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Church of the Holy Sepulchre

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, also known as the Church of the Resurrection, is a fourth-century church in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem. The church is also the seat of the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem It is considered the holiest site in Christianity in the world and has been the most important pilgrimage site for Christians since the fourth century.

According to traditions dating to the fourth century, the church contains both the site where Jesus was crucified at Calvary, or Golgotha, and the location of Jesus' empty tomb, where he was buried and resurrected. Both locations are considered immensely holy sites by Christians. In earlier times, the site was used as a Jewish burial ground, upon which a pagan temple was built. The church and rotunda was built under Constantine in the 4th century and destroyed by al-Hakim in 1009. Al-Hakim's son allowed Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos to reconstruct the church, which was completed in 1048. After it was captured by the Crusaders in 1099, it continued to undergo modifications, resulting in a significant departure from the original structure. Several renovations and restorations were made under the Ottomans. The tomb itself is enclosed by a 19th-century shrine called the Aedicule.

Within the church proper are the last four stations of the Cross of the Via Dolorosa, representing the final episodes of the Passion of Jesus. The church has been a major Christian pilgrimage destination since its creation in the fourth century, as the traditional site of the resurrection of Christ, thus its original Greek name, Church of the Anastasis ('Resurrection').

The Status Quo, an understanding between religious communities dating to 1757, applies to the site. Control of the church itself is shared among several Christian denominations and secular entities in complicated arrangements essentially unchanged for over 160 years, and some for much longer. The main denominations sharing property over parts of the church are the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Apostolic, Coptic, Syriac, and Ethiopian Orthodox churches.

Name
The church was named either for the Resurrection of Jesus, or for his tomb, which is at its focal point.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is also known as the Basilica of the Holy Sepulchre and the Holy Sepulchre.

Eastern Christians also call it the Church of the Resurrection and the Church of the Anastasis, Anastasis being Greek for Resurrection.

Background (1st–4th centuries)
After the siege of Jerusalem in AD 70 during the First Jewish–Roman War, Jerusalem had been reduced to ruins. In AD 130, the Roman emperor Hadrian began the building of a Roman colony, the new city of Aelia Capitolina, on the site. About AD 135, he ordered that a cave containing a rock-cut tomb be filled in to make a flat foundation for a temple dedicated to Jupiter or Venus. The temple remained until the early fourth century.

Constantine and Macarius: context for the first sanctuary
After seeing a vision of a cross in the sky in 312, Constantine the Great began to favour Christianity and signed the Edict of Milan legalizing the religion. The Bishop of Jerusalem Macarius asked Constantine for permission to dig for the tomb. With the help of Eusebius (a Bishop of Caesarea) and Macarius, three crosses were found near a tomb; one, which was said to have cured people of death, was presumed to be the True Cross, on which Jesus was crucified, leading the Romans to believe that they had found Calvary.

About 326, Constantine ordered that the temple to Jupiter or Venus be replaced by a church. After the temple was torn down and its ruins removed, the soil was removed from the cave, revealing a rock-cut tomb that Macarius identified as the burial site of Jesus.

First sanctuary (4th century)
A shrine was built on the site of the tomb Macarius had identified as that of Jesus, enclosing the rock tomb walls within its own.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, planned by the architect Zenobius, was built as separate constructs over two holy sites:

 * 1) a rotunda called the  ('Resurrection'), where Macarius believed Jesus to have been buried,  and;
 * 2) the great basilica (also known as Martyrium), across a courtyard to the east (an enclosed colonnaded atrium, known as the Triportico) with the traditional site of Calvary in one corner.

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre site has been recognized since early in the fourth century as the place where Jesus was crucified, buried, and rose from the dead. The church was consecrated on 13 September 335.

In 327, Constantine and Helena separately commissioned the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem to commemorate the birth of Jesus.

Damage and destruction (614–1009)
The Constantinian sanctuary in Jerusalem was destroyed by a fire in May of 614, when the Sassanid Empire, under Khosrau II, invaded Jerusalem and captured the True Cross. In 630, the Emperor Heraclius rebuilt the church after recapturing the city.

After Jerusalem came under Islamic rule, it remained a Christian church, with the early Muslim rulers protecting the city's Christian sites, prohibiting their destruction or use as living quarters. A story reports that the caliph Umar ibn al-Khattab visited the church and stopped to pray on the balcony, but at the time of prayer, turned away from the church and prayed outside. He feared that future generations would misinterpret this gesture, taking it as a pretext to turn the church into a mosque. Eutychius of Alexandria adds that Umar wrote a decree saying that Muslims would not inhabit this location. The building suffered severe damage from an earthquake in 746.

Early in the ninth century, another earthquake damaged the dome of the Anastasis. The damage was repaired in 810 by Patriarch Thomas I. In 841, the church suffered a fire. In 935, the Christians prevented the construction of a Muslim mosque adjacent to the Church. In 938, a new fire damaged the inside of the basilica and came close to the rotunda. In 966, due to a defeat of Muslim armies in the region of Syria, a riot broke out, which was followed by reprisals. The basilica was burned again. The doors and roof were burnt, and Patriarch John VII was murdered.

On 18 October 1009, Fatimid caliph al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the complete destruction of the church as part of a more general campaign against Christian places of worship in Palestine and Egypt. The damage was extensive, with few parts of the early church remaining, and the roof of the rock-cut tomb damaged; the original shrine was destroyed. Some partial repairs followed. Christian Europe reacted with shock: it was a spur to expulsions of Jews and, later on, the Crusades.

Reconstruction (11th century)
In wide-ranging negotiations between the Fatimids and the Byzantine Empire in 1027–1028, an agreement was reached whereby the new Caliph Ali az-Zahir (al-Hakim's son) agreed to allow the rebuilding and redecoration of the church. The rebuilding was finally completed during the tenures of Emperor Constantine IX Monomachos and Patriarch Nicephorus of Jerusalem in 1048. As a concession, the mosque in Constantinople was reopened and the khutba sermons were to be pronounced in az-Zahir's name. Muslim sources say a by-product of the agreement was the renunciation of Islam by many Christians who had been forced to convert under al-Hakim's persecutions. In addition, the Byzantines, while releasing 5,000 Muslim prisoners, made demands for the restoration of other churches destroyed by al-Hakim and the reestablishment of a patriarch in Jerusalem. Contemporary sources credit the emperor with spending vast sums in an effort to restore the Church of the Holy Sepulchre after this agreement was made. Still, "a total replacement was far beyond available resources. The new construction was concentrated on the rotunda and its surrounding buildings: the great basilica remained in ruins."

The rebuilt church site consisted of "a court open to the sky, with five small chapels attached to it." The chapels were east of the court of resurrection (when reconstructed, the location of the tomb was under open sky), where the western wall of the great basilica had been. They commemorated scenes from the passion, such as the location of the prison of Christ and his flagellation, and presumably were so placed because of the difficulties of free movement among shrines in the city streets. The dedication of these chapels indicates the importance of the pilgrims' devotion to the suffering of Christ. They have been described as "a sort of Via Dolorosa in miniature" since little or no rebuilding took place on the site of the great basilica. Western pilgrims to Jerusalem during the 11th century found much of the sacred site in ruins. Control of Jerusalem, and thereby the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, continued to change hands several times between the Fatimids and the Seljuk Turks (loyal to the Abbasid caliph in Baghdad) until the Crusaders' arrival in 1099.

Background
Many historians maintain that the main concern of Pope Urban II, when calling for the First Crusade, was the threat to Constantinople from the Seljuk invasion of Asia Minor in response to the appeal of Byzantine Emperor Alexios I Komnenos. Historians agree that the fate of Jerusalem and thereby the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was also of concern, if not the immediate goal of papal policy in 1095. The idea of taking Jerusalem gained more focus as the Crusade was underway. The rebuilt church site was taken from the Fatimids (who had recently taken it from the Abbasids) by the knights of the First Crusade on 15 July 1099.

The First Crusade was envisioned as an armed pilgrimage, and no crusader could consider his journey complete unless he had prayed as a pilgrim at the Holy Sepulchre. The classical theory is that Crusader leader Godfrey of Bouillon, who became the first Latin ruler of Jerusalem, decided not to use the title "king" during his lifetime, and declared himself Advocatus Sancti Sepulchri ('Protector [or Defender] of the Holy Sepulchre').

According to the German priest and pilgrim Ludolf von Sudheim, the keys of the Chapel of the Holy Sepulchre were in hands of the "ancient Georgians", and the food, alms, candles and oil for lamps were given to them by the pilgrims at the south door of the church.

Crusaders: reconstruction (12th century) and ownership
By the Crusader period, a cistern under the former basilica was rumoured to have been where Helena had found the True Cross, and began to be venerated as such; the cistern later became the Chapel of the Invention of the Cross, but there is no evidence of the site's identification before the 11th century, and modern archaeological investigation has now dated the cistern to 11th-century repairs by Monomachos.

William of Tyre, chronicler of the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem, reports on the rebuilding of the church in the mid-12th century. The Crusaders investigated the eastern ruins on the site, occasionally excavating through the rubble, and while attempting to reach the cistern, they discovered part of the original ground level of Hadrian's temple enclosure; they transformed this space into a chapel dedicated to Helena, widening their original excavation tunnel into a proper staircase.

The Crusaders began to refurnish the church in Romanesque style and added a bell tower. These renovations unified the small chapels on the site and were completed during the reign of Queen Melisende in 1149, placing all the holy places under one roof for the first time.

The church became the seat of the first Latin patriarchs and the site of the kingdom's scriptorium.

Eight 11th- and 12th-century Crusader leaders (Godfrey, Baldwin I, Baldwin II, Fulk, Baldwin III, Amalric, Baldwin IV and Baldwin V – the first eight rulers of the Kingdom of Jerusalem) were buried in the south transept and inside the Chapel of Adam. The royal tombs were looted during the Khwarizmian sack of Jerusalem in 1244 but probably remained mostly intact until 1808 when a fire damaged the church. The tombs may have been destroyed by the fire, or during renovations by the Greek Orthodox custodians of the church in 1809–1810. The remains of the kings may still be in unmarked pits under the church's pavement.

The church was lost to Saladin, along with the rest of the city, in 1187, although the treaty established after the Third Crusade allowed Christian pilgrims to visit the site. Emperor Frederick II (r. 1220–50) regained the city and the church by treaty in the 13th century while under a ban of excommunication, with the consequence that the holiest church in Christianity was laid under interdict. The church seems to have been largely in the hands of Greek Orthodox patriarch Athanasius II of Jerusalem (c. 1231–47) during the last period of Latin control over Jerusalem. Both city and church were captured by the Khwarezmians in 1244.

Ottoman period
There was certainly a recognisable Nestorian (Church of the East) presence at the Holy Sepulchre from the years 1348 through 1575, as contemporary Franciscan accounts indicate. The Franciscan friars renovated the church in 1555, as it had been neglected despite increased numbers of pilgrims. The Franciscans rebuilt the Aedicule, extending the structure to create an antechamber. A marble shrine commissioned by Friar Boniface of Ragusa was placed to envelop the remains of Christ's tomb, probably to prevent pilgrims from touching the original rock or taking small pieces as souvenirs. A marble slab was placed over the limestone burial bed where Jesus's body is believed to have lain.

After the renovation of 1555, control of the church oscillated between the Franciscans and the Orthodox, depending on which community could obtain a favourable firman from the "Sublime Porte" at a particular time, often through outright bribery. Violent clashes were not uncommon. There was no agreement about this question, although it was discussed at the negotiations to the Treaty of Karlowitz in 1699. During the Holy Week of 1757, Orthodox Christians reportedly took over some of the Franciscan-controlled church. This may have been the cause of the sultan's firman (decree) later developed into the Status Quo.

A fire severely damaged the structure again in 1808, causing the dome of the Rotunda to collapse and smashing the Aedicule's exterior decoration. The Rotunda and the Aedicule's exterior were rebuilt in 1809–10 by architect Nikolaos Ch. Komnenos of Mytilene in the contemporary Ottoman Baroque style. The interior of the antechamber, now known as the Chapel of the Angel, was partly rebuilt to a square ground plan in place of the previously semicircular western end.

Another decree in 1853 from the sultan solidified the existing territorial division among the communities and solidified the Status Quo for arrangements to "remain in their present state", requiring consensus to make even minor changes.

The dome was restored by Catholics, Greeks, and Turks in 1868, being made of iron ever since.

British Mandate period
By the time of the British Mandate for Palestine following the end of World War I, the cladding of red limestone applied to the Aedicule by Komnenos had deteriorated badly and was detaching from the underlying structure; from 1947 until restoration work in 2016–17, it was held in place with an exterior scaffolding of iron girders installed by the British authorities.

After the care of the British Empire, the Church of England had an important role in the appropriation of the Holy Sepulcher, such as funds for the maintenance of external infrastructures, and the abolition of territorial claims near the Temple of the Holy Sepulcher, the Protestant Church allowed to carry out the elimination of taxes from the Holy Sepulcher, currently the Anglican and Lutheran dioceses of Jerusalem are allowed to attend Armenian cults.

Jordanian and Israeli periods

In 1948, Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan and where the church was located, in the Old City, were made part of Jordan. In 1967, Israeli forces captured East Jerusalem in the Six Day War, and that area has remained under Israeli control ever since. Under Israeli rule, legal arrangements relating to the churches of East Jerusalem were maintained in coordination with the Jordanian government. The dome at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was restored again in 1994–97 as part of extensive modern renovations that have been ongoing since 1959. During the 1970–78 restoration works and excavations inside the building, and under the nearby Muristan bazaar, it was found that the area was originally a quarry, from which white meleke limestone was struck.

Chapel of St. Vartan
East of the Chapel of Saint Helena, the excavators discovered a void containing a second-century drawing of a Roman pilgrim ship, two low walls supporting the platform of Hadrian's second-century temple, and a higher fourth-century wall built to support Constantine's basilica. After the excavations of the early 1970s, the Armenian authorities converted this archaeological space into the Chapel of Saint Vartan, and created an artificial walkway over the quarry on the north of the chapel, so that the new chapel could be accessed (by permission) from the Chapel of Saint Helena.

Aedicule restoration
After seven decades of being held together by steel girders, the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) declared the visibly deteriorating Aedicule structure unsafe. A restoration of the Aedicule was agreed upon and executed from May 2016 to March 2017. Much of the $4 million project was funded by the World Monuments Fund, as well as $1.3 million from Mica Ertegun and a significant sum from King Abdullah II of Jordan. The existence of the original limestone cave walls within the Aedicule was confirmed, and a window was created to view this from the inside. The presence of moisture led to the discovery of an underground shaft resembling an escape tunnel carved into the bedrock, seeming to lead from the tomb. For the first time since at least 1555, on 26 October 2016, marble cladding that protects the supposed burial bed of Jesus was removed. Members of the National Technical University of Athens were present. Initially, only a layer of debris was visible. This was cleared in the next day, and a partially broken marble slab with a Crusader-style cross carved was revealed. By the night of 28 October, the original limestone burial bed was shown to be intact. The tomb was resealed shortly thereafter. Mortar from just above the burial bed was later dated to the mid-fourth century.

2020 pandemic
On 25 March 2020, Israeli health officials ordered the site closed to the public due to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the keeper of the keys, it was the first such closure since 1349, during the Black Death. Clerics continued regular prayers inside the building, and it reopened to visitors two months later, on 24 May.

Crusader altar slab discovered (2022)
During church renovations in 2022, a stone slab covered in modern graffiti was moved from a wall, revealing Cosmatesque-style decoration on one face. According to an IAA archaeologist, the decoration was once inlaid with pieces of glass and fine marble; it indicates that the relic was the front of the church's high altar from the Crusader era (c. 1149), which was later used by the Greek Orthodox until being damaged in the 1808 fire.

Parvis (courtyard)

The courtyard facing the entrance to the church is known as the parvis. Two streets open into the parvis: St Helena Road (west) and Suq ed-Dabbagha (east). Around the parvis are a few smaller structures.

South of the parvis, opposite the church:
 * Broken columns—once forming part of an arcade—stand opposite the church, at the top of a short descending staircase stretching over the entire breadth of the parvis. In the 13th century, the tops of the columns were removed and sent to Mecca by the Khwarezmids.
 * The Gethsemane Metochion, a small Greek Orthodox monastery (metochion).

On the eastern side of the parvis, south to north: North of the parvis, in front of the church façade or against it:
 * The Monastery of St Abraham (Greek Orthodox), next to the Suq ed-Dabbagha entrance to the parvis.
 * The Chapel of St John the Evangelist (Armenian Orthodox)
 * The Chapel of St Michael and the Chapel of the Four Living Creatures (both are disputed between the Copts and Ethiopians), giving access to Deir es-Sultan (also disputed), a rooftop monastery surrounding the dome of the Chapel of St Helena.
 * Chapel of the Franks (Chapel of Our Lady of Sorrows): a blue-domed Roman Catholic Crusader chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows, which once provided exclusive access to Calvary. The chapel marks the 10th Station of the Cross (the stripping of Jesus's garments).
 * Oratory of St. Mary of Egypt: a Greek Orthodox oratory and chapel, directly beneath the Chapel of the Franks, dedicated to St. Mary of Egypt.
 * The tomb (including a ledgerstone) of Philip d'Aubigny aka Philip Daubeney (died 1236), a knight, tutor, and royal councillor to Henry III of England and signer of Magna Carta—is placed in front of, and between, the church's two original entrance doors, of which the eastern one is walled up. It is one of the few tombs of crusaders and other Europeans not removed from the Church after the Khwarizmian capture of Jerusalem in 1244. In the 1900s, during a fight between the Greeks and Latins, some monks damaged the tomb by throwing stones from the roof. A stone marker was placed on his tomb in 1925, sheltered by a wooden trapdoor that hides it from view.

A group of three chapels borders the parvis on its west side. They originally formed the baptistery complex of the Constantinian church. The southernmost chapel was the vestibule, the middle chapel the baptistery, and the north chapel the chamber in which the patriarch chrismated the newly baptized before leading them into the rotunda north of this complex. Now they are dedicated as (from south to north)
 * The Chapel of St. James the Just (Greek Orthodox),
 * The Chapel of St. John the Baptist (Greek Orthodox),
 * The Chapel of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste (Greek Orthodox; at the base of the bell tower).

Bell tower
The 12th-century Crusader bell tower is just south of the Rotunda, to the left of the entrance. Its upper level was lost in a 1545 collapse. In 1719, another two storeys were lost.

Façade and entrance

The wooden doors that compose the main entrance are the original, highly carved arched doors. Today, only the left-hand entrance is currently accessible, as the right doorway has long since been bricked up. The entrance to the church leads to the south transept, through the crusader façade in the parvis of a larger courtyard. This is found past a group of streets winding through the outer Via Dolorosa by way of a souq in the Muristan. This narrow way of access to such a large structure has proven to be hazardous at times. For example, when a fire broke out in 1840, dozens of pilgrims were trampled to death.

According to their own family lore, the Muslim Nuseibeh family has been responsible for opening the door as an impartial party to the church's denominations already since the seventh century. However, they themselves admit that the documents held by various Christian denominations only mention their role since the 12th century, in the time of Saladin, which is the date more generally accepted. After retaking Jerusalem from the Crusaders in 1187, Saladin entrusted the Joudeh family with the key to the church, which is made of iron and 30 cm long; the Nuseibehs either became or remained its doorkeepers.

The 'immovable ladder' stands beneath a window on the façade.

Calvary (Golgotha)

Just inside the church entrance is a stairway leading up to Calvary (Golgotha), traditionally regarded as the site of Jesus's crucifixion and the most lavishly decorated part of the church. The exit is via another stairway opposite the first, leading down to the ambulatory. Golgotha and its chapels are just south of the main altar of the catholicon.

Calvary is split into two chapels: one Greek Orthodox and one Catholic, each with its own altar. On the left (north) side, the Greek Orthodox chapel's altar is placed over the supposed rock of Calvary (the 12th Station of the Cross), which can be touched through a hole in the floor beneath the altar. The rock can be seen under protective glass on both sides of the altar. The softer surrounding stone was removed when the church was built. The Roman Catholic (Franciscan) Chapel of the Nailing of the Cross (the 11th Station of the Cross) stretches to the south. Between the Catholic Altar of the Nailing to the Cross and the Orthodox altar is the Catholic Altar of the Stabat Mater, which has a statue of Mary with an 18th-century bust; this middle altar marks the 13th Station of the Cross.

On the ground floor, just underneath the Golgotha chapel, is the Chapel of Adam. According to tradition, Jesus was crucified over the place where Adam's skull was buried. According to some, the blood of Christ ran down the cross and through the rocks to fill Adam's skull. Through a window at the back of the 11th-century apse, the rock of Calvary can be seen with a crack traditionally held to be caused by the earthquake that followed Jesus's death; some scholars claim it is the result of quarrying against a natural flaw in the rock.

Behind the Chapel of Adam is the Greek Treasury (Treasury of the Greek Patriarch). Some of its relics, such as a 12th-century crystal mitre, were transferred to the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate Museum (the Patriarchal Museum) on Greek Orthodox Patriarchate Street.

Stone of Anointing

Just inside the entrance to the church is the Stone of Anointing (also Stone of the Anointing or Stone of Unction), which tradition holds to be where Jesus's body was prepared for burial by Joseph of Arimathea, though this tradition is only attested since the crusader era (notably by the Italian Dominican pilgrim Riccoldo da Monte di Croce in 1288), and the present stone was only added in the 1810 reconstruction.

The wall behind the stone is defined by its striking blue balconies and taphos symbol-bearing red banners (depicting the insignia of the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre), and is decorated with lamps. The modern mosaic along the wall depicts the anointing of Jesus's body, preceded on the right by the Descent from the Cross, and succeeded on the left by the Burial of Jesus.

The wall was a temporary addition to support the arch above it, which had been weakened after the damage in the 1808 fire; it blocks the view of the rotunda, separates the entrance from the catholicon, sits on top of four of the now empty and desecrated Crusader graves and is no longer structurally necessary. Opinions differ as to whether it is to be seen as the 13th Station of the Cross, which others identify as the lowering of Jesus from the cross and located between the 11th and 12th stations on Calvary.

The lamps that hang over the Stone of Unction, adorned with cross-bearing chain links, are contributed by Armenians, Copts, Greeks and Latins.

Immediately inside and to the left of the entrance is a bench (formerly a divan) that has traditionally been used by the church's Muslim doorkeepers, along with some Christian clergy, as well as electrical wiring. To the right of the entrance is a wall along the ambulatory containing the staircase leading to Golgotha. Further along the same wall is the entrance to the Chapel of Adam.

Rotunda and Aedicule
The rotunda is the building of the larger dome located on the far west side. In the centre of the rotunda is a small chapel called the Aedicule in English, from the Latin, in reference to a small shrine. The Aedicule has two rooms: the first holds a relic called the Angel's Stone, which is believed to be a fragment of the large stone that sealed the tomb; the second, smaller room contains the tomb of Jesus. Possibly to prevent pilgrims from removing bits of the original rock as souvenirs, by 1555, a surface of marble cladding was placed on the tomb to prevent further damage to the tomb. In October 2016, the top slab was pulled back to reveal an older, partially broken marble slab with a Crusader-style cross carved in it. Beneath it, the limestone burial bed was revealed to be intact.

Under the Status Quo, the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Armenian Apostolic Churches all have rights to the interior of the tomb, and all three communities celebrate the Divine Liturgy or Holy Mass there daily. It is also used for other ceremonies on special occasions, such as the Holy Saturday ceremony of the Holy Fire led by the Greek Orthodox patriarch (with the participation of the Coptic and Armenian patriarchs). To its rear, in the Coptic Chapel, constructed of iron latticework, lies the altar used by the Coptic Orthodox. Historically, the Georgians also retained the key to the Aedicule.

To the right of the sepulchre on the northwestern edge of the Rotunda is the Chapel of the Apparition, which is reserved for Roman Catholic use.

Catholicon

In the central nave of the Crusader-era church, just east of the larger rotunda, is the Crusader structure housing the main altar of the Church, today the Greek Orthodox catholicon. Its dome is 19.8 m in diameter, and is set directly over the centre of the transept crossing of the choir where the compas is situated, an omphalos ("navel") stone once thought to be the center of the world and still venerated as such by Orthodox Christians (associated with the site of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection).

Since 1996 this dome is topped by the monumental Golgotha Crucifix, which the Greek Patriarch Diodoros I of Jerusalem consecrated. It was at the initiative of Israeli professor Gustav Kühnel to erect a new crucifix at the church that would not only be worthy of the singularity of the site, but that would also become a symbol of the efforts of unity in the community of Christian faith.

The catholicon's iconostasis demarcates the Orthodox sanctuary behind it, to its east. The iconostasis is flanked to the front by two episcopal thrones: the southern seat (cathedra) is the patriarchal throne of the Greek Orthodox patriarch of Jerusalem, and the northern seat is for an archbishop or bishop. (There is also a popular claim that both are patriarchal thrones, with the northern one being for the patriarch of Antioch – which has been described as a misstatement, however.)

Armenian monastery south of the Aedicule
South of the Aedicule is the "Place of the Three Marys", marked by a stone canopy (the Station of the Holy Women) and a large modern wall mosaic. From here one can enter the Armenian monastery, which stretches over the ground and first upper floor of the church's southeastern part.

Syriac Chapel with Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea

West of the Aedicule, to the rear of the Rotunda, is the Syriac Chapel with the Tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, located in a Constantinian apse and containing an opening to an ancient Jewish rock-cut tomb. This chapel is where the Syriac Orthodox celebrate their Liturgy on Sundays.

The Syriac Orthodox Chapel of Saint Joseph of Arimathea and Saint Nicodemus. On Sundays and feast days it is furnished for the celebration of Mass. It is accessed from the Rotunda, by a door west of the Aedicule.

First-century tomb
On the far side of the chapel is the low entrance to an almost complete first-century Jewish tomb, initially holding six kokh-type funeral shafts radiating from a central chamber, two of which are still exposed. Although this space was discovered relatively recently and contains no identifying marks, some believe that Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus were buried here. Since Jews always buried their dead outside the city, the presence of this tomb seems to prove that the Holy Sepulchre site was outside the city walls at the time of the crucifixion.

Franciscan area north of the Aedicule

 * The Franciscan Chapel of St. Mary Magdalene – The chapel, an open area, indicates the place where Mary Magdalene met Jesus after his resurrection.
 * The Franciscan Chapel of the Apparition (Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament), directly north of the above – in memory of Jesus's meeting with his mother after the Resurrection, a non-scriptural tradition. Here stands a piece of an ancient column, allegedly part of the one Jesus was tied to during his scourging.

Arches of the Virgin
The Arches of the Virgin are seven arches (an arcade) at the northern end of the north transept, which is to the catholicon's north. Disputed by the Orthodox and the Latin, the area is used to store ladders.

Prison of Christ

In the northeast side of the complex, there is the Prison of Christ, alleged to be where Jesus was held. The Greek Orthodox are showing pilgrims yet another place where Jesus was allegedly held, the similarly named Prison of Christ in their, located near the Church of Ecce Homo, between the Second and Third Stations of the Via Dolorosa. The Armenians regard a recess in the Monastery of the Flagellation at the Second Station of the Via Dolorosa as the Prison of Christ. A cistern among the ruins beneath the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu on Mount Zion is also alleged to have been the Prison of Christ. To reconcile the traditions, some allege that Jesus was held in the Mount Zion cell in connection with his trial by the Jewish high priest, at the Praetorium in connection with his trial by the Roman governor Pilate, and near the Golgotha before crucifixion.

Ambulatory

The chapels in the ambulatory are, from north to south: the Greek Chapel of Saint Longinus (named after Longinus), the Armenian Chapel of the Division of Robes, the entrance to the Chapel of Saint Helena, and the Greek Chapel of the Derision.

Chapel of Saint Helena

 * Chapel of Saint Helena – between the Chapel of the Division of Robes and the Greek Chapel of the Derision are stairs descending to the Chapel of Saint Helena. The Armenians, who own it, call it the Chapel of St. Gregory the Illuminator, after the saint who brought Christianity to the Armenians.

Chapel of Saint Vartan

 * Chapel of St Vartan (or Vardan) Mamikonian – on the north side of the Chapel of Saint Helena is an ornate wrought iron door, beyond which a raised artificial platform affords views of the quarry, and which leads to the Chapel of Saint Vartan. The latter chapel contains archaeological remains from Hadrian's temple and Constantine's basilica. These areas are open only on request.

Chapel of the Invention of the Holy Cross

 * Chapel of the Invention of the Cross (named for the Invention (Finding) of the Holy Cross) – another set of 22 stairs from the Chapel of Saint Helena leads down to the Roman Catholic Chapel of the Invention of the Holy Cross, believed to be the place where the True Cross was found.

Ottoman decrees

An Ottoman decree of 1757 helped establish a status quo upholding the state of affairs for various Holy Land sites. The status quo was upheld in Sultan Abdülmecid I's firman (decree) of 1852/3, which pinned down the now-permanent statutes of property and the regulations concerning the roles of the different denominations and other custodians.

The primary custodians are the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Armenian Apostolic churches. The Greek Orthodox act through the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate as well as through the Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre. Roman Catholics act through the Franciscan Custody of the Holy Land. In the 19th century, the Coptic Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox also acquired lesser responsibilities, which include shrines and other structures in and around the building.

None of these controls the main entrance. In 1192, Saladin assigned door-keeping responsibilities to the Muslim Nusaybah family. The wooden doors that compose the main entrance are the original, highly carved doors. The Joudeh al-Goudia (al-Ghodayya) family were entrusted as custodian to the keys of the Holy Sepulchre by Saladin in 1187. Despite occasional disagreements, religious services take place in the Church with regularity and coexistence is generally peaceful. An example of concord between the Church custodians is the full restoration of the Aedicule from 2016 to 2017.

Interdenominational issues
The establishment of the modern Status Quo in 1853 did not halt controversy and occasional violence. In 1902, 18 friars were hospitalized and some monks were jailed after the Franciscans and Greeks disagreed over who could clean the lowest step of the Chapel of the Franks. In the aftermath, the Greek patriarch, Franciscan custos, Ottoman governor and French consul general signed a convention that both denominations could sweep it. On a hot summer day in 2002, a Coptic monk moved his chair from its agreed spot into the shade. This was interpreted as a hostile move by the Ethiopians and eleven were hospitalized after the resulting fight. In another incident in 2004, during Orthodox celebrations of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a door to the Franciscan chapel was left open. This was taken as a sign of disrespect by the Orthodox and a fistfight broke out. Some people were arrested, but no one was seriously injured.

On Palm Sunday, in April 2008, a brawl broke out when a Greek monk was ejected from the building by a rival faction. Police were called to the scene but were also attacked by the enraged brawlers. On Sunday, 9 November 2008, a clash erupted between Armenian and Greek monks during celebrations for the Feast of the Cross.

Tax and land disputes
In February 2018, the church was closed following a tax dispute over 152 million euros of uncollected taxes on church properties. The city hall stressed that the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and all other churches are exempt from the taxes, with the changes only affecting establishments like "hotels, halls and businesses" owned by the churches.

There was a lock-in protest against an Israeli legislative proposal which would expropriate church lands that had been sold to private companies since 2010, a measure which church leaders assert constitutes a serious violation of their property rights and the Status Quo. In a joint official statement the church authorities protested what they considered to be the peak of a systematic campaign in: "a discriminatory and racist bill that targets solely the properties of the Christian community in the Holy Land ... This reminds us all of laws of a similar nature which were enacted against the Jews during dark periods in Europe."

The 2018 taxation affair does not cover any church buildings or religious related facilities (because they are exempt by law), but commercial facilities such as the Notre Dame Hotel which was not paying the municipal property tax, and any land which is owned and used as a commercial land. The church holds the rights to land where private homes have been constructed, and some of the disagreement had been raised after the Knesset had proposed a bill that will make it harder for a private company not to extend a lease for land used by homeowners. The church leaders have said that such a bill will make it harder for them to sell church-owned lands. According to The Jerusalem Post: "The stated aim of the bill is to protect homeowners against the possibility that private companies will not extend their leases of land on which their houses or apartments stand."

Land sale to Israeli settlers
NPR had reported that the Greek Orthodox Church owns may properties across Jerusalem, Israel and the West Bank. It owns some 30% of the land in the Old City. But, due to property sales, these properties are diminishing every year. The decision to sell is made by Greek leaders, even though most local followers of the church are Arab Palestinians. The Palestinian Christians have raised concerns about selling these properties to Israeli settler-affiliated organizations.

In June 2019, a number of Christian denominations in Jerusalem raised their voice against the Supreme Court's decision to uphold the sale of three properties by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate to Ateret Cohanim – an organization that seeks to increase the number of Jews living in the Old City and East Jerusalem. The church leaders warned that if the organization gets to control the sites, Christians could lose access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. In June 2022, the Supreme Court upheld the sale and ended the legal battle.

Connection to Roman temple

The site of the church had been a temple to Jupiter or Venus built by Hadrian before Constantine's edifice was built. Hadrian's temple had been located there because it was the junction of the main north–south road with one of the two main east–west roads and directly adjacent to the forum (now the location of the Muristan, which is smaller than the former forum). The forum itself had been placed, as is traditional in Roman towns, at the junction of the main north–south road with the other main east–west road (which is now El-Bazar/David Street). The temple and forum together took up the entire space between the two main east–west roads (a few above-ground remains of the east end of the temple precinct still survive in the Alexander Nevsky Church complex of the Russian Mission in Exile).

From the archaeological excavations in the 1970s, it is clear that construction took over most of the site of the earlier temple enclosure and that the Triportico and Rotunda roughly overlapped with the temple building itself; the excavations indicate that the temple extended at least as far back as the Aedicule, and the temple enclosure would have reached back slightly further. Virgilio Canio Corbo, a Franciscan priest and archaeologist, who was present at the excavations, estimated from the archaeological evidence that the western retaining wall of the temple itself would have passed extremely close to the east side of the supposed tomb; if the wall had been any further west any tomb would have been crushed under the weight of the wall (which would be immediately above it) if it had not already been destroyed when foundations for the wall were made.

Other archaeologists have criticized Corbo's reconstructions. Dan Bahat, the former city archaeologist of Jerusalem, regards them as unsatisfactory, as there is no known temple of Aphrodite (Venus) matching Corbo's design, and no archaeological evidence for Corbo's suggestion that the temple building was on a platform raised high enough to avoid including anything sited where the Aedicule is now; indeed Bahat notes that many temples to Aphrodite have a rotunda-like design, and argues that there is no archaeological reason to assume that the present rotunda was not based on a rotunda in the temple previously on the site.

Location

The New Testament describes Jesus's tomb as being outside the city wall, as was normal for burials across the ancient world, which were regarded as unclean. Today, the site of the Church is within the current walls of the old city of Jerusalem. It has been well documented by archaeologists that in the time of Jesus, the walled city was smaller and the wall then was to the east of the current site of the Church. In other words, the city had been much narrower in Jesus's time, with the site then having been outside the walls; since Herod Agrippa (41–44) is recorded by history as extending the city to the north (beyond the present northern walls), the required repositioning of the western wall is traditionally attributed to him as well.

The area immediately to the south and east of the sepulchre was a quarry and outside the city during the early first century as excavations under the Lutheran Church of the Redeemer across the street demonstrated.

The church is a part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Old City of Jerusalem.

The Christian Quarter and the (also Christian) Armenian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem are both located in the northwestern and western part of the Old City, due to the fact that the Holy Sepulchre is located close to the northwestern corner of the walled city. The adjacent neighbourhood within the Christian Quarter is called the Muristan, a term derived from the Persian word for hospital – Christian pilgrim hospices have been maintained in this area near the Holy Sepulchre since at least the time of Charlemagne.

Influence
From the ninth century onward, the construction of churches inspired by the Anastasis was extended across Europe. One example is Santo Stefano in Bologna, Italy, an agglomeration of seven churches recreating shrines of Jerusalem.

Several churches and monasteries in Europe, for instance, in Germany and Russia, and at least one church in the United States have been wholly or partially modelled on the Church of the Resurrection, some even reproducing other holy places for the benefit of pilgrims who could not travel to the Holy Land. They include the Heiliges Grab (Görlitz) ("Holy Tomb") of Görlitz, constructed between 1481 and 1504, the New Jerusalem Monastery in Moscow Oblast, constructed by Patriarch Nikon between 1656 and 1666, and Mount St. Sepulchre Franciscan Monastery built by the Franciscans in Washington, DC in 1898.

Author Andrew Holt writes that the church is the most important in all Christendom.

title: Church of the Holy Sepulchre


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Cernunnos

In ancient Celtic and Gallo-Roman religion, Cernunnos or Carnonos is a god depicted with antlers, seated cross-legged, and is associated with stags, horned serpents, dogs and bulls. He is usually shown holding or wearing a torc and sometimes holding a bag of coins (or grain) and a cornucopia. He is believed to have originally been a Proto-Celtic God. There are more than fifty depictions and inscriptions referring to him, mainly in the north-eastern region of Gaul.

Name and etymology
The Gaulish form of the name Cernunnos is, from the stem which means "horn" or "antler," suffixed with the augmentative -no- is characteristic of theonyms. Karnon is cognate with Latin cornu and Germanic *hurnaz, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European

The etymon karn- "horn" appears in both Gaulish and Galatian branches of Continental Celtic. Hesychius of Alexandria glosses the Galatian word (κάρνον) as "Gallic trumpet", that is, the Celtic military horn listed as the carnyx (κάρνυξ) by Eustathius of Thessalonica, who notes the instrument's animal-shaped bell. The root also appears in the names of Celtic polities, most prominent among them the Carnutes, meaning something like "the Horned Ones", and in several personal names found in inscriptions.

Maier (2010) states that the etymology of Cernunnos is unclear, but seems to be rooted in the Celtic word for "horn" or "antler" (as in Carnonos).

"Cernunnos" is believed by some Celticists to be an obscure epithet of a better attested Gaulish deity; perhaps the god described in the interpretatio Romana as Mercury or Dis Pater, which are considered to share Cernunnos's psychopomp or chthonic associations. The name has only appeared once with an image, when it was inscribed on the Nautae Parisiaci (the sailors of the Parisii, who were a tribe of Gauls). Otherwise, variations of the name Cernunnos has also been found in a Celtic inscription written in Greek characters at Montagnac, Hérault (as καρνονου, karnonou, in the dative case). A Gallo-Latin adjective carnuātus, "horned", is also found.

Epigraphic evidence
Due to the lack of surviving Gaulish literature regarding mythologies about Cernunnos, stories with various possible epithets he might have had, or information regarding religious practices and followers, his overall significance in Gaulish religious traditions is unknown. Interpretations of his role within Gaulish culture vary from a god of animals, nature, fertility and prosperity to a symbol of authority, strength, unyielding endurance and virility; he has also been portrayed as a god of travel, commerce and bi-directionality; or associated with crossroads, the underworld and reincarnation, symbolizing the cycle of life and death. The only evidence which has survived consists of inscriptions found on various artifacts.

The Nautae Parisiaci monument was probably constructed by Gaulish sailors in 14 CE. It was discovered in 1710 within the foundations of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, site of ancient Lutetia, the civitas capital of the Celtic Parisii. It is now displayed in the Musée National du Moyen Age in Paris. The distinctive stone pillar is an important monument of Gallo-Roman religion. Its low reliefs depict and label by name several Roman deities such as Jupiter, Vulcan, and Castor and Pollux, along with Gallic deities such as Esus, Smertrios, and Tarvos Trigaranus. The name Cernunnos can be read clearly on 18th century drawings of the inscriptions, but the initial letter has been obscured since, so that today only a reading "[_]ernunnos" can be verified.

Additional evidence is given by one inscription on a metal plaque from Steinsel-Rëlent in Luxembourg, in the territory of the Celtic Treveri. This inscription read Deo Ceruninco, "to the God Cerunincos", assumed to be the same deity. The Gaulish inscription from Montagnac reads αλλετ[ει]νος καρνονου αλ[ι]σο[ντ]εας (Alletinos [dedicated this] to Carnonos of Alisontea), with the last word possibly a place name based on Alisia, "service-tree" or "rock" (compare Alesia, Gaulish Alisiia).

Iconography

On the Pillar of the Boatmen, we find an image depicted with stag's antlers, both having torcs hanging from them with the inscription of "[C]ernunnos" with it. The lower part of the relief is lost, but the dimensions suggest that the god was sitting cross-legged, in the depiction traditionally called "Buddhic posture", providing a direct parallel to the antlered figure on the Gundestrup cauldron.

Iconography associated with Cernunnos is often portrayed with a stag and the ram-horned serpent. Less frequently, there are bulls (at Rheims), dogs and rats. Because of the image of him on the Gundestrup Cauldron, some scholars describe Cernunnos as the Lord of the Animals or the Lord of Wild Things, and Miranda Green describes him as a "peaceful god of nature and fruitfulness" who seems to be seated in a manner that suggests traditional shamans who were often depicted surrounded by animals. Other academics such as Ceisiwr Serith describes Cernunnos as a god of bi-directionality and mediator between opposites, seeing the animal symbolism in the artwork reflecting this idea.

The Pilier des nautes links him with sailors and with commerce, suggesting that he was also associated with material wealth as does the coin pouch from the Cernunnos of Rheims (Marne, Champagne, France)—in antiquity, Durocortorum, the civitas capital of the Remi tribe—and the stag vomiting coins from Niedercorn-Turbelslach (Luxembourg) in the lands of the Treveri. The god may have symbolized the fecundity of the stag-inhabited forest.

Other examples of Cernunnos imagery include a petroglyph in Val Camonica in Cisalpine Gaul. The antlered human figure has been dated as early as the 7th century BCE or as late as the 4th. Two goddesses with antlers appear at Besançon and Clermont-Ferrand, France. An antlered god appears on a relief in Cirencester, Britain dated to Roman times and appears depicted on a coin from Petersfield, Hampshire. An antlered child appears on a relief from Vendeuvres, flanked by serpents and holding a purse and a torc. The best known image appears on the Gundestrup cauldron found on Jutland, dating to the 1st century BCE, thought to depict Celtic subject matter though usually regarded as of Thracian workmanship.

Among the Celtiberians, horned or antlered figures of the Cernunnos type include a "Janus-like" god from Candelario (Salamanca) with two faces and two small horns; a horned god from the hills of Ríotinto (Huelva); and a possible representation of the deity Vestius Aloniecus near his altars in Lourizán (Pontevedra). The horns are taken to represent "aggressive power, genetic vigor and fecundity."

Divine representations of the Cernunnos type are exceptions to the often-expressed view that the Celts only began to picture their gods in human form after the Roman conquest of Gaul. The Celtic "horned god", while well attested in iconography, cannot be identified in description of Celtic religion in Roman ethnography and does not appear to have been given any interpretatio romana, perhaps due to being too distinctive to be translatable into the Roman pantheon. While Cernunnos was never assimilated, scholars have sometimes compared him functionally to Greek and Roman divine figures such as Mercury, Actaeon, specialized forms of Jupiter, and Dis Pater, of whom the last-named was said by Julius Caesar to have been considered by the Gauls to be their ancestor. An image of Cernunnos survives in the Stuttgart Psalter, a 9th century Christian manuscript. The god is recognizably depicted with cross-legged posture, horns, and a ram-headed serpent. He sits in an arcaded niche of hades within the Descent into Limbo scene. This later image is a representation of Cernunnos as lord of the underworld, firmly planted in the funerary sphere.

Possible reflexes in Insular Celtic
There have been attempts to find the cern root in the name of Conall Cernach, the foster brother of the Irish hero Cuchulainn in the Ulster Cycle. In this line of interpretation, Cernach is taken as an epithet with a wide semantic field—"angular; victorious; prominent," though there is little evidence that the figures of Conall and Cernunnos are related.

A brief passage involving Conall in an eighth-century story entitled Táin Bó Fraích ("The Cattle Raid on Fraech") has been taken as evidence that Conall bore attributes of a "master of beasts." In this passage Conall Cernach is portrayed as a hero and mighty warrior who assists the protagonist Fraech in rescuing his wife and son, and reclaiming his cattle. The fort that Conall must penetrate is guarded by a mighty serpent. The supposed anti-climax of this tale is when the fearsome serpent, instead of attacking Conall, darts to Conall's waist and girdles him as a belt. Rather than killing the serpent, Conall allows it to live, and then proceeds to attack and rob the fort of its great treasures the serpent previously protected.

The figure of Conall Cernach is not associated with animals or forestry elsewhere; and the epithet "Cernach" has historically been explained as a description of Conall's impenetrable "horn-like" skin which protected him from injury.

Possible connection to Saint Ciarán

Some see the qualities of Cernunnos subsumed into the life of Saint Ciarán of Saighir, one of the Twelve Apostles of Ireland. When he was building his first tiny cell, as his hagiography goes, his first disciple and monk was a boar that had been rendered gentle by God. This was followed by a fox, a badger, a wolf and a stag.

Neopaganism and Wicca
Within Neopaganism, specifically the Wiccan tradition, the Horned God is a deity that is believed to be the equal to the Great Goddess and syncretizes various horned or antlered gods from various cultures. The name Cernunnos became associated with the Wiccan Horned God through the adoption of the writings of Margaret Murray, an Egyptologist and folklorist of the early 20th century. Murray, through her Witch-cult hypothesis, believed that the various horned deities found in Europe were expressions of a "proto-horned god" and in 1931 published her theory in The God of the Witches. Her work was considered highly controversial at the time, but was adopted by Gerald Gardner in his development of the religious movement of Wicca.

Within the Wiccan tradition, the Horned God reflects the seasons of the year in an annual cycle of life, death and rebirth and his imagery is a blend of the Gaulish god Cernunnos, the Greek god Pan, The Green Man motif, and various other horned spirit imagery.

In popular culture

 * Cernunnos is featured in both Marvel Comics and DC Comics as a member of the Celtic pantheon.
 * Cernunnos is a playable hunter as the second of the Celtic gods to arrive in Smite.
 * In the French production Black Spot Cernunnos is referred to frequently as the woodsman.
 * The antagonist in the video game Perennial is an antlered forest monster, based on Cernunnos, who is turning park visitors into trees.
 * Cernunnos is listed as the first playable god in the prologue chapter of the computer game "These Doomed Isles".
 * Cernunnos can be seen dancing during the end credits of season 2 episode 2 of Nathan Head's series Apparitions, here he is played by Benjamin Reilly.
 * Cernunnos is featured in the mobile game Fate/Grand Order as a boss enemy.
 * In the SCP Foundation, Cernunnos class objects are objects which "can be functionally contained, but the Foundation cannot achieve this for logistical and/or ethical reasons."
 * In The Secrets of the Immortal Nicholas Flamel series by Michael Scott (Irish author), Cernunnos appears in the second book as an Archon, one of many kinds of elder deities.

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

title: Cernunnos


text:
Talk:Caste

Published genetics data on castes cannot be ignored
Some editors here who appear to be of not of the scientific background are reverting edits that cite published scientific research in highly reputed journals, such as the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA.

Who gives them the authority to judge on the scientific merit of published and accepted science research? -- — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mkv22 (talk • contribs)

Philology correlates in Caste traditions
Hallo!: no need to provide references, sound, and writing, is self-evident: Brahmin comes from Brahma, the upper deity of the syncretic Hindu Trimurti, composed of an equivalent to Zeus, Dyauspitar, Jupiter, Deus, brought by the European settlers, and the local duality, conservation-destruction: 'Vishnu-Shiva'; Kashatriyas would equal the Persian: 'Satraps'='Governors'; 'Vaishyas', the: 'Vassals', 'Shudras'= 'Serfs'. 'Varna' once meant just: 'Color', as in the French: 'Vernis'='Enamel paint', and the Spanish: 'Barniz'= 'Varnish'; as the Sanskrit has a connection to one of the dialects of Classical Greek (Coulson: 'Teach yourself...Sanskrit'), the culture that brought Sanskrit and Prakrit to Indian subcontinent left a print in the places of the trip from Greece to India. 'Paryah', as: 'Yah', is a Name for the Almighty, could mean just: 'Beggars', 'By God', 'Pordiosero', 'Mendicant', as the people not having a Caste, not belonging to one, was not granted right to work.

The Caste system included detailed and comprehensive instructions about marriages, eg. offspring of a man of a peasant's family and a woman of a governor, princes or army family, should become a physician; it would be good having references to further readings about these bylaws.

The name: 'Punjab', meaning: 'Five rivers', a region, today part of Pakistan, from which Gypsies were expelled around XIII century AD, for an unknown reason, perhaps of a religious nature, is pronounced in Spanish: 'Pañab', coming from the number: 'Five': 'Pañca', in Sanskrit, 'Penta' in Greek, and the Arab term for: 'River'= 'Uad'.

No need showing that: 'Uttar Pradesh'= 'Upper Prairie', 'Madhya Pradesh'= 'Middle Praire', 'Undra Pradesh'= 'Under Prairie', that the name: 'Goswintha'= 'The Cow Path', of a Spanish Visigoth Queen, is the contemporary Indian name: 'Govind', this Queen was recalcitrant Aryan in religion, they had the announcement of Jesus by bishop Ulfilas, who may have interpreted strictly the text in OT, about wisdom, commonly taken as Jesus, the Son of the Almighty: 'Before times I was created'; as a creature, this wisdom can't be divine, but the 'Credo', profession of Faith, is clear about Jesus: 'Begotten, not made'. Gothic Aryans had a solar cult, receiving the names: 'Oberon', and: 'Alberic', a cult as in Beth-El, same as primitive Apollyon in Greece; also crystal clear that: 'Baratiya Janata', 'Hindu Nationalist Party', is: 'Party Homeland', in German: 'Partei Heimat'.

To show that Indo-Europeans and Europeans have common and quite close roots: Möchten Sie noch etwas?

A functional illiterate in Spanish Wikipedia, he reads, but doesn't understand what they read, denies all this, and deleted an analog entry in the article: 'Casta'. What a fuck!. Thanks. Regards. Gesund +

The Caste system was not implemented by Europeans, not by the so-called: 'Aryans', 'from a good family', even if they took the upper positions in community pyramids: PMID25932481, and PMID23209649 are obvious, summarized in http://press.nationalgeographic.com/2012/11/28/southern-india-caste-system-indo-europeans-genographic/. For sure the term 'Indo-Europeans' evidence a European root in the migrations that shaped part of the cultural and linguistic landscape of today's India. 'Ideology' issues, fighting the WW II in XXI century, is absurd. Thanks. Regards. Gesund +

other castes
why arent castes in ohter countires not mentioned why is only india s caste system written in detail we ned apage on european feudalism, and casta in latin america this page is still biased.

Wiki Education assignment: This is America
— Assignment last updated by Llynn2 (talk) 17:36, 15 December 2023 (UTC)

What a great English propaganda!!
This propaganda of caste system now completely justifies any foreign invasion and colonisation of India. 122.187.117.179 (talk) 12:03, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

 * I know that history is written by the victors which is British in this case but the level of repackaging of some homogaemous interaction between different tribes of people into a full blown genetically backed foreign invasion propaganda has something to do with rewriting of history. All the sources are non Indian for some reason. 122.187.117.179 (talk) 12:10, 29 March 2024 (UTC)

title: Talk:Caste


text:
Click consonant

Click consonants, or clicks, are speech sounds that occur as consonants in many languages of Southern Africa and in three languages of East Africa. Examples familiar to English-speakers are the tut-tut (British spelling) or tsk! tsk! (American spelling) used to express disapproval or pity (IPA ), the tchick! used to spur on a horse (IPA ), and the clip-clop! sound children make with their tongue to imitate a horse trotting (IPA ). However, these paralinguistic sounds in English are not full click consonants, as they only involve the front of the tongue, without the release of the back of the tongue that is required for clicks to combine with vowels and form syllables.

Anatomically, clicks are obstruents articulated with two closures (points of contact) in the mouth, one forward and one at the back. The enclosed pocket of air is rarefied by a sucking action of the tongue (in technical terminology, clicks have a lingual ingressive airstream mechanism). The forward closure is then released, producing what may be the loudest consonants in the language, although in some languages such as Hadza and Sandawe, clicks can be more subtle and may even be mistaken for ejectives.

Phonetics and IPA notation
Click consonants occur at six principal places of articulation. The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) provides five letters for these places (there is as yet no dedicated symbol for the sixth).
 * The easiest clicks for English speakers are the dental clicks written with a single pipe, ⟨ǀ⟩. These are sharp (high-pitched) squeaky sounds made by sucking on the front teeth. A simple dental click is used in English to express pity or to shame someone, or to call a cat or other animal, and is written tut! in British English and tsk! in American English. In many cultures around the Mediterranean a simple dental click is used for "no" in answer to a direct question. They are written with the letter c in Zulu and Xhosa.
 * Next most familiar to English speakers are the lateral clicks, which are written with a double pipe, ⟨ǁ⟩. They are also squeaky sounds, though less sharp than, made by sucking on the molars on either side (or both sides) of the mouth. A simple lateral click is made in English to get a horse moving, and is conventionally written tchick!. They are written with the letter x in Zulu and Xhosa.
 * Then there are the labial clicks, written with a bull's eye, ⟨ʘ⟩. These are lip-smacking sounds, but often without the pursing of the lips found in a kiss, that occur in words in only a few languages.

The above clicks sound like affricates, in that they involve a lot of friction. The next two families of clicks are more abrupt sounds that do not have this friction. Technically, these IPA letters transcribe only the forward articulation of the click, not the entire consonant. As the Handbook states, "Since any click involves a velar or uvular closure [as well], it is possible to symbolize factors such as voicelessness, voicing or nasality of the click by combining the click symbol with the appropriate velar or uvular symbol:,." Thus technically is not a consonant, but only one part of the articulation of a consonant, and one may speak of "ǂ-clicks" to mean any of the various click consonants that share the  place of articulation. In practice, however, the simple letter ⟨ǂ⟩ has long been used as an abbreviation for, and in that role it is sometimes seen combined with diacritics for voicing (e.g. ⟨ǂ̬⟩ for ), nasalization (e.g. ⟨ǂ̃⟩ for ), etc. These differing transcription conventions may reflect differing theoretical analyses of the nature of click consonants, or attempts to address common misunderstandings of clicks.
 * With the alveolar clicks, written with an exclamation mark, ⟨ǃ⟩, the tip of the tongue is pulled down abruptly and forcefully from the roof of the mouth, sometimes using a lot of jaw motion, and making a hollow pop! like a cork being pulled from an empty bottle. Something like these sounds may be used for a 'clip-clop' sound as noted above. These sounds can be quite loud. They are written with the letter q in Zulu and Xhosa.
 * The palatal clicks, ⟨ǂ⟩, are made with a flat tongue that is pulled backward rather than downward, and are sharper cracking sounds than the clicks, like sharply snapped fingers. They are not found in Zulu but are very common in the San languages of southern Africa.
 * Finally, the retroflex clicks are poorly known, being attested from only a single language, Central !Kung. The tongue is curled back in the mouth, and they are both fricative and hollow sounding, but descriptions of these sounds vary between sources. This may reflect dialect differences. They are perhaps most commonly written ⟨‼⟩, but that is an ad hoc transcription. The expected IPA letter is ⟨𝼊⟩ (⟨ǃ⟩ with retroflex tail), and the IPA supported the addition of that letter to Unicode.

Southern Africa
Clicks occur in all three Khoisan language families of southern Africa, where they may be the most numerous consonants. To a lesser extent they occur in three neighbouring groups of Bantu languages—which borrowed them, directly or indirectly, from Khoisan. In the southeast, in eastern South Africa, Eswatini, Lesotho, Zimbabwe and southern Mozambique, they were adopted from a Tuu language (or languages) by the languages of the Nguni cluster (especially Zulu, Xhosa and Phuthi, but also to a lesser extent Swazi and Ndebele), and spread from them in a reduced fashion to the Zulu-based pidgin Fanagalo, Sesotho, Tsonga, Ronga, the Mzimba dialect of Tumbuka and more recently to Ndau and urban varieties of Pedi, where the spread of clicks continues. The second point of transfer was near the Caprivi Strip and the Okavango River where, apparently, the Yeyi language borrowed the clicks from a West Kalahari Khoe language; a separate development led to a smaller click inventory in the neighbouring Mbukushu, Kwangali, Gciriku, Kuhane and Fwe languages in Angola, Namibia, Botswana and Zambia. These sounds occur not only in borrowed vocabulary, but have spread to native Bantu words as well, in the case of Nguni at least partially due to a type of word taboo called hlonipha. Some creolised varieties of Afrikaans, such as Oorlams, retain clicks in Khoekhoe words.

East Africa
Three languages in East Africa use clicks: Sandawe and Hadza of Tanzania, and Dahalo, an endangered South Cushitic language of Kenya that has clicks in only a few dozen words. It is thought the latter may remain from an episode of language shift.

Damin
The only non-African language known to have clicks as regular speech sounds is Damin, a ritual code once used by speakers of Lardil in Australia. In addition, one consonant in Damin is the egressive equivalent of a click, using the tongue to compress the air in the mouth for an outward (egressive) "spurt".

Spread of clicks from loanwords
Once clicks are borrowed into a language as regular speech sounds, they may spread to native words, as has happened due to hlonipa word-taboo in the Nguni languages. In Gciriku, for example, the European loanword tomate (tomato) appears as cumáte with a click, though it begins with a t in all neighbouring languages. It has also been argued that click phonemes have been adopted into some languages through the process of hlonipha, women refraining from saying certain words and sounds that were similar to the name of their husband, sometimes replacing local sounds by borrowing clicks from a nearby language.

Marginal usage of clicks
Scattered clicks are found in ideophones and mimesis in other languages, such as Kongo, Mijikenda and Hadza  (Hadza does not otherwise have labial clicks). Ideophones often use phonemic distinctions not found in normal vocabulary.

English and many other languages may use bare click releases in interjections, without an accompanying rear release or transition into a vowel, such as the dental "tsk-tsk" sound used to express disapproval, or the lateral tchick used with horses. In a number of languages ranging from the central Mediterranean to Iran, a bare dental click release accompanied by tipping the head upwards signifies "no". Libyan Arabic apparently has three such sounds. A voiceless nasal back-released velar click is used throughout Africa for backchanneling. This sound starts off as a typical click, but the action is reversed and it is the rear velar or uvular closure that is released, drawing in air from the throat and nasal passages.

Clicks occasionally turn up elsewhere, as in the special registers twins sometimes develop with each other. In West Africa, clicks have been reported allophonically, and similarly in French and German, faint clicks have been recorded in rapid speech where consonants such as and  overlap between words. In Rwanda, the sequence may be pronounced either with an epenthetic vowel,, or with a light bilabial click, —often by the same speaker.

Speakers of Gan Chinese from Ningdu county, as well as speakers of Mandarin from Beijing and Jilin and presumably people from other parts of the country, produce flapped nasal clicks in nursery rhymes with varying degrees of competence, in the words for 'goose' and 'duck', both of which begin with in Gan and until recently began with  in Mandarin as well. In Gan, the nursery rhyme is,
 * 天上一隻鵝 'a goose in the sky'
 * 地下一隻鴨 'a duck on the ground'
 * 鵝生鵝蛋鵝孵鵝 'a goose lays a goose egg, a goose hatches a goose'
 * 鴨生鴨蛋鴨孵鴨 'a duck lays a duck egg, a duck hatches a duck'

where the onsets are all pronounced.

Occasionally other languages are claimed to have click sounds in general vocabulary. This is usually a misnomer for ejective consonants, which are found across much of the world.

Position in word
For the most part, the Southern African Khoisan languages only use root-initial clicks. Hadza, Sandawe and several Bantu languages also allow syllable-initial clicks within roots. In no language does a click close a syllable or end a word, but since the languages of the world that happen to have clicks consist mostly of CV syllables and allow at most only a limited set of consonants (such as a nasal or a glottal stop) to close a syllable or end a word, most consonants share the distribution of clicks in these languages.

Number of click-types in languages
Most languages of the Khoesan families (Tuu, Kxʼa and Khoe) have four click types: or variants thereof, though a few have three or five, the last supplemented with either bilabial  or retroflex. Hadza and Sandawe in Tanzania have three,. Yeyi is the only Bantu language with four,, while Xhosa and Zulu have three, , and most other Bantu languages with clicks have fewer.

Types of clicks
Like other consonants, clicks can be described using four parameters: place of articulation, manner of articulation, phonation (including glottalisation) and airstream mechanism. As noted above, clicks necessarily involve at least two closures, which in some cases operate partially independently: an anterior articulation traditionally represented by the special click symbol in the IPA—and a posterior articulation traditionally transcribed for convenience as oral or nasal, voiced or voiceless, though such features actually apply to the entire consonant. The literature also describes a contrast between velar and uvular rear articulations for some languages.

In some languages that have been reported to make this distinction, such as Nǁng, all clicks have a uvular rear closure, and the clicks explicitly described as uvular are in fact cases where the uvular closure is independently audible: contours of a click into a pulmonic or ejective component, in which the click has two release bursts, the forward (click-type) and then the rearward (uvular) component. "Velar" clicks in these languages have only a single release burst, that of the forward release, and the release of the rear articulation isn't audible. However, in other languages all clicks are velar, and a few languages, such as Taa, have a true velar–uvular distinction that depends on the place rather than the timing of rear articulation and that is audible in the quality of the vowel.

Regardless, in most of the literature the stated place of the click is the anterior articulation (called the release or influx), whereas the manner is ascribed to the posterior articulation (called the accompaniment or efflux). The anterior articulation defines the click type and is written with the IPA letter for the click (dental ⟨ǀ⟩, alveolar ⟨ǃ⟩, etc.), whereas the traditional term 'accompaniment' conflates the categories of manner (nasal, affricated), phonation (voiced, aspirated, breathy voiced, glottalised), as well as any change in the airstream with the release of the posterior articulation (pulmonic, ejective), all of which are transcribed with additional letters or diacritics, as in the nasal alveolar click, ⟨ǃŋ⟩ or ⟨ᵑǃ⟩ or—to take an extreme example—the voiced (uvular) ejective alveolar click, ⟨ᶢǃ͡qʼ⟩.

The size of click inventories ranges from as few as three (in Sesotho) or four (in Dahalo), to dozens in the Kxʼa and Tuu (Northern and Southern Khoisan) languages. Taa, the last vibrant language in the latter family, has 45 to 115 click phonemes, depending on analysis (clusters vs. contours), and over 70% of words in the dictionary of this language begin with a click.

Clicks appear more stop-like (sharp/abrupt) or affricate-like (noisy) depending on their place of articulation: In southern Africa, clicks involving an apical alveolar or laminal postalveolar closure are acoustically abrupt and sharp, like stops, whereas labial, dental and lateral clicks typically have longer and acoustically noisier click types that are superficially more like affricates. In East Africa, however, the alveolar clicks tend to be flapped, whereas the lateral clicks tend to be more sharp.

Transcription
The five click places of articulation with dedicated symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) are labial, dental , palatal ("palato-alveolar") , (post)alveolar ("retroflex") and lateral. In most languages, the alveolar and palatal types are abrupt; that is, they are sharp popping sounds with little frication (turbulent airflow). The labial, dental and lateral types, on the other hand, are typically noisy: they are longer, lip- or tooth-sucking sounds with turbulent airflow, and are sometimes called affricates. (This applies to the forward articulation; both may also have either an affricate or non-affricate rear articulation as well.) The apical places, and, are sometimes called "grave", because their pitch is dominated by low frequencies; whereas the laminal places,  and , are sometimes called "acute", because they are dominated by high frequencies. (At least in the Nǁng language and Juǀʼhoan, this is associated with a difference in the placement of the rear articulation: "grave" clicks are uvular, whereas "acute" clicks are pharyngeal.) Thus the alveolar click sounds something like a cork pulled from a bottle (a low-pitch pop), at least in Xhosa; whereas the dental click  is like English ''tsk! tsk!,'' a high-pitched sucking on the incisors. The lateral clicks are pronounced by sucking on the molars of one or both sides. The labial click is different from what many people associate with a kiss: the lips are pressed more-or-less flat together, as they are for a  or an, not rounded as they are for a.

The most populous languages with clicks, Zulu and Xhosa, use the letters c, q, x, by themselves and in digraphs, to write click consonants. Most Khoisan languages, on the other hand (with the notable exceptions of Naro and Sandawe), use a more iconic system based on the pipe $⟨|⟩$. (The exclamation point for the "retroflex" click was originally a pipe with a subscript dot, along the lines of ṭ, ḍ, ṇ used to transcribe the retroflex consonants of India.) There are also two main conventions for the second letter of the digraph as well: voicing may be written with g and uvular affrication with x, or voicing with d and affrication with g (a convention of Afrikaans). In two orthographies of Juǀʼhoan, for example, voiced is written g! or dq, and  !x or qg. In languages without, such as Zulu, may be written gq.

 * 1)  $⟨🡣⟩$ was proposed by Clement Doke, and  by Beach, but did not catch on. The former is not supported by Unicode, and the latter was proposed only in 2020. (Doke's character resembles a down arrow and is here represented by the old Roman numeral for 50; Beach is a double-barred esh.) Three of these, ⟨ʇ⟩, ⟨ʗ⟩ and ⟨ʖ⟩, were adopted into the IPA, though eventually abandoned. Doke and Beach used additional or modified letters for voiced and nasal clicks, but they did not catch on.
 * 2)  The labial and palatal clicks do not occur in written Bantu languages. However, the palatal clicks have been romanised in Naron, Juǀʼhõasi and !Xun, where they have been written $⟨tc⟩$, $⟨ç⟩$ and $⟨qc⟩$, respectively. In the 19th century, they were sometimes written $⟨v⟩$, which might be source of the Doke letter $⟨🡣⟩$.

There are a few less-well-attested articulations. A reported subapical retroflex articulation ⟨𝼊⟩ in Grootfontein !Kung turns out to be alveolar with lateral release, ⟨ǃ𐞷⟩; Ekoka !Kung has a fricated alveolar click with an s-like release, provisionally transcribed ⟨ǃ͡s⟩; and Sandawe has a "slapped" alveolar click, provisionally transcribed ⟨ǃ¡⟩ (in turn, the lateral clicks in Sandawe are more abrupt and less noisy than in southern Africa). However, the Khoisan languages are poorly attested, and it is quite possible that, as they become better described, more click articulations will be found.

Formerly when a click consonant was transcribed, two symbols were used, one for each articulation, and connected with a tie bar. This is because a click such as was analysed as a voiced uvular rear articulation  pronounced simultaneously with the forward ingressive release. The symbols may be written in either order, depending on the analysis: ⟨ɢ͡ǀ⟩ or ⟨ǀ͡ɢ⟩. However, a tie bar was not often used in practice, and when the manner is tenuis (a simple ), it was often omitted as well. That is, ⟨ǂ⟩ = ⟨kǂ⟩ = ⟨ǂk⟩ = ⟨k͡ǂ⟩ = ⟨ǂ͡k⟩. Regardless, elements that do not overlap with the forward release are usually written according to their temporal order: Prenasalisation is always written first (⟨ɴɢ͡ǀ⟩ = ⟨ɴǀ͡ɢ⟩ = ⟨ɴǀ̬⟩), and the non-lingual part of a contour is always written second (⟨k͡ǀʼqʼ⟩ = ⟨ǀ͡kʼqʼ⟩ = ⟨ǀ͡qʼ⟩).

However, it is common to analyse clicks as simplex segments, despite the fact that the front and rear articulations are independent, and to use diacritics to indicate the rear articulation and the accompaniment. At first this tended to be ⟨ᵏǀ, ᶢǀ, ᵑǀ⟩ for ⟨k͡ǀ, ɡ͡ǀ, ŋ͡ǀ⟩, based on the belief that the rear articulation was velar; but as it has become clear that the rear articulation is often uvular or even pharyngeal even when there is no velar–uvular contrast, voicing and nasalisation diacritics more in keeping with the IPA have started to appear: ⟨ǀ̥, ǀ̬, ǀ̃, ŋǀ̬⟩ for ⟨ᵏǀ, ᶢǀ, ᵑǀ, ŋᶢǀ⟩.

In practical orthography, the voicing or nasalisation is sometimes given the anterior place of articulation: dc for and mʘ for, for example.

In the literature on Damin, the clicks are transcribed by adding $⟨⦀⟩$ to the homorganic nasal: $⟨ψ⟩$.

Places of articulation
Places of articulation are often called click types, releases, or influxes, though 'release' is also used for the accompaniment/efflux. There are seven or eight known places of articulation, not counting slapped or egressive clicks. These are (bi)labial affricated, or "bilabial"; laminal denti-alveolar affricated , or "dental"; apical (post)alveolar plosive , or "alveolar"; laminal palatal plosive , or "palatal"; laminal palatal affricated (known only from Ekoka !Kung); subapical postalveolar , or "retroflex" (only known from Central !Kung and possibly Damin); and apical (post)alveolar lateral , or "lateral".

Languages illustrating each of these articulations are listed below. Given the poor state of documentation of Khoisan languages, it is quite possible that additional places of articulation will turn up. No language is known to contrast more than five.

Extra-linguistically, Coatlán Zapotec of Mexico uses a linguolabial click,, as mimesis for a pig drinking water, and several languages, such as Wolof, use a velar click , long judged to be physically impossible, for backchanneling and to express approval. An extended dental click with lip pursing or compression ("sucking-teeth"), variable in sound and sometimes described as intermediate between and, is found across West Africa, the Caribbean and into the United States.

The exact place of the alveolar clicks varies between languages. The lateral, for example, is alveolar in Khoekhoe but postalveolar or even palatal in Sandawe; the central is alveolar in Nǀuu but postalveolar in Juǀʼhoan.

Names found in the literature
The terms for the click types were originally developed by Bleek in 1862. Since then there has been some conflicting variation. However, apart from "cerebral" (retroflex), which was found to be an inaccurate label when true retroflex clicks were discovered, Bleek's terms are still considered normative today. Here are the terms used in some of the main references.

The dental, lateral and bilabial clicks are rarely confused, but the palatal and alveolar clicks frequently have conflicting names in older literature, and non-standard terminology is fossilized in Unicode. However, since Ladefoged & Traill (1984) clarified the places of articulation, the terms listed under Vosser (2013) in the table above have become standard, apart from such details as whether in a particular language and  are alveolar or postalveolar, or whether the rear articulation is velar, uvular or pharyngeal, which again varies between languages (or may even be contrastive within a language).

Manners of articulation
Click manners are often called click accompaniments or effluxes, but both terms have met with objections on theoretical grounds.

There is a great variety of click manners, both simplex and complex, the latter variously analysed as consonant clusters or contours. With so few click languages, and so little study of them, it is also unclear to what extent clicks in different languages are equivalent. For example, the of Khoekhoe,  of Sandawe and  of Hadza may be essentially the same phone; no language distinguishes them, and the differences in transcription may have more to do with the approach of the linguist than with actual differences in the sounds. Such suspected allophones/allographs are listed on a common row in the table below.

Some Khoisan languages are typologically unusual in allowing mixed voicing in non-click consonant clusters/contours, such as, so it is not surprising that they would allow mixed voicing in clicks as well. This may be an effect of epiglottalised voiced consonants, because voicing is incompatible with epiglottalisation.

Phonation
As do other consonants, clicks vary in phonation. Oral clicks are attested with four phonations: tenuis, aspirated, voiced and breathy voiced (murmured). Nasal clicks may also vary, with plain voiced, breathy voiced / murmured nasal, aspirated and unaspirated voiceless clicks attested (the last only in Taa). The aspirated nasal clicks are often said to have 'delayed aspiration'; there is nasal airflow throughout the click, which may become voiced between vowels, though the aspiration itself is voiceless. A few languages also have pre-glottalised nasal clicks, which have very brief prenasalisation but have not been phonetically analysed to the extent that other types of clicks have.

All languages have nasal clicks, and all but Dahalo and Damin also have oral clicks. All languages but Damin have at least one phonation contrast as well.

Complex clicks
Clicks may be pronounced with a third place of articulation, glottal. A glottal stop is made during the hold of the click; the (necessarily voiceless) click is released, and then the glottal hold is released into the vowel. Glottalised clicks are very common, and they are generally nasalised as well. The nasalisation cannot be heard during the click release, as there is no pulmonic airflow, and generally not at all when the click occurs at the beginning of an utterance, but it has the effect of nasalising preceding vowels, to the extent that the glottalised clicks of Sandawe and Hadza are often described as prenasalised when in medial position. Two languages, Gǀwi and Yeyi, contrast plain and nasal glottalised clicks, but in languages without such a contrast, the glottalised click is nasal. Miller (2011) analyses the glottalisation as phonation, and so considers these to be simple clicks.

Various languages also have prenasalised clicks, which may be analysed as consonant sequences. Sotho, for example, allows a syllabic nasal before its three clicks, as in nnqane 'the other side' (prenasalised nasal) and seqhenqha 'hunk'.

There is ongoing discussion as to how the distinction between what were historically described as 'velar' and 'uvular' clicks is best described. The 'uvular' clicks are only found in some languages, and have an extended pronunciation that suggests that they are more complex than the simple ('velar') clicks, which are found in all. Nakagawa (1996) describes the extended clicks in Gǀwi as consonant clusters, sequences equivalent to English st or pl, whereas Miller (2011) analyses similar sounds in several languages as click–non-click contours, where a click transitions into a pulmonic or ejective articulation within a single segment, analogous to how English ch and j transition from occlusive to fricative but still behave as unitary sounds. With ejective clicks, for example, Miller finds that although the ejective release follows the click release, it is the rear closure of the click that is ejective, not an independently articulated consonant. That is, in a simple click, the release of the rear articulation is not audible, whereas in a contour click, the rear (uvular) articulation is audibly released after the front (click) articulation, resulting in a double release.

These contour clicks may be linguo-pulmonic, that is, they may transition from a click (lingual) articulation to a normal pulmonic consonant like (e.g. ); or linguo-glottalic and transition from lingual to an ejective consonant like  (e.g. ): that is, a sequence of ingressive (lingual) release + egressive (pulmonic or glottalic) release. In some cases there is a shift in place of articulation as well, and instead of a uvular release, the uvular click transitions to a velar or epiglottal release (depending on the description, or ). Although homorganic does not contrast with heterorganic    in any known language, they are phonetically quite distinct (Miller 2011).

Implosive clicks, i.e. velar, uvular , and de facto front-closed palatal are not only possible but easier to produce than modally voiced clicks. However, they are not attested in any language.

Apart from Dahalo, Damin and many of the Bantu languages (Yeyi and Xhosa being exceptions), 'click' languages have glottalized nasal clicks. Contour clicks are restricted to southern Africa, but are very common there: they are found in all members of the Tuu, Kxʼa and Khoe families, as well as in the Bantu language Yeyi.

Variation among languages
In a comparative study of clicks across various languages, using her own field work as well as phonetic descriptions and data by other field researchers, Miller (2011) posits 21 types of clicks that contrast in manner or airstream. The homorganic and heterorganic affricated ejective clicks do not contrast in any known language, but are judged dissimilar enough to keep separate. Miller's conclusions differ from those of the primary researcher of a language; see the individual languages for details. (all spoken primarily in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana; Khoekhoe is similar to Korana except it has lost ejective ) (Zulu is similar to Xhosa apart from not having )
 * Taa (ǃXóõ) and Nǁng (Nǀuu) are Tuu languages, from the two branches of that family.
 * ǂʼAmkoe (ǂHoan) and Juǀʼhoan (ǃKung) are Kxʼa languages, from the two branches of that family.
 * Korana and Gǀui (Gǁana) are Khoe languages, from the two branches of that family.
 * Sandawe and Hadza are language isolates spoken in Tanzania
 * Dahalo is a Cushitic language of Kenya
 * Xhosa and Yeyi are Bantu languages, from the two geographic areas of that family that have acquired clicks.
 * Damin was an initiation jargon in northern Australia.

Each language below is illustrated with Ʞ as a placeholder for the different click types. Under each language are the orthography (in italics, with old forms in parentheses), the researchers' transcription (in $⟨!⟩$), or allophonic variation (in [brackets]). Some languages also have labialised or prenasalised clicks as well as those listed below.

Yeyi also has prenasalised. The original researchers believe that and  are allophones.

A DoBeS (2008) study of the Western ǃXoo dialect of Taa found several new manners: creaky voiced (the voiced equivalent of glottalised oral), breathy-voiced nasal, prenasalised glottalised (the voiced equivalent of glottalised) and a (pre)voiced ejective. These extra voiced clicks reflect Western ǃXoo morphology, where many nouns form their plural by voicing their initial consonant. DoBeS analyses most Taa clicks as clusters, leaving nine basic manners (marked with asterisks in the table). This comes close to Miller's distinction between simple and contour clicks, shaded light and medium grey in the table.

Phonotactics
Languages of the southern African Khoisan families only permit clicks at the beginning of a word root. However, they also restrict other classes of consonant, such as ejectives and affricates, to root-initial position. The Bantu languages, Hadza and Sandawe allow clicks within roots.

In some languages, all click consonants within known roots are the same phoneme, as in Hadza cikiringcingca 'pinkie finger', which has three tenuis dental clicks. Other languages are known to have the occasional root with different clicks, as in Xhosa ugqwanxa 'black ironwood', which has a slack-voiced alveolar click and a nasal lateral click.

No natural language allows clicks at the ends of syllables or words, but then no languages with clicks allows many consonants at all in those positions. Similarly, clicks are not found in underlying consonant clusters apart from /Cw/ (and, depending on the analysis, /Cχ/), as languages with clicks do not have other consonant clusters than that. Due to vowel elision, however, there are cases where clicks are pronounced in cross-linguistically common types of consonant clusters, such as Xhosa Snqobile, from Sinqobile (a name), and  isXhosa, from isiXhosa (the Xhosa language).

Like other articulatorily complex consonants, clicks tend to be found in lexical words rather than in grammatical words, but this is only a tendency. In Nǁng, for example, there are two sets of personal pronouns, a full one without clicks and a partial set with clicks (ńg 'I', á 'thou', í 'we all', ú 'you', vs. nǀǹg 'I', gǀà 'thou', gǀì 'we all', gǀù 'you'), as well as other grammatical words with clicks such as ǁu 'not' and nǀa 'with, and'.

The back-vowel constraint
In several languages, including Nama and Juǀʼhoan, the alveolar click types and  only occur, or preferentially occur, before back vowels, whereas the dental and palatal clicks occur before any vowel. The effect is most noticeable with the high front vowel. In Nama, for example, the diphthong is common but  is rare after alveolar clicks, whereas the opposite is true after dental and palatal clicks. This is a common effect of uvular or uvularised consonants on vowels in both click and non-click languages. In Taa, for example, the back-vowel constraint is triggered by both alveolar clicks and uvular stops, but not by palatal clicks or velar stops: sequences such as and  are rare to non-existent, whereas sequences such as  and  are common. The back-vowel constraint is also triggered by labial clicks, though not by labial stops. Clicks subject to this constraint involve a sharp retraction of the tongue during release.

Miller and colleagues (2003) used ultrasound imaging to show that the rear articulation of the alveolar clicks in Nama is substantially different from that of palatal and dental clicks. Specifically, the shape of the body of the tongue in palatal clicks is very similar to that of the vowel, and involves the same tongue muscles, so that sequences such as involved a simple and quick transition. The rear articulation of the alveolar clicks, however, is several centimetres further back, and involves a different set of muscles in the uvular region. The part of the tongue required to approach the palate for the vowel is deeply retracted in, as it lies at the bottom of the air pocket used to create the vacuum required for click airstream. This makes the transition required for much more complex and the timing more difficult than the shallower and more forward tongue position of the palatal clicks. Consequently, takes 50 ms longer to pronounce than, the same amount of time required to pronounce.

Languages do not all behave alike. In Nǀuu, the simple clicks trigger the  and  allophones of  and, whereas  do not. All of the affricated contour clicks, such as, do as well, as do the uvular stops. However, the occlusive contour clicks pattern like the simple clicks, and does not trigger the back-vowel constraint. This is because they involve tongue-root raising rather than tongue-root retraction in the uvular-pharyngeal region. However, in Gǀwi, which is otherwise largely similar, both and  trigger the back-vowel constraint (Miller 2009).

Click genesis and click loss
One genetic study concluded that clicks, which occur in the languages of the genetically divergent populations Hadza and !Kung, may be an ancient element of human language. However, this conclusion relies on several dubious assumptions (see Hadza language), and most linguists assume that clicks, being quite complex consonants, arose relatively late in human history. How they arose is not known, but it is generally assumed that they developed from sequences of non-click consonants, as they are found allophonically for doubly articulated consonants in West Africa, for sequences that overlap at word boundaries in German, and for the sequence  in Ndau and Tonga. Such developments have also been posited in historical reconstruction. For example, the Sandawe word for 'horn',, with a lateral affricate, may be a cognate with the root found throughout the Khoe family, which has a lateral click. This and other words suggests that at least some Khoe clicks may have formed from consonant clusters when the first vowel of a word was lost; in this instance * > * >.

On the other side of the equation, several non-endangered languages in vigorous use demonstrate click loss. For example, the East Kalahari languages have lost clicks from a large percentage of their vocabulary, presumably due to Bantu influence. As a rule, a click is replaced by a consonant with close to the manner of articulation of the click and the place of articulation of the forward release: alveolar click releases (the family) tend to mutate into a velar stop or affricate, such as ; palatal clicks ( etc.) tend to mutate into a palatal stop such as, or a post-alveolar affricate ; and dental clicks ( etc.) tend to mutate into an alveolar affricate.

Difficulty
Clicks are often presented as difficult sounds to articulate within words. However, children acquire them readily; a two-year-old, for example, may be able to pronounce a word with a lateral click with no problem, but still be unable to pronounce. Lucy Lloyd reported that after long contact with the Khoi and San, it was difficult for her to refrain from using clicks when speaking English.

title: Click consonant