Early life and loss.

Emily Brontë was born on 30 July 1818 to Maria Branwell and an Irish father, Patrick Brontë. The family was living on Market Street in the village of Thornton on the outskirts of Bradford, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, Northern England. Emily's older siblings included, eldest to youngest, Maria, Elizabeth, Charlotte and Branwell, making Emily the Brontës' fifth child. In 1820, Emily's younger sister Anne, the last Brontë child, was born. Shortly thereafter, the family moved eight miles away to Haworth, where Patrick was employed as perpetual curate, In Haworth, the children would have opportunities to develop their literary talents.  When Emily was only three, and all six children under the age of eight, she and her siblings lost their mother, Maria, to cancer on 15 September 1821. The younger children were to be cared for by Elizabeth Branwell, their aunt and mother Maria's sister.  Emily's three elder sisters, Maria, Elizabeth, and Charlotte, were sent to the Clergy Daughters' School at Cowan Bridge. At the age of six, on 25 November 1824, Emily joined her sisters at school for a brief period. At school, however, the children suffered abuse and privations, and when a typhoid epidemic swept the school, Maria and Elizabeth became ill. Maria, who may actually have had tuberculosis, was sent home, where she died. Emily, Charlotte and Elizabeth were subsequently removed from the school in June 1825. Elizabeth died soon after their return home.  The four youngest Brontë children, all under ten years of age, had suffered the loss of the three eldest females in their immediate family.  Charlotte maintained that the school's poor conditions permanently affected her health and physical development and that it had hastened the deaths of Maria (born 1814) and Elizabeth (born 1815), who both died in 1825. After the deaths of his older daughters, Patrick removed Charlotte and Emily from the school. Charlotte would use her experiences and knowledge of the school as the basis for Lowood School in "Jane Eyre".  The three remaining sisters and their brother Branwell were thereafter educated at home by their father and aunt Elizabeth Branwell. A shy girl, Emily was very close to her siblings and was known as a great animal lover, especially for befriending stray dogs she found wandering around the countryside. Despite the lack of formal education, Emily and her siblings had access to a wide range of published material; favourites included Sir Walter Scott, Byron, Shelley, and "Blackwood's Magazine".  Inspired by a box of toy soldiers Branwell had received as a gift, the children began to write stories which they set in a number of invented imaginary worlds peopled by their soldiers as well as their heroes the Duke of Wellington and his sons, Charles and Arthur Wellesley. Little of Emily's work from this period survives, except for poems spoken by characters. Initially, all four children shared in creating stories about a world called Angria.  However, when Emily was 13, she and Anne withdrew from participation in the Angria story and began a new one about Gondal, a fictional island whose myths and legends were to preoccupy the two sisters throughout their lives. With the exception of their Gondal poems and Anne's lists of Gondal's characters and place-names, Emily and Anne's Gondal writings were largely not preserved. Among those that did survive are some "diary papers," written by Emily in her twenties, which describe current events in Gondal. The heroes of Gondal tended to resemble the popular image of the Scottish Highlander, a sort of British version of the "noble savage": romantic outlaws capable of more nobility, passion, and bravery than the denizens of "civilization". Similar themes of romanticism and noble savagery are apparent across the Brontë's juvenilia, notably in Branwell's "The Life of Alexander Percy", which tells the story of an all-consuming, death-defying, and ultimately self-destructive love and is generally considered an inspiration for "Wuthering Heights".  At seventeen, Emily began to attend the Roe Head Girls' School, where Charlotte was a teacher, but suffered from extreme homesickness and left after only a few months. Charlotte wrote later that "Liberty was the breath of Emily's nostrils; without it, she perished. The change from her own home to a school and from her own very noiseless, very secluded but unrestricted and unartificial mode of life, to one of disciplined routine (though under the kindest auspices), was what she failed in enduring... I felt in my heart she would die if she did not go home, and with this conviction obtained her recall." Emily returned home and Anne took her place. At this time, the girls' objective was to obtain sufficient education to open a small school of their own.

Adulthood.

Emily became a teacher at Law Hill School in Halifax beginning in September 1838, when she was twenty. Her always fragile health soon broke under the stress of the 17-hour work day and she returned home in April 1839. Thereafter she remained at home, doing most of the cooking, ironing, and cleaning at Haworth. She taught herself German out of books and also practised the piano.  In 1842, Emily accompanied Charlotte to the Héger Pensionnat in Brussels, Belgium, where they attended the girls' academy run by Constantin Héger in the hope of perfecting their French and German before opening their school. Unlike Charlotte, Emily was uncomfortable in Brussels, and refused to adopt Belgian fashions, saying "I wish to be as God made me", which rendered her something of an outcast. Nine of Emily's French essays survive from this period. Héger seems to have been impressed with the strength of Emily's character, writing that:  The two sisters were committed to their studies and by the end of the term had become so competent in French that Madame Héger proposed that they both stay another half-year, even, according to Charlotte, offering to dismiss the English master so that she could take his place. Emily had, by this time, become a competent pianist and teacher and it was suggested that she might stay on to teach music. However, the illness and death of their aunt drove them to return to their father and Haworth. In 1844, the sisters attempted to open a school in their house, but their plans were stymied by an inability to attract students to the remote area.  In 1844, Emily began going through all the poems she had written, recopying them neatly into two notebooks. One was labelled "Gondal Poems"; the other was unlabelled. Scholars such as Fannie Ratchford and Derek Roper have attempted to piece together a Gondal storyline and chronology from these poems. In the autumn of 1845, Charlotte discovered the notebooks and insisted that the poems be published. Emily, furious at the invasion of her privacy, at first refused but relented when Anne brought out her own manuscripts and revealed to Charlotte that she had been writing poems in secret as well. As co-authors of Gondal stories, Anne and Emily were accustomed to read their Gondal stories and poems to each other, while Charlotte was excluded from their privacy. Around this time she had written one of her most famous poems "No coward soul is mine", probably as an answer to the violation of her privacy and her own transformation into a published writer. Despite Charlotte's later claim, it was not her last poem.  In 1846, the sisters' poems were published in one volume as "Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell". The Brontë sisters had adopted pseudonyms for publication, preserving their initials: Charlotte was "Currer Bell", Emily was "Ellis Bell" and Anne was "Acton Bell". Charlotte wrote in the 'Biographical Notice of Ellis and Acton Bell' that their "ambiguous choice" was "dictated by a sort of conscientious scruple at assuming Christian names positively masculine, while we did not like to declare ourselves women, because... we had a vague impression that authoresses are liable to be looked on with prejudice". Charlotte contributed 19 poems, and Emily and Anne each contributed 21. Although the sisters were told several months after publication that only two copies had sold, they were not discouraged (of their two readers, one was impressed enough to request their autographs). "The Athenaeum" reviewer praised Ellis Bell's work for its music and power, singling out his poems as the best: "Ellis possesses a fine, quaint spirit and an evident power of wing that may reach heights not here attempted", and "The Critic" reviewer recognised "the presence of more genius than it was supposed this utilitarian age had devoted to the loftier exercises of the intellect."

Personality and character.

Emily Brontë remains a mysterious figure and a challenge to biographers because information about her is sparse due to her solitary and reclusive nature. Except for Ellen Nussey and Louise de Bassompierre, Emily's fellow student in Brussels, she does not seem to have made any friends outside her family. Her closest friend was her sister Anne. Together they shared their own fantasy world, Gondal, and, according to Ellen Nussey, in childhood they were "like twins", "inseparable companions" and "in the very closest sympathy which never had any interruption". In 1845 Anne took Emily to visit some of the places she had come to know and love in the five years she spent as governess. A plan to visit Scarborough fell through and instead the sisters went to York where Anne showed Emily York Minster. During the trip the sisters acted out some of their Gondal characters.  Charlotte Brontë remains the primary source of information about Emily, although as an elder sister, writing publicly about her only shortly after her death, she is considered by certain scholars not to be a neutral witness. Stevie Davies believes that there is what might be called Charlotte's smoke-screen and argues that Emily evidently shocked her, to the point where she may even have doubted her sister's sanity. After Emily's death, Charlotte rewrote her character, history and even poems on a more acceptable (to her and the bourgeois reading public) model. Charlotte presented Emily as someone whose "natural" love of the beauties of nature had become somewhat exaggerated owing to her shy nature, portraying her as too fond of the Yorkshire moors, and homesick whenever she was away. According to Lucasta Miller, in her analysis of Brontë biographies, "Charlotte took on the role of Emily's first mythographer." In the "Preface" to the Second Edition of "Wuthering Heights", in 1850, Charlotte wrote: Emily's unsociability and extremely shy nature have subsequently been reported many times. According to Norma Crandall, her "warm, human aspect" was "usually revealed only in her love of nature and of animals". In a similar description, "Literary news" (1883) states: "[Emily] loved the solemn moors, she loved all wild, free creatures and things", and critics attest that her love of the moors is manifest in "Wuthering Heights". Over the years, Emily's love of nature has been the subject of many anecdotes. A newspaper dated 31 December 1899, gives the folksy account that "with bird and beast [Emily] had the most intimate relations, and from her walks she often came with fledgling or young rabbit in hand, talking softly to it, quite sure, too, that it understood". Elizabeth Gaskell, in her biography of Charlotte, told the story of Emily's punishing her pet dog Keeper for lying "on the delicate white counterpane" that covered one of the beds in the Parsonage. According to Gaskell, she struck him with her fists until he was "half-blind" with his eyes "swelled up". This story is apocryphal, and contradicts the following account of Emily's and Keeper's relationship:  In "Queens of Literature of the Victorian Era" (1886), Eva Hope summarises Emily's character as "a peculiar mixture of timidity and Spartan-like courage", and goes on to say, "She was painfully shy, but physically she was brave to a surprising degree. She loved few persons, but those few with a passion of self-sacrificing tenderness and devotion. To other people's failings she was understanding and forgiving, but over herself she kept a continual and most austere watch, never allowing herself to deviate for one instant from what she considered her duty."  Emily Brontë has often been characterised as a devout if somewhat unorthodox Christian, a heretic and a visionary "mystic of the moors".

"Wuthering Heights".

Emily Brontë's "Wuthering Heights" was first published in London in 1847 by Thomas Cautley Newby, appearing as the first two volumes of a three-volume set that included Anne Brontë's "Agnes Grey". The authors were printed as being Ellis and Acton Bell; Emily's real name did not appear until 1850, when it was printed on the title page of an edited commercial edition. The novel's innovative structure somewhat puzzled critics.  "Wuthering Heights"'s violence and passion led the Victorian public and many early reviewers to think that it had been written by a man. According to Juliet Gardiner, "the vivid sexual passion and power of its language and imagery impressed, bewildered and appalled reviewers." Literary critic Thomas Joudrey further contextualizes this reaction: "Expecting in the wake of Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" to be swept up in an earnest Bildungsroman, they were instead shocked and confounded by a tale of unchecked primal passions, replete with savage cruelty and outright barbarism." Even though the novel received mixed reviews when it first came out, and was often condemned for its portrayal of amoral passion, the book subsequently became an English literary classic. Emily Brontë never knew the extent of fame she achieved with her only novel, as she died a year after its publication, aged 30.  Although a letter from her publisher indicates that Emily had begun to write a second novel, the manuscript has never been found. Perhaps Emily or a member of her family eventually destroyed the manuscript, if it existed, when she was prevented by illness from completing it. It has also been suggested that, though less likely, the letter could have been intended for Anne Brontë, who was already writing "The Tenant of Wildfell Hall", her second novel.

Death.

Emily's health was probably weakened by the harsh local climate and by unsanitary conditions at home, the source of water being contaminated by run off from the church's graveyard. Branwell died suddenly, on Sunday, 24 September 1848. At his funeral service, a week later, Emily caught a severe cold which quickly developed into inflammation of the lungs and led to tuberculosis. Though her condition worsened steadily, she rejected medical help and all offered remedies, saying that she would have "no poisoning doctor" near her. On the morning of 19 December 1848, Charlotte, fearing for her sister, wrote:  At noon, Emily was worse; she could only whisper in gasps. With her last audible words she said to Charlotte, "If you will send for a doctor, I will see him now" but it was too late. She died that same day at about two in the afternoon. According to Mary Robinson, an early biographer of Emily, it happened while she was sitting on the sofa. However, Charlotte's letter to William Smith Williams where she mentions Emily's dog, Keeper, lying at the side of her dying-bed, makes this statement seem unlikely.  It was less than three months since Branwell's death, which led Martha Brown, a housemaid, to declare that "Miss Emily died of a broken heart for love of her brother". Emily had grown so thin that her coffin measured only 16 inches wide. The carpenter said he had never made a narrower one for an adult. Her mortal remains were interred in the family vault in St Michael and All Angels' Church, Haworth.

Legacy.

In July 2019 English folk group The Unthanks released "Lines", a trilogy of short albums, which includes settings of Brontë's poems to music and was recorded at the Brontës' parsonage home, using their own regency piano, played by Adrian McNally.

References.

Notes Footnotes Bibliography

Emily Jane Brontë (, ; 30 July 1818 – 19 December 1848) was an English novelist and poet who is best known for her only novel, "Wuthering Heights", now considered a classic of English literature. She also published one book of poetry with her sisters Charlotte and Anne titled "Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bell" with her own poems finding regard as poetic genius. Emily was the third-eldest of the four surviving Brontë siblings, between the youngest Anne and her brother Branwell. She published under the pen name Ellis Bell.

Emily Jane Brontëová (30. července 1818 – 19. prosince 1848) byla britská spisovatelka. Nejvíce ji proslavil její jediný román "Na Větrné hůrce" ("Wuthering Heights"), klasické dílo anglické literatury. Emily byla druhá nejstarší z pěti sester Brontëových. Publikovala pod mužským pseudonymem Ellis Bell.


Groups of thyreophorans.

Ankylosauria.

Among the Ankylosauria, the two main groups are the ankylosaurids and nodosaurids.  Ankylosaurids are noted by the presence of a large tail club composed of distended vertebrae that have fused into a single mass. They were heavy-set and heavily armored from head to tail in bony armor, even down to minor features such as the eyelids. Spikes and nodules, often of horn, were set into the armor. The head was flat, stocky, with little or no "neck", roughly shovel-shaped and characterized by two spikes on either side of the head approximately where the ears and cheeks were. "Euoplocephalus tutus" is perhaps the best-known ankylosaurid.  Nodosaurids, the other family in the Ankylosauria, may actually include the ancestors of the ankylosaurids. They lived during the middle Jurassic (approx 170 mya) on up through the late Cretaceous (66 mya) and, while armored as the ankylosaurids, did not have a tail club. Instead, the bony bumps and spikes that covered the rest of their body continued out to the tail and/or were augmented with sharp spines. Two examples of nodosaurs are "Sauropelta" and "Edmontonia", the latter most notable for its formidable forward-pointing shoulder spikes.

Stegosauria.

The suborder Stegosauria comprises Stegosauridae and Huayangosauridae. These dinosaurs lived mostly from the Middle to Late Jurassic, although some fossils have been found in the Cretaceous. Stegosaurs had very small heads with simple, leaf-like teeth. Stegosaurs possessed rows of plates and/or spikes running down the dorsal midline and elongated dorsal vertebra. It has been suggested that stegosaur plates functioned in control of body temperature (thermoregulation) and/or were used as a display to identify members of a species, as well as to attract mates and intimidate rivals. Well known stegosaurs are "Stegosaurus" and "Kentrosaurus".

Classification.

Taxonomy.

While ranked taxonomy has largely fallen out of favor among dinosaur paleontologists, a few 21st century publications have retained the use of ranks, though sources have differed on what its rank should be. Most have listed Thyreophora as an unranked taxon containing the traditional suborders Stegosauria and Ankylosauria, though Thyreophora is also sometimes classified as a suborder, with Ankylosauria and Stegosauria as infraorders.

Phylogeny.

Thyreophora was first named by Nopcsa in 1915. Thyreophora was defined as a clade by Paul Sereno in 1998, as "all genasaurs more closely related to "Ankylosaurus" than to "Triceratops"". Thyreophoroidea was first named by Nopcsa in 1928 and defined by Sereno in 1986, as ""Scelidosaurus", "Ankylosaurus", their most recent common ancestor and all of its descendants". Eurypoda was first named by Sereno in 1986 and defined by him in 1998, as ""Stegosaurus", "Ankylosaurus", their most recent common ancestor and all of their descendants". The cladogram below follows a 2011 analysis by paleontologists Richard S. Thompson, Jolyon C. Parish, Susannah C. R. Maidment and Paul M. Barrett.

Thyreophora ("shield bearers", often known simply as "armored dinosaurs") is a group of armored ornithischian dinosaurs that lived from the early Jurassic Period until the end of the Cretaceous.

Thyreophora („Nosiči štítů“) je skupina ptakopánvých dinosaurů rozdělována na dvě hlavní vývojové skupiny, a sice příslušníky stegosaurů a ankylosaurů. Kromě nich zahrnovala i několik blíže neklasifikovaných rodů a čeleď Scelidosauridae. Tito tzv. obrnění dinosauři žili od spodní jury do svrchní křídy na většině území druhohorního světa. Jejich společným rysem je přítomnost osteodermů - pevných kožních destiček, tvořících ochranný pancíř. Dnes tvoří někteří zástupci této skupiny jedny z nejpopulárnějších známých dinosaurů (např. rody "Stegosaurus", "Ankylosaurus" ad.).


Etymology.

The mountain is known as “'” (; var.') in Sanskrit. The name also could have been derived from the word “""” (), which means "crystal".  In his Tibetan-English dictionary, Chandra (1902: p. 32) identifies the entry for 'kai la sha' () which is a loan word from Sanskrit.  The Tibetan name for the mountain is Gang Rinpoche (Tibetan: གངས་རིན་པོ་ཆེ་; ). "Gang" or "Kang" is the Tibetan word for "snow peak" analogous to or "hima"; "rinpoche" is an honorific meaning "precious one" so the combined term can be translated "precious jewel of snows". Alice Albinia lists some of the names for the mountain, and its religious significance to various faiths:  Another local name for the mountain is Tisé mountain, which derives from "ti tse" in the Zhang-Zhung language, meaning "water peak" or "river peak", connoting the mountain's status as the source of the mythical Lion, Horse, Peacock and Elephant Rivers, and in fact the Indus, Yarlung Tsangpo/Dihang/Brahmaputra, Karnali and Sutlej all begin in the Kailash-Lake Manasarovara region.

Religious significance.

In Hinduism.

In Hinduism, it is traditionally recognized as the abode of God Shiva, who resided there along with his consort goddess Parvati and their children, lord Ganesh and lord Kartikeya.  In the "Uttara Kanda" section of the epic Ramayana, it is said that Ravana attempted to uproot the mount kailash as retaliation to lord Shiva, who in turn, pressed his right big toe upon the mountain, trapping Ravana in between. This version of lord Shiva is also referred to as Ravananugraha, or favour form to ravana while seated in mount Kailash  According to the epic Mahabharata, it is said that the Pandava brothers, along with their wife Draupadi, trekked to the summit of mount Kailash on their path to liberation, as it is considered to be a gateway to Heaven, also known as Swarga Loka.  According to Charles Allen, one description in the Vishnu Purana of the mountain states that its four faces are made of crystal, ruby, gold, and lapis lazuli. It is a pillar of the world and is located at the heart of six mountain ranges symbolizing a lotus.

In Jainism.

According to Jain scriptures, Ashtapada, the mountain next to Mt. Kailash, is the site where the first Jain Tirthankara, Rishabhadeva attained moksha (liberation). In Jain tradition, it is believed that after Rishabhdeva attained nirvana, his son emperor Bharata Chakravartin had constructed three stupas and twenty four shrines of the 24 tirthankaras over there with their idols studded with precious stones and named it "Sinhnishdha".  In Jain tradition the 24th and last Tirthankara, Vardhamana Mahavira was taken to the summit of Meru by Indra shortly after his birth, after putting his mother Queen Trishala into deep slumber. There he was bathed and anointed with precious unctions.

In Buddhism.

Mount Kailash (Kailasa) is known as Mount Meru in Buddhist texts. It is central to its cosmology, and a major pilgrimage site for some Buddhist traditions.  Vajrayana Buddhists believe that Mount Kailash is the home of the buddha Cakrasaṃvara (also known as Demchok), who represents supreme bliss.  There are numerous sites in the region associated with Padmasambhava, whose tantric practices in holy sites around Tibet are credited with finally establishing Buddhism as the main religion of the country in the 7th–8th century AD.  It is said that Milarepa (c. 1052 – c. 1135), champion of Vajrayana, arrived in Tibet to challenge Naro Bönchung, champion of the Bön religion of Tibet. The two magicians engaged in a terrifying sorcerers' battle, but neither was able to gain a decisive advantage. Finally, it was agreed that whoever could reach the summit of Kailash most rapidly would be the victor. While Naro Bönchung sat on magic drum and soared up the slope, Milarepa's followers were dumbfounded to see him sitting still and meditating. Yet when Naro Bönchung was nearly at the top, Milarepa suddenly moved into action and overtook him by riding on sunlight, thus winning the contest. He did, however, fling a handful of snow on to the top of a nearby mountain, since known as Bönri, bequeathing it to the Bönpo and thereby ensuring continued Bönpo connections with the region.

In Bön.

Bön, a religion native to Tibet, maintain that the entire mystical region and Kailash, which they call the "nine-story Swastika Mountain", is the axis mundi, Tagzig Olmo Lung Ring.

Pilgrimage.

Every year, thousands make a pilgrimage to Kailash, following a tradition going back thousands of years. Pilgrims of several religions believe that circumambulating Mount Kailash on foot is a holy ritual that will bring good fortune. The peregrination is made in a clockwise direction by Hindus and Buddhists, while Jains and Bönpos circumambulate the mountain in a counterclockwise direction.  The path around Mount Kailash is long. Some pilgrims believe that the entire walk around Kailash should be made in a single day, which is not considered an easy task. A person in good shape walking fast would take perhaps 15 hours to complete the entire trek. Some of the devout do accomplish this feat, little daunted by the uneven terrain, altitude sickness and harsh conditions faced in the process. Indeed, other pilgrims venture a much more demanding regimen, performing body-length prostrations over the entire length of the circumambulation: The pilgrim bends down, kneels, prostrates full-length, makes a mark with his fingers, rises to his knees, prays, and then crawls forward on hands and knees to the mark made by his/her fingers before repeating the process. It requires at least four weeks of physical endurance to perform the circumambulation while following this regimen. The mountain is located in a particularly remote and inhospitable area of the Tibetan Himalayas. A few modern amenities, such as benches, resting places, and refreshment kiosks, exist to aid the pilgrims in their devotion. According to all religions that revere the mountain, setting foot on its slopes is a dire sin. It is a popular belief that the stairways on Mount Kailash lead to heaven. Because of the Sino-Indian border dispute, pilgrimage to the legendary abode of Shiva was stopped from 1954 to 1978. Thereafter, a limited number of Indian pilgrims have been allowed to visit the place, under the supervision of the Chinese and Indian governments either by a lengthy and hazardous trek over the Himalayan terrain, travel by land from Kathmandu or from Lhasa where flights from Kathmandu are available to Lhasa and thereafter travel over the great Tibetan plateau by car. The journey takes four night stops, finally arriving at Darchen at an elevation of, a small outpost that swells with pilgrims at certain times of the year. Despite its minimal infrastructure, modest guest houses are available for foreign pilgrims, whereas Tibetan pilgrims generally sleep in their own tents. A small regional medical center serving far-western Tibet and funded by the Swiss Ngari Korsum Foundation was built here in 1997.  Walking around the mountain—a part of its official park—has to be done on foot, pony or domestic yak, and takes some three days of trekking starting from a height of around past the Tarboche (flagpole) to cross the Drölma pass, and encamping for two nights en route. First, near the meadow of Dirapuk gompa, some before the pass and second, after crossing the pass and going downhill as far as possible (viewing Gauri Kund in the distance).

Geology.

The region around Mount Kailash and the Indus headwaters area is typified by wide-scale faulting of metamorphosed late Cretaceous to mid Cenozoic sedimentary rocks which have been intruded by igneous Cenozoic granitic rocks. Mt. Kailash appears to be a metasedimentary roof pendant supported by a massive granite base. The Cenozoic rocks represent offshore marine limestones deposited before subduction of the Tethys oceanic crust. These sediments were deposited on the southern margin of the Asia block during subduction of the Tethys oceanic crust before the collision between the Indian and Asian continents.

Mountaineering.

Due to its religious significance, Kailash remains an unclimbed mountain.  In 1926, Hugh Ruttledge studied the north face, which he estimated was 6,000 feet (1,800 m) high and "utterly unclimbable" and thought about an ascent of the northeast ridge, but he ran out of time. Ruttledge had been exploring the area with Colonel R. C. Wilson, who was on the other side of the mountain with his Sherpa named Tseten. According to Wilson, Tseten told Wilson, "'Sahib, we can climb that!'... as he too saw that this [the SE ridge] represented a feasible route to the summit." Further excerpts from Wilson's article in the "Alpine Journal" (vol. 40, 1928) show that he was serious about climbing Kailash, but Colonel Wilson, "“Just when I discovered an easy walk to the summit of the mountain, heavy snow began to fall, making the ascent impossible.”". Herbert Tichy was in the area in 1936, attempting to climb Gurla Mandhata. When he asked one of the Garpons of Ngari whether Kailash was climbable, the Garpon replied, "Only a man entirely free of sin could climb Kailash. And he wouldn't have to actually scale the sheer walls of ice to do it – he'd just turn himself into a bird and fly to the summit." Reinhold Messner was given the opportunity by the Chinese government to climb in the mid-1980s but he declined.  In 2001, reports emerged that the Chinese had given permission for a Spanish team to climb the peak, which caused an international backlash. Chinese authorities disputed the reports, and stated that any climbing activities on Mt Kailash were strictly prohibited. Reinhold Messner, who condemned the reported Spanish plans, said:

Mount Kailash (also Kailasa; Kangrinboqê or "Gang Rinpoche"; Tibetan: གངས་རིན་པོ་ཆེ; ;, ), is a high peak in the Kailash Range (Gangdisê Mountains), which forms part of the Transhimalaya in the Ngari Prefecture, Tibet Autonomous Region, China.

Kailás, též Kailáš či Gang Rinpočhe (tibetsky, གངས་རིན་པོ་ཆེ (Wylie "Gangs Rin-po-che"), čínsky 冈仁波齐峰 (pchin-jin "Gāngrénbōqí Fēng"), hindsky कैलाश पर्वत, "Kailāś Parvat") je nejposvátnější tibetská hora. Nachází se v západním Tibetu (prefektura Ngari) 960 km západně od Lhasy a 100 km severně od města Purang, v pohoří Transhimálaj. Má podobu téměř pravidelné pyramidy, ve vrcholových partiích je pokrytá ledovcem a věčným sněhem. Ve vzdálenosti 30 kilometrů jižně od Kailásu se nachází dvojice posvátných jezer Manasarovar a Rakas.


Early history.

In February 2002, the developers started creating language-code based sub-domains for different language Wikipedias. Along with other Wikipedia sub-domains, Bengali language sub-domain was created at that time. A placeholder page was created automatically in that sub-domain on June 1, 2002. On December 9, 2003, A Bangladeshi Ph.D. student of Canada's McGill University named Shah Asaduzzaman emailed Wikipedia Founder Jimmy Wales with a request to create Bengali Wikipedia. As a result, the developers created a test page on the Wikipedia named "Home Page" on December 26 of the same year.  The Main Page of Bengali Wikipedia was created on January 27, 2004 from an IP address which marks the official beginning of Bengali Wikipedia. '' ("Bānglā Bhāshā"; Bengali Language in English) is the first article of Bengali Wikipedia which was created on May 24, 2004.

History.

Bengali Wikipedia started its journey on January 27, 2004. Back then, the Bengali-speaking population had a little interest in Wikipedia. A few students and scholars used the English Wikipedia, but it was not accountable. Besides that, there were various difficulties contributing in Bengali. The whole scenario has been changed in 2006. During that time, the Bengali blogging world was growing slowly, and many people became accustomed to Bengali computing where a free and open-source Bengali typing tool, Avro Keyboard played a key role. On March 25, 2006, a Wiki team was created by the ‘Bangladesh Open Source Network’ (BdOSN) to popularize Wikipedia throughout the country. The aim was to represent Bengalis to the world through Wikipedia and build a complete encyclopedia in Bengali.  At that time, Bengali Wikipedia had only 500 articles. ‘BdOSN wiki team’ managed to spread the word through some newspapers and start a Bengali Wiki mailing list. Soon, many Bengali-speaking people from Bangladesh, India and abroad joined them in this dynamic project. As a result, by the end of the October, Bengali Wikipedia got to 10,000 articles. Among the South Asian language Wikipedias, Bengali Wikipedia reached that milestone first, and many of these articles were illustrated with photos from the demonstrator of Bengali Language Movement Dr. Rafiqul Islam, who donated all his historical photographs taken during the language movement to Wikimedia Commons.  One of the pioneer of the Bengali Wikipedia, Dr. Ragib Hasan said that  Between 2009 and 2010, Bengali speakers from West Bengal, India also started to contribute to Bengali Wikipedia. In the meantime, the Wikimedia Foundation started their operations and on October 3, 2011 a local chapter named Wikimedia Bangladesh was approved in Bangladesh by the Foundation to promote educational content in Bengali. On February 26, 2015, Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia—visited Bangladesh for a celebration program that was organized by Wikimedia Bangladesh to mark the tenth year of Bengali Wikipedia. In his keynote, Jimmy said that according to the article depth, Bengali Wikipedia is rated quite well.  Bengali Wikipedia now has articles on various topics with active editors per month. As of January 2019, Bengali Wikipedia is the only online free encyclopedia written in Bengali language. It is also one of the largest Bengali content related sites on the internet.

Confusion.

Over the years, there have been confusion in Bangladeshi media regarding some information of Bengali Wikipedia. In April 2018, Bangladeshi print and electronic media reported that Wikipedia named Runa Laila, a renowned singer from Bangladesh, among its Top 30 Bengali people of all time. This confusion arises due to the use of a collage image in the Bengalis article's infobox at Bengali and English version of Wikipedia. In August of the same year, an unregistered user added fake date of death in Muhammed Zafar Iqbal's article, which also attracted media attention.

The Bengali Wikipedia or Bangla Wikipedia () is the Bengali language edition of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. Launched on January 27, 2004, it surpassed 10,000 articles in October 2006, becoming the second South-Asian language to do so. In, total article crossed articles with active editors per month. In 2018, Bengali Wikipedia was viewed about 190 million times from all over the world. On an average, the site was viewed over 500 thousand times a day.

Bengálská Wikipedie je verze Wikipedie v bengálštině. V lednu 2020 obsahovala přes 79 000 článků a pracovalo pro ni 12 správců. Registrováno bylo přes 262 000 uživatelů, z nichž bylo asi 1 000 aktivních. V počtu článků byla 72. největší Wikipedie.


History.

The Earl Grey blend, or "Earl Grey's Mixture", is assumed to be named after Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, British Prime Minister in the 1830s and author of the Reform Bill of 1832. He reputedly received a gift, probably a diplomatic perquisite, of tea flavoured with bergamot oil. A "Grey's Tea" is known from the 1850s, but the first known published references to an "Earl Grey" tea are advertisements by Charlton & Co. of Jermyn Street in London in the 1880s.  According to one legend, a grateful Chinese mandarin whose son was rescued from drowning by one of Lord Grey's men first presented the blend to the Earl in 1803. The tale appears to be apocryphal, as Lord Grey never set foot in China and the use of bergamot oil to scent tea was then unknown in China. However, this tale is subsequently told (and slightly corrected) on the Twinings website, as "having been presented by an envoy on his return from China".  Jacksons of Piccadilly claim they originated Earl Grey's Tea, Lord Grey having given the recipe to Robert Jackson & Co. partner George Charlton in 1830. According to Jacksons, the original recipe has been in constant production and has never left their hands. Theirs has been based on Chinese black tea since the beginning.  According to the Grey family, the tea was specially blended by a Chinese Mandarin-speaking individual for Lord Grey, to suit the water at Howick Hall, the family seat in Northumberland, using bergamot in particular to offset the preponderance of lime in the local water. Lady Grey used it to entertain in London as a political hostess, and it proved so popular that she was asked if it could be sold to others, which is how Twinings came to market it as a brand.  A 2010 survey found that a significant minority of people in the United Kingdom associate drinking Earl Grey tea with being "posh" or upper class.

Preparation and variations.

"Earl Grey" as applied to tea is not a registered trademark, and numerous tea companies produce their own versions of Earl Grey tea, using a wide variety of tea leaves and additives.  Bergamot orange ("Citrus bergamia") is a small citrus tree which blossoms during the winter and is grown commercially in Calabria, Italy. It is probably a hybrid of "Citrus limetta" (sweet lime) and "Citrus aurantium" (bitter orange).

Use as a flavouring.

Earl Grey tea is used as a flavouring for many types of cakes and confectionery, such as chocolates, as well as savoury sauces. For sauces, the flavour is normally created by adding tea bags to the basic stock, boiling for a few minutes and then discarding the bags. For sweet recipes, loose tea is often added to melted butter or hot cream and strained after the flavour is infused.

Toxicology.

In several studies, application of high concentrations of some brands of bergamot oil directly to the skin was shown to increase redness after exposure to ultraviolet light; however, this should not apply to ordinary oral consumption of Earl Grey tea. Bergamot is a source of bergamottin which, along with the chemically related compound 6',7'-dihydroxybergamottin, is known to be responsible for grapefruit–drug interactions in which the consumption of the juice affects the metabolism of a variety of pharmaceutical drugs.  In one case study, a patient who consumed four litres of Earl Grey tea per day reported muscle cramps, which were attributed to the function of the bergapten in bergamot oil as a potassium channel blocker. The symptoms subsided upon reducing his consumption of Earl Grey tea to one litre per day.

Earl Grey tea is a tea blend which has been flavoured in addition to oil of bergamot. The rind's fragrant oil is added to black tea to give Earl Grey its unique taste. Traditionally, Earl Grey was made from black teas such as China keemun and was intended to be had without milk. However, tea companies have since begun to offer Earl Grey based upon stronger teas such as Ceylons which are better suited to the addition of milk or cream. Other varieties have been introduced as well, such as green or oolong.

Earl Grey je pravděpodobně nejvíce známá čajová směs s charakteristickou příchutí silic bergamotu. Výroba této směsi spočívá rozprášení přiměřené množství alkoholického roztoku aromatické esence na čaj. Tradičně se používá k výrobě čínský černý čaj, V dnešní době je možné se setkat s čaji z Indie a Afriky, nebo směsí čajů z různých zemí (například z Indie a Keni, Číny a Indie a podobně). Postupem času byli představeny další variace, z nichž některé ani neobsahují černý čaj.


History.

The Delhi Transport Corporation was incorporated in May 1948 by the Indian government for local bus services when they found out the incumbent service provider Gwalior and Northern India Transport Company Ltd. was inadequate in serving the purpose. It was then named "Delhi Transport Service". It was again constituted as "Delhi Road Transport Authority" under the Road Transport Corporation Act, 1950. This Authority became an undertaking of Municipal Corporation of Delhi by an Act of Parliament in April, 1958. In 1971, on a recommendation from the Indian government took over the assets and liabilities from the erstwhile Delhi Transport Undertaking (DTU) operated by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi until 2 November 1971. Delhi Transport Corporation which was under administrative control of the Indian government was transferred to the Government of National Capital Territory, Delhi. Beginning in October 2019, New Delhi began rolling out free bus transit for women on the Delhi Transport Corporation, with women traveling for free when using pink tickets.

Routes.

Delhi Transport Corporation operates on many routes in Delhi and neighbouring States. The mofussil buses operate around 46 depots out of which 18 depots are of old DTC buses and rest have low floor buses while the inter-state buses operate from the Three Inter State Bus Terminals in Kashmiri Gate, Sarai Kale Khan and Anand Vihar.

Intra-Delhi bus services.

Delhi Transport Corporation services in Delhi has vastly distributed network of bus services. It connects almost every part of Delhi with this network of buses. The most Prominent of these being the "Mudrika" and the "Bahri Mudrika Seva" services interconnecting all parts of the city with a great frequency of buses until approximately 10:30 p.m.

High capacity bus service.

Delhi Transport Corporation has started High Capacity Bus Service on a few routes and work is in progress to develop more high capacity bus routes. This service uses buses with improved carrying capacity and better facilities like air-conditioning, less travel time, less congestion, more comfortable interiors, GPS navigation etc. And now in the list of High Capacity Buses is the new, sleek, red coloured air-conditioned buses of the Delhi Transport Corporation, which was inaugurated by Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit on 4 June 2008 during the celebrations of World Environment Day in the Capital at India Gate. Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit flagged off the eight new air-conditioned Red Line buses, which will initially ply on select routes in the capital, of which two will be on the newly constructed bus rapid transport corridor. The minimum bus fare starts at ₹5 and the maximum is ₹25(excluding passes, which are of ₹50-55 ).

Fleet.

It is having a fleet of 3800 buses, apart from this there are 2400 DIMTS buses, taking total fleet to 6200 buses.

Details.

It being stated that there were 5,847 buses functional in Delhi in 2013-14, which went up to 6,118 in 2014-15. The number further increased to 6,659 in 2015-16 and in the next year it went down to 5,826 buses. The number fell to 5,814 in 2017-18 and again rose to 6,578 for the last financial year 2018-19. There are 3,781 buses in DTC's fleet. Majority of these buses are as old as nine years. The last bus that was commissioned was in 2010 before the Commonwealth Games in New Delhi. Around 1700 more to be delivered by Tata Marcopolo by the end of 2021.

Delhi Integrated Multi-Modal Transit System (DIMTS).

The buses having a fleet of 1725 buses deployed under the cluster scheme have state-of-the-art technology to guide and monitor them. They have been equipped with Global Positioning System (GPS) devices so that their movement and geographic location are tracked by the Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) system on real-time basis that provides ETA and other data to the passengers by PoochhO App, the App also has trip planner, pollution status in vicinity and other features. Electronic Ticketing Machines (ETM) are being used on these buses in place of pre-printed tickets as part of the automated fare collection (AFC) system, since August 2018 it is possible to use DMRC Metro Card to buy tickets in DIMTS' buses. Under the scheme the private concessionaires, who would be allotted clusters, would bring in their buses, arrange for their cleaning and maintenance and provide for the staff. For the services rendered, the concessionaire would be paid on the basis of an indexed cost system that would have a fixed component based on the cost of the bus, a variable component that would factor in the fuel and maintenance costs and a component that would deal with the wages cost keeping in mind the consumer price index.

Inter-state bus services.

DTC was one of the premier bus services of North India. Which connects almost all the major centres of North India with its services. At present Interstate bus service is suspended. It covers only few area of NCR.

Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) is the main public transport operator of Delhi. It is one of the largest CNG-powered bus service operator in the world.

Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) je hlavní dopravce v Dillí, největším městě Indie. Zajišťuje městskou autobusovou dopravu, včetně linek po městských okruzích ("mudrika"). DTC provozuje největší autobusový provoz vozů poháněných na CNG na světě. V meziměstské dopravě zajišťuje DTC spojení do mnoha destinací v severní části země (cca v deseti svazových státech) a také i do pákistánského Láhaur.


Description.

In 2010, American paleontologist Gregory S. Paul estimated the length of "Denversaurus" at six meters and its weight at three tonnes.  American paleontologist Robert T. Bakker considered "Denversaurus" distinct from "Edmontonia" and "Chassternbergia" in having a skull that was wide at the rear and a more rearward position of the eye sockets. The holotype skull has a length of 496 millimetres and a rear width of 346 millimetres. In the referred specimen AMNH 3076 these proportions are less extreme, measuring 395 millimetres long with a rear width of 220 millimetre. According to American paleontologist Kenneth Carpenter, the greater width of both the holotype and the referred specimen was due to crushing.  Vertebrate anatomist and paleontologist Michael Burns in 2015 published an abstract that concluded that "Denversaurus" was different from "Edmontonia" but similar to "Panoplosaurus" in having inflated, convex, cranial sculpturing with visible sulci, or troughs, between individual top skull armour elements, but is distinct from "Panoplosaurus" in having a relatively wider snout.

Discovery and naming.

In 1922, Philip Reinheimer, a collector and technician employed by the Colorado Museum of Natural History, the predecessor of the present Denver Museum of Nature and Science, near the Twito Ranch in Corson County, South Dakota discovered the fossil of an ankylosaurian in a Maastrichtian age terrestrial horizon of the Lance Formation. In 1943, American paleontologist Barnum Brown referred the find to "Edmontonia longiceps".  In 1988, Robert Thomas Bakker decided to split the genus "Edmontonia". The species "Edmontonia rugosidens" he made into a separate genus "Chassternbergia" and the Denver fossil was named and described as a new genus and species. The type species of this genus was "Denversaurus schlessmani". The generic name referred to the Denver Museum of Natural History at Denver, Colorado. The specific name honoured Lee E. Schlessman, a major benefactor of the museum and the founder of the Schlessman Family Foundation.  The fossil the species is based on, the holotype DMNH 468, was discovered in a layer of the late Maastrichtian-age Lance Formation of South Dakota. It consists of a skull, lacking the lower jaws, and a number of osteoderms of the body armour. It is part of the collection of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science after which the genus was named. Bakker referred a second fossil to the species, specimen AMNH 3076, a skull found by Brown and American Museum of Natural History paleontologist Roland T. Bird at the Tornillo Creek in Brewster County, Texas, in a layer of the poorly dated Upper Cretaceous Aguja Formation, possibly from the Maastrichtian also.  Scientists at the Black Hills Institute found a nodosaurid skeleton in Niobrara County, Wyoming, nick-named "Tank", which has been identified as "Denversaurus". The specimen contains the lower jaws, parts of the torso and about a hundred osteoderms. It is part of the collection of the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center under inventory number BHI 127327.

Validity.

The validity of "Denversaurus" was disputed in a 1990 paper on ankylosaurian systematics by Kenneth Carpenter, who noted that Bakker's diagnosis of "Denversaurus" was based primarily on Bakker's artistic restoration of the holotype in an uncrushed state. Since DMNH 468 was found crushed, Carpenter assigned "Denversaurus" to a "Edmontonia" sp., even though he noted its similarity to "Edmontonia rugosidens". A number of workers treated "Denversaurus" as synonymous with either "E. rugosidens" or "E. longiceps", or alternatively a valid species of "Edmontonia", an "Edmontonia schlessmani".  In a SVP 2015 abstract, Michael Burns revisited the systematics of latest Cretaceous nodosaurids from the Western Interior. According to Burns, "Denversaurus" is a valid taxon based on its phylogenetic position.

Classification.

Bakker in 1988 placed "Denversaurus" within an Edmontoniidae, the presumed sister group of the Nodosauridae within a Nodosauroidea that would not have been Ankylosauria but the last surviving Stegosauria. These hypotheses have not been confirmed by modern cladistic analysis. Today the "Denversaurus" material, whether it presents a separate species or is identical to "E. rugosidens" or "E. longiceps", is considered nodosaurid and ankylosaurian. Paul suggested that it were the direct descendant of "E. longiceps". Burns recovered "Denversaurus" as the sister species of "Panoplosaurus". "Denversaurus" is the latest known member of the Thyreophora.

Denversaurus (meaning "Denver lizard") is a genus of herbivorous nodosaurid ankylosaurian dinosaur from the Late Cretaceous (late Maastrichtian) of western North America. Although at one point treated as a junior synonym of "Edmontonia" by some taxonomists, current research indicates that it is a distinct nodosaurid genus.

Denversaurus („Denverský ještěr“) byl obrněný nodosauridní dinosaurus. Žil na konci svrchní křídy (stupeň maastricht) na území dnešního západu Severní Ameriky (státy Jižní Dakota, Texas a Wyoming). Šlo o posledního známého nodosaurida, žijícího před hromadným vymíráním na konci křídy.


Importance in antiquity.

Pliny the Elder and other writers identify Petra as the capital of the Nabataean Kingdom and the centre of their caravan trade. Enclosed by towering rocks and watered by a perennial stream, Petra not only possessed the advantages of a fortress, but controlled the main commercial routes which passed through it to Gaza in the west, to Bosra and Damascus in the north, to Aqaba and Leuce Come on the Red Sea, and across the desert to the Persian Gulf.

Description.

Water control.

Excavations have demonstrated that it was the ability of the Nabataeans to control the water supply that led to the rise of the desert city, creating an artificial oasis. The area is visited by flash floods, but archaeological evidence shows that the Nabataeans controlled these floods by the use of dams, cisterns and water conduits. These innovations stored water for prolonged periods of drought and enabled the city to prosper from its sale.

Access routes.

In ancient times, Petra might have been approached from the south on a track leading across the plain of Petra, around Jabal Haroun ("Aaron's Mountain"), the location of the Tomb of Aaron, said to be the burial place of Aaron, brother of Moses. Another approach was possibly from the high plateau to the north. Today, most modern visitors approach the site from the east. The impressive eastern entrance leads steeply down through a dark, narrow gorge, in places only wide, called the "Siq" ("shaft"), a natural geological feature formed from a deep split in the sandstone rocks and serving as a waterway flowing into Wadi Musa.

City centre.

At the end of the narrow gorge, the Siq, stands Petra's most elaborate ruin, popularly known as Al Khazneh ("the Treasury"), hewn into the sandstone cliff. While remaining in remarkably preserved condition, the face of the structure is marked by hundreds of bullet holes made by the local Bedouin tribes that hoped to dislodge riches that were once rumoured to be hidden within it. A little further from the Treasury, at the foot of the mountain called "en-Nejr", is a massive theatre, positioned so as to bring the greatest number of tombs within view. At the point where the valley opens out into the plain, the site of the city is revealed with striking effect. The theatre has been cut into the hillside and into several of the tombs during its construction. Rectangular gaps in the seating are still visible. Almost enclosing it on three sides are rose-coloured mountain walls, divided into groups by deep fissures and lined with knobs cut from the rock in the form of towers.

Huge structure discovered in 2016.

In 2016, archaeologists using satellite imagery and drones discovered a very large, previously unknown monumental structure whose beginnings were tentatively dated to about 150 BCE, the time when the Nabataeans initiated their public building programme. It is located outside the main area of the city, at the foot of Jabal an-Nmayr and about south of the city centre, but is facing east, not towards the city, and has no visible relationship to it. The structure consists of a huge, platform, with a truly monumental staircase all along its eastern side. The large platform enclosed a slightly smaller one, topped with a comparatively small building,, which was facing east toward the staircase. The structure, second in size only to the Monastery complex, probably had a ceremonial function of which not even a speculative explanation has yet been offered by the researchers.

Climate.

In Petra, there is a semi-arid climate. Most rain falls in the winter. The Köppen-Geiger climate classification is BSk. The average annual temperature in Petra is. About of precipitation falls annually.

History.

Though the city was founded relatively late, a sanctuary has existed there since very ancient times.

Neolithic.

By 7000 BCE, some of the earliest recorded farmers had settled in Beidha, a Pre-Pottery Neolithic settlement just north of Petra.

Bronze Age.

Petra is listed in Egyptian campaign accounts and the Amarna letters as "Pel", "Sela" or "Seir".

Iron Age Edom.

The Edomite site excavated at the top of the Umm el-Biyara mountain at Petra was established not earlier than the seventh century BCE (Iron II).

The emergence of Rekem/Petra.

The Nabataeans were one among several nomadic Bedouin tribes that roamed the Arabian Desert and moved with their herds to wherever they could find pasture and water. Although the Nabataeans were initially embedded in Aramaic culture, theories about them having Aramean roots are rejected by modern scholars. Instead, archaeological, religious and linguistic evidence confirm that they are a northern Arabian tribe.

Petra as "Rekem".

Historian Josephus (ca. 37–100) writes that the region as inhabited by the Midianites during the time of Moses, and that they were ruled by five kings, one of whom was Rekem. Josephus mentions that the city, called Petra by the Greeks, "ranks highest in the land of the Arabs" and was still called Rekeme by all the Arabs of his time, after its royal founder (Antiquities iv. 7, 1; 4, 7).  The name Rekem was inscribed in the rock wall of the Wadi Musa opposite the entrance to the Siq. However, Jordan built a bridge over the wadi and this inscription was buried beneath tons of concrete.

Petra as "Sela".

An old theory held that Petra might be identified with a place called "sela" in the Hebrew Bible. "Encyclopædia Britannica" (1911) states that the Semitic name of the city, if not Sela, would remain unknown. It nevertheless cautioned that "sela" simply means "rock" in Hebrew, and thence might not be identified with a city where it occurs in the biblical text.  The passage in Diodorus Siculus (xix. 94–97) which describes the expeditions which Antigonus sent against the Nabataeans in 312 BCE, was understood by some researchers — and not so by others — to throw some light upon the history of Petra, but the "petra" (Greek for rock) referred to as a natural fortress and place of refuge cannot be a proper name, and the description implies that there was no town in existence there at the time.

Roman period.

In AD 106, when Cornelius Palma was governor of Syria, the part of Arabia under the rule of Petra was absorbed into the Roman Empire as part of "Arabia Petraea", and Petra became its capital. The native dynasty came to an end but the city continued to flourish under Roman rule. It was around this time that the Petra Roman Road was built. A century later, in the time of Alexander Severus, when the city was at the height of its splendor, the issue of coinage came to an end. There was no more building of sumptuous tombs, owing apparently to some sudden catastrophe, such as an invasion by the neo-Persian power under the Sassanid Empire.  Meanwhile, as Palmyra (fl. 130–270) grew in importance and attracted the Arabian trade away from Petra, the latter declined. It appears, however, to have lingered on as a religious centre. Another Roman road was constructed at the site. Epiphanius of Salamis (c.315–403) writes that in his time a feast was held there on December 25 in honour of the virgin Khaabou (Chaabou) and her offspring Dushara. Dushara and al-Uzza were two of the main deities of the city, which otherwise included many idols from other Nabatean deities such as Allat and Manat.  Between 111 and 114, Trajan built the Via Traiana Nova, running from the Syrian border to the Red Sea through Petra. This road followed the old routes of Nabataean caravans. In the shadow of the Pax Romana, this route revived trade between Arabia, Syria, and Mediterranean harbors. In 125 AD, one of Emperor Hadrian's administrators left marks in Petra, pointed out by documents found at the Dead Sea. In 130 AD, Hadrian visited the former Nabataean capital, giving it the name of "Hadriane Petra Metropolis", imprinted on his coins. His visit, however, did not lead to any boom in architectural development and new buildings as it did in Jerash. The province's governor, Sextius Florentinus, erected a monumental mausoleum for his son near the end of the al-Hubta (King's Wall) tombs, which had been generally reserved during the Nabataean period for the royal family.  The interest that Roman emperors showed for the city in the 3rd century suggests that Petra and its environs remained highly esteemed for a long time. An inscription to Liber Pater, a god revered by Emperor Septimius Severus, was found in the "temenos" of the temple known as Qasr al-Bint, and Nabataean tombs contained silver coins with the Emperor's portrait, as well as pottery from his reign. Emperor Elagabalus declared Petra to be a "Roman colony" when he reorganised the Roman Empire towards the end of the 3rd century. The area from Petra to Wadi Mujib, the Negev, and the Sinai Peninsula were annexed into the province of Palaestina Salutaris. Petra may be seen on the mosaic map of Madaba from the reign of Emperor Justinian.

Byzantine period.

Petra declined rapidly under Roman rule, in large part from the revision of sea-based trade routes. In 363 an earthquake destroyed many buildings, and crippled the vital water management system. The old city of Petra was the capital of the Byzantine province of Palaestina III and many churches were excavated in and around Petra from the Byzantine period. In one of them, 140 papyri were discovered, which contained mainly contracts, dated from 537 to 593, establishing that the city was still flourishing in the sixth century.

Crusaders and Mamluks.

In the 12th century, the Crusaders built fortresses, but were forced to abandon Petra after a while. As a result, the location of Petra was lost for the Western world until the 19th century. The ruins of Petra were an object of curiosity during the Middle Ages and were visited by Baibars, one of the first Mamluk sultans of Egypt, towards the end of the 13th century.

19th-20th centuries.

The first European to describe them was Swiss traveller Johann Ludwig Burckhardt during his travels in 1812. At that time, the Greek Church of Jerusalem operated a diocese in Al Karak named Battra (باطره in Arabic, and Πέτρας in Greek) and it was the opinion among the clergy of Jerusalem that Kerak was the ancient city of Petra.  Léon de Laborde and Louis-Maurice-Adolphe Linant de Bellefonds made the first accurate drawings of Petra in 1828. The Scottish painter David Roberts visited Petra in 1839 and returned to England with sketches and stories of the encounter with local tribes, published in "The Holy Land, Syria, Idumea, Arabia, Egypt, and Nubia". Frederic Edwin Church, the leading American landscape painter of the 19th century, visited Petra in 1868, and the resulting painting, "El Khasné Petra", is among his most important and well-documented.  Because the structures weakened with age, many of the tombs became vulnerable to thieves, and many treasures were stolen. In 1929, a four-person team, consisting of British archaeologists Agnes Conway and George Horsfield, Palestinian physician and folklore expert Dr Tawfiq Canaan and Dr Ditlef Nielsen, a Danish scholar, excavated and surveyed Petra.  The archaeologist Philip Hammond from the University of Utah visited Petra for nearly 40 years. He explained that the local folklore says it was created by the wand of Moses, when he struck the rock to bring forth water for the Israelites. Hammond believed the carved channels deep within the walls and ground were made from ceramic pipes that once fed water for the city, from rock-cut systems on the canyon rim.  Numerous scrolls in Greek and dating to the Byzantine period were discovered in an excavated church near the Winged Lion Temple in Petra in December 1993.

UNESCO listing of ancient Petra and Bedouin heritage.

The Bidoul/Bidul (Petra Bedouin) were forcibly resettled from their cave dwellings in Petra to Umm Sayhoun/Um Seihun by the Jordanian government in 1985, prior to the UNESCO designation process. They were provided with block-built housing with some infrastructure including in particular a sewage and drainage system. Among the six communities in the Petra Region, Umm Sayhoun is one of the smaller communities. The village of Wadi Musa is the largest in the area, inhabited largely by the Layathnah Bedouin, and is now the closest settlement to the visitor centre, the main entrance via the Siq and the archaeological site generally. Umm Sayhoun gives access to the 'back route' into the site, the Wadi Turkmaniyeh pedestrian route.  On December 6, 1985, Petra was designated a World Heritage Site. In a popular poll in 2007, it was also named one of the New7Wonders of the World. The Petra Archaeological Park (PAP) became an autonomous legal entity over the management of this site in August 2007.  The Bidouls belong to one of the Bedouin tribes whose cultural heritage and traditional skills were proclaimed by UNESCO on the Intangible Cultural Heritage List in 2005 and inscribed in 2008.  In 2011, following an 11-month project planning phase, the Petra Development and Tourism Region Authority in association with DesignWorkshop and JCP s.r.l published a Strategic Master Plan that guides planned development of the Petra Region. This is intended to guide planned development of the Petra Region in an efficient, balanced and sustainable way over the next 20 years for the benefit of the local population and of Jordan in general. As part of this, a Strategic Plan was developed for Umm Sayhoun and surrounding areas.  The process of developing the Strategic Plan considered the area's needs from five points of view:

Issues.

The site suffers from a host of threats, including collapse of ancient structures, erosion from flooding and improper rainwater drainage, weathering from salt upwelling, improper restoration of ancient structures and unsustainable tourism. The last has increased substantially, especially since the site received widespread media coverage in 2007 during the New Seven Wonders of the World Internet and cellphone campaign.  In an attempt to reduce the impact of these threats, the Petra National Trust (PNT) was established in 1989. It has worked with numerous local and international organisations on projects that promote the protection, conservation, and preservation of the Petra site. Moreover, UNESCO and ICOMOS recently collaborated to publish their first book on human and natural threats to the sensitive World Heritage sites. They chose Petra as its first and the most important example of threatened landscapes. The presentation "Tourism and Archaeological Heritage Management at Petra: Driver to Development or Destruction?" (2012) was the first in a series to address the very nature of these deteriorating buildings, cities, sites, and regions. The next books in the series of deteriorating UNESCO World Heritage Sites will include Machu Picchu, Angkor Wat, and Pompeii. People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) released a video in 2018 highlighting abuse against working animals in Petra. PETA claimed that animals are forced to carry tourists or pull carriages every day. The video showed handlers beating and whipping working animals, with beatings intensifying when animals faltered. PETA also revealed some wounded animals, including camels with fly-infested, open wounds. The Jordanian authority running the site responded by opening up a veterinarian clinic, and by spreading awareness among animal handlers.

Religion.

The Nabataeans worshipped Arab gods and goddesses during the pre-Islamic era as well as a few of their deified kings. One, Obodas I, was deified after his death. Dushara was the primary male god accompanied by his three female deities: Al-‘Uzzá, Allat and Manāt. Many statues carved in the rock depict these gods and goddesses. New evidence indicates that broader Edomite, and Nabataean theology had strong links to Earth-Sun relationships, often manifested in the orientation of prominent Petra structures to equinox and solstice sunrises and sunsets.  A stele dedicated to Qos-Allah 'Qos is Allah' or 'Qos the god', by Qosmilk (melech – king) is found at Petra (Glueck 516). Qos is identifiable with Kaush (Qaush) the God of the older Edomites. The stele is horned and the seal from the Edomite Tawilan near Petra identified with Kaush displays a star and crescent (Browning 28), both consistent with a moon deity. It is conceivable that the latter could have resulted from trade with Harran (Bartlett 194). There is continuing debate about the nature of Qos (qaus – bow) who has been identified both with a hunting bow (hunting god) and a rainbow (weather god) although the crescent above the stele is also a bow.  Nabatean inscriptions in Sinai and other places display widespread references to names including Allah, El and Allat (god and goddess), with regional references to al-Uzza, Baal and Manutu (Manat) (Negev 11). Allat is also found in Sinai in South Arabian language. Allah occurs particularly as Garm-'allahi – god decided (Greek Garamelos) and Aush-allahi – 'gods covenant' (Greek Ausallos). We find both Shalm-lahi 'Allah is peace' and Shalm-allat, 'the peace of the goddess'. We also find Amat-allahi'she-servant of god' and Halaf-llahi 'the successor of Allah'.  Recently, Petra has been put forward as the original 'Mecca' by some in the revisionist school of Islamic studies, owing to claims of large numbers of independent pieces of evidence, namely that the early original mosques faced Petra, not Jerusalem or Mecca, as the direction of Muslim prayer, the qibla. However, others have challenged the notion of comparing modern readings of Qiblah directions to early mosques’ Qiblahs as they claim early Muslims could not accurately calculate the direction of the Qiblah to Mecca and so the apparent pinpointing of Petra by some early mosques may well be coincidental.  The Monastery, Petra's largest monument, dates from the 1st century BC. It was dedicated to Obodas I and is believed to be the symposium of Obodas the god. This information is inscribed on the ruins of the Monastery (the name is the translation of the Arabic ""Ad Deir"").  Christianity found its way to Petra in the 4th century AD, nearly 500 years after the establishment of Petra as a trade centre. Athanasius mentions a bishop of Petra (Anhioch. 10) named Asterius. At least one of the tombs (the "tomb with the urn"?) was used as a church. An inscription in red paint records its consecration "in the time of the most holy bishop Jason" (447). After the Islamic conquest of 629–632, Christianity in Petra, as of most of Arabia, gave way to Islam. During the First Crusade Petra was occupied by Baldwin I of the Kingdom of Jerusalem and formed the second fief of the barony of Al Karak (in the lordship of Oultrejordain) with the title "Château de la Valée de Moyse" or Sela. It remained in the hands of the Franks until 1189. It is still a titular see of the Catholic Church.  Two Crusader-period castles are known in and around Petra. The first is al-Wu'ayra and is situated just north of Wadi Musa. It can be viewed from the road to "Little Petra". It is the castle of Valle Moise which was seized by a band of Turks with the help of local Muslims and only recovered by the Crusaders after they began to destroy the olive trees of Wadi Musa. The potential loss of livelihood led the locals to negotiate surrender. The second is on the summit of el-Habis in the heart of Petra and can be accessed from the West side of the Qasr al-Bint.  According to Arab tradition, Petra is the spot where Musa (Moses) struck a rock with his staff and water came forth, and where Moses' brother, Harun (Aaron), is buried, at Mount Hor, known today as Jabal Haroun or Mount Aaron. The Wadi Musa or "Wadi of Moses" is the Arab name for the narrow valley at the head of which Petra is sited. A mountaintop shrine of Moses' sister Miriam was still shown to pilgrims at the time of Jerome in the 4th century, but its location has not been identified since.

References.

Notes Bibliography

Petra (;, "Stone"), originally known to its inhabitants as Raqmu, is a historical and archaeological city in southern Jordan. Petra lies around Jabal Al-Madbah in a basin surrounded by mountains which form the eastern flank of the Arabah valley that runs from the Dead Sea to the Gulf of Aqaba. The area around Petra has been inhabited from as early as 7000 BC, and the Nabataeans might have settled in what would become the capital city of their kingdom, as early as the 4th century BC. However, archaeological work has only discovered evidence of Nabataean presence dating back to the second century BC, by which time Petra had become their capital. The Nabataeans were nomadic Arabs who invested in Petra's proximity to the trade routes by establishing it as a major regional trading hub.

Petra ( "petra" – „skála“, "Al-Butrā") je skalní město a archeologické naleziště v Jordánsku. Od roku 1985 je zařazena na seznam světového kulturního a přírodního dědictví UNESCO. V Bibli je označováno jako "Selá" a Arabové mu dali jméno "Mojžíšovo údolí".


History.

Creation and early success.

The "Belle Époque" was a period of peace and optimism marked by industrial progress, and a particularly rich cultural exuberance was about at the opening of the Moulin Rouge. The Expositions Universelles of 1889 and 1900 are symbols of this period. The Eiffel Tower was also constructed in 1889, epitomising the spirit of progress along with the culturally transgressive cabaret. Japonism, an artistic movement inspired by the Orient, with Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec as its most brilliant disciple, was also at its height. Montmartre, which, at the heart of an increasingly vast and impersonal Paris, retained a bucolic village atmosphere; festivities and artists mixed, with pleasure and beauty as their values. On 6 October 1889, the Moulin Rouge opened in the Jardin de Paris, at the foot of the Montmartre hill. Its creator Joseph Oller and his Manager Charles Zidler were formidable businessmen who understood the public's tastes. The aim was to allow the very rich to come and'slum it' in a fashionable district, Montmartre. The extravagant setting – the garden was adorned with a gigantic elephant – allowed people from all walks of life to mix. Workers, residents of the Place Blanche, artists, the middle classes, businessmen, elegant women, and foreigners passing through Paris rubbed shoulders. Nicknamed "The First Palace of Women" by Oller and Zidler, the cabaret quickly became a great success.  The ingredients for its success:

Legacy.

Enterprises.

The Moulin Rouge in Paris was a source of inspiration for:

Moulin Rouge (, ; ) is a cabaret in Paris, France. The original house, which burned down in 1915, was co-founded in 1889 by Charles Zidler and Joseph Oller, who also owned the Paris Olympia. Close to Montmartre in the Paris district of Pigalle on Boulevard de Clichy in the 18th "arrondissement", it is marked by the red windmill on its roof. The closest métro station is Blanche.

Moulin Rouge (česky "Červený mlýn") je francouzský kabaret, který se nachází ve čtvrti Pigalle, na "Boulevardu de Clichy" na úpatí Montmartru v Paříži. Kabaret byl založen v roce 1889. Za dobu jeho existence zde vystupovalo mnoho umělců, jako např. La Goulue, Josephine Baker, Frank Sinatra, Jean Gabin, Yvette Guilbert, Jane Avril, Mistinguett, Joseph Pujol, Édith Piaf, Ella Fitzgerald, La Toya Jackson aj. O tomto kabaretu bylo také natočeno několik celovečerních filmů, filmových dokumentů a objevil se i v literárních dílech. S tímto kabaretem je spojen tanec kankán, jehož tanečnice zachytil častý návštěvník podniku malíř Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.


Implementation.

It was decided that the indenter shape should be capable of producing geometrically similar impressions, irrespective of size; the impression should have well-defined points of measurement; and the indenter should have high resistance to self-deformation. A diamond in the form of a square-based pyramid satisfied these conditions. It had been established that the ideal size of a Brinell impression was of the ball diameter. As two tangents to the circle at the ends of a chord 3"d"/8 long intersect at 136°, it was decided to use this as the included angle between plane faces of the indenter tip. This gives an angle from each face normal to the horizontal plane normal of 22° on each side. The angle was varied experimentally and it was found that the hardness value obtained on a homogeneous piece of material remained constant, irrespective of load. Accordingly, loads of various magnitudes are applied to a flat surface, depending on the hardness of the material to be measured. The HV number is then determined by the ratio "F/A", where "F" is the force applied to the diamond in kilograms-force and "A" is the surface area of the resulting indentation in square millimeters. "A" can be determined by the formula.  which can be approximated by evaluating the sine term to give,  where "d" is the average length of the diagonal left by the indenter in millimeters. Hence,  where "F" is in kgf and "d" is in millimeters.  The corresponding unit of HV is then kilograms-force per square millimeter (kgf/mm2) or HV number. In the above equation, "F" could be in N and "d" in mm, giving HV in the SI unit of MPa. To calculate Vickers hardness number (VHN) using SI units one needs to convert the force applied from newtons to kilogram-force by dividing by 9.806 65 (standard gravity). This leads to the following equation:  where "F" is in N and "d" is in millimeters. A common error is that the above formula to calculate the HV number does not result in a number with the unit Newton per square millimeter (N/mm2), but results directly in the Vickers hardness number (usually given without units), which is in fact kilograms-force per square millimeter (kgf/mm2).  Vickers hardness numbers are reported as xxxHVyy, e.g. 440HV30, or xxxHVyy/zz if duration of force differs from 10 s to 15 s, e.g. 440HV30/20, where:  To convert the Vickers hardness number to SI units the hardness number in kilograms-force per square millimeter (kgf/mm2) has to be multiplied with the standard gravity (9.806 65) to get the hardness in MPa (N/mm2) and furthermore divided by 1000 to get the hardness in GPa. Vickers hardness can also be converted to an SI hardness based on the projected area of the indent rather than the surface area. The projected area, formula_5, is defined as the following for a Vickers indenter geometry:  formula_6  This hardness is sometimes referred to as the mean contact area and ideally can be directly compared with other hardness tests also defined using projected area.  Vickers values are generally independent of the test force: they will come out the same for 500 gf and 50 kgf, as long as the force is at least 200 gf.However, lower load indents often display a dependence of hardness on indent depth known as the indentation size effect (ISE).  For thin samples indentation depth can be an issue due to substrate effects. As a rule of thumb the sample thickness should be kept greater than 2.5 times the indent diameter. Alternatively indent depth, formula_7, can be calculated according to:  See for a geometric derivation of above.

Precautions.

When doing the hardness tests the minimum distance between indentations and the distance from the indentation to the edge of the specimen must be taken into account to avoid interaction between the work-hardened regions and effects of the edge. These minimum distances are different for ISO 6507-1 and ASTM E384 standards.

Estimating tensile strength.

If HV is first expressed in N/mm (MPa), or otherwise by converting from kgf/mm, then the tensile strength (in MPa) of the material can be approximated as ≈ HV/ ≈ HV/3, where is a constant determined by yield strength, Poisson's ratio, work-hardening exponent and geometrical factors - usually ranging between 2 and 4.. In other words, if HV is expressed in N/mm (i.e. in MPa) then the tensile strength (in MPa) ≈ HV/3. This empirical law depends variably on the work-hardening behavior of the material.

Application.

The fin attachment pins and sleeves in the Convair 580 airliner were specified by the aircraft manufacturer to be hardened to a Vickers Hardness specification of 390HV5, the '5' meaning five kiloponds. However, on the aircraft flying Partnair Flight 394 the pins were later found to have been replaced with sub-standard parts, leading to rapid wear and finally loss of the aircraft. On examination, accident investigators found that the sub-standard pins had a hardness value of only some 200-230HV5.

The Vickers hardness test was developed in 1921 by Robert L. Smith and George E. Sandland at Vickers Ltd as an alternative to the Brinell method to measure the hardness of materials. The Vickers test is often easier to use than other hardness tests since the required calculations are independent of the size of the indenter, and the indenter can be used for all materials irrespective of hardness. The basic principle, as with all common measures of hardness, is to observe a material's ability to resist plastic deformation from a standard source. The Vickers test can be used for all metals and has one of the widest scales among hardness tests. The unit of hardness given by the test is known as the Vickers Pyramid Number (HV) or Diamond Pyramid Hardness (DPH). The hardness number can be converted into units of pascals, but should not be confused with pressure, which uses the same units. The hardness number is determined by the load over the surface area of the indentation and not the area normal to the force, and is therefore not pressure.

Zkouška tvrdosti podle Vickerse patří mezi statické zkoušky tvrdosti materiálu. Způsob jejího provedení je popsán a ujednocen normou ČSN EN ISO 6507-1. Princip spočívá ve vnikání zkušebního tělesa – indentoru – do zkoumaného materiálu a následného zjišťování míry deformace tohoto materiálu. Jakožto indentor se v tomto případě používá diamantový čtyřboký jehlan s vrcholovým úhlem 136°, měřítkem tvrdosti materiálu jsou délky dvou úhlopříček vtisknutého jehlanu. Vickersova zkouška se označuje HV, je značně univerzální, lze ji použít na tvrdé i měkké materiály. Její výhodou je též to, že výsledná hodnota tvrdosti nezávisí na zatěžovací síle. Toto však platí pouze při zkoušce tvrdosti homogenního materiálu. Při zkoušce tvrdosti povlaků je třeba aby maximální hloubka vtisku nepřesáhla 1/10 tloušťky zkoušeného povlaku. V takovémto případě se volí odpovídající zatížení již od 10g.


Applications.

On 20 March 1800, Alessandro Volta wrote to the London Royal Society to describe the technique for producing electric current using his device. On learning of the voltaic pile, William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle used it to discover the electrolysis of water. Humphry Davy showed that the electromotive force, which drives the electric current through a circuit containing a single voltaic cell, was caused by a chemical reaction, not by the voltage difference between the two metals. He also used the voltaic pile to decompose chemicals and to produce new chemicals. William Hyde Wollaston showed that electricity from voltaic piles had identical effects to those of electricity produced by friction. In 1802 Vasily Petrov used voltaic piles in the discovery and research of electric arc effects.  Humphry Davy and Andrew Crosse were among the first to develop large voltaic piles. Davy used a 2000-pair pile made for the Royal Institution in 1808 to demonstrate carbon arc discharge and isolate five new elements: barium, calcium, boron, strontium and magnesium.

Electrochemistry.

Because Volta believed that the electromotive force occurred at the contact between the two metals, Volta's piles had a different design than the modern design illustrated on this page. His piles had one extra disc of copper at the top, in contact with the zinc, and one extra disc of zinc at the bottom, in contact with the copper. Expanding on Volta's work and the electro-magnetism work of his mentor Humphry Davy, Michael Faraday utilized both magnets and the voltaic pile in his experiments with electricity. Faraday believed that all “electricities” being studied at the time (voltaic, magnetic, thermal, and animal) were one and the same. His work to prove this theory led him to propose two laws of electrochemistry which stood in direct conflict with the current scientific beliefs of the day as laid down by Volta thirty years earlier. Because of their contributions to the understanding of this field of study, Faraday and Volta are both considered to be among the fathers of electrochemistry. The words "electrode" and "electrolyte", used above to describe Volta's work, are due to Faraday.

Dry pile.

A number of high-voltage "dry piles" were invented between the early 19th century and the 1830s in an attempt to determine the source of electricity of the wet voltaic pile, and specifically to support Volta's hypothesis of contact tension. Indeed, Volta himself experimented with a pile whose cardboard discs had dried out, most likely accidentally.  The first to publish was Johann Wilhelm Ritter in 1802, albeit in an obscure journal, but over the next decade, it was announced repeatedly as a new discovery. One form of dry pile is the Zamboni pile. Francis Ronalds in 1814 was one of the first to realise that dry piles also worked through chemical reaction rather than metal to metal contact, even though corrosion was not visible due to the very small currents generated.  The dry pile could be referred to as the ancestor of the modern dry cell.

Electromotive force.

The strength of the pile is expressed in terms of its electromotive force, or emf, given in volts. Alessandro Volta's theory of contact tension considered that the emf, which drives the electric current through a circuit containing a voltaic cell, occurs at the contact between the two metals. Volta did not consider the electrolyte, which was typically brine in his experiments, to be significant. However, chemists soon realized that water in the electrolyte was involved in the pile's chemical reactions, and led to the evolution of hydrogen gas from the copper or silver electrode.  The modern, atomic understanding of a cell with zinc and copper electrodes separated by an electrolyte is the following. When the cell is providing an electrical current through an external circuit, the metallic zinc at the surface of the zinc anode is oxidised and dissolves into the electrolyte as electrically charged ions (Zn), leaving 2 negatively charged electrons () behind in the metal:  This reaction is called oxidation. While zinc is entering the electrolyte, two positively charged hydrogen ions (H) from the electrolyte accept two electrons at the copper cathode surface, become reduced and form an uncharged hydrogen molecule (H):  This reaction is called reduction. The electrons used from the copper to form the molecules of hydrogen are made up by an external wire or circuit that connects it to the zinc. The hydrogen molecules formed on the surface of the copper by the reduction reaction ultimately bubble away as hydrogen gas.  One will observe that the global electro-chemical reaction does not immediately involve the electrochemical couple Cu/Cu (Ox/Red) corresponding to the copper cathode. The copper metal disk thus only serves here as a "chemically inert" noble metallic conductor for the transport of electrons in the circuit and does not chemically participate to the reaction in the aqueous phase. The copper electrode could be replaced in the system by any sufficiently noble/inert metallic conductor (Ag, Pt, stainless steel, graphite,...). The global reaction can be written as follows:  This is usefully stylised by means of the electro-chemical chain notation:  in which a vertical bar each time represents an interface. The double vertical bar represents the interfaces corresponding to the electrolyte impregnating the porous cardboard disk.  When no current is drawn from the pile, each cell, consisting of zinc/electrolyte/copper, generates 0.76 V with a brine electrolyte. The voltages from the cells in the pile add, so the six cells in the diagram above generate 4.56 V of electromotive force.

The voltaic pile was the first electrical battery that could continuously provide an electric current to a circuit. It was invented by Italian physicist Alessandro Volta, who published his experiments in 1799. The voltaic pile then enabled a rapid series of other discoveries including the electrical decomposition (electrolysis) of water into oxygen and hydrogen by William Nicholson and Anthony Carlisle (1800) and the discovery or isolation of the chemical elements sodium (1807), potassium (1807), calcium (1808), boron (1808), barium (1808), strontium (1808), and magnesium (1808) by Humphry Davy.

Voltův sloup byl první elektrický článek, produkující elektrický proud. Sestavil ho Alessandro Guiseppe Antonio Anastasio Volta v roce 1800. Jednalo se o galvanickou baterii tvořenou několika sériově zapojenými elektrickými články se zinkovou a měděnou elektrodou. Skládal se z navrstvených měděných a zinkových plíšků, proložených plátky kůže, které byly provlhčeny okyseleným roztokem. Konce sloupu, měděný a zinkový, nazval Volta póly. Po spojení pólů vodiči jimi procházel silný, dlouhotrvající elektrický proud. Volta takto přesvědčivě dokázal neudržitelnost představ zastánců živočišné elektřiny, kteří tvrdili, že v Galvaniho pokusech je zdrojem proudu živočišná elektřina.