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Palestrina
Palestrina , town (1991 pop. 15,802), in Latium, central Italy. It is an agricultural market. It is located on the site of Praeneste, a town founded by c.800 BC and later destroyed (and rebuilt) by the Romans in the 1st cent. BC Of note are the ruins of a temple of Fortuna (8th cent. BC), celebrated...
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Taanach
Taanach , in the Bible, royal city of Canaan, central ancient Palestine, the modern Tell Ti'innik, West Bank, SE of Megiddo. Sisera was defeated here by Deborah and Barak. It is also spelled Tanach. Remains dating from about the 26th cent. BC were excavated (1901-4) here.
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Scythia
Scythia , ancient region of Eurasia, extending from the Danube on the west to the borders of China on the east. The Scythians flourished from the 8th to the 4th cent. BC They spoke an Indo-Iranian language but had no system of writing. They were nomadic conquerors and skilled horsemen. They seem t...
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frieze
frieze in architecture, the member of an entablature between the architrave and the cornice or any horizontal band used for decorative purposes. In the first type the Doric frieze alternates the metope and the triglyph; that of the other orders is plain or sculptured. The 5th-century BC treasury of...
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Numidia
Numidia , ancient country of NW Africa, very roughly the modern Algeria . It was part of the Carthaginian empire until Masinissa , ruler of E Numidia, allied himself (c.206 BC) with Rome in the Punic Wars . After the Roman victory over Carthage led to peace in 201 BC, Masinissa was awarded rule o...
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Pontus
Pontus ancient country, NE Asia Minor (now Turkey), on the Black Sea coast. On its inland side were Cappadocia and W Armenia. It was not significantly penetrated by Persian or Hellenic civilization. In the 4th cent. BC, Pontus was taken over by a Persian family, profiting by the breakup of the empi...
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Macedon
Macedon , ancient country, roughly equivalent to the modern region of Macedonia . In the history of Greek culture Macedon had its single significance in producing the conquerors and armies who created the Hellenistic empires and civilizations.
Macedon proper constituted the coast plain NW, N, ...
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Babylonian captivity
Babylonian captivity in the history of Israel, the period from the fall of Jerusalem (586 BC) to the reconstruction in Palestine of a new Jewish state (after 538 BC). After the capture of the city by the Babylonians some thousands, probably selected for their prosperity and importance, were deporte...
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Anatolian languages
Anatolian languages , subfamily of the Indo-European family of languages (see The Indo-European Family of Languages , table); the term "Anatolian languages" is also used to refer to all languages, Indo-European and non-Indo-European, that were spoken in Anatolia in ancient times. The progress m...
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cuneiform
cuneiform [Lat.,=wedge-shaped], system of writing developed before the last centuries of the 4th millennium BC in the lower Tigris and Euphrates valley, probably by the Sumerians. The characters consist of arrangements of wedgelike strokes generally impressed with a stylus on wet clay tablets, wh...
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