36 posts tagged “history”

It seems that princess was a very brave and passionate woman. When she was twenty years old, Anna met Friedrich von der Trenck, whose adventurous life inspired works by literary giants such as Victor Hugo and Voltaire. In 1743, Anna secretly married him. When her brother, who was already a king, discovered she had married secretly and was pregnant, he annulled her marriage and imprisoned her husband for ten years. Then Frederick exiled her in anger to Quedlinburg Abbey, a place where many aristocratic women were sent to give birth to children out of wedlock. However, Anna continued to correspond with Friedrich von der Trenck until her death.

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In my blog entries, I describe mostly outstanding creative people who had God given talents in spite of the harsh times that they were living. Luckily, not everybody is born a genius. There were other composers. I would not call them minor talents or diminish their creativity in any way. They also deserve the utmost respect and gratitude of the following generations. One of these dedicated people was Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia. I found out about her when I was doing my regular research for my web analytics company.

Princess Anna Amalia of Prussia was one of eight children of Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia. She was a younger sister of the famous Frederick II, King of Prussia and she was born in 1723 in Berlin. Among her other famous close relatives were Wilhelmine, Margravine of Bayreuth, Louise Ulrika, Queen of Sweden and Augustus William, Prince of Prussia. Anna was eleven years younger than her brother Frederick, and would have been seven years old when he made his attempt to run away from home, after being humiliated by his father. Both children were musically inclined, but for Anna formal musical instruction was only possible after the death of her father, who hated music with all his heart. Music was her secret consolation against his cruelty to her - in his bursts of rage he would often drag her across a room by the hair. Fortunately, her mother encouraged Anna to learn how to play the harpsichord, flute, and violin. And she received her first lessons from her brother, future king.

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Everybody heard about Sappho, at least in connection with the island of Lesbos. Researchers say, that Sappho's birth was sometime between 630 BC and 612 BC, and that she died around 570 BC. Unfortunately, the bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity, has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.

Guess, what? No contemporary historical sources exist for Sappho's life — only her poetry. Scholars have rejected a biographical reading of her poetry and have cast doubt on the reliability of the later biographical traditions from which all more detailed accounts derive. So what do we know about Sappho?

It seems that she was born into an aristocratic family, because her language is so sophisticated. References to dances, festivals, religious rites, military fleets, parading armies, generals, and ladies of the ancient courts are all reflected in her writings.

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Each Easter one can hear the same questions from children, that adults usually can’t answer. What has bunny to do with the religious holiday of Easter? And why Easter Bunny lays eggs anyways? Usually adults don’t know what to say and joke their way out.

Yet, if we go back in history, there are several explanations. In the archives of my local web analytics company, I found one story that is worth mentioning. The origin of Easter Bunny as well as the word “Easter” comes from the  pre-Christian customs honoring the fertility goddess Eostre of old German tribes, including Anglo-Saxon ones. According to popular folklore, Eostre once saved a bird whose wings had frozen during the winter by turning it into a rabbit. Because the rabbit had once been a bird, it could still lay eggs. As it happens a lot with old lore, that rabbit in the end became the modern Easter Bunny.

This legend arrived to the United States with German immigrants and Amish somewhere in the eighteenth century.  These guys were telling their children stories about bunnies, although very often in their stories the rabbit laying eggs was replaced with a hare.

Freud’s theory expressed in XX century is not dead even now and still have its supporters and adversaries. It even prompted serious researches that were trying to prove or disprove his theory. At least the timing of it seems to be right because Akhenaten appears in history two centuries before the first archaeological and written evidence for Judaism and Israelite culture is found in the Levant.

Pottery found throughout Judea dated to the end of the 8th century BC have seals resembling a winged sun disk of the god Athen burned on their handles. Some historians even claimed that Akhenaten’s maternal grandfather Yuya was the same person as the Biblical Joseph. Another striking coincidence is that there are strong similarities between Akhenaten’s Great Hymn to the Aten and the Biblical Psalm 104.

Amenhotep IV was a Pharaoh of the Eighteenth dynasty of Egypt was an extraordinary man for the times that lived in. He attempted to compel the Egyptian population in the monotheistic worship of sun god Aten, instead of the whole pantheon of Egyptian gods, that existed at his times. He even changed his name for that purpose to Akhenaten. Some historians even go as far as calling Amenhotep the first individual, as well as the first monotheist, first scientist, and first romantic on the planet Earth.

There are huge volumes written about his reign, his life and his Great Royal wife Nefertiti. So there is no use to go deep into these topics in this humble blog entry. But I wanted to tell you about interesting theories in regards of Akhenaten. The first one is that created by Akhenaten monotheistic religion transitioned later in Judaism. The first scientist that expressed this theory was famous Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. Freud argued that Moses had been an Atenist priest forced to leave Egypt with his followers after Akhenaten’s death. Akhenaten was striving to promote monotheism, something that the biblical Moses was able to achieve. Freud thought that there was connection between Adonai, the Egyptian Aten and the Syrian divine name of Adonis as a primeval unity of language between the factions.

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However, the idea of the holiday was loosely imported from the old British holiday that has the identical name. The original Mother's Day started in England somewhere in the sixteenth century. At first it was not viewed as a holiday but more as a Christian practice of visiting one's mother church annually. Then it grew into a day when mothers had a chance to reunite with their children. It was especially important for young working women and apprentices who were allowed by their masters to visit their families.

Nowadays, in Britain this holiday partially lost its religious meaning. On Mother's Day people celebrate and give thanks for mothers. The holiday falls on the fourth Sunday of Lent which exactly three weeks before Easter Sunday.

Around 36 BC Chinese forces encountered and clashed with Roman soldiers in Sogdiana for the first time in the recorded history. These Roman legionaries may have been either irregular warriors or a part of Mark Antony's army invading Parthia. Chinese got out of this battle victorious, thanks to their crossbows, whose bolts and darts seem easily to have penetrated Roman shields and armor.

In spite of this within several years an intense trade between China and Rome soon followed, probably with Parthians as middlemen. Famous Chinese silk became in fashion among Romans, who thought that it was obtained from the trees. This obsession with silk went so far that its importation caused a huge outflow of gold out of Rome. There is evidence that the The Senate issued, in vain, several edicts to prohibit the wearing of silk, on economic and moral grounds. Senate proclaimed that silk clothes were decadent and immoral.

During the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), China officially became a Confucian state and prospered domestically: agriculture, handicrafts and commerce flourished, and the population reached over 55 million people. It lasted over four hundred years and it is one of the greatest periods in the history of China. In the 1st century BC China made numerous attempts to consolidate a road to the Western world and India, both through direct and diplomatic relations with the countries located further west. This is when Silk Road network of routes came into existence.

Chinese army regularly policed the trade route against nomadic bandit forces. In the 1st century AD China even sent an army of seventy thousand soldiers and light cavalry troops to secure the trade routes far west across central Asia to the doorstep of Europe. It even set up base on the shores of the Caspian Sea to cooperate with Parthia. China subsequently sent numerous embassies, around ten every year, to other countries reaching as far as Syria.

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Alexander the Great and his Macedon generals had great impact in the development and extension of the Silk Road network of routes. Their campaigns are thought to be the first major step in opening the big connection between the East and the West. Alexander's empire extended from Greece to Central Asia. In Fergana Valley, which is located in modern Tajikistan, he founded the famous city Alexandria Eschate which later became the major point of northern Silk Road.

After his death Alexander's general Ptolemy and his descendants got Egypt and became first Greek pharaohs. Egypt heavily depended on trade, it had large sea ports on Red Sea and established routes to the Middle East and India and to the South, reaching East Africa.

As for Greek kingdoms in Central Asia, they lasted for the next three hundred years. They were trying to continue the expansion to Sogdiana and India and set up new Greco-Indian kingdoms there. Ancient historians noted not once that Greek kingdoms led their expeditions to China and Chinese Turkestan around 200 BC, which constitutes the first verified by documents contact between China and the West.