years, for Chemosh was angry at his land"
Omri and Mesha
The identifications of the biblical Mesha, king of Moab, and of the biblical Omri, king of the northern kingdom of Israel, in the Mesha stele are generally accepted by the scholarly community, especially because what is said about them in the narrative of the Mesha stele agrees well with the narrative in the biblical books of Kings and Chronicles.
Scriptures
2 Kings 3:4 And Mesha king of Moab was a sheepmaster, and rendered unto the king of Israel an hundred thousand lambs, and an hundred thousand rams, with the wool.
2 Kings 8:26 Athaliah, the daughter of Omri king of Israel.
King of Hamath, Sargon Assyria, Tilgath Pileser, Inscriptions, Bible, Archaeology
The Aramaic Inscription of Zakar, King of HamathThis important monument, published by the discoverer H. Pognon in 1907, makes a significant reference in lines four and five to Benhadad II. Under the Aramaic form of the name, "Barhadad, son of Hazael, king of Aram" is presented as heading a coalition of twelve to eighteen kings against "Zakir, king of Hamath and Lu'ash". The operations of the confederacy, in which only seven of the kings take part, as Zakir expressly mentions, are directed against Hazrek (biblical Hadrach of Zechariah 9:1), the capital city of Lu'ash, a north Syrian principality southwest of Aleppo, and north of Hamath on the Orontes.
The Translation of the Inscription - Line 17
01. ...... Hazrak ....
02. ...... for chariotry and cavalry ...
03. ...... its king within it I ....
04. ...... Hazrak, and I added ....
05. ...... all the circuit ....
06. ...... and I set him as king ....
07. ...... ...... ...... ......
08. ...... these enemies in all its midst
09. I built gods' houses in all
10. ...... and I built
11. .......................
12. ...... house ....
13. ...... I set before [El-
14. Ur] this stele and in[sribed
15. i]t with the writing of my hands.
16. [And] whosoever will remove the wri[ting
17. of the hands of Zakar king of Hamath and La-
18. ash from this stele, and whosoever
19. will remove this stele from [be-
20. fore] El-Ur, and disturb it [from
21. its] place, or whosoever will lay upon [it
22. his hand] .... [shall curse him?]
23. [the Lor]d of Heaven and El-
24. [Ur] ..... and Sun and Moon
25. ...... and the gods of heaven
26. [and the gods of] earth, and Baal of Laa-
Shalmaneser's Monolith
Another famous artifact known as the Kirk Monolith, from Shalmaneser, contains the name and title "Iruleni King of Hamath."
Sargon's Palace Inscription
This inscription of the Assyrian King Sargon discovered in the ruins of Khorsabad, Iraq lists several names of royalty and citizens associated with the city of Hamath.
Line 12 reads: "Jaubid of Hamath, a smith, was not the legitimate master of the throne, he was an infidel and an impious man, and he had coveted the royalty of Hamath"
Line 60 reads: "Irkhulina of Hamath"
Line 88 reads: "The land of the Hamathites"
Tilgath Pileser III - Campaigns Against Syria - ANET Volume 1
Building inscription of Tilgath Pileser - "Enil of Hamath"
Scriptures
Isaiah 37:13 Where is the king of Hamath, and the king of Arphad, and the king of the city of Sepharvaim, Hena, and Ivah?
1 Chronicles 18:3 And David smote Hadarezer king of Zobah unto Hamath, as he went to stablish his dominion by the river Euphrates.
2 Samuel 8:9 When Toi king of Hamath heard that David had smitten all the host of Hadadezer
Jesus Shiloh and The Ark of the Covenant - Former Things - Biblical Archaeology and The Bible
The City of Shiloh
After Joshua conquered the Land of Israel, the Ark of the Covenant was placed in the village of Shiloh. Located in the area settled by the tribes of Benjamin and Ephraim, Shiloh became known as the "place of the Lord’s Tabernacle." It was to Shiloh that the Israelites brought their sacrifices. It was at Shiloh that the priest Eli promised that Hannah would bear a son. That son, Samuel, became a prophet who dedicated himself to the Lord and served the Tabernacle in Shiloh.
Joshua 18:1 The children of Israel assembled together at Shiloh
Archaeological excavations were carried out and findings of great significance were found: elaborate mosaics, a testimony of settlement and an unprecedented mosaic inscription in Greek referring to the site as the "Village of Shiloh." The excavations conducted by Danish archeologists in 1926 and 1929 have shown that the site was inhabited also in the Hellenistic, Roman, Byzantine, and Arab periods.
Additional photos and notes on the Christian Era of Shiloh
Jesus, Shiloh and The Ark of the Covenant
Exodus 25:18 And thou shalt make two angels of gold, of beaten work shalt thou make them, in the two ends of the mercy seat.
John 20:12 And seeth two angels in white sitting, the one at the head, and the other at the feet, where the body of Jesus had lain.
Genesis 49:10 The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come; and unto him shall the gathering of the people be.
"The sceptre shall not depart from Judah"
Jesus is the Lion of Judah - Revelation 5:5
But unto the Son a sceptre of righteousness - Hebrews 1:8
"Judah is my law giver" - Psalm 108
Matthew 5:17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.
Jesus and the ark of the covenant
Ark of the Covenant: Replaced by God's New Covenant
The Ark of the Covenant disappeared from the Jewish Temple somewhere before or during the Babylonian invasion of Jerusalem in 586 BC. In anticipation of the Ark's disappearance, the prophet Jeremiah wrote: "And it shall come to pass, when ye be multiplied and increased in the land, in those days, saith the LORD, they shall say no more, The ark of the covenant of the LORD: neither shall it come to mind: neither shall they remember it; neither shall they visit it; neither shall that be done any more" (Jeremiah 3:16). Even before Jesus, Jeremiah's prophecy revealed that there would be no more need for the Ark of the Covenant in the future. God had a better covenant He would bring to pass -- the new covenant in His Son, Jesus Christ.
Scriptures
Joshua 18:1 The children of Israel assembled together at Shiloh
1Samuel 3:21 And the LORD appeared again in Shiloh: for the LORD revealed himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the LORD.
Jeremiah 7:14 Therefore will I do unto this house, which is called by my name, wherein ye trust, and unto the place which I gave to you and to your fathers, as I have done to Shiloh.
Shalmaneser - Former Things - Biblical Archaeology and The Bible
The second register from the top includes the earliest surviving picture of an Israelite: the Biblical Jehu, king of Israel. It describes how Jehu brought or sent his tribute in or around 841 BCE.Jehu severed Israel’s alliances with Phoenicia and Judah, and became subject to Assyria. The caption above the scene, written in Assyrian cuneiform, can be translated:
“The tribute of Jehu, son of Omri: I received from him silver, gold, a golden bowl, a golden vase with pointed bottom, golden tumblers, golden buckets, tin, a staff for a king and spears."
Shalmaneser, Jehu, Ahab (Kurk Monolith), and Omri are all mentioned in the Bible!
The Kurkh Monolith
The Monolith is an Assyrian document that contains the Battle of Qarqar at the end. The Monolith stands some 2.2 metres tall and roughly covers years one through six of the reign of Assyrian King Shalmaneser III.
Inscribed on the Monolith is a reference to King Ahab who contributed 2,000 chariots and 10,000 soldiers to an alliance of kings that was attempting to resist the conquering armies of Shalmaneser.
Scriptures
2 Kings 17:3 Against him came up Shalmaneser king of Assyria; and Hoshea became his servant, and gave him presents.
2 Kings 18:9 Shalmaneser king of Assyria came up against Samaria, and besieged it.
2 Kings 9:13 Then they hasted, and took every man his garment, and put it under him on the top of the stairs, and blew with trumpets, saying, Jehu is king.
2 Kings 8:26 Two and twenty years old was Ahaziah when he began to reign; and he reigned one year in Jerusalem. And his mother's name was Athaliah, the daughter of Omri king of Israel.
King Artaxerxes - Former Things - Biblical Archaeology and The Bible
Persepolis - Home of the Persian KingsPersepolis is quite magnificent. Started under Darius I (the Great) in about 518 BC, and built out over 150 years, it is the greatest surviving set of ruins of ancient Near Eastern civilizations, and its scale and grandeur is magnificent. It burned down when Alexander the Great visited in 330BC because, despite being made mostly of stone, the roof had wooden timbers and when the fire raged these burned, melting the iron clamps that held the columns in place.
The remains of Persepolis include bas-reliefs and sculptures that provide an insight into the hearts and beliefs of the ancient Iranians. It can be seen that the buildings at Persepolis are divided into three areas, military quarters, the treasury and the reception and occasional houses for King of Kings. These included the Great Stairway, the Gate of Nations (Xerxes), Apadana palace of Darius, the Hall of a Hundred Columns, the Tripylon Hall and Tachara palace of Darius, the Hadish palace of Xerxes, palace of Artaxerxes, the Imperial Treasury, the Royal Stables and the Chariot house.
The Historian Herodotus - The Histories 484 B.C.
"Darius the son of Hystaspes and Xerxes the son of Darius and Artoxerxes the son of Xerxes" - Book 6 : 98
"The Argives at that time sent envoys to Susa, and these asked Artoxerxes the son of Xerxes, if the friendship still remained" - Book 7:151
The Elephantine Papyris
From Ancient Near East Texts - Volume I - ANET
"On the 21st of Chisleu, that is the 1st of Mesore, year 6 of King Artaxerxes, a Jew of Elephantine, of the detachment of Haumadata, said to Jeziniah.
- Mibtahiah's First Marriage
"On the 25th of Tishri, that is the 6th day of the month Epiphi, year.... of King Artaxerxes" - Contract of Mibahiah's Third Marriage
Scriptures
Ezra 7:12 Now this is the copy of the letter that the king Artaxerxes gave unto Ezra the priest. Artaxerxes, king of kings, unto Ezra the priest, a scribe of the law of the God of heaven, perfect peace, and at such a time.
Ezra 8:1 These are now the chief of their fathers, and this is the genealogy of them that went up with me from Babylon, in the reign of Artaxerxes the king.
Ezra 6:12 according to the commandment of Cyrus, and Darius, and Artaxerxes king of Persia.
Sennacherib | Sennacherib's Prism | Hezekiah Isaiah and the Bible
ible. 2nd Kings, 2nd Chronicles and Isaiah. “Now it came to pass in the fourteenth year of king Hezekiah, that Sennacherib king of Assyria came up against all the defenced cities of Judah, and took them.” – Isaiah 36Sennacherib’s prism also contains the name of Merodach Baladan found in the book of Isaiah.
“In my first campaign I accomplished the defeat of Merodach-Baladan”
“At that time Merodach Baladan, the son of Baladan, king of Babylon.”
- Isaiah 39
The prism gives a detailed account of Sennacherib’s war campaigns and he consistently brags about the many people he has killed and what nations he destroyed and forced to pay tribute to him. He describes hanging people on stakes as well as amputating hands and genitalia of his enemies. The Bible states that God sent angels to destroy his entire army for his arrogant threats against Hezekiah and Israel. Full translation of Sennacherib's Prism
“Hear all the words of Sennacherib, which he sent to reproach the living God” – Isaiah 37
Sennacherib Killed by His Sons - Confirmed
“ Sennacherib was killed by his sons.” - Isaiah 37
The Chronicle on the Reigns from Nabu-Nasir to Samas-suma-ukin (ABC 1) is one of the historiographical texts about ancient Assyria and Babylonia.
Line 35 reads: "On the twentieth day of the month Tebetu, Sennacherib, King of Assyria, was killed by his son in a rebellion.”
The historical evidence proves King Sennacherib’s existence and his palace at Nineveh. Sennacherib’s own writings and Assyrian documents testify that he did in fact lay siege to Jerusalem and was killed by his sons just as described in the book of Isaiah.
Scriptures
2Kings 19:36 So Sennacherib king of Assyria departed, and went and returned, and dwelt at Nineveh.
Isaiah 37:21 Then Isaiah the son of Amoz sent unto Hezekiah, saying, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Whereas thou hast prayed to me against Sennacherib king of Assyria
2 Chronicles 32:10 Thus saith Sennacherib king of Assyria, Whereon do ye trust, that ye abide in the siege in Jerusalem?
Pharaoh Hophra Apries - Former Things - Biblical Archaeology and The Bible
Hosea 9:6 For, lo, they are gone because of destruction: Egypt shall gather them up, Memphis shall bury them: the pleasant places for their silver, nettles shall possess them: thorns shall be in their tabernacles.Palace of Apries at Memphis
More recently, in 1909, in the course of excavations carried on by the British School of Archaeology in Egypt, the palace of King Apries, Pharaoh Hophra, has been discovered on the site of Memphis, the ancient capital of Egypt. Under the gray mud hill, close to the squalid Arab village of Mitrahenny, which every tourist passes on the way to Sakkhara, had lain for centuries Hophra's magnificent palace, 400 ft. long by 200 ft., with a splendid pylon, an immense court, and stonelined halls, of which seven have been found intact. With many other objects of value there was found a fitting of a palanquin of solid silver, decorated with a bust of Hathor with a gold face. It is said to be of the finest workmanship of the time of Apries-Hophra, a relic of the fire, which, Jeremiah predicted at Tahpanhes, the Lord of Hosts was to kindle "in the houses of the gods of Egypt" (Jeremiah 43:12).
The main palace building was excavated in two seasons between 1908 and 1910. It is located on a massive artificial platform. Most of the walls of the palace are constructed in mud-brick, while important elements such as columns, pavements and wall cladding (at least to a certain height) are of limestone. Some of the capitals of the columns still bore the name of king Apries, who was therefore most likely the builder of main parts of the complex.
King Zedekiah and the Babylonian Chronicle
King Zedekiah is in this same chapter and verse of Jeremiah that the Pharaoh Apries-Hophra is mentioned. We are going to compare the record of the Babylonian chronicle clay tablet, as translated into English by scholars, with the account recorded in the Bible. This tablet resides in the British Museum.
"He installed in his place a king Zedekiah of his own choice, and after he had received rich tribute, he sent them forth to Babylon." - Babylonian Chronicle
I gave Zedekiah king of Judah into the hand of Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon - Jeremiah 44:30
This chronicle names all of the following people and all of them are in the bible! - Jehoiachin - Zedekiah - Pharaoh Necho - Nebuchadnezzar
Lachish Letters City of Lachish
Old Testament. Three appear only during the time of Jeremiah. In Letter IVHoshaiah writes:
And let my lord know that we are watching for the signals of Lachish according to all the indications which my lord hath given, for we cannot see Azekah.
Jeremiah mentions “fire” signals (Jeremiah 6:1), and tells how the king of Babylon “fought against Jerusalem, and against all the cities of Judah that were left, against Lachish, and Azekah: for these defenced cities remained of the cities of Judah” (Jeremiah 34:7). - More information on the Letters
Lachish Under Siege
Of further interest is the fact that archaeological digs at the city of Lachish bear out the details of Sennacherib’s wall relief. Extensive archaeological digs at Lachish from 1935 to 1938 by the British, and again from 1973 to 1987 under Israeli archaeologist David Ussishkin and others, have revealed a treasure trove of artifacts, each of which fits the events depicted by Sennacherib. Concerning the Assyrian siege of Lachish, William Dever noted:
"The evidence of it is all there: the enormous sloping siege ramp thrown up against the city walls south of the gate; the double line of defense walls, upslope and downslope; the iron-shod Assyrian battering rams that breached the city wall at its highest point; the massive destruction within the fallen city.... Virtually all the details of the Assyrian reliefs have been confirmed by archaeology.... Also brought to light by the excavators were the double city walls; the complex siege ramp, embedded with hundreds of iron arrowheads and stone ballistae; the counter-ramp inside the city; the destroyed gate, covered by up to 6 ft. of destruction debris; huge boulders from the city wall, burned almost to lime and fallen far down the slope."
(2001, pp. 168-169).
The Assyrian monarch’s siege of Lachish is documented by the biblical text, and the destruction of the city is corroborated by the massive carving dedicated to the event in Sennacherib’s palace at Nineveh, as well as the actual artifacts found in stratum III at Lachish
The Amarna Letters
The town of Lachish is also mentioned in the Amarna letters.
Letter from Pabi, Prince of Lachish, to Akhenaton
Scriptures
Joshua 10:31 And Joshua passed from Libnah, and all Israel with him, unto Lachish, and encamped against it, and fought against it:
2 Kings 18:14 And Hezekiah king of Judah sent to the king of Assyria to Lachish.
Tirhakah Pharaoh Egypt | Bible and Egypt | Archaeology
Statuette of Taharqa and the Falcon GodThe statue represents King Taharqa, the third sovereign of the 25th Dynasty (ruled by Nubian kings). He reigned over Egypt for nearly half a century until the country was invaded and conquered by the Assyrians. The kneeling pharaoh offers two round vases to a falcon god holding a rearing cobra. This sculpture in the round depicts a traditional scene: an offering of wine to a deity.
The small bronze statuette in this group is a magnificent portrait of King Taharqa, born in the Sudan but crowned in Memphis. His power and dual reign over Egypt and Nubia is affirmed by the two uraeus cobras on his forehead. His birth name is engraved on his belt: "The perfect god, Taharqa alive for eternity." Taharqa was the most famous pharaoh of the 25th Dynasty, also known as the reign of the Kushites. He renovated old temples, constructed new shrines, and had official inscriptions written throughout his large empire. A monumental column in the first court of Karnak marks his architectural participation in the great temple of Amun. He is kneeling and clad in the traditional Egyptian kilt. He is much smaller than the majestic falcon, which is covered in gold leaf; the king is offering vases of wines to the animal.
Tirhakah’s Name Appears on Ancient Documents
The ANET is a collection of ancient inscriptions from various civilizations written by James Pritchard an American archaeologist with a PHD from the University of Pennsylvania. The volume provides reliable translations of documents from Ancient Near Eastern history in relation to the Hebrew Bible. The following inscriptions come from Esarhaddon an Assyrian King that is also named in the Bible:
“Balu, king of Tyre who had put his trust upon his friend Tirhakah, king of Nubia, and therefore had thrown off the yoke of Ashur, my lord” - ANET 292
“I fought daily, without interruption, very bloody battles against Tirhakah, king of Egypt and Ethiopia.”- ANET 293
“From the town of Ishhupri as far as Memphis, his royal residence, a distance of 15 days march, I fought daily, without interruption, very bloody battles against Tirhakah, king of Egypt and Ethiopia” – ANET 293
Scriptures
2Kingd 19:9 And when he heard say of Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, Behold, he is come out to fight against thee: he sent messengers again unto Hezekiah, saying,
Isaiah 37:9 And he heard say concerning Tirhakah king of Ethiopia, He is come forth to make war with thee. And when he heard it, he sent messengers to Hezekiah, saying,
City of Shechem - Former Things - Biblical Archaeology and The Bible
Joseph's Tomb in ShechemJoshua 24:32 And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for an hundred pieces of silver: and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph.
The palestinians destroyed Joseph's Tomb and immediately rebuilt it as a mosque and now claim that it was never Joseph's Tomb at all but rather the grave of a Muslim clergyman of note. They now claim that it is a Muslim holy place and assert exclusive rights to it.
Following the 1967 War, Israel gained control of the site and a small settlement citation needed, including a Jewish seminary and military outpost, was built there in the 1980s. The settlement was handed over to the Palestinian Authority in 1995, but the Israeli Defence Forces retained control over the site since the Oslo accords granted it free Israeli access.
For Israelis, the destruction of a Jewish shrine raised serious doubts as to whether the Palestinian Authority would protect religious sites belonging to Jews and Christians and guarantee access to them as agreed in the Oslo accords.
Since the October 7th, 2000 retreat, Israelis have been forbidden to visit the site. Only in the last couple of years, due to very high demand, has the Israeli Army infrequently allowed pilgrims to visit the site under armoured army escort.
Scriptures
Joshua 24:32 And the bones of Joseph, which the children of Israel brought up out of Egypt, buried they in Shechem, in a parcel of ground which Jacob bought of the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem for an hundred pieces of silver: and it became the inheritance of the children of Joseph.
Judges 9:6 And all the men of Shechem gathered together, and all the house of Millo, and went, and made Abimelech king, by the plain of the pillar that was in Shechem.
1 Kings 12:1 And Rehoboam went to Shechem: for all Israel were come to Shechem to make him king.
Nero - Former Things - Biblical Archaeology and The Bible
Nero Claudius Caesar
2 Timothy 4:22 - From Rome, when Paul was brought before Nero
Nero Caesar
This coin is a sestertius, and was minted in 64-66 A.D. On the front is a Laureate bust of Nero. \" Nero Claudius Caesar pontifex maximus, with tribunician power, imperator, father of the country\".
Bust of Nero. Musei Capitolini
The Domus Aurea - Nero\'s golden house. Rome, Italy.
History
Nero Claudius Caesar was the fifth and last Roman Emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero became heir to the then Emperor, his grand-uncle and adoptive father Claudius. As Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus he succeeded to the throne on October 13, 54 following Claudius\' death. In 66, he added the prefix Imperator to his name. His subsequent death was reportedly the result of suicide assisted by his scribe Epaphroditos.
Orgies, Gluttony and Lust
Nero lavished himself in his own power, he used golden thread for his fishing nets, he never wore the same robe twice, he had his mules shod with silver. He was heavily into parties and practiced orgies and gluttony, and his dinners sometimes lasted twelve hours, from noon to midnight. He also murdered his 19-year-old wife so that he could marry his mistress, and then later he killed that mistress.
Persecutions of Christians in Roman Transcripts
Nero had to find a way to \"suppress this rumor\" according to Tacitus. Nero chose the new secret religious sect of the Christians as his scapegoats and punished them severely. They were arrested throughout the empire and \"their deaths were made farcical.\" Nero took pleasure in the Christian persecutions and even offered many of them upon stakes to be burned to death as torches for his parties. According to history many of them were hunted down and tortured, some were sewn into skins of animals and fed to starving dogs while the mob cheered.
Even the historian Tacitus, who did not like Christians, objected to the way Nero had made scapegoats of them. The persecution of the Christians under Nero revealed the growing resentment the people had toward the early church. It also revealed that 20 years after the reign of Claudius, the Christians in Rome had become recognized as a distinct group, separate from the Jews.
\"Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition.\" - Suetonius
Life of the Emperor Nero Claudius - Chapter 25
Christianity was a new religion and did not appear to be very threatening. The Christians refused to participate in pagan rituals and therefore those who practiced them found it very offensive, according to Tacitus. He describes the Christians as \"depraved\" and says that this religion is \"deadly superstition\", \"mischief\", and \"shameful practices.\" Tacitus also indicted the Christians as \"not so much for incendiarism as for their anti-social tendencies,\" and a hidden hatred for mankind, which was a label that had been originally put on the Jews. It is interesting that Tacitus was more than a historian, he was a member of the aristocracy and a friend of several emperors. Therefore his feelings toward the Christians may have reflected also among the aristocrats. Suetonius, a writer and government official, also indicted the Christians explaining that they were proponents of \"a new and mischievous religious belief.\"
Tacticus Annals
The Roman historian Tacitus wrote concerning the Great Fire of Rome, in Book 15, chapter 44 of his Annals:
\" Hence to suppress the rumor, Nero falsely charged with the guilt, and punished Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christ, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea\"
Coins with Nero\'s face and inscriptions
The Domus Aurea - Nero\'s Golden House
This collection of nymphaeums, banqueting rooms, bath houses, gardens and terraces was surrounded by a vast complex of fountains, drained from the surrounding hills. Nero is famous for his self indulgence of course.
\" He made a palace extending all the way from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which at first he called the House of Passage, but when it was burned shortly after its completion and rebuilt, the Golden House.\"
Seutonius – Nero 31– Lives of the Twelve Caesars
Nero eventually comitted suicide.
Nero and The King of Tyre - Satan
The Harlot of Revelation and The Origins of Rome
Scriptures
2 Timothy 4:22 From Rome, when Paul was brought before Nero
2 Timothy 4:22 - From Rome, when Paul was brought before Nero
Nero Caesar
This coin is a sestertius, and was minted in 64-66 A.D. On the front is a Laureate bust of Nero. \" Nero Claudius Caesar pontifex maximus, with tribunician power, imperator, father of the country\".
Bust of Nero. Musei Capitolini
The Domus Aurea - Nero\'s golden house. Rome, Italy.
History
Nero Claudius Caesar was the fifth and last Roman Emperors of the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero became heir to the then Emperor, his grand-uncle and adoptive father Claudius. As Nero Claudius Caesar Drusus he succeeded to the throne on October 13, 54 following Claudius\' death. In 66, he added the prefix Imperator to his name. His subsequent death was reportedly the result of suicide assisted by his scribe Epaphroditos.
Orgies, Gluttony and Lust
Nero lavished himself in his own power, he used golden thread for his fishing nets, he never wore the same robe twice, he had his mules shod with silver. He was heavily into parties and practiced orgies and gluttony, and his dinners sometimes lasted twelve hours, from noon to midnight. He also murdered his 19-year-old wife so that he could marry his mistress, and then later he killed that mistress.
Persecutions of Christians in Roman Transcripts
Nero had to find a way to \"suppress this rumor\" according to Tacitus. Nero chose the new secret religious sect of the Christians as his scapegoats and punished them severely. They were arrested throughout the empire and \"their deaths were made farcical.\" Nero took pleasure in the Christian persecutions and even offered many of them upon stakes to be burned to death as torches for his parties. According to history many of them were hunted down and tortured, some were sewn into skins of animals and fed to starving dogs while the mob cheered.
Even the historian Tacitus, who did not like Christians, objected to the way Nero had made scapegoats of them. The persecution of the Christians under Nero revealed the growing resentment the people had toward the early church. It also revealed that 20 years after the reign of Claudius, the Christians in Rome had become recognized as a distinct group, separate from the Jews.
\"Punishment was inflicted on the Christians, a class of men given to a new and mischievous superstition.\" - Suetonius
Life of the Emperor Nero Claudius - Chapter 25
Christianity was a new religion and did not appear to be very threatening. The Christians refused to participate in pagan rituals and therefore those who practiced them found it very offensive, according to Tacitus. He describes the Christians as \"depraved\" and says that this religion is \"deadly superstition\", \"mischief\", and \"shameful practices.\" Tacitus also indicted the Christians as \"not so much for incendiarism as for their anti-social tendencies,\" and a hidden hatred for mankind, which was a label that had been originally put on the Jews. It is interesting that Tacitus was more than a historian, he was a member of the aristocracy and a friend of several emperors. Therefore his feelings toward the Christians may have reflected also among the aristocrats. Suetonius, a writer and government official, also indicted the Christians explaining that they were proponents of \"a new and mischievous religious belief.\"
Tacticus Annals
The Roman historian Tacitus wrote concerning the Great Fire of Rome, in Book 15, chapter 44 of his Annals:
\" Hence to suppress the rumor, Nero falsely charged with the guilt, and punished Christians, who were hated for their enormities. Christ, the founder of the name, was put to death by Pontius Pilate, procurator of Judea\"
Coins with Nero\'s face and inscriptions
The Domus Aurea - Nero\'s Golden House
This collection of nymphaeums, banqueting rooms, bath houses, gardens and terraces was surrounded by a vast complex of fountains, drained from the surrounding hills. Nero is famous for his self indulgence of course.
\" He made a palace extending all the way from the Palatine to the Esquiline, which at first he called the House of Passage, but when it was burned shortly after its completion and rebuilt, the Golden House.\"
Seutonius – Nero 31– Lives of the Twelve Caesars
Nero eventually comitted suicide.
Nero and The King of Tyre - Satan
The Harlot of Revelation and The Origins of Rome
Scriptures
2 Timothy 4:22 From Rome, when Paul was brought before Nero
Isaiah Mentions Hell - Bible Archaeology
Isaiah 66
“Where their worm will never die and their fire will never be put out”
Historical evidence as you will see has proven that Isaiah is deadly accurate. The fact that Isaiah clearly mentions hell demands that people should take him seriously when he mentions this place of eternal torment.
Jesus specifically quoted Isaiah 66 in the Book of Mark - Chapter 9
Sargon
Isaiah 20:1 – Sargon The King of Assyria
There is a vase in the British Museum with Sargon’s named engraved into it. The Fortress of Sargon or Palace of Sargon was discovered in 1842 by the French Archaeologist Paul Emille Botta.
Sennacherib
Isaiah 37:21 – Sennacherib King of Assyria
Taylor’s Prism also known as Sennacherib’s Prism is an artifact that records Sennacherib’s own wars and history. This prism has King Hezekiah’s name on it and he is also found in the book of Isaiah. Sennacherib’s palace and remains from his capital of Nineveh are on display in the British Museum.
Esarhaddon
Isaiah 37:38 – Esarhaddon King of Assyria
There is a plaque of King Esarhaddon and the Queen Mother Nakija in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The stone Prism of Esarhaddon and a lion’s head statue with his name inscribed on it in the British Museum.
Tirhakah
Isaiah 37:9 – Pharaoh Tirhakah
Statuette of Tirhakah and the Falcon God in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The belt on this statue has his name engraved in it. A Granite shabti and sphinx of King Tirhakah From the pyramid of Tirhakah at Nuri – British Museum.
The House of Tophet, Seals of King Hezekiah, Hezekiah’s Tunnel, the city of Lachish and the Siloam Inscription also attest to Isaiah’s historical accuracy.
The Man In Hell in the Book of Luke
And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. And Abraham said unto him, if they hear not Moses and the prophets, (Isaiah) neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead – Luke 16:31
“Where their worm will never die and their fire will never be put out”
Historical evidence as you will see has proven that Isaiah is deadly accurate. The fact that Isaiah clearly mentions hell demands that people should take him seriously when he mentions this place of eternal torment.
Jesus specifically quoted Isaiah 66 in the Book of Mark - Chapter 9
Sargon
Isaiah 20:1 – Sargon The King of Assyria
There is a vase in the British Museum with Sargon’s named engraved into it. The Fortress of Sargon or Palace of Sargon was discovered in 1842 by the French Archaeologist Paul Emille Botta.
Sennacherib
Isaiah 37:21 – Sennacherib King of Assyria
Taylor’s Prism also known as Sennacherib’s Prism is an artifact that records Sennacherib’s own wars and history. This prism has King Hezekiah’s name on it and he is also found in the book of Isaiah. Sennacherib’s palace and remains from his capital of Nineveh are on display in the British Museum.
Esarhaddon
Isaiah 37:38 – Esarhaddon King of Assyria
There is a plaque of King Esarhaddon and the Queen Mother Nakija in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The stone Prism of Esarhaddon and a lion’s head statue with his name inscribed on it in the British Museum.
Tirhakah
Isaiah 37:9 – Pharaoh Tirhakah
Statuette of Tirhakah and the Falcon God in the Louvre Museum in Paris. The belt on this statue has his name engraved in it. A Granite shabti and sphinx of King Tirhakah From the pyramid of Tirhakah at Nuri – British Museum.
The House of Tophet, Seals of King Hezekiah, Hezekiah’s Tunnel, the city of Lachish and the Siloam Inscription also attest to Isaiah’s historical accuracy.
The Man In Hell in the Book of Luke
And he cried and said, Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger in water, and cool my tongue; for I am tormented in this flame. And Abraham said unto him, if they hear not Moses and the prophets, (Isaiah) neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead – Luke 16:31
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Agnosia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Agnosia (a-gnosis, \"non-knowledge\", or loss of knowledge) is a loss of ability to recognize objects, persons, sounds, shapes, or smells while the specific sense is not defective nor is there any significant memory loss.[1][2] It is usually associated with brain injury or neurological illness, particularly after damage to the occipitotemporal border, which is part of the ventral stream.[3]
Alexia Inability to recognize text.[4]
Amusia or Receptive amusia Is agnosia for music. It involves loss of the ability to recognize musical notes, rhythms, and intervals and the inability to experience music as musical.
Anosognosia This is the inability to gain feedback about one's own condition and can be confused with lack of insight but is caused by problems in the feedback mechanisms in the brain. It's caused by neurological damage and can occur in connection with a range of neurological impairments but is most commonly referred to in cases of paralysis following stroke. Those with Anosognosia with multiple impairments may even be aware of some of their impairments but completely unable to perceive others.
Apperceptive agnosia Patients are unable to distinguish visual shapes and so have trouble recognizing, copying, or discriminating between different visual stimuli. Unlike patients suffering from associative agnosia, those with apperceptive agnosia are unable to copy images.[5]
Apraxia Is a form of motor (body) agnosia involving the neurological loss of ability to map out physical actions in order to repeat them in functional activities. It is a form of body-disconnectedness and takes several different forms; Speech-Apraxia in which ability to speak is impaired, Limb-Kinetic Apraxia in which there is a loss of hand or finger dexterity and can extend to the voluntary use of limbs, Ideomotor Apraxia in which the gestures of others can't be easily replicated and can't execute goal-directed movements, Ideational Apraxia in which one can't work out which actions to initiate and struggles to plan and discriminate between potential gestures, Apraxia of Gait in which co-ordination of leg actions is problematic such as kicking a ball, Constructional Apraxia in which a person can't co-ordinate the construction of objects or draw pictures or follow a design, Oculomotor Apraxia in which the ability to control visual tracking is impaired and Buccofacial Apraxia in which skilled use of the lips, mouth and tongue is impaired.[citation needed]
Associative agnosia Patients can describe visual scenes and classes of objects but still fail to recognize them. They may, for example, know that a fork is something you eat with but may mistake it for a spoon. Patients suffering from associative agnosia are still able to reproduce an image through copying.
Auditory agnosia With Auditory Agnosia there is difficulty distinguishing environmental and non-verbal auditory cues including difficulty distinguishing speech from non-speech sounds even though hearing is usually normal.[6]
Autotopagnosia Is associated with the inability to orient parts of the body, and is often caused by a lesion in the parietal part of the posterior thalmic radiations.[7]
Color agnosia Refers to the inability to recognize a color, while being able to perceive or distinguish it.
Cortical deafness Refers to people who do not perceive any auditory information but whose hearing is intact.
Finger agnosia Is the inability to distinguish the fingers on the hand. It is present in lesions of the dominant parietal lobe, and is a component of Gerstmann syndrome.[8]
Form agnosia Patients perceive only parts of details, not the whole object.[9]
Integrative agnosia This is where one has the ability to recognize elements of something but yet be unable to integrate these elements together into comprehensible perceptual wholes.[10][11]
Mirror agnosia One of the symptoms of Hemispatial neglect. Patients with Hemispatial neglect were placed so that an object was in their neglected visual field but a mirror reflecting that object was visible in their non-neglected field. Patients could not acknowledge the existence of objects in the neglected field and so attempted to reach into the mirror to grasp the object. [12]
Pain agnosia Also referred to as Analgesia, this is the difficulty perceiving and processing pain; thought to underpin some forms of self injury.[13]
Phonagnosia Is the inability to recognize familiar voices, even though the hearer can understand the words used.[14]
Prosopagnosia Also known as faceblindness and facial agnosia: Patients cannot consciously recognize familiar faces, sometimes even including their own. This is often misperceived as an inability to remember names.
Semantic agnosia Those with this form of agnosia are effectively 'object blind' until they use non-visual sensory systems to recognise the object. For example, feeling, tapping, smelling, rocking or flicking the object, may trigger realisation of its semantics (meaning).[15]
Simultanagnosia Patients can recognize objects or details in their visual field, but only one at a time. They cannot make out the scene they belong to or make out a whole image out of the details. They literally cannot see the forest before the trees.[16] Simultanagnosia is a common symptom of Balint's syndrome.
Social emotional agnosia Sometimes referred to as Expressive Agnosia, this is a form of agnosia in which the person is unable to perceive facial expression, body language and intonation, rendering them unable to non-verbally perceive people's emotions and limiting that aspect of social interaction.
Somatosensory agnosia Or Astereognosia[clarification needed] is connected to tactile sense - that is, touch. Patient finds it difficult to recognize objects by touch based on its texture, size and weight. However, they may be able to describe it verbally or recognize same kind of objects from pictures or draw pictures of them. Thought to be connected to lesions or damage in somatosensory cortex.[6]
Tactile agnosia Impaired ability to recognize or identify objects by touch alone.[17]
Time agnosia Is the loss of comprehension of the succession and duration of events[18].
Topographical agnosia This is a form of visual agnosia in which a person cannot rely on visual cues to guide them directionally due to the inability to recognise objects. Nevertheless, they may still have an excellent capacity to describe the visual layout of the same place[19]
Verbal auditory agnosia This presents as a form of meaning 'deafness' in which hearing is intact but there is significant difficulty recognising spoken words as semantically meaningful.[20]
Visual agnosia Is associated with lesions of the left occipital lobe and temporal lobes. Many types of visual agnosia involve the inability to recognize objects.
Visual verbal agnosia Difficulty comprehending the meaning of written words. The capacity to read is usually intact but compre
Alexia Inability to recognize text.[4]
Amusia or Receptive amusia Is agnosia for music. It involves loss of the ability to recognize musical notes, rhythms, and intervals and the inability to experience music as musical.
Anosognosia This is the inability to gain feedback about one's own condition and can be confused with lack of insight but is caused by problems in the feedback mechanisms in the brain. It's caused by neurological damage and can occur in connection with a range of neurological impairments but is most commonly referred to in cases of paralysis following stroke. Those with Anosognosia with multiple impairments may even be aware of some of their impairments but completely unable to perceive others.
Apperceptive agnosia Patients are unable to distinguish visual shapes and so have trouble recognizing, copying, or discriminating between different visual stimuli. Unlike patients suffering from associative agnosia, those with apperceptive agnosia are unable to copy images.[5]
Apraxia Is a form of motor (body) agnosia involving the neurological loss of ability to map out physical actions in order to repeat them in functional activities. It is a form of body-disconnectedness and takes several different forms; Speech-Apraxia in which ability to speak is impaired, Limb-Kinetic Apraxia in which there is a loss of hand or finger dexterity and can extend to the voluntary use of limbs, Ideomotor Apraxia in which the gestures of others can't be easily replicated and can't execute goal-directed movements, Ideational Apraxia in which one can't work out which actions to initiate and struggles to plan and discriminate between potential gestures, Apraxia of Gait in which co-ordination of leg actions is problematic such as kicking a ball, Constructional Apraxia in which a person can't co-ordinate the construction of objects or draw pictures or follow a design, Oculomotor Apraxia in which the ability to control visual tracking is impaired and Buccofacial Apraxia in which skilled use of the lips, mouth and tongue is impaired.[citation needed]
Associative agnosia Patients can describe visual scenes and classes of objects but still fail to recognize them. They may, for example, know that a fork is something you eat with but may mistake it for a spoon. Patients suffering from associative agnosia are still able to reproduce an image through copying.
Auditory agnosia With Auditory Agnosia there is difficulty distinguishing environmental and non-verbal auditory cues including difficulty distinguishing speech from non-speech sounds even though hearing is usually normal.[6]
Autotopagnosia Is associated with the inability to orient parts of the body, and is often caused by a lesion in the parietal part of the posterior thalmic radiations.[7]
Color agnosia Refers to the inability to recognize a color, while being able to perceive or distinguish it.
Cortical deafness Refers to people who do not perceive any auditory information but whose hearing is intact.
Finger agnosia Is the inability to distinguish the fingers on the hand. It is present in lesions of the dominant parietal lobe, and is a component of Gerstmann syndrome.[8]
Form agnosia Patients perceive only parts of details, not the whole object.[9]
Integrative agnosia This is where one has the ability to recognize elements of something but yet be unable to integrate these elements together into comprehensible perceptual wholes.[10][11]
Mirror agnosia One of the symptoms of Hemispatial neglect. Patients with Hemispatial neglect were placed so that an object was in their neglected visual field but a mirror reflecting that object was visible in their non-neglected field. Patients could not acknowledge the existence of objects in the neglected field and so attempted to reach into the mirror to grasp the object. [12]
Pain agnosia Also referred to as Analgesia, this is the difficulty perceiving and processing pain; thought to underpin some forms of self injury.[13]
Phonagnosia Is the inability to recognize familiar voices, even though the hearer can understand the words used.[14]
Prosopagnosia Also known as faceblindness and facial agnosia: Patients cannot consciously recognize familiar faces, sometimes even including their own. This is often misperceived as an inability to remember names.
Semantic agnosia Those with this form of agnosia are effectively 'object blind' until they use non-visual sensory systems to recognise the object. For example, feeling, tapping, smelling, rocking or flicking the object, may trigger realisation of its semantics (meaning).[15]
Simultanagnosia Patients can recognize objects or details in their visual field, but only one at a time. They cannot make out the scene they belong to or make out a whole image out of the details. They literally cannot see the forest before the trees.[16] Simultanagnosia is a common symptom of Balint's syndrome.
Social emotional agnosia Sometimes referred to as Expressive Agnosia, this is a form of agnosia in which the person is unable to perceive facial expression, body language and intonation, rendering them unable to non-verbally perceive people's emotions and limiting that aspect of social interaction.
Somatosensory agnosia Or Astereognosia[clarification needed] is connected to tactile sense - that is, touch. Patient finds it difficult to recognize objects by touch based on its texture, size and weight. However, they may be able to describe it verbally or recognize same kind of objects from pictures or draw pictures of them. Thought to be connected to lesions or damage in somatosensory cortex.[6]
Tactile agnosia Impaired ability to recognize or identify objects by touch alone.[17]
Time agnosia Is the loss of comprehension of the succession and duration of events[18].
Topographical agnosia This is a form of visual agnosia in which a person cannot rely on visual cues to guide them directionally due to the inability to recognise objects. Nevertheless, they may still have an excellent capacity to describe the visual layout of the same place[19]
Verbal auditory agnosia This presents as a form of meaning 'deafness' in which hearing is intact but there is significant difficulty recognising spoken words as semantically meaningful.[20]
Visual agnosia Is associated with lesions of the left occipital lobe and temporal lobes. Many types of visual agnosia involve the inability to recognize objects.
Visual verbal agnosia Difficulty comprehending the meaning of written words. The capacity to read is usually intact but compre
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Oedipus Trilogy by Sophocles. Search, Read, Study, Discuss.
The Oedipus Trilogy was originally written by Sophocles and is meant to be told in a story-telling fashion. But this Grecian tragedy was revised and translated into English by Paul Roche and put into a novel form. The Oedipus Trilogy is a novel that deals with destiny and fate. The reader is shown a series of events plotted out from which Oedipus cannot escape. When we begin to read this story, we must remember that Greek society was based around myths and legends. They, much like today’s society, had the need to explain everything. Their myths were a way of explaining such things. They had a series of gods and muses and fates to explain why things happened the way it happened. They believed in a force greater than their own controlling their every move. Sophocles took their beliefs and used the Oedipus Trilogy to explore the irony of how the Fates work more closely. The Oedipus plays are separated into three main plays: Oedipus Rex (The King), Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone. The story starts in Oedipus Rex, and the city of Thebes in which he is ruler is in plague. The city calls upon the ruler Oedipus to find a way to stop the plague. At this point in time, it is 15 years after the prophecy given to him by the Oracle of Delphi of his father dying and him marrying his mother. When he hears of this he promises never to return so he may outsmart the fates. He eventually ends up in Thebes through his travels and gets into an argument with an old man. He ends up killing the old man in a brawl. Little does he know that this old man is King Laius, his father. He goes to Thebes where a Sphynx is harassing it’s people for an answer to it’s riddle. Oedipus solves the riddle and the Sphynx throws itself from its perch upon a rock outside the city. Its people make Oedipus the new King. Now he is faced with another challenge, to find the killer and banish him from the city to rid them of the plague. We are faced with an interesting plot indeed. When Oedipus pledges to find the murderers, he puts himself in the ironic position of having to hunt himself down. The story shows Oedipus following his own tracks until he finds the shepherd who gave the infant Oedipus to the king of Corinth, from King Laius. Once the story becomes clear, Jocasta, his wife, kills herself in a bloody rage and Oedipus stabs his eyes out. Oedipus has Creon, brother to Jocasta, tend to his last affairs and assume kingship of Thebes. When we go to Oedipus at Colonus, the whole story then goes to the eminent defeat of Thebes by whomever holds Oedipus’s tomb. Oedipus promises the knowledge of his tomb only to the kings of Athens. The story of Antigone is of how Oedipus’ daughter defies the will of Creon and gives Polynices. When a person is faced with the possibility of committing an unfavorable deed, a person will take whatever steps necessary to prevent them from committing the act. It is a basic human instinct to prevent ones self from committing the act. And the basic overall theme of the Oedipus trilogy is defiance. We see the attempt to defy throughout the whole trilogy. Oedipus tries to defy the Fates by avoiding his destiny. Creon tries to avoid the will of the Fates by getting Oedipus to come back to Thebes so he can save it from being taken. And Antigone defies the will of Creon by burying Polynices against his will. What they all learned by the end of their stories was that they could not escape their chosen fate. All throughout the story we see attempts to defy the will of others. Oedipus staying in the sanctuary is one example. His resistance to go back to Thebes is another. It all points back to defiance of fate. The entire trilogy is done from a third person omniscient point of view. This gives it the flexibility to move easily between the three different stories without having to explain each setting in length. Each character in Oedipus’ line all seems to have one thing in common, their stubbornness. Creon seems to be a man of distinction and honor in the story. Tiresias, as the seer, symbolizes knowledge and reason. Jocasta acts as the mediator between Oedipus and the rest of the world. The two daughters are quiet and obedient to only their family and to what makes sense. The sons are the symbol of the everlasting conflict in the line of Oedipus. Of course the setting takes a major role in the play. It takes place in ancient Greece, naturally, where tragedies and stories of misfortune are known to happen. And as such there are many symbols used throughout the trilogy. The chorus is one of the main symbols continually used in the story, singing their strophies and antistrophies. Their importance is to show what the people of the time would feel about what was happening. They are sort of a mild version of critics in the story. Tiresias, the seer, is another great symbol in the story. Though he is blind, he is proved in the story to have seen things more clearly than the stubborn Oedipus would have. The irony of it is that Oedipus himself later became that seer in the story of Colonus, with Antigone as his own hand-girl. The plays of Oedipus also use a great range of picturesque speech to make a point. We see it in the very first lines of Oedipus the king when Oedipus asks his beloved people, “what is the meaning of this thronging round my feet- this holding out of olive branches wreathed in woe?” (Roche 23). By this sentence Sophocles is showing that his people are crying at his feet for an answer to their sickness. Little did Oedipus know that he had his own much larger problem on his hands. The plays of Oedipus have long been some of the most enlightening and teaching of stories. This story sparked the study of much psychological debate and theories pertaining to the love of ones mother and ones own sanity. It was used in Ancient Greece to tell of the twisted ways that Fate worked and how you can do something you may not want to out of pure ignorance. This story is a truly remarkable one for those who would read it for pleasure, and yet it is a plague of its own for many a student. And it is still used today so that we may study how an ancient culture thought. Much of Greco-Roman myths are centered on the subject of Fate. Homers epics, the Iliad and the Odyssey are two such examples. We can see that their societies were greatly concerned with Fate, as much of their writing reflects that. Every society has its own needs and concerns, and literature is always the best way to reflect them.
Oedipus the King - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Background
Much of the myth of Oedipus takes place before the opening scene of the play. The protagonist of the tragedy is the son of King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes. After Laius learns from an oracle that \"he is doomed/To perish by the hand of his own son,\" he binds tightly together with a pin the feet of the infant Oedipus and orders Jocasta to kill the infant. Hesitant to do so, she demands a servant to commit the act for her. Instead, the servant abandons the baby in the fields, leaving the baby\'s fate to the gods. A shepherd rescues the infant and names him Oedipus (or \"swollen foot\"). Intending to raise the baby himself, but not possessing of the means to do so, the shepherd gives it to a fellow shepherd from a distant land, who spends the summers sharing pastureland with his flocks.The second shepherd carries the baby with him to Corinth, where Oedipus is taken in and raised in the court of the childless King Polybus of Corinth as if he were his own.
As a young man in Corinth, Oedipus hears a rumour that he is not the biological son of Polybus and his wife Merope. When Oedipus sounds them out on this, they deny it, but, still suspicious, he asks the Delphic Oracle who his parents really are. The Oracle seems to ignore this question, telling him instead that he is destined to \"Mate with [his] own mother, and shed/With [his] own hands the blood of [his] own sire.\" Desperate to avoid his foretold fate, Oedipus leaves Corinth in the belief that Polybus and Merope are indeed his true parents and that, once away from them, he will never harm them.
On the road to Thebes, he meets Laius, his true father. Unaware of each other\'s identities, they quarrel over whose chariot has right-of-way. Oedipus\'s pride leads him to murder Laius, fulfilling part of the oracle\'s prophecy. Shortly after, he solves the riddle of the Sphinx, which has baffled many a diviner: \"What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening?\"
To this Oedipus replies, \"Man\" (who crawls on all fours as an infant, walks upright later, and needs a walking stick in old age), and the distraught Sphinx throws herself off the cliffside. Oedipus\'s reward for freeing the kingdom of Thebes from her curse is the kingship and the hand of queen Jocasta, his biological mother. The prophecy is thus fulfilled, although none of the main characters know it.
[edit] The Action of the Play
A priest and the chorus of Thebans arrive at the palace to call upon their King, Oedipus, to aid them with the plague of Apollo ravaging the city. Oedipus has sent his brother-in-law Creon to ask help of Delphi, who at that moment returns. Creon says the plague is the result of religious pollution, caused because the murderer of their former King, Laius, was never caught. Oedipus vows to find the murderer and curses him for the plague that he has caused.
Oedipus summons the blind prophet Tiresias for help. When Tiresias arrives he claims to know the answers to Oedipus\' questions, but refuses to speak, instead telling Oedipus to abandon his search. Oedipus is enraged by Tiresias\' refusal, and says the prophet must be complicit in the murder. Outraged, Tiresias tells the king that Oedipus himself is the murderer. Oedipus cannot see how this could be, and concludes that the prophet must have been paid off by Creon in an attempt to undermine him. The two argue vehemently and eventually Tiresias leaves, muttering darkly that when the murderer is discovered he shall be: a native citizen of Thebes; brother and father to his own children; and son and husband to his own mother.
Creon arrives to face Oedipus\' accusations. The King demands that Creon be executed, however the chorus convince him to let Creon live. Oedipus\' wife Jocasta enters, and attempts to comfort Oedipus, telling him he should take no notice of prophets. Many years ago she and Laius received an oracle which never came true. It was said that Laius would be killed by his own son, but, as all Thebes knows, Laius was killed by bandits at a crossroads on the way to Delphi.
The mention of this crossroads causes Oedipus to pause and ask for more details. He asks Jocasta what Laius looked like, and suddenly becomes worried that Tiresias\' accusations were true. Oedipus sends for the one surviving witness of the attack to be brought to the palace from the fields where he now works as a shepherd. Jocasta, confused, asks Oedipus what is the matter, and he tells her.
Many years ago, at a banquet in Corinth, a man drunkenly accused Oedipus of not being his father\'s son. Bothered by the comment Oedipus went to Delphi and asked the oracle about his parentage. Instead of answers he was given a prophesy that he would one day murder his father and sleep with his mother. Upon hearing this he resolved to quit Corinth and never return. While travelling he came to the very crossroads where Laius was killed, and encountered a carriage which attempted to drive him off the road. An argument ensued and Oedipus killed the travellers, including a man who matches Jocasta\'s description of Laius.
Oedipus has hope, however, because the story is that Laius was murdered by a gang of robbers. If the shepherd confirms that Laius was attacked by many men, then Oedipus is in the clear.
A man arrives from Corinth with the message that Oedipus\' father has died. Oedipus, to the surprise of the messenger, is made ecstatic by this news, for it proves one half of the prophesy false, for now he can never kill his father. However he still fears that he may somehow commit incest with his mother. The messenger, eager to ease Oedipus\' mind, tells him not to worry, because Merope the Queen of Corinth was not in fact his real mother.
It emerges that this messenger was formerly a shepherd on Mount Cithaeron, and that he came was given a baby, which the childless Polybus then adopted. The baby, he says, was given to him by another shepherd from the household Laius, who had been told to get rid of the child. Oedipus asks the chorus if anyone knows who this man was, or where he might be now. They respond that he is the same shepherd who was witness to the murder of Laius, and who Oedipus had already been sent for. Jocasta, who has by now realised the truth, desperately begs Oedipus to stop asking questions, but he refuses and Jocasta runs into the palace.
When the shepherd arrives Oedipus questions him, but he begs to be allowed to leave without answering further. Oedipus presses him however, finally threatening him with torture or execution. It emerges that the child he gave away was Laius\' own son, and that Jocasta had given the baby to the shepherd to secretly be exposed upon the mountainside. This was was done in fear of the prophecy that Jocasta said had never come true: that the child would kill its father.
Everything has at last been revealed, and Oedipus curses himself and fate before leaving the stage. The chorus laments how even a great man can be felled by fate, and shortly afterwards a servant exits the palace to speak of what has happened inside. When Jocasta entered the house she ran to the palace bedroom and hanged herself there. Shortly afterwards Oedipus entered in a fury, calling on his servants to bring him a sword so that he might kill himself. He then raged through the house until he came upon Jocasta\'s body. Giving a cry, Oedipus took her down and removed the long gold pins that held her dress together, before plunging them into his own eyes in despair.
A blind Oedipus now exits the palace and begs to be exiled as soon as possible. Creon enters, saying that Oedipus shall be taken into the house until oracles can be consulted regarding what it best to be done. Oedipus\' two daughters, Antigone and Ismene, are sent out and Oedipus laments that they should be born to such a cursed family. He asks Creon to watch over them and Creon agrees, before sending Oedipus back into the palace.
On an empty stage the chorus repeat the common Greek maxim, that no man should be considered fortunate until he is dead[3].
[edit] Relationship with the mythic tradition
The two cities of Troy and Thebes, were the major focus of Greek epic poetry. The events surrounding the Trojan War were chronicled in the Epic Cycle, of which much remains, and those about Thebes in the Theban Cycle, which have been lost. The Theban Cycle recounted the sequence of tragedies that befell the house of Laius, of which the story of Oedipus is a part.
In Homer\'s Odyssey (XI.271ff.) we get our earliest account of the Oedipus myth when Odysseus encounters Jocasta (named Epicaste) in the underworld. Homer briefly summarises the story of Oedipus, including the incest, patricide, and Jocasta\'s subsequent suicide. However in the Homeric version Oedipus remains King of Thebes after the revelation and neither blinds himself, nor is sent into exile. In particular, it is said that the gods made the matter known, whilst in Oedipus the King Oedipus very much discovers the truth himself[4].
In 467 BC, Sophocles\' fellow tragedian Aeschylus won first prize at the City Dionysia with a trilogy about the House of Laius, comprising Laius, Oedipus and Seven against Thebes (the only play which survives). The major difference that we can see between the two tragedians\' interpretations, is that the Aeschylean prophecies were conditional, whereas Sophocles\' were definite (see discussion on fate below). On other particulars of the myth the two interpretations appear to concur.
[edit] Themes and motifs
[edit] Fate and free will
Fate is a theme that often occurs in Greek writing, tragedies in particular. The inevitability of oracular predictions is one such example: It is predicted that Oedipus shall \"kill his father and mate with his mother\", thus his parents order a servant to kill the child. As a result Oedipus ends up being adopted and not knowing his true parents. When he then hears the prophecy for himself, he leaves Corinth to avoid this, but in fact runs away from the wrong people. In running away he crosses paths with his biological family, something which otherwise would never have occurred. The idea that attempting to avoid an oracle is the very thing which brings it about is a common motif in many Greek myths, and similarities to Oedipus can for example be seen in the myth of the birth of Perseus.
Two oracles in particular dominate the plot of Oedipus the King. In lines 713 to 714, Jocasta relates the prophecy that was told to Laius before the birth of Oedipus. Namely:
that it was fate that he should die a victim
at the hands of his own son, a son to be born
of Laius and me.
The oracle told to Laius tells only of the patricide, whereas the incest is missing. This perhaps prevents Jocasta and Oedipus from being suspicious of the fact that both had received near-identical oracles. As Oedipus, prompted by Jocasta\'s recollection, narrates the prophecy which caused him to leave Corinth (791-93):
it was my fate to defile my mother\'s bed,
to bring forth to men a human family that people could not bear to look upon,
to murder the father who engendered me.
These two oracles are interestingly distinct from the Aeschylean interpretation of the myth. The oracle as told in The Seven Against Thebes is conditional: if Laius has a child, then he shall grow up to kill his father. Thus, rather like his Oresteia, Aeschylus\' interpretation of the myth is one of a curse running through successive generations of a family begun by a single choice[5]. Sophocles\' Oedipus, however, is simply doomed from his moment of birth, and thus there is no justification for the punishment that he receives. This is what the chorus refers to (1186-1222) when they mourn the fact that even the best men can be destroyed by fate.
Given our modern conception of fate and fatalism, readers of the play have a tendency to view Oedipus as a mere puppet controlled by greater forces, a man crushed by the gods and fate for no good reason. This, however, is not an entirely accurate reading. While it is a mythological truism that oracles exist to be fulfilled, oracles merely predict the future. Neither they nor Fate dictates the future. In his landmark essay \"On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex\",[6] E.R. Dodds draws a comparison with Jesus\'s prophecy at the Last Supper that Peter would deny him three times. Jesus knows that Peter will do this, but we as readers would in no way suggest that Peter was a puppet of fate being forced to deny Christ. Free will and predestination are by no means mutually exclusive, and thus is the case with Oedipus.
The oracle delivered to Oedipus is often called a \"self-fulfilling prophecy\", in that the prophecy itself sets in motion events that conclude with its own fulfillment.[7] This, however, is not to say that Oedipus is a victim of fate and has no free will. The oracle inspires a series of specific choices, freely made by Oedipus, which lead to kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus chooses not to return to Corinth after hearing the oracle, just as he chooses to head toward Thebes, to kill Laius, to marry and to take Jocasta specifically as his bride; in response to the plague at Thebes, he chooses to send Creon to the Oracle for advice and then to follow that advice, initiating the investigation into Laius\'s murder. None of these choices were predetermined.
Another characteristic of oracles in myth is that they are almost always misunderstood by those who hear them; hence Oedipus\'s misunderstanding the significance of the Delphic Oracle. He visits Delphi to find out who his real parents are and assumes that the Oracle refuses to answer that question, offering instead an unrelated prophecy which forecasts patricide and incest. Oedipus\'s assumption is incorrect: the Oracle does answer his question. Stated less elliptically, the answer to his question reads thus: \"Polybus and Merope are not your parents. You will one day kill a man who will turn out to be your biological father. You will also one day marry, and the woman whom you choose as your bride will be your mother.\"[citation needed]
[edit] State control
The exploration of this theme in Oedipus the King is paralleled by the examination of the conflict between the individual and the state in Antigone. The dilemma that Oedipus faces here is similar to that of the tyrannical Creon: each man has, as king, made a decision that his subjects question or disobey; each king also misconstrues both his own role as a sovereign and the role of the rebel. When informed by the blind prophet Tiresias that religious forces are against him, each king claims that the priest has been corrupted. It is here, however, that their similarities come to an end: while Creon, seeing the havoc he has wreaked, tries to amend his mistakes, Oedipus refuses to listen to anyone.[8]
[edit] Sight and blindness
Literal and metaphorical references to eyesight appear throughout Oedipus the King. Clear vision serves as a metaphor for insight and knowledge, but the clear-eyed Oedipus is blind to the truth about his origins and inadvertent crimes. The prophet Tiresias, on the other hand, although literally blind, \"sees\" the truth and relays what is revealed to him. Only after Oedipus has physically blinded himself so as not to look upon his children, the fruit of his unconscious sin, does he gain a limited prophetic ability, as seen in Oedipus at Colonus.[original research?]. It is deliberately ironic that the \"seer\" can \"see\" better than Oedipus, despite being blind. In one line (Oedipus Rex, 469), Tiresias says:
\"So, you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this. You [Oedipus] with your precious eyes, you\'re blind to the corruption of your life...\"
(Robert Fagles 1984)
Much of the myth of Oedipus takes place before the opening scene of the play. The protagonist of the tragedy is the son of King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes. After Laius learns from an oracle that \"he is doomed/To perish by the hand of his own son,\" he binds tightly together with a pin the feet of the infant Oedipus and orders Jocasta to kill the infant. Hesitant to do so, she demands a servant to commit the act for her. Instead, the servant abandons the baby in the fields, leaving the baby\'s fate to the gods. A shepherd rescues the infant and names him Oedipus (or \"swollen foot\"). Intending to raise the baby himself, but not possessing of the means to do so, the shepherd gives it to a fellow shepherd from a distant land, who spends the summers sharing pastureland with his flocks.The second shepherd carries the baby with him to Corinth, where Oedipus is taken in and raised in the court of the childless King Polybus of Corinth as if he were his own.
As a young man in Corinth, Oedipus hears a rumour that he is not the biological son of Polybus and his wife Merope. When Oedipus sounds them out on this, they deny it, but, still suspicious, he asks the Delphic Oracle who his parents really are. The Oracle seems to ignore this question, telling him instead that he is destined to \"Mate with [his] own mother, and shed/With [his] own hands the blood of [his] own sire.\" Desperate to avoid his foretold fate, Oedipus leaves Corinth in the belief that Polybus and Merope are indeed his true parents and that, once away from them, he will never harm them.
On the road to Thebes, he meets Laius, his true father. Unaware of each other\'s identities, they quarrel over whose chariot has right-of-way. Oedipus\'s pride leads him to murder Laius, fulfilling part of the oracle\'s prophecy. Shortly after, he solves the riddle of the Sphinx, which has baffled many a diviner: \"What is the creature that walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three in the evening?\"
To this Oedipus replies, \"Man\" (who crawls on all fours as an infant, walks upright later, and needs a walking stick in old age), and the distraught Sphinx throws herself off the cliffside. Oedipus\'s reward for freeing the kingdom of Thebes from her curse is the kingship and the hand of queen Jocasta, his biological mother. The prophecy is thus fulfilled, although none of the main characters know it.
[edit] The Action of the Play
A priest and the chorus of Thebans arrive at the palace to call upon their King, Oedipus, to aid them with the plague of Apollo ravaging the city. Oedipus has sent his brother-in-law Creon to ask help of Delphi, who at that moment returns. Creon says the plague is the result of religious pollution, caused because the murderer of their former King, Laius, was never caught. Oedipus vows to find the murderer and curses him for the plague that he has caused.
Oedipus summons the blind prophet Tiresias for help. When Tiresias arrives he claims to know the answers to Oedipus\' questions, but refuses to speak, instead telling Oedipus to abandon his search. Oedipus is enraged by Tiresias\' refusal, and says the prophet must be complicit in the murder. Outraged, Tiresias tells the king that Oedipus himself is the murderer. Oedipus cannot see how this could be, and concludes that the prophet must have been paid off by Creon in an attempt to undermine him. The two argue vehemently and eventually Tiresias leaves, muttering darkly that when the murderer is discovered he shall be: a native citizen of Thebes; brother and father to his own children; and son and husband to his own mother.
Creon arrives to face Oedipus\' accusations. The King demands that Creon be executed, however the chorus convince him to let Creon live. Oedipus\' wife Jocasta enters, and attempts to comfort Oedipus, telling him he should take no notice of prophets. Many years ago she and Laius received an oracle which never came true. It was said that Laius would be killed by his own son, but, as all Thebes knows, Laius was killed by bandits at a crossroads on the way to Delphi.
The mention of this crossroads causes Oedipus to pause and ask for more details. He asks Jocasta what Laius looked like, and suddenly becomes worried that Tiresias\' accusations were true. Oedipus sends for the one surviving witness of the attack to be brought to the palace from the fields where he now works as a shepherd. Jocasta, confused, asks Oedipus what is the matter, and he tells her.
Many years ago, at a banquet in Corinth, a man drunkenly accused Oedipus of not being his father\'s son. Bothered by the comment Oedipus went to Delphi and asked the oracle about his parentage. Instead of answers he was given a prophesy that he would one day murder his father and sleep with his mother. Upon hearing this he resolved to quit Corinth and never return. While travelling he came to the very crossroads where Laius was killed, and encountered a carriage which attempted to drive him off the road. An argument ensued and Oedipus killed the travellers, including a man who matches Jocasta\'s description of Laius.
Oedipus has hope, however, because the story is that Laius was murdered by a gang of robbers. If the shepherd confirms that Laius was attacked by many men, then Oedipus is in the clear.
A man arrives from Corinth with the message that Oedipus\' father has died. Oedipus, to the surprise of the messenger, is made ecstatic by this news, for it proves one half of the prophesy false, for now he can never kill his father. However he still fears that he may somehow commit incest with his mother. The messenger, eager to ease Oedipus\' mind, tells him not to worry, because Merope the Queen of Corinth was not in fact his real mother.
It emerges that this messenger was formerly a shepherd on Mount Cithaeron, and that he came was given a baby, which the childless Polybus then adopted. The baby, he says, was given to him by another shepherd from the household Laius, who had been told to get rid of the child. Oedipus asks the chorus if anyone knows who this man was, or where he might be now. They respond that he is the same shepherd who was witness to the murder of Laius, and who Oedipus had already been sent for. Jocasta, who has by now realised the truth, desperately begs Oedipus to stop asking questions, but he refuses and Jocasta runs into the palace.
When the shepherd arrives Oedipus questions him, but he begs to be allowed to leave without answering further. Oedipus presses him however, finally threatening him with torture or execution. It emerges that the child he gave away was Laius\' own son, and that Jocasta had given the baby to the shepherd to secretly be exposed upon the mountainside. This was was done in fear of the prophecy that Jocasta said had never come true: that the child would kill its father.
Everything has at last been revealed, and Oedipus curses himself and fate before leaving the stage. The chorus laments how even a great man can be felled by fate, and shortly afterwards a servant exits the palace to speak of what has happened inside. When Jocasta entered the house she ran to the palace bedroom and hanged herself there. Shortly afterwards Oedipus entered in a fury, calling on his servants to bring him a sword so that he might kill himself. He then raged through the house until he came upon Jocasta\'s body. Giving a cry, Oedipus took her down and removed the long gold pins that held her dress together, before plunging them into his own eyes in despair.
A blind Oedipus now exits the palace and begs to be exiled as soon as possible. Creon enters, saying that Oedipus shall be taken into the house until oracles can be consulted regarding what it best to be done. Oedipus\' two daughters, Antigone and Ismene, are sent out and Oedipus laments that they should be born to such a cursed family. He asks Creon to watch over them and Creon agrees, before sending Oedipus back into the palace.
On an empty stage the chorus repeat the common Greek maxim, that no man should be considered fortunate until he is dead[3].
[edit] Relationship with the mythic tradition
The two cities of Troy and Thebes, were the major focus of Greek epic poetry. The events surrounding the Trojan War were chronicled in the Epic Cycle, of which much remains, and those about Thebes in the Theban Cycle, which have been lost. The Theban Cycle recounted the sequence of tragedies that befell the house of Laius, of which the story of Oedipus is a part.
In Homer\'s Odyssey (XI.271ff.) we get our earliest account of the Oedipus myth when Odysseus encounters Jocasta (named Epicaste) in the underworld. Homer briefly summarises the story of Oedipus, including the incest, patricide, and Jocasta\'s subsequent suicide. However in the Homeric version Oedipus remains King of Thebes after the revelation and neither blinds himself, nor is sent into exile. In particular, it is said that the gods made the matter known, whilst in Oedipus the King Oedipus very much discovers the truth himself[4].
In 467 BC, Sophocles\' fellow tragedian Aeschylus won first prize at the City Dionysia with a trilogy about the House of Laius, comprising Laius, Oedipus and Seven against Thebes (the only play which survives). The major difference that we can see between the two tragedians\' interpretations, is that the Aeschylean prophecies were conditional, whereas Sophocles\' were definite (see discussion on fate below). On other particulars of the myth the two interpretations appear to concur.
[edit] Themes and motifs
[edit] Fate and free will
Fate is a theme that often occurs in Greek writing, tragedies in particular. The inevitability of oracular predictions is one such example: It is predicted that Oedipus shall \"kill his father and mate with his mother\", thus his parents order a servant to kill the child. As a result Oedipus ends up being adopted and not knowing his true parents. When he then hears the prophecy for himself, he leaves Corinth to avoid this, but in fact runs away from the wrong people. In running away he crosses paths with his biological family, something which otherwise would never have occurred. The idea that attempting to avoid an oracle is the very thing which brings it about is a common motif in many Greek myths, and similarities to Oedipus can for example be seen in the myth of the birth of Perseus.
Two oracles in particular dominate the plot of Oedipus the King. In lines 713 to 714, Jocasta relates the prophecy that was told to Laius before the birth of Oedipus. Namely:
that it was fate that he should die a victim
at the hands of his own son, a son to be born
of Laius and me.
The oracle told to Laius tells only of the patricide, whereas the incest is missing. This perhaps prevents Jocasta and Oedipus from being suspicious of the fact that both had received near-identical oracles. As Oedipus, prompted by Jocasta\'s recollection, narrates the prophecy which caused him to leave Corinth (791-93):
it was my fate to defile my mother\'s bed,
to bring forth to men a human family that people could not bear to look upon,
to murder the father who engendered me.
These two oracles are interestingly distinct from the Aeschylean interpretation of the myth. The oracle as told in The Seven Against Thebes is conditional: if Laius has a child, then he shall grow up to kill his father. Thus, rather like his Oresteia, Aeschylus\' interpretation of the myth is one of a curse running through successive generations of a family begun by a single choice[5]. Sophocles\' Oedipus, however, is simply doomed from his moment of birth, and thus there is no justification for the punishment that he receives. This is what the chorus refers to (1186-1222) when they mourn the fact that even the best men can be destroyed by fate.
Given our modern conception of fate and fatalism, readers of the play have a tendency to view Oedipus as a mere puppet controlled by greater forces, a man crushed by the gods and fate for no good reason. This, however, is not an entirely accurate reading. While it is a mythological truism that oracles exist to be fulfilled, oracles merely predict the future. Neither they nor Fate dictates the future. In his landmark essay \"On Misunderstanding the Oedipus Rex\",[6] E.R. Dodds draws a comparison with Jesus\'s prophecy at the Last Supper that Peter would deny him three times. Jesus knows that Peter will do this, but we as readers would in no way suggest that Peter was a puppet of fate being forced to deny Christ. Free will and predestination are by no means mutually exclusive, and thus is the case with Oedipus.
The oracle delivered to Oedipus is often called a \"self-fulfilling prophecy\", in that the prophecy itself sets in motion events that conclude with its own fulfillment.[7] This, however, is not to say that Oedipus is a victim of fate and has no free will. The oracle inspires a series of specific choices, freely made by Oedipus, which lead to kill his father and marry his mother. Oedipus chooses not to return to Corinth after hearing the oracle, just as he chooses to head toward Thebes, to kill Laius, to marry and to take Jocasta specifically as his bride; in response to the plague at Thebes, he chooses to send Creon to the Oracle for advice and then to follow that advice, initiating the investigation into Laius\'s murder. None of these choices were predetermined.
Another characteristic of oracles in myth is that they are almost always misunderstood by those who hear them; hence Oedipus\'s misunderstanding the significance of the Delphic Oracle. He visits Delphi to find out who his real parents are and assumes that the Oracle refuses to answer that question, offering instead an unrelated prophecy which forecasts patricide and incest. Oedipus\'s assumption is incorrect: the Oracle does answer his question. Stated less elliptically, the answer to his question reads thus: \"Polybus and Merope are not your parents. You will one day kill a man who will turn out to be your biological father. You will also one day marry, and the woman whom you choose as your bride will be your mother.\"[citation needed]
[edit] State control
The exploration of this theme in Oedipus the King is paralleled by the examination of the conflict between the individual and the state in Antigone. The dilemma that Oedipus faces here is similar to that of the tyrannical Creon: each man has, as king, made a decision that his subjects question or disobey; each king also misconstrues both his own role as a sovereign and the role of the rebel. When informed by the blind prophet Tiresias that religious forces are against him, each king claims that the priest has been corrupted. It is here, however, that their similarities come to an end: while Creon, seeing the havoc he has wreaked, tries to amend his mistakes, Oedipus refuses to listen to anyone.[8]
[edit] Sight and blindness
Literal and metaphorical references to eyesight appear throughout Oedipus the King. Clear vision serves as a metaphor for insight and knowledge, but the clear-eyed Oedipus is blind to the truth about his origins and inadvertent crimes. The prophet Tiresias, on the other hand, although literally blind, \"sees\" the truth and relays what is revealed to him. Only after Oedipus has physically blinded himself so as not to look upon his children, the fruit of his unconscious sin, does he gain a limited prophetic ability, as seen in Oedipus at Colonus.[original research?]. It is deliberately ironic that the \"seer\" can \"see\" better than Oedipus, despite being blind. In one line (Oedipus Rex, 469), Tiresias says:
\"So, you mock my blindness? Let me tell you this. You [Oedipus] with your precious eyes, you\'re blind to the corruption of your life...\"
(Robert Fagles 1984)
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