The dying person is wrapped up in the animal skin as the dead person is in Iran. The animal skin is of goat or sheep. It would seem that they get spirited wearing the skin of a sacrificed animal.
It was the custom of neolithic Egypt to be buried with the animal skin on the body. In the ancient world even the deity needed the animal skin when he was to be full of life. The animal skin revitalized the dead, the deity, and the living as well.
The animal sacrifice was not to offer up an animal to the deity but to kill the deity itself. The skin of the animal was full of life. Therefore the dying deity clad in the skin of the sacrificed animal came to life again.

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Sira al-Ustadh Jawdhar is a biography of Jawdhar who served the first four Fatimid caliphs and occupied a high position both in the court and in the administration. The character of this work is that the greater part of it consists of quotations from the documents relating to different affairs in which Jawdhar was involved. Therefore, this work provides vivid information about the affairs which took place at the Fatimid court. Among such information, perhaps the especially interesting topics are those concerning the discord in the Fatimid family and the designation of the heir apparent. I have here considered these two topics in an attempt to elucidate the inside affairs of the early Fatimid court.

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In 1979 at Anemospilia in Archanes, north of Knossos, Y. Sakellarakis unearthed ruins of a rectangular temple which had been destroyed by earthquake in the Middle Minoan IIIA period (c. 1700 B. C.). The temple consists of three rooms and a corridor, where a pair of clay foot models in life size was found. The excavator indicated that the clay feet could have belonged to an anthropomorphic wooden cult image, xoanon. The hypothesis has supported strongly those views which insist on its existence in the period. The aim of this article is to proceed with a negative argument to the views, and to clarify the meaning of the clay foot models in the find-contexts.
To begin with, attentions should be paid to the following four facts. 1) Fourteen models so far discovered from seven sites in Crete and one in Kea are rarely found in pairs. 2) Usually they are found in non-shrine contexts and not in shrines of a palace or a country house. 3) They do not represent bare feet, but most likely some sort of footgears are painted on them. 4) Statues and figures in large scale existed certainly in the palatial periods in Minoan Crete. However, they should not be interpreted automatically as a xoanon. In fact, the fragments are always found in the context as a votive.
The above analysis leads to a conclusion that no archaeological evidence supports the view which maintains the existence of xoanon in the palatial periods. If it were so, what is the role of the fourteen clay foot models in the find-contexts?
It is evident that our models are not votives, since feet models dedicated to deities should be barefooted as we see in numerous examples from the Asklepieion in the classical Corinth. It is also agreed that ‘epiphany’ of deity was a central element in Minoan rituals in the palatial periods, since there existed no cult images. Pictorial representations of epiphanies include scenes where a small deity hovers in the air or descends before the worshippers. Such representations as these could imply a deity perceived by the worshippers, but invisible. Therefore, the clay foot models must symbolize the presence of such invisible deity in ritual, which could have taken place outdoors as shown on a gold ring from Isopata. Consequently The clay feet should not necessarily be found in shrines.

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In order to advance his theory that the Mature Harappan culture grew out of the “Early Harappan culture”, Dr. M. R. Mughal has particularly emphasized on that the Kot Dijian occupation was widespread throughout the Greater Indus Valley and even in northern and central Baluchistan, and that the distributional pattern of the “Early Harappan settlements almost dupricates that of the Mature Harappan's.” A fresh close examination of what Mughal includes in the extension of the Kot Dijian culture (which in fact equals his “Early Harappan culture”), however, leads one to find out that several groups of independent cultures had co-existed before the Mature Harappans expanded in around 2500 BC and that the Kot Dijian culture had only occupied the northern areas of the Indus river system. The fact that the Kot Dijian pottery certainly extends even up to Baluchistan can hardly be interpreted as a result of the extension of the Kot Dijian culture proper. The distributional duprication of both cultures therefore turns out false, and a single “Early Harappan culture” which Mughal thinks to have prepared the formation of the Mature Harappan culture seems to be delusive.

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how the five emperors in the Dynasty of Lascaris (1204-1261) succeeded to the throne is discussed here. The succession by the blood relation as Theodoros I, Theodoros II, John IV, and the succession by the marriage as John III, continued the family line of Lascaris. But a usurpation by Michael VIII has gone to ruin the family of Lascaris. The patriarch and the aristcracy in Nicaea supported the family line of the dynasty.

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A Pahlavi text entitled Ayadgar i Zareran (AZ) relates the legendary battle between Vištasp, Kayanian king, and Arjasp, king of Xyons. § § 17-21 of AZ describe the answer made by Zarer, Vištasp's brother, to Arjasp's demand that Vištasp should abandon Zoroastrianism. A new translation of AZ § § 17-21 is given here to elucidate the latent eschatology of Zoroastrianism in the answer full of metaphor. The latter half of the answer should be interpreted as follows: … Next month we, except you, shall (live in the peaceful world just as all the people) drink “immortality” (on the Last Day and live for ever); there, at Hutos-wood and the meadow (morv: Pth marγ) of Zardušt, not a high mountain nor a deep lake, on that level plain (just as gods are separated from demons on the Last Day, our) horses and brave footmen should be separated (from you for ever). Come from there so that we shall come from here. And you will see us and we shall see you. And we shall show you how (you will be struck by us just as) demons are struck at the hands of the gods (in the Last Day Battle).

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The colossal Buddhas are scarcely found in India proper, but in Central Asia and China. The images of colossal Buddhas are mostly Maitreya, although those of Sakyamuni and Vairocana also exist. Why were many colossal statues made as Maitreya? The Buddhist narrative texts about Maitreya describe that the Earthly Paradise would be realized when Maitreya will descend on the Earth, and on that ocasion the span of human life will be eighty thousand or eighty-four thousand years. According to the Buddhist texts of the Seven Buddhas of the Past, on the other hand, the human span had been eighty thousand years under the first Buddha of the Past, and became shorter and shorter, and has been reduced to one hundred years under Sakyamuni Buddha. So the appearence of Maitreya suggests a rebirth of the Paradise of the Past.
It is Buddhabhadra who transformed the descriptions of the span of human life into those of the visual height of the Buddhas. He studied the Buddhist meditations in Gandhara. The “Sutra on the Sea of Mystic Ecstasy Attained by Visualizing the Buddha” (T. vol. 15, p. 693) translated by him (A. D. 412-429) illustrates that the height of Kasyapa Buddha of the Past is 160 feet, that of Sakyamuni is 16 feet, and the future Buddha Maitreya is 160 feet tall again. This author considers that this idea was the first conception of colossal Maitreya. The “Grand Sutra on Maitreya's Becoming Buddha” (T. vol. 14, p. 429-430) translated by Kumarajiva, whom Buddhabhadra met in Ch'ang-an early in the fifth century, describes that the human being in the Maitreya's age is 160 feet in height and Maitreya himself is twice as tall as he, namely 320 feet. The “Sutra on Maitreya's Rebirth Here Below and Becoming Buddha” (T. vol. 14, p. 423-424) translated also by Kumarajiva exaggerates the height of Maitreya; one thousand feet. The colossal images of Maitreya have been considered as a symbol of this future Buddha's Golden Age.

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