|
Alan F. Alford
Alan F. Alford, (1961-14 November 2011) was a British writer and speaker on the subjects of ancient religion, mythology, and Egyptology. His first book ''Gods of the New Millennium'' (1996) drew on the ancient astronaut theory of Zecharia Sitchin and became a number 11 non-fiction bestseller in the UK. In his subsequent writings, however, he admitted to serious faults in his use of Sitchin's theory and proposed an alternative, cataclysm theory of ancient myth: "I am now firmly of the opinion that these gods personified the falling sky; in other words, the descent of the gods was a poetic rendition of the cataclysm myth which stood at the heart of ancient Near Eastern religions." Alford's recent work focuses on the importance of the creation myth in ancient Egyptian religion. Biography Born in 1961, Alan Alford was educated at King Edward VI School in Southampton, England and gained a degree in Commerce from the University of Birmingham in 1982. He became a qualified chartered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mythology
Myth is a folklore genre consisting of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society, such as foundational tales or origin myths. Since "myth" is widely used to imply that a story is not objectively true, the identification of a narrative as a myth can be highly controversial. Many adherents of religions view their own religions' stories as truth and so object to their characterization as myth, the way they see the stories of other religions. As such, some scholars label all religious narratives "myths" for practical reasons, such as to avoid depreciating any one tradition because cultures interpret each other differently relative to one another. Other scholars avoid using the term "myth" altogether and instead use different terms like "sacred history", "holy story", or simply "history" to avoid placing pejorative overtones on any sacred narrative. Myths are often endorsed by secular and religious authorities and are closely linked to religion or spirituality. Many soc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Victor Clube
Stace Victor Murray Clube (born 22 October 1934 in London) is an English astrophysicist. He was educated at St John's School, Leatherhead and Christ Church, Oxford. in He played first-class cricket for Oxford University. He appeared seventeen times for the university between 1956 and 1959, but only won a Blue—the awarding of the Oxford "colours" to sportsmen—in his first year there, appearing in the 1956 University match against Cambridge. During that match, which finished as a draw, he took just one wicket with his off break bowling. Clube obtained his doctorate in 1959 with a thesis titled '' Interferometry of the Solar Chemosphere and Photosphere'' and went on to become a professional astrophysicist and astronomer. He has been Dean of the Astrophysics Department of Oxford University, and has worked at the observatories of Edinburgh, Armagh and Cape Town. In 1994 he appeared in the BBC '' Horizon'' programme; "The Hunt for the Doomsday Asteroid". The asteroid 6523 C ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Peter Allen
James Peter Allen (born 1945) is an American Egyptologist, specializing in language and religion. He was curator of Egyptian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1990 to 2006. In 2007, he became the Charles Edwin Wilbour Professor of Egyptology at Brown University. In 2008, he was elected president of the International Association of Egyptologists. A graduate of Saint Meinrad Seminary and School of Theology, he received his PhD from the University of Chicago. Major publications * ''The Inflection of the Verb in the Pyramid Texts'' (Malibu: Undena, 1984) * ''Genesis in Egypt: The Philosophy of Ancient Egyptian Creation Accounts'' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988) * ''Middle Egyptian: An Introduction to the Language and Culture of Hieroglyphs'' (Cambridge: University Press, 2000) * ''The Heqanakht papyri''. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002) * ''The Art of Medicine in Ancient Egypt'' (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2006) * ''The Ancient Egyptian Pyrami ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Penglase
Charles is a masculine given name predominantly found in English and French speaking countries. It is from the French form ''Charles'' of the Proto-Germanic name (in runic alphabet) or ''*karilaz'' (in Latin alphabet), whose meaning was "free man". The Old English descendant of this word was '' Ċearl'' or ''Ċeorl'', as the name of King Cearl of Mercia, that disappeared after the Norman conquest of England. The name was notably borne by Charlemagne (Charles the Great), and was at the time Latinized as ''Karolus'' (as in ''Vita Karoli Magni''), later also as '' Carolus''. Some Germanic languages, for example Dutch and German, have retained the word in two separate senses. In the particular case of Dutch, ''Karel'' refers to the given name, whereas the noun ''kerel'' means "a bloke, fellow, man". Etymology The name's etymology is a Common Germanic noun ''*karilaz'' meaning "free man", which survives in English as churl (< Old English ''ċeorl''), which developed its depre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Martin Litchfield West
Martin Litchfield West, (23 September 1937 – 13 July 2015) was a British philologist and classical scholar. In recognition of his contribution to scholarship, he was awarded the Order of Merit in 2014. West wrote on ancient Greek music, Greek tragedy, Greek lyric poetry, the relations between Greece and the ancient Near East, and the connection between shamanism and early ancient Greek religion, including the Orphic tradition. This work stems from material in Akkadian, Phoenician, Hebrew, Hittite, and Ugaritic, as well as Greek and Latin. West also studied the reconstitution of Indo-European mythology and poetry and its influence on Ancient Greece, notably in the 2007 book ''Indo-European Poetry and Myth'' (''IEPM''). In 2001, he produced an edition of Homer's ''Iliad'' for the Bibliotheca Teubneriana, accompanied by a study of its critical tradition and overall philology entitled ''Studies in the Text and Transmission of the Iliad.'' A further volume on ''The Making of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Walter Burkert
Walter Burkert (; 2 February 1931 – 11 March 2015) was a German scholar of Greek mythology and cult. A professor of classics at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, he taught in the UK and the US. He has influenced generations of students of religion since the 1960s, combining in the modern way the findings of archaeology and epigraphy with the work of poets, historians, and philosophers. He was a member of both the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He published books on the balance between lore and science among the followers of Pythagoras, and more extensively on ritual and archaic cult survival, on the ritual killing at the heart of religion, on mystery religions, and on the reception in the Hellenic world of Near Eastern and Persian culture, which sets Greek religion in its wider Aegean and Near Eastern context. First academic era Burkert was born in Neuendettelsau. He married Maria Bosch in 1957 and they had three chi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Titan (mythology)
In Greek mythology, the Titans ( grc, οἱ Τῑτᾶνες, ''hoi Tītânes'', , ''ho Tītân'') were the pre-Olympian gods. According to the ''Theogony'' of Hesiod, they were the twelve children of the primordial parents Uranus (Sky) and Gaia (Earth), with six male Titans— Oceanus, Coeus, Crius, Hyperion, Iapetus, and Cronus—and six female Titans, called the Titanides or "Titanesses" (, ''hai Tītānídes'')—Theia, Rhea, Themis, Mnemosyne, Phoebe, and Tethys. Cronus mated with his older sister Rhea, who then bore the first generation of Olympians: the six siblings Zeus, Hades, Poseidon, Hestia, Demeter, and Hera. Certain descendants of the Titans, such as Prometheus, Helios, and Leto, are sometimes also called Titans. The Titans were the former gods: the generation of gods preceding the Olympians. They were overthrown as part of the Greek succession myth, which tells how Cronus seized power from his father Uranus and ruled the cosmos with his fellow Titans b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hesiod
Hesiod (; grc-gre, Ἡσίοδος ''Hēsíodos'') was an ancient Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. He is generally regarded by western authors as 'the first written poet in the Western tradition to regard himself as an individual persona with an active role to play in his subject.' Ancient authors credited Hesiod and Homer with establishing Greek religious customs. Modern scholars refer to him as a major source on Greek mythology, farming techniques, early economic thought, archaic Greek astronomy and ancient time-keeping. Life The dating of Hesiod's life is a contested issue in scholarly circles (''see § Dating below''). Epic narrative allowed poets like Homer no opportunity for personal revelations. However, Hesiod's extant work comprises several didactic poems in which he went out of his way to let his audience in on a few details of his life. There are three explicit references in ''Works and Days'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Atlantis
Atlantis ( grc, Ἀτλαντὶς νῆσος, , island of Atlas (mythology), Atlas) is a fictional island mentioned in an allegory on the hubris of nations in Plato's works ''Timaeus (dialogue), Timaeus'' and ''Critias (dialogue), Critias'', wherein it represents the antagonist naval power that besieges "Ancient Athens", the Counterfactual history, pseudo-historic embodiment of Plato's ideal state in ''The Republic (Plato), The Republic''. In the story, Athens repels the Atlantean attack unlike any other nation of the Ecumene, known world, supposedly bearing witness to the superiority of Plato's concept of a state. The story concludes with Atlantis falling out of favor with the deities and submerging into the Atlantic Ocean. Despite its minor importance in Plato's work, the Atlantis story has had a considerable impact on literature. The allegorical aspect of Atlantis was taken up in utopian works of several Renaissance writers, such as Francis Bacon's ''New Atlantis'' and Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plato
Plato ( ; grc-gre, Πλάτων ; 428/427 or 424/423 – 348/347 BC) was a Greek philosopher born in Athens during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. He founded the Platonist school of thought and the Academy, the first institution of higher learning on the European continent. Along with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato is a central figure in the history of Ancient Greek philosophy and the Western and Middle Eastern philosophies descended from it. He has also shaped religion and spirituality. The so-called neoplatonism of his interpreter Plotinus greatly influenced both Christianity (through Church Fathers such as Augustine) and Islamic philosophy (through e.g. Al-Farabi). In modern times, Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed Western culture as growing in the shadow of Plato (famously calling Christianity "Platonism for the masses"), while Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Immanuel Velikovsky
Immanuel Velikovsky (; rus, Иммануи́л Велико́вский, p=ɪmənʊˈil vʲɪlʲɪˈkofskʲɪj; 17 November 1979) was a Jewish, Russian-American psychoanalyst, writer, and catastrophist. He is the author of several books offering pseudohistorical interpretations of ancient history, including the U.S. bestseller ''Worlds in Collision'' published in 1950. Velikovsky's work is frequently cited as a canonical example of pseudoscience and has been used as an example of the demarcation problem. His books use comparative mythology and ancient literary sources (including the Old Testament) to argue that Earth suffered catastrophic close contacts with other planets (principally Venus and Mars) in ancient history. In positioning Velikovsky among catastrophists including Hans Bellamy, Ignatius Donnelly, and , the British astronomers Victor Clube and Bill Napier noted "... Velikovsky is not so much the first of the new catastrophists ...; he is the last in a lin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
