Humanities Winter Exam

Ancient paintings have been discovered in several locations, including Chauvet, France, Lascaux, France, and Altamira, Spain.

The Willendorf Venus was discovered in the country of Austria.

The term megalith refers to one of the “big stones” used in the construction of a site such as Stonehenge. 

The term cromlech refers to the category of megalithic structures that includes Stonehenge.  

Sin, the god of the moon was the considered the resident god at Ur.

The Babylonian army is credited with capturing Jerusalem, destroying its temples, and deporting many of the Hebrews.

Narmer, the ancient Egyptian leader, ruled circa 3,000 B.C.E. and is credited with unifying both Upper and Lower Egypt. 

The new style of art that was developed during the rule of Amenhotep IV/Akhenaten was known as the Amarna style.

A dragon and phoenix is found on the jade disc known as Pi. 

Common among the people of Thera were; elaborately decorated homes, clay pipes which connected the toilets and bathes to sewers, and straw which was used to reinforce the walls of their homes.

The bull was the creature which was associated with male virility and strength by the inhabitants of Crete.

Pasiphae, the legendary Minoan queen is credited with giving birth to the Minotaur.

Penelope was the wife of Odysseus.

The term Acropolis is translated to mean “top of the city”, and refers to the portion of an ancient Greek city-state that functioned as its religious center.

The agora refers to the portion of an ancient Greek city-state that served as public meeting place, marketplace, and civic center. 

The entasis is the columns swell about one-third of the way up and contract again near the top.

The term demes are a part of the Athenian political system and refer to small local areas comparable to precincts or wards.

The illustrations in the metopes on the four sides of the Parthenon depicts battles between the Greeks and four enemies; the Trojans, giants, Amazons, and centaurs. 

Marcus Junius Brutus was among those who stabbed Gaius Julius Caesar on the floor of the Senate.

Imagines refer to the wax death masks used to create the high level of naturalism in portrait busts.

In the sculpture of Augustus of Primaporta, Cupid is pictured riding a dolphin.

Augustus did not view the writings of Ovid favorably, thus permanently banishing him from Rome.

The literary pieces that celebrated Augustus’s gift of farmlands to veterans of the civil wars was the Georgics.

Each level of the Colosseum used a different architectural order: on the ground floor the Tuscan order, the Ionic on the second, and the Corinthian on the third which was favored by the Romans.

The Pantheon contained an oculus, a circular opening at the top, which Hadrian conceived of as the “Eye of Jupiter.”

The term patricians refer to land-owning aristocrats who served as priests, magistrates, lawyers, and judges in ancient Rome.

The term plebeians refer to the poorer class who were the craftspeople, merchants, and laborers in ancient Rome.

Anglo-Saxon law was based on the idea of the wergild, or “life-price” of an individual.

The epic poem, Beowulf, provides an account of a Scandinavian warrior who rids a community of monsters that have ravaged the land.

Augustine is credited with building a cathedral at Canterbury and a church dedicated to St. Paul in London.

Bishop Eadfrith designed the Lindisfarne Gospels. 

Roland’s horn was made from the ivory of an elephants tusk.

The dining hall where monks ate their meals was known as the refectory.

The barrel vault is the elongated arched masonry structure spanning an interior space and shaped like a half cylinder.

The voussoir refers to wedge-shaped stones that form the arch in a Romanesque church. 

Chartres was considered the center of the cult of the Virgin throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

The tunic Mary wore at Jesus’ birth was considered the most cherished relic at the Chartres Cathedral.

The chief purpose of the stained-glass programs in all Gothic cathedrals was to tell the stories of the Bible.

One of the stained-glass windows at the Chartres Cathedral shows the genealogy of Christ. The window called “Tree of Jesse” depicts the Virgin Mary as descended from Jesse, the father of King David, Thus fulfilling a prophecy in the book of Isaiah.

In a gothic church, the flying buttress was traditionally built against an exterior wall to provide support for more windows and brace it against strong winds.

The figure of Saint Theodore found on the jamb of Chartres’ south transept portal stands in a contrapposto position.

The trivium consisted of:

• Grammar

• Rhetoric

• Dialectic

Bologna was the first city to found a university, establishing itself as a center for the study of law.

Latin was mandatory, and students studied Latin in all courses of their first four years of study. 

Robert de Sorbon played a significant role in organizing theology students in Paris. 

Peter Abelard, a logician and author of the treatise Sic et Non taught by the dialectical method. 

Trotula is widely recognized as the author of On the Diseases of Women.

Thomas Aquinas wrote the Summa Theologiae and was one of the prominent spokesmen for Scholasticism. 

The Gothic church at Sainte-Chapelle features the highest ratio of glass to stone.

Ambrogio Lorenzetti is credited with painting the fresco known as the Allegory of Good Government.