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Nautilus

The nautilus is an ancient pelagic marine mollusc of the cephalopod family Nautilidae. The nautilus is the sole extant family of the superfamily Nautilaceae and the suborder Nautilina.

It comprises nine living species in two genera, the type of which is the genus Nautilus. Though it more specifically refers to species Nautilus pompilius, the name chambered nautilus is also used for any of the Nautilidae. All are protected under CITES Appendix II. Depending on species, adult shell diameter is between 4 and 10 in.

Nautilidae, both extant and extinct, are characterized by involute or more or less convolute shells that are generally smooth, with compressed or depressed whorl sections, straight to sinuous sutures, and a tubular, generally central siphuncle. Having survived relatively unchanged for hundreds of millions of years, nautiluses represent the only living members of the subclass Nautiloidea, and are often considered "living fossils". The word nautilus is derived from the Greek word ναυτίλος nautílos "sailor", it originally referred to a type of octopus of the genus Argonauta, also known as 'paper nautilus', which were thought to use two of their arms as sails.

Tentacles
The arm crown of modern nautilids (genera Nautilus and Allonautilus) is very distinct in comparison to coleoids. Unlike the ten-armed Decabrachia or the eight-armed Octopodiformes, nautilus may possess any number of tentacles (cirri) from 50 to over 90 tentacles depending on the sex and individual. These tentacles are classified into three distinct categories: ocular, digital, and labial (buccal). There are two sets of ocular tentacles: one set in front of the eye (pre-ocular) and one set behind the eye (post-ocular). The digital and labial tentacles are arrayed circularly around the mouth, with the digital tentacles forming the outermost ring and the labial tentacles in between the digital tentacles and the mouth. There are 19 pairs of digital tentacles that, together with the ocular tentacles, make up the 42 appendages that are visible when observing the animal (not counting the modified tentacles that form the hood). The labial tentacles are generally not visible, being smaller than the digital tentacles, and more variable both in number and in shape. Males modify three of their labial tentacles into the spadix, which delivers spermatophores into the female during copulation.

The tentacle is composed of two distinct structures: the first structure, a fleshy sheath that contains the second structure: an extendable cirrus (plural: cirri). The sheaths of the digital tentacles are fused at their base into a single mass referred to as the cephalic sheath. The digital cirri can be fully withdrawn into the sheath and are highly flexible, capable of extending just over double their fully retracted length and show a high degree of allowable bendability and torsion. Despite not having suckers, the digital tentacles show strong adhesive capabilities. Adhesion is achieved through the secretion of a neutral (rather than acidic) mucopolysaccharide from secretory cells in the ridges of the digital cirri. Release is triggered through contraction of the tentacle musculature rather than the secretion of a chemical solvent, similar to the adhesion/release system in Euprymna, though it is unclear whether these adhesives are homologous. The ocular tentacles show no adhesive capability but operate as sensory organs. Both the ocular tentacles and the eight lateral digital tentacles show chemoreceptive abilities; the preocular tentacles detect distant odor and the lateral digital tentacles detect nearby odor.

Digestive system
The radula is wide and distinctively has nine teeth.

The mouth consists of a parrot-like beak made up of two interlocking jaws capable of ripping the animal's food— mostly crustaceans— from the rocks to which they are attached. Males can be superficially differentiated from females by examining the arrangement of tentacles around the buccal cone: males have a spadix organ (shaped like a spike or shovel) located on the left side of the cone making the cone look irregular, whereas the buccal cone of the female is bilaterally symmetrical.

The crop is the largest portion of the digestive tract, and is highly extensible. From the crop, food passes to the small muscular stomach for crushing, and then goes past a digestive caecum before entering the relatively brief intestine.

Circulatory system
Like all cephalopods, the blood of the nautilus contains hemocyanin, which is blue in its oxygenated state. There are two pairs of gills which are the only remnants of the ancestral metamerism to be visible in extant cephalopods. Oxygenated blood arrives at the heart through four ventricles and flows out to the animal's organs through distinct aortas but returns through veins which are too small and varied to be specifically described. The one exception to this is the vena cava, a single large vein running along the underside of the crop into which nearly all other vessels containing deoxygenated blood empty. All blood passes through one of the four sets of filtering organs (composed of one pericardial appendage and two renal appendages) upon leaving the vena cava and before arriving at the gills for re-oxygenation. Blood waste is emptied through a series of corresponding pores into the pallial cavity.

Nervous system
The central component of the nautilus nervous system is the oesophageal nerve ring which is a collection of ganglia, commissures, and connectives that together form a ring around the animal's oesophagus. From this ring extend all of the nerves forward to the mouth, tentacles, and funnel; laterally to the eyes and rhinophores; and posteriorly to the remaining organs.

The nerve ring does not constitute what is typically considered a cephalopod "brain": the upper portion of the nerve ring lacks differentiated lobes, and most of the nervous tissue appears to focus on finding and consuming food (i.e., it lacks a "higher learning" center). Nautili also tend to have rather short memory spans, and the nerve ring is not protected by any form of brain case.

Shell

Nautili are the sole living cephalopods whose bony body structure is externalized as a planispiral shell. The animal can withdraw completely into its shell and close the opening with a leathery hood formed from two specially folded tentacles. The shell is coiled, aragonitic, nacreous and pressure-resistant, imploding at a depth of about 800 m. The nautilus shell is composed of two layers: a matte white outer layer with dark orange stripes, and a striking white iridescent inner layer. The innermost portion of the shell is a pearlescent blue-gray. The osmeña pearl, contrarily to its name, is not a pearl, but a jewellery product derived from this part of the shell.

Internally, the shell divides into camerae (chambers), the chambered section being called the phragmocone. The divisions are defined by septa, each of which is pierced in the middle by a duct, the siphuncle. As the nautilus matures, it creates new, larger camerae and moves its growing body into the larger space, sealing the vacated chamber with a new septum. The camerae increase in number from around 4 at the moment of hatching to 30 or more in adults.

The shell coloration also keeps the animal cryptic in the water. When seen from above, the shell is darker in color and marked with irregular stripes, which helps it blend into the dark water below. The underside is almost completely white, making the animal indistinguishable from brighter waters near the surface. This mode of camouflage is called countershading.

The nautilus shell presents one of the finest natural examples of a logarithmic spiral, although it is not a golden spiral. The use of nautilus shells in art and literature is covered at nautilus shell.

Size
N. pompilius is the largest species in the genus. One form from Indonesia and northern Australia, once called N. repertus, may reach 25.4 cm in diameter. However, most nautilus species never exceed 20 cm. Nautilus macromphalus is the smallest species, usually measuring only 16 cm. A dwarf population from the Sulu Sea (Nautilus pompilius suluensis) is even smaller, with a mean shell diameter of 11.56 cm.

Buoyancy and movement

To swim, the nautilus draws water into and out of the living chamber with its hyponome, which uses jet propulsion. This mode of propulsion is generally considered inefficient compared to propulsion with fins or undulatory locomotion, however, the nautilus has been found to be particularly efficient compared to other jet-propelled marine animals like squid and jellyfish, or even salmon at low speeds. It is thought that this is related to the use of asymmetrical contractile cycles and may be an adaptation to mitigate metabolic demands and protect against hypoxia when foraging at depth. While water is inside the chamber, the siphuncle extracts salt from it and diffuses it into the blood.

The animal adjusts its buoyancy only in long term density changes by osmosis, either removing liquid from its chambers or allowing water from the blood in the siphuncle to slowly refill the chambers. This is done in response to sudden changes in buoyancy that can occur with predatory attacks of fish, which can break off parts of the shell. This limits nautiluses in that they cannot operate under the extreme hydrostatic pressures found at depths greater than approximately 800 m, and in fact implode at about that depth, causing instant death. The gas also contained in the chambers is slightly below atmospheric pressure at sea level. The maximum depth at which they can regulate buoyancy by osmotic removal of chamber liquid is not known.

The nautilus has the extremely rare ability to withstand being brought to the surface from its deep natural habitat without suffering any apparent damage from the experience. Whereas fish or crustaceans brought up from such depths inevitably arrive dead, a nautilus will be unfazed despite the pressure change of as much as 80 atm. The exact reasons for this ability, which is thought to be coincidental rather than specifically functional, are not known, though the perforated structure of the animal's vena cava is thought to play an important role.

Senses

Unlike many other cephalopods, nautiluses do not have what many consider to be good vision; their eye structure is highly developed but lacks a solid lens. Whereas a sealed lens allows for the formation of highly focused and clear, detailed surrounding imagery, nautiluses have a simple pinhole eye open to the environment which only allows for the creation of correspondingly simple imagery.

Instead of vision, the animal is thought to use olfaction (smell) as the primary sense for foraging and for locating and identifying potential mates.

The "ear" of the nautilus consists of structures called otocysts located immediately behind the pedal ganglia near the nerve ring. They are oval structures densely packed with elliptical calcium carbonate crystals.

Brain and intelligence
Nautiluses are much closer to the first cephalopods that appeared about 500 million years ago than the early modern cephalopods that appeared maybe 100 million years later (ammonoids and coleoids). They have a seemingly simple brain, not the large complex brains of octopus, cuttlefish and squid, and had long been assumed to lack intelligence. But the cephalopod nervous system is quite different from that of other animals, and recent experiments have shown not only memory, but a changing response to the same event over time.

In a study in 2008, a group of nautiluses (N. pompilius) were given food as a bright blue light flashed until they began to associate the light with food, extending their tentacles every time the blue light was flashed. The blue light was again flashed without the food 3 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 6 hours, 12 hours, and 24 hours later. The nautiluses continued to respond excitedly to the blue light for up to 30 minutes after the experiment. An hour later they showed no reaction to the blue light. However, between 6 and 12 hours after the training, they again responded to the blue light, but more tentatively. The researchers concluded that nautiluses had memory capabilities similar to the "short-term" and "long-term memories" of the more advanced cephalopods, despite having different brain structures. However, the long-term memory capability of nautiluses was much shorter than that of other cephalopods. The nautiluses completely forgot the earlier training 24 hours later, in contrast to octopuses, for example, which can remember conditioning for weeks afterwards. However, this may be simply the result of the conditioning procedure being suboptimal for sustaining long-term memories in nautiluses. Nevertheless, the study showed that scientists had previously underestimated the memory capabilities of nautiluses.

Reproduction and lifespan
Nautiluses reproduce by laying eggs. Gravid females attach the fertilized eggs, either singly or in small batches, to rocks in warmer waters (21–25 Celsius), whereupon the eggs take eight to twelve months to develop until the 30 mm juveniles hatch. Females spawn once per year and regenerate their gonads, making nautiluses the only cephalopods to present iteroparity or polycyclic spawning.

Nautiluses are sexually dimorphic, in that males have four tentacles modified into an organ, called the "spadix", which transfers sperm into the female's mantle during mating. At sexual maturity, the male shell becomes slightly larger than the female's. Males have been found to greatly outnumber females in practically all published studies, accounting for 60 to 94% of all recorded individuals at different sites.

The lifespan of nautiluses may exceed 20 years, which is exceptionally lengthy for a cephalopod, many of whom live less than three even in captivity and under ideal living conditions. However, nautiluses typically do not reach sexual maturity until they are about 15 years old, limiting their reproductive lifespan to often less than five years.

Nautilus male has a reproductive organ named Van der Hoeven's organ. Nautilus female has two reproductive organs whose functions are unknown, the Organ of Valenciennes and Owen's laminated organ.

Range and habitat
Nautiluses are only found in the Indo-Pacific, from 30° N to 30° S latitude and 90° E to 175° E longitude. They inhabit the deep slopes of coral reefs.

Nautiluses usually inhabit depths of several hundred metres. It has long been believed that nautiluses rise at night to feed, mate, and lay eggs, but it appears that, in at least some populations, the vertical movement patterns of these animals are far more complex. The greatest depth at which a nautilus has been sighted is 703 m (N. pompilius). Implosion depth for nautilus shells is thought to be around 800 m. Only in New Caledonia, the Loyalty Islands, and Vanuatu can nautiluses be observed in very shallow water, at depths of as little as 5 m. This is due to the cooler surface waters found in these southern hemisphere habitats as compared to the many equatorial habitats of other nautilus populations – these usually being restricted to depths greater than 100 m.  Nautiluses generally avoid water temperatures above 25 °C.

Diet
Nautiluses are scavengers and opportunistic predators. They eat lobster molts, hermit crabs, and carrion of any kind.

Evolutionary history
Fossil records indicate that nautiloids have experienced minimal morphological changes over the past 500 million years. Many were initially straight-shelled, as in the extinct genus Lituites. They developed in the Late Cambrian period and became a significant group of sea predators during the Ordovician period. Certain species reached over 2.5 m in size. The other cephalopod subclass, Coleoidea, diverged from the nautiloids long ago and the nautilus has remained relatively unchanged since. Nautiloids were much more extensive and varied 200 million years ago. The ancestors of all Coleoidea (shell-less Cephalopods) once possessed shells, and many early cephalopod species are only known from shell remains. Following the K-Pg extinction event most nautiloid species went extinct, while members of Coleoidea managed to survive. Following the mass extinction, the nautilus became the only extant species of nautiloids.

The family Nautilidae has its origin in the Trigonocerataceae (Centroceratina), specifically in the Syringonautilidae of the Late Triassic and continues to this day with Nautilus, the type genus, and its close relative, Allonautilus.

Fossil genera
The fossil record of Nautilidae begins with Cenoceras in the Late Triassic, a highly varied genus that makes up the Jurassic Cenoceras complex. Cenoceras is evolute to involute, and globular to lentincular; with a suture that generally has a shallow ventral and lateral lobe and a siphuncle that is variable in position but never extremely ventral or dorsal. Cenoceras is not found above the Middle Jurassic and is followed by the Upper Jurassic-Miocene Eutrephoceras.

Eutrephoceras is generally subglobular, broadly rounded laterally and ventrally, with a small to occluded umbilicus, broadly rounded hyponomic sinus, only slightly sinuous sutures, and a small siphuncle that is variable in position.

Next to appear is the Lower Cretaceous Strionautilus from India and the European ex-USSR, named by Shimankiy in 1951. Strionautilus is compressed, involute, with fine longitudinal striations. Whorl sections are subrectangular, sutures sinuous, the siphuncle subcentral.

Also from the Cretaceous is Pseudocenoceras, named by Spath in 1927. Pseudocenoceras is compressed, smooth, with subrectangular whorl sections, flattened venter, and a deep umbilicus. The suture crosses the venter essentially straight and has a broad, shallow, lateral lobe. The siphuncle is small and subcentral. Pseudocenoceras is found in the Crimea and in Libya.

Carinonautilus is a genus from the Upper Cretaceous of India, named by Spengler in 1919. Carinonautilus is a very involute form with high whorl section and flanks that converge on a narrow venter that bears a prominent rounded keel. The umbilicus is small and shallow, the suture only slightly sinuous. The siphuncle is unknown.

Obinautilus has also been placed in Nautilidae by some authorities, though it may instead be an argonautid octopus.

Pakiwheel is a genus from the Upper Cretaceous of Pakistan, named by Malkani in 2014.

Taxonomy
The family Nautilidae contains up to nine extant species and several extinct species:

 * Genus Allonautilus
 * A. perforatus
 * A. scrobiculatus
 * Genus Nautilus
 * †N. altifrons
 * †N. balcombensis
 * N. belauensis
 * †N. butonensis
 * †N. campbelli
 * †N. cookanus
 * †N. geelongensis
 * †N. javanus
 * N. macromphalus
 * N. pompilius (type)
 * N. p. pompilius
 * N. p. suluensis
 * †N. praepompilius
 * Nautilus samoaensis Barord et al., 2023 – Samoa
 * N. stenomphalus
 * †Nautilus taiwanus Huang, 2002 – Taiwan
 * Nautilus vanuatuensis Barord et al., 2023 – Vanuatu
 * Nautilus vitiensis Barord et al., 2023 – Fiji

Genetic data collected in 2011 pointed to there being only three extant species: A. scrobiculatus, N. macromphalus, and N. pompilius, with N. belauensis and N. stenomphalus both subsumed under N. pompilius, possibly as subspecies, though this was prior to the description of three additional species (samoaensis, vanuatuensis and vitiensis).

Dubious or uncertain taxa
The following taxa associated with the family Nautilidae are of uncertain taxonomic status:

Conservation status and human use
Nautilus are collected or fished for sale as live animals or to carve the shells for souvenirs and collectibles, not for just the shape of their shells, but also the nacreous inner shell layer, which is used as a pearl substitute. In Samoa, nautilus shells decorate the forehead band of a traditional headdress called tuiga. Nautilus shells were popular items in the Renaissance and Baroque cabinet of curiosities and were often mounted by goldsmiths on a thin stem to make extravagant nautilus shell cups.

The low fecundity, late maturity, long gestation period and long life-span of nautiluses suggest that these species are vulnerable to overexploitation and demand for the ornamental shell is causing population declines. The threats from trade in these shells has led to countries such as Indonesia legally protecting the chambered nautilus with fines of up to US$8,500 and/or 5 years in prison for trading in this species. Despite their legal protection, these shells were reported to be openly sold at tourist areas in Bali as of 2014. The continued trade of these animals has led to a call for increased protection and in 2016 all species in Family Nautilidae were added to CITES Appendix II, regulating international trade.

In human culture
Palauans see nautili (kedarm) as a symbol of vulnerable or fragile character from a belief that they easily die even from slight bumps on ocean rocks; hence someone who gets quickly angry after being pranked is compared to one (ng ko er a kedarm, el di metirem e metord).

title: Nautilus


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Opet

Opet is a Turkish petroleum company engaged in the sale of commercial and industrial fuels, mineral oils, retail sales, warehousing and international sales. Opet Petroleum’s roots date back to the fuel distribution company "Ozturk Petrol" founded by Ozturk Family.

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As of 2015, Opet has received the 'best in customer satisfaction' award for 10 consecutive years.

Turkish Opet Aviation Fuels
THY Opet was founded in 2009 as a 50–50 partnership between Turkish Airlines and Opet. The company operates in the aircraft fuel storage and refueling business. As of 2013, Fortune 500 Turkey ranked Turkish Opet as the 25th largest company in the country.

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title: Opet


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Wepwawet

In Egyptian mythology, Wepwawet (hieroglyphic wp-w3w.t; also rendered Upuaut, Wep-wawet, Wepawet, Apuat, and Ophois) was originally a deity of funerary rites, war, and royalty association, whose cult centre was Asyut in Upper Egypt (Lycopolis in the Greco-Roman period). His name means opener of the ways and he is often depicted as a wolf standing at the prow of a solar-boat. Some interpret that Wepwawet was seen as a scout, going out to clear routes for the army to proceed forward. One inscription from the Sinai states that Wepwawet "opens the way" to king Sekhemkhet's victory.

Wepwawet originally was seen as wolf deity, with his cult center being at the Lycopolis, (meaning city of wolves in Greek). He is one of the earliest Egyptian Gods on record. Wepwawet was heavily seen in association with royalty and the Pharaoh (My face is that of Upwawet, Pyramid Texts), symbolizing and protecting their rise to power, accompanying them on hunts (in which capacity he was titled [one with] sharp arrows more powerful than the gods alone) or in the pharaoh's ascent to the Duat, or afterlife.

Over time, the connection to war and thus to death led to Wepwawet also being seen as one who opened the ways to, and through, Duat, for the spirits of the dead. Through this, and the similarity of the jackal to the wolf, Wepwawet became associated with Anubis, a deity that was worshiped in Asyut, eventually being considered his brother. He was seen as both having the head of a wolf and sometimes a jackal, like Anubis. He also was said to be Set's son. Consequently, Wepwawet is often confused with Anubis. This deity appears in the Temple of Seti I at Abydos.

In later Egyptian art, Wepwawet was depicted as a wolf or a jackal, or as a man with the head of a wolf or a jackal. Even when considered a jackal, Wepwawet usually was shown with grey, or white fur, reflecting his lupine origins. In rare cases, he appeared in fully human form. however there is some academic debate as to whether the Grey pigmentation is authentic with some scolars disputing this and stating that he was most often depicted with black fur, like Anubis. The discrepancy in color is most often attributed to pigment degradation, or the pigment variety chosen by the artist (for Wepwawet, Anubis, and other Jackal Gods such as Duamutef ).

He was sometimes depicted dressed as a soldier, as well as carrying other military equipment—a mace and a bow.

For what generally is considered to be lauding purposes of the pharaohs, a later myth briefly was circulated claiming that Wepwawet was born at the sanctuary of Wadjet, the sacred site for the oldest goddess of Lower Egypt that is located in the heart of Lower Egypt. Consequently, Wepwawet, who had hitherto been the standard of Upper Egypt alone, formed an integral part of royal rituals, symbolizing the unification of Egypt.

In later Pyramid Texts, Wepwawet is called "Ra" who has gone up from the horizon, perhaps as the "opener" of the sky. In the later Egyptian funerary context, Wepwawet assists at the Opening of the mouth ceremony and guides the deceased into the netherworld.

In popular culture
In Crusader Kings III, God Wepwawet is the supreme deity of the Kordofan faith.

Wepwawet is the personal god or totem of Thu, the main character in the Lady of the Reeds books by Canadian author Pauline Gedge (House of Dreams, 1994; and House of Illusions, 1996).

Animal origin
While we do not know for certain the exact species of animal represented by the Ancient Egyptian sꜢb / sAb animal (Jackal/wolf), the African wolf (Canis lupaster) was one species thought to depict and the template of numerous Ancient Egyptian deities, including Wepwawet. Other species theorized include the black-backed jackal also called the silver-backed Jackal (C. mesomelas or Lupulella mesomelas) and golden jackal or Asiatic jackal (Canis aureus).

The Egyptian jackal was listed as a subspecies of the golden jackal but molecular and osteological data has established that it is a unique species in its own right. It is native to Egypt, Libya, and Ethiopia, though its post-Pleistocene range once encompassed the Palestine region.

Inter-breeding between species also cannot be ruled out, and it has been posited that a species sharing the characteristics of both African jackal and wolf species could be the missing link, such as the combination of C. aureas and C. lupus lupaster appearing as Canis aureus lupaster.

title: Wepwawet


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Wadjet

Wadjet (wꜢḏyt "Green One"), known to the Greek world as Uto or Buto (Βουτώ) among other renderings including Wedjat, Uadjet, and Udjo, was originally the ancient Egyptian local goddess of the city of Dep or Buto in Lower Egypt, which was an important site in prehistoric Egypt. Wadjet's worship originally started in the Predynastic period, but evolved over time from a local goddess to a patron goddess.

Wadjet was closely associated in ancient Egyptian religion with the Eye of Ra and the Eye of Horus symbols, each powerful protective deities. The hieroglyph for her eye is shown below; sometimes two are shown in the sky of religious images. There is little consensus on which eye is truly tied to Wadjet as both have some importance to her. The main differences between her eyes are which side of the face they are on, left or right. The color of these eyes in amulets and ceramics are usually created in vibrant blue and green colors, which resemble the goddess's name of "the green one". The green Wadjet eye amulets found in Egyptian daily life provided a token of fertility and protection to those who had them.

Etymology
The name Wadjet is derived from the term for the symbol of her domain, Lower Egypt, the papyrus. Its hieroglyphs differ from those of the Green Crown or Deshret of Lower Egypt only by the determinative, which in the case of the crown was a picture of the Green Crown and, in the case of the goddess, a rearing cobra. The transliteration of the various eyes that Wadjet is associated with (Wedjat-eye) refers to the name the "Intact-one". Wadjet's name ends with a T, signifying her being a feminine presence rather than a male presence that some claim she is. Other names for Wadjet include: Wedjat, Wadjit, Wadjyt, Uto, Buto, Uatchet, and Edjo.

History
Wadjet was said to be the matron and protector of Lower Egypt in her cobra form, and upon unification with her sister Nekhbet, Goddess of Upper Egypt, the joint protector and patron of all of Egypt. Scenes of the two sisters together as two cobras can be found in King Sety I's tomb, located in the Valley of the Kings. The image of Wadjet with the sun disk is called the uraeus, and it was the emblem on the crown of the rulers of Lower Egypt. She was also the protector of kings and of women in childbirth, tasked with guarding them from enemies that could harm them.

Wadjet's family history is largely unconfirmed, mainly found through myth and word of mouth. In one myth, Wadjet was said to be Ra's Daughter, where she was depicted as his seeing eye. Her job was to find Shu and Tefnut for him, to which she successfully did. Her father was very proud of her and honored her by commanding that she stay with him to protect him from enemies. She took her most recognizable form as a snake and struck any enemies that tried to hurt her father. She was also in charge of carrying out Ra's orders. This myth is represented by triadic seals, amulets, and more, depicting the family of gods together, including Ra as the father, Wadjet as the daughter, and Seth as Ra's bodyguard. A clear example of these three gods being tied together was found on a Triad amulet in Tel Azekah, closer to Jerusalem, Israel.

In another myth, Wadjet was said to be the nurse of the infant god Horus. With the help of his mother Isis, they protected Horus from his treacherous uncle, Set, when they took refuge in the swamps of the Nile Delta.

Wadjet and Nekhbet have been portrayed as nurses to the various kings in the afterlife, breastfeeding him in order to sustain his royal qualities. These two goddesses appear in the Pyramid Texts, maintaining the king's divinity through suckling while he is in a child-like state. A similar portrayal of Wadjet as a nurse, found in the tomb of Tutankhamun on a pendant, instead depicts the King as fully grown and standing straight up while being breastfed. He is dressed in his traditional royal attire, using the Goddess's milk to help him be successful in his position of king. This pendant of Wadjet and the king was found in the context of funerary rituals and could serve multiple purposes of both resurrection and coronation. This imagery is also found in King Pepy II's funerary temple, which shows a damaged relief of Wadjet nursing the king.

Wadjet's oracle was in the renowned temple in Per-Wadjet that was dedicated to her worship and gave the city its name. This oracle may have been the source for the oracular tradition that spread to Greece from Egypt. From around the 4th dynasty onward, Wadjet was claimed as the patron goddess and protector of the whole of Lower Egypt. She became associated with Nekhbet, depicted as a white vulture, who held unified Egypt. After the unification the image of Nekhbet joined Wadjet on the crown, thereafter shown as part of the uraeus. The religious epithet for these patron deities of the entire county was, "nebty ('Two Ladies')".

Wadjet, as the goddess of Lower Egypt, had a large temple at the ancient Imet (now Tell Nebesha) in the Nile Delta. She was worshipped in the area as the "Lady of Imet". Later she was joined by Min and Horus to form a triad of deities. From the site of Tebtunis, in the Egyptian Faiyum, a temple is dedicated to Wadjet and was the site of ritual performance in her honor.

According to ancient Greece, Wadjet was present in their mythology as well. Known as Buto, Uto, Leto or Latona, the goddess was one of the focal points for the town of Buto, as mentioned above.

Appearance
The Egyptian word wꜣḏ signifies blue and green. It is also the name for the well-known "Eye of the Moon". Wadjet was usually depicted as an Egyptian cobra, a venomous snake common to the region. In later times, she was often depicted simply as a woman with a snake's head, a woman wearing the uraeus, or a lion headed goddess often wearing the uraeus. The uraeus originally had been her body alone, which wrapped around or was coiled upon the head of the pharaoh or another deity. In her snake form, she was depicted as striking and biting those who try to harm the King, which is why she is featured as a protective symbol on crown emblems and amulets. Wadjet is also depicted as an Egyptian cobra with large, colorful wings. She is shown in her signature green and blue colors on the snake hood and wing feathers, but she is also shown with vibrant red and gold colors that scale down to the snake's tail. Gold commonly represented the gods and goddesses eternal flesh, while red represented danger and fire to signify something as a threat. A decorative panel depicting Wadjet's cobras was found in the Maru-Aten Temple in a darker colored granite. This darkened material helps historians infer that a yellow quartzite color was present, representing the color of the sun and the eternal flesh.

Later Wadjet often was shown coiled upon the head of Ra; in order to act as his protector, this image of her became the uraeus symbol used on the royal crowns as well. Another early depiction of Wadjet is as a cobra entwined around a papyrus stem, beginning in the Predynastic era (prior to 3100 B.C.) and it is thought to be the first image that shows a snake entwined around a staff symbol. This is a sacred image that appeared repeatedly in the later images and myths of cultures surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, called the caduceus, which may have had separate origins. Her image also rears up from the staff of the "flagpoles" that are used to indicate deities, as seen in the hieroglyph for "uraeus" and for "goddess" in other places.

Similar to her sister, Nekhbet, Wadjet can also be found in the form of a vulture. It is less common to find her in this form as her cobra form is more popular in order to represent protection. However some reliefs do depict Wadjet in her avian form hovering over the heads of kings and pharaohs.

Wadjet is occasionally depicted as other animal headed beings or depicted as other animals such as a lion, mongoose, Ichneumonidae. Notably the depiction of the mongoose serves as an antithesis to that of the cobra as it is a natural predator. While the Icheumon probably serves as a depiction of Wedjat's role in seeing for Horus. Many bronze statues of Wadjet are argued to contain Icheumon remains however confirmation on this being forensic or a visual observation is unknown.

When Wadjet is depicted as a lion, she is usually seated in the bronze statues that represent her. She is in a relaxed position with her mouth closed and her arms at her side, which is very different from her other depictions as a snake rearing at enemies. An explanation for her depiction as a lion headed goddess may stem from the goddess Sekhmet through association as a powerful or dangerous goddess. Some historians are not sure that these bronze statues are of Wadjet, but instead of the goddess Sekhmet.

At times she was depicted wearing the Red Crown of Lower Egypt. Wadjet was depicted many times in her cobra form alongside her Upper Egyptian counterpart Nekhbet, in her vulture form wearing the Red Crown on wall paintings or on the pharaoh's headdress.

In the relief shown in the gallery, which is on the wall of the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut at Luxor, there are two images of Wadjet: one of her as the Uraeus with her head through an ankh and another where she precedes a Horus hawk wearing the pschent, representing the pharaoh whom she protects.

Protector of country, pharaohs, and other deities
Wadjet was associated with the Nile Delta region and was more associated with the world of the living. She was closely linked to pharaohs as a protective deity.

Wadjet is found in several different burial sites of both Kings and Queens in order to symbolize protection. Notably, she is found in Queen consort Nefertari's tomb in a rearing position wearing a double crown, or Pschent. The Pschent depicts the unity of Lower and Upper Egypt into one. These crowns are usually found in the tombs of royalty in order to show control over the entirety of Egypt. Along with her double crown, Wadjet is posed holding a Was-sceptre, a valued symbol of authority or divine power. All of these sacred items Wadjet is posed with help to provide protection over the royal family, and in this case, the royal family is of King Ramsses II and Queen consort Nefertari.

Aside from Nefertari's tomb, Wadjet is also found in King Sety I's Tomb, along with her sister Nekhbet. The two sisters are seen on each side of King Sety's name, providing full protection to him as he rules over Egypt. The unification of the sisters shows Sety I's control over all of Egypt, not just of Lower or Upper Egypt.Wadjet, as mentioned above, is often depicted as a winged cobra. These wings serving a dual purpose as a protective embrace and being capable of creating the breath of life often connected to the image of the Ankh that she is often depicted with. Both of these uses are vital in surviving the afterlife.

From the Temple of Kom Ombo an engraving depicts surgical equipment among which is a set of Wadjet eyes denoting its uses as a medical item and Wadjet's role as a protector deity. Within the wider relief it contains a depiction of a Roman pharaoh offering the Wadjet Eyes to Haroeris and Senetneferet (meaning the good sister), his consort. While only the lower portion of the relief remains, its inscription describes the pharaoh's desire for Haroeris to cleanse the eyes symbolizing the two halves of Egypt and in turn restore Egypt itself. Once again this denotes Wadjet's role as a protector and unifier of Egypt.

Wadjet in Modern Media
Like many aspects of Egyptology, mass media tends to incorporate Egyptian influences into video games, movies and much more. Wadjet is no exception to this rule and is referenced in countless different forms of modern media.

 * Wadjet's symbolism through the Eye of Horus appears in the video game Overwatch 2 underneath the character "Pharah's" eye.
 * Wadjet's symbolism through the Eye of Ra appears in the video game Overwatch 2 underneath the character "Ana (Overwatch)"'s eye.
 * Wadjet appears as the protector of Lower Egypt in The Crown of Ptolemy (March 31, 2015), by Rick Riordan.
 * Wadjet's symbolism as the Eye of Horus appears within the quest, "The Curse of Wadjet", in the video game Assassin's Creed Origins.
 * Wadjet appears in the board game Wadjet (board game) (1996), where she attempts to stop the explorers (players) from entering her tomb.

Other uses
The Nazit Mons, a mountain on Venus, is named for Nazit, an "Egyptian winged serpent goddess". According to Elizabeth Goldsmith, the Greek name for Nazit was Buto.

title: Wadjet


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Uto, Kumamoto

Uto (宇土市) is a city located in Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan. The city was founded on October 1, 1958. As of March 2017, the city has an estimated population of 37,442 and a population density of 500 inhabitants/km2. The total area is 74.17 km2.

Famous people of Uto

 * Hamanoshima Keishi - retired sumo wrestler, komusubi
 * Shiranui Dakuemon - retired sumo wrestler, 8th yokozuna
 * Shōdai Naoya - sumo wrestler, ōzeki
 * Naomichi Ueda - Footballer

title: Uto, Kumamoto


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Buto

Buto (Βουτώ, بوتو, Butu), Bouto, Butus (Βοῦτος, Boutos) or Butosus was a city that the Ancient Egyptians called Per-Wadjet. It was located 95 km east of Alexandria in the Nile Delta of Egypt. What in classical times the Greeks called Buto, stood about midway between the Taly (Bolbitine) and Thermuthiac (Sebennytic) branches of the Nile, a few kilometers north of the east-west Butic River and on the southern shore of the Butic Lake (Βουτικὴ λίμνη, Boutikē limnē).

Today, it is called Tell El Fara'in ("Hill of the Pharaohs"), near the villages of Ibtu (or Abtu), Kom Butu, and the city of Desouk (دسوق).

History
Buto was a sacred site in dedication to the goddess Wadjet. It was an important cultural site during prehistoric Egypt (before 3100 BCE).

The Buto-Maadi culture was the most important Lower Egyptian prehistoric culture, dating from 4000 - 3500, and contemporary with Naqada I and II phases in Upper Egypt. The culture was best known from the site Maadi near Cairo, but was also attested in many other places in the Delta to the Faiyum region. This culture was marked by development in architecture and technology.

Archaeological evidence shows that the Upper Egyptian Naqada culture replaced the Buto-Maadi culture (also known as the "Lower Egyptian Cultural Complex"), perhaps after a conquest. More recently, scholars have expressed reservations about this; they pointed out that, in the Delta, there was a considerable transitional phase.

The unification of Lower Egypt and Upper Egypt into one entity is now considered to be a more complex process than previously thought.

Earliest texts
In the earliest records about the region, it contained two cities, Pe and Dep. Eventually, they merged into one city that the Ancient Egyptians named Per-Wadjet.

The goddess Wadjet was the patron deity of Lower Egypt and her oracle was located in her renowned temple in this area. An annual festival was held there that celebrated Wadjet. The area also contained sanctuaries of Horus and Bast, and much later, the city became associated with Isis.

Due to similarities, many deities had parallel identities and roles and merged into a unified pantheon of deities. That was not the case with patron deities, however. The patron deity of Lower Egypt, Wadjet, was represented as a cobra. The patron deity of Upper Egypt, Nekhbet, was depicted as a white vulture. Their separate cultural statures were such essential features that they never merged when the two cultures unified. There were so many deities with similar roles or natures from the religious beliefs of the two unified regions. The two goddesses became known euphemistically as the Two Ladies, who together, remained the patrons of unified Egypt throughout the remainder of its ancient history. The image of Nekhbet joined Wadjet on the uraeus encircling the crown of the kings who ruled Egypt after that.

Ptolemaic period
During the Ptolemaic Kingdom, a Greek-speaking dynasty that ruled from 305 to 30 BCE, the Greeks coined the toponym Buto for the city. It served as the capital, or according to Herodian, merely the principal village of the Delta. Herodotus styled it the Chemmite nome, Ptolemy knew it as the Phthenothite nome (Φθενότης), and Pliny the Elder as Ptenetha.

Greek historians recorded that Buto was celebrated for its monolithic temple and the oracle of the goddess Wadjet (Buto), and a yearly festival was held there in honour of the goddess. While writing about Egyptian culture, the classical Greeks attempted to associate the more ancient Egyptian deities with their own, a process called the interpretatio graeca. They wrote about them as essentially the same deities but with different names in Greek culture. For Wadjet, the parallel identification was made with Leto or Latona. They also noted that at Buto, there was a sanctuary of Horus, whom the Greeks associated with Apollo, and a sanctuary of Bastet, who the Greeks associated with Artemis.

Writing during that Graeco-Roman period, Plutarch reported that Isis had entrusted the baby Horus to "Leto" (Wadjet) to raise at Buto while Isis searched for the body of her murdered husband Osiris. According to these same late sources, the shrew (sometimes associated with Horus) was worshiped at Buto as well.

Archeological findings
A palace building dating to the Second Dynasty is considered one of the most important discoveries within Buto. Archaeological excavations were undertaken at Buto by the Egypt Exploration Society from 1964–1969, under the direction of Veronica Seton-Williams and later, by Dorothy Charlesworth. The German Archaeological Institute, Cairo has been excavating at Buto since the early 1980s. Six Greek bathhouses also were excavated by different missions in Buto.

In 2022, excavations over an area of 6.5m x 4.5m uncovered the remains of an ancient hall lined with pillars within the larger temple structure. The hall contained the remains of three surviving columns, aligned on a north-south axis at the southwestern end of the temple. A number of stone fragments decorated with engravings where found, as well as numerous ceramics and pottery associated with ritual activity. In a press release issued by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, archaeologists also found a limestone painting with the representation of a bird’s head wearing a white crown surrounded by feathers.

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Nekhbet

Nekhbet (also spelt Nekhebit) is an early predynastic local goddess in Egyptian mythology, who was the patron of the city of Nekheb (her name meaning of Nekheb). Ultimately, she became the patron of Upper Egypt and one of the two patron deities (alongside Wadjet) for all of Ancient Egypt when it was unified.

Mythology
One of Egypt's earliest temples was the shrine of Nekhbet at Nekheb (also referred to as El Kab). It was the companion city to Nekhen, the religious and political capital of Upper Egypt, at the end of the Predynastic period (c. 3200–3100 BC) and probably, also during the Early Dynastic Period (c. 3100–2686 BC). The original settlement on the Nekhen site dates from Naqada I or the late Badarian cultures. At its height, from about 3400 BC, Nekhen had at least 5,000 and possibly as many as 10,000 inhabitants.

Nekhbet was the tutelary deity of Upper Egypt. Nekhbet and her Lower Egyptian counterpart Wadjet often appeared together as the "Two Ladies". One of the titles of each ruler was the Nebty name, which began with the hieroglyphs for [s/he] of the Two Ladies....

Iconography
In art, Nekhbet was depicted as a vulture. Alan Gardiner identified the species that was used in divine iconography as a griffon vulture. Arielle P. Kozloff, however, argues that the vultures in New Kingdom art, with their blue-tipped beaks and loose skin, better resemble the lappet-faced vulture.

In New Kingdom times, the vulture appeared alongside the uraeus on the headdresses with which kings were buried. The uraeus and vulture are traditionally interpreted as Wadjet and Nekhbet, but Edna R. Russmann has suggested that in this context they represent Isis and Nephthys, two major funerary goddesses, instead.

Nekhbet usually was depicted hovering, with her wings spread above the royal image, clutching a shen symbol (representing eternal encircling protection), frequently in her claws.

Depictions of animal deities start with the animal being depicted directly. Later the animal appears in human form, but still with an animal head. Individual deities continue into historical times (post 3000 BC) to often be described in their original animal form: e.g., Horus (Falcon), Wadjet (cobra) and Nekhbet (vulture).

In popular culture

 * Nekhbet is a bird-like monster in Final Fantasy XII.
 * Nekhbet appears in Rick Riordan's The Throne of Fire as a minor antagonist.
 * Nekhbet is the name of a pet vulture in the anime Tenshi ni Narumon.
 * Nekhbet is an ascending goddess in the Dungeon Crawler Carl series.

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Nautilus (fictional submarine)

Nautilus is the fictional submarine belonging to Captain Nemo featured in Jules Verne's novels Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870) and The Mysterious Island (1875). Verne named the Nautilus after Robert Fulton's real-life submarine Nautilus (1800). For the design of the Nautilus, Verne was inspired by the French Navy submarine Plongeur, a model of which he had seen at the 1867 Exposition Universelle, three years before writing his novel.

Description
Nautilus is described by Verne as "a masterpiece containing masterpieces". It is designed and commanded by Captain Nemo. Electricity provided by sodium/mercury batteries (with the sodium provided by extraction from seawater) is the craft's primary power source for propulsion and other services. The energy needed to extract the sodium is provided by coal mined from the sea floor.

Nautilus is double-hulled, and is further separated into water-tight compartments. Its top speed is 50 mph. In Captain Nemo's own words:

Here, Professor Aronnax, are the different dimensions of this boat now transporting you. It's a very long cylinder with conical ends. It noticeably takes the shape of a cigar, a shape already adopted in London for several projects of the same kind. The length of this cylinder from end to end is exactly seventy meters, and its maximum breadth of beam is eight meters. So it isn't quite built on the ten–to–one ratio of your high–speed steamers; but its lines are sufficiently long, and their tapering gradual enough, so that the displaced water easily slips past and poses no obstacle to the ship's movements. These two dimensions allow you to obtain, via a simple calculation, the surface area and volume of the Nautilus. Its surface area totals 1,011.45 square meters, its volume 1,507.2 cubic meters—which is tantamount to saying that when it's completely submerged, it displaces 1,500 cubic meters of water, or weighs 1,500 metric tons.

Nautilus uses floodable tanks in order to adjust buoyancy and so control its depth. The pumps that evacuate these tanks of water are so powerful that they produce large jets of water when the vessel emerges rapidly from the surface of the water. This leads many early observers of Nautilus to believe that the vessel is some species of marine mammal, or perhaps a sea monster not yet known to science. To submerge deeply in a short time, Nautilus uses a technique called "hydroplaning", in which the vessel dives down at a steep angle.

Nautilus supports a crew that gathers food from the sea. Nautilus includes a galley for preparing these foods, which includes a machine that makes drinking water from seawater through distillation. Nautilus is not able to refresh its air supply, so Captain Nemo designed it to do this by surfacing and exchanging stale air for fresh, much like a whale. Nautilus is capable of extended voyages without refueling or otherwise restocking supplies. Its maximum dive time is around five days.

Much of the ship is decorated to standards of luxury that are unequalled in a seagoing vessel of the time. These include a library containing about twelve thousand books, with boxed collections of valuable oceanic specimens. The library is also filled with expensive paintings and other works of art. Nautilus also features a lavish dining room and even an organ that Captain Nemo uses to entertain himself in the evening. By comparison, Nemo's personal quarters are very sparsely furnished but do feature duplicates of the bridge instruments so that the captain can keep track of the vessel without being present on the bridge. These amenities however, are only available to Nemo, Professor Aronnax, and his companions.

From her attacks on ships, using a ramming prow to puncture target vessels below the waterline, the world thinks it a sea monster, but later identifies it as an underwater vessel capable of great destructive power, after Abraham Lincoln is attacked and Ned Land strikes the metallic surface of Nautilus with his harpoon.

Its parts were built to order by companies including Creusot and Cail & Co. in France, Pen & Co. and Laird's in England, Scott's in Scotland, Krupp in Prussia, the Motala workshops in Sweden, and Hart Bros. in the United States. Each part was ordered by Nemo anonymously under a different address. Then they were assembled by Nemo's men on a desert island. Nautilus returned to this island, where Nemo later helped castaways in the novel The Mysterious Island. After Nemo dies on board, the volcanic island erupts, entombing the Captain and Nautilus for eternity.

Claimed links between Captain Nemo's Nautilus and the Confederate warship CSS Alabama
In 1998 the Jules Verne scholar William Butcher was the first to identify a possible link between the Birkenhead, England built CSS Alabama and Captain Nemo's Nautilus. The CSS Alabama was a warship built in secrecy for the Confederate States by Lairds shipyard of Birkenhead, England in the American Civil War. Butcher stated, "The Alabama, which claimed to have sunk 75 merchantmen, was destroyed by the Unionist Kearsarge off Cherbourg on 11 June 1864... This battle has clear connections with Nemo's final attack, also in the English Channel."

Jules Verne had himself made a previous comparison between the Birkenhead built CSS Alabama and the Nautilus in a letter to his publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel in March 1869.

In September 2021 the Birkenhead born geography teacher John Lamb noted that both the hull of the fictional Nautilus and the hull of the real-life Confederate warship CSS Alabama had been built in secret at the Laird's shipyard in Birkenhead, lying opposite the port of Liverpool. Furthermore, both vessels had been completed on a ‘desert island’ – in the case of the Alabama, on the Azores island of Terceira.

In Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1869) Captain Nemo explains how he built the Nautilus: "Each of its components, Dr Aronnax, was sent to me from a different point on the globe via a forwarding address... the iron plates for its hull by Laird’s of Liverpool…. I set up my workshops on a small desert island in the middle of the ocean. There with my workmen, that is my good companions whom I instructed and trained, I completed our Nautilus."

According to the historian Stephen Fox, Captain Raphael Semmes had portraits of General Robert E Lee and the Confederate President Jefferson Davis on the cabin wall of the CSS Alabama. In Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas, Captain Nemo has portraits of Abraham Lincoln and the radical abolitionist John Brown adorning the cabin walls of the Nautilus. Semmes was a supporter of slavery while Captain Nemo is a militant antislaver.

The two-year voyage of the CSS Alabama had covered a distance of approximately 75,000 miles which equates to just over 21,700 leagues in the Nautilus and Verne may have chosen Captain Nemo’s motto of ‘Mobilis in Mobile’ (sometimes changed to Mobilis in Mobili) quite simply because the captain of the CSS Alabama, Raphael Semmes, was a part time lawyer from Mobile, Alabama.

In 1869 Captain Semmes released his American Civil War memoirs entitled Memoirs of Service Afloat During the War Between the States. In the same year of 1869, Jules Verne released his classic novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. John Lamb catalogued the many similarities between the two books on his website "Jules Verne and the Heroes of Birkenhead" in August 2022.

John Lamb hypothesized that to Jules Verne the CSS Alabama and Captain Nemo's Nautilus might essentially be one and the same and that the militant abolitionist Captain Nemo is the ‘alter ego’ of the pro slavery Raphael Semmes – i.e. the ‘opposite of oneself’

In their respective books, Memoirs Afloat During the War Between the States (1869) and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1869), both Raphael Semmes and Jules Verne mention world shipping being alarmed by a destructive maritime force which is compared to a ‘sea monster’. In both books the monster is jeered at in the press and celebrated in song (see "Roll, Alabama, Roll").

Raphael Semmes was denounced by Abraham Lincoln as a ‘pirate’ and a bounty put on his head by the U.S Navy Department of Admiral David Farragut. The fictional Captain Nemo is also denounced as a pirate in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and the Nautilus is chased by a warship called the USS Abraham Lincoln, whose commander, a Captain Farragut, offers a reward for the first sighting of the ‘sea monster’.

Both Raphael Semmes and Jules Verne talk about their respective vessels as being illuminated by an eerie light and slowly moving in circles around their ‘prey’. The CSS Alabama and the Nautilus both have a specialized recess in their hull, and a state-of-the-art water condenser on board to provide fresh water for their multinational crews.

Both the CSS Alabama and the Nautilus encounter an imaginary island, sail through a patch of white water, have an aversion for the coast of Brazil, but still pause to describe the fresh waters of the Amazon as they pour in to the sea.

Raphael Semmes seeks sanctuary for the CSS Alabama on the Brazilian volcanic island of Fernando de Noronha, where he takes on coal from his supply ship Agrippina whereas Captain Nemo seeks sanctuary for the Nautilus within the flooded crater of a secret volcanic island where his crew proceed to mine their own coal.

On the respective voyages of both the CSS Alabama and the Nautilus an elaborate funeral is described in detail and both captains are visibly overcome with emotion. while both authors talk about a grave / mausoleum sealed up by coral over time.

Both Raphael Semmes and Captain Nemo describe the nature and the effects of the Gulf Stream in detail, both have a ‘museum of curiosities’ gathered on dingy trips, and while Raphael Semmes collects an Amazonian seed pod that looks like a Havanna cigar, Captain Nemo gives Doctor Aronnax a seaweed cigar which Doctor Aronnax mistakes for a Havanna cigar.

Both Raphael Semmes and Captain Nemo talk about sleeping sperm whales and highlight the dangers to right whales in venturing into the warm waters near the equator. Both Raphael Semmes and Captain Nemo kill a single albatross, sail through swarms of argonauts / nautilus, and refer to food that a Malay would cook.

Raphael Semmes claims a fully grown swordfish can pierce a ship’s wooden hull while Doctor Aronnax claims a giant Narwhal’s tusk can pierce a ship’s hull.

Both Raphael Semmes and Jules Verne describe the journey across the Indian Ocean as tedious to everyone but the natural historian, and then come across ships from the P and O Line. Both Raphael Semmes and Captain Nemo pride themselves on their good manners and hospitality, but both lament the passing of sail to be replaced by steam.

Whereas Raphael Semmes comments at length on the sinking of the Liverpool built Confederate commerce raider CSS Florida it is Captain Nemo and the Nautilus who come across the remains of a ship called the Florida (a Confederate link first identified by the Jules Verne scholar William Butcher in 1998).

Both Raphael Semmes and Captain Nemo pay tribute to the oceanographer Matthew Fontaine Maury and comment on his fall from grace after the American Civil War. Whereas Captain Semmes compares the CSS Alabama to his wife Captain Nemo compares the Nautilus to himself. Raphael Semmes laments the loss of the British built CSS Alabama and its largely British crew as if it were the loss of his wife and children, whereas Captain Nemo laments the actual loss of his wife and children – killed by the British. Whereas Raphael Semmes states that India should never be free from British rule, Captain Nemo is later revealed to be an Indian who fought to be free from British rule.

In the 1875 sequel novel to Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas entitled The Mysterious Island Captain Nemo returns and is revealed as the rebel Indian Prince Dakkar, a possible derivation of the Afrikaan CSS Alabama celebratory song Daar Kom die Alibama ('Here Comes the Alabama') whereby moving the letter 'k' two spaces to the left gives the phrase Dakar om die Alibama.

In November 2021, Alan Evans, the Director of Regeneration and Place at Wirral Borough Council, endorsed the further claim of John Lamb that Jules Verne had set his sequel novel The Mysterious Island in Birkenhead and the Wirral Peninsula, so confirming that the Nautilus and Captain Nemo had indeed returned back to their spiritual home of Birkenhead – also the home port of the CSS Alabama.

Notable appearances
Beside their original appearances in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas and The Mysterious Island, Nautilus and Captain Nemo have appeared in numerous other works.

In the 1954 film adaptation of the first novel and in The Return of Captain Nemo, it is suggested that Nautilus is powered by nuclear energy (discovered by Nemo himself), and that Nemo uses the same energy to destroy Vulcania, Nautilus ' s base island.

In the 1969 film Captain Nemo and the Underwater City, Nautilus and its sister ship Nautilus II are depicted as industrialised stingray-like vessels, flattened with pronounced tumblehomes supporting rounded deckhouses. Each has a heavy girderwork tail, at the tip of which twin rudders and diving planes are mounted.

In Kevin J. Anderson's Captain Nemo: The Fantastic History of a Dark Genius, Nautilus appears as a real submarine, apparently cigar-shaped like the one from the novel, built by Nemo for the Ottoman Empire.

In Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Nautilus features with a squid-like appearance in the graphic novel and a more traditional – albeit extremely tall – submarine in the film. Toward the closing stages of the film, antagonist "The Fantom" has stolen Nemo's design and begun construction of multiple submarines dubbed "Nautili" by Skinner.

The Nautilus is also featured in the Rick Riordan young adult novel Daughter of the Deep. The book is set in the world of 20,000 Leagues, but six generations after the events described in Jules Verne's book.

Other Verne submarines
Submarines feature in some other of Verne's works. In the 1896 novel Facing the Flag, the pirate Ker Karraje uses an unnamed submarine that acts both as a tug to his schooner Ebba and for ramming and destroying ships which are the targets of his piracy. The same book also features HMS Sword, a small Royal Navy experimental submarine which is sunk after a valiant but unequal struggle with the pirate submarine. In the book The Master of the World, Robur's secondary vehicle, Terror, is a strange flying machine with submarine, automobile and speedboat capabilities. It briefly eludes naval forces on the Great Lakes by diving.

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Talk:Post-communism

Title
It is ridiculous that "post-communism" can exist as a concept when communism still exists. --Daniel C. Boyer 13:15 Oct 1, 2002 (UTC)

 * Please let me know where. Which countries actually practice communism at the moment, rather than calling themselves communist? I don't notice China's leaders, or North Korea's leaders, for example, doing much sharing with the common people. Perhaps you mean Communism, the rule of a so-called "Communist party", something entirely different.

 * But doesn't calling it "post-communism" already assume this fallacy? --Daniel C. Boyer

 * In Marxism, the inevitable theoretical stage after socialism is communism. It will occur, Marxists maintain, after socialism "withers away" in some undefined fashion. As historians and journalists well know, no Communist country has ever advanced from socialism to the predicted stage of communism. Nonetheless, dozens of countries ruled by Communist (or Workers) parties are commonly referred to as Communist countries. This by no means implies that they've reached their stated goal: it only describes the regime in power. --Ed Poor

Not really. Consider as an analogy the Stone Age. The bronze-working techniques that marked the end of the Stone Age happened at different times across the world. So, some places were "post-Stone Age", without that necessarily implying that the Stone Age was finished everywhere. It *may* suppose that Communism is a transitory phenomenon, and so we have to be careful covering it with NPOV, but that doesn't negate the existence of the concept. - Khendon 13:30 Oct 1, 2002 (UTC)

The breakup of the Soviet Union heralded the end of Communism. Obviously, Cuba and North Korea are still hard-line Communist, and China still Communism albeit "with Chinese characteristics" as the artful phrase goes. But, thank God, hundreds of millions of people have finally gotten their freedom back from Communist tyranny. So it makes sense to speak of the "post-Communist" era.

Perhaps we need more information on the transition from the Cold War era of Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and the "stan" countries of Asia, as well as attention to other countries which might become non-Communist in coming years. --Ed Poor

 * Speaking as an inhabitant of one of those "post-communist" countries, I know many people around here who, if you were to suggest to them that 15 years ago they have "finally gotten their freedom back from Communist tyranny", would tell you to take your freedom and shove it up your... well, you get the point. To say that capitalism is unpopular in "post-communist" countries would be a vast understatement. And that might have something to do with the collapse of living standards, endemic poverty, swollen crime rate, rampant corruption, and other nice things that have followed the "fall of communism". -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 19:28, 1 Oct 2004 (UTC)

In my opinion, the term "post-Communist" has to be looked at for the parties themselves rather than to the world or even the country as a whole. The parties themselves used to be communist but are not any more, and as such can be said to be post-communist, independent of in what stage the world as a whole is.

But in the end, the question comes down to what word is actually used, rather than what would be a correct denomination. As such, I also doubt whether the page is titled correctly, I have not heared the word be used recently (although that may also be because I hear less of Italian politics), so it might well not have 'staying power'. I personally would regret it, because I also see no alternative term coming up, while these parties have a lot in common to warrant a name for the group (they form for example one of the seven parties in the European Parliament, the European Unitary Left - Nordic Green Left. Andre Engels

context of western Europe
Mihnea Tudoreanu wrote: those paragraphs were removed because "post-communism" is a term defining the current regimes of former communist states, not the situation of western CP's

 * That's something the history of this page disagrees with. It has had information about both eastern and western communist parties from the beginning, and I don't see why it's wrong to mention the western ones. Sure, they haven't been in power during the Cold War, but they were nevertheless influenced by the fall of Communism in the east. Also, it's inconsistent to remove this and at the same time keep the link to "Eurocommunism". --Joy [shallot]   11:49, 5 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * The history of this article is hardly an argument! The article could have easily been wrong from the beginning; the term "post-communism" refers to the current situation in Eastern Europe. However, I agree we should remove the link to Eurocommunism in order to be consistent. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 09:04, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * You failed to provide any real reason why it's wrong to mention the western ones. The fall of Communism in the east certainly affected them and the information is correct per se, I am going to restore it again. --Joy [shallot]   11:05, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

 * My reason is the fact that they are off-topic. But I have no time to argue such a minor point, so I'll accept this inclusion and just make a few edits to your paragraphs. -- Mihnea Tudoreanu 11:55, 23 Oct 2004 (UTC)

catastrophic fall of standards of living
Standards of living registered a catastrophic fall in the early 1990s, and in most post-communist countries they are still below their 1989 level even today.
 * Source?

Is that true? I'm not disputing that... it's just that I haven't heard that before. We really need a source for that and a little more information. Gingermint (talk) 04:47, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Error
The entire article is a description of how the Great Socialist People were ruined into poverty and unemployment by the Evil Imperialist Capitalists.

Is it even possible to de-POV it without deleting the entire farce? --Joffeloff 11:17, 22 July 2006 (UTC) --122.53.139.22 (talk) 00:42, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Since when?
As in, since when has the Communist Party of the Russian Federation been democratic socialist as opposed to ideologically Communist? If the CPRF can be fairly called democratic, socialist or democratic socialists then I shall eat my hat.

This article is badly written, relies on partisan conclusions in its work and has no sources. If someone wants to document the post-USSR world, then it needs to be done properly and not in this format.82.109.85.98 (talk) 19:38, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

Catastrophic fall of standards of living is a myth
There is a paper that argues that output collapse after fall of communism is largely a myth. In short, the problem is that there is lack of trustworthy materials about "real" output of the communist countries. Official communist reports are highly overestimating the economic data simply for ideological and propagandistic purposes. As former Czechoslovak president Vaclav Havel said in his first presidental new year's speech on 1th january 1990: "For forty years you heard from my predecessors on this day different variations on the same theme: how our country was flourishing [...] and what bright perspectives were unfolding in front of us. I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you. Our country is not flourishing." And even standard measures of prosperity like purchasing power parity must be taken in a very specific context. In communism, the products were mostly cheap, but unavailable because the huge demand was not met by adequate supply (pricing mechanism was not working in communism). The amount of goods that an average person could buy for their salary was thus only hypothetical. I do not argue that there was not an economic shock after the huge market system change, but I do argue about the size of actual industrial and living standards downturn, being nowhere near to "catastrophic". I propose to remove parts: "Average standards of living registered a catastrophic fall in the early 1990s" and "Some populations are still poorer today than they were in 1989", unless backed by solid and relevant sources. --Vanes Sirac (cz) 13:18 28 October 2010 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.177.169.200 (talk) 13:54, 28 October 2010 (UTC)

 * The public dept in Poland for one Polish citizen (even for a little baby or an 90-year old man) is now over 9.000 $ (30.000 złotys). The average monthly salary in Poland for a Polish person is 500 $ net (foreigners in Poland earn somewhat more). Is Poland richer than during communism??? I wouldn't say so. 195.69.81.75 (talk) 12:02, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

title: Talk:Post-communism


text:
750 BC

Asia Minor

 * King Sardur II shows the cities in the kingdom of Urartu strengthen against the Cimmerians.

Italy

 * The Ionian Greeks found the cities of Cumae and Naples in the Gulf of Naples.
 * Romulus, the legendary co-founder of Rome, holds the first Roman triumph to celebrate a military victory following the Rape of the Sabine Women.

Deaths

 * King Xie of Zhou

title: 750 BC


text:
Robert C. Merton

Robert Cox Merton (born July 31, 1944) is an American economist, Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate, and professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, known for his pioneering contributions to continuous-time finance, especially the first continuous-time option pricing model, the Black–Scholes–Merton model. In 1997 Merton together with Myron Scholes were awarded the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel for the method to determine the value of derivatives.

Merton was on the board of directors of Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM), a highly leveraged hedge fund that collapsed in 1998, wiping out most of the value paid in by the investors, and requiring a $3.6 billion bailout from a group of 14 banks, in a deal brokered and put together by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Merton's current research focus is on the topics of lifecycle investing and retirement funding, measuring and monitoring systemic risks in macrofinance, and financial innovation coupled with changing dynamics in financial institutions.

Early life and education
Merton was born in New York City to sociologist Robert K. Merton, who was of Jewish descent, and Suzanne Carhart, who was from a "multigenerational southern New Jersey Methodist/Quaker family." He grew up in Hastings-on-Hudson, New York.

Merton earned a Bachelor of Science in Engineering Mathematics from the School of Engineering and Applied Science of Columbia University, a Masters of Science from the California Institute of Technology, and his doctorate in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1970 under the guidance of Paul Samuelson.

Career
In 1970 Merton joined the faculty of the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he taught until 1988. Subsequently, Merton moved to Harvard University, where he was George Fisher Baker Professor of Business Administration from 1988 to 1998. He was the John and Natty McArthur University Professor from 1998-2010, becoming Professor Emeritus at Harvard University in 2010.

In 2010 Robert C. Merton rejoined the MIT Sloan School of Management where he is the School of Management Distinguished Professor of Finance. Since 2010, he also has been a Resident Scientist at Dimensional Fund Advisors, working on pension management.

Merton received the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1997 for a new methodology to value derivatives. He is past President of the American Finance Association (1986), a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1993) and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

He remained on the faculty at MIT in 2021.

Research
Merton’s research focuses on finance theory including lifecycle finance, optimal intertemporal portfolio selection, capital asset pricing, pricing of options, risky corporate debt, loan guarantees, and other complex derivative securities. He has also written on the operation and regulation of financial institutions. Merton’s current academic interests include financial innovation and dynamics of institutional change, controlling the propagation of macro financial risk, and improving methods of measuring and managing sovereign risk. He is the author of Continuous-Time Finance, and a co-author of Cases in Financial Engineering: Applied Studies of Financial Innovation and The Global Financial System: A Functional Perspective; Finance; and Financial Economics. Merton was a founding co-editor of the Annual Review of Financial Economics, serving from 2009 to 2021.

Merton has also been recognized for translating finance science into practice. He received the inaugural Financial Engineer of the Year Award from the International Association of Financial Engineers in 1993, which also elected him a senior fellow. Derivatives Strategy magazine named him to its Derivatives Hall of Fame in 1998 as did Risk magazine to its Risk Hall of Fame in 2002. He also received Risk’s Lifetime Achievement Award for contributions to the field of risk management in 2003. A distinguished fellow of the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance ('Q Group', 1997) and a fellow of the Financial Management Association (2000), Merton received the Nicholas Molodovsky Award for Outstanding Contribution to Investment Research from the CFA Institute (2003).

His first professional association with a hedge fund came in 1968. His advisor at the time, Paul Samuelson, brought him on board Arbitrage Management Company (AMC), to join founder Michael Goodkin and chief executive Harry Markowitz. AMC is the first known attempt at computerized arbitrage trading. After a successful run as a private hedge fund, AMC was sold to Stuart & Co. in 1971. In 1993, Merton co-founded a hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, which earned high returns for four years but later lost $4.6 billion in 1998 and was bailed out by a consortium of banks and closed out in early 2000.

Personal life
Merton married June Rose in 1966. They separated in 1996. They have three children: two sons and one daughter.

Honours and awards

 * In 1986, Merton became a Fellow at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
 * In 1986, Merton was President of the American Finance Association.
 * In 1993, Merton became a member of the U.S. United States National Academy of Sciences.
 * In 1993, Merton was awarded the International INA - Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei Prize, National Academy of Lincei, Rome.
 * In 1993, Merton won the inaugural Financial Engineer of the Year Award by the International Association of Financial Engineers (since renamed International Association for Quantitative Finance).
 * In 1994, Merton became of Senior Fellow at the International Association of Financial Engineers (since renamed International Association for Quantitative Finance)
 * In 1997, Merton became a Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Research in Finance ('Q Group').
 * In 1997, Merton was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with Myron Scholes for their work on stock options.
 * In 1998, Merton was awarded the Michael I. Pupin Medal for Service to the Nation from Columbia University.
 * In 1999, Merton was awarded a lifetime achievement award in mathematical finance.
 * In 2000, Merton became a FMA Fellow at the Financial Management Association.
 * In 2000, Merton became a Fellow at the Society of Fellows, American Finance Association.
 * In 2003 Merton received the Nicholas Molodovsky Award for Outstanding Contribution to Investment Research from the CFA Institute.
 * In 2005 the Baker Library at Harvard University opened The Merton Exhibit in his honor.
 * In 2009, Merton was awarded the Robert A. Muh Award in the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
 * In 2009, Merton was awarded the Tjalling C. Koopmans Asset Award from Tilburg University.
 * In 2010, Merton received the Kolmogorov medal from the University of London.
 * In 2010, Merton received the Hamilton Medal from the Royal Irish Academy.
 * In 2011, Merton received the CME Group Melamed-Arditti Innovation Award.
 * In 2013, Merton received the WFE Award for Excellence from the World Federation of Exchanges.
 * In 2014, Merton received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Financial Intermediation Research Society.
 * In 2017, Merton received the Finance Diamond Price from the Fundacion de Investigacion IMEF, Mexico.
 * In 2022, Merton received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Plan Sponsor Council of America (PSCA).

Publications

 * Theory of rational option pricing (1973)

title: Robert C. Merton