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1-6 upshure
Question | Answer |
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Avesta | The holy book of the Zoroastrian religion. |
Chavin | Early Peruvian Amerindian culture. |
Cuneiform | Mesopotamian wedge-shaped writing begun by the Sumerians. |
Gilgamesh | One of the earliest epics in world literature, originating in prehistoric Mesopotamia. |
Hieroglyphics | Early Egyptian writing consisting of pictographs and symbols for letters and syllables. |
Hittites | An Indo-European people prominent in Anatolia (present-day Turkey) around 1200 b.c.e. |
Hyksos | A people who invaded the Nile delta in Egypt and ruled it during the Second Intermediate Period around 1600 b.c.e. |
Isis | A chief Egyptian goddess with strong creative and nurturing associations |
Kush | Kingdom in northeast Africa that had close relations with Egypt for several centuries in the pre-Christian epoch. |
Mycenaeans | An early and rich Greek culture centered on Mycenae and other cities that was destroyed by the "Sea Peoples" and the influx of Dorians from the north. |
Nineveh | The main city and later capital of the Assyrian Empire. |
Osiris | A chief Egyptian god, ruler of the underworld |
Persepolis | With Ecbatana, one of the capitals of the Persian Empire in the 500s b.c.e. |
Tel el Amarna | The site of great temple complexes along the Nile River in Egypt; Akhenaton´s capital |
ziggurat | a massive stepped tower upon which a temple dedicated to the chief god or goddess of a Sumerian city was built. |
Zoroastrianism | A religion founded by the Persian Zoroaster in the seventh century b.c.e.; characterized by worship of a supreme god, Ahura Mazda, who represents the good against the evil spirit, identified as Ahriman. |
Chapter 2 | Words from Chapter 2 |
Aryian | A nomadic pastoral people from Eurasia who invaded the Indus Valley and other regions in about 1500 b.c.e. |
Brahman | The caste of priests, which is the highest caste in Hinduism. |
Dasa | Sanskrit term for "slave" used by Aryans; refers to the dark skin color of Indus Valley peoples. |
Harappa | A town in the Indus Valley; also a name for the early civilization in that region. |
Karma | A Sanskrit term meaning "deed" or "action"; a belief held by members of all religions in India that the amount of good or evil done in a given lifetime affected one´s destiny in the next existence. |
Kshatriyas | The warrior class of Aryan society. |
Mahabharata | A Hindu epic poem. |
Mohenjo-Daro | One of the two chief towns of the ancient Indus Valley civilization. |
Oracle bones | Animal bones used in Shang China for divination. Contains earliest evidence of Chinese writing. |
Rig Veda | The oldest of the four Vedas, brought into India by the Aryans; the holiest works of Hinduism. |
Sanskrit | The sacred language of India, an Indo-European language introduced by the Aryans. |
Shiva | An important member of the Hindu pantheon, along with his wife Kali (Durga). God of destruction and fertility. |
Upanishads | ]The Hindu writings dealing with philosophical issues. |
Vaisyas | The third caste, consisting of the landholder and artisan class of Aryan society. |
Vishnu | A Hindu savior god who, through his nine incarnations, saves the world from destruction; in one incarnation he was Krishna, in another Gautama Buddha. |
Chapter 3 | Definitions from Chapter 3 |
Academy | The school founded by Plato; Aristotle is its most famous student. |
Ahimsa | Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain doctrine of not harming living creatures. |
Analects | The body of writing containing conversations between Confucius and his disciples that preserves his worldly wisdom and pragmatic philosophies. |
Babylonian Captivity | The transportation of many Jews to exile in Babylon; occurred in the sixth century b.c.e. |
Delian League | An empire of satellite Greek states under Athens in the fifth century b.c.e. |
Delian League | An empire of satellite Greek states under Athens in the fifth century b.c.e. |
Helots | State-owned slaves of the Spartans. |
Hinayana Buddhism | A strict, monastic form of Buddhism claiming a close link with the Buddha´s teaching; also called Theravada. |
Hoplites | Heavily armed infantry soldiers in ancient Greece. |
Legalism | A Chinese philosophy of government emphasizing strong state authority. |
Mahayana Buddhism | A form of Buddhism; it deemphasized the monastic life and abstruse philosophy in favor of prayer to the Buddha and saintly and helpful bodhisattvas to attain nirvana. |
Marathon | The battle in 490 b.c.e. in which the Athenians defeated the Persians. |
Messenian Wars | Conflicts between the neighbors Sparta and Messenia that resulted in Sparta´s conquest of Messenia around 600 b.c.e. |
Metics | Resident foreigners in ancient Athens; not permitted full rights of citizenship, but did receive the protection of the laws. |
Monotheism A religion having only one god. | |
Nirvana Buddhist concept; | the final liberation from suffering and reincarnation. |
Ostracism | In ancient Athens, the expulsion of a citizen for ten years. |
Parthenon | The classic Greek temple to Athena on the Acropolis in Athens´ center. |
Peloponnesian War | The great war between Athens and Sparta and their respective allies in ancient Greece; fought between 431 and 404 b.c.e. and eventually won by Sparta. |
Phoenicians | An ancient seafaring people living along the coast north of Palestine; they dominated trade in the Mediterranean. |
Plataea | The land battle that, along with the naval battle of Salamis, ended the Persian Wars with a Greek victory. |
Polis | The political and social community of citizens in ancient Greece. |
Salamis | The naval battle that, with the battle of Plataea, ended the Persian Wars with a Greek victory. |
Sparta | A militaristic Greek city-state that vied with Athens for power in the Peloponnesian War. |
Taoism | China´s nature-oriented philosophy/religion. |
Theravada Buddhism | A strict monastic form of Buddhism that claims close adherence to the teachings of Gautama Buddha. Also called Hinayana Buddhism. |
tyrant/tyranny | in an ancient Greek polis (or an Italian city-state during the Renaissance), a ruler who came to power in an unconstitutional way and ruled without being subject to the law. |
Chapter 4 | Chapter 4 Definitions |
Actium, Battle of | The decisive 31 b.c.e. battle in the struggle between Octavian and Marc Antony, in which Octavian´s victory paved the way for the Principate. |
Arthasastra | a Christian heresy that taught that Jesus was inferior to God; although condenmed by Council of Nicaea, many Germans in Roman Empire held this belief |
Bhagavad-Gita | The best-known part of the Mahabharata, it details the proper relations between the castes and the triumph of the spirit over material creation. |
Carthage | Rival in the Mediterranean basin to Rome in the third century b.c.e.; it was destroyed by Rome. |
Chaeronea | The battle in 338 b.c.e. in which Philip of Macedon decisively defeated the Greeks and brought them under Macedonian dominance. |
Dharma | Hindu and Buddhist term for moral conduct. |
Epicureanism | A Hellenistic philosophy advocating the pursuit of pleasure (mental) and avoidance of pain as the supreme good. |
Etruscans | The pre-Roman rulers of most of northern and central Italy and cultural models for early Roman civilization. |
Han dynasty | The dynasty that ruled China from 202 b.c.e. to 221 c.e. |
Isis | A chief Egyptian goddess with strong creative and nurturing associations. |
Knight | Type of feudal noble who held title and landed domain only for his lifetime; generally based originally on military service to his overlord. |
Krishna | An important Hindu god who is an incarnation of the god Vishnu. |
Mahabharata | A Hindu epic poem. |
Patricians (patres) | The aristocratic upper class in ancient Rome. |
Plebeians | The common people of ancient Rome. |
Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt | The state created by Ptolemy, one of Alexander the Great´s generals, in the Hellenistic era. |
Punic Wars | The three conflicts between Rome and Carthage that ended with the complete destruction of the Carthaginian Empire and the extension of Roman control throughout the western Mediterranean. |
Ramayana | A Hindu text that illustrates important aspects of the religion; its heroes, Rama and his wife Sita, are worshipped as the embodiment of the ideal man and woman. |
Seleucid kingdom | The successor state to the empire of Alexander the Great in most of the Middle East. |
Silk Road | A route linking China with India, Persia, Central Asia, and the Mediterranean region. It was an important conduit for ideas and goods. |
Stoicism | a philosophy founded by Zeno in the fourth century B.C. that taught that happiness could be obtained by accepting one's lot and living in harmony with the will of God, thereby achieving inner peace. |
Zama, Battle of | Decisive battle of the Second Punic War; Roman victory in 202 b.c.e was followed by absorption of most of the Carthaginian Empire in the Mediterranean. |
Chapter 5 | Definitions from Chapter 5 |
Abbasid dynasty | The caliphs resident in Baghdad from the 700s c.e. until the tenth century. |
Arianism | a Christian heresy that taught that Jesus was inferior to God. Though condemned by the Council of Nicaea in 325, Arianism was adopted by many of the Germanic peoples who entered the Roman Empire over the next centuries. |
Bedouin | The nomadic inhabitants of the Arabian Peninsula and the eastern Mediterranean; they were the original converts to Islam. |
Black Death | the outbreak of plague (mostly bubonic) in the mid-fourteenth century that killed from 25 to 50 percent of Europe's population. |
Byzantine Empire | The continuation of the Roman imperium in its eastern provinces until its fall to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. |
Caliph | Arabic term for "successor" (to Muhammad); leader of Islam. |
Diaspora | The scattering of the Jews from ancient Palestine. |
Edict of Milan | Edict that made Christianity an officially tolerated religion within the Roman Empire; issued by the emperor Constantine in 313. |
Essenes | A Jewish religious group that lived near the Dead Sea at Qumran from around the middle of the second century b.c.e.; some of their ideas were similar to those found in early Christianity. |
eucharist | a Christian sacrament in which consecrated bread and wine are consumed in celebration of Jesus' Last Supper; also called the Lord's Supper or communion. |
Gothic style | An artistic style, found mainly in architecture, that came into general European usage during the thirteenth century. |
Guild | A medieval urban organization that controlled the production and prices of many goods and services. |
Hagia Sophi | a Greek name ("Holy Wisdom") of the cathedral in Constantinople, later made into a mosque by Ottoman Turkish conquerors. |
Hajj | The pilgrimage to Mecca and the sacred places of Islam. |
Holy Roman Empire | First constituted by Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Empire was a concept that served both political and religious purposes; it was eventually controlled by the Habsburgs centered in Austria, but it essentially had lost all its meaning by the early nineteenth |
iconoclasm | an eighth-century Byzantine movement against the use of icons (pictures of sacred figures), which was condemned as idolatry. |
Magna Carta | A "great charter" issued in 1215 by King John of England that gave the aristocracy substantially increased powers, especially over taxation, and created a more uniform justice system. |
Manor | An agricultural estate of varying size normally owned by a noble or the clergy and worked by free and unfree peasants/serfs. |
Sanhedrin | The Jewish governing council under the overlordship of Rome. |
scholasticism | the philosophical and theological system of the medieval schools, which emphasized rigorous analysis of contradictory authorities; often used to try to reconcile faith and reason. |
Sharia | The sacred law of Islam; based on the Qur´an. |
ShiI | A minority sect of Islam; adherents believe that kinship with Muhammad is necessary to qualify for the caliphate. |
Sunni | The majority group in Islam; adherents believe that the caliphate should go to the most qualified individual and should not necessarily pass to the kin of Muhammad. |
Umayyad dynasty | The caliphs resident in Damascus from 661 to 750 c.e. |
Vassal | In medieval Europe, a person, usually a noble, who owed feudal duties to a superior, called a suzerain. |
Chapter 6 | Definitions |
Ajanta Caves | Caves in central India that are the site of marvelous early frescoes inspired by Hinduism and Buddhism. |
Bakufu | The military-style government of the Japanese shoguns. |
Bushido | The code of conduct of the samurai, or Japanese warriors. |
Fujiwara clan | The noble clan that controlled the government of Japan between the ninth and twelfth centuries. |
Kal | i Wife of the Hindu god Shiva, she was both the cosmic mother and the goddess of destruction. |
Kamakura shogunate | The rule by members of a noble Japanese clan from the late twelfth to the mid-fourteenth century in the name of the emperor, who was their puppet. |
Khmers | The inhabitants of Cambodia; founders of a large empire in ancient Southeast Asia. |
Krishna | An important Hindu god who is an incarnation of the god Vishnu. |
Neo-Confucianism | An eleventh- and twelfth-century c.e. revival of Confucian thought. It became the accepted doctrine in China, Japan, and Korea. |
Nicheren sect A Japanese sect of Buddhism founded by the monk Nicheren in the thirteenth century. | |
Puranas | A collection of mythical stories about Hindu gods and goddesses. |
Ramayana | A Hindu text that illustrates important aspects of the religion; its heroes, Rama and his wife Sita, are worshipped as the embodiment of the ideal man and woman. |
Samurai | Hereditary warrior-aristocrats of feudal Japan. |
Shintoism | The indigenous religion of Japan, it was polytheistic and stressed the importance of nature. |
Shiva | An important member of the Hindu pantheon, along with his wife Kali (Durga). God of destruction and fertility. |
Sui dynasty | Ruled China from 581 to 618 c.e.; era of disunity that paved the way for the T´ang dynasty. |
Vishnu | A Hindu savior god who, through his nine incarnations, saves the world from destruction; in one incarnation he was Krishna, in another Gautama Buddha. |
Yamato state | The earliest known government of Japan; headed by the Yamato family. |
Zen Buddhism | The Japanese form of Ch´an Buddhism. |