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History of ancient Israel and Judah

The history of ancient Israel and Judah spans from the early appearance of the Israelites in Canaan's hill country during the late second millenium BCE, to the establishment and subsequent downfall of the two Israelite kingdoms in the mid-first millenium BCE. This history unfolds within the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. The earliest documented mention of "Israel" as a people appears on the Merneptah Stele, an ancient Egyptian inscription dating back to around 1208 BCE. Archaeological evidence suggests that ancient Israelite culture evolved from the pre-existing Canaanite civilization. During the Iron Age II period, two Israelite kingdoms emerged, covering much of Canaan: the Kingdom of Israel in the north and the Kingdom of Judah in the south.

According to the Hebrew Bible, a "United Monarchy" consisting of Israel and Judah existed as early as the 11th century BCE, under the reigns of Saul, David, and Solomon; the great kingdom later was seperated into two smaller kingdoms: Israel, containing the cities of Shechem and Samaria, in the north, and Judah, containing Jerusalem and the Solomon's Temple, in the south. The historicity of the United Monarchy is debated—as there are no archaeological remains of it that are accepted as consensus—but historians and archaeologists agree that Israel and Judah existed as separate kingdoms by c. 900 BCE and c. 850 BCE, respectively. The kingdoms' history is known in greater detail than that of other kingdoms in the Levant, primarily due to the selective narratives in the Books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles, which were included in the Bible.

The northern Kingdom of Israel was destroyed around 720 BCE, when it was conquered by the Neo-Assyrian Empire. While the Kingdom of Judah remained intact during this time, it became a client state of first the Neo-Assyrian Empire and then the Neo-Babylonian Empire. However, Jewish revolts against the Babylonians led to the destruction of Judah in 586 BCE, under the rule of Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II. According to the biblical account, the armies of Nebuchadnezzar II besieged Jerusalem between 589–586 BCE, which led to the destruction of Solomon's Temple and the exile of the Jews to Babylon; this event was also recorded in the Babylonian Chronicles. The exilic period saw the development of the Israelite religion towards a monotheistic Judaism.

The exile ended with the fall of Babylon to the Achaemenid Empire c. . Subsequently, the Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great issued a proclamation known as the Edict of Cyrus, which authorized and encouraged exiled Jews to return to Judah. Cyrus' proclamation began the exiles' return to Zion, inaugurating the formative period in which a more distinctive Jewish identity developed in the Persian province of Yehud. During this time, the destroyed Solomon's Temple was replaced by the Second Temple, marking the beginning of the Second Temple period.

Periods
The Iron Age II period is followed by periods named after conquering empires, such as the Neo-Babylonians becoming the "godfathers" for the Babylonian period.
 * Iron Age I: 1150 –950 BCE
 * Iron Age II: 950 –586 BCE

Other academic terms often used are: The return to Zion and the construction of the Second Temple marked the beginning of the Second Temple period (c. – 70 CE).
 * First Temple or Israelite period (c. 1000 – )

Background: Late Bronze Age (1550–1150 BCE)
The eastern Mediterranean seaboard stretches 400 miles north to south from the Taurus Mountains to the Sinai Peninsula, and 70 to 100 miles east to west between the sea and the Arabian Desert. The coastal plain of the southern Levant, broad in the south and narrowing to the north, is backed in its southernmost portion by a zone of foothills, the Shfela; like the plain this narrows as it goes northwards, ending in the promontory of Mount Carmel. East of the plain and the Shfela is a mountainous ridge, the "hill country of Judea" in the south, the "hill country of Ephraim" north of that, then Galilee and Mount Lebanon. To the east again lie the steep-sided valley occupied by the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, and the wadi of the Arabah, which continues down to the eastern arm of the Red Sea. Beyond the plateau is the Syrian desert, separating the Levant from Mesopotamia. To the southwest is Egypt, to the northeast Mesopotamia. The location and geographical characteristics of the narrow Levant made the area a battleground among the powerful entities that surrounded it.

Canaan in the Late Bronze Age was a shadow of what it had been centuries earlier: many cities were abandoned, others shrank in size, and the total settled population was probably not much more than a hundred thousand. Settlement was concentrated in cities along the coastal plain and along major communication routes; the central and northern hill country which would later become the biblical kingdom of Israel was only sparsely inhabited although letters from the Egyptian archives indicate that Jerusalem was already a Canaanite city-state recognizing Egyptian overlordship. Politically and culturally it was dominated by Egypt, each city under its own ruler, constantly at odds with its neighbours, and appealing to the Egyptians to adjudicate their differences.

The Canaanite city state system broke down during the Late Bronze Age collapse, and Canaanite culture was then gradually absorbed into those of the Philistines, Phoenicians and Israelites. The process was gradual and a strong Egyptian presence continued into the 12th century BCE, and, while some Canaanite cities were destroyed, others continued to exist in Iron Age I.

The name "Israel" first appears in the Merneptah Stele c. : "Israel is laid waste and his seed is no more." This "Israel" was a cultural and probably political entity, well enough established for the Egyptians to perceive it as a possible challenge, but an ethnic group rather than an organized state.

Iron Age I (1150–950 BCE)
Archaeologist Paula McNutt says: "It is probably… during Iron Age I [that] a population began to identify itself as 'Israelite'," differentiating itself from its neighbours via prohibitions on intermarriage, an emphasis on family history and genealogy, and religion.

In the Late Bronze Age there were no more than about 25 villages in the highlands, but this increased to over 300 by the end of Iron Age I, while the settled population doubled from 20,000 to 40,000. The villages were more numerous and larger in the north, and probably shared the highlands with pastoral nomads, who left no remains. Archaeologists and historians attempting to trace the origins of these villagers have found it impossible to identify any distinctive features that could define them as specifically Israelite – collared-rim jars and four-room houses have been identified outside the highlands and thus cannot be used to distinguish Israelite sites, and while the pottery of the highland villages is far more limited than that of lowland Canaanite sites, it develops typologically out of Canaanite pottery that came before. Israel Finkelstein proposed that the oval or circular layout that distinguishes some of the earliest highland sites, and the notable absence of pig bones from hill sites, could be taken as markers of ethnicity, but others have cautioned that these can be a "common-sense" adaptation to highland life and not necessarily revelatory of origins. Other Aramaean sites also demonstrate a contemporary absence of pig remains at that time, unlike earlier Canaanite and later Philistine excavations.

In The Bible Unearthed (2001), Finkelstein and Silberman summarized recent studies. They described how, up until 1967, the Israelite heartland in the highlands of western Palestine was virtually an archaeological terra incognita. Since then, intensive surveys have examined the traditional territories of the tribes of Judah, Benjamin, Ephraim, and Manasseh. These surveys have revealed the sudden emergence of a new culture contrasting with the Philistine and Canaanite societies existing in Canaan in the Iron Age. This new culture is characterized by a lack of pork remains (whereas pork formed 20% of the Philistine diet in places), by an abandonment of the Philistine/Canaanite custom of having highly decorated pottery, and by the practice of circumcision. The Israelite ethnic identity had originated, not from the Exodus and a subsequent conquest, but from a transformation of the existing Canaanite-Philistine cultures. "These surveys revolutionized the study of early Israel. The discovery of the remains of a dense network of highland villages – all apparently established within the span of few generations – indicated that a dramatic social transformation had taken place in the central hill country of Canaan around 1200 BCE. There was no sign of violent invasion or even the infiltration of a clearly defined ethnic group. Instead, it seemed to be a revolution in lifestyle. In the formerly sparsely populated highlands from the Judean hills in the south to the hills of Samaria in the north, far from the Canaanite cities that were in the process of collapse and disintegration, about two-hundred fifty hilltop communities suddenly sprang up. Here were the first Israelites."

Modern scholars therefore see Israel arising peacefully and internally from existing people in the highlands of Canaan.

Extensive archaeological excavations have provided a picture of Israelite society during the early Iron Age period. The archaeological evidence indicates a society of village-like centres, but with more limited resources and a small population. During this period, Israelites lived primarily in small villages, the largest of which had populations of up to 300 or 400. Their villages were built on hilltops. Their houses were built in clusters around a common courtyard. They built three- or four-room houses out of mudbrick with a stone foundation and sometimes with a second story made of wood. The inhabitants lived by farming and herding. They built terraces to farm on hillsides, planting various crops and maintaining orchards. The villages were largely economically self-sufficient and economic interchange was prevalent. According to the Bible, prior to the rise of the Israelite monarchy the early Israelites were led by the Biblical judges, or chieftains who served as military leaders in times of crisis. Scholars are divided over the historicity of this account. However, it is likely that regional chiefdoms and polities provided security. The small villages were unwalled but were likely subjects of the major town in the area. Writing was known and available for recording, even at small sites.

Iron Age II (950–587 BCE)
According to Israel Finkelstein, after an emergent and large polity was suddenly formed based on the Gibeon-Gibeah plateau and destroyed by Shoshenq I, the biblical Shishak, in the 10th century BCE, a return to small city-states was prevalent in the Southern Levant, but between another large polity emerged in the northern highlands with its capital eventually at Tirzah, that can be considered the precursor of the Kingdom of Israel. The Kingdom of Israel was consolidated as an important regional power by the first half of the 9th century BCE, before falling to the Neo-Assyrian Empire in 722 BCE, and the Kingdom of Judah began to flourish in the second half of the 9th century BCE.

Unusually favourable climatic conditions in the first two centuries of Iron Age II brought about an expansion of population, settlements and trade throughout the region. In the central highlands this resulted in unification in a kingdom with the city of Samaria as its capital, possibly by the second half of the 10th century BCE when an inscription of the Egyptian pharaoh Shoshenq I records a series of campaigns directed at the area. Israel had clearly emerged in the first half of the 9th century BCE, this is attested when the Assyrian king Shalmaneser III names "Ahab Sir'lit" among his enemies at the battle of Qarqar (853 BCE) on the Kurkh Monoliths. This "Sir'lit" is most often interpreted as "Israel". At this time Israel was apparently engaged in a three-way contest with Damascus and Tyre for control of the Jezreel Valley and Galilee in the north, and with Moab, Ammon and Aram Damascus in the east for control of Gilead; the Mesha Stele (c. ), left by a king of Moab, celebrates his success in throwing off the oppression of the "House of Omri" (i.e., Israel). It bears what is generally thought to be the earliest extra-biblical reference to the name "Yahweh". A century later Israel came into increasing conflict with the expanding Neo-Assyrian Empire, which first split its territory into several smaller units and then destroyed its capital, Samaria. Both the biblical and Assyrian sources speak of a massive deportation of people from Israel and their replacement with settlers from other parts of the empire – such population exchanges were an established part of Assyrian imperial policy, a means of breaking the old power structure –  and the former Israel never again became an independent political entity.

Finkelstein holds that Judah emerged as an operational kingdom somewhat later than Israel, during the second half of 9th century BCE, but the subject is one of considerable controversy. There are indications that during the 10th and 9th centuries BCE, the southern highlands had been divided between a number of centres, none with clear primacy. During the reign of Hezekiah, between c., a notable increase in the power of the Judean state can be observed. This is reflected in archaeological sites and findings, such as the Broad Wall; a defensive city wall in Jerusalem; and the Siloam tunnel, an aqueduct designed to provide Jerusalem with water during an impending siege by the Neo-Assyrian Empire led by Sennacherib; and the Siloam inscription, a lintel inscription found over the doorway of a tomb, has been ascribed to comptroller Shebna. LMLK seals on storage jar handles, excavated from strata in and around that formed by Sennacherib's destruction, appear to have been used throughout Sennacherib's 29-year reign, along with bullae from sealed documents, some that belonged to Hezekiah himself and others that name his servants. Archaeological records indicate that the Kingdom of Israel was fairly prosperous. The late Iron Age saw an increase in urban development in Israel. Whereas previously the Israelites had lived mainly in small and unfortified settlements, the rise of the Kingdom of Israel saw the growth of cities and the construction of palaces, large royal enclosures, and fortifications with walls and gates. Israel initially had to invest significant resources into defence as it was subjected to regular Aramean incursions and attacks, but after the Arameans were subjugated by the Assyrians and Israel could afford to put less resources into defending its territory, its architectural infrastructure grew dramatically. Extensive fortifications were built around cities such as Dan, Megiddo, and Hazor, including monumental and multi-towered city walls and multi-gate entry systems. Israel's economy was based on multiple industries. It had the largest olive oil production centres in the region, using at least two different types of olive oil presses, and also had a significant wine industry, with wine presses constructed next to vineyards. By contrast, the Kingdom of Judah was significantly less advanced. Some scholars believe it was no more than a small tribal entity limited to Jerusalem and its immediate surroundings. In the 10th and early 9th centuries BCE, the territory of Judah appears to have been sparsely populated, limited to small and mostly unfortified settlements. The status of Jerusalem in the 10th century BCE is a major subject of debate among scholars. According to some scholars, Jerusalem does not show evidence of significant Israelite residential activity until the 9th century BCE. Other scholars argue that recent discoveries and radiocarbon tests in the City of David seem to indicate that Jerusalem was already a significant city by the 10th century BCE. Significant administrative structures such as the Stepped Stone Structure and Large Stone Structure, which originally formed part of one structure, also contain material culture from the 10th century BCE or earlier. The ruins of a significant Judahite military fortress, Tel Arad, have also been found in the Negev, and a collection of military orders found there suggest literacy was present throughout the ranks of the Judahite army. This suggests that literacy was not limited to a tiny elite, indicating the presence of a substantial educational infrastructure in Judah. In the 7th century Jerusalem grew to contain a population many times greater than earlier and achieved clear dominance over its neighbours. This occurred at the same time that Israel was being destroyed by the Neo-Assyrian Empire, and was probably the result of a cooperative arrangement with the Assyrians to establish Judah as an Assyrian vassal state controlling the valuable olive industry. Judah prospered as a vassal state (despite a disastrous rebellion against Sennacherib), but in the last half of the 7th century BCE, Assyria suddenly collapsed, and the ensuing competition between Egypt and the Neo-Babylonian Empire for control of the land led to the destruction of Judah in a series of campaigns between 597 and 582.

Aftermath: Assyrian and Babylonian periods
After its fall, the former Kingdom of Israel became the Assyrian province of Samerina, which was taken over about a century later by the Neo-Babylonian Empire, created after the revolt of the Babylonians and them defeating the Neo-Assyrian Empire.

Babylonian Judah suffered a steep decline in both economy and population and lost the Negev, the Shephelah, and part of the Judean hill country, including Hebron, to encroachments from Edom and other neighbours. Jerusalem, destroyed but probably not totally abandoned, was much smaller than previously, and the settlements surrounding it, as well as the towns in the former kingdom's western borders, were all devastated as a result of the Babylonian campaign. The town of Mizpah in Benjamin in the relatively unscathed northern section of the kingdom became the capital of the new Babylonian province of Yehud. This was standard Babylonian practice: when the Philistine city of Ashkalon was conquered in 604, the political, religious and economic elite (but not the bulk of the population) was banished and the administrative centre shifted to a new location. There is also a strong probability that for most or all of the period the temple at Bethel in Benjamin replaced that at Jerusalem, boosting the prestige of Bethel's priests (the Aaronites) against those of Jerusalem (the Zadokites), now in exile in Babylon.

The Babylonian conquest entailed not just the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, but the liquidation of the entire infrastructure which had sustained Judah for centuries. The most significant casualty was the state ideology of "Zion theology," the idea that the god of Israel had chosen Jerusalem for his dwelling-place and that the Davidic dynasty would reign there forever. The fall of the city and the end of Davidic kingship forced the leaders of the exile community – kings, priests, scribes and prophets –  to reformulate the concepts of community, faith and politics. The exile community in Babylon thus became the source of significant portions of the Hebrew Bible: Isaiah 40–55; Ezekiel; the final version of Jeremiah; the work of the hypothesized priestly source in the Pentateuch; and the final form of the history of Israel from Deuteronomy to 2 Kings. Theologically, the Babylonian exiles were responsible for the doctrines of individual responsibility and universalism (the concept that one god controls the entire world) and for the increased emphasis on purity and holiness. Most significantly, the trauma of the exile experience led to the development of a strong sense of Hebrew identity distinct from other peoples, with increased emphasis on symbols such as circumcision and Sabbath-observance to sustain that distinction.

Hans M. Barstad writes that the concentration of the biblical literature on the experience of the exiles in Babylon disguises that the great majority of the population remained in Judah; for them, life after the fall of Jerusalem probably went on much as it had before. It may even have improved, as they were rewarded with the land and property of the deportees, much to the anger of the community of exiles remaining in Babylon. Conversely, Avraham Faust writes that archaeological and demographic surveys show that the population of Judah was significantly reduced to barely 10% of what it had been in the time before the exile. The assassination around 582 of the Babylonian governor by a disaffected member of the former royal House of David provoked a Babylonian crackdown, possibly reflected in the Book of Lamentations, but the situation seems to have soon stabilized again. Nevertheless, those unwalled cities and towns that remained were subject to slave raids by the Phoenicians and intervention in their internal affairs by Samaritans, Arabs, and Ammonites.

Religion
Although the specific process by which the Israelites adopted monotheism is unknown, it is certain that the transition was a gradual one and was not totally accomplished during the First Temple period. More is known about this period, as during this time writing was widespread. The number of gods that the Israelites worshipped decreased, and figurative images vanished from their shrines. Yahwism, as some scholars name this belief system, is often described as a form of henotheism or monolatry. Over the same time, a folk religion continued to be practised across Israel and Judah. These practices were influenced by the polytheistic beliefs of the surrounding ethnicities, and were denounced by the prophets.

In addition to the Temple in Jerusalem, there was public worship practised all over Israel and Judah in shrines and sanctuaries, outdoors, and close to city gates. In the 8th and 7th centuries BCE, the kings Hezekiah and Josiah of Judah implemented a number of significant religious reforms that aimed to centre worship of the God of Israel in Jerusalem and eliminate foreign customs.

Henotheism
Henotheism is the act of worshipping a single god, without denying the existence of other deities. Many scholars believe that before monotheism in ancient Israel, there came a transitional period; in this transitional period many followers of the Israelite religion worshipped the god Yahweh, but did not deny the existence of other deities accepted throughout the region. Henotheistic worship was not uncommon in the Ancient Near East, as many Iron Age nation states worshipped an elevated national god which was nonetheless only part of a wider pantheon; examples include Chemosh in Moab, Qos in Edom, Milkom in Ammon, and Ashur in Assyria].

Canaanite religion syncretized elements from neighbouring cultures, largely from Mesopotamian religious traditions. Using Canaanite religion as a base was natural due to the fact that the Canaanite culture inhabited the same region prior to the emergence of Israelite culture. Israelite religion was no exception, as during the transitional period, Yahweh and El were syncretized in the Israelite pantheon. El already occupied a reasonably important place in the Israelite religion. Even the name "Israel" is based on the name El, rather than Yahweh. It was this initial harmonization of Israelite and Canaanite religious thought that lead to Yahweh gradually absorbing several characteristics from Canaanite deities, in turn strengthening his own position as an all-powerful "One." Even still, monotheism in the region of ancient Israel and Judah did not take hold overnight, and during the intermediate stages most people are believed to have remained henotheistic.

During this intermediate period of henotheism many families worshipped different gods. Religion was very much centred around the family, as opposed to the community. The region of Israel and Judah was sparsely populated during the time of Moses. As such many different areas worshipped different gods, due to social isolation. It was not until later on in Israelite history that people started to worship Yahweh alone and fully convert to monotheistic values. That switch occurred with the growth of power and influence of the Israelite kingdom and its rulers. Further details of this are contained in the Iron Age Yahwism section below. Evidence from the Bible suggests that henotheism did exist: "They [the Hebrews] went and served alien gods and paid homage to them, gods of whom they had no experience and whom he [Yahweh] did not allot to them" (Deut. 29.26). Many believe that this quote demonstrates that the early Israelite kingdom followed traditions similar to ancient Mesopotamia, where each major urban centre had a supreme god. Each culture embraced their patron god but did not deny the existence of other cultures' patron gods. In Assyria, the patron god was Ashur, and in ancient Israel, it was Yahweh; however, both Israelite and Assyrian cultures recognized each other's deities during this period. Some scholars have used the Bible as evidence to argue that most of the people alive during the events recounted in the Hebrew Bible, including Moses, were most likely henotheists. There are many quotes from the Hebrew Bible that are used to support this view. One such quote from Jewish tradition is the first commandment which in its entirety reads "I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage: You shall have no other gods before me." This quote does not deny the existence of other gods; it merely states that Jews should consider Yahweh or God the supreme god, incomparable to other supernatural beings. Some scholars attribute the concept of angels and demons found in Judaism and Christianity to the tradition of henotheism. Instead of completely getting rid of the concept of other supernatural beings, these religions changed former deities into angels and demons.

Iron Age Yahwism
The religion of the Israelites of Iron Age I, like the Ancient Canaanite religion from which it evolved and other religions of the ancient Near East, was based on a cult of ancestors and worship of family gods (the "gods of the fathers"). With the emergence of the monarchy at the beginning of Iron Age II the kings promoted their family god, Yahweh, as the god of the kingdom, but beyond the royal court, religion continued to be both polytheistic and family-centred. The major deities were not numerous – El, Asherah, and Yahweh, with Baal as a fourth god, and perhaps Shamash (the sun) in the early period. At an early stage El and Yahweh became fused and Asherah did not continue as a separate state cult, although she continued to be popular at a community level until Persian times.

Yahweh, the national god of both Israel and Judah, seems to have originated in Edom and Midian in southern Canaan and may have been brought to Israel by the Kenites and Midianites at an early stage. There is a general consensus among scholars that the first formative event in the emergence of the distinctive religion described in the Bible was triggered by the destruction of Israel by Assyria in c. . Refugees from the northern kingdom fled to Judah, bringing with them laws and a prophetic tradition of Yahweh. This religion was subsequently adopted by the landowners of Judah, who in 640 BCE placed the eight-year-old Josiah on the throne. Judah at this time was a vassal state of Assyria, but Assyrian power collapsed in the 630s, and around 622 Josiah and his supporters launched a bid for independence expressed as loyalty to "Yahweh alone".

The Babylonian exile and Second Temple Judaism
According to the Deuteronomists, as scholars call these Judean nationalists, the treaty with Yahweh would enable Israel's god to preserve both the city and the king in return for the people's worship and obedience. The destruction of Jerusalem, its Temple, and the Davidic dynasty by Babylon in 587/586 BCE was deeply traumatic and led to revisions of the national mythos during the Babylonian exile. This revision was expressed in the Deuteronomistic history, the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, which interpreted the Babylonian destruction as divinely-ordained punishment for the failure of Israel's kings to worship Yahweh to the exclusion of all other deities.

The Second Temple period (520 BCE – 70 CE) differed in significant ways from what had gone before. Strict monotheism emerged among the priests of the Temple establishment during the seventh and sixth centuries BCE, as did beliefs regarding angels and demons. At this time, circumcision, dietary laws, and Sabbath-observance gained more significance as symbols of Jewish identity, and the institution of the synagogue became increasingly important, and most of the biblical literature, including the Torah, was substantially revised during this time.

Administrative and judicial structure
As was customary in the ancient Near East, a king (מלך) ruled over the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The national god Yahweh, who selects those to rule his realm and his people, is depicted in the Hebrew Bible as having a hand in the establishment of the royal institution. In this sense, the true king is God, and the king serves as his earthly envoy and is tasked with ruling his realm. In some Psalms that appear to be related to the coronation of kings, they are referred to as "sons of Yahweh". The kings actually had to succeed one another according to a dynastic principle, even though the succession was occasionally decided through coups d'état. The coronation seemed to take place in a sacred place, and was marked by the anointing of the king who then becomes the "anointed one (māšîaḥ ,the origin of the word Messiah) of Yahweh"; the end of the ritual seems marked by an acclamation by the people (or at least their representatives, the Elders), followed by a banquet.

The Bible's descriptions of the lists of dignitaries from the reigns of David and Solomon show that the king is supported by a group of high dignitaries. Those include the chief of the army (שר הצבא), the great scribe (שר הצבא) who was in charge of the management of the royal chancellery, the herald (מזכיר), as well as the high priest (כהן הגדול) and the master of the palace (על הבית, סוכן), who has a function of stewardship of the household of the king at the beginning and seems to become a real prime minister of Judah during the later periods. The attributions of most of these dignitaries remain debated, as illustrated in particular by the much-discussed case of the “king's friend” mentioned under Solomon.

title: History of ancient Israel and Judah


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List of monarchs of Persia

This article lists the monarchs of Iran (Persia) from the establishment of the Medes around 678 BC until the deposition of the Pahlavi dynasty in 1979.

Achaemenid Empire (559–334/327 BC)
Note: Ancient Persia is generally agreed to have ended with the collapse of the Achaemenid dynasty as a result of the Wars of Alexander the Great.

Fratarakas (?-140BC)
The Fratarakas appear to have been Governors of the Seleucid Empire.

Parthian Empire (247 BC – AD 228)
The Seleucid dynasty gradually lost control of Persia. In 253, the Arsacid dynasty established itself in Parthia. The Parthians gradually expanded their control, until by the mid-2nd century BC, the Seleucids had completely lost control of Persia. Control of eastern territories was permanently lost by Antiochus VII in 129 BC.

For more comprehensive lists of kings, queens, sub-kings and sub-queens of this Era see:
 * List of Parthian monarchs
 * List of rulers of Parthian sub-kingdoms

Sasanian Empire (224–651)
Note: Classical Persia is generally agreed to have ended with the collapse of the Sasanian Empire as a result of the Muslim conquest of Persia.

Dabuyid (651–760)
A Zoroastrian Persian dynasty that held power in the north for over a century before finally falling to the Abbasid Caliphate.

Rashidun Caliphate (642–661)
For more comprehensive lists of kings and sub-kings of this Era see:
 * Muslim dynasties of Iran

Umayyad Caliphate (661–750)
For more comprehensive lists of kings and sub-kings of this Era see:
 * Islamic dynasties of Iran

Abbasid Caliphate (748–861)
For more comprehensive lists of kings and sub-kings of this Era see:
 * Muslim dynasties of Iran

Samanid Empire (819–999)
For more comprehensive lists of kings and sub-kings of this Era see:
 * Muslim dynasties of Iran

Saffarid Kingdom (861–1003)
For more comprehensive lists of kings and sub-kings of this Era see:
 * Muslim dynasties of Iran

Ghurid Kingdom (879–1215)
For more comprehensive lists of kings and sub-kings of this Era see:
 * Muslim dynasties of Iran

Buyid Kingdom (934–1062)
The Buyid Kingdom was divided into a number of separate emirates, of which the most important were Fars, Ray, and Iraq. Generally, one of the emirs held a sort of primus inter pares supremacy over the rest, which would be marked by titles like Amir al-umara (which tied them into the hierarchy of the Abbasid Caliphate) and Shahanshah (which the dynasty revived as a sign of independence from the Abbasid caliphs).

For more comprehensive lists of kings and sub-kings of this Era see:
 * Muslim dynasties of Iran

Ghaznavids Empire (977–1186)
For more comprehensive lists of kings and sub-kings of this Era see:
 * Muslim dynasties of Iran

Seljuk Empire (1037–1194)
For more comprehensive lists of kings and sub-kings of this Era see:
 * Muslim dynasties of Iran

Khwarazmian Empire (1153–1220)
An empire built from Khwarezm, covering part of Iran and neighbouring Central Asia.

For more comprehensive lists of kings and sub-kings of this Era see:
 * Islamic dynasties of Iran

Mongol Empire (1220–1256)
For more comprehensive lists of kings and sub-kings of this Era see:
 * Muslim dynasties of Iran

Aq Quyunlu

Sources:

Note: Medieval Persia is generally agreed to have ended with the rise of the Safavid Empire

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: List of monarchs of Persia


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Homology

Homology may refer to:

Biology

 * Homology (biology), any characteristic of biological organisms that is derived from a common ancestor
 * Sequence homology, biological homology between DNA, RNA, or protein sequences
 * Homologous chromosomes, chromosomes in a biological cell that pair up (synapse) during meiosis
 * Homologous recombination, genetic recombination in which nucleotide sequences are exchanged between molecules of DNA
 * Homologous desensitization, a receptor decreases its response to a signalling molecule when that agonist is in high concentration
 * Homology modeling, a method of protein structure prediction

Chemistry

 * Homologous series, a series of organic compounds having different quantities of a repeated unit
 * Homologous temperature, the temperature of a material as a fraction of its absolute melting point
 * Homologation reaction, a chemical reaction which produces the next logical member of a homologous series

Other sciences

 * Homology (anthropology), analogy between human beliefs, practices or artifacts owing to genetic or historical connections
 * Homology (psychology), behavioral characteristics that have common origins in either evolution or development
 * Homologous behaviors, behaviors typical of species that share a common ancestor that was characterized by that behavior OR behaviors in an individual that share common origins in development
 * Homology (sociology), a structural resonance between the different elements making up a socio-cultural whole

Mathematics

 * Homology (mathematics), a procedure to associate a sequence of abelian groups or modules with a given mathematical object
 * Homological algebra, a branch of mathematics

Other uses

 * Homologation, from the ancient Greek "to agree", to indicate the approval of a sanctioning body
 * Homologation (motorsport), the process in motorsports where the sanctioning body approves a racing model for official use
 * Homological word, a word expressing a property which it possesses itself

title: Homology


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Henry J. Heinz

Henry John Heinz (October 11, 1844 – May 14, 1919) was an American entrepreneur who co-founded the H. J. Heinz Company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

He was involved in the passage of the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act. Many of his descendants are known for philanthropy and involvement in politics and public affairs. His fortune became the basis for the Heinz Foundations.

Early life
Henry John Heinz was born in Birmingham, Pennsylvania to John Henry Heinz (1811–1891) and Anna Margaretha Schmidt (1822–1899). John Henry was born Johann Heinrich Heinz to parents Johann Georg and Charlotte Louisa (née Trump) Heinz in Kallstadt of the Palatinate, which at that time was part of the Kingdom of Bavaria. In 1840, John Henry emigrated to Birmingham, where he got a job making bricks and then met and married Anna in 1843, who herself had recently emigrated from (today a part of Haunetal), Hesse-Kassel. Then when Henry was five years old, his parents moved to Sharpsburg where Henry’s father went into the brick making business for himself. Anna Schmidt was the daughter of a farmer and church administrator, Johann Adam Schmidt, and his wife Dorothea (Thiel) Schmidt. Anna came from Hesse-Kassel, which was a Reformed Protestant (Calvinist) territory, so she was raised in the Calvinist Christian faith. Anna's husband, John Heinz, was a Lutheran, and they raised and confirmed their son to that faith.

H. J. Heinz Company
Henry John Heinz began packing foodstuffs on a small scale at Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1869. There, he founded Heinz Noble & Company with a friend, L. Clarence Noble, and started marketing bottled horseradish, soon followed by sauerkraut, vinegar, and pickles. The company became bankrupt in 1875. The following year, Heinz founded another company, F & J Heinz, with his brother John Heinz and a cousin, Frederick Heinz.

The company continued to grow and, in 1888, Heinz bought out his other two partners and reorganized it as the H. J. Heinz Company, the name carried to the present day. The company's slogan, "57 varieties," was introduced by Heinz in 1896; by then, the company was selling more than 60 different products. Heinz said he chose "5" because it was his lucky number; the number "7" was his wife's lucky number.

The H. J. Heinz Company was incorporated in 1905 with Heinz serving as its first president, retaining that position for the rest of his life. At the time of Heinz's death in Pittsburgh at the age of 74, the H. J. Heinz Company had more than 20 food processing plants and owned seed farms and container factories.

Later life
Heinz led a successful lobbying effort in favor of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. During World War I, he worked with the Food Administration. He was a director in many financial institutions, and was chairman of a committee to devise ways of protecting Pittsburgh from floods.

Marriage and family
Heinz married Sarah Sloan Young on September 3, 1869. She was of Scots-Irish ancestry and had grown up in the Presbyterian Church. They had five children: They were raised as Presbyterians.
 * Irene Edwilda Heinz-Given (1871–1956)
 * Clarence Henry Heinz (1873–1920)
 * Howard Covode Heinz (1877–1941)
 * Robert Eugene Heinz (1882–1882, lived about 1 month)
 * Clifford Sloan Heinz (1883–1935)

Religious faith
Later in life Heinz worshipped as a member of Methodist and Presbyterian churches, and worked closely with Baptists as well.

When Heinz visited England, his "tourist stops" included the graves of religious leaders John Bunyan, Isaac Watts, and John Wesley. He visited a chapel that Wesley founded, later writing that "I felt I was upon holy ground." At the beginning of his will Heinz wrote: "I desire to set forth, at the very beginning of this Will, as the most important item in it, a confession of my faith in Jesus Christ as my Savior."

Death and legacy
Heinz died at his home on May 14, 1919, after contracting pneumonia. His funeral was at East Liberty Presbyterian Church. He was buried at Homewood Cemetery in Pittsburgh, in the Heinz Family Mausoleum.

A bronze statue of Heinz by Emil Fuchs was dedicated on October 11, 1924, at the Heinz Company building in Pittsburgh.

Heinz is the grandfather of H. J. Heinz II (1908–1987) the great-grandfather of U.S. Senator H. John Heinz III (1938–1991) of Pennsylvania (who was later buried in the same family mausoleum), and great-great grandfather of Henry John Heinz IV, André Thierstein Heinz and Christopher Drake Heinz.

Through his paternal grandmother, Charlotte Louisa Trump, he was a second cousin of Friedrich Trump, second cousin (once removed) of real estate magnate Fred Trump, and second cousin (twice removed) of 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump.

title: Henry J. Heinz


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Heinz

The H. J. Heinz Company was an American food processing company headquartered at One PPG Place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The company was founded by Henry J. Heinz in 1869. Heinz manufactures a couple thousand food products in plants on six continents, and markets these products in more than 200 countries and territories. The company claims to have 150 number-one or number-two brands worldwide. Heinz ranked first in ketchup in the US with a market share in excess of 50%; the Ore-Ida label held 46% of the frozen potato sector in 2003.

Since 1896, the company used its "57 Varieties" slogan; it was inspired by a sign advertising 21 styles of shoes, and Henry Heinz chose the number 57 even though the company manufactured more than 60 products at the time, because "5" was his lucky number and "7" was his wife's.

In February 2013, Heinz agreed to be purchased by Berkshire Hathaway and the Brazilian investment firm 3G Capital for $23billion. On March 25, 2015, Kraft announced its merger with Heinz, arranged by Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital. The resulting Kraft Heinz Company is the fifth largest food company in the world. Berkshire Hathaway became a majority owner of Heinz on June 18, 2015. After exercising a warrant to acquire 46 million shares of common stock for a total price of over $461million, Berkshire increased its stake to 52.5%. The merger to form Kraft Heinz was completed on July 2, 2015.

Foundation
Heinz was founded by and is named for Henry J. Heinz, who was born in the United States to German immigrants. His father was originally from Kallstadt (then part of the Bavarian Rhenish Palatinate, now part of Rhineland-Palatinate). His mother Anna was from Haunetal, Hesse-Kassel, and they met in Pittsburgh.

Henry J. Heinz began packing foodstuffs on a small scale at Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania, in 1869. There he founded Heinz Noble & Company with a friend, L. Clarence Noble, and began marketing horseradish. The first product in Heinz and Noble's new Anchor Brand (a name selected for its biblical meaning of hope) was his mother Anna Heinz's recipe for horseradish. The young Heinz manufactured it in the basement of his father's former house.

The company went bankrupt in 1875. The following year Heinz founded another company, F & J Heinz, with his brother John Heinz and a cousin, Frederick Heinz. One of this company's first products was Heinz Tomato Ketchup. The company continued to grow.

In 1888, Heinz bought out his two partners and reorganized the company as the H. J. Heinz Company. Its slogan, "57 varieties", was introduced by Heinz in 1896. Inspired by an advertisement he saw while riding an elevated train in New York City (a shoe store boasting "21 styles"), Heinz picked the number more or less at random because he liked the sound of it, selecting "7" specifically because, as he put it, of the "psychological influence of that figure and of its enduring significance to people of all ages".

20th century
In 1905, H. J. Heinz was incorporated, and Heinz served as its first president, holding that position for the rest of his life. Under his leadership, the company pioneered processes for sanitary food preparation, and led a successful lobbying effort in favor of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. In 1908 he established a processing plant in Leamington, Ontario, Canada for tomatoes and other products. Heinz operated it until 2014, when it was sold.

Heinz was a pioneer in both scientific and "technological innovations to solve problems like bacterial contamination". He personally worked to control the "purity of his products by managing his employees", offering hot showers and weekly manicures for the women handling food. During World War I, he worked with the Food Administration.

In 1914, Heinz Salad Cream was invented in England.

In 1930, Howard Heinz, son of Henry Heinz, helped to fight the downturn of the Great Depression by selling ready-to-serve soups and baby food. They became top sellers.

The Pittsburgh plant included a large "Heinz service building", which included three dining rooms and a 3,000-seat auditorium. The auditorium included a pipe organ, and Heinz employed an organist to give recitals and musical programs. The original organ was severely damaged in the 1936 Pittsburgh floods, it was replaced with a new Kimball organ that had four manuals and 57 sets of pipes. The original organ was restored and installed in Grace Methodist Church in Sharpsburg.

During World War II, "Jack" Heinz led the company as president and CEO to aid the United Kingdom and offset food shortages. Its plant in Pittsburgh was converted for a time to manufacture gliders for the War Department.

In the postwar years, Jack Heinz expanded the company to develop plants in several nations overseas, greatly expanding its international presence. He also acquired Ore-Ida and Starkist Tuna.

In 1959, long-time Heinz employee Frank Armour Jr. was elected president and COO of H. J. Heinz Co., succeeding H. J. Heinz II. He was the first non-family member to hold the job since the company started in 1869. He became vice chairman in 1966, and later became chairman and CEO of Heinz subsidiary, Ore-Ida Foods Inc. In 1969, Tony O'Reilly joined the company's UK subsidiary, soon becoming its managing director. He moved to Pittsburgh in 1971 when he was promoted to senior vice president for the North America and Pacific region. By 1973, Heinz selected him as president. He became CEO in 1979 and chairman in 1987.

Between 1981 and 1991, Heinz returned 28% annually, doubling the Standard & Poor's average annual return for those years. By 2000, the consolidation of grocery store chains, the spread of retailers such as Walmart, and growth of private-label brands caused competition for shelf space, and put price pressure on the company's products. The decline was also attributed to an inadequate response to broad demographic changes in the United States, particularly the growth in population among Hispanic and increased spending power of African Americans.

In 1998, Tony O'Reilly left Heinz after issues with the company's performance. He faced challenges from corporate governance groups and pension funds including CalPERS. He was succeeded by his deputy, William R. Johnson.

21st century
In 2001, Heinz acquired the pasta sauce, dry bouillon and soup business of Borden Foods. CEO William R. Johnson stated that "They fit very well with our tomato-based expertise".

On August 22, 2001, Heinz announced that it would acquire the Anchor Food Products' branded products, which included the Poppers line of appetizers, as well as the licensing rights to the TGI Fridays brand of frozen foods and appetizers. The acquisition was completed on September 25.

Billionaire Nelson Peltz initiated a proxy battle during 2006, culminating in a vote to place five of Peltz's nominees on the Board. After the final vote, two of the five nominees joined the Heinz Board. The new members of the board were Nelson Peltz and Matthew Craig Walsh.

In 2002, Heinz announced that it had sold the StarKist and 9Lives brands to Del Monte Foods.

In June 2008, Heinz began an advertising campaign in the UK for their new "New York Deli Mayo" products. The advertisement featured two men kissing in a family setting, which drew 200 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority. On June 24, 2008, Heinz withdrew the advertisement, which had been planned for a five-week run. The company said that some of its customers had expressed concerns. Withdrawing the advert was also controversial, with critics accusing Heinz of homophobia. The gay rights group Stonewall called for a boycott of Heinz products. Some expressed surprise that it had responded to what they said was a relatively small number of complaints, compared to the UK's estimated 3.6 million gay and lesbian consumers. MP Diane Abbott called the decision to withdraw the advert "ill-considered" and "likely to offend the gay community".

On February 14, 2013, it was announced that Heinz would be purchased by Berkshire Hathaway and 3G Capital for $23billion. Including debt assumption the transaction was valued at $28billion. According to Heinz, the deal was the largest in food industry history. Berkshire Hathaway and 3G would each own half of Heinz, with 3G running the company. Berkshire and 3G paid $72.50 a share. The acquisition was completed in June of that year. Berkshire and 3G immediately named Bernardo Hees, former chief executive of Burger King Worldwide Inc, as the CEO.

On August 13, 2013, Heinz announced it was cutting 600 jobs in North America. On October 25, 2013, fast-food chain McDonald's announced it would end its 40-year relationship with Heinz, after the former Burger King, McDonald's competitor, chief Hees became CEO of Heinz.

Heinz and Kraft merger
On March 25, 2015, Kraft Foods Group Inc. announced that it would merge with the H. J. Heinz Company, owned by 3G Capital and Berkshire Hathaway Inc., to form the world's fifth-largest food and beverage company. The companies completed the merger on July 2, 2015.

Brands

 * ABC
 * Bull's-Eye
 * Classico
 * Complan
 * Daddies
 * Devour
 * De Ruijter (food)
 * Delimex
 * Diana Sauce
 * Farex
 * Greenseas
 * Heinz
 * HP Sauce
 * Jack Daniel's sauces (under license)
 * Lea & Perrins
 * Ore-Ida
 * Bagel Bites
 * T.G.I. Friday's (under license)
 * Wattie's
 * Weight Watchers (under license)
 * Wyler's

Products

 * Beanz
 * Italian Beanz
 * Lentil Curry
 * Mexican Beanz
 * No Added Sugar Beanz
 * No Added Sugar Beanz Snap Pots
 * Organic Beanz
 * Peri Peri Beanz
 * Pork Sausage Beanz
 * Smokey Bacon Beanz
 * Spanish Beanz
 * Tikka Beanz (Limited Edition)
 * Jalfrezi Beanz (Limited Edition)
 * Vindaloo Beanz (Limited Edition)

Dressings

 * Balsamic With a hint of Garlic
 * Chilli & Lime
 * Raspberry Balsamic
 * Zesty Lemon

Pastas

 * Alphabetti
 * Beef Ravioli
 * Hoops
 * Hoops Snap Pots
 * Macaroni Cheese
 * Micro Spaghetti Snap Pots
 * No Added Sugar Hoops
 * Numberetti
 * Peppa Pig Pasta Shapes
 * Spaghetti
 * Spaghetti Bolognese
 * Spaghetti With Sausages

Sauces

 * Mayonnaise
 * Light Mayonnaise
 * Garlic & Caramelized Onion Mayonnaise
 * Truffle Mayonnaise
 * Lemon & Black Pepper Mayonnaise
 * Salad Cream
 * Salad Cream 30% Less Fat
 * Salad Cream 70% Less Fat
 * Classic Barbecue Sauce
 * Sticky Barbecue Sauce
 * Sweet & Spicy Barbecue Sauce
 * American Style Smokey Baconnaise Sauce
 * Korean Style Sticky Barbecue Sauce
 * American Style Burger Sauce
 * Thai Style Sweet Chilli Sauce
 * Thai Style Coconut Lime Sauce
 * Turkish Style Garlic Sauce
 * Mild Yellow Mustard
 * Honey Yellow Mustard
 * Piccalilli Pickle
 * Ploughman's Pickle
 * Original Sandwich Spread
 * Light Sandwich Spread
 * Saucy Sauce (Mayo & Ketchup Sauce)
 * Heinz Tomato Ketchup
 * Aromatic Herbs Ketchup
 * Balsamic Vinegar Ketchup
 * Fiery Chilli Tomato Ketchup
 * Jalapeño Chilli Tomato Ketchup
 * Organic Tomato Ketchup
 * Roasted Garlic Ketchup
 * Sweet Chilli Tomato Ketchup
 * Firecracker

Soups

 * Cream of Tomato
 * Cream of Chicken
 * Vegetable
 * Cream of Mushroom
 * Cream of Tomato with a Kick of Chilli
 * Lentil
 * Oxtail
 * Organic Cream of Tomato
 * Beef Broth
 * Carrot and Coriander
 * Cream of Chicken and Mushroom
 * Chicken and Sweetcorn
 * Chicken Noodle Soup
 * Lentil & Bacon
 * Minestrone
 * Mulligatawny
 * No Added Sugar Cream of Tomato
 * No Added Sugar Vegetable
 * Pea & Ham
 * Potato & Leek
 * Scotch Broth
 * Spring Vegetable
 * Cream of Tomato with Basil
 * Cream of Tomato Cup Soup
 * Vegetable Cup Soup
 * Cream of Tomato with a Kick of Chilli Cup Soup
 * Cream of Chicken Cup Soup
 * Cream of Mushroom Cup Soup
 * Cream of Tomato with Basil Cup Soup
 * Minestrone Cup Soup
 * Oxtail Cup Soup
 * Spiced Butternut Squash & Chickpea Eatwell Soup
 * Tomato & Cannellini Eatwell Soup
 * Tomato Spinach & Lentil Eatwell Soup
 * Cream of Chicken Pot Soup
 * Cream of Mushroom Pot Soup
 * Cream of Tomato Pot Soup
 * Smooth Vegetable Pot Soup
 * Cauliflower, Onion & Potato Soup of the Day
 * Chicken, Parsnip & Rosemary Soup of the Day
 * Green Garden Vegetables Soup of the Day
 * Mushroom & Toasted Garlic Soup of the Day
 * Potato & Leek with chives Soup of the Day
 * Spice Pumpkin, Sweet Potato & Carrot Soup of the Day
 * Tomato, Roasted Garlic & Black Pepper Soup of the Day

United States
The company's world headquarters were in Chicago, Illinois, with the H. J. Heinz division located in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where the company was founded. The company's "keystone" logo was based on that of Pennsylvania, the "keystone state". Heinz Field was named after the Heinz company in 2001.

A majority of its ketchup was produced in Fremont, Ohio, and the rest made in Muscatine, Iowa.

Heinz opened a pickle factory in Holland, Michigan, in 1897, and it is the largest such facility in the world. The Heinz Portion Control subsidiary is located in Jacksonville, Florida, and produces single-serving containers of ketchup, mustard, salad dressings, jams, jellies and syrups.

Heinz also had factories in the following locations: Arizona (Phoenix); California (Chatsworth, Escalon, Irvine, San Diego); Florida (Fort Myers); Idaho (Pocatello); Iowa (Cedar Rapids, Muscatine); Massachusetts (Newburyport); Ohio (Mason, Massillon); Oregon (Ontario), and South Carolina (Florence).

In 2000, seven retailers, including Walmart, Albertsons, and Safeway, comprised half of the company's sales by volume.

Australia

Heinz Australia's head office is located in Melbourne. Products include canned baked beans in tomato sauce (popularized in the "beanz meanz Heinz" advertising campaign), spaghetti in a similar sauce, and canned soup, condensed soup, and "ready to eat" soups.

Heinz manufactures "Big Red" tomato sauce, and a number of flavored baked bean varieties, as well as canned meals. Heinz also markets the Wattie's brand of canned foods, which are made in New Zealand.

On October 6, 2008, Heinz announced plans to acquire the Australian company Golden Circle which "manufactures more than 500 products, including canned fruit and vegetables, fruit juices, drinks, cordials and jams".

On May 27, 2011, Heinz announced it would close its factory in Girgarre, Victoria, and downsize its factories in Northgate (Brisbane), and Wagga Wagga, with loss of more than 300 jobs. Heinz has other factories in Echuca and Mill Park.

On January 6, 2012, Heinz closed its tomato sauce factory in Girgarre as announced in the previous May. 146 workers lost their jobs. A local group was seeking to purchase the factory and start its own production, with offers of financial assistance from investors. The group's first offer for the site was rejected by Heinz. Girgarre was the second to last tomato sauce factory in Australia, and its closing brought an end to Heinz's 70 years of tomato processing operations in Australia.

As of May 2020 Kraft Heinz is said to potentially be in discussions with Graeme Hart to sell off the brands of Wattie's in New Zealand and Golden Circle in Australia.

Canada

Heinz was established in Canada in 1908 in a former tobacco factory in Leamington, Ontario (known as the Tomato Capital of Canada). Most products shipped from Leamington have bilingual English and French labels for distribution throughout Canada, but a substantial amount of product is sent from there to the US. Ketchup is the main product produced there, and the city has been a center of tomato production. The factory also produces Canada Fancy (Grade A) tomato juice, mustard, vinegar, baby food, barbecue sauces, canned pastas, beans, pasta sauces, gravies and soups. Heinz Canada is the major supplier of single-serving and flexible-packaging condiments for most fast food chains in Canada. Leamington is the largest tomato-processing region per acreage in the world. The Leamington plant usually processes more than 250,000 tons of tomatoes per year. Heinz Canada's head office is in North York, Ontario; it also has operations in St. Marys, Ontario; Montreal, Quebec; and Calgary, Alberta.

On November 14, 2013, Heinz announced that the Leamington facility, the second-largest in the company, would close sometime in May 2014. Ketchup processing operations were to be consolidated at the company's US locations. Over 800 local jobs were lost due to the town's largest employer ending operations there. A local effort began in an attempt to save the 105-year-old Leamington plant, and it included creating a Facebook page to gather support. On February 27, 2014, the Highbury Canco Corporation signed a letter of intent to acquire and operate the facility. In April it was reported that Highbury Canco Corporation had received a one-year license to process tomatoes at the facility, saving some 250 jobs.

As a result of this corporate restructuring and the angry Canadian response, a rival food company, French's, began producing their own ketchup brand using Leamington produce. It marketed the brand with an appeal to Canadian patriotism. This successful campaign, combined with a Canadian grassroots effort on Facebook encouraging purchasing of the French's product, resulted in Heinz's market share in Canada dropping from 84 to 76%, a significant shift in a mature market. This undesirable development was exacerbated in 2018 when Canadian tariffs were erected against specific American exports, which includes ketchup produced in the United States, in retaliation to the US President Trump's tariffs on Canadian steel and aluminum exports. Heinz conducted a belated public relations campaign in Canada to try to counter the public anger against them, a task made more difficult by public sentiment rising to encourage a boycott of American goods in reaction of US President Trump's rhetoric against Canada.

India
Heinz Ketchup is available in India in two varieties, the standard Tomato Ketchup and Tomato Chili Sauce. As Indian taste preferences vary among the regions, Western brands such as Heinz must work on Indian interpretations of ketchups for sale in the country. Heinz acquired the former foods division of Glaxo India, gaining the Complan, Glucon D, Glucon C, Sampriti Ghee, and Nycil products and brands. In 2019, Heinz sold a portion of the business, including Complan and Glucon-D, for $627.18 million to Zydus Wellness.

Indonesia

H. J. Heinz Company entered Indonesia in 1999, when it acquired 65 percent share of PT. ABC Central Food, for US$70 million, and formed PT. Heinz ABC Indonesia. The company is based in Jakarta, and manufactures sauces, condiments, juices and syrups.

Serving demand from Indonesia's large population and growing economy, in the early 21st century PT. Heinz ABC Indonesia is the largest Heinz's business in Asia, and one of the largest in the world. It employs 3000 employees, has 3 production facilities, 8 packing facilities, and an extensive distribution network in Java and other parts of Indonesia. Their leading products are Syrup ABC (fruit syrup), Kecap ABC (sweet soy sauce), and Sambal ABC (hot chili sauce).

Netherlands
Heinz sells many products in the Netherlands; the Elst factory in Gelderland is the primary production facility for Heinz sauces for Western Europe. In 2006, production of both HP Sauce and Daddies was transferred from Birmingham, West Midlands to Elst as a result of the acquisition of HP Foods and the subsequent closure of the Aston factory. Subsequently, Heinz suffered severe supply issues for the ex-HP Foods brands as the Elst factory struggled to integrate production, resulting in significant negative coverage from UK retailers. Heinz was forced to begin bottling sauce in Spain, shipping ready-made sauce from Elst, to get product back into supply.

United Kingdom

After opening its first overseas office in London in 1896, the company opened its first UK factory in Peckham, south London in 1905. This was followed by a factory at Harlesden, north-west London in 1919. Bombed twice in World War II, this factory remained in production until 2000. Production was started at a former munitions factory at Standish near Wigan in 1946, before the new factory at Kitt Green, near Wigan, opened in 1959. Heinz also had an infant food factory in Kendal, Cumbria. The site specialized in baby milks, previously under the brand of Farley's, but then manufactured under the name Heinz Nurture.

Heinz produces oriental foods sold under the Amoy brand, once used under license from Ajinomoto Co. Inc., Tokyo, Japan. In 2018, Amoy Food was sold to the new owners, CITIC Capital Asian Foods Holdings Ltd.

In July 2001, the Food Standards Agency of the Government of the United Kingdom found Heinz canned baked beans products to be contaminated with the hormone disruptor bisphenol.

In 2013, the Kitt Green facility was listed as one among the world's five largest manufacturing units by the Discovery Channel (the list comprised Reliance's Jamnagar Refinery, Volkswagen's car plant, Kitt Green Foods plant, NASA's Kennedy Space Center and POSCO's steel plant). It was Europe's largest food factory and turns over more than 1 billion cans every year.

China
On February 22, 2013, Sanquan Food, a Chinese frozen food company, signed a contract to purchase LongFong Food, a subsidiary of Heinz Company in China. With this sale, Heinz (China) will focus on infant foods and sauces in emerging markets such as China. Heinz Hong Kong Limited is the regional office serving for operations in Hong Kong, China and Taiwan.

New Zealand
Heinz produces frozen vegetables for export for the New Zealand and Australian market. They also produce mayonnaise and other sauces for the New Zealand and Australian market. Most products sold in New Zealand are sold under the brand name "Watties".

title: Heinz


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Talk:Heinz

Amoy update?
Information about Amoy seems outdated. It no longer belongs to the Japanese company but instead sold off to a Chinese company. Plus not sure that Heinz still have a license from Amoy nowadays. It needs to be updated.

https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-insights/trending/gyr9mrmq0sp8xk3wvgzkhg2

https://www.just-food.com/news/uk-heinz-launches-amoy-oriental-sauces/ Soyegg2417 (talk) 00:10, 14 March 2022 (UTC)

Needs some work post-merger
This page needs some work now that Heinz is just a brand of Kraft Heinz and the H. J. Heinz Company no longer exists. Gotrees4 (talk) 09:30, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:Heinz


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Huffman coding

[[Image:Huffman tree 2.svg|thumb|Huffman tree generated from the exact frequencies of the text "this is an example of a huffman tree". Encoding the sentence with this code requires 135 (or 147) bits, as opposed to 288 (or 180) bits if 36 characters of 8 (or 5) bits were used (This assumes that the code tree structure is known to the decoder and thus does not need to be counted as part of the transmitted information). The frequencies and codes of each character are shown in the accompanying table.

]] In computer science and information theory, a Huffman code is a particular type of optimal prefix code that is commonly used for lossless data compression. The process of finding or using such a code is Huffman coding, an algorithm developed by David A. Huffman while he was a Sc.D. student at MIT, and published in the 1952 paper "A Method for the Construction of Minimum-Redundancy Codes".

The output from Huffman's algorithm can be viewed as a variable-length code table for encoding a source symbol (such as a character in a file). The algorithm derives this table from the estimated probability or frequency of occurrence (weight) for each possible value of the source symbol. As in other entropy encoding methods, more common symbols are generally represented using fewer bits than less common symbols. Huffman's method can be efficiently implemented, finding a code in time linear to the number of input weights if these weights are sorted. However, although optimal among methods encoding symbols separately, Huffman coding is not always optimal among all compression methods - it is replaced with arithmetic coding or asymmetric numeral systems if a better compression ratio is required.

History
In 1951, David A. Huffman and his MIT information theory classmates were given the choice of a term paper or a final exam. The professor, Robert M. Fano, assigned a term paper on the problem of finding the most efficient binary code. Huffman, unable to prove any codes were the most efficient, was about to give up and start studying for the final when he hit upon the idea of using a frequency-sorted binary tree and quickly proved this method the most efficient.

In doing so, Huffman outdid Fano, who had worked with Claude Shannon to develop a similar code. Building the tree from the bottom up guaranteed optimality, unlike the top-down approach of Shannon–Fano coding.

Terminology
Huffman coding uses a specific method for choosing the representation for each symbol, resulting in a prefix code (sometimes called "prefix-free codes", that is, the bit string representing some particular symbol is never a prefix of the bit string representing any other symbol). Huffman coding is such a widespread method for creating prefix codes that the term "Huffman code" is widely used as a synonym for "prefix code" even when such a code is not produced by Huffman's algorithm.

Informal description

 * Given: A set of symbols and their weights (usually proportional to probabilities).
 * Find: A prefix-free binary code (a set of codewords) with minimum expected codeword length (equivalently, a tree with minimum weighted path length from the root).

Formalized description
Input.

Alphabet $$A = (a_{1},a_{2},\dots,a_{n})$$, which is the symbol alphabet of size $$n$$.

Tuple $$W = (w_{1},w_{2},\dots,w_{n})$$, which is the tuple of the (positive) symbol weights (usually proportional to probabilities), i.e. $$w_{i} = \operatorname{weight}\left(a_{i}\right),\, i \in \{1, 2, \dots, n\}$$.

Output.

Code $$C\left(W\right) = (c_{1},c_{2},\dots,c_{n})$$, which is the tuple of (binary) codewords, where $$c_{i}$$ is the codeword for $$a_{i},\, i \in \{1, 2, \dots, n\}$$.

Goal.

Let $L\left(C\left(W\right)\right) = \sum_{i=1}^{n} {w_{i}\operatorname{length}\left(c_{i}\right)}$ be the weighted path length of code $$C$$. Condition: $$L\left(C\left(W\right)\right) \leq L\left(T\left(W\right)\right)$$ for any code $$T\left(W\right)$$.

Example
We give an example of the result of Huffman coding for a code with five characters and given weights. We will not verify that it minimizes L over all codes, but we will compute L and compare it to the Shannon entropy H of the given set of weights; the result is nearly optimal.

For any code that is biunique, meaning that the code is uniquely decodeable, the sum of the probability budgets across all symbols is always less than or equal to one. In this example, the sum is strictly equal to one; as a result, the code is termed a complete code. If this is not the case, one can always derive an equivalent code by adding extra symbols (with associated null probabilities), to make the code complete while keeping it biunique.

As defined by Shannon (1948), the information content h (in bits) of each symbol ai with non-null probability is

 * $$h(a_i) = \log_2{1 \over w_i}. $$

The entropy H (in bits) is the weighted sum, across all symbols $a_{i}$ with non-zero probability $w_{i}$, of the information content of each symbol:

 * $$ H(A) = \sum_{w_i > 0} w_i h(a_i) = \sum_{w_i > 0} w_i \log_2{1 \over w_i} = - \sum_{w_i > 0} w_i \log_2{w_i}. $$

(Note: A symbol with zero probability has zero contribution to the entropy, since $$\lim_{w \to 0^+} w \log_2 w = 0$$. So for simplicity, symbols with zero probability can be left out of the formula above.)

As a consequence of Shannon's source coding theorem, the entropy is a measure of the smallest codeword length that is theoretically possible for the given alphabet with associated weights. In this example, the weighted average codeword length is 2.25 bits per symbol, only slightly larger than the calculated entropy of 2.205 bits per symbol. So not only is this code optimal in the sense that no other feasible code performs better, but it is very close to the theoretical limit established by Shannon.

In general, a Huffman code need not be unique. Thus the set of Huffman codes for a given probability distribution is a non-empty subset of the codes minimizing $$L(C)$$ for that probability distribution. (However, for each minimizing codeword length assignment, there exists at least one Huffman code with those lengths.)

Compression

The technique works by creating a binary tree of nodes. These can be stored in a regular array, the size of which depends on the number of symbols, $$n$$. A node can be either a leaf node or an internal node. Initially, all nodes are leaf nodes, which contain the symbol itself, the weight (frequency of appearance) of the symbol and optionally, a link to a parent node which makes it easy to read the code (in reverse) starting from a leaf node. Internal nodes contain a weight, links to two child nodes and an optional link to a parent node. As a common convention, bit '0' represents following the left child and bit '1' represents following the right child. A finished tree has up to $$n$$ leaf nodes and $$n-1$$ internal nodes. A Huffman tree that omits unused symbols produces the most optimal code lengths.

The process begins with the leaf nodes containing the probabilities of the symbol they represent. Then, the process takes the two nodes with smallest probability, and creates a new internal node having these two nodes as children. The weight of the new node is set to the sum of the weight of the children. We then apply the process again, on the new internal node and on the remaining nodes (i.e., we exclude the two leaf nodes), we repeat this process until only one node remains, which is the root of the Huffman tree.

The simplest construction algorithm uses a priority queue where the node with lowest probability is given highest priority:

 * 1) Create a leaf node for each symbol and add it to the priority queue.
 * 2) While there is more than one node in the queue:
 * 3) Remove the two nodes of highest priority (lowest probability) from the queue
 * 4) Create a new internal node with these two nodes as children and with probability equal to the sum of the two nodes' probabilities.
 * 5) Add the new node to the queue.
 * 6) The remaining node is the root node and the tree is complete.

Since efficient priority queue data structures require O(log n) time per insertion, and a tree with n leaves has 2n−1 nodes, this algorithm operates in O(n log n) time, where n is the number of symbols.

If the symbols are sorted by probability, there is a linear-time (O(n)) method to create a Huffman tree using two queues, the first one containing the initial weights (along with pointers to the associated leaves), and combined weights (along with pointers to the trees) being put in the back of the second queue. This assures that the lowest weight is always kept at the front of one of the two queues:

 * 1) Start with as many leaves as there are symbols.
 * 2) Enqueue all leaf nodes into the first queue (by probability in increasing order so that the least likely item is in the head of the queue).
 * 3) While there is more than one node in the queues:
 * 4) Dequeue the two nodes with the lowest weight by examining the fronts of both queues.
 * 5) Create a new internal node, with the two just-removed nodes as children (either node can be either child) and the sum of their weights as the new weight.
 * 6) Enqueue the new node into the rear of the second queue.
 * 7) The remaining node is the root node; the tree has now been generated.

Once the Huffman tree has been generated, it is traversed to generate a dictionary which maps the symbols to binary codes as follows:

 * 1) Start with current node set to the root.
 * 2) If node is not a leaf node, label the edge to the left child as 0 and the edge to the right child as 1. Repeat the process at both the left child and the right child.

The final encoding of any symbol is then read by a concatenation of the labels on the edges along the path from the root node to the symbol.

In many cases, time complexity is not very important in the choice of algorithm here, since n here is the number of symbols in the alphabet, which is typically a very small number (compared to the length of the message to be encoded); whereas complexity analysis concerns the behavior when n grows to be very large.

It is generally beneficial to minimize the variance of codeword length. For example, a communication buffer receiving Huffman-encoded data may need to be larger to deal with especially long symbols if the tree is especially unbalanced. To minimize variance, simply break ties between queues by choosing the item in the first queue. This modification will retain the mathematical optimality of the Huffman coding while both minimizing variance and minimizing the length of the longest character code.

Decompression
Generally speaking, the process of decompression is simply a matter of translating the stream of prefix codes to individual byte values, usually by traversing the Huffman tree node by node as each bit is read from the input stream (reaching a leaf node necessarily terminates the search for that particular byte value). Before this can take place, however, the Huffman tree must be somehow reconstructed. In the simplest case, where character frequencies are fairly predictable, the tree can be preconstructed (and even statistically adjusted on each compression cycle) and thus reused every time, at the expense of at least some measure of compression efficiency. Otherwise, the information to reconstruct the tree must be sent a priori. A naive approach might be to prepend the frequency count of each character to the compression stream. Unfortunately, the overhead in such a case could amount to several kilobytes, so this method has little practical use. If the data is compressed using canonical encoding, the compression model can be precisely reconstructed with just $$B\cdot 2^B$$ bits of information (where $B$ is the number of bits per symbol). Another method is to simply prepend the Huffman tree, bit by bit, to the output stream. For example, assuming that the value of 0 represents a parent node and 1 a leaf node, whenever the latter is encountered the tree building routine simply reads the next 8 bits to determine the character value of that particular leaf. The process continues recursively until the last leaf node is reached; at that point, the Huffman tree will thus be faithfully reconstructed. The overhead using such a method ranges from roughly 2 to 320 bytes (assuming an 8-bit alphabet). Many other techniques are possible as well. In any case, since the compressed data can include unused "trailing bits" the decompressor must be able to determine when to stop producing output. This can be accomplished by either transmitting the length of the decompressed data along with the compression model or by defining a special code symbol to signify the end of input (the latter method can adversely affect code length optimality, however).

Main properties
The probabilities used can be generic ones for the application domain that are based on average experience, or they can be the actual frequencies found in the text being compressed. This requires that a frequency table must be stored with the compressed text. See the Decompression section above for more information about the various techniques employed for this purpose.

Optimality
Huffman's original algorithm is optimal for a symbol-by-symbol coding with a known input probability distribution, i.e., separately encoding unrelated symbols in such a data stream. However, it is not optimal when the symbol-by-symbol restriction is dropped, or when the probability mass functions are unknown. Also, if symbols are not independent and identically distributed, a single code may be insufficient for optimality. Other methods such as arithmetic coding often have better compression capability.

Although both aforementioned methods can combine an arbitrary number of symbols for more efficient coding and generally adapt to the actual input statistics, arithmetic coding does so without significantly increasing its computational or algorithmic complexities (though the simplest version is slower and more complex than Huffman coding). Such flexibility is especially useful when input probabilities are not precisely known or vary significantly within the stream. However, Huffman coding is usually faster and arithmetic coding was historically a subject of some concern over patent issues. Thus many technologies have historically avoided arithmetic coding in favor of Huffman and other prefix coding techniques. As of mid-2010, the most commonly used techniques for this alternative to Huffman coding have passed into the public domain as the early patents have expired.

For a set of symbols with a uniform probability distribution and a number of members which is a power of two, Huffman coding is equivalent to simple binary block encoding, e.g., ASCII coding. This reflects the fact that compression is not possible with such an input, no matter what the compression method, i.e., doing nothing to the data is the optimal thing to do.

Huffman coding is optimal among all methods in any case where each input symbol is a known independent and identically distributed random variable having a probability that is dyadic. Prefix codes, and thus Huffman coding in particular, tend to have inefficiency on small alphabets, where probabilities often fall between these optimal (dyadic) points. The worst case for Huffman coding can happen when the probability of the most likely symbol far exceeds 2−1 = 0.5, making the upper limit of inefficiency unbounded.

There are two related approaches for getting around this particular inefficiency while still using Huffman coding. Combining a fixed number of symbols together ("blocking") often increases (and never decreases) compression. As the size of the block approaches infinity, Huffman coding theoretically approaches the entropy limit, i.e., optimal compression. However, blocking arbitrarily large groups of symbols is impractical, as the complexity of a Huffman code is linear in the number of possibilities to be encoded, a number that is exponential in the size of a block. This limits the amount of blocking that is done in practice.

A practical alternative, in widespread use, is run-length encoding. This technique adds one step in advance of entropy coding, specifically counting (runs) of repeated symbols, which are then encoded. For the simple case of Bernoulli processes, Golomb coding is optimal among prefix codes for coding run length, a fact proved via the techniques of Huffman coding. A similar approach is taken by fax machines using modified Huffman coding. However, run-length coding is not as adaptable to as many input types as other compression technologies.

Variations
Many variations of Huffman coding exist, some of which use a Huffman-like algorithm, and others of which find optimal prefix codes (while, for example, putting different restrictions on the output). Note that, in the latter case, the method need not be Huffman-like, and, indeed, need not even be polynomial time.

n-ary Huffman coding
The n-ary Huffman algorithm uses the {0, 1,..., n − 1} alphabet to encode message and build an n-ary tree. This approach was considered by Huffman in his original paper. The same algorithm applies as for binary (n = 2) codes, except that the n least probable symbols are taken together, instead of just the 2 least probable. Note that for n greater than 2, not all sets of source words can properly form an n-ary tree for Huffman coding. In these cases, additional 0-probability place holders must be added. This is because the tree must form an n to 1 contractor; for binary coding, this is a 2 to 1 contractor, and any sized set can form such a contractor. If the number of source words is congruent to 1 modulo n−1, then the set of source words will form a proper Huffman tree.

Adaptive Huffman coding
A variation called adaptive Huffman coding involves calculating the probabilities dynamically based on recent actual frequencies in the sequence of source symbols, and changing the coding tree structure to match the updated probability estimates. It is used rarely in practice, since the cost of updating the tree makes it slower than optimized adaptive arithmetic coding, which is more flexible and has better compression.

Huffman template algorithm
Most often, the weights used in implementations of Huffman coding represent numeric probabilities, but the algorithm given above does not require this; it requires only that the weights form a totally ordered commutative monoid, meaning a way to order weights and to add them. The Huffman template algorithm enables one to use any kind of weights (costs, frequencies, pairs of weights, non-numerical weights) and one of many combining methods (not just addition). Such algorithms can solve other minimization problems, such as minimizing $$\max_i\left[w_{i}+\mathrm{length}\left(c_{i}\right)\right]$$, a problem first applied to circuit design.

Length-limited Huffman coding/minimum variance Huffman coding
Length-limited Huffman coding is a variant where the goal is still to achieve a minimum weighted path length, but there is an additional restriction that the length of each codeword must be less than a given constant. The package-merge algorithm solves this problem with a simple greedy approach very similar to that used by Huffman's algorithm. Its time complexity is $$O(nL)$$, where $$L$$ is the maximum length of a codeword. No algorithm is known to solve this problem in $O(n)$ or $O(n\log n)$ time, unlike the presorted and unsorted conventional Huffman problems, respectively.

Huffman coding with unequal letter costs
In the standard Huffman coding problem, it is assumed that each symbol in the set that the code words are constructed from has an equal cost to transmit: a code word whose length is N digits will always have a cost of N, no matter how many of those digits are 0s, how many are 1s, etc. When working under this assumption, minimizing the total cost of the message and minimizing the total number of digits are the same thing.

Huffman coding with unequal letter costs is the generalization without this assumption: the letters of the encoding alphabet may have non-uniform lengths, due to characteristics of the transmission medium. An example is the encoding alphabet of Morse code, where a 'dash' takes longer to send than a 'dot', and therefore the cost of a dash in transmission time is higher. The goal is still to minimize the weighted average codeword length, but it is no longer sufficient just to minimize the number of symbols used by the message. No algorithm is known to solve this in the same manner or with the same efficiency as conventional Huffman coding, though it has been solved by Karp whose solution has been refined for the case of integer costs by Golin.

Optimal alphabetic binary trees (Hu–Tucker coding)
In the standard Huffman coding problem, it is assumed that any codeword can correspond to any input symbol. In the alphabetic version, the alphabetic order of inputs and outputs must be identical. Thus, for example, $$A = \left\{a,b,c\right\}$$ could not be assigned code $$H\left(A,C\right) = \left\{00,1,01\right\}$$, but instead should be assigned either $$H\left(A,C\right) =\left\{00,01,1\right\}$$ or $$H\left(A,C\right) = \left\{0,10,11\right\}$$. This is also known as the Hu–Tucker problem, after T. C. Hu and Alan Tucker, the authors of the paper presenting the first $O(n\log n)$-time solution to this optimal binary alphabetic problem, which has some similarities to Huffman algorithm, but is not a variation of this algorithm. A later method, the Garsia–Wachs algorithm of Adriano Garsia and Michelle L. Wachs (1977), uses simpler logic to perform the same comparisons in the same total time bound. These optimal alphabetic binary trees are often used as binary search trees.

The canonical Huffman code
If weights corresponding to the alphabetically ordered inputs are in numerical order, the Huffman code has the same lengths as the optimal alphabetic code, which can be found from calculating these lengths, rendering Hu–Tucker coding unnecessary. The code resulting from numerically (re-)ordered input is sometimes called the canonical Huffman code and is often the code used in practice, due to ease of encoding/decoding. The technique for finding this code is sometimes called Huffman–Shannon–Fano coding, since it is optimal like Huffman coding, but alphabetic in weight probability, like Shannon–Fano coding. The Huffman–Shannon–Fano code corresponding to the example is $$\{000,001,01,10,11\}$$, which, having the same codeword lengths as the original solution, is also optimal. But in canonical Huffman code, the result is $$\{110,111,00,01,10\}$$.

Applications
Arithmetic coding and Huffman coding produce equivalent results — achieving entropy — when every symbol has a probability of the form 1/2k. In other circumstances, arithmetic coding can offer better compression than Huffman coding because — intuitively — its "code words" can have effectively non-integer bit lengths, whereas code words in prefix codes such as Huffman codes can only have an integer number of bits. Therefore, a code word of length k only optimally matches a symbol of probability 1/2k and other probabilities are not represented optimally; whereas the code word length in arithmetic coding can be made to exactly match the true probability of the symbol. This difference is especially striking for small alphabet sizes.

Prefix codes nevertheless remain in wide use because of their simplicity, high speed, and lack of patent coverage. They are often used as a "back-end" to other compression methods. Deflate (PKZIP's algorithm) and multimedia codecs such as JPEG and MP3 have a front-end model and quantization followed by the use of prefix codes; these are often called "Huffman codes" even though most applications use pre-defined variable-length codes rather than codes designed using Huffman's algorithm.

title: Huffman coding