title: Papers, Please

text: Two Russian filmmakers, Liliya Tkach and Nikita Ordynskiy of Kinodom Productions, developed an 11-minute live-action film based on "Papers, Please", entitled "Papers, Please: The Short Film", starring Igor Savochkin as the passport inspector. The film was authorized by Lucas Pope after Ordynskiy sent him the screenplay via email. The film premiered at the Trekhgorka House of Culture in Moscow, Russia, on January 27, 2018. The film debuted worldwide via YouTube and the Steam storefront on February 24, 2018. The film received "Overwhelmingly Positive" reviews on Steam upon its release. The short film's success led Tkach and Ordynskiy to pursue a similar short film for "Beholder", another game set in a totalitarian state. Ordynskiy would later voice Seaman Aleksei Toporov in "Return of the Obra Dinn", a 2018 video game developed by Pope, which was also a Seumas McNally Grand Prize winner.


title: Saint Anne

text: According to Christian apocryphal and Islamic tradition, Saint Anne was the mother of Mary and the maternal grandmother of Jesus. Mary's mother is not named in the canonical gospels. In writing, Anne's name and that of her husband Joachim come only from New Testament apocrypha, of which the Gospel of James (written perhaps around 150) seems to be the earliest that mentions them.


title: Saint Anne

text: The story is similar to that of Samuel, whose mother Hannah ( "Ḥannāh" "favour, grace"; etymologically the same name as Anne) had also been childless. The Immaculate Conception was eventually made dogma by the Catholic Church following an increased devotion to Anne in the 12th century. Dedications to Anne in Eastern Christianity occur as early as the 6th century. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, Anne and Joachim are ascribed the title "Ancestors of God", and both the Nativity of Mary and the Presentation of Mary are celebrated as two of the twelve Great Feasts of the Orthodox Church. The Dormition of Anne is also a minor feast in Eastern Christianity. In Lutheran Protestantism, it is held that Martin Luther chose to enter religious life as an Augustinian friar after invoking St. Anne while endangered by lightning.


title: Saint Anne

text: Anne () is also revered in Islam, recognized as a highly spiritual woman and as the mother of Mary. She is not named in the Quran, where she is referred to as "the wife of Imran". The Quran describes her remaining childless until her old age. One day, Hannah saw a bird feeding its young while sitting in the shade of a tree, which awakened her desire to have children of her own. She prayed for a child and eventually conceived; her husband, Imran, died before the child was born. Expecting the child to be male, Hannah vowed to dedicate him to isolation and service in the Second Temple.


title: Saint Anne

text: However, Hannah bore a daughter instead, and named her Mary. Her words upon delivering Mary reflect her status as a great mystic, realising that while she had wanted a son, this daughter was God's gift to her:


title: Saint Anne

text: Although the canonical books of the New Testament never mention the mother of the Virgin Mary, traditions about her family, childhood, education, and eventual betrothal to Joseph developed very early in the history of the church. The oldest and most influential source for these is the apocryphal Gospel of James, first written in Koine Greek around the middle of the second century AD. In the West, the Gospel of James fell under a cloud in the fourth and fifth centuries when it was accused of "absurdities" by Jerome and condemned as untrustworthy by Pope Damasus I, Pope Innocent I, and Pope Gelasius I. However, despite having been condemned by the Church, it was taken over almost "in toto" by another apocryphal work, the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, which popularised most of its stories.


title: Saint Anne

text: Ancient belief, attested to by a sermon of John of Damascus, was that Anne married once. In the Late Middle Ages, legend held that Anne was married three times: first to Joachim, then to Clopas and finally to a man named Solomas and that each marriage produced one daughter: Mary, mother of Jesus, Mary of Clopas, and Mary Salome, respectively. The sister of Saint Anne was Sobe, mother of Elizabeth. In the fifteenth century, the Catholic cleric Johann Eck related in a sermon that St Anne's parents were named Stollanus and Emerentia. Frederick George Holweck, writing in the "Catholic Encyclopedia" (1907) regards this genealogy as spurious.


title: Saint Anne

text: In the 4th century and then much later in the 15th century, a belief arose that Mary was conceived of Anne without original sin. This belief in the Immaculate Conception states that God preserved Mary's body and soul intact and sinless from her first moment of existence, through the merits of Jesus Christ. The Immaculate Conception, often confused with the Annunciation of the Incarnation (Mary's virgin birth of Jesus), was made dogma in the Catholic church by Pope Pius IX's papal bull, "Ineffabilis" "Deus", in 1854.


title: Saint Anne

text: The thirteenth century "Speculum Maius" of Vincent of Beauvais incorporates information regarding the life of Saint Anne from an earlier work by Hrotsvitha of Gandersheim Abbey.


title: Saint Anne

text: In the Eastern church, the veneration of Anne herself may go back as far as c. 550, when Justinian built a church in Constantinople in her honor. The earliest pictorial sign of her veneration in the West is an 8th-century fresco in the church of Santa Maria Antiqua, Rome.


title: Saint Anne

text: The Feast of the Conception of the Virgin Mary had reached southern Italy by the 9th-century. The cult of Saint Anne had developed in northern Europe by the twelfth century. A shrine at Douai, in northern France, was one of the early centers of devotion to St. Anne in the West.


title: Saint Anne

text: The "Anna Selbdritt" was a type of iconography depicting the 3 generations of Saint Anne, Mary, and the child Jesus. Emphasizing the humanity of Jesus, it drew on the earlier conventions of the Seat of Wisdom, and was popular in northern Germany in the 1500s.


title: Saint Anne

text: During the High Middle Ages, Saint Anne became increasingly identified as a maritime saint, protecting sailors and fisherman, and invoked against storms.


title: Saint Anne

text: Two well-known shrines to St. Anne are that of Ste-Anne-d'Auray in Brittany, France; and that of Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré near the city of Québec. The number of visitors to the Basilica of Ste-Anne-de-Beaupré is greatest on St Anne's Feast Day, 26 July, and the Sunday before Nativity of the Virgin Mary, 8 September. In 1892, Pope Leo XIII sent a relic of St Anne to the church.


title: Saint Anne

text: In the Maltese language, the Milky Way galaxy is called "It-Triq ta' Sant'Anna", literally ""The Way of St. Anne"".


title: Saint Anne

text: In the United States, the Daughters of the Holy Spirit named the former Annhurst College in her honor.


title: Saint Anne

text: By the middle of the 7th-century, a distinct feast day, the Conception of St. Anne (Maternity of Holy Anna) celebrating the conception of Mary by Saint Anne, was observed at the Monastery of Saint Sabas. It is now known in the Greek Orthodox Church as the feast of "The Conception by St. Anne of the Most Holy Theotokos", and celebrated on 9 December. In the Roman Catholic Church, the Feast of Saints Anne and Joachim is celebrated on 26 July.


title: Saint Anne

text: The alleged relics of St. Anne were brought from the Holy Land to Constantinople in 710 and were kept there in the church of St. Sophia as late as 1333.


title: Saint Anne

text: During the 12th and 13th centuries, returning crusaders and pilgrims from the East brought relics of Anne to a number of churches, including most famously those at Apt, in Provence, Ghent, and Chartres. St. Anne's relics have been preserved and venerated in the many cathedrals and monasteries dedicated to her name, for example in Austria, Canada, Germany, Italy, and Greece in the semi-autonomous Mount Athos, and the city of Katerini. Medieval and baroque craftsmanship is evidenced in, for example, the metalwork of the life-size reliquaries containing the bones of her forearm. Examples employing folk art techniques are also known.


title: Saint Anne

text: Düren has been the main place of pilgrimage for Anne since 1506, when Pope Julius II decreed that her relics should be kept there.


title: Saint Anne

text: The Church of Saint Anne in Beit Guvrin National Park was built by the Byzantines and the Crusaders in the 12th century, known in Arabic as Khirbet (lit. "ruin") Sandahanna, the mound of Maresha being called Tell Sandahanna.


title: Saint Anne

text: Saint Anne is patroness of unmarried women, housewives, women in labor or who want to be pregnant, grandmothers, mothers and educators. She is also a patroness of horseback riders, cabinet-makers and miners. As the mother of Mary, this devotion to Saint Anne as the patron of miners arises from the medieval comparison between Mary and Christ and the precious metals silver and gold. Anne's womb was considered the source from which these precious metals were mined.


title: Saint Anne

text: She is also the patron saint of: Brittany (France), Chinandega (Nicaragua), the Mi'kmaq people of Canada, Castelbuono (Sicily), Quebec (Canada), Santa Ana (California), Norwich (Connecticut), Detroit (Michigan), Adjuntas (Puerto Rico), Santa Ana and Jucuarán (El Salvador), Berlin (New Hampshire), Santa Ana Pueblo, Seama, and Taos (New Mexico), Chiclana de la Frontera, Marsaskala, Tudela and Fasnia (Spain), Town of Sta Ana Province of Pampanga, St. Anne in Molo, Iloilo City, Hagonoy, Santa Ana, Taguig City, Saint Anne Shrine, Malicboy, Pagbilao, Quezon and Malinao, Albay (Philippines), Santana (Brazil), Saint Anne (Illinois), Sainte Anne Island, Baie Sainte Anne and Praslin Island (Seychelles), Bukit Mertajam and Port Klang (Malaysia), Kľúčové (Slovakia) and South Vietnam. The parish church of Vatican City is Sant'Anna dei Palafrenieri. There is a shrine dedicated to Saint Anne in the Woods in Bristol, United Kingdom.


title: Saint Anne

text: Anne is shown in her son-in-law Joseph's carpentry shop caring for a young Jesus who had cut his hand on a nail. She joins her daughter Mary, Joseph, and a young boy who will later become known as John the Baptist in caring for the injured hand of Jesus.


title: Saint Anne

text: The subject of Joachim and Anne "The Meeting at the Golden Gate" was a regular component of artistic cycles of the Life of the Virgin. The couple meet at the Golden Gate of Jerusalem and embrace. They are aware of Anne's pregnancy, of which they have been separately informed by an archangel. This moment stood for the conception of Mary, and the feast was celebrated on the same day as the Immaculate Conception. Art works representing the Golden Gate and the events leading up to it were influenced by the narrative in the widely read "Golden Legend" of Jacobus de Voragine. The Birth of Mary, the Presentation of Mary and the Marriage of the Virgin were usual components of cycles of the Life of the Virgin in which Anne is normally shown here.


title: Saint Anne

text: Anne is never shown as present at the Nativity of Christ, but is frequently shown with the infant Christ in various subjects. She is sometimes believed to be depicted in scenes of the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple and the Circumcision of Christ, but in the former case, this likely reflects a misidentification through confusion with Anna the Prophetess. There was a tradition that Anne went (separately) to Egypt and rejoined the Holy Family after their Flight to Egypt. Anne is not seen with the adult Christ, so was regarded as having died during the youth of Jesus. Anne is also shown as the matriarch of the Holy Kinship, the extended family of Jesus, a popular subject in late medieval Germany; some versions of these pictorial and sculptural depictions include Emerentia who was reputed in the 15th Century to be Anne's mother. In modern devotions, Anne and her husband are invoked for protection for the unborn.


title: Saint Anne

text: The role of the Messiah's grandparents in salvation history was commonly depicted in early medieval devotional art in a vertical double-Madonna arrangement known as the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne. Another typical subject has Anne teaching the Virgin Mary the Scriptures (see gallery below).


title: Eobard Thawne

text: Eobard Thawne, otherwise known as the Reverse-Flash and Professor Zoom, is a supervillain appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by John Broome and Carmine Infantino, and first appeared in "The Flash" #139 in September 1963. The first and most well-known character to assume the "Reverse-Flash" mantle, Thawne is depicted as the archenemy of Barry Allen (the second superhero to be called the Flash), a descendant of Malcolm Thawne, and a forefather of Bart Allen, Thaddeus Thawne and Owen Mercer. He has been established as one of the fastest speedsters in the DC Universe.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: Hailing from the 25th century, Thawne was a scientist who became obsessed with and idolized Barry Allen and managed to replicate the accident that gave him his powers. However, he was driven insane upon learning he was destined to become the Flash’s greatest enemy; fueled by jealousy and hatred, he became determined to ruin Barry’s life as the “Reverse Flash.” Thawne’s powers come from the “Negative Speed Force” which he uses to alter time to his own whims.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: The character has been adapted in various media incarnations, having been portrayed by Tom Cavanagh and Matt Letscher in The CW's live-action Arrowverse franchise, most notably on the television series "The Flash". C. Thomas Howell, John Wesley Shipp and Liam O'Brien have provided the character's voice ranging from animation to video games.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: Eobard Thawne found a time capsule in the 25th century containing a costume of the Flash (Barry Allen) and with a Tachyon device amplified the suit's speed energy, giving himself speedster abilities. Reversing the costume's colors, he adopted the moniker of "Professor Zoom the Reverse-Flash" and went on a crime spree. However, the time capsule also contained an atomic clock which, due to the effects of time travel, altered into an atomic bomb. To prevent its detonation, Flash pursued and defeated Zoom, hoping he knew where the clock was. He did not, but Flash later found the clock, detonated it safely, and destroyed Thawne's costume.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: Blaming the Flash for his defeat, Thawne became obsessed with "replacing" Barry and traveled back in time to exact his revenge. When Iris West (Barry's wife) rejected his romantic pursuits, Thawne killed Iris. After Flash had found love again, Thawne threatened to kill Fiona Webb (Barry's new fiancé) on their wedding day. Fearful that history was repeating itself, Barry killed Thawne by breaking his neck.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: The Post-"Crisis" extended origin storyline "The Return of Barry Allen" revealed that Thawne, prior to discovering the time capsule contains the Flash's costume, was once a scientist obsessed with him, even undergoing cosmetic surgery to resemble his hero. Obtaining the Cosmic Treadmill from an antique shop, Thawne gained all of the Flash's powers after replicating the electrochemical accident that created the Flash. Seeking to use the Cosmic Treadmill to travel back in time and meet his idol, Thawne arrived at the Flash Museum several years after Barry's death, discovering that he was destined to become Professor Zoom the Reverse-Flash and die at his idol's hands. As a result, the unstable Thawne convinced himself that he was Barry and subsequently attacked Central City for "forgetting him". Wally West ultimately tricked Thawne into returning to the 25th century with no memory of the incident. Despite this, Thawne still managed to bring the remains of his older self's costume with him, cluing him further into his destiny.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: After the events of "", it is revealed that Malcolm Thawne is Eobard Thawne's ancestor and Barry's long-lost twin brother, meaning that Barry is Thawne's great-uncle.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: In 2009, Thawne was re-imagined as a major villain in the DC Universe by writer Geoff Johns in "". His resurrection is foreshadowed to occur in a near-future event. It is later revealed that Thawne's recreation of the accident behind Barry's powers made Thawne able to lure Barry out of the Speed Force during "Final Crisis" and temporarily turn his nemesis into the Black Flash.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: When Thawne reappears, he murders the revived Johnny Quick, before proceeding to trap Barry and the revived Max Mercury inside the negative Speed Force. Thawne then attempts to kill Wally's children through their Speed Force connection in front of Linda Park-West, only to be stopped by Jay Garrick and Bart Allen. Thawne defeats Jay and prepares to kill Bart, but Barry, Max, Wally, Jesse Quick and Impulse arrive to prevent the villain from doing so. In the ensuing fight, Thawne reveals that he is responsible for every tragedy that has occurred in Barry's life, including the death of Nora Allen (Barry's mother). Thawne then decides to destroy everything the Flash holds dear by killing Iris before they even met.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: As Barry chases after Thawne, Wally joins Barry in the time barrier. They reach Thawne and in doing so, they become the lightning bolt that turns Barry into the Flash as they are able to stop Thawne from killing Iris. The Flashes push Thawne back through time, showing his past and future. They return to the present, where the Justice League, the Justice Society, and the Outsiders have built a device originally intended to disconnect Barry from the Speed Force as the Black Flash. Barry tosses Thawne in and Jay activates the device, severing his connection to the negative Speed Force. As the Flashes tie him up to stop him from running, Iris discovers Thawne's weapon back in the past, which she keeps.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: In the present, he is imprisoned in Iron Heights. Hunter Zolomon speaks to him, saying they can help each other be better. In Gorilla City, one of the apes warns that Professor Zoom has done something horrible to their jungles, but just what he has done is something even they do not know.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: In the 2009–2010 storyline "Blackest Night", the Pre-"Crisis" version of Thawne's broken-necked corpse is reanimated as a member of the Black Lantern Corps. The black power ring downloaded the corpse's memories, resulting in him not knowing of Barry's death and resurrection. Declaring himself the new "Black Flash", he hunts down and attacks Barry, who manages to elude him for the moment. When the Black Lantern Rogues attack Iron Heights, the living Thawne is encountered and the Black Lanterns' rings strangely malfunction, displaying a strange symbol. When Thawne's corpse approaches his living counterpart, he stops moving and is then frozen by Captain Cold's "cold grenade". Thawne's corpse is brought back to life by the white light of creation, and manages to escape.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: In the follow-up "Brightest Day" storyline, the present Professor Zoom is still imprisoned in Iron Heights. When Deadman activates the White Power Battery, the Entity speaks to the 12 heroes and villains resurrected at the climax of the "Blackest Night" and tells each of them of their mission that must be accomplished in order to restore 'life' to the universe and prevent the Blackest Night from ever reoccurring. Zoom becomes the first to inadvertently fulfill his mission, which occurred in the events of "The Flash: Rebirth" when he freed Allen from the Speed Force following the resurrection. The Entity proclaims Zoom has completed his task and his life is restored to him, later revealing that Zoom (having fulfilled his task) is now fully purged of all trace remnants of his Black Lantern ties – both present and future. Zoom is released from Iron Heights by Captain Boomerang, who had hoped to better understand his version of the Entity's message. Zoom does not answer him directly, giving a cryptic response and eventually escaping as Captain Boomerang is confronted by the rest of the Rogues.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: Thawne uses his powers to completely rewrite his own history; he erases his younger brother from existence and kills his parents when they try to interfere with his research. Thawne later falls in love with a reporter who had been hired to interview him, thus his future self wipes all of the reporter's romantic interests from existence. After finding out his would-be love interest did not return his affections, Thawne's future self traumatized the reporter as a child, causing the woman to be mute and institutionalized so that they never met each other. He later had his younger self find the time capsule containing Barry's costume to make himself the Flash of the 25th century. He sheds a tear as his altered past self runs past him while saying "It won't last long. You will never find love. You will never be the Flash. Barry Allen destroyed my future. It's time I destroyed his.".


title: Eobard Thawne

text: In the 2011 "Flashpoint" storyline, a new timeline is created through the alteration of history. The Reverse-Flash reveals that his body is permanently connected to the Speed Force, enabling him to create a negative version, with which he escaped prison. He was unable to alter Barry's transformation into the Flash, however, as that would effectively erase himself from existence. Instead, Thawne decides to ruin Barry's life during the latter's childhood, killing his mother, Nora. Thawne later reveals that the Flashpoint timeline was created when Barry went back in time to stop the Reverse-Flash from killing Nora. After Thawne is killed by this reality's Batman with a sword stab through the chest, the Flash travels back in time to stop Barry's younger self from altering history but instead, under Pandora's manipulations, a third, new timeline is created, in which DC Comics' continuity takes place from 2011 onward.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: In "The New 52" reboot of DC's continuity, Thawne's origin is re-established as hailing from the Central City of a 25th-century devoted to the Flash. As a child, Thawne witnessed his father murder his mother and subsequently get arrested. One day, he is struck by lightning and gains the ability to control the flow of time around him, making it appear as if he is moving at superhuman speeds. Believing himself to have been "chosen" by the Speed Force as the Flash's replacement, Thawne dons a costume similar to the hero's and begins to terrorize the Gem Cities as "Zoom", demanding the citizens accept him as a king. However, he is enraged when people rebel against him in the Flash's name. Jealous and bitter that the Flash is worshiped and loved by the people despite their similar powers, Thawne uses Rip Hunter's notes to travel back in time, where he starts recruiting four individuals "touched by the lightning" (the Speed Force) across history, after "saving" them from situations he himself put them into under the false pretense that he requires their help in order to vanquish the "evil menace" of the Flash.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: Thawne then makes an acquaintance with Dr. Henry Allen (Barry's father), funding Henry's research lab. But when Henry refuses to help him with an unknown cause, Zoom subsequently murders Nora in order to make Barry endure and give them both an "equal start", and forces Henry to take the blame for his deed, with the threat of Barry's life. Laying low for many years, Zoom reemerges following William Selkirk's defeat, recruiting as an "acolyte" of his. Zoom and his acolytes then cause havoc in the city and put the blame on the Flash, desiring to destroy his nemesis's legacy. Thawne then kidnaps Henry when some inmates escape from prison in order to divert Thawne's attention away from Barry, and forces Henry to construct a power-stealing glove. But when his closest "ally" Magali (who has been keeping Thawne alive for centuries via powers) discover the truth about him, he uses the glove to steal Magali's abilities of affecting the age of organic and inorganic matter, leading to his true nature being exposed to the rest of his acolytes, who join forces with the Flash to destroy the device.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: After the failure of his plan to be a god, Zoom then takes Henry to the Allen house, with Barry in pursuit. Revealing his backstory to Barry, Thawne proceeds to best Barry in combat and is about to kill him until the Flash realizes how Thawne's powers work, and then proceeds to counter by moving time forward – finally defeating him. After talking Henry out of killing Thawne, Barry has him arrested and imprisoned at Iron Heights Penitentiary.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: The serial-killing speedster Godspeed later attempts to kill Thawne and every other inmate at Iron Heights as a twisted gesture of friendship to Barry, only to be stopped by the hero.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: In the "DC Rebirth" relaunch, Thawne's powers are retconned back to Negative Speed Force superspeed, his origin is revised to be closer to his pre-Flashpoint ones (albeit with some differences and an altered motive), and the Reverse-Flash mantle is returned to him, now as his primary moniker. In spite of these retcons, his New 52 history is shown to have somehow still occurred, to some extent.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: An only child when his parents died in an accident, Eobard Thawne grew up obsessed with the Flash. After finding a time capsule with the speedster's costume, he uses traces of the Speed Force in it to turn himself into a Flash. Due to a lack of threats in the 25th century, Thawne creates his own by endangering people, before "saving" them. He is overjoyed when Barry Allen travels to his time and teaches him new tricks, but his deceit is soon found out. After Barry defeats him and has him arrested, Thawne promises to rehabilitate himself, to that end undergoing therapy and becoming a professor. He also eventually becomes the curator of the Flash Museum. Seeking to show Barry how much he's changed and become his partner, Thawne travels to the past. However, he is enraged after he witnesses Barry give Wally West a talk on how "every second is a gift", similar to one that Barry gave him, and realises that he wasn't treated specially by the Flash. Still seeking to spend time with the Flash and be his friend, Thawne becomes the Reverse-Flash, vowing to making Barry's life a living hell until he learns to "make time" for him.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: Leading up to the 2017 "The Button" crossover, Thawne's memories of his Pre-"New 52" self are restored after a mysterious wave of energy strikes him, and he recalls being killed by Batman (Thomas Wayne) during "Flashpoint". Seeking to teach the Dark Knight's son a lesson, Thawne attacks Bruce Wayne in the Batcave and destroys Thomas's letter as retribution. Thawne brutally beats and verbally taunts Bruce before picking up the Comedian's smiley-face pin, which teleports him away to an unknown location. Thawne is then teleported back to the Batcave, having been bathed in radiation by a mysterious entity. As he collapses, Thawne says "God...I saw...God." After discovering traces of his energy signature on Thawne's corpse, Barry ponders if he kills the Reverse-Flash at some point in his future (but Thawne's past). Batman and the Flash come across Thawne in possession of the Button shortly before his apparent death, and follow him in an attempt to prevent it. As he follows the traces leading to the entity, Thawne muses that he may go back in time to raise his nemesis as a "family friend" after killing Nora, but is killed by Doctor Manhattan and teleported back to the Batcave.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: In the aftermath of "The Button", Thawne's corpse is taken to S.T.A.R. Labs, but he is resurrected via his connection to the Negative Speed Force and returns to the future, to examine the difference between the pre and post-Flashpoint timelines. He is present at Iris West's house when she arrives with Wallace West, who Thawne brutally beats and denounces as a fake, before kidnapping Iris and bringing her to the 25th century. When Barry arrives, he is quickly beaten by Thawne, who reveals his identity as the Flash to Iris. Thawne subsequently shows the couple's future and tricks Barry into becoming trapped in the Negative Speed Force, but Flash becomes connected to it and escapes. A pleased Thawne implores Barry to "ditch the loser sidekicks" and become his friend and partner, but Flash refuses and strips him of his speed. Nevertheless, Thawne vows to regain his powers and keep coming back to torment Barry, before being killed by Iris with a vaporisation gun.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: It is later revealed that Thawne pulled Thomas Wayne out of the Flashpoint timeline just as Manhattan erased it, in order to torment Thomas with the main timeline, where Bruce is Batman.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: Thawne is revealed to be the only person to have defeated the chronokinesis-wielding new Flash villain, Paradox. To learn how to do so, Barry pulls an earlier version of Thawne out of the timeline, from the night he killed Nora.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: Thawne later starts to assemble the Legion of Zoom by bringing together Captain Cold, Golden Glider, Gorilla Grodd, Tar Pit, the Tornado Twins, Trickster, and Turtle. They start to attack Flash on all fronts to the point where Thawne starts to take over Flash's body enough that the Flash Family had to assemble to combat him. After Thawne in Barry's body tries to get Captain Cold, Golden Girder, Gorilla Grodd, and Turtle to dig up Nora Allen's body, Trickster and the Tornado Twins try to stop him when the rest of the Flash family shows up only to be returned to their own timelines. When Thawne is exorcised from Barry Allen, he rounds up every villain who hates the Flash family to expand his Legion of Zoom like Abra Kadabra, Belladonna, Blacksmith, Bloodwork, Double Down, Fiddler, Folded Man, Girder, Papercut, Peek-a-Boo, Plunder, Rag Doll, Razer, Thinker, and Top. As the battle continues, Thawne reveals that he was responsible not only for the creation of Barry's other major speedster enemies, such as Zoom and Godspeed, but reveals that he was present at every moment where Barry essentially isolated himself from his allies, such as keeping the investigation into the button secret or provoking the fight between Barry and Wally, whispering at hyperspeed to implant a subconscious suggestion in their minds. The Flash family receives aid from different Flashes from across time and the Multiverse as well as the Renegades. As Barry forces Thawne into the Speed Force, Barry's allies are able to meditate to tap the Force's power and banish their foes back to their points of origin, but the Tornado Twins contact those in the present stating that this will be Barry and Thawne's final race. Confronted with Thawne's taunts about how their history with each other had defined them for so long, Barry instead chose to forgive Thawne rather than kill him or allow him to escape, tricking Thawne into attacking him as he was vibrating at just the right frequency to 'infect' Thawne with a sample of his own Speed Force energy. This transference 'grounded' Thawne back in reality, erasing his personal experience of his life as the Reverse Flash, leaving him as a tour guide in the Flash Museum of his home era and unaware of his villainous past.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: Eobard Thawne already possessed genius-level intellect by the standards of the 25th Century even prior to gaining his metahuman abilities, making him possibly one of the smartest individuals when in the 21st century. "" revealed that duplicating the accident behind Barry Allen's powers corrupted the Speed Force which created a negative version. The Reverse-Flash is therefore able to travel at superhuman speeds faster than the speed of light, deliver blows of extreme force by hitting the victim hundreds of times a second, run on water, generate vacuums, create afterimages ("speed mirages") of himself, and vibrate his molecules to pass through solid objects. Unlike original Speed Force users, Thawne has the ability to travel through and manipulate time, being able to drastically alter history and completely erase people from existence (other speedsters cannot change the past without dramatic consequences). Thawne developed numerous new powers in the events leading up to "Flashpoint", including the ability to cross over to other dimensions, create shock waves across time and space at the snap of his fingers, absorb another's memories via physical contact, and alter the age of anyone or anything. Thawne has also displayed superhuman strength, as well as electrokinetic abilities. The presence of his lightning is able to disrupt and fry nearby electronics, in addition to allowing him to manipulate magnetism. During the "New 52" reboot, he gained the ability to slow down time similar to Hunter Zolomon. He retained his Pre-"New 52" counterpart's age-altering abilities. In the "DC Rebirth" relaunch, however, Thawne regains his connection to the Negative Speed Force and therefore all of his original powers.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: In an alternate timeline created when Impulse kills an insect in the Devonian Age, most super-villains are government bureaucrats. Professor Zoom is the National Science Advisor to President-for-Life Julian Tremain. In subsequent changes to the timeline, Zoom defected to the rebellion against Tremain led by Gorilla Grodd; turned into a gorilla fighting against an army of flying turtles led by Grodd, now a flying turtle himself; and was a gorilla in a modern society identical to that of ancient Egypt.


title: Eobard Thawne

text: IGN ranked Eobard Thawne as the 31st Greatest Comic Book Villain Of All Time in 2009 and #2 on their Top 5 Flash Villains list in 2015.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Baroness Karen Christenze von Blixen-Finecke (born Dinesen; 17 April 1885 – 7 September 1962) was a Danish author who wrote works in Danish and English. She is also known under her pen names Isak Dinesen, used in English-speaking countries, Tania Blixen, used in German-speaking countries, Osceola, and Pierre Andrézel.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Blixen is best known for "Out of Africa", an account of her life while living in Kenya, and for one of her stories, "Babette's Feast", both of which have been adapted into Academy Award–winning motion pictures. She is also noted, particularly in Denmark, for her "Seven Gothic Tales". Among her later stories are "Winter’s Tales" (1942), "Last Tales" (1957), "Anecdotes of Destiny" (1958) and "Ehrengard" (1963).


title: Karen Blixen

text: Blixen was considered several times for the Nobel Prize in Literature, but it wasn't awarded because judges were reportedly concerned about showing favoritism to Scandinavian writers, according to Danish reports.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Karen Dinesen was born in the manor house of Rungstedlund, north of Copenhagen. Her father, Wilhelm Dinesen (1845–1895), was a writer and army officer, including in the 1864 war by Denmark against Prussia and who also joined the French army against Prussia and wrote about La Commune in Paris. He was from a wealthy family of Jutland landowners closely connected to the monarchy, the established church and conservative politics. He was elected as Member of Parliament. Her mother, Ingeborg Westenholz (1856–1939), came from a wealthy Unitarian bourgeois merchant family of ship owners. Karen Dinesen was the second oldest in a family of three sisters and two brothers. Her younger brother, Thomas Dinesen, grew up to earn the Victoria Cross in the First World War. Karen was known to her friends as "Tanne".


title: Karen Blixen

text: Dinesen's early years were strongly influenced by her father's relaxed manner and his love of the outdoor life and hunting. He also wrote throughout his life and his memoir, "Boganis Jagtbreve" (Letters from the Hunt) became a minor classic in Danish literature. From August 1872 to December 1873, Wilhelm had lived among the Chippewa Indians in Wisconsin, where he fathered a daughter. On returning to Denmark, he suffered from syphilis which resulted in bouts of deep depression. After conceiving a child out of wedlock with his maid Anna Rasmussen, he was devastated because he broke his promise to his mother-in-law to remain faithful to his wife. He hanged himself on 28 March 1895 when Karen was nine years old.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Karen Dinesen's life at Rungstedlund changed significantly after her father's death. From the age of 10 years, her life was dominated by her Westenholz family. Unlike her brothers, who attended school, she was educated at home by her maternal grandmother and by her aunt, Mary B. Westenholz, who brought her up in the staunch Unitarian tradition. Aunt Bess, as Westenholz was known to Dinesen, had a significant impact on her niece. They engaged in lively discussions and correspondence on women's rights and relationships between men and women.


title: Karen Blixen

text: During her early years, she spent part of her time at her mother's family home, the Mattrup seat farm near Horsens, while in later years there were visits to Folehavegård, an estate near Hørsholm that had belonged to her father's family. Longing for the freedom she had enjoyed when her father was alive, she was able to find some satisfaction in telling her younger sister Ellen hair-raising good-night stories, partly inspired by Danish folk tales and Icelandic sagas. In 1905, these led to her "Grjotgard Ålvesøn og Aud" in which her literary talent began to emerge. Around this time, she also published fiction in Danish periodicals under the pseudonym Osceola, the name of her father's dog, which she had often walked in her father's company.


title: Karen Blixen

text: In 1898, Karen and her two sisters spent a year in Switzerland, where she learned to speak French. In 1902, she attended Charlotte Sode's art school in Copenhagen before continuing her studies at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts under Viggo Johansen from 1903 to 1906. In her mid-twenties, she also visited Paris, London and Rome on study trips.


title: Karen Blixen

text: While still young, Dinesen spent many of her holidays with her paternal cousin's family, the Blixen-Fineckes, in Skåne in the south of Sweden. She first fell in love with the dashing equestrian baron Hans, but he did not reciprocate. She therefore decided to accept the favours of his twin brother, Baron Bror Blixen-Finecke, and they announced their engagement on 23 December 1912, to the family's surprise. Given the difficulties both were experiencing in settling in Denmark, the family suggested they should move abroad. Their common uncle, Aage Westenholz (1859–1935) who had made a fortune in Siam, suggested they should go to Kenya to start a coffee farm. He and his sister Ingeborg Dinesen invested 150,000 Danish crowns in the venture. Early in 1913, Bror left for Kenya. He was followed by his fiancée in December.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Soon after Dinesen arrived in Kenya, which at the time was part of British East Africa, she and Blixen were married in Mombasa on 14 January 1914. After her marriage, she became known as Baroness Blixen, and she used the title until her then ex-husband remarried in 1929. Bror had attended agricultural college at Alnarp, and then managed the Stjetneholm farm, within the Nasbyholm estate. During her early years, Karen spent part of her time at her mother's family home, the Mattrup seat farm near Horsens. Karen and Bror planned to raise cattle on their farm, but eventually they became convinced that coffee would be more profitable. The Karen Coffee Company was established by their uncle, Aage Westerholz, who chose the name after his daughter Karen, Blixen's cousin, rather than to create an association with Karen Blixen. The couple soon established their first farm, Mbagathi, in the Great Lakes area.


title: Karen Blixen

text: During First World War fighting between the Germans and the British in East Africa, Bror served in Lord Delamere's patrols along Kenya's border with German-Tanganyika and Karen helped transport supplies. The war led to a shortage of workers and supplies. Nevertheless, in 1916, the Karen Coffee Company purchased a larger farm, Mbogani, near the Ngong Hills to the south–west of Nairobi. The property covered of land: were used for a coffee plantation, were used by the natives for grazing, and of virgin forest were left untouched.


title: Karen Blixen

text: The land was not well-suited for coffee cultivation, given its high elevation. The couple hired local workers: most were Kikuyu who lived on the farmlands at the time of the couple's arrival, but there were also Wakamba, Kavirondo, Swahili and Masai. Initially, Bror worked the farm, but it soon became evident that he had little interest in it and preferred to leave running the farm to Blixen while he went on safari. For the first time, English became the language she used daily. About the couple's early life in the African Great Lakes region, Karen Blixen later wrote,Here at long last one was in a position not to give a damn for all conventions, here was a new kind of freedom which until then one had only found in dreams!


title: Karen Blixen

text: Blixen and her husband were quite different in education and temperament, and Bror Blixen was unfaithful to his wife.


title: Karen Blixen

text: According to Peter Capstick, "It was not long after Blixen and his wife settled on their farm that he started womanizing." Capstick goes on to say, "His forays into town and his often wild socializing at the Muthaiga Club, coupled with a legendary indiscipline when it came to money and honoring his debts, soon gave the charming Swede a notorious reputation."


title: Karen Blixen

text: As a consequence, she was diagnosed with syphilis according to her biographer Judith Thurman. She herself attributed her symptoms, in a letter to her brother Thomas, to syphilis acquired at 29 years old from her husband toward the end of their first year of marriage in 1915. However, later in life, her medical records do not support that diagnosis. She had been locally prescribed mercury and arsenic, a treatment for the disease in her time. It is now believed that some of her later symptoms were the result of heavy metal poisoning.


title: Karen Blixen

text: At her farm, she also used to take care of local sick persons, including those suffering from fever, variola, meningitis and typhus.


title: Karen Blixen

text: She returned to Denmark in June 1915 for treatment which proved successful. Although Blixen's illness was eventually cured (some uncertainty exists), it created medical anguish for years to come.


title: Karen Blixen

text: the English big game hunter Denys Finch Hatton (1887–1931). Soon afterwards he was assigned to military service in Egypt.


title: Karen Blixen

text: By 1919, the marriage had run into difficulties, causing her husband to request a divorce in 1920. Bror was dismissed as the farm manager by their uncle, Aage Westenholz, chair of the Karen Coffee Company, and Karen took over its management in 1921.


title: Karen Blixen

text: On his return to Kenya after the Armistice, Hatton developed a close friendship with Karen and Bror. He left Africa again in 1920.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Hatton often travelled back and forth between Africa and England, and visited Karen occasionally. He returned in 1922, investing in a land development company. After her separation from her husband she and Finch Hatton had developed a close friendship, which eventually became a long-term love affair. In a letter to her brother Thomas in 1924, she wrote: "I believe that for all time and eternity I am bound to Denys, to love the ground he walks upon, to be happy beyond words when he is here, and to suffer worse than death many times when he leaves..." But other letters in her collections show that the relationship was unstable, and that Karen's increasing dependence upon Finch Hatton, who was intensely independent, was an issue.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Karen and Bror were officially divorced in 1925. Karen would go to Government House where she had befriended Joan Grigg who was the bored wife of the governor. Grigg would in time create a charity to create hospitals in Kenya.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Finch Hatton moved into her house, made Blixen's farmhouse his home base between 1926 and 1931 and began leading safaris for wealthy sportsmen. Among his clients was Edward, Prince of Wales. On safari with his clients, he died in the crash of his de Havilland Gipsy Moth biplane in March 1931. Blixen recorded their parting.


title: Karen Blixen

text: "When he had started in his car for the aerodrome in Nairobi, and had turned down the drive, he came back to look for a volume of poems, that he had given to me and now wanted on his journey. He stood with one foot on the running-board of the car, and a finger in the book, reading out to me a poem we had been discussing.


title: Karen Blixen

text: At the same time, the failure of the coffee plantation, as a result of mismanagement, the height of the farm, drought and the falling price of coffee caused by the worldwide economic depression, forced Blixen to abandon her estate. The family corporation sold the land to a residential developer, and Blixen returned to Denmark in August 1931 to live with her mother. In the Second World War, she helped Jews escape out of German-occupied Denmark. She remained in Rungstedlund for the rest of her life.


title: Karen Blixen

text: While still in Kenya, Blixen had written to her brother Thomas, "I have begun to do what we brothers and sisters do when we don't know what else to resort to, I have started to write a book. ... I have been writing in English because I thought it would be more profitable."


title: Karen Blixen

text: Upon returning to Denmark, aged 46, she continued writing in earnest. Though her first book, "Seven Gothic Tales", was completed in 1933, she had difficulty finding a publisher and used her brother's contacts with Dorothy Canfield to help. The book was published in the United States in 1934 under the pseudonym Isak Dinesen, though the publisher refused to give Blixen an advance and discouraged the use of a pseudonym. When it was chosen as a Book-of-the-Month Club selection, sales skyrocketed. This first book, highly enigmatic and more metaphoric than Gothic, won wide recognition in the United States, and publication of the book in the United Kingdom and Denmark followed, though with difficulty. Unable to find a translator she was satisfied with, Blixen prepared the Danish versions herself, though they are not translations, but rather versions of the stories with differing details. Blixen's explanation for the difference was that she "very much wanted it to be published in Danish as an original Danish book, and not in any — no matter how good — translation". The Danish critics were not enthusiastic about the book and were annoyed, according to Blixen, that it had first been published abroad. Blixen never again published a book in English first. All her later books were either published first in Danish, or published simultaneously in Danish and English.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Her second book, now the best known of her works, "Out of Africa", was published in 1937. Its success firmly established her reputation. Having learned from her previous experience, Blixen published the book first in Denmark and the United Kingdom, and then in the United States. Garnering another Book-of-the-Month Club choice, Blixen was assured of not only sales for this new work, but also renewed interest in "Seven Gothic Tales". She was awarded the Tagea Brandt Rejselegat (a Danish prize for women in the arts or academic life) in 1939. The work brought attention from critics who were concerned not only with literary appraisal of the book, but also with defining Blixen's intentions and morality. Post-colonial criticism has linked her with contemporary British writers and in some cases branded her as just another morally bankrupt white European aristocrat. Danish scholars have not typically made judgments about her morality, perhaps understanding that while elements of racism and colonial prejudices, given the context and era, are inherent in the work, her position as an outsider, a Dane and a woman made evaluating her, rather than the work, more complex. Some critics, including Carolyn Martin Shaw and Raoul Granqvist, have judged her to be a racist and a white supremacist, while other critics, such as Abdul R. JanMohamed, have recognized both her romanticized colonial attitudes and her understanding of colonial problems, as well as her concern and respect for African nationalists.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Five years after the publication of "Out of Africa", Blixen published a collection of short stories called "Winter's Tales" (1942; ). A departure from her previous Gothic works, the stories reflect the starkness of the times, occupation tinged with courage and pride, and hope for the future. The stories do not reflect resistance, but resilience, and explore the interdependence of opposites. She examines shame versus pride in "The Heroine", cowardice and courage in "The Pearls", master and servant in "The Invincible Slave-Owners", and life versus death as well as freedom versus imprisonment in "Peter and Rosa". In "Sorrow-acre", the best-known story of the collection, Blixen explores victimization and oppression. Because of the war, she had to be creative about getting the manuscript published, travelling to Stockholm and meeting with employees at both the American and British embassies. The Americans were unable to ship personal items, but the British embassy agreed, shipping the document to her publisher in the United States. Blixen did not receive further communication about "Winter's Tales" until after the war ended, when she received correspondence praising the stories from American troops who had read them in the "Armed Services Editions" during the conflict.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Blixen worked on a novel she called "Albondocani" for many years, hoping to produce a volume in the style of "Les Hommes de bonne volonté" by Jules Romains, with interwoven stories across several volumes. The main character, Harun al-Rashid, was taken from "One Thousand and One Nights". She worked on several collections at once, categorizing them according to their themes and whether she thought they were mostly to make money or literary. She jumped between writing the collections of stories for "Albondocani" to "Anecdotes of Destiny" to "New Gothic Tales" and "New Winter's Tales". Almost all of Blixen's tales from the 1940s and 1950s follow a traditional style of storytelling, weaving Gothic themes such as incest and murder with myth and bewitchment as a means of exploring identity, morality and philosophy. Most also take place against the background of the 19th century or earlier periods. Concerning her deliberately old-fashioned style, Blixen mentioned in several interviews that she wanted to express a spirit that no longer existed in modern times, one of being rather than doing. Her narratives hover between skillfully crafted illusion and romanticism, with a keen knowledge of the preferred tastes of her audience. Blixen crafted her English tales in a more direct manner and her Danish tales in a 19th-century writing style which she felt would appeal more to them. Because she simultaneously worked on different collections, works written in this period were not published until almost a decade after they were originally written.


title: Karen Blixen

text: During World War II, when Denmark was occupied by the Germans, Blixen started her only full-length novel, the introspective tale "The Angelic Avengers", under a French pseudonym, Pierre Andrezel, for the first and last time. Though it was written in Danish, she claimed that it was a translation of a French work written between the wars and denied being its author. The book was published in 1944 and nominated for a third Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Blixen initially did not want the book to be nominated, but eventually accepted the distinction. The horrors experienced by the young heroines have been interpreted as an allegory of Nazism, though Blixen also denied that interpretation, claiming instead that the novel was a distraction that had helped her to escape the feeling of being imprisoned by the war. In 1956, in an interview for "The Paris Review", she finally acknowledged that she was the author of the novel, saying that it was her "illegitimate child". Dorothy Canfield described "The Angelic Avengers" in her "Book-of-the-Month Club News" review as "of superlatively fine literary quality, written with distinction in an exquisite style".


title: Karen Blixen

text: A collection of stories, "Last Tales" () was published in 1957, followed in 1958 by the collection "Anecdotes of Destiny" (). "Last Tales" included seven stories that Blixen had intended to be parts of "Albondocani". It also included sections called "New Gothic Tales" and "New Winter's Tales". Blixen's concept of the art of the story is perhaps most directly expressed in the stories "The Blank Page" and "The Cardinal's First Tale" in "Last Tales". These tales feature many innuendos, which Blixen employed to force her reader into participating in the creation of the story. She mixed obscure references with explicit observation. Her writing was not just a retelling of tales, however; it was a complex layering of clues and "double entendres" which force the reader to deduce Blixen's intent and draw conclusions. The story, for Blixen, was vital to expression: it gives a recitation of experience, and simultaneously a potential vision of the possible.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Blixen planned for "Anecdotes of Destiny" to be a final part of the "Last Tales" in 1953, but as she prepared all the stories, she decided to publish "Anecdotes" as a separate volume. She wanted both books to appear simultaneously, but because of publication issues "Anecdotes" was delayed for another year. The most famous tale from "Anecdotes" is "Babette's Feast", about a chef who spends her entire 10,000-franc lottery prize to prepare a final spectacular gourmet meal. The story evaluates relationships and examines whether the austere but charitable life led by the sisters, in adherence to an ideal, is less true to faith than the passionate gift from the heart of their housekeeper. The story was reproduced in a film directed and written by Gabriel Axel, which was released in 1987, and won the Best Foreign Film Oscar in 1988.


title: Karen Blixen

text: In 1959, Blixen made her only trip to the United States. It was an extended trip spanning from January to April, and while the purpose was to complete a series of educational films and discussions for the Ford Foundation and Encyclopædia Britannica, Blixen intended to enjoy herself. She was the feature of a "Life Magazine" article in the edition of 19 January 1959 and attended two Broadway openings. Feted by the well-to-do of New York society, Blixen was invited to dine with socialites Babe Paley and Gloria Vanderbilt. She was photographed by Richard Avedon and Cecil Beaton; the guest of John Steinbeck, who hosted a cocktail party in her honor; and serenaded by Maria Callas. Nobel laureate Pearl Buck and poets e. e. cummings and Marianne Moore came to see her, as well. When Blixen expressed a desire to meet Marilyn Monroe, the author Carson McCullers arranged a meeting with Monroe and her husband, the playwright Arthur Miller. Throughout the trip, Blixen played upon her crafted persona as a reclusive aristocrat and an outsider, but also that of an eccentric, who would eat only oysters and grapes, and drink only champagne. It was clear that she was ill, as it was reported that she was "frail" and "weighed 63 pounds [28 kg]" and she spent part of her time receiving "intravenous infusions".


title: Karen Blixen

text: After returning to Denmark, Blixen resumed working, despite severe illness, finishing the African sketches "Shadows on the Grass" in 1960. The last of her works published during her lifetime, it was awarded her fifth selection as a Book-of-the-Month. A return-to-Africa memoir, "Shadows" explores the stereotypes and labels of Europeans and Africans, concluding that "prejudices reveal more about the perceiver than the perceived". The book consists of four tales: "Shadows on the Grass", which focuses on her Somali servant Farah; "Faith is Revealed", which relays the importance of symbolism; "The Great Gesture", which depicts medical issues in her community; and "Echoes from the Hills", which evaluates her loneliness after leaving Africa and the tireless vigil her staff from Africa kept on her former home for many years.


title: Karen Blixen

text: When Blixen was diagnosed with syphilis in 1915, she was treated with mercury tablets. She took approximately 1 gram of mercury per day for almost a year according to some reports, while others show she did so for only a few months. She then spent time in Denmark for treatment and was given arsenic, which she continued to take in drop form as a treatment for the syphilis that she thought was the cause of her continued pain. Blixen had reported severe bouts of abdominal pain as early as 1921, while she was still in Kenya. Several well-known physicians and specialists of both internal medicine and neurology diagnosed her with third-stage chronic syphilis. Mogens Fog, who was Blixen's neurologist, thought that her gastric problems were attributable to syphilis, in spite of the fact that blood and spinal fluid tests were negative. By the time she left Africa, Blixen was suffering from anemia, had jaundice and had overused arsenic. As clumps of her hair had begun to fall out, she took to wearing hats and turbans.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Although it was widely believed that syphilis continued to plague Blixen throughout her lifetime, extensive tests were unable to reveal evidence of syphilis in her system after 1925. Her writing prowess suggests that she did not suffer from the mental degeneration of late stages of syphilis. She did suffer a mild permanent loss of sensation in her legs that could be attributed to use of the arsenic-based anti-syphilis drug salvarsan. Her gastric pain was often called "tropic dysentery", though no stool analyses were reported in her medical records. Concerned about gaining weight, Blixen took strong laxatives "during her whole adult life", which after years of misuse affected her digestive system. She also was a heavy smoker, which when combined with her minimal food intake led to her developing a peptic ulcer.


title: Karen Blixen

text: In 1946 and 1955 the neurosurgeon Eduard Busch performed a lumbar sympathectomy on Blixen's spinal cord, but her pain returned. In 1956 when she was diagnosed with the stomach ulcer, Professor Torben Knudtzon performed surgery at Copenhagen University Hospital, but by that time, she was in her seventies, and already in poor health. Over the next several years, she continued to suffer from dehydration and a lack of nutrition, which rendered her weak and led to four additional hospitalizations at the Central Hospital in Hillerød. Late in her treatment, she finally confessed her use of laxatives to her doctors. The source of her abdominal problems remains unknown. A 1995 report published by the Danish physician, Kaare Weismann, concluded that the cause of her chronic pain and ailment was likely heavy metal poisoning. A 2002 report by Søgaard in the "Danish Medical History Journal" ("") attributed her misdiagnosis to a failure to communicate on both the part of Blixen and her doctors. As she didn't tell them about her laxative misuse, and the physicians believed they were fighting syphilis, each missed the opportunity for effective treatment. Both Erik Münster and Weismann also recognized the lapse in communication, as had Blixen been treated with penicillin, which was available by the 1950s, syphilis would have been able to be ruled out.


title: Karen Blixen

text: It is also known that Blixen suffered from panic attacks because she described them in her book "Out of Africa". In her analysis of Blixen's medical history, Donelson points out that Blixen wondered if her pain was psychosomatic and states that during Blixen's lifetime her illnesses were rumored to be fabricated. Her publisher indicated that Blixen's syphilis was a myth in private, but publicly, Blixen blamed syphilis for her chronic health issues. Donelson concluded: "Whatever her belief about her illness, the disease suited the artist's design for creating her own personal legend."


title: Karen Blixen

text: Unable to eat, Blixen died in 1962 at Rungstedlund, her family's estate, at the age of 77, apparently of malnutrition. Others attribute her weight loss and eventual death to anorexia nervosa.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Among Blixen's posthumously published works are: "Ehrengard" (1962), "Carnival: Entertainments and Posthumous Tales (1977)", "Daguerreotypes, and Other Essays" (1979) and "Letters from Africa, 1914–31" (1981). In the late 1960s, Orson Welles planned an anthology of Dinesen's films, in which he intended to release "The Heroine", "The Deluge at Norderney", "A Country Tale", and "Full Moon". After a day of shooting film in Budapest on "The Heroine", the project was canceled because his financier went bankrupt. "The Immortal Story" was adapted to film in 1968 by Welles and released simultaneously on French television and in theaters. Welles later attempted to film "The Dreamers", but only a few scenes were ever completed. In 1982, Emidio Greco directed an Italian film, "Ehrengard", based upon Blixen's work of the same name, which was not released until 2002 due to financial complications.


title: Karen Blixen

text: For her literary accomplishments, Blixen was awarded the Danish Holberg Medal in 1949, the Ingenio et Arti medal in 1952


title: Karen Blixen

text: , granted the inaugural Hans Christian Andersen Scholarship of the Danish Writers Association in 1955 and received the Henrik Pontoppidan Memorial Foundation Grant in 1959. Peter Englund, permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, described it as "a mistake" that Blixen was not awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature during the 1930s and when Hemingway won the prize in 1954, he stated that Bernard Berenson, Carl Sandburg and Blixen deserved the prize more than he did. Although never awarded the prize, she finished in third place behind Graham Greene in 1961, the year Ivo Andrić was awarded the prize. In 2012, the Nobel records were opened after 50 years and it was revealed that Blixen was among a shortlist of authors considered for the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, along with John Steinbeck (the eventual winner), Robert Graves, Lawrence Durrell, and Jean Anouilh. Blixen became ineligible after dying in September of that year.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Blixen's former secretary and house manager, Clara Svendsen wrote a book, "Notes about Karen Blixen" () in 1974, which told of the transformation of the young woman who moved to Africa into the sophisticated writer. Giving personal anecdotes about Blixen's life, Svendsen focused on the private woman behind her public image. Blixen's great-nephew, Anders Westenholz, an accomplished writer himself, wrote two books about her and her works: "Kraftens horn: myte og virkelighed i Karen Blixens liv" (1982) (translated into English as "The Power of Aries: myth and reality in Karen Blixen's life" and republished in 1987) and "Den glemte abe: mand og kvinde hos Karen Blixen" (1985) (The Forgotten Ape: man and woman in Karen Blixen).


title: Karen Blixen

text: Karen Blixen's portrait was featured on the front of the Danish 50-krone banknote, 1997 series, from 7 May 1999 to 25 August 2005. She also featured on Danish postage stamps that were issued in 1980 and 1996. The Asteroid 3318 Blixen was named in her honor on her 100th birthday.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Blixen lived most of her life at the family estate Rungstedlund, which was acquired by her father in 1879. The property is located in Rungsted, north of Copenhagen, Denmark's capital. The oldest parts of the estate date to 1680, and it had been operated as both an inn and a farm. Most of Blixen's writing was done in Ewald's Room, named after author Johannes Ewald.


title: Karen Blixen

text: In the 1940s, Blixen contemplated selling the estate due to the costs of running it, but the house became a haven for a group of young intellectuals, including Thorkild Bjørnvig, Frank Jæger, Erling Schroeder, among others, who found the house as intriguing as its occupant. They began using the property as a literary salon, which continued to be used by artists until 1991. Bjørnvig, who edited the journal "Heretica" also developed a close friendship with Blixen. The house was repaired and restored between 1958 and 1960 with a portion of the estate set aside as a bird sanctuary. After its restoration, the property was deeded to the Danish Literary Academy and became managed by the Rungstedlund Foundation, founded by Blixen and her siblings. It was opened to the public as a museum in 1991. In 2013 The Karen Blixen Museum joined the Nordic museum portal.


title: Karen Blixen

text: When Blixen returned to Denmark in 1931, she sold her property to a developer, Remi Martin, who divided the land into parcels. The Nairobi suburb that emerged on the land where Blixen farmed coffee is now named Karen. Blixen herself declared in her later writings that "the residential district of Karen" was "named after me". The family corporation that owned Blixen's farm was incorporated as the "Karen Coffee Company" and the house she lived in was built by the chairman of the board, Aage Westenholz, her uncle. Though Westenholz named the coffee company after his own daughter Karen and not Blixen, the developer of the suburb named the district after its famous author/farmer rather than the name of her company.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Changing hands several times, the original farmhouse occupied by Blixen was purchased by the Danish government and given to the Kenyan government in 1964 as an independence gift. The government established a college of nutrition on the site and then when the film "Out of Africa" was made in 1985, the college was acquired by the National Museums of Kenya. A year later, the Karen Blixen Museum was opened and features many of Blixen's furnishings, which were reacquired from Lady McMillan, who had purchased them when Blixen left Africa. The museum house has been judged a significant cultural landmark, not only for its association with Blixen, but as a cultural representative of Kenya's European settlement, as well as a significant architectural style—the late 19th-century bungalow.


title: Karen Blixen

text: A considerable proportion of the Karen Blixen archive at the Royal Danish Library consists of the unpublished poems, plays and short stories Karen Dinesen wrote before she married and left for Africa. In her teens and early 20s, she probably spent much of her spare time practising the art of writing. It was only when she was 22 that she decided to publish some of her short stories in literary journals, adopting the pen name Osceola.


title: Karen Blixen

text: Some of these works were published posthumously, including tales previously removed from earlier collections and essays she wrote for various occasions.


title: Oats Studios

text: Oats Studios is an independent film studio started in 2017 by Oscar-nominated South African filmmaker Neill Blomkamp.


title: Oats Studios

text: The studio was created with the goal of distributing experimental short films via YouTube and Steam in order to gauge the community for interest and feedback as to which of them are viable for expansion into feature films. Actors featured in the films include Sigourney Weaver, Carly Pope, Sharlto Copley, Jason Cope, Kellan Lutz, Michael Rogers, Jose Pablo Cantillo, and Dakota Fanning.


title: Oats Studios

text: A race of ruthless reptilian aliens have invaded the Earth and enslaved humanity through brute force and telepathy. The survivors, led by a woman named Jasper (Sigourney Weaver) are fighting a losing battle, but are able to turn the tide with the help of an angelic, messianic species and a mute precognitive.


title: Oats Studios

text: A series of black comedy parodies of late-night cooking infomercials, starring a hapless presenter named Bill. The products he demonstrates all end up producing a disgusting product which he then consumes, or malfunctioning and maiming him.


title: Oats Studios

text: Archive footage from the Vietnam War in 1969 shows 15,212 soldiers and 2,425 military vehicles being levitated into the air and destroyed by an unknown force. The insides of several deceased Viet Cong are also transformed into hard, insect-like shells. The incident is immediately classified, and dubbed the “Omega Event” by the Central Intelligence Agency.


title: Oats Studios

text: In 1970, Sgt. Hines attacks and kills what appears to be a reanimated US Army soldier, but beneath the skin, they turn out to be an insect-like creature as well. He is then collected by CIA agent Jacob Palmer, who transports him to Firebase Quatro, a military field hospital on the border with Cambodia. En route, Palmer reveals the mysterious events were caused by an extremely powerful entity dubbed The River God, whom Hines has been tracking down for some time. The two arrive at the base, where they interview Cpl. Bracken, one of the only survivors of the River God's attacks. Bracken recalls that his unit encountered the River God during a skirmish with Viet Cong forces at Firebase Tarheel. Upon locking eyes with the entity, he was immediately teleported to an airfield in Charleston, South Carolina, where he and several other soldiers were attacked and set on fire by experimental Soviet fighter jets. He then reappeared back to the jungles of Vietnam, still on fire, where his teammates helped put out the flames. Before retreating, he recalls that the River God reanimated his fallen comrades.


title: Oats Studios

text: Later that night, Palmer talks with Hines, and recounts several stories from the sergeant's teammates where they say he appears to be protected by some sort of divine intervention, as if the universe has a set plan for him. It is then revealed that the River God was once an ordinary Vietnamese fisherman, an innocent within the conflict, whose wife and children were killed in an attack on his village. Overcome by grief, he gained the ability to warp reality and space-time, raining havoc on both sides as he made his way down the Mekong Delta. An invincible skeletal figure, his skin burned off by napalm, he now uses his unwavering power to transform the world into his own personal hell. As Firebase Quatro prepares to move out and engage with the River God, Hines is presented with an experimental railgun and a backpack apparatus dubbed the “relativity capsule”. It generates a magnetic field around him, preventing the River God from warping his immediate reality and allowing him to function whilst fighting him. Armed with this new arsenal, Hines prepares himself to fight what he and many of the other soldiers have come to view as the Devil.


title: Oats Studios

text: A series featuring God (Sharlto Copley) and his butler (Jason Cope), who interact with miniature humans and animals laid out before them on a platform while commentating and reacting to what they are doing.


title: Oats Studios

text: Twenty years ago, a smattering of large, mineral-rich asteroids crashed into northern Canada and Russia. At a remote mining outpost operated by Cerberus Minerals in the Northwest Territories, an anomalous, crystalline alien object described as the "quartz" has been recovered from one of the asteroids. The quartz, apparently sentient, cognitively affects humans by transmitting gigabytes of information via bursts of light, influencing them to assimilate organisms to construct it a suitable body to inhabit. One personnel member afflicted by the light (known as "Holebrook") used the organs of livestock to create such organisms before proceeding to construct a larger creature from the bodies of numerous deceased personnel. The creature killed him and eventually all but two of the 98 personnel, absorbing the bodies and memories of the remaining non-synthetic humans.


title: Oats Studios

text: The two survivors, human security guard John Quinn (Jose Pablo Cantillo), and "Canary Class" synthetic labourer Barklay (Dakota Fanning) prepare to venture to the fortified corporate facility of the outpost, having run out of food and water in their section. Quinn, blinded by an encounter with the alien light, trains Barklay on how to use his rifle. The two make it to the corporate section, but are closely followed by the creature, who has absorbed the necessary biometrics to also gain access. Taking cover in a kitchen, Quinn refuses to go on, concerned that the alien influence from when he looked into the light has compromised him. He reveals to Barklay that she is not a synthetic, but an orphan purchased by the company as a cheaper alternative to synthetic labour, and cuts off his finger so that she will have the necessary biometric to enter the corporate bunker. He is then killed by the creature, which absorbs his knowledge of where Barklay is heading.


title: Oats Studios

text: Barklay eventually makes it to the bunker while being pursued by the creature, but Quinn's fingerprint is deemed to have insufficient security clearance status to allow entry. Confronted by the creature, she opens fire and briefly incapacitates it, then cuts some hands from its body, with one belonging to the former CFO eventually granting her access. Traumatized, and with the creature regaining consciousness outside and attempting to break down the door, Barklay contemplates her next move.


title: Oats Studios

text: A parody of various tech-related test shows, such as "Mythbusters" and "Top Gear", the film consists of test footage for the private weapons manufacturer Kapture. It follows Gary and Jeff, two over-excited scientists testing their newest invention dubbed 'the Fluke'. The weapon is described as a base station and transformer unit that work together, with the transformer being able to be fired from any conventional variant of shotgun.


title: Oats Studios

text: Before the two test the weapon, Gary announces to the camera that they have a special deal with the US Department of Defense and the US Bureau of Prisons, which enables them to use human prisoners as test subjects. The subject, Mike, is escorted into the testing facility where he is informed that he is likely to survive the test, and thus will get a reduced sentence. However, the two scientists note privately closer to the camera he is unlikely to do so.


title: Oats Studios

text: Mike is shot with the transmitter, which embeds in his leg. Jeff then activates the neural connection, which allows the two scientists complete control over Mike's body, complete with cerebral capture allowing them to see what his eyes do. They briefly demonstrate the devices ability to control the subjects, walking a now comatose Mike around the facility. They then direct him into a structure standing in for enemy headquarters, before activating the transmitter's self destruct system which blows up the structure, killing Mike and damaging the plexiglas screen in front of them. The two scientists are shown to be jovial and elated at the success of the product.


title: Oats Studios

text: A group of criminal androids, including one named Adam, follow a mysterious cloaked android figure through a desert peppered with large oil fires. As a sandstorm sets in, one female android becomes heavily damaged, and despite the others best efforts, does not make it. The rest of the group eventually make it to an abandoned facility, guarded by other androids, and escape from the storm.


title: Oats Studios

text: Once inside, the cloaked figure details how human residents live inside a walled city run by an organisation known as The Consortium. Those who are convicted of felony crimes have their bodies and organs harvested, used to benefit other citizens. Their brains, the only part of their bodies that are “tainted”, are placed within cheap android shells and expelled into the wasteland beyond the walls. The reason this is done is unknown. The cloaked android also reveals their memories are wiped, but introduces them to a human-android hybrid named ‘The Mirror’, who can read traces of who they were before their transformation.


title: Oats Studios

text: The mirror approaches Adam, and reveals that he was convicted for treason and terrorism within the Takoma Walled City, deducing that he was a political dissident. After hearing this, the cloaked android moves to confront him.


title: Oats Studios

text: In an alternate timeline Arizona State alumni William "Billy" Coltran became president of the United States. He was here to party.


title: Oats Studios

text: A short film exploring the ideas of multinational corporations, secret government programs and failed scientific experiments.


title: Helen Baxendale

text: Helen Victoria Baxendale (born 7 June 1970) is an English actress of stage and television, known for her roles as Rachel Bradley in the British comedy drama "Cold Feet" (1997–2003), and Emily Waltham in the American sitcom "Friends" (1998–1999).


title: Helen Baxendale

text: Baxendale's early stage credits include "The Soldiers" at Glasgow's Citizens Theatre, which earned her a 1993 Ian Charleson Award nomination. Her other television credits include "Cardiac Arrest" (1994–1996), "An Unsuitable Job for a Woman" (1997–1999), "" (2001), "Cuckoo" (2012–2019), and "Noughts + Crosses" (2020).


title: Helen Baxendale

text: Baxendale was born on 7 June 1970 in Pontefract, West Riding of Yorkshire. Her sister is the screenwriter Katie Baxendale.


title: Helen Baxendale

text: She grew up in Shenstone, Staffordshire, and attended King Edward VI School, Lichfield. She wanted to be a ballet dancer and trained at the Elmhurst School for Dance, until dropping out aged 17 in favour of an acting career. She moved to the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, then worked at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre from 1992 to 1995.


title: Helen Baxendale

text: Via her work at Glasgow Citizens' Theatre, Baxendale was cast in hospital TV series "Cardiac Arrest", though it was not her first television role. Her performance as Dr Claire Maitland earned her a Scottish BAFTA nomination in 1995. Her role as Rachel Bradley in the TV series "Cold Feet" garnered her a British Comedy Award nomination. She starred in "An Unsuitable Job for a Woman", playing Cordelia Gray. The Independent stated: "her early roles were defined by icy cool, sleek bobs and ironic detachment."


title: Helen Baxendale

text: Aged 27 Baxendale was cast in a recurring role in "Friends" as Ross Geller's girlfriend, wife and ultimately ex-wife Emily Waltham. She appeared in fourteen episodes throughout Season 4 and early Season 5.


title: Helen Baxendale

text: Other notable roles include Lorna Johnson in "Truth or Dare" alongside John Hannah, Caroline Meagher in "The Investigator" alongside Laura Fraser, and Julie Matthews in Curt Truninger's "Dead by Monday". She was nominated for another Scottish BAFTA in 1997 for her role as Lorna Johnson. "Dead by Monday" won the Angel Award for Best Film at the Monaco International Film Festival in 2003 and the Portland Festival of World Cinema award for best feature film in 2001. She played Pandora Braithwaite in "" in 2001 and "Maggie" in the multiple award-winning "Bolse Vita". She appeared in "Saving Nellie", a physics programme running on Teachers TV. From 2007 to January 2008 she starred in "Swimming with Sharks" alongside Christian Slater at London's Vaudeville Theatre.


title: Helen Baxendale

text: In 2010, Baxendale appeared in the pilot episode of "Dirk Gently" as Susan Harmison. In January 2011, she co-starred with Trevor Eve in the three-part ITV drama "Kidnap and Ransom", filmed on location in South Africa. Later in 2011, she starred as DCI Marion Bettany in Val McDermid's radio crime drama "Village SOS". In 2012 she reprised her role in the second episode. She then appeared in the "Inspector George Gently" episode "The Lost Child" alongside Mark Gatiss. From 2012 to 2019, she starred in "Cuckoo" as Lorna, the mother in-law of the titular Dale 'Cuckoo' Ashbrick. In 2020 she played housekeeper Meggie McGregor in "Noughts + Crosses".


title: Helen Baxendale

text: Baxendale starred as Christine in Patrick Marber's "After Miss Julie", and in 2005 appeared as Romy, the title role in "The Woman Before" at the Royal Court alongside Nigel Lindsay, Saskia Reeves, Tom Riley and Georgia Taylor. She played Ophelia in "Hamlet" (the Marovitz Hamlet) alongside Henry Ian Cusick. She was nominated for an Ian Charleson Award (best classical actor under 30) for her 1993 performance in "Soldiers" at the Glasgow Citizens Theatre. In 2009 Baxendale played Lara in "Amongst Friends" alongside Aden Gillett and Emma Cunniffe at Hampstead Theatre.


title: Helen Baxendale

text: In 2008, Baxendale guest starred in episode three of the award winning BBC radio comedy "Cabin Pressure".


title: Helen Baxendale

text: Baxendale has been with her boyfriend David L. Williams since her Glasgow days. Together they have three children. Her first pregnancy was written into "An Unsuitable Job for a Woman" and her second was written into the fourth series of "Cold Feet".


title: Helen Baxendale

text: Due to Baxendale's first pregnancy, and the fact that she lived in the UK rather than the US, her character was written out of "Friends" earlier than the writers had originally intended. She appeared in only 14 episodes, despite her character dating, marrying, and divorcing Ross Geller (David Schwimmer), one of the show's six leads.


title: Karnak

text: The Karnak Temple Complex, commonly known as Karnak (, which was originally derived from "Khurnaq" "fortified village"), comprises a vast mix of decayed temples, pylons, chapels, and other buildings near Luxor, Egypt. Construction at the complex began during the reign of Senusret I (reigned 1971–1926 BCE) in the Middle Kingdom (around 2000–1700 BCE) and continued into the Ptolemaic Kingdom (305–30 BCE), although most of the extant buildings date from the New Kingdom. The area around Karnak was the ancient Egyptian "Ipet-isut" ("The Most Selected of Places") and the main place of worship of the 18th Dynastic Theban Triad, with the god Amun as its head. It is part of the monumental city of Thebes, and in 1979 it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List along with the rest of the city. The Karnak complex gives its name to the nearby, and partly surrounded, modern village of El-Karnak, north of Luxor.


title: Karnak

text: The complex is a vast open site and includes the Karnak Open Air Museum. It is believed to be the second most visited historical site in Egypt; only the Giza pyramid complex near Cairo receives more visits. It consists of four main parts, of which only the largest is currently open to the general public. The term Karnak often is understood as being the Precinct of Amun-Re only, because this is the only part most visitors see. The three other parts, the Precinct of Mut, the Precinct of Montu, and the dismantled Temple of Amenhotep IV, are closed to the public. There also are a few smaller temples and sanctuaries connecting the Precinct of Mut, the Precinct of Amun-Re, and the Luxor Temple. The Precinct of Mut is very ancient, being dedicated to an Earth and creation deity, but not yet restored. The original temple was destroyed and partially restored by Hatshepsut, although another pharaoh built around it in order to change the focus or orientation of the sacred area. Many portions of it may have been carried away for use in other buildings.


title: Karnak

text: The key difference between Karnak and most of the other temples and sites in Egypt is the length of time over which it was developed and used. Construction of temples started in the Middle Kingdom and continued into Ptolemaic times. Approximately thirty pharaohs contributed to the buildings, enabling it to reach a size, complexity, and diversity not seen elsewhere. Few of the individual features of Karnak are unique, but the size and number of features are overwhelming. The deities represented range from some of the earliest worshipped to those worshipped much later in the history of the Ancient Egyptian culture. Although destroyed, it also contained an early temple built by Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), the pharaoh who later would celebrate a near monotheistic religion he established that prompted him to move his court and religious center away from Thebes. It also contains evidence of adaptations, where the buildings of the ancient Egyptians were used by later cultures for their own religious purposes.


title: Karnak

text: One famous aspect of Karnak is the Great Hypostyle Hall in the Precinct of Amun-Re, a hall area of with 134 massive columns arranged in 16 rows. One hundred and twenty-two of these columns are tall, and the other 12 are tall with a diameter of over . The architraves on top of these columns are estimated to weigh 70 tons. These architraves may have been lifted to these heights using levers. This would be an extremely time-consuming process and also would require great balance to get to such great heights. A common alternative theory regarding how they were moved is that large ramps were constructed of sand, mud, brick or stone and that the stones were then towed up the ramps. If stone had been used for the ramps, they would have been able to use much less material. The top of the ramps presumably would have employed either wooden tracks or cobblestones for towing the megaliths.


title: Karnak

text: There is an unfinished pillar in an out-of-the-way location that indicates how it would have been finished. Final carving was executed after the drums were put in place so that it was not damaged while being placed. Several experiments moving megaliths with ancient technology were made at other locations – some of which are amongst the largest monoliths in the world.


title: Karnak

text: In 2009 UCLA launched a website dedicated to virtual reality digital reconstructions of the Karnak complex and other resources. The sun god's shrine has light focused upon it during the winter solstice.


title: Karnak

text: The history of the Karnak complex is largely the history of Thebes and its changing role in the culture. Religious centers varied by region, and when a new capital of the unified culture was established, the religious centers in that area gained prominence. The city of Thebes does not appear to have been of great significance before the Eleventh Dynasty and previous temple building there would have been relatively small, with shrines being dedicated to the early deities of Thebes, the Earth goddess Mut and Montu. Early building was destroyed by invaders. The earliest known artifact found in the area of the temple is a small, eight-sided column from the Eleventh Dynasty, which mentions Amun-Re. Amun (sometimes called Amen) was long the local tutelary deity of Thebes. He was identified with the ram and the goose. The Egyptian meaning of Amun is "hidden" or the "hidden god".


title: Karnak

text: Major construction work in the Precinct of Amun-Re took place during the Eighteenth Dynasty, when Thebes became the capital of the unified Ancient Egypt. Almost every pharaoh of that dynasty added something to the temple site. Thutmose I erected an enclosure wall connecting the Fourth and Fifth pylons, which comprise the earliest part of the temple still standing "in situ". Hatshepsut had monuments constructed and also restored the original Precinct of Mut, that had been ravaged by the foreign rulers during the Hyksos occupation. She had twin obelisks, at the time the tallest in the world, erected at the entrance to the temple. One still stands, as the second-tallest ancient obelisk still standing on Earth; the other has broken in two and toppled. Another of her projects at the site, Karnak's Red Chapel or Chapelle Rouge, was intended as a barque shrine and originally may have stood between her two obelisks. She later ordered the construction of two more obelisks to celebrate her sixteenth year as pharaoh; one of the obelisks broke during construction, and thus, a third was constructed to replace it. The broken obelisk was left at its quarrying site in Aswan, where it still remains. Known as the unfinished obelisk, it provides evidence of how obelisks were quarried.


title: Karnak

text: Construction of the Great Hypostyle Hall also may have begun during the Eighteenth Dynasty (although most new building was undertaken under Seti I and Ramesses II in the Nineteenth). Merneptah, also of the Nineteenth Dynasty, commemorated his victories over the Sea Peoples on the walls of the Cachette Court, the start of the processional route (also known as the Avenue of Sphinxes) to the Luxor Temple. The last major change to the Precinct of Amun-Re's layout was the addition of the First Pylon and the massive enclosure walls that surround the whole precinct, both constructed by Nectanebo I of the Thirtieth Dynasty.


title: Karnak

text: In 323 AD, Roman emperor Constantine the Great recognised the Christian religion, and in 356 Constantius II ordered the closing of pagan temples throughout the Roman empire, into which Egypt had been annexed in 30 BC. Karnak was by this time mostly abandoned, and Christian churches were founded among the ruins, the most famous example of this is the reuse of the Festival Hall of Thutmose III's central hall, where painted decorations of saints and Coptic inscriptions can still be seen.


title: Karnak

text: Thebes' exact placement was unknown in medieval Europe, though both Herodotus and Strabo give the exact location of Thebes and how long up the Nile one must travel to reach it. Maps of Egypt, based on the 2nd century Claudius Ptolemaeus' mammoth work "Geographia", had been circulating in Europe since the late 14th century, all of them showing Thebes' (Diospolis) location. Despite this, several European authors of the 15th and 16th centuries who visited only Lower Egypt and published their travel accounts, such as Joos van Ghistele and André Thévet, put Thebes in or close to Memphis.


title: Karnak

text: The Karnak temple complex is first described by an unknown Venetian in 1589, although his account gives no name for the complex. This account, housed in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, is the first known European mention, since ancient Greek and Roman writers, about a whole range of monuments in Upper Egypt and Nubia, including Karnak, Luxor temple, the Colossi of Memnon, Esna, Edfu, Kom Ombo, Philae, and others.


title: Karnak

text: Karnak ("Carnac") as a village name, and name of the complex, is first attested in 1668, when two capuchin missionary brothers, Protais and Charles François d'Orléans, travelled though the area. Protais' writing about their travel was published by Melchisédech Thévenot ("Relations de divers voyages curieux", 1670s–1696 editions) and Johann Michael Vansleb ("The Present State of Egypt", 1678).


title: Karnak

text: The first drawing of Karnak is found in Paul Lucas' travel account of 1704, ("Voyage du Sieur Paul Lucas au Levant"). It is rather inaccurate, and can be quite confusing to modern eyes. Lucas travelled in Egypt during 1699–1703. The drawing shows a mixture of the Precinct of Amun-Re and the Precinct of Montu, based on a complex confined by the three huge Ptolemaic gateways of Ptolemy III Euergetes / Ptolemy IV Philopator, and the massive long, high and thick, First Pylon of the Precinct of Amun-Re.


title: Karnak

text: Karnak was visited and described in succession by Claude Sicard and his travel companion Pierre Laurent Pincia (1718 and 1720–21), Granger (1731), Frederick Louis Norden (1737–38), Richard Pococke (1738), James Bruce (1769), Charles-Nicolas-Sigisbert Sonnini de Manoncourt (1777), William George Browne (1792–93), and finally by a number of scientists of the Napoleon expedition, including Vivant Denon, during 1798–1799. Claude-Étienne Savary describes the complex in rather great detail in his work of 1785; especially in light of the fact that it is a fictional account of a pretend journey to Upper Egypt, composed out of information from other travellers. Savary did visit Lower Egypt in 1777–78, and published a work about that too.


title: Karnak

text: This is the largest of the precincts of the temple complex, and is dedicated to Amun-Re, the chief deity of the Theban Triad. There are several colossal statues, including the figure of Pinedjem I which is tall. The sandstone for this temple, including all of the columns, was transported from Gebel Silsila south on the Nile river. It also has one of the largest obelisks, weighing 328 tonnes and standing tall.


title: Karnak

text: Located to the south of the newer Amen-Re complex, this precinct was dedicated to the mother goddess, Mut, who became identified as the wife of Amun-Re in the Eighteenth Dynasty Theban Triad. It has several smaller temples associated with it and has its own sacred lake, constructed in a crescent shape. This temple has been ravaged, many portions having been used in other structures. Following excavation and restoration works by the Johns Hopkins University team, led by Betsy Bryan (see below) the Precinct of Mut has been opened to the public. Six hundred black granite statues were found in the courtyard to her temple. It may be the oldest portion of the site.


title: Karnak

text: In 2006, Betsy Bryan presented her findings of one festival that included apparent intentional overindulgence in alcohol. Participation in the festival was great, including the priestesses and the population. Historical records of tens of thousands attending the festival exist. These findings were made in the temple of Mut because when Thebes rose to greater prominence, Mut absorbed the warrior goddesses, Sekhmet and Bast, as some of her aspects. First, Mut became Mut-Wadjet-Bast, then Mut-Sekhmet-Bast (Wadjet having merged into Bast), then Mut also assimilated Menhit, another lioness goddess, and her adopted son's wife, becoming Mut-Sekhmet-Bast-Menhit, and finally becoming Mut-Nekhbet.


title: Karnak

text: Temple excavations at Luxor discovered a "porch of drunkenness" built onto the temple by the pharaoh Hatshepsut, during the height of her twenty-year reign. In a later myth developed around the annual drunken Sekhmet festival, Ra, by then the sun god of Upper Egypt, created her from a fiery eye gained from his mother, to destroy mortals who conspired against him (Lower Egypt). In the myth, Sekhmet's blood-lust was not quelled at the end of the battle and led to her destroying almost all of humanity, so Ra had tricked her by turning the Nile as red as blood (the Nile turns red every year when filled with silt during inundation) so that Sekhmet would drink it. The trick, however, was that the red liquid was not blood, but beer mixed with pomegranate juice so that it resembled blood, making her so drunk that she gave up slaughter and became an aspect of the gentle Hathor. The complex interweaving of deities occurred over the thousands of years of the culture.


title: Karnak

text: This portion of the site is dedicated to the son of Mut and Amun-Re, Montu, the war-god of the Theban Triad. It is located to the north of the Amun-Re complex and is much smaller in size. It is not open to the public.


title: Karnak

text: The temple that Akhenaten (Amenhotep IV) constructed on the site was located east of the main complex, outside the walls of the Amun-Re precinct. It was destroyed immediately after the death of its builder, who had attempted to overcome the powerful priesthood who had gained control over Egypt before his reign. It was so thoroughly demolished that its full extent and layout is currently unknown. The priesthood of that temple regained their powerful position as soon as Akhenaten died, and were instrumental in destroying many records of his existence.


title: Territorial evolution of the British Empire

text: The territorial evolution of the British Empire is considered to have begun with the foundation of the English colonial empire in the late 16th century. Since then, many territories around the world have been under the control of the United Kingdom or its predecessor states.


text: When the Kingdom of Great Britain was formed in 1707 by the union of the Kingdom of Scotland with the Kingdom of England, the latter country's colonial possessions passed to the new state. Similarly, when Great Britain was united with the Kingdom of Ireland in 1801 to form the United Kingdom, control over its colonial possessions passed to the latter state. Collectively, these territories are referred to as the British Empire. Upon much of Ireland gaining independence in 1922 as the Irish Free State, the other territories of the empire remained under the control of the United Kingdom.


text: From 1714 to 1837, the British throne was held by a series of kings who were also the rulers of the German state of Hanover. However, this was purely a personal union, with Hanover maintaining its political independence otherwise, and so it is not usually considered to have formed part of the British Empire.


text: The nature of the territories (and peoples) ruled as part of the British Empire varied enormously. In legal terms the territories included those formally under the sovereignty of the British monarch (who held the additional title of Emperor (or Empress) of India from 1876 to 1947); various "foreign" territories controlled as protectorates; territories transferred to British administration under the authority of the League of Nations or the United Nations; and miscellaneous other territories, such as the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, a condominium with Egypt. No uniform system of government was applied to any of these.


text: A number of countries (dominions) within the British Empire gained independence in stages during the earlier part of the 20th century. Much of the rest of the empire was dismantled in the twenty years following the end of the Second World War, starting with the independence of India and Pakistan in 1947, and continued until the handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. There remain, however, 14 global territories which remain under the jurisdiction and sovereignty of the United Kingdom.