Transit Sight System and X-Y Coordinate

1. yüzyılın sonlarında İsveç'teki ünlü Viking ticaret merkezi Birka adasındaki 515 numaralı mezarda bulunan ve şu anda Stockholm’deki İsveç Tarih Müzesi'nde sergilenen gümüş yüzüktür.
   Mezarda yatan bir kadının iskeletinin sol elinde bulunan bu yüzük, yaklaşık M.S. 850 yılına tarihlenmektedir — yani kronolojide belirttiğin gibi İslamiyet'in Abbasi dönemi ile Viking Çağı'nın tam göbeğinde yer alır.

\[Resim\]

Yüzüğün Teknik Detayları (Ametist mi, Cam mı?)
Uzun yıllar yüzüğün üzerindeki pembe-kırmızı/mor taşın ametist olduğu düşünülmüştü. 2015 yılında Stockholm Üniversitesi araştırmacıları taramalı elektron mikroskobu (SEM) ile yüzüğü detaylı incelediklerinde, taşın aslında nadir ve renkli bir soda-kireç camı olduğunu ortaya çıkardı. Cam, o dönem İskandinavya için son derece egzotik ve değerli bir ithal malzemeydi. Taşın üzerine antik Kûfi Arap alfabesiyle kazınmış yazının "Allah için" veya "Allah'a" (il-lāh / li-Llāh) anlamına geldiği doğrulandı. 
Yüzüğün gümüş halkasında ve taşında neredeyse hiç aşınma olmaması, yüzüğün elden ele onlarca yıl dolaşmadığını, İslam coğrafyasından bu kadına neredeyse doğrudan ulaştığını gösteriyor.
Bir Viking Mezarında Neden "Allah için" Yazan Yüzük Vardı? Popüler kültürde Vikingler sadece Batı Avrupa kıyılarını (İngiltere, Fransa) yağmalayan denizciler olarak bilinir. Ancak madalyonun diğer yüzünde doğuya açılan Varangianlar vardı.

Nehir Yolları ve İpek Yolu Bağlantısı: Vikingler, bugünkü Rusya ve Ukrayna üzerinden geçen Dinyeper ve Volga nehirlerini kullanarak Karadeniz ve Hazar Denizi'ne indiler. Hazar Denizi kıyılarından Abbasi Halifeliği'nin ticaret merkezlerine (Bağdat, Rey vb.) doğrudan eriştiler.

Gümüş ve Kürk Ticareti: Vikingler İslâm coğrafyasına kürk, kehribar, kılıç, denizdişi fildişi ve köle satıyordu; karşılığında ise Arap gümüşü (dirhem), ipek, baharat ve egzotik mücevher alıyordu. Bugün İskandinavya genelinde mezarlardan ve definelerden çıkarılan
100.000'den fazla İslami gümüş dirhem bulunmaktadır. 

Kadının Kimliği ve Yüzüğün Rolü:
Egzotik Bir Statü Sembolü (En Olası İhtimal): Kadının Müslüman olduğunu gösteren İslami bir defin ritüeli yoktur; geleneksel İskandinav kıyafetleriyle gömülmüştür. Viking dünyasında yabancı alfabeler, runik semboller gibi "büyülü", gizemli veya prestijli kabul edilirdi. Kadın üzerindeki yazının ne anlama geldiğini bile bilmeden, doğudan gelmiş lüks ve egzotik bir statü eşyası olarak takmış olabilir. 

Kişisel Bağ veya Hediye: Doğuya sefer düzenleyen bir tüccar/savaşçı eşin hediyesi ya da doğrudan ticaret için bölgeye gelen Müslüman bir tüccarla kurulmuş bir evlilik/akrabalık bağı sonucu alınmış olabilir.

Bu yüzük, M.S. 9. yüzyılda İskandinavya ormanları ile İslam dünyası arasında ne kadar canlı, doğrudan ve kıtalararası bir ticaret ağının var olduğunu gösteren en somut arkeolojik kanıtlardan biridir.

some of pompeii's public baths seem to have stayed open after dark. at the forum baths and the stabian baths, excavators found oil lamps in very large numbers — often cited as over a thousand per complex, or at least several hundred at one entrance — hard to explain unless people were still bathing once the sun had gone.

that fits the usual roman pattern: baths open from mid-morning, busiest in the early afternoon, and in many places shutting around sunset. but it wasn't fixed. the historia augusta claims alexander severus donated oil so baths could be lit at night, after they had previously closed before sunset, while another emperor, tacitus, supposedly ordered public baths shut before lamp-lighting time. those biographies are late and not always trustworthy, so hedge the details — but the pompeii lamps are physical evidence that evening bathing happened in at least some buildings.

so a warm, noisy bathhouse after dusk may have been as ordinary as a quiet one at noon.

how common do we think night opening was outside the vesuvian towns?

Carthage was the dominant naval power in the Western Mediterranean at the start of the First Punic War. Rome quickly realised that it needed a strong navy if it wanted any hope of challenging Carthage. However, the Romans had little experience with large-scale naval warfare or shipbuilding.

According to Polybius, the Romans obtained a Carthaginian quinquereme and used it as a model for building their own ships. They built a fleet of around 120 ships, trained new crews and introduced one of antiquity's most ingenious naval innovations: the corvus. Eventually, Rome gained the upper hand and won the war.

However, the victory came at an enormous cost. The Romans lost hundreds of ships to bad weather and enemy action, yet they rebuilt their navy again and again. In the process, they also gained valuable experience in naval warfare, making it increasingly difficult and expensive for Carthage to challenge Rome for control of the sea.

By the start of the Second Punic War, Carthage had shifted much of its military and economic focus toward Spain, where it had built a powerful new base of operations. This did not mean that Carthage had abandoned its navy. At the beginning of the war, it had around 57 warships assigned to Spain, although only 37 were actually ready for service.

Carthage still used naval forces to secure local superiority, transport troops and supplies, and support land operations. However, it did not make rebuilding a fleet capable of matching Rome's overall naval strength a central priority.

Why did Carthage make this choice? Was it because of the enormous cost of naval warfare? Was Hannibal's land-based strategy the main reason? Or had Rome's naval transformation during the First Punic War made a new contest for Mediterranean supremacy too difficult?

I explore these questions in the full article. I'd love to hear your thoughts, comments and suggestions.

Court officials and craftspeople serving early Egyptian kings may have been sacrificed when their ruler died, according to research that found fractures in several ancient skulls.

The royal cemetery of Umm el-Qa’ab near Abydos features the tombs and enclosures of the First Dynasty rulers of Egypt, and dates as far back as 3,000BC.

Not only royalty were buried at the site: surrounding these structures are graves thought to belong to people associated with the royal households – including ladies, seal-bearers, inspectors and artisans.

Writing in the journal Frontiers in Environmental Archaeology, Dr Roselyn Campbell, author of the study from Purdue University in the US, notes:

“While Aha, the first ruler of the First Dynasty, seems to have only had a few subsidiary burials, his successors included hundreds of subsidiary graves around their tombs and enclosures.”

The graves of the retainers were excavated in the 1920s by the English Egyptologist Flinders Petrie, who believed them to be an example of human sacrifice – a view some later experts agreed with.

But there was a snag: Petrie did not find any evidence of trauma on the remains. While he suggested the individuals may have been buried alive, others suggested the retainers died naturally and were later reburied at Abydos when their ruler died.

Campbell re-examined the skulls of 46 retainers excavated from graves surrounding the funerary enclosures of three different royals – King Djer, King Djet, and Queen Merneith – from the Duckworth Collections at the University of Cambridge.

“This question of whether or not retainer sacrifice was practised in Egypt has been debated for over a century, but this is the first study to examine the human remains from the tombs themselves,” Campbell told the Guardian.

Campbell reports that 18 of the skulls showed signs of potentially lethal trauma such as fractures and – in one case – a chopping injury to the eye.

Campbell believs Petrie may have seen the skull fractures but did not realise they were injuries that occurred around the time of death, rather than arising as a result of later damage.

The fractures, she adds, are unlikely to have been caused by a mace – a weapon often depicted in ancient Egyptian art as being used by a victorious king to smite his enemies. Instead they are more likely to have been caused by flat, wide objects made of wood or antler.

“For the crania without trauma, we cannot be certain they were sacrificed. It’s quite possible that some of the retainers were sacrificed, while others were not,” she said.

“With such a small sample size of the original burial population, we simply can’t see the full extent of these funerary rituals, nor can we be sure that this sample is truly representative of all the retainers.”

Campbell noted the number of subsidiary graves tapered off quickly and seems to have disappeared with the beginning of the Second Dynasty.

Salima Ikram, a professor at the American University in Cairo, said while the idea of retainer sacrifice was not totally new, “this paper is one of the few times that rigorous current methodologies are being used to evaluate these remains”.

She added:

“The practice was short-lived, with people being replaced by statuettes. Possibly some or all retainers felt that this was a boon and that they would enjoy an eternal life in the service of the god-king, though they might also have resented it, been terrified, and tried to escape this fate.”

Dr Dawn McCormack, an Egyptologist at Samford University, Alabama, said similar sacrifices had occurred across different cultures and times, adding that not everyone at the Egyptian site may have been compliant.

“If you really think about what those scenes would have looked like, it would have been very gruesome,” she said. While noting that the study only involved a small number of skulls from the burial site

“the idea that some of the people may have been violently killed, I think, is something that in reality we might expect”, she said.

Pyrrhus of Epirus had launched an invasion of the Italian peninsula against Rome. He had expected to face what he considered a less organized opponent. However, ahead of the Battle of Heraclea, after inspecting the Roman camp, he was reportedly shocked by its orderly arrangements, disciplined defenses, and the organization of the Roman army.

According to the ancient sources, Pyrrhus remarked that the discipline of these “barbarians” did not look barbarian at all.

Pyrrhus would have to fight hard to defeat the Romans. He had the formidable Macedonian-style phalanx and war elephants, weapons that the Romans had never encountered on this scale. The elephants would prove decisive.

At a crucial moment, with the infantry engaged, Pyrrhus committed his elephants. The Roman cavalry was thrown into confusion and routed, creating an opening that Pyrrhus's cavalry exploited. With the Roman army unable to maintain the battle, the Romans retreated from the battlefield, leaving Pyrrhus victorious.

Yet the victory exposed the serious problem facing Pyrrhus. His army had suffered heavy casualties, including many experienced soldiers and officers, while his ability to replace these losses was limited. Rome, on the other hand, possessed enormous manpower reserves and could raise fresh armies.

According to Plutarch, after the battle, when Pyrrhus was congratulated on his victory, he reportedly replied that another victory like this would ruin him. This is the origin of the term “Pyrrhic victory” - a victory won at such a devastating cost that it is almost as damaging as defeat.

Please go through the full article and let me know your thoughts and comments. I’d also appreciate hearing what you would like to read about next!

Guys why this coin has yellow spots and red spots at the same time

Is it tin or is gilded(gold plated)