allegoric

Victory. Allegoric. When meaning needs to be hidden in talent. We talked about Grant Wood who in the 1900's became an icon of regionalist painting with his influential " American Gothic " painting which rendered Nan and the Dentist has subjects who were merely hard working Americans...Puritans. We said that Woods....well we didn't quite say that Woods was the Grand Master of Grand Masters....of the 33 degree Mason..such as Durer and da Vinci were...are we getting ahead of ourselves???]

Allegory...

Is there meaning beyond the brush stroke or the engravers knife???

Durer was a hero of Woods.

Durer is famous for Melancolia I.

Melancolia I  by Albrecht Durer is considered
Allegoric and Esotetic

Woods is semi famous for Death on Ridge Road. Recall that Grant
Wood was a nobody American  Iowa farm boy. This painting has an allegorical message just like his hero Durer's painting had. A few telephone polls looking like crosses ready for a sacrifice and the wheels of a classic high end car coming into the horizon of a .....house.................semi truck????...............wake the Tel el fukhal up.................someone is trying to tell you something about world religion.

Such is the depth of Goth....Are Goths really ravinish blood sucking Draculians as mainstream media would have you believe, or are the Pagans, who have been pressed between the eastern reality of Roman empiricism and western papal empiricism.....really being duped.???? It's a devilish question and my extra teeth want a sincere answer....Am I a Frankenstein ??????

In Blackrobes where the Jesuit mercenary seeks to infiltrate the Canadian Huron colony the native pagan sorcerer asks...as he rattles is macambas.....Blackrobe, are you human or demon......basically the sorcerer is simply trying to protect his soul, his dream, and his vision of humanism.
Who the hell is the evil cast speller ??? Democrat ? Republican ?....

kuuipo1207

While kuuipo1207 is thinking the deep goth highliner which i know absolutely noth' about, yet I am thinking on October 29 how to look more ghoulish, my mind is on Arius.

A few worlds apart i would say.

Arius.

He becomes the bishop of Ptolemais, the renamed port of the ancient Tel el Fukhar. And I'm grinding those extra teeth that I have but shouldn't be there in the meanwhile. The port was renamed by Ptolemy II in the post Diodochi years when the Alexandrian conquested kingdom was being divided.

It's circa 300 AD and Constantine is looking at aligning himself with the Nicea power. Politico-ecclesiastics has a price. The congress is dividing the Arius school of thought with the Nicene school of thought. Constantine, ruling out of Constantinople becomes a Nicean. Arius and Lucius run for the hills. Death be to those who do noth' raise the flag of Constantine.................Politico-Ecclisiastics is borne or born again.

it is just make up

Soon I know i wait for mystery...

Don't try to fix me i'm noth' broken...


just a girl putting on make up ....so dark ......and goth....I used my 3/8' mop by Maxine loew cornell...




It's the music that makes the make up session so intense.....

Gothic America

Models used by Grant Wood in American Gothic
Picture credit - Time January 18, 1943

Nan is the female character and Doctor McKeeby stands as Woods male puritan American hard working farmer. The American Gothic McKeeby is in reality a dentist and Nan is Grant's sister.

Grant Wood, the Regionalist Iowa based American painter, claims that he went beyond the actual being of his American Gothic models and the portrait is his rendition of the deeper ethics of solid hard working American folks.

He studied art in Paris, France at a time when the Impressionists were populating the art scene. He returned to the USA and his hometown of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. His gothic america theme rendered in paintings like American Gothic, Pioneer, and Daughters of Revolution were influenced more by the works of artist like Durer and Holbein than Impressionists like Monet, Renoir, Pissaro and others.

Holbein the Younger was a Bavarian born German who learnt the skills of an artist from Holbein the Elder who'd started painting in the late Gothic style and had been tested the evolving Renaissance classical style. Elder Holbein was a painter who made mostly religious images in the years leading up to religious reformations. Younger Holbein travelled Europe from Bavaria, to Switzerland, to England where he ended up getting the job of court painter to Henry the Eight.

Grant Wood
Gothic America
-
Daughters of
Revolution
detail

Grant Wood to the Gothic America theme very seriously. One as to wonder if Pouting Meg, the ugly  duchess Castle Tyrol and the Neuhaus or Maultasch Castle is not the furthest back ladies in the Daughters of Revolution. 

Wood was supposedly going to work on artistic stories which involved the esoteric nature of evolution and revolution. Amongst his collection of scrapbooking were articles on information about the Arabic Order of Mystic Shriners.

Shriners were not novelty in America in Grant Wood's lifetime. Assemblies of the AAONMS or Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, or simply the Shriners had been meeting in Temples within Mosques since the 1870's. The Shriners were American men who grew out of the freemason ideologies. AAONMS was and remains an appendage of freemansonry.

Grant Wood was questioning the deeper reasoning of such fellowship. The rest of America was accepting that fellows like this who provided services such as the Shriners Hospital for Children could do no wrong. The general public was calling the Shriners Hospital project " The World's Greatest Philanthropy ".

Death on Ridge Road
-
Part of Grant Wood's
Gothic America

Grant Wood was a nobody farm boy out of Iowa in the 1920's. His popularity exploded when the Art Institute of Chicago exposed his American Gothic painting.

Nearly overnight all of America was looking at Nan and Dr McKeeby and looking at the rest of the Wood collection with deeper interest. Many were calling the Gothic theme grotesque while others fell passionately in love with the painted renditions of hard working yeoman evolving in America alongside auto giants and other well to do elite.

At first glance, when looking at Death on Ridge Road, most people see a house on the horizon. A closer look shows that it is not a house. It is a huge truck coming straight into the path of an oncoming car. This painting was used by an Insurance Company with the caption " Death begins at 40 " to advertise and sell insurance policies. Ironically, Wood had painted after both he and a close personal friend had been in separate automobile accidents. Even the hydro poles have that eerie religious dark gothic feeling in this picture.

Wood died in 1942 at the age of 50 from complications related to cancer of the liver. The Gothic America estate went to his sister Nan who lived until 1990.

The full name of the Anamosa, Iowa, painter and founding father of the Regionalist movement of art, is Grant DeVolson Wood.

Devil's Son !!!!! Go figure.........Things of Gothic things never cease to amaze and amuse. 

For example, when Nan died in 1990, the then named Davenport Museum of Art ( Figge Art Museum ) became the owners of the Wood estate and all of it's content. The Davenport Museum is a product of the Davenport Art Association which was founded in 1878 at about the same time that the masons are meeting in New York at the Knickerbocker Cottage.  The Davenport Museum of Art opened in 1925 and it was supplied with a huge collection of art memorabilia by a prominent lawyer named Charles Ficke.

The Davenport Museum becomes the Figge Art Museum in 2005. A top supporter of the Figge is the Henry Luce Foundation. Interestingly enough Henry R. Luce is co-founder and editor in chief of Time Inc. which ran the article used as a resource for this blog post called Gothic America.

Figge is Ficke in Swedish.

Ficke, Charles August (1850-1931) — also known as Charles A. Ficke — of Davenport, Scott County, Iowa. Born in Beitzenburg, Germany, April 21, 1850. Son of Christoph Ficke and Elisabeth (Praesent) Ficke; married, March 23, 1882, to Frances 'Fannie' Davison. Democrat. Lawyer; Scott County Attorney, 1886-88; mayor of Davenport, Iowa, 1890-91. German ancestry. Died in Davenport, Scott County, Iowa, December 10, 1931. Interment at Oakdale Memorial Gardens, Davenport, Iowa.

  

Pouting Meg

"Pouting Meg" Maultasch wasn't her real name. Her preferred residence was the Neuhaus Castle which became known as The Maultasch Castle many centuries after the ugly Countess passed away. Or was it " the Maultasch Castle becomes the Neuhaus Castle ?

Was Quentin Massys thinking
Pouting Meg Maultasch
when he painted
A Grotesque Women
in 1515 ?

Here is an excerpt from Tales and legends of the Tyrol by Comptesse Marie Alker Gunther which describes the eerie Gothic nature of Margeret Maultasch.....


The Treasure of Maultasch

Above the route which leads from Meran to Botzen, not far from Terlan, are to be seen the ruins of the old castle of Maultasch, which was once the favorite residence of a Princess of the same name, and from her appears to have inherited this name, while another legend says the Princess derived her name from the castle.
There have been two different parts of this building, the principal one of which used to stand below the valley to guard the route, and on that spot is still to be seen a hole in the rock, which leads into an underground passage, through which Margaretha Maultasch, the last proprietress of the castle, used to ascend to the upper part of it on the heights above, called Neuhaus.
In this passage is said to lie a hidden treasure, guarded by a fearful keeper, who is said to be the devil himself. Many people have tried to get at this treasure, but no one has ever succeeded; and the inhabitants of the surrounding country recount that, some years ago, two young peasants of Meran had resolved upon going to take the envied treasure.
On their way there, they said to one another, " Today the devil will never escape us. " So they entered the passage, and began to repeat the incantations they had learnt by heart for the purpose, while throwing around them consecrated powders; but all at once a huge black dog rushed upon them, and they fled away, terrified by death, believing that the devil himself was at their heels ; and, since that time, no one has ever again tried to discover the treasure of Maultasch.

_________________________

Why Pouting Meg ?

"It is commonly said that she was called Maultasch (Mouth-Pocket), on account of the largeness of her mouth". quote from p.104 History of Christian Church - James Craigie Robertson

" Bishop Hefele says that she got her name from the castle of Maultasch, where she was born. " viz. p.104


_________________

Pouting Meg or Countess of Tyrol Margaret was born in 1318. The Duke of Carinthia, Henry of Gorizia Tyrol was her father. Adelaide of Brunswick Grubenhagen was Pouting Meg's mother. At the age of 12, in 1330, through a marriage of convenience, Meg is married off to John Henry of Luxembourg who is the son of the Bohemian King. John Henry is but 8 years old. Therefore her real name was Margarete Gorizia-Tyrol.  Her aunt is Elizabeth Gorizia-Tyrol and she is the wife of King Albert I of Germany who is also the founder of the House of Habsburg. She gains succession to the Tyrol powerful estate when Duke Henry, who who has no sons by any of his marriages, dies in 1335.

The Emperor in 1335 is Louis IV and he gives the Duchy of Carinthia to the son of Albert I. Albert II is now both Duke of Corinthia and Duke of Austria.

At the age of 17 in 1335 Pouting Meg and John Henry are residing in Castle Tyrol but their marriage of convenience is about to come to an end. She has him excommunicated from the Castle lands. To protect herself and her Countess estates from the wrath of the House of Luxembourg, which John Henry was a member of, she turned to the Bavarian Wittelsbachs where Louis the IV had affiliations.

Before passing away Duke Henry had made arrangements with Louis IV that would allow Margarete to keep her title of Countess of Tyrol. Duke of Bavaria, Louis V of Wittelsbach marries Pouting Meg in 1342 after declaring the marriage of Meg and John Henry null and void. Pope Clemens VI proclaims this an illegal scandal and excommunicates the newly wed couple. For a decade and a half attempts are made to overthrow the Tyrolean seat of power at Castle Tyrol. In 1359 Pope Innocent VI overturns the previous excommunications orders against Pouting Meg and Louis V. Pope Innocent VI is an interesting figure. For example he is said to have survived the Black Death by sitting many hours between fires thinking that the smoke would purify the air which he believed was foul of death. His family lineage continues to this day under the family name of Aubert but more mysteriously the Aubert family is aligned with the Compte of Saint Germain.  A certain legend of this Count St Germain paints him as the immortal German alchemist who plays a role in the diplomacy of Louis XV. Voltaire, said of Saint Germain, " He is a man who knows everything and who never dies. ".

" In ecclesiastical propoganda of the day she received the nickname " Maultasch " (literally, "bag mouth " ), which means whore , or ugly women. - source - wikipedia

Pouting Meg and Louis V have a son in 1344 and name him Meinhard III. He succeeds Louis V to the role of Count of Tyrol from the House of Wittelsbach when his father dies in 1361. However Meinhard III loses his life in 1363 and leaves no male descendents. Within a few years Margarete Gorizia-Tyrol seizes control of the the Tyrolean estates to the Habsburgs.

 

Castle Tyrol

Off we go to Castle Tyrol where the counts of Tyrol were seated.

Castle Tyrol near Meran Italy
image from wikimedia

Margaret Maultasch, ( Pouting Meg ) Countess of Tyrol, was the last noble of the House of Tyrol. In 1363 Maultasch turns over her dominions to the Dukes of Austria. This act joined the Gyrizia -Tyrol - Meinhardiner nobility lands to the Habsburg estates.

Dnieper river

The Dnieper river is the fourth longest river in Europe after the rivers Volga, Danube, and Ural. Many river dump their waters into the Dnieper. It is the third ranked amongst water catchers in Europe after the Volga and Danube.

The Dnieper is also the Dniepr river (Russian)  and the Dnipro river ( Ukrainian ) and the Dniapro ( Belarussian ). It begins in the marshlands above Smolensk in Russia. The waters of the marshes and the glacial springs pour through a forested area of the Valdai Hills which is about midway between St Petersburg and Moscow.

Mostly the Dnieper river flows in a southerly direction through Russia, Belarus ( once part of Russia ), and the Ukraine and drains into the Black sea. The boggy area above Smolensk would not have been much use for agriculture but as Dniepe waters run through the steppes better land becomes available.
This is recorded in artifacts dated to the Middle Dnieper culture. Middle means somewhere where Belarus and North Ukraine are situated. Tribes living along the forest steppes of the Dnieper can be identified as early as 3500 BC or so. 

The Dnieper river is very navigable therefore would have been used extensively as a trade route. It runs west-southernly or as the Russian would have it; Austru.

Any Goth life along the Dnieper would likely extend into its adjoining rivers : Pripyat, Desna........

If the theory of Goth division which claims that the Ostro-goths moved towards the right side of the Dnieper while the Visi-Goths stayed on the left is true then the right and left side tributaries that fall into the Dnieper must be considered as possible strongholds of either Goth tribal culture evolution.

The right side Dnieper tributaries.

• Drut
• Berezina
• Prypiat
• Teteriv
• Irpin
• Stuhna
• Ros
• Tiasmyn
• Bazavluk
• Inhulets

The left side tributary rivers that flow into the Dnieper.

• Sozh
• Desna
• Trubizh
• Supiy
• Sula
• Psel
• Vorskla
• Samara
• Konka
• Bilozerka

Another Ukraine ( frontier ) river with Goth implications is called the Dneister and this river is considered to be the marker of the end of the Eurasian steppes ( Mongolia to Hungary ). Remarkably the cultural heritage along this river is older than the Middle Dneiper culture. Dneister artifacts date back to the Trypillian culture and some 8000 years ago. The Dneister was originally called the Tyras by the Greeks. Tyras refers to rapid ( water ???).

Could the Tyras have any correlation to the Tyr and Thyrranean stories ? Austria is related to Tyrol.

Who are the ostrogoths ?

The ostrogoths are one side of the division of the goths. The other gothic people are the visigoths.

Ostro might refer to the word auster (Austrilian ) or austru ( Romanian, German ). Both  refer to wind direction. Auster is a direct southerly wind, whereas austru is a west to southwest wind.

The Goths according to the Penny cyclopedia (1800's) " originally inhabited the countries on the Baltic between the Vistula and the Niemen.".

By 200 AD the Goths had divided into the Ostro Greuthungi Goths who inhabited Danubian lands east of the Dnieper.  The Visi Thervingi Goths took the west Dnieper river.

wakeful phantasm

Day dreams or wakeful phantasms are said to have provided Mary Shelley with the inspiration to write her story The Modern Prometheus; Frankenstein. The novel is romance and horror which is the definition of Gothic fictional literature which was a genre introduced in the middle of the 18th century with writers like Horace Walpole and gothic stories like The Castle of Otranto.

Shelley claims that the name Frankenstein was part of the wakeful phantasm she experienced while looking for a subject to write a story about. The name Victor is suspected of being influenced by "the Victor" mentioned in Paradise Lost which Shelley quotes on the opening page of her book. 

Mary Shelley writes Frankenstein at the age of 18 in 1818. Now, using a bit of illogical thinking it is easy to work 666 into this wakeful phantasm story. If 18 is 9 then 181818 is 999 and reverse engineering death into life as Doctor Victor attempts to do is 666. Too easy...... I agree.....

Interestingly however, the story of Frankenstein's monster mentions galvanism which was a theory of this period and involved using electricity on dissected animals. Today that animal electricity that Luigi Galvani was working on in the late 1700's is more commonly referred to as electrophysiology.

Frankenstein was not a name invented by Shelley. 

In the 1200's a castle made of stone " stein " became Castle Frankenstein.  This was the project of Konrad II Reiz von Breuberg who elects himself as the founder and Lord of Frankenstein. Is there any truth to the legend that the Castle Frankenstein was once occupied by a body snatcher who stole bodies in order to study anatomy ?

The story goes something like this. Konrad II is the son of elitists who are inhabitants of the Breuberg castle. This rich family has real estate holdings and business in surrounding places like Darmstadt, Beerbach, Hesse, Wetterau, and more. Konrad II builds the Stone Castle on a hill about 5 miles from Darmstadt and seeks the protection of Knights who will help him keep his businesses trading or supplying with little interference from vandals. Konrad II calls his realm Frankenstein and names himself lord of Frankenstein. Thus he begins a new dynasty. His message to the neighbours is that he is a sovereign free imperial lord and his lordship of Frankenstein is answerable only to the Holy Roman Emperor. In time Lord Frankenstein connects with the Katzenelnbogen. I guess being in the business of protecting the wealthy is not a bad way to make a little spare cash. Within a hundred years the Castle of Frankenstein was split into two sections. Half was controlled by the Knights and the other by the Lords. A century or so later the Katzenelnbogen/Frankenstein allegiance is broken.

In 1662 the lordship of Frankenstein is sold to the Holy Roman Empire state of Hesse-Darmstadt which had been formed in 1567. When the Holy Roman Empire is dissolved in 1806 the state ( landgrave ) of Hesse Darmstadt is made subject to the German Confederation. From 1806 to 1918 it is referred to as the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, then simply Grand Duchy of Hesse by the Rhine......or something like that.

Shelley is said to have visited the castle in Germany not long before writing her Prometheus themed story.

_________

Wicked images of the wakeful phantasm of someone who created artistic sculpture inspired by Lord Konrad Arminius

gothic elements in architecture

Wenzel Hollar [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Wenzel Hollar was a Bohemian etcher who lived from 1607 to 1677. Hollar is living in the days of the Thirty Years War ( 1618 - 1648 ) and while it was mostly a war fought in Germany it also changed the values of much of Europe. This was a war waged by the Bohemian Ferdinand II of the House of Habsburg and other royals who were Catholic oriented. The Bohemian king was looking to close down Protestantism and with the Jesuit was enforcing conversion to his religion.  The Protestants meanwhile were revolting. Meanwhile Lord Abbot of Fulda was leading an inquisition in search of wicked witches. The wickedness of this witch hunt was ruthless and has been told in many Gothic tales where torture dungeons, medieval castles, and dark methods of all types are involved.

King Gustavus II of Sweden was a protestant and Sweden was an opulant country strategically well placed to take advantaged of the Dutch trade routes. Both Ferdinand II and Gustavus II were looking to monopolize the countries inside this trade route. With the emerging markets of North America, control of Dutch trade was very lucrative. It was such a prospect that in time the war became about money more than about religion where Catholic France allied with the Gustavus protestant against the Catholic Habsburg and Jesuits.

The Hollar engraving above is of the Mainz Cathedral which was initially built in the Romanesque style but which came to incorporate many Gothic features over the course of it's existance.

Basically three elements of composition separates Romanesque architecture from the Gothic style. The Franks like pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and flying buttresses. These were all elements that were eventually part of the Mainz Cathedral

Also in Romanesque style a story is told to the visitors, who are generally illiterate, through the use of bas-relief which is a form of sculpture that slighly rises out of the wood, stone, etc. The Goth influence takes that Romanesque bas-relief type of story telling into more three dimensional works. The Renaissance is a revival of classicals which was extremely three dimensional.

flying buttresses on Basilica of Saint Remi
c. 1170

Flying buttresses are those wing like columns used to hold the building together. In 1211 a fire destroys a church which was built on the basilica site. A new church is erected and named Notre Dame de Reims, aka. Our Lady of Rheims.
The story of the original church goes back to Remy who was bishop of Reims in 496 AD. Remy converts the Franks to Nicene Christianity starting with the baptism of Clovis who was at this time King or the Franks. The doors of the Cathedral of Notre Dame of Reims are great examples of pointed arches and Gothic architecture. ( Reims was a city founded by the Gauls and the Gauls were the competition of the earliest Romans. Remi was the name of a Belgic tribe at this time and the tribe of Remi are the Gauls of Rheim - according to some theorists Remi finds its roots in Remus who was the brother of Romulus. That legend goes that Romulus killed Remus while deciding what to name the city of their new world ideology). 

So the Gothic architectural style of the Franks includes wing like flying buttresses and pointed arches that point to the heavens.

The Goths also had ribbed vaults. The making of a ribbed vault involves setting up two or three barrel vaults. These barrel vaults were used as far back as ancient Egypt and Sumer construction. Barrel or tunnel vaulting is seen alot in the underground tunneling of the old world.

This image from wikimedia shows the three gothic architectural elements working together.

These gothic elements are common starting in the mid 1100's.

Opus Francigenum

Opus

To the Latins, Ops defined wealth, power, and resources. Op alone is to work or create in abundance. An opus is a styled creation and defines the work produced through the application of opulence ( wealth, resources, and power ).

Francigenum

Biologist use genus to categorize something that fits somewhere between a species and a family. Francigenum was a term used in the medieval ages to describe Frank influence.

Opus Francigenum was the medieval phrase used to define the unique style of the Franks. The Latins called the Franks the Franci and these gens Francorum were barbarian tribes who occupied lands from Mainz to the sea ( doesn't state which sea ) and along the Rhine. According to the NewAdvent Encyclopedia these ancient barbarian tribes form a confederation and starting in about 300 AD they begin to populate the Belgic Gallic lands along the Meuse and Scheldt rivers after having mostly occupied settlement on the eastern side of the Rhine previously.

Romanesque is an Opus of sorts. The Romanesque style is a mixture of Latin-Roman ( Classical Roman - Rome) and Greco-Roman (Byzantine - Constantinople) influence.

A revival of classical starts in the 1400's and is later named the Rennaisance.

Between the Renaissance and the Romanesque is the Opus Francigenum which is later referred to as the Gothic period.

Ptolemais Herod and the Diodochi

Notes on Ptolemais Herod and the Diodochi division of Alexanders conquered lands.

Ptolemais was Akko, and before that it was Tel el Fulkhar. It becomes Ptolemais when renamed by Ptolemy II. Herod to the Hebrew is Hordos and the Greeks know him as Heroides. To the Romans he is Herod I or Herod the Great, yet to others he is The Great Evil Genius of the Judean nation. Herod's father was Antipater who was Jewish but perhaps only Jewish by vassal methods. The Judean ways had been forced on the Idumaen by Hyrcanus and Antipater was an Idumaen. The Idumaen were settled in Edom and were called Idumea people by the Greeks and Romans. Edom is just south of Juda and the Dead Sea.

Antipater is named procurator by Julius Caesar in 47 BC and in 37 BC Herod is crowned King of the Jews. This came on the heels of the beheading of Antigonus. Herod has the devils touch of influencing the super elite and their influence in political arenas goes a long way in raising him to the throne. But when he marries Mariamne in 38 BC is chances of staying favoured among the Jews become greatly appreciated. Mariamne was of a family of Hasmoneans.

_______Interesting side note - Google Hasmonea and you come up with an Estonian or Eesti reference to a revival Jewish movement that predates WW II. New Hasmonea, Estonian Jewry, and the Tartu Zionist Student Organization, definitely warrant research. Eesti is on the Baltic Sea and very close to where the original Goths are said to have emerged from.

The original Hasmonean were very popular amongst the Jewish people. These were people who ruled the Hasmonean Kingdom of Israel between 140 and 37 BC. The Hasmonean Dynasty starts with Mattathias ben Johanan. Two generations later Johanan Hyrcanus rules from 134 to 104 BC. Mariamne is of the seventh generation of Hasmoneans. Antigonus is of the sixth generation and was known for his rebellious battles against Rome. Herod captures Antigonus in Jerusalem and delivered him to Antioch where Mark Antony sentenced him to death by beheading. Antigonus was an advocate of Jewish independence from Roman influence and was the first King executed by the rule of the Roman courts.

Supposedly in 150 BC, Jonathan, an Hasmonite King conquers the city of Ptolemais which is now west of the original Tel el Fukhar mound and ruled by the Syria while they were Kingdom of the Seleucids. Seleucus I Nicotar was one of Alexander the Great's general and received much of the Assyrian and Babylonian lands when the Great Greek's empire was divided after his death. Seleucus names two capitals for his kingdom. One is in Antioch in Syria. The other is Seleucia in Mesopotamia.  see the Diadochi.

to be continued.........

history of tel el fukhar

The notes on the history of tel el fukhar are referenced in The Holy Land by Jerome Murphy O'Connor.

Execration texts are Egyptian lists of enemies of the Pharoah and a proscription list like this dated c. C18 BC mentions Tel el Fukhar (Akko). Tel el Fukhar is also Akko, or Acre, St Jean D'Acre, or Ptolemais.

From 2200 BC to 1800 BC Egypt goes from being feudal and ruled by many kings until 2055 BC when Mentuhotep II becomes the Pharoah and sole leader of all of Egypt. This is the middle kingdom period of Egyptian history and by 1800 BC the foundations of the Temples at Karnak are up, Nubia is controlled by the Egyptians after having gained it`s independence in the first intermediary period. Mentuhotep II also set a goal of restoring the power of Egypt over the Sinai region which would lead him towards the Tel Akko.

Being strategically placed for both commercial and military purpose Akko is growing in popularity and giving more prominent place like Tyr and Sidon competition for pit stops along the trading routes.

Tel el Fukhar is the earliest name and Akko is a derivative of the Greek Ake (with a top hat accent on the e).

The Tel el Ake is visited by Alexander the Great, the Hellenistic Greek conquerer who has conquered Egypt in 332 BC from the Persians who taken it in about 600 BC. Alexander dies in  and Egypt is given to Ptolemy I who becomes pharoah. Under the Ptolemy`s Akko becomes Ptolemais.

In 63 AD Pompey of Rome gives Ptolemais it`s independence. Akko however was losing much of it`s prominence as a port to the city of Caesarea ( port city midway between Haifa and Tel Aviv ) which had been founded by Herod. Akko was becoming Christianized and was a pit stop on the third voyage of the Apostle Paul ( Acts 21:7). Akko was also regaining some functionality as a port city and attracted the attention of the Arabs in 636 AD.

story of the history of tel el fukhar continues.... Ptolemais Herod and the Diodochi

___________________

Reference

The Holy Land

Who were the earliest Goths

Trying to answer a question like who were the first Goths is almost impossible.

The first Goths were likely counted as barbarians or a subculture to the classic cultures.

Jordanes was a Roman bureaucrat turned historian who lived in about 550 AD. He wrote a book called Getica : Origin and Deeds of the Goths, in which an attempt is made at identifying the Goth and the geneology of the Gothic bloodlines. To scholars, Jordanes work provides a base for argument. To curious people who just want to know a bit about the foundation of this peculiar subculture it provides a starting point.

The story goes that Berig was the King of an East Germanic tribe who occupied the land of Gothiscandza. This was in about 1500 BC. The East Germanic tribe was led by the King on three ships away from the island of Scandza and found a land which they quickly called Gothiscandza. This is all happening somewhere around Scandinavia and the Nordic countries and probably involves the island of Gotland which is in the Baltic sea. On one side of Gotland is Sweden and on the other the nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Goteborg is another place found in Sweden. Other nations that are touched by the Baltic sea include Poland, Germany, Finland, and Denmark.

Somehow the early Goths invade the land of the Rugians and from there become scattered all over Europe. The Goths are believed to have played a big role in the history of Ukraine which is a country which is bordered on one side by the Black Sea.

Gothic Romance

The Gothic genre evolves from a point somewhere in the dark ages where the Roman Empire rises and falls. Goth involves separate voices of spiritual thought balanced somewhere between pure evil and pure sanctity. The Romans moved from paganism to Catholicism and the tribes that move away from the major Holy See centre also move away from the prescribed form of spiritual dogma. By the 1500's the Renaissance of classical thinking sort of foreshadows Goth but all types of neo Gothic movements continue to dominate certain small sects. Mancy is associated to divination and I can only take a wild guess that Roman-ce is somehow associated to spells caste in the genre of the Roman.

Classical romance is heard in the sounds of musicians like Beethoven and Mendelssohn, and masters of art and science like Leonardo daVinci and Michelangelo are often thought of a classical. But they of neo-classical and are revivalists of a classic form that was prominent in early Rome and further even in Hellenistic Greece.

The same is true of romantic literature and romantic classical architecture. Romance usually flames the imagination towards the most perfect form. Plato explained that form as being the quintessential element which can never truly be achieved in this earthly dimension.

Classical artists, composers, writers and others sometimes talk of, or attempt to express demons and angels. So do Goths.

What differentiate Goth from Classic or from other genres of expression ?

When dealing with demons and angels both genre are dealing with the undead.

Goth however holds a reputation as a subculture and is often associated with the evil side of the undead. That is why so many Gothic stories are so popular. Romance often deals with death and with heroes charm the human spirit by battling the evils amongst us. Goth goes deeper than the secular reality or pseudo reality of Romance and as such gains the reputation of being punkish or subordinate to the ideal conditioning prescribed by mainstream influence.

Goth has a beginning..............like Classic or any other genre or cultural influence has a beginning. And like the others it has periods of revival and dark periods where only pockets of followers dare to position themselves with the reputation of Goth.

If Classical defines looking in the hour glass of time through the eyes of perfect form the Gothic defines looking in the hour glass of time through the eyes of disintegration.

Which is the perfect form ? Neither and maybe both since the pendulum swings to both extremes and perfection is somewhere in the middle.