title: Lost-wax casting

text: Further investigations have revealed this not to be the case as it is clear that the piece-mould casting method was the principal technique used to manufacture bronze vessels in China. The lost-wax technique did not appear in northern China until the 6th century BC. Lost-wax casting is known as "rōgata" in Japanese, and dates back to the Yayoi period, c. 200 BC. The most famous piece made by "cire perdue" is the bronze image of Buddha in the temple of the Todaiji monastery at Nara. It was made in sections between 743 and 749, allegedly using seven tons of wax.


title: Lost-wax casting

text: The inhabitants of Ban Na Di were casting bronze from c. 1200 BC to 200 AD, using the lost-wax technique to manufacture bangles. Bangles made by the lost-wax process are characteristic of northeast Thailand. Some of the bangles from Ban Na Di revealed a dark grey substance between the central clay core and the metal, which on analysis was identified as an unrefined form of insect wax. It is likely that decorative items, like bracelets and rings, were made by "cire perdue" at Non Nok Tha and Ban Chiang. There are technological and material parallels between northeast Thailand and Vietnam concerning the lost-wax technique. The sites exhibiting artifacts made by the lost-mould process in Vietnam, such as the Dong Son drums, come from the Dong Son, and Phung Nguyen cultures, such as one sickle and the figure of a seated individual from Go Mun (near Phung Nguyen, the Bac Bo Region), dating to the Go Mun phase (end of the General B period, up until the 7th century BC).


title: Lost-wax casting

text: The Dunaverney (1050–910 BC) and Little Thetford (1000–701 BC) flesh-hooks have been shown to be made using a lost-wax process. The Little Thetford flesh-hook, in particular, employed distinctly inventive construction methods. The intricate Gloucester Candlestick (1104–1113 AD) was made as a single-piece wax model, then given a complex system of gates and vents before being invested in a mould.


title: Lost-wax casting

text: Cast bronzes are known to have been produced in Africa by the 9th century AD in Igboland (Igbo-Ukwu) in Nigeria, the 12th century AD in Yorubaland (Ife) and the 15th century AD in the kingdom of Benin. Some portrait heads remain.


title: Lost-wax casting

text: Benin mastered bronze during the 16th century, produced portraiture and reliefs in the metal using the lost wax process.


title: Lost-wax casting

text: The lost-wax casting tradition was developed by the peoples of Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, northwest Venezuela, Andean America, and the western portion of South America. Lost-wax casting produced some of the region's typical gold wire and delicate wire ornament, such as fine ear ornaments. The process was employed in prehispanic times in Colombia's Muisca and Sinú cultural areas. Two lost-wax moulds, one complete and one partially broken, were found in a shaft and chamber tomb in the vereda of Pueblo Tapado in the municipio of Montenegro (Department of Quindío), dated roughly to the pre-Columbian period. The lost-wax method did not appear in Mexico until the 10th century, and was thereafter used in western Mexico to make a wide range of bell forms.


title: Lost-wax casting

text: Some early literary works allude to lost-wax casting. Columella, a Roman writer of the 1st century AD, mentions the processing of wax from beehives in "De Re Rustica", perhaps for casting, as does Pliny the Elder, who details a sophisticated procedure for making Punic wax. One Greek inscription refers to the payment of craftsmen for their work on the Erechtheum in Athens (408/7–407/6 BC). Clay-modellers may use clay moulds to make terracotta negatives for casting or to produce wax positives. Pliny portrays as a well-reputed ancient artist producing bronze statues, and describes Lysistratos of Sikyon, who takes plaster casts from living faces to create wax casts using the indirect process.


title: Lost-wax casting

text: Many bronze statues or parts of statues in antiquity were cast using the lost wax process. Theodorus of Samos is commonly associated with bronze casting. Pliny also mentions the use of lead, which is known to help molten bronze flow into all areas and parts of complex moulds. Quintilian documents the casting of statues in parts, whose moulds may have been produced by the lost wax process. Scenes on the early-5th century BC Berlin Foundry Cup depict the creation of bronze statuary working, probably by the indirect method of lost-wax casting.


title: Lost-wax casting

text: The lost-wax method is well documented in ancient Indian literary sources. The "Shilpa Shastras", a text from the Gupta Period (c. 320-550 AD), contains detailed information about casting images in metal. The 5th-century AD "Vishnusamhita", an appendix to the "Vishnu Purana", refers directly to the modeling of wax for making metal objects in chapter XIV: "if an image is to be made of metal, it must first be made of wax." Chapter 68 of the ancient Sanskrit text "Mānasāra Silpa" details casting idols in wax and is entitled "Maduchchhista Vidhānam", or the "lost wax method". The 12th century text "Mānasollāsa", allegedly written by King Someshvara III of the Western Chalukya Empire, also provides detail about lost-wax and other casting processes.


title: Lost-wax casting

text: In a 16th-century treatise, the "Uttarabhaga" of the Śilparatna written by Srïkumāra, verses 32 to 52 of Chapter 2 (""Linga Lakshanam""), give detailed instructions on making a hollow casting.


title: Lost-wax casting

text: An early medieval writer Theophilus Presbyter, believed to be the Benedictine monk and metalworker Roger of Helmarshausen, wrote a treatise in the early-to-mid-12th century that includes original work and copied information from other sources, such as the "Mappae clavicula" and Eraclius, "De dolorous et artibus Romanorum". It provides step-by-step procedures for making various articles, some by lost-wax casting: "The Copper Wind Chest and Its Conductor" (Chapter 84); "Tin Cruets" (Chapter 88), and "Casting Bells" (Chapter 85), which call for using "tallow" instead of wax; and "The Cast Censer". In Chapters 86 and 87 Theophilus details how to divide the wax into differing ratios before moulding and casting to achieve accurately tuned small musical bells. The 16th-century Florentine sculptor Benvenuto Cellini may have used Theophilus' writings when he cast his bronze "Perseus with the Head of Medusa".


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Portuguese Mozambique () or Portuguese East Africa ("África Oriental Portuguesa") were the common terms by which Mozambique was designated during the period in which it was a Portuguese colony. Portuguese Mozambique originally constituted a string of Portuguese possessions along the south-east African coast, and later became a unified colony, which now forms the Republic of Mozambique.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Portuguese trading settlements—and later, colonies—were formed along the coast and into the Zambezi basin from 1498 when Vasco da Gama first reached the Mozambican coast. Lourenço Marques explored the area that is now Maputo Bay in 1544. The Portuguese increased efforts for occupying the interior of the colony after the Scramble for Africa, and secured political control over most of its territory in 1918, facing the resistance of Africans during the process.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Some territories in Mozambique were handed over in the late 19th century for rule by chartered companies like the Mozambique Company ("Companhia de Moçambique"), which had the concession of the lands corresponding to the present-day provinces of Manica and Sofala, and the Niassa Company ("Companhia do Niassa"), which had controlled the lands of the modern provinces of Cabo Delgado and Niassa. The Mozambique Company relinquished its territories back to Portuguese control in 1942, unifying Mozambique under control of the Portuguese government.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: The region as a whole was long officially termed Portuguese East Africa, and was subdivided into a series of colonies extending from Lourenço Marques in the south to Niassa in the north. Cabo Delgado was initially merely a strip of territory along the Rovuma River, including Cape Delgado itself, which Portugal acquired out of German East Africa in 1919, but it was enlarged southward to the Lurio River to form what is now Cabo Delgado Province. In the Zambezi basin were the colonies of Quelimane (now Zambezia Province) and Tete (in the panhandle between Northern Rhodesia, now Zambia, and Southern Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe), which were for a time merged as Zambezia. The colony of Moçambique (now Nampula Province) had the Island of Mozambique as its capital. The island was also the seat of the Governor-General of Portuguese East Africa until the late 1890s, when that official was officially moved to the city of Lourenço Marques. Also in the south was the colony of Inhambane, which lay north-east of Lourenço Marques. Once these colonies were merged, the region as a whole became known as "Moçambique".


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: According to the official policy of the Salazar regime, inspired on the concept of Lusotropicalismo, Mozambique was claimed as an integral part of the "pluricontinental and multiracial nation" of Portugal, as was done in all of its colonies to Europeanise the local population and assimilate them into Portuguese culture. This policy was largely unsuccessful, however, and African opposition to colonisation led to a ten-year independence war that culminated in the Carnation Revolution at Lisbon in April 1974 and the independence from Portugal in June 1975.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: During its history as a Portuguese colony, the present-day territory of Mozambique had the following formal designations:


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Until the 20th century, the land and peoples of Mozambique were barely affected by the Europeans who came to its shores and entered its major rivers. As the Muslim traders, mostly Swahili, were displaced from their coastal centres and routes to the interior by the Portuguese, migrations of Bantu peoples continued and tribal federations formed and reformed as the relative power of local chiefs changed. For four centuries the Portuguese presence was meagre. Coastal and river trading posts were built, abandoned, and built again. Governors sought personal profits to take back to Portugal, and colonists were not attracted to the distant area with its relatively unattractive climate; those who stayed were traders who married local women and successfully maintained relations with local chiefs.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: In Portugal, however, Mozambique was considered to be a vital part of a world empire. Periodic recognition of the relative insignificance of the revenues it could produce was tempered by the mystique which developed regarding the mission of the Portuguese to bring their civilisation to the African territory. It was believed that through missionary activity and other direct contact between Africans and Europeans, the Africans could be taught to appreciate and participate in Portuguese culture.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: In the last decade of the 19th century and the first part of the 20th century, integration of Mozambique into the structure of the Portuguese nation was begun. After all of the area of the present province had been recognised by other European powers as belonging to Portugal, administrators waged wars against African polities to assert control over the territory. Civil administration was established throughout the area, the building of an infrastructure was begun, and agreements regarding the transit trade of Mozambique's land-locked neighbours to the west, such as Southern Rhodesia, Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, were made.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Colonial legislation discriminated against Africans on cultural grounds. Colonial legislation submitted Africans to forced labour, to pass laws and to segregation in schools. That most Africans were perceived to engage in "uncivilised behaviour" by the Portuguese created a low opinion of Africans as a group among Europeans. The uneducated Portuguese immigrant peasants in urban areas were frequently in direct competition with Africans for jobs and demonstrated jealousies and racial prejudice.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Between the urban and rural sectors of the society lied a steadily increasing group of Africans who were loosening their ties with rural villages and starting to participate in the urban economy, to settle in suburbs, and to adopt European customs. Members of this group would later become active participants in the independence movement.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: When Portuguese explorers reached East Africa in 1498, Swahili commercial settlements had existed along the Swahili Coast and outlying islands for several centuries. From about 1500, Portuguese trading posts and forts became regular ports of call on the new route to the east.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: The voyage of Vasco da Gama around the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean in 1498 marked the Portuguese entry into trade, politics, and society in the Indian Ocean world. The Portuguese gained control of the Island of Mozambique and the port city of Sofala in the early 16th century. Vasco da Gama having visited Mombasa in 1498 was then successful in reaching India thereby permitting the Portuguese to trade with the Far East directly by sea, thus challenging older trading networks of mixed land and sea routes, such as the spice trade routes that used the Persian Gulf, Red Sea and caravans to reach the eastern Mediterranean.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: The Republic of Venice had gained control over much of the trade routes between Europe and Asia. After traditional land routes to India had been closed by the Ottoman Turks, Portugal hoped to use the sea route pioneered by da Gama to break the Venetian trading monopoly. Initially, Portuguese rule in East Africa focused mainly on a coastal strip centred in Mombasa. With voyages led by Vasco da Gama, Francisco de Almeida and Afonso de Albuquerque, the Portuguese dominated much of southeast Africa's coast, including Sofala and Kilwa, by 1515. Their main goal was to dominate trade with India. As the Portuguese settled along the coast, they made their way into the hinterland as (backwoodsmen). These lived alongside Swahili traders and even took up service among Shona kings as interpreters and political advisors. One such managed to travel through almost all the Shona kingdoms, including the Mutapa Empire's (Mwenemutapa) metropolitan district, between 1512 and 1516.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: By the 1530s, small groups of Portuguese traders and prospectors penetrated the interior regions seeking gold, where they set up garrisons and trading posts at Sena and Tete on the Zambezi River and tried to gain exclusive control over the gold trade. The Portuguese finally entered into direct relations with the Mwenemutapa in the 1560s.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: They recorded a wealth of information about the Mutapa kingdom as well as its predecessor, Great Zimbabwe. According to Swahili traders whose accounts were recorded by the Portuguese historian João de Barros, Great Zimbabwe was an ancient capital city built of stones of marvellous size without the use of mortar. And while the site was not within Mutapa's borders, the Mwenemutapa kept noblemen and some of his wives there.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: The Portuguese attempted to legitimate and consolidate their trade and settlement positions through the creation of (land grants) tied to Portuguese settlement and administration. While were originally developed to be held by Portuguese, through intermarriage they became African Portuguese or African Indian centres defended by large African slave armies known as "Chikunda". Historically, within Mozambique, there was slavery. Human beings were bought and sold by African tribal chiefs, Arab traders, and the Portuguese. Many Mozambican slaves were supplied by tribal chiefs who raided warring tribes and sold their captives to the .


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Although Portuguese influence gradually expanded, its power was limited and exercised through individual settlers and officials who were granted extensive autonomy. The Portuguese were able to wrest much of the coastal trade from Arabs between 1500 and 1700, but, with the Arab seizure of Portugal's key foothold at Fort Jesus on Mombasa Island (now in Kenya) in 1698, the pendulum began to swing in the other direction. As a result, investment lagged while Lisbon devoted itself to the more lucrative trade with India and the Far East and to the colonisation of Brazil. During the 18th and 19th centuries, the Mazrui and Omani Arabs reclaimed much of the Indian Ocean trade, forcing the Portuguese to retreat south. Many had declined by the mid-19th century, but several of them survived. During the 19th century, other European powers, particularly the British and the French, became increasingly involved in the trade and politics of the region. In the Island of Mozambique, the hospital, a majestic neo-classical building constructed in 1877 by the Portuguese, with a garden decorated with ponds and fountains, was for many years the biggest hospital south of the Sahara. By the early 20th century the Portuguese had shifted the administration of much of Mozambique to private chartered companies, including the Mozambique Company, the Zambezia Company and the Niassa Company, which established several railroad lines to neighbouring countries. The companies, granted a charter by the Portuguese government to foster economic development and maintain Portuguese control in the territory's provinces, would lose their purpose when the territory was transferred to the control of the Portuguese colonial government between 1929 and 1942.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Although slavery had been legally abolished in Mozambique by the Portuguese colonial authorities, at the end of the 19th century the Chartered companies enacted a forced labour policy and supplied cheap – often forced – African labour to the mines and plantations of other European colonies in Africa. The Zambezia Company, the most profitable chartered company, took over a number of smaller holdings and requested Portuguese military outposts to protect its property. The chartered companies and the Portuguese administration built roads and ports to bring their goods to market including a railway linking Southern Rhodesia with the Mozambican port of Beira. However, the development's administration gradually started to pass directly from the trading companies to the Portuguese government itself.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Because of their unsatisfactory performance and because of the shift, under the regime of Oliveira Salazar, towards a stronger Portuguese control of the Portuguese Empire's economy, the companies' concessions were not renewed when they ran out. This was what happened in 1942 with the Mozambique Company, which, however, continued to operate in the agricultural and commercial sectors as a corporation, and had already happened in 1929 with the termination of the Niassa Company's concession.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: In the 1950s, the Portuguese overseas colony was rebranded an overseas province of Portugal, and by the early 1970s, it was officially upgraded to the status of Portuguese non-sovereign state, by which it would remain a Portuguese territory but with a wider administrative autonomy. The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), initiated a guerrilla campaign against Portuguese rule in September 1964. This conflict, along with the two others already initiated in the other Portuguese colonies of Angola and Guinea, became part of the so-called Portuguese Colonial War (1961–74). From a military standpoint, the Portuguese regular army held the upper hand during all of the conflicts against the independentist guerrilla forces, which created favourable conditions for social development and economic growth until the end of the conflict in 1974.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: After ten years of sporadic warfare and after Portugal's return to democracy through a leftist military coup in Lisbon which replaced Portugal's regime in favour of a military junta (the Carnation Revolution of April 1974), FRELIMO took control of the territory. The talks that led to an agreement on Mozambique's independence, signed in Lusaka, were started. Within a year, almost the entire ethnic Portuguese population had left, many fleeing in fear (in mainland Portugal they were known as ); others were expelled by the ruling power of the newly independent territory. Mozambique became independent from Portugal on 25 June 1975.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: At least since the early 19th century, the legal status of Mozambique always considered it as much a part of Portugal as Lisbon, but as a "província ultramarina" (overseas province) enjoyed special derogations to account for its distance from Europe.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: From 1837, the highest government official in the province of Mozambique has always been the Governor-General, who reported directly to the Government in Lisbon, usually through the Minister of the Overseas. During some periods in the late 19th and the early 20th century, the governors-general of Mozambique received the status of royal commissioners or of high commissioners, which gave them extended executive and legislative powers, equivalent to those of a government minister.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: In the 20th century, the province was also subject to the authoritarian regime that ruled Portugal from 1933 to 1974, until the military coup in Lisbon, known as the Carnation Revolution. Most members of the government of Mozambique were from Portugal, but a few were Africans. Nearly all members of the bureaucracy were from Portugal, as most Africans did not have the necessary qualifications to obtain positions.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: The Government of Mozambique, like the Portuguese Government itself, was highly centralised. Power was concentrated in the executive branch, and all elections, where they occurred, were carried out using indirect methods. From the Prime Minister's office in Lisbon, authority extended down to the remotest posts and of Mozambique through a rigid chain of command. The authority of the government of Mozambique was residual, primarily limited to implementing policies already decided in Europe. In 1967, Mozambique also sent seven delegates to the National Assembly in Lisbon.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: The highest official in the province was the Governor-General, appointed by the Portuguese Council of Ministers on recommendation of the Overseas Minister. The Governor-General had both executive and legislative authority. A Government Council advised the Governor-General in the running of the province. The functional cabinet consisted of five secretaries appointed by the Overseas Minister on the advice of the Governor-General. A Legislative Council had limited powers and its main activity was approving the provincial budget. Finally, an Economic and Social Council had to be consulted on all draft legislation, and the Governor-General had to justify his decision to Lisbon if he ignored its advice.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Mozambique was divided into nine districts, which were further subdivided into 61 municipalities () and 33 circumscriptions (). Each subdivision was then made up of three or four individual posts, 166 in all with an average of 40,000 Africans in each. Each district, except Lourenço Marques which was run by the Governor-General, was overseen by a governor. Most Africans only had contact with the Portuguese through the post administrator, who was required to visit each village in his domain at least once a year.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: The lowest level of administration was the , settlements inhabited by Africans living according to customary law. Each was run by a , an African or Portuguese official chosen on the recommendation of local residents. Under the , each village had its own African headman.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Each level of government could also have an advisory board or council. They were established in municipalities with more than 500 electors, in smaller municipalities or circumscriptions with more than 300 electors, and in posts with more than 20 electors. Each district also had its own board as well.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Two legal systems were in force — Portuguese civil law and African customary law. Until 1961, Africans were considered to be Natives (), rather than citizens. After 1961, the previous native laws were repealed and Africans gained "de facto" Portuguese citizenship.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Portuguese East Africa was located in south-eastern Africa. It was a long coastal strip with Portuguese strongholds, from current day Tanzania and Kenya, to the south of current-day Mozambique.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: In 1900, the part of modern Mozambique northwest of the Zambezi and Shire Rivers was called ; the rest of it was . Various districts existed, and even issued stamps, during the first part of the century, including Inhambane, , Mozambique Colony, Mozambique Company, Nyassa Company, Quelimane, Tete, and . The Nyassa Company territory is now and .


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: In the early- and mid-20th century, a number of changes occurred. Firstly, on 28 June 1919, the Treaty of Versailles transferred the Kionga Triangle, a territory south of the Rovuma River from German East Africa to Mozambique.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: During World War II, the Charter of the Mozambique Company expired, on 19 July 1942; its territory, known as Manica and Sofala, became a district of Mozambique. Mozambique was constituted as four districts on 1 January 1943 — Manica and Sofala, , (South of the Save River), and .


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: On 20 October 1954, administrative reorganization caused and Mozambique districts to be split from . At the same time, the district was divided into Gaza, Inhambane and , while the district was split from Manica and Sofala.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: By the early 1970s, Mozambique was bordering the Mozambique Channel, bordering the countries of Malawi, Rhodesia, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, and Zambia. Covering a total area of . With a tropical to subtropical climate, the Zambezi flows through the north-central and most fertile part of the country. Its coastline had , with of land boundaries, its highest point at Monte Binga (). The Gorongosa National Park, founded in 1920, was the main natural park in the territory.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Other important urban centres included Sofala, Nacala, António Enes, Island of Mozambique and Vila Junqueiro.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: By 1970, the Portuguese Overseas Province of Mozambique had about 8,168,933 inhabitants. Nearly 300,000 were white ethnic Portuguese. There was a number of mulattoes, from both European and African ancestry, living across the territory. However, the vast majority of the population belonged to local tribal groups which included the Makua–Lomwe, the Shona and the Tsonga. Other ethnic minorities included British, Greeks, Chinese and Indians. Most inhabitants were black indigenous Africans with a diversity of ethnic and cultural backgrounds, ranging from Shangaan and Makonde to Yao or Shona peoples. The Makua were the largest ethnic group in the north. The Sena and Shona (mostly Ndau) were prominent in the Zambezi valley, and the Shangaan (Tsonga) dominated in the south. In addition, several other minority groups lived a tribal lifestyle across the territory.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Mozambique had around 250,000 Europeans in 1974 that made up around 3% of the population. Mozambique was cosmopolitan as it had Indian, Chinese, Greek and Anglophone communities (over 25,000 Indians and 5,000 Chinese by the early 1970s). The capital of Portuguese Mozambique, Lourenço Marques (Maputo), had a population of 355,000 in 1970 with around 100,000 Europeans. Beira had around 115,000 inhabitants at the time with around 30,000 Europeans. Most of the other cities ranged from 10 to 15% in the number of Europeans, while Portuguese Angola cities had European majorities ranging from 50% to 60%.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Starting in 1926, Portugal's colonial authorities abandoned conceptions of an innate inferiority of Africans, and set as their goal the development of a multiethnic society in its African colonies. The establishment of a dual, racialised civil society was formally recognised in (The Statute of Indigenous Populations) adopted in 1929, which was based on the subjective concept of civilization versus tribalism. In the administration's view, the goal of civilising mission would only be achieved after a period of Europeanisation or enculturation of African communities.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: The established a distinction between the colonial citizens, subject to the Portuguese laws and entitled to all citizenship rights and duties effective in the metropole, and the (natives), subjected to colonial legislation and customary African laws. Between the two groups there was a third small group, the , comprising native blacks, mulatos, Asians, and mixed-race people, who had at least some formal education and not subjected to paid forced labour. They were entitled to some citizenship rights, and held a special identification card, used to control the movements of forced labour. The were subject to the traditional authorities, who were gradually integrated into the colonial administration and charged with solving disputes, managing the access to land, and guaranteeing the flows of workforce and the payment of taxes. As several authors have pointed out, the regime was the political system that subordinated the immense majority of Africans to local authorities entrusted with governing, in collaboration with the lowest echelon of the colonial administration, the native communities described as tribes and assumed to have a common ancestry, language, and culture. The colonial use of traditional law and structures of power was thus an integral part of the process of colonial domination.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: In the 1940s, the integration of traditional authorities into the colonial administration was deepened. The Portuguese colony was divided into (municipalities), in urban areas, governed by colonial and metropolitan legislation, and (localities), in rural areas. The were led by a colonial administrator and divided into (subdivisions of circunscrições), headed by (tribal chieftains), the embodiment of traditional authorities. Provincial Portuguese Decree No. 5.639, of July 29, 1944, attributed to and their assistants, the , the status of (administrative assistants). Gradually, these traditional titles lost some of their content, and the and came to be viewed as an effective part of the colonial state, remunerated for their participation in the collection of taxes, recruitment of the labour force, and agricultural production in the area under their control. Within the areas of their jurisdiction, the and the also controlled the distribution of land and settled conflicts according to customary norms. To exercise their power, the and had their own police force.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: The "indigenato" regime was abolished in 1960. From then on, all Africans were considered Portuguese citizens, and racial discrimination became a sociological rather than a legal feature of colonial society. In fact, the rule of traditional authorities became even more integrated than before in the colonial administration. Legally speaking, by the 1960s and 1970s segregation in Mozambique was minimal compared to that in neighbouring South Africa.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: The largest coastal cities, the first founded or settled by Portuguese people since the 16th century, like the capital , Beira, Quelimane, Nacala and Inhambane, were modern cosmopolitan ports and a melting pot of several cultures, with a strong South African influence. The Southeast African and Portuguese cultures were dominant, but the influence of Arab, Indian, and Chinese cultures were also felt. The cuisine was diverse, owing especially to the Portuguese cuisine and Muslim heritage, and seafood was also quite abundant.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Lourenço Marques had always been a point of interest for artistic and architectural development since the first days of its urban expansion and this strong artistic spirit was responsible for attracting some of the world's most forward-thinking architects at the turn of the 20th century. The city was home to masterpieces of building work by, Pancho Guedes, Herbert Baker and Thomas Honney amongst others. The earliest architectural efforts around the city focused on classical European designs such as the Central Train Station (CFM) designed by architects Alfredo Augusto Lisboa de Lima, Mario Veiga and Ferreira da Costa and built between 1913 and 1916 (sometimes mistaken with the work of Gustav Eiffel), and the Hotel Polana designed by Herbert Baker.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Throughout the 1960s and early 1970s, Lourenço Marques was yet again at the centre of a new wave of architectural influences made most popular by Pancho Guedes. The designs of the 1960s and 1970s were characterised by modernist movements of clean, straight and functional structures. However, prominent architects such as Pancho Guedes fused this with local art schemes giving the city's buildings a unique Mozambican theme. As a result, most of the properties erected during the second construction boom take on these styling cues.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Since the 15th century, Portugal founded settlements, trading posts, forts, and ports on the Sub-Saharan Africa's coast. Cities, towns, and villages were founded all over East African territories by the Portuguese, especially since the 19th century, like Lourenço Marques, Beira, Vila Pery, Vila Junqueiro, Vila Cabral and Porto Amélia. Others were expanded and developed greatly under Portuguese rule, like Quelimane, Nampula and Sofala. By this time, Mozambique had become a Portuguese colony, but the administration was left to the trading companies (like Mozambique Company and Niassa Company) who had received long-term leases from Lisbon. By the mid-1920s, the Portuguese succeeded in creating a highly exploitative and coercive settler economy, in which African natives were forced to work on the fertile lands taken over by Portuguese settlers. Indigenous African peasants mainly produced cash crops designated for sale in the markets of the colonial metropole (the centre, i.e. Portugal). Major cash crops included cotton, cashews, tea and rice. This arrangement ended in 1932 after the takeover in Portugal by the new António de Oliveira Salazar's government — the . Thereafter, Mozambique, along with other Portuguese colonies, was put under the direct control of Lisbon. In 1951, it became an overseas province. The economy expanded rapidly during the 1950s and 1960s, attracting thousands of Portuguese settlers to the country. It was around this time that the first nationalist guerrilla groups began to form in Tanzania and other African countries. The strong industrial and agricultural development that did occur throughout the 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s was based on Portuguese development plans, and also included British and South African investment.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: In 1959–60, Mozambique's major exports included cotton, cashew nuts, tea, sugar, copra and sisal. Other major agricultural productions included rice and coconut. The expanding economy of the Portuguese overseas province was fuelled by foreign direct investment, and public investment which included ambitious state-managed development plans. British capital owned two of the large sugar concessions (the third was Portuguese), including the famous Sena states. The Matola Oil Refinery, Procon, was controlled by Britain and the United States. In 1948 the petroleum concession was given to the Mozambique Gulf Oil Company. At Maotize, coal was mined; the industry was chiefly financed by Belgian capital. 60% of the capital of the was held by the , 30% by the Mozambique Company, and the remaining 10% by the Government of the territory. Three banks were in operation, the , Portuguese, Barclays Bank, D.C.O., British, and the (a partnership between Standard Bank of South Africa and mainland's ). Nine out of the twenty-three insurance companies were Portuguese, which included insurance companies related to Fidelidade throughout its history. 80% of life assurance was in the hands of foreign companies which testifies to the openness of the economy.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: The Portuguese overseas province of Mozambique was the first territory of Portugal, including the European mainland, to distribute Coca-Cola. Lately the Oil Refinery was established by the (SONAREP) — a Franco-Portuguese syndicate. In the sisal plantations Swiss capital was invested, and in copra concerns, a combination of Portuguese, Swiss and French capital was invested. The large availability of capital from both Portuguese and international origin, allied to the wide range of natural resources and the growing urban population, lead to an impressive growth and development of the economy.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: From the late stages of this notable period of high growth and huge development effort started in the 1950s, was the construction of Cahora Bassa dam by the Portuguese, which started to fill in December 1974 after construction was commenced in 1969. In 1971 construction work of the Massingir Dam began. At independence, Mozambique's industrial base was well-developed by Sub-Saharan Africa standards, thanks to a boom in investment in the 1960s and early 1970s. Indeed, in 1973, value added in manufacturing was the sixth highest in Sub-Saharan Africa.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Economically, Mozambique was a source of agricultural raw materials and an earner of foreign exchange. It also provided a market for Portuguese manufacturers which were protected from local competition. Transportation facilities had been developed to exploit the transit trade of South Africa, Swaziland, Southern Rhodesia (which became Rhodesia in November 1965), Malawi, and Zambia, agricultural production for export purposes had been encouraged, and profitable arrangements for the export of labour had been made with neighbouring countries. Industrial production had been relatively insignificant but did begin to increase in the 1960s. The economic structure generally favoured the taking of some profits to Portugal rather than their total reinvestment in Mozambique because counterterrorism campaigns were expensive. The Portuguese economic interests in its overseas province, which dominated in banking, industry, and agriculture, exerted a powerful influence on policy and by early 1974 were fostering good levels of economic growth and development.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Mozambique's rural population was largely illiterate. However, some thousands of Africans were educated in religion, the Portuguese language, and Portuguese history by Catholic and Protestant missionary schools established in cities and in the countryside.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: In 1930, primary schooling became racially segregated. Africans who did not hold assimilated status had to enroll in "rudimentary schools," whereas whites and the few thousand assimilated Africans had access to "primary schools" of better quality.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Starting in the early 1940s, access to education was expanded in all levels. Nevertheless, "rudimentary schools" retained their poor quality. In 1956, there were 292,199 African students enrolled in first grade. Of these, only 9,486 had successfully passed third grade in 1959. By 1970, only 7.7% of Mozambique's population was literate.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: A comprehensive network of secondary schools (the ) and technical or vocational education schools were implemented across the cities and main towns of the territory. However, access to these institutions was largely limited to whites. In 1960, only 30 out of 1,000 students of the "Liceu Salazar" were Africans, in spite of whites making up only 2% of the Mozambican population.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: The Portuguese-ruled territory was introduced to several popular European and North American sports disciplines since the early urbanistic and economic booms of the 1920s and 1940s. This period was a time of city and town expansion and modernization that included the construction of several sports facilities for football, rink hockey, basketball, volleyball, handball, athletics, gymnastics, and swimming. Several sports clubs were founded across the entire territory, among them were some of the largest and oldest sports organizations of Mozambique like established in 1920. Other major sports clubs were founded in the following years like (1921), (1924), (1928), (1943), (1943), and (1955). Several sportsmen, especially football players, that achieved wide notability in Portuguese sports were from Mozambique. Eusébio and Mário Coluna were examples of that, and excelled in the Portugal national football team. Since the 1960s, with the latest developments on commercial aviation, the highest ranked football teams of Mozambique and the other African overseas provinces of Portugal, started to compete in the (the Portuguese Cup). There were also several facilities and organizations for golf, tennis and wild hunting.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Football was a very popular sport in Portuguese Mozambique. Mozambique saw a sizable population of Portuguese people immigrate there during the 20th century. This was a biproduct of the policies of the "Estado Novo" and how they saw their colonies. It would become increasingly popular as it would spread throughout the colony. There was a lot of infrastructure in Mozambique to prepare the players to play professionally. This would allow many players from the colonies to easily play for the national teams. Players from Mozambique contributed a lot to the Portuguese Football success. Eusébio was a notable player from Mozambique and is considered one of the greatest Portuguese football players ever.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: The nautical sports were also well developed and popular, especially in , home to the . The largest stadium was the , located near . Opened in 1968, it was at the time the most advanced in Mozambique conforming to standards set by both FIFA and the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI). The cycling track could be adjusted to allow for 20,000 more seats.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Beginning in the 1950s, motorsport was introduced to Mozambique. At first race cars would compete in areas around the city, Polana and along the but as funding and interest increased, a dedicated race track was built in the Costa Do Sol area along and behind the with the ocean to the east with a length of . The initial surface of the new track, named did not provide enough grip and an accident in the late 1960s killed 8 people and injured many more. Therefore, in 1970, the track was renovated and the surface changed to meet the highest international safety requirements that were needed at large events with many spectators. The length then increased to . The city became host to several international and local events beginning with the inauguration on 26 November 1970.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: As communist and anti-colonial ideologies spread out across Africa, many clandestine political movements were established in support of Mozambique's independence. These movements claimed that policies and development plans were primarily designed by the ruling authorities for the benefit of the ethnic Portuguese population, affecting a majority of the indigenous population who suffered both state-sponsored discrimination and enormous social pressure. Many felt they had received too little opportunity or resources to upgrade their skills and improve their economic and social situation to a degree comparable to that of the Europeans. Statistically, Portuguese Mozambique's whites were indeed wealthier and more skilled than the black indigenous majority, in spite of decreasing legal discrimination of Africans starting in the 1960s.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: The Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO), headquartered in Tanzania, initiated a guerrilla campaign against Portuguese rule in September 1964. This conflict, along with the two others already initiated in the other Portuguese overseas territories of Angola and Portuguese Guinea, became part of the Portuguese Colonial War (1961–74). Several African territories under European rule had achieved independence in recent decades. Oliveira Salazar attempted to resist this tide and maintain the integrity of the Portuguese empire. By 1970, the anti-guerrilla war in Africa was consuming an important part of the Portuguese budget and there was no sign of a final solution in sight. This year was marked by a large-scale military operation in northern Mozambique, the Gordian Knot Operation, which displaced the FRELIMO's bases and destroyed much of the guerrillas' military capacity. At a military level, a part of Portuguese Guinea was "de facto" independent since 1973, but the capital and the major towns were still under Portuguese control. In Angola and Mozambique, independence movements were only active in a few remote countryside areas from where the Portuguese Army had retreated. However, their impending presence and the fact that they wouldn't go away dominated public anxiety. Throughout the war period Portugal faced increasing dissent, arms embargoes and other punitive sanctions imposed by most of the international community. For the Portuguese society the war was becoming even more unpopular due to its length and financial costs, the worsening of diplomatic relations with other United Nations members, and the role it had always played as a factor of perpetuation of the regime. It was this escalation that would lead directly to the mutiny of members of the FAP in the Carnation Revolution in 1974 – an event that would lead to the independence of the former Portuguese colonies in Africa. A leftist military coup in Lisbon on 24 April 1974 by the (MFA), overthrew the "Estado Novo" regime headed by Prime Minister Marcelo Caetano.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: As one of the objectives of the MFA, all the Portuguese overseas territories in Africa were offered independence. FRELIMO took complete control of the Mozambican territory after a transition period, as agreed in the Lusaka Accord which recognized Mozambique's right to independence and the terms of the transfer of power.


title: Portuguese Mozambique

text: Within a year of the Portuguese military coup at Lisbon, almost all of the Portuguese population had left the African territory as refugees (in mainland Portugal they were known as ) – some expelled by the new ruling power of Mozambique, some fleeing in fear. A parade and a state banquet completed the independence festivities in the capital, which was expected to be renamed Can Phumo, or "Place of Phumo", after a Tsonga chief who lived in the area before the Portuguese navigator founded the city in 1545 and gave his name to it. Most city streets, named for Portuguese heroes or important dates in Portuguese history, had their names changed.


title: Amenhotep II

text: Amenhotep II (sometimes called "Amenophis II" and meaning "Amun is Satisfied") was the seventh pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt. Amenhotep inherited a vast kingdom from his father Thutmose III, and held it by means of a few military campaigns in Syria; however, he fought much less than his father, and his reign saw the effective cessation of hostilities between Egypt and Mitanni, the major kingdoms vying for power in Syria. His reign is usually dated from 1427 to 1401 BC. His consort was Tiaa, who was barred from any prestige until Amenhotep's son, Thutmose IV, came into power.


title: Amenhotep II

text: Amenhotep II was born to Thutmose III and a minor wife of the king: Merytre-Hatshepsut. He was not, however, the firstborn son of this pharaoh; his elder brother Amenemhat, the son of the great king's chief wife Satiah, was originally the intended heir to the throne since Amenemhat was designated the 'king's eldest son" and overseer of the cattle of Amun in Year 24 of Thutmose's reign. However, between Years 24 and 35 of Thutmose III, both queen Satiah and prince Amenemhat died, which prompted the pharaoh to marry the non-royal Merytre-Hatshepsut. She would bear Thutmose III a number of children including the future Amenhotep II. Amenhotep II was born and raised in Memphis in the north, instead of in Thebes, the traditional capital. While a prince, he oversaw deliveries of wood sent to the dockyard of Peru-nūfe in Memphis, and was made the "Setem," the high priest over Lower Egypt. Amenhotep has left several inscriptions touting his athletic skills while he was a leader of the army before his crowning. Amenhotep was no less athletic than his powerful father. He claims to have been able to shoot an arrow through a copper target one palm thick, and that he was able to row his ship faster and farther than two hundred members of the navy could row theirs. Some scepticism concerning the truth of these claims has been expressed among Egyptologists.


title: Amenhotep II

text: Amenhotep acceded to the throne on the first day of the fourth month of Akhet, but his father died on the thirtieth day of the third month of Peret. If an Egyptian crown prince was proclaimed king but did not take the throne on the day after his father's death, it meant that he served as the junior coregent during his father's reign. A coregency with Thutmose III and Amenhotep II is believed to have lasted for two years and four months.


title: Amenhotep II

text: When he assumed power, Amenhotep II was 18 years old according to an inscription from his great Sphinx stela:


title: Amenhotep II

text: After becoming pharaoh, Amenhotep married a woman of uncertain parentage named Tiaa. As many as ten sons and one daughter have been attributed to him. Amenhotep's most important son was Thutmose IV, who succeeded him; however, there is significant evidence for his having many more children. Princes Amenhotep, Webensenu, Amenemopet, and Nedjem are all clearly attested, and Amenemhat, Khaemwaset, and Aakheperure as well as a daughter, Iaret, are also possible children.


title: Amenhotep II

text: Papyrus B.M. 10056, which dates to sometime after Amenhotep II's tenth year, refers to a king's son and setem-priest Amenhotep. This Amenhotep might also be attested in a stele from Amenhotep II's temple at Giza, however the stele's name has been defaced so that positive identification is impossible. Stele B may belong to another son, Webensenu. Webensenu's name is otherwise attested on a statue of Amenhotep's chief architect, Minmose, and his canopic jars and a funerary statue have been found in Amenhotep II's tomb. Another Giza stele, stele C, records the name of a Prince Amenemopet, whose name is otherwise unattested. The same statue with the name Webensenu on it is also inscribed with the name of prince Nedjem, who is otherwise unattested.


title: Amenhotep II

text: There are other references to king's sons from this period who may or may not be sons of Amenhotep II. Two graffiti from Sahel mention a king's son and stable master named Khaemwaset, but specifically which king is his father is unknown. A figure with the name Amenemhet is recorded behind a prince Amenhotep in Theban tomb 64, and assuming this Amenhotep is indeed the king's son from B.M. 10056, Amenemhat would also be Amenhotep II's son. Additionally, a prince Aakheperure is mentioned in a Konosso graffito alongside a prince Amenhotep, and if one again assumes that this Amenhotep was the same person as the one in B.M. 10056, Aakheperure would also have been Amenhotep II's son. However, in both these cases the figure identified as Amenhotep has been identified by some as possible references to the later King Amenhotep III, which would make these two princes sons of Thutmose IV. In addition to sons, Amenhotep II may have had a daughter named Iaret, but she could have also been the daughter of Thutmose IV.


title: Amenhotep II

text: Two more sons had been attributed to Amenhotep II in the past; however, they have since been proven to be of other parentage. Gauthier catalogued one Usersatet, the "King's son of Kush," (i.e. Viceroy of Nubia) as a son of Amenhotep II, as well as one Re; however, both are now known to be unrelated to the royal family.


title: Amenhotep II

text: Usersatet merely served as Amenhotep's chief official in Nubia and was not a blood relative of the king.


title: Amenhotep II

text: Amenhotep's coronation can be dated without much difficulty because of a number of lunar dates in the reign of his father, Thutmose III. These sightings limit the date of Thutmose's accession to either 1504 or 1479 BC. Thutmose died after 54 years of reign, at which time Amenhotep would have acceded to the throne. Amenhotep's short coregency with his father would then move his accession two years and four months earlier, dating his accession to either 1427 BC in the low chronology, or in 1454 BC in the high chronology. The length of his reign is indicated by a wine jar inscribed with the king's prenomen found in Amenhotep II's funerary temple at Thebes; it is dated to this king's highest known date—his Year 26—and lists the name of the pharaoh's vintner, Panehsy. Mortuary temples were generally not stocked until the king died or was near death; therefore, Amenhotep could not have lived much later beyond his 26th year. There are alternate theories which attempt to assign him a reign of up to 35 years, which is the absolute maximum length he could have reigned. In this chronology, he reigned from 1454 to 1419. However, there are problems facing these theories which cannot be resolved. In particular, this would mean Amenhotep died when he was 52, but an X-ray analysis of his mummy has shown him to have been about 40 when he died. Accordingly, Amenhotep II is usually given a reign of 26 years and said to have reigned from 1427 to 1401 BC.


title: Amenhotep II

text: Amenhotep's first campaign took place in his third regnal year. It is known that the pharaoh was attacked by the host of Qatna while crossing the Orontes river, but he emerged victorious and acquired rich booty, among which even the equipment of a Mitanni charioteer is mentioned. The king was well known for his physical prowess and is said to have singlehandedly killed 7 rebel Princes at Kadesh, which successfully terminated his first Syrian campaign on a victorious note. After the campaign, the king ordered the bodies of the seven princes to be hung upside down on the prow of his ship. Upon reaching Thebes all but one of the princes were mounted on the city walls. The other was taken to the often rebellious territory of Nubia and hung on the city wall of Napata, as an example of the consequence of rising against Pharaoh and to demoralise any Nubian opponents of Egyptian authority there. Amenhotep called this campaign his first in a Stele from Amada, however he also called his second campaign his first, causing some confusion. The most common solution for this, although not universally accepted, is that this was the first campaign he fought alone before the death of his father and thus before he was the sole king of Egypt, and he counted his second campaign as his first because it was the first that was his and his alone.


title: Amenhotep II

text: In April of his seventh year, Amenhotep was faced with a major rebellion in Syria by the vassal states of Naharin and dispatched his army to the Levant to suppress it. This rebellion was likely instigated by Egypt's chief Near Eastern rival, Mitanni. His stele of victory carved after this campaign records no major battles, which has been read a number of ways. It may be that this campaign was more similar to one of the tours of Syria which his father had fought, and he only engaged minor garrisons in battle and forced cities to swear allegiance to him–oaths immediately broken after his departure. Alternatively, it appears that the two weeks when Amenhotep would have been closest to Mitanni are omitted from the stele, thus it is possible that his army was defeated on this campaign. Amenhotep's last campaign took place in his ninth year, however it apparently did not proceed farther north than the Sea of Galilee. According to the list of plunder from this campaign, Amenhotep claims to have taken 101,128 slaves. These numbers however are difficult to substantiate, leading some to question the accuracy of Amenhotep's court scribes. Others have suggested that such exaggerated figures may instead be simply due to compounded accounting mistakes. Examples include a possible recount of the 15,070 prisoners taken in his year 7 campaign in Nukhash being combined with the figures from his year 9 campaign.


title: Amenhotep II

text: After the campaign in Amenhotep's ninth year, Mitanni sought to make peace with Egypt, and from then on, their armies never fought again. Amenhotep records that the kings of Babylon, the Hittites, and Mitanni came to make peace and pay tribute to him after his ninth year, although this may be outlandish boasting. However, a second passage appears on the walls of Karnak, saying that the princes of Mitanni came to seek peace with Amenhotep, and this cannot be so easily explained away. The rising power of the Hittites eventually persuaded Mitanni to seek an ally, and there was definitely a treaty of some sort between Egypt and Mitanni by the time of Amenhotep's successor, but it may be that it was enacted after Amenhotep's campaigns, to try to prevent any more campaigns of mass deportations. Whenever formal peace was enacted, an informal peace was maintained between Amenhotep and the king of Mitanni. The new peace ties between the two benefitted both nations. For Mitanni, relaxing military conflict with Egypt to its south allowed it to focus more on the rising powers of the Hittites and the Assyrians to its north. For Egypt, it was able to begin extracting significant amounts of resources from Syria and Palestine and it was also now able to access Mediterranean trade routes with the Aegean. Thereafter, Amenhotep concentrated on domestic matters, with one possible exception. A shrine of Amenhotep's Nubian viceroy shows Amenhotep receiving tribute after a Nubian campaign, but it is not possible to date when this happened.


title: Amenhotep II

text: Since Thutmose III had devoted so much energy to expanding Karnak, Amenhotep's building projects were largely focused on enlarging smaller temples all over Egypt. In the Delta, his father's "Overseer of Works", Minmose, is attested from an inscription at Tura as overseeing construction of more temples. In upper Egypt, small shrines are attested at Medamud, el-Tod, and Armant. Karnak, despite not receiving the attention given it by his father, also was not totally neglected. He commissioned a column to stand in the courtyard between the fourth and fifth pylons commemorating the reception of tribute from Mitanni. In Nubia, Amenhotep built at Qasr Ibrim and Semna, and ordered the decoration of the Temple at Kalabsha. However, his most famous Nubian temple was at Amada. Thutmose III had begun constructing a temple which, technically, was dedicated to Horus there, although the presence of Re-Harakhti and Amun-Re is easily observed. Amenhotep completed it and put in it the record of his year 3 campaign on a stele, which was until 1942 the source of most information about Amenhotep's wars.


title: Amenhotep II

text: He had a mortuary temple constructed at the edge of the cultivation in the Theban Necropolis, close to where the Ramesseum was later built, but it was destroyed in ancient times.


title: Amenhotep II

text: A stela from this pharaoh's final years highlights his openly contemptuous attitude towards non-Egyptians. The document, which dates to "Year 23 IV Akhet [day] 1, the day of the festival" of Amenhotep II's accession to power, is a copy of a personal letter which the king composed himself to Usersatet, his viceroy of Kush (Nubia). In it, Amenhotep II reminded Usersatet of their military exploits together in Syria and proceeds to criticise the way this official conducted his office as Viceroy. Amenhotep writes:


title: Amenhotep II

text: Usersatet was so impressed (or fearful) of Amenhotep's message that he ordered a copy of it to be engraved on a stela "that was once [located] at the Second Cataract [in Nubia] and is now in Boston."


title: Amenhotep II

text: Amenhotep II did not openly record the names of his queens; some Egyptologists theorise that he felt that women had become too powerful under titles such as God's Wife of Amun. They point to the fact that he participated in his father's removal of Hatshepsut's name from her monuments and the destruction of her image.


title: Amenhotep II

text: The destruction of Hatshepsut's images began during the co-regency of Amenhotep when his father was very old, but stopped during his reign. However, the king may have harboured his father's concern that another woman would sit on the throne. Despite his efforts however it is possible that a female co-regent of Akhenaten ruled as pharaoh before the end of his own 18th dynasty.


title: Amenhotep II

text: Amenhotep II adopted a large number of Canaanite gods into the Egyptian pantheon, including Resheph, Hauron, Baal, Astarte, Qetesh, and a few others.


title: Amenhotep II

text: Amenhotep II was interred in his KV35 tomb in the Valley of the Kings; his mummy was found there within his original sarcophagus when the tomb was discovered in March 1898 by Victor Loret. The tomb also housed a mummy cache containing several New Kingdom pharaohs including Thutmose IV, Seti II, Ramesses III, Ramesses IV, and Ramesses VI. They had been re-buried in Amenhotep II's tomb by the 21st Dynasty High Priest of Amun, Pinedjem II, during Siamun's reign, to protect them from tomb robbers.


title: Amenhotep II

text: The mummy of the king was first examined, described, and photographed in January 1902 by Gaston Maspero in the company of Howard Carter, Friedrich Wilhelm von Bissing, and Pierre Lacau. The Australian anatomist Grafton Elliot Smith examined Amenhotep's mummy in 1907. During this examination the linen still adhering to the face was removed for an unobstructed view. He found the body to be tall and noted a strong facial resemblance to his son, Thutmose IV. The wavy brown hair present on his head is "abundantly interspersed with white." The arms are crossed low over the chest, with the right hand tightly clenched and the left less so. Unusually, the skin all over the body is covered with small tubercles though Smith could not say if they were the result of the embalming process or disease. Resin on the body preserved the impressions of jewellery; several rows of a beaded collar were present on the upper back, and a diamond-shaped geometric pattern seen on the back of the hips. Smith estimated he was forty to fifty at death based on his worn teeth and greying hair. His cause of death is unknown. His mummy has the inventory number CG 61069.


title: Amenhotep II

text: In 1980, James Harris and Edward F. Wente conducted X-ray examinations of New Kingdom Pharaoh's crania and skeletal remains, which included the mummified remains of Amenhotep II. The authors determined that the royal mummies of the 18th Dynasty bore strong similarities to contemporary Nubians with slight differences.


title: Amenhotep II

text: In April 2021 his mummy was moved from the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities to the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization along with those of 17 other kings and 4 queens in an event termed the Pharaohs' Golden Parade.


title: Commando: A One Man Army

text: Commando: A One Man Army is a 2013 Indian Hindi-language action thriller film directed by Dilip Ghosh and produced by Vipul Amrutlal Shah and Reliance Entertainment. It is the first installment of "Commando film series". The film features Vidyut Jammwal, Pooja Chopra and Jaideep Ahlawat in the lead roles. Jammwal, who is trained in the Indian martial arts of Kalaripayattu, performs his own stunts and martial arts in the film's action sequences.


title: Commando: A One Man Army

text: The film revolves around Karan, an Indian Para SF Captain who escaped from Chinese custody, runs into a woman named Simrit, who is being chased by a gangster named AK-74 and his goons. Learning that AK-74 is hellbent on forcibly marrying Simrit for political gain, Karan intervenes and protects her as they are pursued deeper into the woods where Karan uses his martial arts combat skills to fight off AK-74's henchmen.


title: Commando: A One Man Army

text: The film was released theatrically on 12 April 2013. It was followed by two sequels, "" in 2017 and "Commando 3" in 2019.


title: Commando: A One Man Army

text: Para SF Captain Karan Singh Dogra is captured by Chinese officials when his helicopter crashes on the Chinese border during a routine training exercise. Karan and his seniors are unable to convince the Chinese of the former's innocence. The Chinese decide to brand Karan as a spy to defame India internationally. Feeling the Chinese won't comply, the Indian government order the Indian Army to erase Karan's record, identity and deny his existence. Karan is tortured for a year by the Chinese Army but later escapes while being taken to the Chinese Military Court. He runs into a woman named Simrit, who is running away from dreaded gangster Amrit Kanwal "AK-74" Singh and his goons. Karan rescues her by fighting off the goons headed by AK-47's politician brother. He decides to escort Simrit out of the town for her safety but finds himself surrounded by AK-74 and his goons at a bridge. Outnumbered and outgunned, he jumps into the river along with Simrit who later explains that AK-74 wants to marry her for political gains.


title: Commando: A One Man Army

text: Simrit reveals that AK-47 has total control over her home town, where he rules with an iron fist through fear. Karan decides to help Simrit. AK-74 uses his resources to pursue the duo into the jungle, where Karan uses his expertise in jungle warfare to fight AK-74's men. However, after a long chase, Karan is caught by AK-74, who shoots him and throws him down a cliff. He then kills Simrit's parents as a warning to her. Karan, having survived the fall, goes after AK-74. After combating his henchmen and also an assassin named Theba sent by the Chinese, Karan defeats AK-74 and rescues Simrit. Karan takes the captured AK-74 to the town square, where he is almost foiled by the police who are in AK-74's pocket, but is saved in time by his ex superior officer, Col Akhilesh Sinha. Karan proceeds to hang and kill AK-74. Karan then asks the town folk to be fearless and not be afraid of people like AK-74, who rule through fear. Karan surrenders himself to Col Sinha, where he tells his real name to Simrit, and promises to be back.


title: Commando: A One Man Army

text: The soundtrack album of "Commando" was released on 28 March 2013 as a digital download on popular digital music platforms, iTunes and Amazon. It contains 5 original tracks. The music was composed by Mannan Shaah, with lyrics penned by Mayur Puri, while the background score has been scored by Prasad Sasthe.


title: Commando: A One Man Army

text: Upon release, "Commando" garnered mixed to positive reviews from critics. At Reviewbol.com, it got an average review score of 3/5 from major sites. Taran Adarsh of Bollywood Hungama gave Commando 3.5 out of 5 stars and said "A high-voltage action fare that's racy, pulsating and packed with some adrenaline-pumping stunts". Meena Iyer of The Times of India rated it with 3.5 out of 5 star while remarking "For the first time in eons, the action scenes are totally convincing". Shubhra Gupta of Indian Express awarded it 3.5 out of 5, noting," That an action film should have no place for song and dance is a no-brainer. It also has a story that creaks. Minus these irritants, it would have been a pure adrenaline rush". Saibal Chatterjee of "NDTV" gave it 2 out of 5 while commenting "Despite all the bravura technical effort that has clearly been put into Commando, the end result simply isn't compelling enough". Alisha Coelho of in.com gave the movie 2.5 stars, saying ""Commando – A One Man Army" is a one man show where Vidyut carries the entire weight on his shoulders."


title: Commando: A One Man Army

text: The film earned around on its opening day. The film raked over its first weekend. At its first week, it netted around having decent business in single screens. It finished at around in India.


title: Commando: A One Man Army

text: Nameless Media, the film's German distributor, released four limited edition media books in August 2019 that contained a "Full Action Version" apart from the original uncut version. In this alternate cut, the songs and intermission card have been removed.


title: Commando: A One Man Army

text: Following the film's success, it received two sequels. The first one titled "Commando 2" was released in 2017, while "Commando 3" released in 2019.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: A transcontinental railroad or transcontinental railway is contiguous railroad trackage, that crosses a continental land mass and has terminals at different oceans or continental borders. Such networks can be via the tracks of either a single railroad or over those owned or controlled by multiple railway companies along a continuous route. Although Europe is crisscrossed by railways, the railroads within Europe are usually not considered transcontinental, with the possible exception of the historic Orient Express.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: Transcontinental railroads helped open up unpopulated interior regions of continents to exploration and settlement that would not otherwise have been feasible. In many cases they also formed the backbones of cross-country passenger and freight transportation networks. Many of them continue to have an important role in freight transportation and some like the Trans-Siberian Railway even have passenger trains going from one end to the other.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: A transcontinental railroad in the United States is any continuous rail line connecting a location on the U.S. Pacific coast with one or more of the railroads of the nation's eastern trunk line rail systems operating between the Missouri or Mississippi Rivers and the U.S. Atlantic coast. The first concrete plan for a transcontinental railroad in the United States was presented to Congress by Asa Whitney in 1845.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: A series of transcontinental railroads built over the last third of the 19th century created a nationwide transportation network that united the country by rail. The first of these, the "Pacific Railroad", was built by the Central Pacific Railroad and Union Pacific Railroad to link the San Francisco Bay at Alameda, California, with the nation's existing eastern railroad network at Council Bluffs, Iowa/Omaha, Nebraska, thereby creating the world's first transcontinental railroad when it opened in 1869. Its construction was made possible by the US government under Pacific Railroad Acts of 1862, 1864, and 1867. Its original course was very close to current Interstate 80.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: The U.S.'s first transcontinental railroad was built between 1863 and 1869 to join the eastern and western halves of the United States. Begun just before the American Civil War, its construction was considered to be one of the greatest American technological feats of the 19th century. Known as the "Pacific Railroad" when it opened, this served as a vital link for trade, commerce, and travel and opened up vast regions of the North American heartland for settlement. Shipping and commerce could thrive away from navigable watercourses for the first time since the beginning of the nation. Much of this route, especially on the Sierra grade west of Reno, Nevada, is currently used by Amtrak's "California Zephyr", although many parts have been rerouted.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: The transcontinental railroad provided fast, safe, and cheap travel. The fare for a one-week trip from Omaha to San Francisco on an emigrant sleeping car was about $65 for an adult. It replaced most of the far slower and more hazardous stagecoach lines and wagon trains. The number of emigrants taking the Oregon and California Trails declined dramatically. The sale of the railroad land grant lands and the transport provided for timber and crops led to the rapid settling of the "Great American Desert".


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: The Union Pacific recruited laborers from Army veterans and Irish immigrants, while most of the engineers were ex-Army men who had learned their trade keeping the trains running during the American Civil War.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: The Central Pacific Railroad faced a labor shortage in the more sparsely settled West. It recruited Cantonese laborers in China, who built the line over and through the Sierra Nevada mountains and then across Nevada to their meeting in northern Utah. Chinese workers made up ninety percent of the workforce on the line. The Chinese Labor Strike of 1867 was peaceful, with no violence, organized across the entire Sierra Nevada route, and was carried out according to a peaceful Confucian model of protest. The strike began with the Summer Solstice in June, 1867 and lasted for eight days.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: The Transcontinental Railroad required land and a complex federal policy for purchasing, granting, conveying land.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: George J. Gould attempted to assemble a truly transcontinental system in the 1900s. The line from San Francisco, California, to Toledo, Ohio, was completed in 1909, consisting of the Western Pacific Railway, Denver and Rio Grande Railroad, Missouri Pacific Railroad, and Wabash Railroad. Beyond Toledo, the planned route would have used the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railroad (1900), Wabash Pittsburgh Terminal Railway, Little Kanawha Railroad, West Virginia Central and Pittsburgh Railway, Western Maryland Railroad, and Philadelphia and Western Railway, but the Panic of 1907 strangled the plans before the Little Kanawha section in West Virginia could be finished. The Alphabet Route was completed in 1931, providing the portion of this line east of the Mississippi River. With the merging of the railroads, only the Union Pacific Railroad and the BNSF Railway remain to carry the entire route.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: The completion of Canada's first transcontinental railway with the driving of the Last Spike at Craigellachie, British Columbia, on November 7, 1885, was an important milestone in Canadian history. Between 1881 and 1885, the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) completed a line that spanned from the port of Montreal to the Pacific coast, fulfilling a condition of British Columbia's 1871 entry into the Canadian Confederation. The City of Vancouver, incorporated in 1886, was designated the western terminus of the line. The CPR became the first transcontinental railway company in North America in 1889 after its International Railway of Maine opened, connecting CPR to the Atlantic coast.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: The construction of a transcontinental railway strengthened the connection of British Columbia and the North-West Territories to the country they had recently joined, and acted as a bulwark against potential incursions by the United States.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: Subsequently, two other transcontinental lines were built in Canada: the Canadian Northern Railway (CNoR) opened another line to the Pacific in 1915, and the combined Grand Trunk Pacific Railway (GTPR)/National Transcontinental Railway (NTR) system opened in 1917 following the completion of the Quebec Bridge, although its line to the Pacific opened in 1914. The CNoR, GTPR, and NTR were nationalized to form the Canadian National Railway, which currently is now Canada's largest transcontinental railway, with lines running all the way from the Pacific Coast to the Atlantic Coast.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: The first railroad to directly connect two oceans (although not by crossing a broad "continental" land mass) was the Panama Rail Road. Opened in 1855, this line was designated instead as an "inter-oceanic" railroad crossing Country at its narrowest point, the Isthmus of Panama, when that area was still part of Colombia. (Panama split off from Colombia in 1903 and became the independent Republic of Panama). By spanning the isthmus, the line thus became the first railroad to completely cross any part of the Americas and physically connect ports on the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Given the tropical rain forest environment, the terrain, and diseases such as malaria and cholera, its completion was a considerable engineering challenge. The construction took five years after ground was first broken for the line in May, 1850, cost eight million dollars, and required more than seven thousand workers drawn from "every quarter of the globe."


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: This railway was built to provide a shorter and more secure path between the United States' East and West Coasts. This need was mainly triggered by the California Gold Rush. Over the years the railway played a key role in the construction and the subsequent operation of the Panama Canal, due to its proximity to the canal. Currently, the railway operates under the private administration of the Panama Canal Railroad Company, and its upgraded capacity complements the cargo traffic through the Panama Canal.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: A second Central American inter-oceanic railroad began operation in 1908 as a connection between Puerto San José and Puerto Barrios in Guatemala, but ceased passenger service to Puerto San José in 1989.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: A third Central American inter-oceanic railroad began operation in 1910 as a connection between Puntarenas and Limón in gauge. It currently (2019) sees no passenger service.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: There is activity to revive the connection between Valparaíso and Santiago in Chile and Mendoza, Argentina, through the "Transandino" project. Mendoza has an active connection to Buenos Aires. The old Transandino began in 1910 and ceased passenger service in 1978 and freight 4 years later. Technically a complete transcontinental link exists from Arica, Chile, to La Paz, Bolivia, to Buenos Aires, but this trans-Andean crossing is for freight only.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: On December 6, 2017 the Brazilian President Michel Temer and his Bolivian counterpart Evo Morales signed an agreement for an Atlantic - Pacific railway. The construction will start in 2019 and will be finished in 2024. The new railway is planned to be 3750 km in length. There are two possible tracks in discussion: Both have an Atlantic end in Santos, Brazil but the Pacific ends are in Ilo, Peru and Matarani, Peru.


title: Transcontinental railroad

text: Another longer Transcontinental freight-only railroad linking Lima, Peru, to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil is under development.


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: Maniac is a 2012 psychological slasher film directed by Franck Khalfoun, written by Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur, and starring Elijah Wood and Nora Arnezeder. It is a remake of the 1980 film of the same name, and follows the violent exploits of a brutal serial killer.


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: The film is an international co-production produced by the French film companies La Petite Reine and Studio 37. Unlike the original 1980 film, which is set in New York City, writers Aja and Levasseur chose to set the film in Los Angeles.


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: Frank Zito is a schizophrenic young man who has taken over his family's mannequin restoration business after the recent death of his mother. Frank was traumatized as a child by his mother, a prostitute who made him watch her have sex with her johns. As an adult, he murders and scalps women and attaches their hair onto his mannequins to recreate his one happy childhood memory: brushing his mother's hair before she "went out" at night.


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: Frank joins a dating site, where he gets a date with a woman named Lucie. The two go out to dinner and return to Lucie's apartment, where she attempts to seduce the virginal Frank, mistaking his increasing panic for nervousness. Frank strangles Lucie, scalps her and takes her hair back to his apartment, where he attaches it to another mannequin.


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: One morning, Frank awakens to find a photographer named Anna taking photos of the mannequins in his storefront. Frank invites her into his store, where she is taken with his work restoring antique department store mannequins. The two develop a friendship, with Frank agreeing to help Anna put together an art exhibit using his mannequins. Frank falls in love with her and starts taking medication to control his violent urges. Frank nevertheless kills again, stabbing a young dancer to death and attaching her scalp to another mannequin.


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: At the opening of the exhibit, Frank meets Anna's boyfriend Jason, as well as art director and Anna's mentor Rita. Both mock him for his interest in mannequins, questioning his sexual orientation. Frank later follows Rita home, subdues her in the bathtub and hog-ties her on her bed. Identifying Rita with his mother, Frank voices his resentment and sense of abandonment, finally scalping Rita alive in a fit of rage.


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: The next day, Frank calls Anna, who tearfully tells him of Rita's murder and of her recent breakup with Jason. Frank comes to Anna's apartment to comfort her but inadvertently reveals his guilt by mentioning things that only the killer would know. Realizing that Frank is the killer, Anna stabs Frank through the hand with a knife before locking herself in her bedroom. Anna's neighbor, Martin, breaks into the apartment to save her, only for Frank to kill him with a meat cleaver. Breaking down Anna's bathroom door, Frank puts her into a choke hold and knocks her unconscious. Frank loads Anna's body into his van and drives home, but as he opens the doors Anna regains consciousness and stabs him in the stomach with a piece of rebar attached to a mannequin hand. Anna flees and is picked up by a passing car, whose driver panics at the sight of a blood-covered Frank and runs him down, crashing and flinging Anna through the windshield. Bloodied, Frank hobbles to the mortally injured Anna and scalps her as she dies.


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: Frank returns to his apartment, attaching Anna's hair to a mannequin dressed in a bridal gown. As he succumbs to his injuries, Frank suffers hallucinations of the mannequins transforming into his victims and begin to tear his body apart, finally ripping off his face to reveal a mannequin head. Before he dies, Frank sees Anna, clad in a wedding dress, lower her veil and turn her back on him. Later that day, a SWAT team breaks into Frank's apartment, only to find Frank's corpse in his closet, alongside his collection of scalps.


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: Nearly the entire film is shot from the murderer's point of view, with his face being shown only in reflections and occasionally in the third person. This "proved to be challenging on both a narrative and technical level for the filmmakers and cast". Because of this point of view technique, Elijah Wood had to be present nearly every day of filming, which is unusual. Wood told an interviewer: "It's the most intriguing element of the film. It meant I could create this character in a completely different way. It became about hearing him and feeling him rather than seeing him. And you only see him in flashes, so they become very intense character revealing moments. I've never played someone so dark before. It was interesting to go there". He added: "The four-week shoot was very technical so you kind of become desensitised to what is very disturbing material. None of us had ever made a PoV [point-of-view] film before. There was this whole element of the character that was basically the camera. I've never worked so closely with a DP [director of photography] before. I would be behind him the whole time, tapping on his shoulder to make him move faster or slower. It was a totally fascinating way to work".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: Director Khalfoun told an interviewer: "He has this good guy sort of package. Usually an actor's baggage can hurt your character, but he really is just this good guy sort of persona so I couldn't wait to turn him into a horrible beast. I think for his fans it's shocking too, and it adds to the shock value of the film". Khalfoun said in another interview: "POV (Point of View) has been in movies since "Peeping Tom", but no horror film had ever been entirely shot that way... I wanted the audience to feel trapped in his body. The cinema plays a big part in that concept since you are stuck in your seat forced to experience the events with little control over the outcome. Much like Frank is stuck in his body. You are therefore at the same time complicit and repulsed. Therein lies the horror".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: Wood described some of the filming process to "The Guardian": "The whole film is primarily shown from the character's perspective, so 70% of the process involved working with the director of photography Maxime Alexandre. Maxime was effectively the character as well as me, and the rest of Frank had to be created locally through his inner monologue, which I recorded on an audio stage afterwards... We approached the point-of-view thing with a certain naivety. At first, we thought we'd use a body double. We quickly discovered that didn't work. So I was there the whole time, dancing around behind the camera, leaning forward to put my hand in the frame. Every sequence was a learning process".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: Wood told, however, that they did use a body double's hands in some scenes: "I also had a counterpart who could 'be' my left or my right hand because I couldn't always use both hands in a natural way, depending on where the camera was. So we literally held things together and handed things off as if it were the same person. It was a lot of choreography!... Most of the time I couldn't get both of my hands on either side of the camera, because the rig was too big. So there'd be times when I'd be on one side with my right hand, and then my double would be on the left side with his left hand, so we'd have to work together a lot, like moving an object from one hand to another. And if you're trying to do that with two different hands, it's pretty challenging to make that look pretty natural".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: Blocking the scenes, Wood said, was "a 'puzzle' as they had to map out how each scene was covered within the context of the POV nature. Being on set felt far more technical than emotional. I was thinking about how I was going to fit into the construct of a shot. It had more to do with physicality than my emotional state of being except for the reflections that were relatively intense moments".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: Khalfoun said: "It was a real marriage between Maxime's camera work and Elijah. You see Frank throughout the movie sporadically and Elijah was there to make sure the camera moved the right way and the lines were delivered correctly. It was important he be there. It was the first time I had seen an actor work so closely and technically with the camera to guide it through where he would be or actually do". Khalfoun employed angles and mirrors to conceal the cameras while filming reflections.


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: Only some of Wood's dialogue was recorded while shooting. Wood said that the additional dialogue recording (ADR) was crucial to creating the character of Frank: "I knew that the character had to come alive when you didn't see him. So most of that was done in the ADR stage in post-production; I felt the character was kind of created there, for the most part". He told an interviewer: "I always felt like the heart of the character and the depths of the darkness of the character were going to happen in the ADR stage".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: The film was scored by French composer Robin Coudert, credited simply as "Rob". "Bloody Disgusting" judged the music to be "one of the best parts" of the film, and "Screen International" wrote that the "'80s style synth score is reminiscent of John Carpenter", a horror movie director who has provided the musical score for many of his own films.


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: "The Hollywood Reporter" declared: "The nerve-shredding score, by the mono-monikered Rob, salutes the music Italian prog-rockers Goblin provided for [Dario] Argento's early horror-thrillers, the 1980s electronica lending a deeply melancholic city-at-night vibe". "Fangoria" called the soundtrack "delightful". A reviewer for the Geeks of Doom website thought that "composer Rob's synth-heavy score" was "reminiscent of Cliff Martinez's "Drive" soundtrack and the electronic music composed by Wendy Carlos for Stanley Kubrick's "A Clockwork Orange"".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: A red band trailer was released May 25, 2012 and the film was screened at the Cannes Film Festival the following day. Warner Brothers released an online video of the first six minutes of the film in late 2012. An international behind-the-scenes "featurette" was made available online in December the same year.


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: "Maniac" opened in German theaters in December 2012, and in other European countries in March 2013. "Maniac" had its USA premiere at the Mad Monster Party horror convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, on March 23, 2013. It was later released at the IFC Center in New York City on June 21.


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: DVD release company Blue Underground is cited in the opening credits. The film was made available through iTunes, cable video on demand, Amazon Video, SundanceNow.com, and elsewhere.


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: "Maniac" has a 53% approval rating on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 74 reviews and an average score of 5.08/10. The consensus says: "Shocking and bloody, "Maniac" is smarter than your average psychological slasher, but it's often undermined by its excessive gore".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: Front Row Reviews called it "one of the strongest and most beautiful classic horror stories of our generation... visually and audibly stunning".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: "Complex" magazine wrote that "having seen it, we can confirm that "Maniac" is an early frontrunner for 2013's best horror movie". "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote that Wood's "forever-young face, often an asset in projecting innocence, is here a sign of a man-child emotionally interrupted, as he stalks down women and removes their scalps in a rampage that begins shortly after the death of his mother".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: Megan Lehmann, who watched the film at the Cannes Film Festival for "The Hollywood Reporter", wrote in her review: "Wood's limpid saucer eyes are used here to telegraph unhinged blood-lust and insanity, even if only sporadically, as he plays a sicko with mommy issues who scalps his female victims. The twist, and what helps elevate the nasty, no-holds-barred "Maniac" from the grindhouse to an out-of-competition midnight-screening slot in Cannes, is that the entire movie is shot from the killer's POV – we only glimpse Wood in reflection and in photographs. It's a daring decision, potentially stripping the film of the suspense of not knowing where the killer is and obliquely inviting the audience to have empathy with him. For the most part Khalfoun and cinematographer Maxime Alexandre pull it off, although the technique more than once tips over from inventively arty to film-school-grad pretentious. Slasher-movie fans, however, need not be put off by the stylized camera work and arty patina: this is down and dirty genre filmmaking, and the various slaughters, excruciatingly detailed scalpings and other atrocities are no less gruesome because of the highfalutin approach... The movie is essentially a sadistic art-house bloodbath, with opera music and ballet dancers and funky little art galleries".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: A reviewer for "SciFiNow" praised the film's "fresh and challenging approach" and said "Khalfoun's version is arguably a more troubling piece of work than its predecessor. By forcing us to see through the eyes of a man who brutally murders women, the issues of voyeurism and misogyny rear their ugly heads before you've even settled in... "Maniac" is certainly brutal and gory, but it's the manner in which the violence is presented that really turns the stomach. This unsavoury but powerful trick is contrasted by the decision to switch out the grimy night-time world of Eighties New York for the neon landscape of Los Angeles, complete with a superb synth-heavy soundtrack that makes the film feel more like Nicolas Winding Refn's "Drive" than anything from the gloomy Platinum Dunes remake stable or the winking throwbacks of the "Grindhouse" movies".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: Daniel Krupa reviewed the film for the IGN website, calling it "violent, gruesome, shocking, and extremely cruel" but "also entertaining, darkly amusing, smart, and impeccably well-made". The first-person point of view filming, he said, is not "an idle stylistic flourish, though, since it has a serious impact on how the audience experiences the movie... It's uncomfortable and queasy stuff, but it occasionally achieves a kind of weird beauty". A review on the Geeks of Doom website said "Elijah Wood provides a chilling, downright eerie performance as Frank – even though he's seldom on-screen. Wood communicates Frank's mental illness by muttering to himself and carrying on conversations with his mannequins – grunting like a rabid animal as he stalks his prey – while Arnezeder makes for a compelling, sympathetic 'final girl' who challenges Wood's maniac in unconventional ways. Overall, "Maniac" is a well-made, artistic take on Lustig's guerrilla-gore flick that manages to give the viewer the requisite blood and brutality while adding some much-needed psychological underpinning to the characters and their motivations. There's a lot to appreciate in Khalfoun's film – a stylish, modern-day slasher that is deeply disturbing and compelling".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: The ScreenRant.com review called the film a "solid revival of a genre that's gone rather stale in the last decade" and said: "With its throwback synthesizer score, sustained point-of-view shots, and shadowy lighting, the preview certainly evokes a sense of gut-churning dread". Wood's acting was praised: "Though this isn't the first time Wood has played a serial killer, the trailer makes it clear that this isn't simply a rehash of his wordless, goggle-eyed performance as Kevin in "Sin City". With a voice that mixes breathy, genuinely unsettling obsession with a childlike honesty, Wood's interpretation of Frank looks to be a new creature entirely".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: "New Empress Magazine" criticized the film: "The digital cinematography by Maxime Alexandre uses an annoyingly stylized gloss over a lot of the potential scuzziness, leaving run-down downtown Los Angeles as industrial and neglected, but not forbidding, creating an atmosphere reminiscent of a video game. The aesthetic choices also make the murders seem unreal and even pixelated, with a blotchy and heightened crimson colour accompanying every scalping. Such a pity then, that the opportunity for a truly horrifying cinematic experience has been botched through odd directional choices by Franck Khalfoun and photography that creates style over substance, reducing the impact of a serial killer with so much potential to horrify and disturb us".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: Khalfoun said that audience members have vomited and fainted, and he took the reactions "as a compliment", explaining: "We had a screening here in Los Angeles and somebody passed out, which I pat myself on the back for. The movie had to creep on you – it's a different kind of fear; it's more of a nauseating fear. You really have the opportunity to maybe feel the [nausea] of committing crime rather than glorifying it just for the aspect of fun and thrill. The audience gets to experience for the first time how sick [it is to commit murder] – we're certainly not condoning it, but making a real statement about serial killers".


title: Maniac (2012 film)

text: The CD soundtrack composed by Robin Coudert (aka Rob) is available on Music Box Records label website.


title: Mirrors (Justin Timberlake song)

text: "Mirrors" is a song recorded by American singer-songwriter Justin Timberlake for his third studio album, "The 20/20 Experience" (2013). First conceived in 2009, the track was inspired by his relationship with Jessica Biel and the marriage of his grandparents. It is an eight-minute-long mid-tempo progressive soul and R&B ballad. Timberlake wrote and produced the song with Timothy "Timbaland" Mosley and Jerome "J-Roc" Harmon, with additional writing from James Fauntleroy. The accompanying music video, directed by Floria Sigismondi, was released in March 2013 and depicts a tale of two lovers through several decades.