title: Psychological abuse

text: When considering the emotional state of psychological abusers, psychologists have focused on aggression as a contributing factor. While it is typical for people to consider males to be the more aggressive of the two sexes, researchers have studied female aggression to help understand psychological abuse patterns in situations involving female abusers. According to Walsh and Shluman, "The higher rates of female initiated aggression [including psychological aggression] may result, in part, from adolescents' attitudes about the unacceptability of male aggression and the relatively less negative attitudes toward female aggression". This concept that females are raised with fewer restrictions on aggressive behaviors (possibly due to the anxiety over aggression being focused on males) is a possible explanation for women who utilize aggression when being mentally abusive.


title: Psychological abuse

text: Some researchers have become interested in discovering exactly why women are usually not considered to be abusive. Hamel's 2007 study found that a "prevailing patriarchal conception of intimate partner violence" led to a systematic reluctance to study women who psychologically and physically abuse their male partners. These findings state that existing cultural norms show males as more dominant and are therefore more likely to begin abusing their significant partners.


title: Psychological abuse

text: Dutton found that men who are emotionally or physically abused often encounter victim blaming that erroneously presumes the man either provoked or deserved the mistreatment by their female partners. Similarly, domestic violence victims will often blame their own behavior, rather than the violent actions of the abuser. Victims may try continually to alter their behavior and circumstances in order to please their abuser. Often, this results in further dependence of the individual on their abuser, as they may often change certain aspects of their lives that limit their resources. A 2002 study concluded that emotional abusers frequently aim to exercise total control of different aspects of family life. This behavior is only supported when the victim of the abuse aims to please their abuser.


title: Psychological abuse

text: Many abusers are able to control their victims in a manipulative manner, utilizing methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the abuser, rather than to force them to do something they do not wish to do. Simon argues that because aggression in abusive relationships can be carried out subtly and covertly through various manipulation and control tactics, victims often do not perceive the true nature of the relationship until conditions worsen considerably.


title: Psychological abuse

text: A researcher in 1988 said that wife abuse stems from "normal psychological and behavioral patterns of most men ... feminists seek to understand why men, in general, use physical force against their partners and what functions this serves for a society in a given historical context". Dobash and Dobash (1979) said that "Men who assault their wives are actually living up to cultural prescriptions that are cherished in Western society--aggressiveness, male dominance and female subordination--and they are using physical force as a means to enforce that dominance," while Walker claims that men exhibit a "socialized androcentric need for power".


title: Psychological abuse

text: While some women are aggressive and dominating to male partners, a 2003 report concluded that the majority of abuse in heterosexual partnerships, at about 80% in the US, is perpetrated by men. (Note that critics stress that this Department of Justice study examines "crime" figures, and does not specifically address "domestic abuse" figures. While the categories of crime and domestic abuse may cross-over, many instances of domestic abuse are either not regarded as crimes or reported to police—critics thus argue that it is inaccurate to regard the DOJ study as a comprehensive statement on domestic abuse.) A 2002 study reports that ten percent of violence in the UK, overall, is by females against males. However, more recent data specifically regarding domestic abuse (including emotional abuse) report that 3 in 10 women, and 1 in 5 men, have experienced domestic abuse.


title: Psychological abuse

text: One source said that legal systems have in the past endorsed these traditions of male domination, and it is only in recent years that abusers have begun to be punished for their behavior. In 1879, a Harvard University law scholar wrote, "The cases in the American courts are uniform against the right of the husband to use any chastisement, moderate or otherwise, toward the wife, for any purpose."


title: Psychological abuse

text: While recognizing that researchers have done valuable work and highlighted neglected topics critics suggest that the male cultural domination hypothesis for abuse is untenable as a generalized explanation for numerous reasons:


title: Psychological abuse

text: A 2010 study said that fundamentalist views of religions tend to reinforce emotional abuse, and that "Gender inequity is usually translated into a power imbalance with women being more vulnerable. This vulnerability is more precarious in traditional patriarchal societies."


title: Psychological abuse

text: In the Book of Genesis God specifically punishes women after Adam and Eve disobey Him: "in sorrow, thou shalt bring forth children: and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee"; God also condemns Adam to a lifetime of work, for the sin of listening to his wife.


title: Psychological abuse

text: Some studies say that fundamentalist religious prohibitions against divorce may make it more difficult for religious men or women to leave an abusive marriage. A 1985 survey of Protestant clergy in the United States by Jim M Alsdurf found that 21% of them agreed that "no amount of abuse would justify a woman's leaving her husband, ever", and 26% agreed with the statement that "a wife should submit to her husband and trust that God would honor her action by either stopping the abuse or giving her the strength to endure it." A 2016 report by the Muslim Women's Network UK cited several barriers for Muslim women in abusive marriages who seek divorce through Sharia Council services. These barriers include: selectively quoting religious text to discourage divorce; blaming the woman for the failed marriage; placing greater weight on the husband's testimony; requiring the woman to present two male witnesses; and pressuring women into mediation or reconciliation rather than granting a divorce, even when domestic violence is present.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: "Yuri on Ice" has been well received in Japan. It won three awards at the Tokyo Anime Award Festival, a Japan Character Award, seven awards in Crunchyroll's inaugural Anime Awards, and in 2019 was named by the website's editorial team as one of the top 25 anime of the 2010s. In Japan, the series was released in six parts on Blu-ray and DVD, with all the releases coming No. 1 on the Oricon Animation Blu-ray disc and Animation DVD disc rankings respectively. It was the eighth-most successful media franchise in Japan for 2017, had the second-highest combined Blu-ray and DVD sales of any anime in Japan for 2017, and had the highest combined sales for a TV anime that year. It was popular on social media outlets such as Tumblr, Sina Weibo and Twitter, where it received over a million more tweets than the next most-talked about anime series in the season it was broadcast. It also attracted praise from professional figure skaters, with some skaters in the 2018 Winter Olympics performing to music from the show.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: "Yuri on Ice" has raised discussion concerning its depiction of a same-sex relationship between its protagonists, with some critics praising its depiction of anxiety, its covering of homosexuality in a way that differs from most anime and manga such as the yaoi genre, and for dealing with homosexuality in a country and sport that has present-day issues with homophobia. Others criticized its depiction for being unrealistic, and of visual censorship that arguably makes it ambiguous to some viewers.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: After a crushing defeat in the Grand Prix Final and other competition losses, 23-year-old Japanese figure skater Yuri Katsuki develops mixed feelings about skating and puts his career on hold; he returns to his hometown of Hasetsu in Kyushu after 5 years abroad. Yuri visits his childhood friend, Yuko, at an ice rink (Ice Castle Hasetsu) and perfectly mimics an advanced skating routine performed by his idol, Russian figure skating champion Victor Nikiforov. When secretly recorded footage of Yuri's performance is uploaded to the internet, it catches Victor's attention, and he travels to Kyushu with an offer to coach Yuri and revive his figure-skating career. It is later revealed that Victor was already familiar with Yuri, having met him before at a banquet where Yuri got drunk and asked Victor to be his coach.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: After learning about Victor's career decision, Yuri Plisetsky, a rising 15-year-old Russian prodigy skater, travels to Hasetsu to make Victor keep a promise made prior to the beginning of the series. Victor had promised he would choreograph a routine specifically for Yuri P. if he won the Junior World Championships. Victor, having forgotten about his promise to Yuri P., makes the two Yuris compete against each other to decide who he will coach. He chooses two pieces for the skaters, both with the same melody but with a different meaning. The first piece, "Agape", about unconditional love, is given to Yuri P. The second piece, "Eros,” about sexual love, is given to Yuri K. Yuri K.'s performance wins, and Victor becomes Yuri K.'s coach. Yuri P. returns to Russia, and both Yuris vow to win the Grand Prix championship.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: Both Yuri K. and Yuri P. qualify to represent their countries in the Grand Prix series, and then later qualify for the Grand Prix Final in Barcelona. Over the course of the Grand Prix, Yuri K. and Victor become increasingly close, with the two of them kissing in public. Yuri K. buys them both gold rings in Barcelona, which leads to remarks by Victor about them being engaged. On the eve of the final, Yuri K. plans to quit skating so that Victor can return to the sport and tells Victor of his decision, but Victor tearfully rejects the idea, and they agree to choose their paths after the tournament has finished. The tournament ends with Yuri P. winning the gold medal and Yuri K. winning silver. As a result, Yuri K. decides to continue skating and moves to St. Petersburg so that he can continue to stay with Victor, and train alongside Yuri P.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: The original TV series of "Yuri on Ice" aired on TV Asahi from October 6 to December 22, 2016. The anime was produced by MAPPA, directed and written by Sayo Yamamoto using original scripts by Mitsurō Kubo under the supervision of Jun Shishido, with character designs by Tadashi Hiramatsu, music by Taro Umebayashi and Taku Matsushiba and figure-skating choreography by Kenji Miyamoto. The episodes were made available for streaming by Crunchyroll, and Funimation began streaming an English dub on October 24, 2016, at 10:00 p.m. ET. Six Blu-ray and DVD sets of "Yuri on Ice" were released in Japan. The first set, containing the first two episodes, was released on December 30, 2016. Each set includes bonus content such as booklets, production audio commentary and costume-design and choreography videos.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: Yuri Katsuki's hometown of Hasetsu, Kyushu is based on Karatsu, Saga. In December 2016, Saga Prefecture's Sagaprise project announced plans to use "Yuri on Ice" to promote tourism in the area. According to Akinori Kawakami, president of the Association to Connect Hasetsu and Karatsu, 20 to 30 people visit Karatsu every day on anime pilgrimages. By May 2017, "Yuri on Ice" helped to attract 20,000 tourists from 27 countries to Karatsu. On February 22, 2017, the "Nikkan Sports" newspaper featured a collaborative illustration depicting Yuri K., Yuri P. and Victor supporting Sagan Tosu football club, which is based in Saga Prefecture.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: According to a "Sakuga Blog" study, "Yuri on Ice" used more key animators than any other anime series during the fall 2016 season: an average of 48.5 key animators per episode, five more than "Flip Flappers" (which had the second-highest number of key animators). In the early episodes of the series, each character was handled by a different key animator, meaning that skating style of the characters differed from each other. In the skating scenes, the sound effects were changed to match each venue, according to the building's capacity and crowd size. The skating sounds for each sequence were recorded separately. No stock sounds were used for the sequences because each part sounds different, and no footage of professional skaters was used because the music in the programmes normally muffles the sounds. Thus the sounds used were recorded and performed by series choreographer Miyamoto, and each skating sequence is unique to the program.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: The opening theme, "History Maker" by Dean Fujioka, and ending theme, "You Only Live Once" by Wataru Hatano, were both released as singles. A compilation CD entitled , with the anime's 24 original songs, was released on December 21, 2016, and ranked #1 on Oricon's Weekly Digital Album Chart for the week of December 19–25. The insert song "Yuri on Ice" was included in "Piano Solo Chū Jōkyū Figure Skate Meikyoku-shū ~Hyōyō ni Hibiku Melody~ 2016-2017", a piano book released on January 21, 2017 with music used by figure skaters (including Mao Asada and Yuzuru Hanyu). It was the only anime song in the music book release. An album of the TV soundtrack, the "Yūtora/Yuri!!! on Ice" Original Soundtrack Collection, was released on June 28, 2017.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: A side story manga, "Yuri on Ice Side Story: Welcome to The Madness", was published on May 26, 2017 as a bonus item included with the final Blu-Ray volume of the anime series. Written and illustrated by series co-creator Mitsurou Kubo, the manga follows Yuri P. and Otabek Altin the night after the Grand Prix Final. An original video animation also included with the Blu-Ray, "Welcome to The Madness", depicts Yuri P.'s skate at the Grand Prix Final exhibition event.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: A "Yuri on Ice" original film was announced on April 29, 2017 at the "Yuri!!! on Stage" exhibition event. The film's title, "Yuri on Ice the Movie: Ice Adolescence (Yuri on Ice Gekijō-ban: Ice Adolescence)" was announced on July 1, 2018 at the "Yuri!!! on Concert" event. The film was originally scheduled to be released in 2019, but it has been delayed to another, currently unknown release date. A teaser trailer depicting a young Viktor Nikiforov performing at the Winter Olympic Games was released in Japan on January 17, 2019 as a part of a "Yuri on Ice" marathon event. The primary production staff from the "Yuri on Ice" anime series will return to produce "Ice Adolescence", including series creators Sayo Yamamoto and Mitsurō Kubo as the film's director and screenwriter, respectively. On November 26, 2020, the same teaser trailer was released worldwide.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: The series received positive reviews from critics and professional figure skaters. Among critics, in "Anime News Network" "Best and Worst Anime of Fall 2016", five out of nine reviewers called "Yuri on Ice" the season's best show. In July 2017, the series was named by Eleanor Bley Griffiths of the "Radio Times" as one of the best anime TV series available to watch in the UK. From professionals, "Yuri on Ice" was well-received by figure skaters, including Johnny Weir, Evgenia Medvedeva, Denis Ten, Evgeni Plushenko, Masato Kimura, Ryuichi Kihara, Miu Suzaki, and Adam Rippon and included cameo appearances by skaters Nobunari Oda and Stéphane Lambiel. Weir said in an interview that: "I broke my rule about one episode per day because I physically couldn't stop watching." The closing scene of the tenth episode, when Yuri K. drunkenly pole dances, was also commended by professional pole dancers for its accuracy.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: "Yuri on Ice" has also been praised for its direction. Critics have commented on Sayo Yamamoto's diverse range of characters. Brandon Teteruck of Crunchyroll commented: "Yamamoto is subtly crafting a work that embraces diversity and cultural acceptance. Yamamoto does not characterize the foreign skaters as ethnic stereotypes, but rather allows them to act and behave as their own people." Teteruck also claims that Yamamoto subverts traditional representations of gender, sexuality, and nationality. He highlights a scene in the sixth episode in which the Thai skater Phichit Chulanont skates to a piece of music referencing "The King and I", of which the 1956 and 1999 film version are both banned in Thailand. However, the plot was criticised for being repetitive. The characters have received positive comment, primarily over the same-sex relationship between Yuri K. and Victor. Critics have praised the character of Yuri K. for being a realistic depiction of someone suffering from anxiety and as, "a textbook example of an unreliable narrator". Other characters were also praised, with James Beckett of "Anime News Network" calling Yuri P. one of 2016's best anime characters.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: The quality of the animation received a mixed reception. The quality of the animation in early episodes was lauded by Clover Harker of the "UK Anime Network", who said it was, "impressive". Kevin Cirugeda of "Anime News Network" commented that character designer Tadashi Hiramatsu was able to, "make it feel fresh, but also weirdly reminiscent of the past", comparing the series to "FLCL". In later episodes however, there was criticism of the animation skating routines, with one describing it as, "at times painful, or perhaps embarrassing to watch", while another said that the poor animation was the fault of Yamamoto's over-ambition. The music gained positive comment, especially the opening theme tune to the series, "History Maker". Ian Wolf of "Anime UK News" commented on its rousing theme; the use of English connecting to the show's international feel; and the use of both unusual musical instruments such a xylophone in the introduction and of a time signature, arguably make the song a fast waltz and thus a dance akin to ballet. "History Maker" was played in the opening ceremony of the 2017–18 Grand Prix of Figure Skating Final in Nagoya. In the 2018 Winter Olympics, Kihara and Suzaki performed to the piano version of "Yuri on Ice", Yuri Katsuki's Free Skating Program track, from the "Oh! SkaTra!!! Yuri!!! on ICE" soundtrack, in the figure skating team event pairs competition.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: In Crunchyroll's inaugural The Anime Awards, "Yuri on Ice" received awards in all of its seven nomination categories: Best Boy (Yuri K.), Best Animation, Most Heartwarming Scene ("The Kiss", episode seven), Best Couple (Yuri K. and Victor), Best Opening, Best Closing, and Anime of the Year. Although some Crunchyroll users complained that the show won awards it did not deserve, notably the award for Best Animation, and accused fans of "Yuri on Ice" of rigging the vote, others defended the awards, writing that there was no conclusive evidence to prove this, while Crunchyroll stated on Twitter that they had used strong anti-cheating methods. Kun Gao, the general manager and founder of Crunchyroll, wrote "We are thrilled that "Yuri!!! on Ice" has both captivated passionate anime fans and introduced new viewers to anime, and we are privileged to have had the opportunity to distribute this amazing property to its many viewers outside Japan". In 2019, Crunchyoll's editorial team named "Yuri on Ice" one of the top 25 anime of the 2010s. Ian Wolf of "Anime UK News" also picked the series for his list of "best anime of 2010s". "Yuri on Ice" was listed by "Looper" as one of the best anime of the 2010s. When reviewing the US Blu-Ray release of the series for "Anime News Network", Jacob Chapman commented on the criticism "Yuri on Ice" received when it won the Anime Awards. He wrote that some people argued the fans were drawn to the anime as a form of escapism following the political events of 2016 among other factors, but he responded to this saying that:


title: Yuri on Ice

text: The problem with this reductive view is that it assumes "Yuri!!! on Ice" is anywhere near as lightweight and fluffy as its sparkly cover art might suggest. (It's also just a gilded version of the more common "only horny fangirls care about this" argument, meant to delegitimize the show's audience and therefore its merits as a work of art.)


title: Yuri on Ice

text: At the Tokyo Anime Award Festival in 2017, "Yuri on Ice" won Animation of the Year: Television Category and the fan-polled Anime Fan Award. Character designer Tadashi Hiramatsu won the award for Best Animator. In the 2017 Japan Character Awards presented by the Character Brand Licensing Association (CBLA), "Yuri on Ice" won the Japan Character Grand Prize New Face Award. The CBLA gave the show the prize for taking an unusual subject like figure skating and making it appeal to audiences, especially women, and predicted the show, "can continue to grow on a global level.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: The anime has attracted a large online following. According to the Kadokawa Ascii Research Laboratories content and information trend-analytics company, "Yuri on Ice" was the most-tweeted anime of the season (collecting 1,440,596 tweets). It had over a million tweets more than its closest rival, the volleyball-based anime "Haikyu!!" (which had 348,109 tweets). Since it started to include anime and manga in their statistics, Tumblr Fandometrics revealed that "Yuri on Ice" was the most talked about anime on their website starting as of May 1, 2017. It was also the fourth most talked about anime on Tumblr in 2016. "Yuri on Ice" was listed as the top 2016 anime on Crunchyroll for Poland, the Czech Republic, Sierra Leone, Burkina Faso, Malawi, Botswana, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Laos, and Singapore; the most popular 2016 anime series for all countries via Crunchyroll was "". "Yuri on Ice" was one of the three most watched anime on Crunchyroll, the others being "" and the third season of "Sailor Moon Crystal", and was also named the series "Most likely to be watched within an hour of release". A poll of 306,568 viewers by the video-hosting service Nico Nico Douga found that "Yuri on Ice" was the fourth-most-popular TV anime series of the year and the most popular series overall with women, who made up 34 percent of those polled. At the Tokyo Anime Award Festival, an online poll was conducted to construct a list of top 100 anime (10 films and 90 TV anime series) for the year, in which "Yuri on Ice" topped the TV list with 64,774 out of 480,004 votes. It would later win the festival's Anime Fan Award from a second fan polling based on the 100 nominees.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: In a "mega poll" of 19,560 readers for Best Anime of 2016 by "Anime News Network", "Yuri on Ice" finished first with 7,400 votes (37.8 percent of the total). A top-100 poll of users of the Japanese website 2chan named "Yuri on Ice" the tenth-best anime of 2016. A poll by mobile phone operator NTT DoCoMo of 4,800 users named "Yuri on Ice" "Most Favourite TV Anime of 2016" and the "Most Moe" series, while another poll by the same company revealed the tenth episode was the eighth most popular "Swimsuit" episode of anime as chosen by women. A poll of 941 voters on the Japanese anime news aggregator "AnimeAnime" named "Yuri on Ice" the best anime of the fall 2016 season. Receiving 20 percent of the female vote, it was the eighth-most-popular show among men. An "Akiba Souken" poll named the series the most satisfactory anime of fall 2016. A poll by "Animage" magazine of the top 100 anime characters of 2016 ranked Victor first, Yuri K. second and Yuri P. sixth. According to a "Charapedia" poll, Victor was 2016's fourth-most-attractive anime character; Yuri K. finished 12th and Yuri P. 19th in the poll. In an "Anime News Network" poll asking people which male anime characters they would most like to give Valentine's Day chocolates to, Victor came top and Yuri K. came second. Another poll reported that women considered the first and fourth episodes of the series to be the best anime episodes set at hot springs, while a different "Anime News Network" poll said that the first episode was the best anime episode set in a hot spring. In 2017, there were over 20 dedicated "Yuri on Ice" dōjinshi events planned in Japan. An all-night screening of the series and a talk show with writer Mitsurou Kubo and voice actors Toshiyuki Toyonaga, Junichi Suwabe, and Kōki Uchiyama (the voices of Yuri K., Victor and Yuri P., respectively) was held on February 11 at the TOHO cinema in Roppongi Hills, and was relayed live to 47 cinemas in Japan. A screening of the first three episodes was held by the Tokyo Anime Award Festival on March 11, 2017 at Cinema Sunshine in Ikebukuro, Tokyo. The anime contains references to, and has been referenced by, western animation and comics. In the animated series "South Park", the episode "The End of Serialization as We Know It", Ike Broflovski's browser history indicates that he searched for the show. The twelfth episode of "Yuri on Ice" includes a flashback in which a young J.J. Leroy is dressed to resemble "South Park" Eric Cartman. "Yuri on Ice" is also referenced in the "Steven Universe" comic by Melanie Gillman and Katy Farina: in the fourth volume, Yuri K., Yuri P., Victor and minor character Otabek Altin are depicted visiting a renaissance faire in Beach City. Two cafés themed around the series have been established in Tokyo: The first was created in December 2016 in Ikebukuro, and the second was established in May 2017 in Shibuya, and is planned to run until July 2, 2017.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: "Yuri on Ice" sales have been high. In the first half of 2017 it was the second-most successful media franchise in Japan, taking ¥3,262,936,824 from sales in home video and music releases. It was released in Japan on Blu-Ray and DVD across six volumes, with each release topping that Oricon Animation Blu-Ray disc ranking and the Oricon Animation DVD disc ranking respectively. The first Blu-Ray edition of "Yuri on Ice" topped the Oricon Animation Blu-Ray disc ranking for two weeks, and was number two in the Oricon general Blu-Ray disc ranking, behind SMAP's "Clip! SMAP! Complete Singles". The first DVD edition topped the Oricon DVD Animation ranking, above limited and standard editions of "One Piece Film: Gold", and was number two in the Oricon general DVD ranking. Oricon later raises the first week sales into 50,878 copies. The second Blu-Ray and DVD sets also topped the Oricon charts for two weeks. The third Blu-Ray and DVD collections also topped of the Oricon charts, with the DVD topping the chart for two weeks and Blu-Ray for one week. The fourth Blu-Ray and DVD collections topped the Oricon Blu-Ray and DVD charts of a week. The fifth Blu-Ray collection stayed at No. 1 the Oricon Blu-Ray chart for two weeks and the DVD chart for one week. The sixth DVD and Blu-Ray release was promoted with a deleted scene from the series featuring Yuri P. and Otabek skating in the Barcelona exhibition event, which in the broadcast version of the series only shows Yuri K. and Victor skating at the event. The sixth Blu-Ray and DVD releases also topped the Oricon charts. For the first half of 2017, "Yuri on Ice" had the highest combined DVD and Blu-Ray sales of an any animated series in Japan. By the end of 2017, "Yuri on Ice" was the eighth top-selling media franchise in Japan. All six Blu-Ray releases appeared in the top 50 of the top-selling animation Blu-Rays discs, and all six DVD releases appeared in the top 100 of the top-selling animation DVDs of 2017. Combined Blu-Ray and DVD sales resulted in "Yuri on Ice" being the top-selling TV anime of 2017, and the second top-selling anime overall behind the anime film "Your Name".


title: Yuri on Ice

text: On February 6, 2018, Funimation released the series in the United States on a combined DVD and Blu-Ray boxset, with extras including textless opening and closing, trailers, commentary from the 11th episode, and the "Welcome to the Madness" original video anime. There is also a limited edition version including a chipboard collector's box with "cracked ice" holographic finish and silver foil, three art cards, and an 80 page book of illustrations and behind-the-scenes interviews with Sayo Yamamoto, Mitsurou Kubo, and Kenji Miyamoto. Funimation is also releasing the series in the United Kingdom and Ireland through their distributors at Sony Pictures UK, and in Australia and New Zealand through Universal Sony. The anime's opening song, "History Maker" by Dean Fujioka, reached number 43 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart. It was named the best opening theme by four of eight "Anime News Network" critics, and received the Best Opening award at the 2016 The Anime Awards. The ending song, "You Only Live Once" by Wataru Hatano, peaked at number 11 on the Billboard Japan Hot 100 and received the Best Ending award at the 2016 The Anime Awards. The "Oh! SkaTra!!! Yuri!!! on ICE" soundtrack was number three on Oricon's CD chart in its first week of sales, and topped Oricon's digital-album chart. The album also became the top selling anime CD album on the Oricon charts for the first half of 2017. By the end of 2017, "Oh! SkaTra!!! Yuri!!! on ICE" was the fourth best-selling anime CD album of the year, while the "Yūtora/Yuri!!! on Ice" Original Soundtrack Collection was the 30th best selling anime CD of 2017.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: "Yuri on Ice" was praised for including a same-sex romantic relationship between Yuri K. and Victor. Among moments highlighted by critics are an apparent kiss in the seventh episode, an exchange of gold rings (indicating a marriage or engagement) in the tenth episode, and Victor's tears when Yuri suggests ending their partnership in the twelfth episode. The kiss won the 2016 The Anime Awards for Most Heartwarming Scene. The exchange of rings between Yuri K. and Victor in the tenth episode is considered the first time such a relationship has been depicted in anime. Gabriella Ekens wrote for "Anime News Network", ""Yuri on Ice", in depicting a sincere and uncomplicated engagement between two dudes, is unprecedented in anime. There hasn't even been a for real gay marriage in Japan, so this show is depicting something that isn't legally possible in its country of origin". For "Anime UK News", Ian Wolf called the exchange of rings "the best scene in the series". According to Wolf, the anime is an example of the Odagiri effect.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: "Yuri on Ice" has highlighted homophobia in figure skating and other areas; the seventh episode features a flashback in which a younger Victor performs in a costume based on those worn by openly gay figure skater Johnny Weir, who was subject to homophobic comments throughout his career. Weir said in an interview with "The Geekiary",


title: Yuri on Ice

text: I think all positive imagery of LGBT themes in sport are good. Unfortunately, the majority of people that rule the skating world are conservative and more business minded. I think many of them, while they may love and appreciate the art and the sport, are more interested in the business side of things or power trips. I don't know if "Yuri on Ice" will be able to change the perception of gay athletes to a 60 year old businessman, but I am of the school of thought that every little bit helps.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: The series finale features a scene in which Yuri K. and Victor skate together at an exhibition event; something which has not yet occurred in actual competition. Critics have noted that the series depicts two characters from countries with problems concerning LGBT rights.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: "Yuri on Ice" differs from other anime covering same-sex relationships, such as yaoi and yuri. Carli Velocci of "Geek.com" wrote,


title: Yuri on Ice

text: Their relationship exists somewhere beyond any sexuality, meaning it doesn't fall into the same traps that a lot of yuri and yaoi relationships do ... While this isn't the first anime with a same-sex couple at the forefront, it's one of the first to present a story that isn't strictly sexual and is mutual. Yuri and Victor complement each other, but both also admit that they've grown as people because of the presence of the other. The equality in their relationship is revolutionary, even if it wasn't the first to depict one. You can assign the "seme" or "uke" label to Victor and Yuri, but when it comes to their psychological bond, it's more equal ... Yuri and Victor aren't just another gay anime couple. They're almost real.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: A review in "Otaku USA" has argued that the skaters take on an androgynous appearance when they are performing, saying:


title: Yuri on Ice

text: While on ice in the series proper, the main performers often take on an androgynous appearance to feed the show's substance. Yuri's evolution in terms of confidence and capabilities is at the core of the plot, but the heart lies in Yuri's exploration of his feminine side via emotional expression. ... Gender roles are further addressed via Viktor's lines of encouragement to Yuri that, at least as translated, imply both skating direction and romantic suggestion.


title: Yuri on Ice

text: The relationship has also been criticized as unrealistic, with Yuri K. and Victor not receiving the homophobic abuse they would experience in real life. Others have remarked that some viewers might refuse to acknowledge the relationship because the homosexuality was not explicit. Although the "kiss" is obscured by Victor's arm, it is implicit. Cecilia D'Anastasio of "Kotaku" wondered why the "kiss" was blocked when other anime, such as "From the New World", had depicted gay kisses. Wolf of "Anime UK News" originally said of the scene that: "I'm 99.999% sure the kiss did occur, but that 0.001% is horribly getting to me. I don't want to go by what everyone else sees – I want to see what is actually going on, and share in the reaction of the characters at the same time as them". However, by the twelfth episode, he said that the scene in which Victor cries was the proof he wanted:


title: Yuri on Ice

text: If the kiss is the initial spark, and the rings the visible sign of love, then the tears are proof that you don't want it to end. I have been saying all the time that what I wanted was text rather than subtext – but in end, I think the subtext did actually pay off.


title: Frequency modulation

text: Frequency modulation (FM) is the encoding of information in a carrier wave by varying the instantaneous frequency of the wave. The technology is used in telecommunications, radio broadcasting, signal processing, and .


title: Frequency modulation

text: In analog frequency modulation, such as radio broadcasting, of an audio signal representing voice or music, the instantaneous frequency deviation, i.e. the difference between the frequency of the carrier and its center frequency, has a functional relation to the modulating signal amplitude.


title: Frequency modulation

text: Digital data can be encoded and transmitted with a type of frequency modulation known as frequency-shift keying (FSK), in which the instantaneous frequency of the carrier is shifted among a set of frequencies. The frequencies may represent digits, such as '0' and '1'. FSK is widely used in computer modems, such as fax modems, telephone caller ID systems, garage door openers, and other low-frequency transmissions. Radioteletype also uses FSK.


title: Frequency modulation

text: Frequency modulation is widely used for FM radio broadcasting. It is also used in telemetry, radar, seismic prospecting, and monitoring newborns for seizures via EEG, two-way radio systems, sound synthesis, magnetic tape-recording systems and some video-transmission systems. In radio transmission, an advantage of frequency modulation is that it has a larger signal-to-noise ratio and therefore rejects radio frequency interference better than an equal power amplitude modulation (AM) signal. For this reason, most music is broadcast over FM radio.


title: Frequency modulation

text: However, under severe enough multipath conditions it performs much more poorly than AM, with distinct high frequency noise artifacts that are audible with lower volumes and less complex tones. With high enough volume and carrier deviation audio distortion starts to occur that otherwise wouldn't be present without multipath or with an AM signal.


title: Frequency modulation

text: Frequency modulation and phase modulation are the two complementary principal methods of angle modulation; phase modulation is often used as an intermediate step to achieve frequency modulation. These methods contrast with amplitude modulation, in which the amplitude of the carrier wave varies, while the frequency and phase remain constant.


title: Frequency modulation

text: If the information to be transmitted (i.e., the baseband signal) is formula_1 and the sinusoidal carrier is formula_2, where "f" is the carrier's base frequency, and "A" is the carrier's amplitude, the modulator combines the carrier with the baseband data signal to get the transmitted signal:


title: Frequency modulation

text: where formula_4, formula_5 being the sensitivity of the frequency modulator and formula_6 being the amplitude of the modulating signal or baseband signal.


title: Frequency modulation

text: In this equation, formula_7 is the "instantaneous frequency" of the oscillator and formula_8 is the "frequency deviation", which represents the maximum shift away from "f" in one direction, assuming "x"("t") is limited to the range ±1.


title: Frequency modulation

text: While most of the energy of the signal is contained within "f" ± "f", it can be shown by Fourier analysis that a wider range of frequencies is required to precisely represent an FM signal. The frequency spectrum of an actual FM signal has components extending infinitely, although their amplitude decreases and higher-order components are often neglected in practical design problems.


title: Frequency modulation

text: Mathematically, a baseband modulating signal may be approximated by a sinusoidal continuous wave signal with a frequency "f". This method is also named as single-tone modulation. The integral of such a signal is:


title: Frequency modulation

text: where the amplitude formula_11 of the modulating sinusoid is represented in the peak deviation formula_4 (see frequency deviation).


title: Frequency modulation

text: The harmonic distribution of a sine wave carrier modulated by such a sinusoidal signal can be represented with Bessel functions; this provides the basis for a mathematical understanding of frequency modulation in the frequency domain.


title: Frequency modulation

text: As in other modulation systems, the modulation index indicates by how much the modulated variable varies around its unmodulated level. It relates to variations in the carrier frequency:


title: Frequency modulation

text: where formula_14 is the highest frequency component present in the modulating signal "x"("t"), and formula_15 is the peak frequency-deviation—i.e. the maximum deviation of the "instantaneous frequency" from the carrier frequency. For a sine wave modulation, the modulation index is seen to be the ratio of the peak frequency deviation of the carrier wave to the frequency of the modulating sine wave.


title: Frequency modulation

text: If formula_16, the modulation is called narrowband FM (NFM), and its bandwidth is approximately formula_17. Sometimes modulation index formula_18 is considered as NFM, otherwise wideband FM (WFM or FM).


title: Frequency modulation

text: For digital modulation systems, for example binary frequency shift keying (BFSK), where a binary signal modulates the carrier, the modulation index is given by:


title: Frequency modulation

text: where formula_20 is the symbol period, and formula_21 is used as the highest frequency of the modulating binary waveform by convention, even though it would be more accurate to say it is the highest "fundamental" of the modulating binary waveform. In the case of digital modulation, the carrier formula_22 is never transmitted. Rather, one of two frequencies is transmitted, either formula_23 or formula_24, depending on the binary state 0 or 1 of the modulation signal.


title: Frequency modulation

text: If formula_25, the modulation is called "wideband FM" and its bandwidth is approximately formula_26. While wideband FM uses more bandwidth, it can improve the signal-to-noise ratio significantly; for example, doubling the value of formula_15, while keeping formula_28 constant, results in an eight-fold improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio. (Compare this with chirp spread spectrum, which uses extremely wide frequency deviations to achieve processing gains comparable to traditional, better-known spread-spectrum modes).


title: Frequency modulation

text: With a tone-modulated FM wave, if the modulation frequency is held constant and the modulation index is increased, the (non-negligible) bandwidth of the FM signal increases but the spacing between spectra remains the same; some spectral components decrease in strength as others increase. If the frequency deviation is held constant and the modulation frequency increased, the spacing between spectra increases.


title: Frequency modulation

text: Frequency modulation can be classified as narrowband if the change in the carrier frequency is about the same as the signal frequency, or as wideband if the change in the carrier frequency is much higher (modulation index > 1) than the signal frequency. For example, narrowband FM (NFM) is used for two-way radio systems such as Family Radio Service, in which the carrier is allowed to deviate only 2.5 kHz above and below the center frequency with speech signals of no more than 3.5 kHz bandwidth. Wideband FM is used for FM broadcasting, in which music and speech are transmitted with up to 75 kHz deviation from the center frequency and carry audio with up to a 20 kHz bandwidth and subcarriers up to 92 kHz.


title: Frequency modulation

text: For the case of a carrier modulated by a single sine wave, the resulting frequency spectrum can be calculated using Bessel functions of the first kind, as a function of the sideband number and the modulation index. The carrier and sideband amplitudes are illustrated for different modulation indices of FM signals. For particular values of the modulation index, the carrier amplitude becomes zero and all the signal power is in the sidebands.


title: Frequency modulation

text: Since the sidebands are on both sides of the carrier, their count is doubled, and then multiplied by the modulating frequency to find the bandwidth. For example, 3 kHz deviation modulated by a 2.2 kHz audio tone produces a modulation index of 1.36. Suppose that we limit ourselves to only those sidebands that have a relative amplitude of at least 0.01. Then, examining the chart shows this modulation index will produce three sidebands. These three sidebands, when doubled, gives us (6 × 2.2 kHz) or a 13.2 kHz required bandwidth.


title: Frequency modulation

text: A rule of thumb, "Carson's rule" states that nearly all (≈98 percent) of the power of a frequency-modulated signal lies within a bandwidth formula_29 of:


title: Frequency modulation

text: where formula_31, as defined above, is the peak deviation of the instantaneous frequency formula_32 from the center carrier frequency formula_33, formula_34 is the Modulation index which is the ratio of frequency deviation to highest frequency in the modulating signal and formula_14is the highest frequency in the modulating signal.


title: Frequency modulation

text: where W is the highest frequency in the modulating signal but non-sinusoidal in nature and D is the Deviation ratio which the ratio of frequency deviation to highest frequency of modulating non-sinusoidal signal.


title: Frequency modulation

text: FM provides improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), as compared for example with AM. Compared with an optimum AM scheme, FM typically has poorer SNR below a certain signal level called the noise threshold, but above a higher level – the full improvement or full quieting threshold – the SNR is much improved over AM. The improvement depends on modulation level and deviation. For typical voice communications channels, improvements are typically 5–15 dB. FM broadcasting using wider deviation can achieve even greater improvements. Additional techniques, such as pre-emphasis of higher audio frequencies with corresponding de-emphasis in the receiver, are generally used to improve overall SNR in FM circuits. Since FM signals have constant amplitude, FM receivers normally have limiters that remove AM noise, further improving SNR.


title: Frequency modulation

text: Many FM detector circuits exist. A common method for recovering the information signal is through a Foster–Seeley discriminator or ratio detector. A phase-locked loop can be used as an FM demodulator. "Slope detection" demodulates an FM signal by using a tuned circuit which has its resonant frequency slightly offset from the carrier. As the frequency rises and falls the tuned circuit provides a changing amplitude of response, converting FM to AM. AM receivers may detect some FM transmissions by this means, although it does not provide an efficient means of detection for FM broadcasts.


title: Frequency modulation

text: When an echolocating bat approaches a target, its outgoing sounds return as echoes, which are Doppler-shifted upward in frequency. In certain species of bats, which produce constant frequency (CF) echolocation calls, the bats compensate for the Doppler shift by lowering their call frequency as they approach a target. This keeps the returning echo in the same frequency range of the normal echolocation call. This dynamic frequency modulation is called the Doppler Shift Compensation (DSC), and was discovered by Hans Schnitzler in 1968


title: Frequency modulation

text: FM is also used at intermediate frequencies by analog VCR systems (including VHS) to record the luminance (black and white) portions of the video signal. Commonly, the chrominance component is recorded as a conventional AM signal, using the higher-frequency FM signal as bias. FM is the only feasible method of recording the luminance ("black-and-white") component of video to (and retrieving video from) magnetic tape without distortion; video signals have a large range of frequency components – from a few hertz to several megahertz, too wide for equalizers to work with due to electronic noise below −60 dB. FM also keeps the tape at saturation level, acting as a form of noise reduction; a limiter can mask variations in playback output, and the FM capture effect removes print-through and pre-echo. A continuous pilot-tone, if added to the signal – as was done on V2000 and many Hi-band formats – can keep mechanical jitter under control and assist timebase correction.


title: Frequency modulation

text: These FM systems are unusual, in that they have a ratio of carrier to maximum modulation frequency of less than two; contrast this with FM audio broadcasting, where the ratio is around 10,000. Consider, for example, a 6-MHz carrier modulated at a 3.5-MHz rate; by Bessel analysis, the first sidebands are on 9.5 and 2.5 MHz and the second sidebands are on 13 MHz and −1 MHz. The result is a reversed-phase sideband on +1 MHz; on demodulation, this results in unwanted output at 6 – 1 = 5 MHz. The system must be designed so that this unwanted output is reduced to an acceptable level.


title: Frequency modulation

text: FM is also used at audio frequencies to synthesize sound. This technique, known as FM synthesis, was popularized by early digital synthesizers and became a standard feature in several generations of personal computer sound cards.


title: Frequency modulation

text: Edwin Howard Armstrong (1890–1954) was an American electrical engineer who invented wideband frequency modulation (FM) radio.


title: Frequency modulation

text: He patented the regenerative circuit in 1914, the superheterodyne receiver in 1918 and the super-regenerative circuit in 1922. Armstrong presented his paper, "A Method of Reducing Disturbances in Radio Signaling by a System of Frequency Modulation", (which first described FM radio) before the New York section of the Institute of Radio Engineers on November 6, 1935. The paper was published in 1936.


title: Frequency modulation

text: As the name implies, wideband FM (WFM) requires a wider signal bandwidth than amplitude modulation by an equivalent modulating signal; this also makes the signal more robust against noise and interference. Frequency modulation is also more robust against signal-amplitude-fading phenomena. As a result, FM was chosen as the modulation standard for high frequency, high fidelity radio transmission, hence the term "FM radio" (although for many years the BBC called it "VHF radio" because commercial FM broadcasting uses part of the VHF band—the FM broadcast band). FM receivers employ a special detector for FM signals and exhibit a phenomenon known as the "capture effect", in which the tuner "captures" the stronger of two stations on the same frequency while rejecting the other (compare this with a similar situation on an AM receiver, where both stations can be heard simultaneously). However, frequency drift or a lack of selectivity may cause one station to be overtaken by another on an adjacent channel. Frequency drift was a problem in early (or inexpensive) receivers; inadequate selectivity may affect any tuner.


title: Frequency modulation

text: An FM signal can also be used to carry a stereo signal; this is done with multiplexing and demultiplexing before and after the FM process. The FM modulation and demodulation process is identical in stereo and monaural processes. A high-efficiency radio-frequency switching amplifier can be used to transmit FM signals (and other constant-amplitude signals). For a given signal strength (measured at the receiver antenna), switching amplifiers use less battery power and typically cost less than a linear amplifier. This gives FM another advantage over other modulation methods requiring linear amplifiers, such as AM and QAM.


title: Frequency modulation

text: FM is commonly used at VHF radio frequencies for high-fidelity broadcasts of music and speech. Analog TV sound is also broadcast using FM. Narrowband FM is used for voice communications in commercial and amateur radio settings. In broadcast services, where audio fidelity is important, wideband FM is generally used. In two-way radio, narrowband FM (NBFM) is used to conserve bandwidth for land mobile, marine mobile and other radio services.


title: Frequency modulation

text: There are reports that on October 5, 1924, Professor Mikhail A. Bonch-Bruevich, during a scientific and technical conversation in the Nizhny Novgorod Radio Laboratory, reported about his new method of telephony, based on a change in the period of oscillations. Demonstration of frequency modulation was carried out on the laboratory model.


title: Mentha

text: Mentha (also known as mint, from Greek , Linear B "mi-ta") is a genus of plants in the family Lamiaceae (mint family). The exact distinction between species is unclear; it is estimated that 13 to 24 species exist. Hybridization occurs naturally where some species' ranges overlap. Many hybrids and cultivars are known.


title: Mentha

text: The genus has a subcosmopolitan distribution across Europe, Africa - (Southern Africa), Asia, Australia - Oceania, North America and South America. Its species can be found in many environments, but most grow best in wet environments and moist soils.


title: Mentha

text: Mints are aromatic, almost exclusively perennial herbs. They have wide-spreading underground and overground stolons and erect, square, branched stems. Mints will grow 10–120 cm (4–48 inches) tall and can spread over an indeterminate area. Due to their tendency to spread unchecked, some mints are considered invasive.


title: Mentha

text: The leaves are arranged in opposite pairs, from oblong to lanceolate, often downy, and with a serrated margin. Leaf colors range from dark green and gray-green to purple, blue, and sometimes pale yellow.


title: Mentha

text: The flowers are produced in long bracts from leaf axils. They are white to purple and produced in false whorls called verticillasters. The corolla is two-lipped with four subequal lobes, the upper lobe usually the largest. The fruit is a nutlet, containing one to four seeds.


title: Mentha

text: "Mentha" is a member of the tribe Mentheae in the subfamily Nepetoideae. The tribe contains about 65 genera, and relationships within it remain obscure. Authors have disagreed on the circumscription of "Mentha". For example, "M. cervina" has been placed in "Pulegium" and "Preslia", and "M. cunninghamii" has been placed in "Micromeria". In 2004, a molecular phylogenetic study indicated that both "M. cervina" and "M. cunninghamii" should be included in "Mentha". However, "M. cunninghamii" was excluded in a 2007 treatment of the genus.


title: Mentha

text: More than 3,000 names have been published in the genus "Mentha", at ranks from species to forms, the majority of which are regarded as synonyms or illegitimate names. The taxonomy of the genus is made difficult because many species hybridize readily, or are themselves derived from possibly ancient hybridization events. Seeds from hybrids give rise to variable offspring, which may spread through vegetative propagation. The variability has led to what has been described as "paroxysms of species and subspecific taxa"; for example, one taxonomist published 434 new mint taxa for central Europe alone between 1911 and 1916. Recent sources recognize between 18 and 24 species.


title: Mentha

text: There are a number of plants that have mint in the Norwegian name in Norway and also the same in other Scandinavian countries here, but which do not belong to the genus "Mentha":


title: Mentha

text: The mint genus has a large grouping of recognized hybrids. Those accepted by Plants of the World Online are listed below. Parent species are taken from Tucker & Naczi (2007). Synonyms, along with cultivars and varieties where available, are included within the specific nothospecies.


title: Mentha

text: All mints thrive near pools of water, lakes, rivers, and cool moist spots in partial shade. In general, mints tolerate a wide range of conditions, and can also be grown in full sun. Mint grows all year round.


title: Mentha

text: They are fast-growing, extending their reach along surfaces through a network of runners. Due to their speedy growth, one plant of each desired mint, along with a little care, will provide more than enough mint for home use. Some mint species are more invasive than others. Even with the less invasive mints, care should be taken when mixing any mint with any other plants, lest the mint take over. To control mints in an open environment, they should be planted in deep, bottomless containers sunk in the ground, or planted above ground in tubs and barrels.


title: Mentha

text: Some mints can be propagated by seed, but growth from seed can be an unreliable method for raising mint for two reasons: mint seeds are highly variable — one might not end up with what one supposed was planted — and some mint varieties are sterile. It is more effective to take and plant cuttings from the runners of healthy mints.


title: Mentha

text: The most common and popular mints for commercial cultivation are peppermint ("Mentha × piperita"), native spearmint ("Mentha spicata"), Scotch spearmint ("Mentha x gracilis"), and cornmint ("Mentha arvensis"); also (more recently) apple mint ("Mentha suaveolens").


title: Mentha

text: Mints are supposed to make good companion plants, repelling pesty insects and attracting beneficial ones. They are susceptible to whitefly and aphids.


title: Mentha

text: Harvesting of mint leaves can be done at any time. Fresh leaves should be used immediately or stored up to a few days in plastic bags in a refrigerator. Optionally, leaves can be frozen in ice cube trays. Dried mint leaves should be stored in an airtight container placed in a cool, dark, dry area.


title: Mentha

text: The leaf, fresh or dried, is the culinary source of mint. Fresh mint is usually preferred over dried mint when storage of the mint is not a problem. The leaves have a warm, fresh, aromatic, sweet flavor with a cool aftertaste, and are used in teas, beverages, jellies, syrups, candies, and ice creams. In Middle Eastern cuisine, mint is used in lamb dishes, while in British cuisine and American cuisine, mint sauce and mint jelly are used, respectively. Mint (pudina) is a staple in Indian cuisine, used for flavouring curries and other dishes.


title: Mentha

text: Mint is a necessary ingredient in Touareg tea, a popular tea in northern African and Arab countries. Tea in Arab countries is popularly drunk this way. Alcoholic drinks sometimes feature mint for flavor or garnish, such as the mint julep and the mojito. "Crème de menthe" is a mint-flavored liqueur used in drinks such as the grasshopper.


title: Mentha

text: Mint essential oil and menthol are extensively used as flavorings in breath fresheners, drinks, antiseptic mouth rinses, toothpaste, chewing gum, desserts, and candies, such as mint (candy) and mint chocolate. The substances that give the mints their characteristic aromas and flavors are menthol (the main aroma of peppermint and Japanese peppermint) and pulegone (in pennyroyal and Corsican mint). The compound primarily responsible for the aroma and flavor of spearmint is -carvone.


title: Mentha

text: Mints are used as food plants by the larvae of some Lepidoptera species, including buff ermine moths. It is also eaten by beetles such as "Chrysolina coerulans" (blue mint beetle) and "Mint leaf beetle".


title: Mentha

text: The ancient Greeks rubbed mint on their arms, believing it would make them stronger. Mint was originally used as a medicinal herb to treat stomach ache and chest pains. There are several uses in traditional medicine and preliminary research for possible use in treating irritable bowel syndrome.


title: Mentha

text: Menthol from mint essential oil (40–90%) is an ingredient of many cosmetics and some perfumes. Menthol and mint essential oil are also used in aromatherapy which may have clinical use to alleviate post-surgery nausea.


title: Mentha

text: Although it is used in many consumer products, mint may cause allergic reactions in some people, inducing symptoms such as abdominal cramps, diarrhea, headaches, heartburn, tingling or numbing around the mouth, anaphylaxis or contact dermatitis.


title: Mentha

text: Mint oil is also used as an environmentally friendly insecticide for its ability to kill some common pests such as wasps, hornets, ants, and cockroaches.


title: Mentha

text: Known in Greek mythology as the herb of hospitality, one of mint's first known uses in Europe was as a room deodorizer. The herb was strewn across floors to cover the smell of the hard-packed soil. Stepping on the mint helped to spread its scent through the room. Today, it is more commonly used for aromatherapy through the use of essential oils.


title: Mentha

text: The word "mint" descends from the Latin word "mentha" or "menta", which is rooted in the Greek words "mintha", "minthē" or  "mintē" meaning "spearmint". The plant was personified in Greek mythology as Minthe, a nymph who was beloved by Hades and was transformed into a mint plant by either Persephone or Demeter. This, in turn, ultimately derived from a proto-Indo-European root that is also the origin of the Sanskrit "-mantha, mathana" ("premna serratifolia").


title: Mentha

text: References to "mint leaves", without a qualifier like "peppermint" or "apple mint", generally refer to spearmint leaves.


title: Mentha

text: In Spain and Central and South America, mint is known as "menta". In Lusophone countries, especially in Portugal, mint species are popularly known as "". In many Indo-Aryan languages, it is called "pudīna": , , borrowed from Persian "pudna" or "puna" meaning "pennyroyal".


title: Mentha

text: The taxonomic family Lamiaceae is known as the mint family. It includes many other aromatic herbs, including most of the more common cooking herbs, such as basil, rosemary, sage, oregano, and catnip.


title: Mentha

text: In common usage, other plants with fragrant leaves may be called "mint", although they are not in the mint family:


title: Mentha

text: †Mentha pliocenica fossil seeds have been excavated in Pliocene deposits of Dvorets on the right bank of the Dnieper river between the cities of Rechitsa and Loyew, in south-eastern Belarus. The fossil seeds are similar to the seeds of "Mentha aquatica" and "Mentha arvensis".


title: Sinkhole

text: A sinkhole is a depression or hole in the ground caused by some form of collapse of the surface layer. The term is sometimes used to refer to doline, enclosed depressions that are locally also known as "vrtače" and shakeholes, and to openings where surface water enters into underground passages known as "ponor", swallow hole or swallet. A "cenote" is a type of sinkhole that exposes groundwater underneath. A "sink" or "stream sink" are more general terms for sites that drain surface water, possibly by infiltration into sediment or crumbled rock.


title: Sinkhole

text: Most sinkholes are caused by karst processes – the chemical dissolution of carbonate rocks, collapse or suffosion processes. Sinkholes are usually circular and vary in size from tens to hundreds of meters both in diameter and depth, and vary in form from soil-lined bowls to bedrock-edged chasms. Sinkholes may form gradually or suddenly, and are found worldwide.


title: Sinkhole

text: Sinkholes may capture surface drainage from running or standing water, but may also form in high and dry places in specific locations. Sinkholes that capture drainage can hold it in large limestone caves. These caves may drain into tributaries of larger rivers.


title: Sinkhole

text: The formation of sinkholes involves natural processes of erosion or gradual removal of slightly soluble bedrock (such as limestone) by percolating water, the collapse of a cave roof, or a lowering of the water table. Sinkholes often form through the process of suffosion. For example, groundwater may dissolve the carbonate cement holding the sandstone particles together and then carry away the lax particles, gradually forming a void.


title: Sinkhole

text: Occasionally a sinkhole may exhibit a visible opening into a cave below. In the case of exceptionally large sinkholes, such as the Minyé sinkhole in Papua New Guinea or Cedar Sink at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, an underground stream or river may be visible across its bottom flowing from one side to the other.


title: Sinkhole

text: Sinkholes are common where the rock below the land surface is limestone or other carbonate rock, salt beds, or in other soluble rocks, such as gypsum, that can be dissolved naturally by circulating ground water. Sinkholes also occur in sandstone and quartzite terrains.


title: Sinkhole

text: As the rock dissolves, spaces and caverns develop underground. These sinkholes can be dramatic, because the surface land usually stays intact until there is not enough support. Then, a sudden collapse of the land surface can occur.


title: Sinkhole

text: On 2 July 2015, scientists reported that active pits, related to sinkhole collapses and possibly associated with outbursts, were found on the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by the "Rosetta" space probe.


title: Sinkhole

text: Collapses, commonly incorrectly labeled as sinkholes, also occur due to human activity, such as the collapse of abandoned mines and salt cavern storage in salt domes in places like Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, in the United States of America. More commonly, collapses occur in urban areas due to water main breaks or sewer collapses when old pipes give way. They can also occur from the overpumping and extraction of groundwater and subsurface fluids.


title: Sinkhole

text: Sinkholes can also form when natural water-drainage patterns are changed and new water-diversion systems are developed. Some sinkholes form when the land surface is changed, such as when industrial and runoff-storage ponds are created; the substantial weight of the new material can trigger a collapse of the roof of an existing void or cavity in the subsurface, resulting in development of a sinkhole.


title: Sinkhole

text: Solution or dissolution sinkholes form where water dissolves limestone under a soil covering. Dissolution enlarges natural openings in the rock such as joints, fractures, and bedding planes. Soil settles down into the enlarged openings forming a small depression at the ground surface.


title: Sinkhole

text: Cover-subsidence sinkholes form where voids in the underlying limestone allow more settling of the soil to create larger surface depressions.


title: Sinkhole

text: Cover-collapse sinkholes or "dropouts" form where so much soil settles down into voids in the limestone that the ground surface collapses. The surface collapses may occur abruptly and cause catastrophic damages. New sinkhole collapses can also form when human activity changes the natural water-drainage patterns in karst areas.


title: Sinkhole

text: Pseudokarst sinkholes resemble karst sinkholes but are formed by processes other than the natural dissolution of rock.


title: Sinkhole

text: The U.S. Geological Survey notes that "It is a frightening thought to imagine the ground below your feet or house suddenly collapsing and forming a big hole in the ground." Human activities can accelerate collapses of karst sinkholes, causing collapse within a few years that would normally evolve over thousands of years under natural conditions. Soil-collapse sinkholes, which are characterized by the collapse of cavities in soil that have developed where soil falls down into underlying rock cavities, pose the most serious hazards to life and property. Fluctuation of the water level accelerates this collapse process. When water rises up through fissures in the rock, it reduces soil cohesion. Later, as the water level moves downward, the softened soil seeps downwards into rock cavities. Flowing water in karst conduits carries the soil away, preventing soil from accumulating in rock cavities and allowing the collapse process to continue.


title: Sinkhole

text: Induced sinkholes occur where human activity alters how surface water recharges groundwater. Many human-induced sinkholes occur where natural diffused recharge is disturbed and surface water becomes concentrated. Activities that can accelerate sinkhole collapses include timber removal, ditching, laying pipelines, sewers, water lines, storm drains, and drilling. These activities can increase the downward movement of water beyond the natural rate of groundwater recharge. The increased runoff from the impervious surfaces of roads, roofs, and parking lots also accelerate man-induced sinkhole collapses.


title: Sinkhole

text: Some induced sinkholes are preceded by warning signs, such as cracks, sagging, jammed doors, or cracking noises, but others develop with little or no warning. However, karst development is well understood, and proper site characterization can avoid karst disasters. Thus most sinkhole disasters are predictable and preventable rather than “acts of God”. The American Society of Civil Engineers has declared that the potential for sinkhole collapse must be a part of land-use planning in karst areas. Where sinkhole collapse of structures could cause loss of life, the public should be made aware of the risks.


title: Sinkhole

text: The most likely locations for sinkhole collapse are areas where there is already a high density of existing sinkholes. Their presence shows that the subsurface contains a cave system or other unstable voids. Where large cavities exist in the limestone large surface collapses can occur, such the Winter Park, Florida sinkhole collapse. Recommendations for land uses in karst areas should avoid or minimize alterations of the land surface and natural drainage.


title: Sinkhole

text: Since water level changes accelerate sinkhole collapse, measures must be taken to minimize water level changes. The areas most susceptible to sinkhole collapse can be identified and avoided. In karst areas the traditional foundation evaluations (bearing capacity and settlement) of the ability of soil to support a structure must be supplemented by geotechnical site investigation for cavities and defects in the underlying rock. Since the soil/rock surface in karst areas are very irregular the number of subsurface samples (borings and core samples) required per unit area is usually much greater than in non-karst areas.


title: Sinkhole

text: In 2015, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated the cost for repairs of damage arising from karst-related processes as at least $300 million per year over the preceding 15 years, but noted that this may be a gross underestimate based on inadequate data. The greatest amount of karst sinkhole damage in the United States occurs in Florida, Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania. The largest recent sinkhole in the USA is possibly one that formed in 1972 in Montevallo, Alabama as a result of man-made lowering of the water level in a nearby rock quarry. This "December Giant" or "Golly Hole" sinkhole measures long, wide and deep.


title: Sinkhole

text: Other areas of significant karst hazards include the Ebro Basin in northern Spain; the island of Sardinia; the Italian peninsula; the Chalk areas in southern England; Sichuan, China; Jamaica; France; Croatia; and Russia, where one-third of the total land area is underlain by karst.


title: Sinkhole

text: Sinkholes tend to occur in karst landscapes. Karst landscapes can have up to thousands of sinkholes within a small area, giving the landscape a pock-marked appearance. These sinkholes drain all the water, so there are only subterranean rivers in these areas. Examples of karst landscapes with numerous massive sinkholes include Khammouan Mountains (Laos) and Mamo Plateau (Papua New Guinea). The largest known sinkholes formed in sandstone are Sima Humboldt and Sima Martel in Venezuela.


title: Sinkhole

text: Some sinkholes form in thick layers of homogeneous limestone. Their formation is facilitated by high groundwater flow, often caused by high rainfall; such rainfall causes formation of the giant sinkholes in the Nakanaï Mountains, on the New Britain island in Papua New Guinea. Powerful underground rivers may form on the contact between limestone and underlying insoluble rock, creating large underground voids.


title: Sinkhole

text: In such conditions, the largest known sinkholes of the world have formed, like the Xiaozhai Tiankeng (Chongqing, China), giant sótanos in Querétaro and San Luis Potosí states in Mexico and others.


title: Sinkhole

text: Unusual processes have formed the enormous sinkholes of Sistema Zacatón in Tamaulipas (Mexico), where more than 20 sinkholes and other karst formations have been shaped by volcanically heated, acidic groundwater. This has produced not only the formation of the deepest water-filled sinkhole in the world—Zacatón—but also unique processes of travertine sedimentation in upper parts of sinkholes, leading to sealing of these sinkholes with travertine lids.


title: Sinkhole

text: The U.S. state of Florida in North America is known for having frequent sinkhole collapses, especially in the central part of the state. Underlying limestone there is from 15 to 25 million years old. On the fringes of the state, sinkholes are rare or non-existent; limestone there is around 120,000 years old.


title: Sinkhole

text: The Murge area in southern Italy also has numerous sinkholes. Sinkholes can be formed in retention ponds from large amounts of rain.


title: Sinkhole

text: Sinkholes have been used for centuries as disposal sites for various forms of waste. A consequence of this is the pollution of groundwater resources, with serious health implications in such areas.


title: Sinkhole

text: The Maya civilization sometimes used sinkholes in the Yucatán Peninsula (known as cenotes) as places to deposit precious items and human sacrifices.


title: Sinkhole

text: When sinkholes are very deep or connected to caves, they may offer challenges for experienced cavers or, when water-filled, divers. Some of the most spectacular are the Zacatón cenote in Mexico (the world's deepest water-filled sinkhole), the Boesmansgat sinkhole in South Africa, Sarisariñama tepuy in Venezuela, the Sótano del Barro in Mexico, and in the town of Mount Gambier, South Australia. Sinkholes that form in coral reefs and islands that collapse to enormous depths are known as blue holes and often become popular diving spots.


title: Sinkhole

text: Large and visually unusual sinkholes have been well known to local people since ancient times. Nowadays sinkholes are grouped and named in site-specific or generic names. Some examples of such names are listed below.


title: Sinkhole

text: The 2010 Guatemala City sinkhole formed suddenly in May of that year; torrential rains from Tropical Storm Agatha and a bad drainage system were blamed for its creation. It swallowed a three-story building and a house; it measured approximately wide and deep. A similar hole had formed nearby in February 2007.


title: Sinkhole

text: This large vertical hole is not a true sinkhole, as it did not form via the dissolution of limestone, dolomite, marble, or any other water-soluble rock. Instead, they are examples of "piping pseudokarst", created by the collapse of large cavities that had developed in the weak, crumbly Quaternary volcanic deposits underlying the city. Although weak and crumbly, these volcanic deposits have enough cohesion to allow them to stand in vertical faces and to develop large subterranean voids within them. A process called "soil piping" first created large underground voids, as water from leaking water mains flowed through these volcanic deposits and mechanically washed fine volcanic materials out of them, then progressively eroded and removed coarser materials. Eventually, these underground voids became large enough that their roofs collapsed to create large holes.


title: Sinkhole

text: A crown hole is subsidence due to subterranean human activity, such as mining and military trenches. Examples have included, instances above World War I trenches in Ypres, Belgium; near mines in Nitra, Slovakia; a limestone quarry in Dudley, England; and above an old gypsum mine in Magheracloone, Ireland.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Egyptian mythology is the collection of myths from ancient Egypt, which describe the actions of the Egyptian gods as a means of understanding the world around them. The beliefs that these myths express are an important part of ancient Egyptian religion. Myths appear frequently in Egyptian writings and art, particularly in short stories and in religious material such as hymns, ritual texts, funerary texts, and temple decoration. These sources rarely contain a complete account of a myth and often describe only brief fragments.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Inspired by the cycles of nature, the Egyptians saw time in the present as a series of recurring patterns, whereas the earliest periods of time were linear. Myths are set in these earliest times, and myth sets the pattern for the cycles of the present. Present events repeat the events of myth, and in doing so renew "maat", the fundamental order of the universe. Amongst the most important episodes from the mythic past are the creation myths, in which the gods form the universe out of primordial chaos; the stories of the reign of the sun god Ra upon the earth; and the Osiris myth, concerning the struggles of the gods Osiris, Isis, and Horus against the disruptive god Set. Events from the present that might be regarded as myths include Ra's daily journey through the world and its otherworldly counterpart, the Duat. Recurring themes in these mythic episodes include the conflict between the upholders of "maat" and the forces of disorder, the importance of the pharaoh in maintaining "maat", and the continual death and regeneration of the gods.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: The details of these sacred events differ greatly from one text to another and often seem contradictory. Egyptian myths are primarily metaphorical, translating the essence and behavior of deities into terms that humans can understand. Each variant of a myth represents a different symbolic perspective, enriching the Egyptians' understanding of the gods and the world.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Mythology profoundly influenced Egyptian culture. It inspired or influenced many religious rituals and provided the ideological basis for kingship. Scenes and symbols from myth appeared in art in tombs, temples, and amulets. In literature, myths or elements of them were used in stories that range from humor to allegory, demonstrating that the Egyptians adapted mythology to serve a wide variety of purposes.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: The development of Egyptian myth is difficult to trace. Egyptologists must make educated guesses about its earliest phases, based on written sources that appeared much later. One obvious influence on myth is the Egyptians' natural surroundings. Each day the sun rose and set, bringing light to the land and regulating human activity; each year the Nile flooded, renewing the fertility of the soil and allowing the highly productive farming that sustained Egyptian civilization. Thus the Egyptians saw water and the sun as symbols of life and thought of time as a series of natural cycles. This orderly pattern was at constant risk of disruption: unusually low floods resulted in famine, and high floods destroyed crops and buildings. The hospitable Nile valley was surrounded by harsh desert, populated by peoples the Egyptians regarded as uncivilized enemies of order. For these reasons, the Egyptians saw their land as an isolated place of stability, or "maat", surrounded and endangered by chaos. These themes—order, chaos, and renewal—appear repeatedly in Egyptian religious thought.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Another possible source for mythology is ritual. Many rituals make reference to myths and are sometimes based directly on them. But it is difficult to determine whether a culture's myths developed before rituals or vice versa. Questions about this relationship between myth and ritual have spawned much discussion among Egyptologists and scholars of comparative religion in general. In ancient Egypt, the earliest evidence of religious practices predates written myths. Rituals early in Egyptian history included only a few motifs from myth. For these reasons, some scholars have argued that, in Egypt, rituals emerged before myths. But because the early evidence is so sparse, the question may never be resolved for certain.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: In private rituals, which are often called "magical", the myth and the ritual are particularly closely tied. Many of the myth-like stories that appear in the rituals' texts are not found in other sources. Even the widespread motif of the goddess Isis rescuing her poisoned son Horus appears only in this type of text. The Egyptologist David Frankfurter argues that these rituals adapt basic mythic traditions to fit the specific ritual, creating elaborate new stories (called historiolas) based on myth. In contrast, J. F. Borghouts says of magical texts that there is "not a shred of evidence that a specific kind of 'unorthodox' mythology was coined... for this genre."


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Much of Egyptian mythology consists of origin myths, explaining the beginnings of various elements of the world, including human institutions and natural phenomena. Kingship arises among the gods at the beginning of time and later passed to the human pharaohs; warfare originates when humans begin fighting each other after the sun god's withdrawal into the sky. Myths also describe the supposed beginnings of less fundamental traditions. In a minor mythic episode, Horus becomes angry with his mother Isis and cuts off her head. Isis replaces her lost head with that of a cow. This event explains why Isis was sometimes depicted with the horns of a cow as part of her headdress.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Some myths may have been inspired by historical events. The unification of Egypt under the pharaohs, at the end of the Predynastic Period around 3100 BC, made the king the focus of Egyptian religion, and thus the ideology of kingship became an important part of mythology. In the wake of unification, gods that were once local patron deities gained national importance, forming new relationships that linked the local deities into a unified national tradition. Geraldine Pinch suggests that early myths may have formed from these relationships. Egyptian sources link the mythical strife between the gods Horus and Set with a conflict between the regions of Upper and Lower Egypt, which may have happened in the late Predynastic era or in the Early Dynastic Period.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: After these early times, most changes to mythology developed and adapted preexisting concepts rather than creating new ones, although there were exceptions. Many scholars have suggested that the myth of the sun god withdrawing into the sky, leaving humans to fight among themselves, was inspired by the breakdown of royal authority and national unity at the end of the Old Kingdom (c. 2686 BC – 2181 BC). In the New Kingdom (c. 1550–1070 BC), minor myths developed around deities like Yam and Anat who had been adopted from Canaanite religion. In contrast, during the Greek and Roman eras (332 BC–641 AD), Greco-Roman culture had little influence on Egyptian mythology.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Scholars have difficulty defining which ancient Egyptian beliefs are myths. The basic definition of myth suggested by the Egyptologist John Baines is "a sacred or culturally central narrative". In Egypt, the narratives that are central to culture and religion are almost entirely about events among the gods. Actual narratives about the gods' actions are rare in Egyptian texts, particularly from early periods, and most references to such events are mere mentions or allusions. Some Egyptologists, like Baines, argue that narratives complete enough to be called "myths" existed in all periods, but that Egyptian tradition did not favor writing them down. Others, like Jan Assmann, have said that true myths were rare in Egypt and may only have emerged partway through its history, developing out of the fragments of narration that appear in the earliest writings. Recently, however, Vincent Arieh Tobin and Susanne Bickel have suggested that lengthy narration was not needed in Egyptian mythology because of its complex and flexible nature. Tobin argues that narrative is even alien to myth, because narratives tend to form a simple and fixed perspective on the events they describe. If narration is not needed for myth, any statement that conveys an idea about the nature or actions of a god can be called "mythic".


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Like myths in many other cultures, Egyptian myths serve to justify human traditions and to address fundamental questions about the world, such as the nature of disorder and the ultimate fate of the universe. The Egyptians explained these profound issues through statements about the gods.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Egyptian deities represent natural phenomena, from physical objects like the earth or the sun to abstract forces like knowledge and creativity. The actions and interactions of the gods, the Egyptians believed, govern the behavior of all of these forces and elements. For the most part, the Egyptians did not describe these mysterious processes in explicit theological writings. Instead, the relationships and interactions of the gods illustrated such processes implicitly.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Most of Egypt's gods, including many of the major ones, do not have significant roles in any mythic narratives, although their nature and relationships with other deities are often established in lists or bare statements without narration. For the gods who are deeply involved in narratives, mythic events are very important expressions of their roles in the cosmos. Therefore, if only narratives are myths, mythology is a major element in Egyptian religious understanding, but not as essential as it is in many other cultures.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: The true realm of the gods is mysterious and inaccessible to humans. Mythological stories use symbolism to make the events in this realm comprehensible. Not every detail of a mythic account has symbolic significance. Some images and incidents, even in religious texts, are meant simply as visual or dramatic embellishments of broader, more meaningful myths.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Few complete stories appear in Egyptian mythological sources. These sources often contain nothing more than allusions to the events to which they relate, and texts that contain actual narratives tell only portions of a larger story. Thus, for any given myth the Egyptians may have had only the general outlines of a story, from which fragments describing particular incidents were drawn. Moreover, the gods are not well-defined characters, and the motivations for their sometimes inconsistent actions are rarely given. Egyptian myths are not, therefore, fully developed tales. Their importance lay in their underlying meaning, not their characteristics as stories. Instead of coalescing into lengthy, fixed narratives, they remained highly flexible and non-dogmatic.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: So flexible were Egyptian myths that they could seemingly conflict with each other. Many descriptions of the creation of the world and the movements of the sun occur in Egyptian texts, some very different from each other. The relationships between gods were fluid, so that, for instance, the goddess Hathor could be called the mother, wife, or daughter of the sun god Ra. Separate deities could even be syncretized, or linked, as a single being. Thus the creator god Atum was combined with Ra to form Ra-Atum.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: One commonly suggested reason for inconsistencies in myth is that religious ideas differed over time and in different regions. The local cults of various deities developed theologies centered on their own patron gods. As the influence of different cults shifted, some mythological systems attained national dominance. In the Old Kingdom (c. 2686–2181 BC) the most important of these systems was the cults of Ra and Atum, centered at Heliopolis. They formed a mythical family, the Ennead, that was said to have created the world. It included the most important deities of the time but gave primacy to Atum and Ra. The Egyptians also overlaid old religious ideas with new ones. For instance, the god Ptah, whose cult was centered at Memphis, was also said to be the creator of the world. Ptah's creation myth incorporates older myths by saying that it is the Ennead who carry out Ptah's creative commands. Thus, the myth makes Ptah older and greater than the Ennead. Many scholars have seen this myth as a political attempt to assert the superiority of Memphis' god over those of Heliopolis. By combining concepts in this way, the Egyptians produced an immensely complicated set of deities and myths.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Egyptologists in the early twentieth century thought that politically motivated changes like these were the principal reason for the contradictory imagery in Egyptian myth. However, in the 1940s, Henri Frankfort, realizing the symbolic nature of Egyptian mythology, argued that apparently contradictory ideas are part of the "multiplicity of approaches" that the Egyptians used to understand the divine realm. Frankfort's arguments are the basis for much of the more recent analysis of Egyptian beliefs. Political changes affected Egyptian beliefs, but the ideas that emerged through those changes also have deeper meaning. Multiple versions of the same myth express different aspects of the same phenomenon; different gods that behave in a similar way reflect the close connections between natural forces. The varying symbols of Egyptian mythology express ideas too complex to be seen through a single lens.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: The sources that are available range from solemn hymns to entertaining stories. Without a single, canonical version of any myth, the Egyptians adapted the broad traditions of myth to fit the varied purposes of their writings. Most Egyptians were illiterate and may therefore have had an elaborate oral tradition that transmitted myths through spoken storytelling. Susanne Bickel suggests that the existence of this tradition helps explain why many texts related to myth give little detail: the myths were already known to every Egyptian. Very little evidence of this oral tradition has survived, and modern knowledge of Egyptian myths is drawn from written and pictorial sources. Only a small proportion of these sources has survived to the present, so much of the mythological information that was once written down has been lost. This information is not equally abundant in all periods, so the beliefs that Egyptians held in some eras of their history are more poorly understood than the beliefs in better documented times.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Many gods appear in artwork from the Early Dynastic Period of Egypt's history (c. 3100–2686 BC), but little about the gods' actions can be gleaned from these sources because they include minimal writing. The Egyptians began using writing more extensively in the Old Kingdom, in which appeared the first major source of Egyptian mythology: the Pyramid Texts. These texts are a collection of several hundred incantations inscribed in the interiors of pyramids beginning in the 24th century BC. They were the first Egyptian funerary texts, intended to ensure that the kings buried in the pyramid would pass safely through the afterlife. Many of the incantations allude to myths related to the afterlife, including creation myths and the myth of Osiris. Many of the texts are likely much older than their first known written copies, and they therefore provide clues about the early stages of Egyptian religious belief.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: During the First Intermediate Period (c. 2181–2055 BC), the Pyramid Texts developed into the Coffin Texts, which contain similar material and were available to non-royals. Succeeding funerary texts, like the "Book of the Dead" in the New Kingdom and the "Books of Breathing" from the Late Period (664–323 BC) and after, developed out of these earlier collections. The New Kingdom also saw the development of another type of funerary text, containing detailed and cohesive descriptions of the nocturnal journey of the sun god. Texts of this type include the "Amduat", the "Book of Gates", and the "Book of Caverns".


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Temples, whose surviving remains date mostly from the New Kingdom and later, are another important source of myth. Many temples had a "per-ankh", or temple library, storing papyri for rituals and other uses. Some of these papyri contain hymns, which, in praising a god for its actions, often refer to the myths that define those actions. Other temple papyri describe rituals, many of which are based partly on myth. Scattered remnants of these papyrus collections have survived to the present. It is possible that the collections included more systematic records of myths, but no evidence of such texts has survived. Mythological texts and illustrations, similar to those on temple papyri, also appear in the decoration of the temple buildings. The elaborately decorated and well-preserved temples of the Ptolemaic and Roman periods (305 BC–AD 380) are an especially rich source of myth.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: The Egyptians also performed rituals for personal goals such as protection from or healing of illness. These rituals are often called "magical" rather than religious, but they were believed to work on the same principles as temple ceremonies, evoking mythical events as the basis for the ritual.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Information from religious sources is limited by a system of traditional restrictions on what they could describe and depict. The murder of the god Osiris, for instance, is never explicitly described in Egyptian writings. The Egyptians believed that words and images could affect reality, so they avoided the risk of making such negative events real. The conventions of Egyptian art were also poorly suited for portraying whole narratives, so most myth-related artwork consists of sparse individual scenes.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: References to myth also appear in non-religious Egyptian literature, beginning in the Middle Kingdom. Many of these references are mere allusions to mythic motifs, but several stories are based entirely on mythic narratives. These more direct renderings of myth are particularly common in the Late and Greco-Roman periods when, according to scholars such as Heike Sternberg, Egyptian myths reached their most fully developed state.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: The attitudes toward myth in nonreligious Egyptian texts vary greatly. Some stories resemble the narratives from magical texts, while others are more clearly meant as entertainment and even contain humorous episodes.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: A final source of Egyptian myth is the writings of Greek and Roman writers like Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, who described Egyptian religion in the last centuries of its existence. Prominent among these writers is Plutarch, whose work "De Iside et Osiride" contains, among other things, the longest ancient account of the myth of Osiris. These authors' knowledge of Egyptian religion was limited because they were excluded from many religious practices, and their statements about Egyptian beliefs are affected by their biases about Egypt's culture.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: The Egyptian word written "m3ˁt," often rendered "maat" or "ma'at," refers to the fundamental order of the universe in Egyptian belief. Established at the creation of the world, "maat" distinguishes the world from the chaos that preceded and surrounds it. "Maat" encompasses both the proper behavior of humans and the normal functioning of the forces of nature, both of which make life and happiness possible. Because the actions of the gods govern natural forces and myths express those actions, Egyptian mythology represents the proper functioning of the world and the sustenance of life itself.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: To the Egyptians, the most important human maintainer of "maat" is the pharaoh. In myth the pharaoh is the son of a variety of deities. As such, he is their designated representative, obligated to maintain order in human society just as they do in nature, and to continue the rituals that sustain them and their activities.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: In Egyptian belief, the disorder that predates the ordered world exists beyond the world as an infinite expanse of formless water, personified by the god Nun. The earth, personified by the god Geb, is a flat piece of land over which arches the sky, usually represented by the goddess Nut. The two are separated by the personification of air, Shu. The sun god Ra is said to travel through the sky, across the body of Nut, enlivening the world with his light. At night Ra passes beyond the western horizon into the Duat, a mysterious region that borders the formlessness of Nun. At dawn he emerges from the Duat in the eastern horizon.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: The nature of the sky and the location of the Duat are uncertain. Egyptian texts variously describe the nighttime sun as traveling beneath the earth and within the body of Nut. The Egyptologist James P. Allen believes that these explanations of the sun's movements are dissimilar but coexisting ideas. In Allen's view, Nut represents the visible surface of the waters of Nun, with the stars floating on this surface. The sun, therefore, sails across the water in a circle, each night passing beyond the horizon to reach the skies that arch beneath the inverted land of the Duat. Leonard H. Lesko, however, believes that the Egyptians saw the sky as a solid canopy and described the sun as traveling through the Duat above the surface of the sky, from west to east, during the night. Joanne Conman, modifying Lesko's model, argues that this solid sky is a moving, concave dome overarching a deeply convex earth. The sun and the stars move along with this dome, and their passage below the horizon is simply their movement over areas of the earth that the Egyptians could not see. These regions would then be the Duat.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: The fertile lands of the Nile Valley (Upper Egypt) and Delta (Lower Egypt) lie at the center of the world in Egyptian cosmology. Outside them are the infertile deserts, which are associated with the chaos that lies beyond the world. Somewhere beyond them is the horizon, the "akhet". There, two mountains, in the east and the west, mark the places where the sun enters and exits the Duat.


title: Egyptian mythology

text: Foreign nations are associated with the hostile deserts in Egyptian ideology. Foreign people, likewise, are generally lumped in with the "nine bows", people who threaten pharaonic rule and the stability of "maat", although peoples allied with or subject to Egypt may be viewed more positively. For these reasons, events in Egyptian mythology rarely take place in foreign lands. While some stories pertain to the sky or the Duat, Egypt itself is usually the scene for the actions of the gods. Often, even the myths set in Egypt seem to take place on a plane of existence separate from that inhabited by living humans, although in other stories, humans and gods interact. In either case, the Egyptian gods are deeply tied to their home land.