As long as man has inhabited earth he has strived to express himself for any number of reasons. Yet over thousands of years the enduring theme of these expressions has been the desire to explain our own existence. This is especially evident when considering the early Egyptian and Sumerian societies. Beginning with cave paintings in France around 15,000 BC and leading up to the grandeur of the great pyramids the cultures of antiquity demonstrate belief in a connection in the material and spiritual worlds. This connection is evident in the study of that period’s architecture, art, and literature.
Since before the beginning of what we know as recorded history mankind has strived to improve on the architectural achievements of generations past. From towering skyscrapers to churches and cathedrals so breathtakingly beautiful and painstakingly crafted they seem to have fallen to Earth from heaven itself, we as a people continually amaze ourselves with our ability to construct buildings and monuments. With all of our modern day glory however we will be hard pressed to ever match the magnifigance of the great pyramids of ancient Egypt. Using only crude tools Egyptians managed to construct some of the most awe inspiring architectural feats imaginable. The sheer magnitude of these undertakings is the greatest testament of their people’s love and ceaseless devotion not only to their rulers but especially to the gods who created and preserved them. The pyramids were in essence nothing more than grand burial tombs for the pharaohs of the fourth dynasty but their spiritual significance reaches far deeper than just a huge grave, rather they acted as the pharaoh’s earthly connection to the sky. The first tombs of the ancient Egyptians were nothing more than bodies wrapped in cloth and covered in stones. Later, small clay pyramid-like structures were built called Mastabas. Mastabas were an improvement on the primitive burials in that they protected the body from the elements and could be decorated with paintings and filled with other adornments to ease the transition from mortal life into the afterlife. Around 2500 BC Mastabas gave way to the great pyramids of Geiza (modern day Cairo). When one looks on these immense structures reaching heights of 481 feet it is easy to make the connection between the architecture of ancient cultures and their spiritual beliefs.
Art has a...
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...overs only his own mortality when he perishes without the secret to everlasting life (Goldberg 536). History has come to show us not only that literature has its roots in spirituality but also that in essence literature was conceived out of necessity to record and broaden the reach of early civilization’s religions and beliefs.
We will always question our existence. Humans seem to posses an inborn desire to comprehend not only the material world but also the spiritual world that has always seemed to coincide with it. It is this desire that drove early people, like people of today, to express these emotions through physical means. From the tiny statuettes of the Venus of Willendorf to the cuneiform tablets of the Sumerians , the cultures of antiquity have expressed their belief in the connection between those two worlds through architecture, art, and literature.
Works Cited
Cunningham Lawrence S. and John J, Reich. Culture and Values:A Survey of the Western Humanities. Vol. I. 4th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1998.
Goldberg, Donald S. Classics of Western Thought: The Ancient World. Vol I. 4th ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1988.
From the ornamented caves of the prehistoric era to the surreal colors of impressionistic paintings, art has always been a medium for conveying human thoughts and emotions. By analyzing this artwork, much can be learned about human history, tendencies, psychology, culture, and the like. For instance, by comparing a sunken relief of Horus—considered to be the Egyptian god of the sky, sun, and war—with the Torso of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, many hidden intricacies of Egyptian and Grecian civilization as well as the motives of the artists themselves can be revealed. Each piece of artwork was created in the same general time period (they are both ancient), composed of different materials, guided by social standards, and composed of a spiritual aura; within these similarities, however, lay a myriad of unique features.
By law enforcement wearing body cameras can be the first step into taking disciplinary action tour wards police brutality. Body cameras will encourage police officers to be more responsible on handling stressful situation and have more control on themselves, because their actions, he or she are in the public eye. For example study shows, when body cameras where issued police, officers decreased 60 percent of excessive force in the first year initiating of cameras.”(Donovan). The body cameras can control a serious situation
If body cameras were required many police officers would be serving time in prison for some of their actions. A vast majority of the victims also would not have been harmed. Following a study done by Rialto, Calif. Police that ran from February 2012 to July 2013. A group of officers wore tiny video cameras while interacting with citizens. According to the New York Times, the video cameras resulted in a 60 percent drop in the use of force and an 88 percent drop in complaints against officers (Amalcar Scott, 2015, p.13). On a different randomized controlled trial, “nearly 1,000 officer shifts were randomized over a 12-month period of treatment and control conditions. During ‘‘treatment shifts’’ officers were required to wear and use body-worn-cameras when interacting with members of the public, while during ‘‘control shifts’’ officers were instructed not to carry or use the devices in any way. We observed the number of complaints, incidents of use-of-force, and the number of contacts between police officers and the public, in the years and months preceding the trial (in order to establish a baseline) and during the 12 months of the experiment” (Tabarrok,
There have been lots of modern technologies introduced in the United States of America to assist law enforcement agencies with crime prevention. But the use of body-worn cameras by police personnel brings about many unanswered questions and debate. Rising questions about the use of body cam are from concern citizens and law enforcement personnel. In this present day America, the use body cameras by all law enforcement personnel and agencies are one of the controversial topics being discussed on a daily base. Body worn cameras were adopted due to the alleged police brutality cases: for instance, the case of Michael Brown, an African-American who was shot and killed by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 2014, Eric Garner died as a result of being put in a chokehold by a New York police officer, and John Crawford, shot and killed by a police officer at a Walmart in Beavercreek, Ohio.
The researcher hypothesizes that the use of body-cameras on police officers would reduce the instances of gainful communication between civilians and law enforcement. The null-hypothesis is that the use of body-cameras on police officers will have no effect on gainful communication between civilian and law enforcement. In determining the implications of how body-cameras effects civilian behavior, the research will include a sampling survey of criminal justice students and information gathered from journal documents related to research on police body-cameras.
For my final project I chose to compare two works of art from ancient Mesopotamia. A visual work of art and a literary one. The visual work of art I chose was the Statuettes of Worshipers which were created around 2900 to 2350 BCE at the Square Temple at Eshnunna, a city in ancient Mesopotamia. The literary artwork I have chosen is the Epic of Gilgamesh written roughly around 2800 BCE by author or authors unknown. It was set in Uruk, another city in ancient Mesopotamia. Both of these works of art share a common theme; the theme of immortality. It is my hopes that within this paper I can accurately show how each of these works of art express this theme, and how it relates to modern society.
Police officers with their body cameras: a history and back ground paper to answer the question if should all police officers wear body cameras, it is important to first look at the history and back ground of the topic. According to article of Journal of quantitative criminology, writers Ariel, Farrar, Sutherland, Body cameras have been given a new eye opener to people about the excessive use of force against their community members. Arial, Farrar, and Sutherland in the article state “The effect of police body warn cameras on use of force and citizens’ complaints against the police: A randomize controlled trial” describe their observation as:
According to Journalistresource.org, officers were more cautious with how situations were handled one statistic said that the cops worked 23.1% more productively by issued more citations for ordinance violations than officers who did not wear them. This follows up with what the ACLU is wanting, in regards to keeping an eye on officers at all times, which shows that they tend to act different when they are on camera. “In San Diego, for example, a 2015 report based on preliminary statistics showed that body cameras helped reduce “personal body” force by officers by 46.5%” (journal). However, CATO Institute’s Police Reporting Project argues that, “ it is difficult to determine how much of the decline in use-of-force incidents and complaints can be directly attributed to the police body cameras.” It is hard to place what the statistic for use-of-force is, because there is a lot that goes into the statistic that could show many inaccuracies.It is also based on how one person is acting at the given moment under a set of various factors that a statistic just cannot show. Location is important as well, because each city is different which results in different cultures and crimes that go one in those areas. An example is comparing Chicago and East Peoria police, Chicago see far more calls and violence than East Peoria, as a result Chicago would require more of an agressive backbone
A common aspect of African culture is our mediating of deities, ancestors, and spirits, by performing rituals and contacting ancestors or historical ideals. This spiritual combination creates a non-Western idea of movement in art. I enjoy this part of our culture, where we create a less static environment. We become other beings, through our usage of art, dance, and costume with mask and headwear. Our artistic creators are forgotten. Our original artwork are eventually forgotten. The work goes back to the Earth, for the only true matter is how the spirits are manifested in the objects at the current time; eventually even this wears out. At the time of the spiritual manifestation in the objects, they are some of the most powerful aspects in our society.
Cunningham, Lawrence S., and John J. . Reich. Culture and Values. 7th ed. Vol. 1. Belmont, CA: Thomson/Wadsworth, 2006. Print.
Ziolkowski, Eric. "Ancient Newcomer to Modern Culture." World Literature Today 81.5 (2007): 55-57. Web. 19 Feb. 2014. .
First of all, in the ancient philosophy, most of the philosophers have examined to identify their critical thinking through some thoughts and incidents. In the textbook “The Allegory of the Cave” Plato illustrates that how human beings perceive and conceive the reality in darkness, and which he implies as an imperfection of thinking and lack of training or education. In addition, the writer has described his thinking through his imagination, and creating portrait such prisoners in the cave who are chained up and asked to figure out what was the reality of creating fire image on the wall behind the prisoners. Although prisoners could not answer exactly what was happened or what was going on behind them because of brightness of light. Likewise, this is because of not being familiar with what a group of people were created the image and it was an...
The questions about the existence of life and the creation of the world are always mind-boggling and fascinating, however, the real answer to these questions may never surface. All there is to rely on are the myths, stories and legends passed on from generation to generation by ancestors and the clues they have left. This essay will try to uncover the ancient Mesopotamian and Hebrew views on existence and creation by looking at sources like the Genesis and other ancient Mesopotamian texts and poems. Mesopotamians and Hebrews had contrasting views on how they explained the events in their lives, and through analysis of ancient sources, those differences will be outlined. In such populated and booming areas, human conflict was inevitable and some of the law codes that were placed in effect to establish order within the society will be examined. Throughout it all, god and religion played a central role in these ancient civilizations.
In spite of religion being the ruling subject matter of art for many centuries, magic and mysticism have long been interwoven in a dark curtain that hangs over a large segment of the art world. The whole world is alive and filled with soul, whether light or dark. “Each material form may be thought of as attracting an appropriate soul, as firewood treated with sulphur draws flame.” While there is no historical or scientific evidence for the legitimacy of séances, magic or communication with the deceased, in D.H. Rawcliffe’s book Occult and Supernatural Phenomena, he reminds us of the importance of hallucinations and other fantastical experiences of the subconscious. These often provide strange and impressive experiences, interpreted as supernatural in origin. As we study art, we can only begin to wonder what spirits might have visited the great masters, any hallucinations they might have experienced, and how their paintings were influenced by the dark corridors of their subconscious.
Damrosch, David, and David Pike. The Longman Anthology of World Literature. The Ancient World. Volume A. Second Edition. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2009. Pgs. .656-691. Print.