title: Smriti Irani

text: Irani was one of the participants of the beauty pageant Miss India 1998 but couldn't reach the top 9, along with Gauri Pradhan Tejwani. In 1998, Irani appeared in a song ""Boliyan"" of the album ""Saawan Mein Lag Gayi Aag"" with Mika Singh. In 2000, she made her acting début with TV series "Aatish" and "Hum Hain Kal Aaj Aur Kal", both of which aired on Star Plus. Apart from this, she acted in "Kavita" on DD metro. In mid-2000, Irani bagged the lead role of Tulsi Virani in Ekta Kapoor's production "Kyunki Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi" on Star Plus for which she holds the record of winning five consecutive ITA Award for Best Actress Popular and four "Indian Telly Awards." Irani had a fallout with the producer Ekta Kapoor and she left the show in June 2007 and was replaced by Gautami Kapoor. She made her comeback in May 2008 in a special episode, reconciling with Kapoor.


title: Smriti Irani

text: In 2002, she played the epic character Sita in Zee TV's Ramayan along with Nitish Bharadwaj In 2006, Irani co-produced the show "Thodi Si Zameen Thoda Sa Aasmaan" under her banner Ugraya Entertainment and co-produced by Balaji Telefilms. She also played the lead role of Uma in it. In 2007, she produced the TV serial "Virrudh" for Sony TV and also portrayed the lead character of Vasudha in it. She produced "Mere Apne" for 9X and portrayed the protagonist alongside Vinod Khanna. She acted in a supporting role in Zee TV's "Teen Bahuraaniyaan".


title: Smriti Irani

text: In 2008, Irani along with Sakshi Tanwar hosted the show "Yeh Hai Jalwa", a dance based reality show featuring celebrities along with their troops on 9X. In the same year she produced another show on Zee TV, "Waaris" which ended in 2009. In 2009, she appeared in a comedy show Maniben.com, aired on SAB TV. She also co-produced the show in collaboration with Contiloe Entertainment. In 2012, she worked in Bengali movie "Amrita".


title: Smriti Irani

text: Irani joined the Bharatiya Janata Party in 2003. The following year, she was appointed vice-president of the Maharashtra Youth Wing in 2004. In the general elections held that year for the 14th Lok Sabha, she contested unsuccessfully against Kapil Sibal from the Chandni Chowk constituency in Delhi. That election witnessed a shock defeat for the incumbent Vajpayee government. In December 2004, Irani, blaming then Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi for BJP's electoral losses, threatened to fast unto death until he resigned. She retracted this demand after the BJP's central leadership threatened to take action against her.


title: Smriti Irani

text: Irani was nominated as executive member of the central committee of the BJP. During the campaign for the 2009 parliamentary elections, while campaigning for Vijay Goel in the New Delhi constituency, Irani voiced her concern for women's safety in the city and advocated capital punishment for rapists as a deterrent. In early 2010, Irani was appointed National Secretary of BJP and on 24 June, she was appointed All India President of the BJP's women's wing, BJP Mahila Morcha. As National President of BJP Women's Wing, she successfully pursued Permanent Commission for Women in the Indian Army by facilitating legal aid to women officers who held temporary commission and were agitating for permanent commission.


title: Smriti Irani

text: In August 2011, Irani finally entered parliament. She was sworn in as a member of parliament from Gujarat to the Rajya Sabha.


title: Smriti Irani

text: Irani contested the 2014 general elections against Rahul Gandhi in Amethi constituency of Uttar Pradesh. Irani lost to Gandhi by 1,07,923 votes, a 12.32% margin. On 26 May 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi appointed her as the Minister of Human Resource Development in his cabinet. Her appointment was criticised by many people owing to her lack of formal higher education.


title: Smriti Irani

text: Irani has been accused of misrepresenting her educational qualifications. Conflicting affidavits were allegedly submitted by her while filing for different elections. In June 2015, a lower court held that the allegations against Irani were maintainable and a delay in prosecution was not a valid reason for dismissal. Irani asked people to file a PIL about her educational qualification to know about the truth behind the affidavit controversy.


title: Smriti Irani

text: Irani implemented various reforms in universities during her term as HRD minister. Irani made a speech in Parliament in which she discussed the 2016 JNU sedition controversy and the Suicide of Rohith Vemula. University of Hyderabad doctor Rajashree M contradicted some claims made by Irani regarding the circumstances of Rohith's death.


title: Smriti Irani

text: In July 2017, she was handed the additional charge of Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (India) when former Minister Venkaiah Naidu resigned from the ministry to take part in vice-presidential elections.


title: Smriti Irani

text: In 2019, Irani became a Member of Parliament for Amethi constituency after winning the Lok Sabha seat in the 2019 general elections from Rahul Gandhi.


title: Smriti Irani

text: Smriti Irani is currently the youngest minister in the cabinet of Narendra Modi. She is also the first woman to hold office as the Union Minister for Human Resource Development and Union Minister of Textiles. She is also the youngest woman to be nominated to the Rajya Sabha. Some of her key achievements in various portfolios held by her have been listed below :


title: Smriti Irani

text: In her term as the HRD minister, Irani undertook a number of decisions which helped in improving the quality, inclusivity and outcome of education in the country. Some of the key achievements have been listed as under :


title: Smriti Irani

text: In July 2016, Irani was given charge of the Textiles Ministry, taking over from Santosh Kumar Gangwar. She held that portfolio for a full five years, until July 2021, having been re-appointed to the position after the parliamentary elections of 2019. Her contribution to the sector has been appreciated by various industry bodies like the textile council TEXPROCIL, the Clothing Manufacturers Association of India and the Indian Texpreneurs Federation (ITF). Her significant initiatives as Minister of Textiles include:


title: Smriti Irani

text: In the second term of the Modi Government, Irani was appointed given the key portfolio Union Minister for Women and Child Development. Subsequently in the cabinet re-shuffle of July 2021, Irani was again given the charge of the Ministry of Women and Child Development.


title: Smriti Irani

text: Irani, in 2019 general elections, in Amethi constituency of Uttar Pradesh, won a historic victory against Rahul Gandhi, President of the Indian National Congress, by a margin of 55,120 votes. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its leadership put in an all around effort over the past five years to ensure this win. Irani made multiple visits to Amethi after her loss to launch central development schemes in the constituency, to underscore her message that she would provide better representation than the incumbent member. Congress suffered from the assumption that the family loyalty factor would continue to hold the seat for the political dynasty, Irani stressed how a record number of toilets and houses had been built by the Centre for the poor in Amethi since the Modi government came to power.


title: Smriti Irani

text: Irani was accused of providing contradictory affidavits about her educational qualifications during different elections. In her affidavit for the 2004 Lok Sabha elections, she reportedly stated her educational qualification as B.A. from Delhi University (school of bhangra correspondence). However, while filing affidavits in her nomination papers for Rajya Sabha from Gujarat in 2011 and Lok Sabha from Uttar Pradesh in 2014, she said her highest educational qualification was, B.com, Part 1 from School of Open Learning at University of Delhi.


title: Smriti Irani

text: She later claimed that she has done B.com, Part 1 from Delhi University (not completing the full course till Part 3) in the affidavit she filed for Rajya Sabha elections from Gujarat in 2017 which stated ""Bachelor of Commerce, Part 1. Three year degree course not completed"".


title: Smriti Irani

text: A freelance writer Ahmer Khan filed a complaint in April 2015 that Smriti Irani had filed an affidavit in April 2004 for the Lok Sabha elections, stating that she had completed her Bachelor of Arts in 1996 from School of Correspondence (Delhi University) but in another affidavit of 16 April 2014, filed by her for the Lok Sabha polls, it was said that she was a Bachelor of Commerce Part-I from the School of Open Learning (Delhi University). The plea said that the facts and circumstances reveal commission of offences by Smriti under section 125A (which deals with penalty of filing false affidavit and entails a jail term) of the Representation of People Act, 1951.


title: Smriti Irani

text: The court had on 20 November 2016 allowed the complainant's plea seeking direction to the officials of EC and DU to bring the records of Ms. Irani's qualifications after he said he was unable to place them before the court. During the hearings of the complaint, the court was told by a poll panel official that the documents filed by Ms. Irani regarding her educational qualification while filing nominations were not traceable. Also, in pursuance of the court's earlier direction, Delhi University had also submitted that the documents pertaining to Ms. Irani's BA course in 1996, as purportedly mentioned by her in an affidavit filed during 2004 Lok Sabha elections, were yet to be found.


title: Smriti Irani

text: On 18 October 2016, a Delhi court said that Smriti Irani will not be summoned for the fake degree case because the petition filed against Irani questioning her college degrees was an attempt to harass her. The court said that the complainant may not have filed it if she were not a central minister. Metropolitan Magistrate Harvinder Singh said that original evidence had already been lost due to the passage of years, secondary evidence wasn't enough for court. The Magistrate also said that the complainant made a "delay of 11 years" in filing the complaint against Irani. This verdict of the lower court was challenged in the Delhi High Court and the court asked all the records of the case to be handed over to it in order to examine case records before deciding to summon Ms Irani or anyone else.


title: Smriti Irani

text: As an incumbent minister for human resource and development of India, at the 2014 India Today Women Summit, Irani stated, "I do have a degree from Yale as well, which I can bring out and show how Yale celebrated my leadership capacity." The degree which Ms Irani was mentioning turned out to be a certificate from Yale faculty for attending a 6-day training program at the university.


title: Smriti Irani

text: In December 2021, while at the same time holding a portfolio of Union Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani posted an image on Instagram which read, "When I was a kid, they didn't take me to a psychologist... My mom was able to open my chakra, stabilize my karma and clean my aura with one single slap." She was widely criticized for trivializing the widely prevalent issue of child abuse in Indian households with her post and degrading the role of mental health experts.


title: Smriti Irani

text: In July 2022, a website by the name of Herald Goa published a story on an RTI response received by lawyer Aires Rodrigues alleging that the liquor license of Silly Souls Cafe and Bar had been renewed illegally and that Smriti Irani's family is connected with the bar. In an earlier interview on a food critic's YouTube channel, Smriti Irani's daughter agreed that the bar is owned by her. In an affidavit in Delhi High Court, Smriti Irani denied any connection of her family with the bar. Later an RTI reply revealed that the license was issued in the name of a company linked with Irani's family. Earlier RTI filings show that the Irani family's company and the bar has the same address and identical GST number, and that the Irani family's company's operation includes liquor sales, which requires license according to law.


title: Smriti Irani

text: Smriti Irani's debut novel is "Lal Salaam", published by Westland publishers in 2021. It is inspired by the April 2010 Maoist attack in Dantewada and the role of the central police forces in insurgencies.


title: Ma (film)

text: Ma is a 2019 American psychological horror film, co-produced and directed by Tate Taylor. It stars Octavia Spencer, Juliette Lewis, Diana Silvers, Corey Fogelmanis, and Luke Evans and follows a group of teenagers who befriend a lonely middle-aged woman. She lets them party in her basement, and they end up being terrorized by her. The film was produced by Jason Blum through his Blumhouse Productions company, along with Tate Taylor and John Norris.


title: Ma (film)

text: Initially, "Ma" came together as a result of Taylor's desire to direct a film about "something fucked up" and Spencer's desire to break away from the kinds of roles she usually gets to play. Taylor and Spencer are longtime friends, having worked together in films such as "The Help" and "Get on Up". Later, in 2018, Taylor and Blumhouse Productions began developing the film, with Taylor directing, Landes writing, Blum producing and Spencer starring. Principal photography on the film started in February 2018 and wrapped in March 2018, in Mississippi, with some parts shot in Natchez.


title: Ma (film)

text: "Ma" was released in the United States on May 31, 2019, by Universal Pictures. It received mixed reviews from critics, who praised Spencer's performance but criticized the pacing, unrealized potential, and depiction of the male teenage characters. The film grossed $61.2 million against a $5 million budget. It has since gained a cult following online.


title: Ma (film)

text: Teenager Maggie Thompson moves with her mother, Erica, to her mother's Ohio hometown after Erica's husband leaves her. At her new high school, Maggie befriends Haley, Darrell, Chaz, and Andy, who immediately develops a crush on her. They convince Sue Ann "Ma" Ellington, a veterinary technician, to help them buy alcohol. Sue Ann anonymously reports their activities, but they are released because of the officer's history with Andy's father, Ben. The next day Sue Ann invites the teenagers to drink in her basement. Over time, many other teenagers arrive at her house to party, making her popular among the students.


title: Ma (film)

text: However, the group grows annoyed as Sue Ann continuously harasses them to spend time with her. One night she drugs Maggie and takes her earrings. The next morning Maggie finds cuts and bruises on her body and her earrings missing. A scared Maggie tells Andy she no longer wants to go to Sue Ann's house and that she does not want him to go either. To earn the group's trust back, Sue Ann lies that she has pancreatic cancer. Haley notices Sue Ann wearing a bracelet belonging to a friend. The girls suspect that Sue Ann has been stealing their jewelry and break into her house to investigate. They are surprised by Genie, Sue Ann's daughter from a failed marriage; Maggie is surprised to see her walking, as she uses a wheelchair at school. Maggie and Haley escape as Sue Ann comes home.


title: Ma (film)

text: Ben, who went to high school with Sue Ann, shows up at her job to drop off his cat and invites her out for drinks after work. At the bar, Ben confronts Sue Ann with a tracking device and asks her why his son has been at her house. Ben warns Sue Ann to stay away from Andy. A flashback reveals that Sue Ann, who had a crush on Ben, was deceived into performing oral sex on a boy she thought was Ben. Ben had gotten the school to witness the assault, including his current girlfriend Mercedes and a young Erica. Sue Ann never recovered from the trauma and humiliation.


title: Ma (film)

text: Sue Ann runs over Mercedes with her truck, killing her. She kills her boss, draws blood from Maggie's dog Louie, and lures Ben to her house, where she knocks him out. Ben wakes up naked and tied to the bed with a towel over his groin. Sue Ann then lifts up the towel grabbing onto Ben's exposed genitalia on one hand while holding a large knife on the other hand threatening to cut it off, but then changes her mind covering it back up with the towel. Sue Ann compares Ben to a dog. She transfuses Louie's blood into Ben, slashes his wrist, and leaves him to bleed out and die. Maggie tells her mother the truth about Sue Ann, and Erica briefly confronts Sue Ann. Sue Ann lures Maggie with a picture of herself with Andy in her basement at Chaz's birthday party. When she arrives, only the original group remains. She tries to get Andy to leave but realizes everyone has been drugged. As Maggie tries to get help, she finds Ben's body, and is drugged by Sue Ann.


title: Ma (film)

text: Maggie awakens chained in the basement. Sue Ann irons Chaz's stomach, sews Haley's mouth shut, and paints Darrell's face white. Andy awakens, and tries to seduce Sue Ann. After kissing, she stabs him for lying. A police officer arrives and is shot by Sue Ann after Maggie screams for help. Sue Ann forces Maggie to gather her friends and take pictures. Sue Ann attempts to hang Maggie but Genie intervenes, starting a fire in the process. Everyone else wakes up and attempts to get out as the fire spreads. Erica, knowing where Maggie likely is, goes with her co-worker to save the teens. Sue Ann attempts to throw Genie into the fire and blames Erica for not stopping the sexual assault. Erica articulates her regrets and Maggie stabs Sue Ann, saving Genie.


title: Ma (film)

text: "Ma" came together as a result of Tate Taylor's desire to direct a film about "something fucked up", and a conversation he had with Octavia Spencer in which she told him that she was "sick of only being offered the same role and never getting to be a lead." The two are longtime friends, having worked together in films such as "The Help" and "Get on Up". Jason Blum and Taylor, who have been friends for a few years, knew each other socially.


title: Ma (film)

text: Taylor went to Blum's office, reiterating, "I want to do something really fucked up." He read Scotty Landes' script of the film, which Blumhouse Productions had bought the day before. Although the original draft was written with a white woman in the title role, Taylor immediately thought about Spencer. He went out to the hall, called Spencer, and asked her if she would like to be in a horror film; without reading the script, Spencer boarded the project.


title: Ma (film)

text: There was no backstory for the title character in the original script, which made her "a complete monster that no audience member could sympathize with". The filmmakers made it a priority to come up with an authentic backstory for the role. Taylor thought it was important to weave the themes of trauma, the sins of our parents, and how we treat people into the story to create a character audiences can relate to and feel bad for.


title: Ma (film)

text: Principal photography on the film started in February 2018. Filming took place in Mississippi, with parts shot in Natchez, and wrapped in March 2018.


title: Ma (film)

text: "Ma" was released digitally on August 20, 2019, and on DVD and Blu-ray on September 3, 2019, by Universal Pictures Home Entertainment (UPHE). The film grossed $3.1 million in domestic video sales.


title: Ma (film)

text: "Ma" grossed $45.9 million in the United States and Canada, and $15.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $61.2 million, against a production budget of $5 million.


title: Ma (film)

text: In the United States and Canada, "Ma" was released alongside "" and "Rocketman", and was projected to gross around $20 million in its opening weekend. The film made $7.2 million on its first day, including $1.4 million from Thursday night previews. It went on to debut to $18.4 million, finishing fourth at the box office. The film made $7.8 million in its second weekend (dropping 54% and finishing in seventh), and then made $3.7 million in its third weekend.


title: Ma (film)

text: On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of based on reviews, with an average rating of . The site's critical consensus reads, "Octavia Spencer's performance overpowers many of "Ma"s flaws, but uneven pacing and a labored story keep this thriller from fully realizing its unhinged potential." On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 53 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an average 2.5 out of 5 stars.


title: Ma (film)

text: Benjamin Lee of "The Guardian" gave the film 3 out of 5 stars, describing it as "a nasty yet surprisingly empathetic slab of exploitation with more than just carnage on its mind." Leah Greenblatt of "Entertainment Weekly" rated the film a grade of B, specifying, "Even as the story descends into full bloody camp at its crescendo, Spencer holds the more ludicrous plot threads together." Owen Glieberman of "Variety" wrote, "Spencer, a chameleon of an actress, does mood swings in "Ma" that leave us entertainingly off guard."


title: Ma (film)

text: Jude Dry of "IndieWire" gave the film a grade of C, stating that "it takes an amusing premise, reduces it to its most basic parts, then weighs it down with silly scare tactics," while John DeFore of "The Hollywood Reporter" wrote, "It quickly spins its shaky premise off into an unconvincing study of emotional need and an even harder-to-believe revenge thriller."


title: Ma (film)

text: At 2019's Saturn Awards, Spencer was nominated for Best Actress and the film was nominated for Best Thriller Film.


title: Ma (film)

text: In an article published by "Gawker" in October 2021, writers Olivia Craighead and Sarah Hagi discussed "Ma"s legacy and their enduring fixation with the film. Craighead and Hagi wrote that "as Black women, it's hard not to empathize and see [themselves] in Ma". The review discusses the film's flaws, such as its avoidance of dealing with race directly. Craighead and Hagi also include quotes from critic Doreen St. Félix and comedian Ayo Edebiri in the piece; both share the writers' interest in the movie, and both have rewatched it numerous times.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Aesop's Fables, or the Aesopica, is a collection of fables credited to Aesop, a slave and storyteller believed to have lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 564 BCE. Of diverse origins, the stories associated with his name have descended to modern times through a number of sources and continue to be reinterpreted in different verbal registers and in popular as well as artistic media.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: The fables originally belonged to oral tradition and were not collected for some three centuries after Aesop's death. By that time, a variety of other stories, jokes and proverbs were being ascribed to him, although some of that material was from sources earlier than him or came from beyond the Greek cultural sphere. The process of inclusion has continued until the present, with some of the fables unrecorded before the Late Middle Ages and others arriving from outside Europe. The process is continuous and new stories are still being added to the Aesop corpus, even when they are demonstrably more recent work and sometimes from known authors.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Manuscripts in Latin and Greek were important avenues of transmission, although poetical treatments in European vernaculars eventually formed another. On the arrival of printing, collections of Aesop's fables were among the earliest books in a variety of languages. Through the means of later collections, and translations or adaptations of them, Aesop's reputation as a fabulist was transmitted throughout the world.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Initially the fables were addressed to adults and covered religious, social and political themes. They were also put to use as ethical guides and from the Renaissance onwards were particularly used for the education of children. Their ethical dimension was reinforced in the adult world through depiction in sculpture, painting and other illustrative means, as well as adaptation to drama and song. In addition, there have been reinterpretations of the meaning of fables and changes in emphasis over time.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: like those who dine well off the plainest dishes, he made use of humble incidents to teach great truths, and after serving up a story he adds to it the advice to do a thing or not to do it. Then, too, he was really more attached to truth than the poets are; for the latter do violence to their own stories in order to make them probable; but he by announcing a story which everyone knows not to be true, told the truth by the very fact that he did not claim to be relating real events.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Earlier still, the Greek historian Herodotus mentioned in passing that "Aesop the fable writer" was a slave who lived in Ancient Greece during the 5th century BCE. Among references in other writers, Aristophanes, in his comedy "The Wasps", represented the protagonist Philocleon as having learnt the "absurdities" of Aesop from conversation at banquets; Plato wrote in "Phaedo "that Socrates whiled away his time in prison turning some of Aesop's fables "which he knew" into verses. Nonetheless, for two main reasons – because numerous morals within Aesop's attributed fables contradict each other, and because ancient accounts of Aesop's life contradict each other – the modern view is that Aesop was not the originator of all those fables attributed to him. Instead, any fable tended to be ascribed to the name of Aesop if there was no known alternative literary source.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: In Classical times there were various theorists who tried to differentiate these fables from other kinds of narration. They had to be short and unaffected; in addition, they are fictitious, useful to life and true to nature. In them could be found talking animals and plants, although humans interacting only with humans figure in a few. Typically they might begin with a contextual introduction, followed by the story, often with the moral underlined at the end. Setting the context was often necessary as a guide to the story's interpretation, as in the case of the political meaning of The Frogs Who Desired a King and The Frogs and the Sun.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Sometimes the titles given later to the fables have become proverbial, as in the case of killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs or the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse. In fact some fables, such as The Young Man and the Swallow, appear to have been invented as illustrations of already existing proverbs. One theorist, indeed, went so far as to define fables as extended proverbs. In this they have an aetiological function, the explaining of origins such as, in another context, why the ant is a mean, thieving creature or how the tortoise got its shell. Other fables, also verging on this function, are outright jokes, as in the case of The Old Woman and the Doctor, aimed at greedy practitioners of medicine.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: The contradictions between fables already mentioned and alternative versions of much the same fable – as in the case of The Woodcutter and the Trees, are best explained by the ascription to Aesop of all examples of the genre. Some are demonstrably of West Asian origin, others have analogues further to the East. Modern scholarship reveals fables and proverbs of Aesopic form existing in both ancient Sumer and Akkad, as early as the third millennium BCE. Aesop's fables and the Indian tradition, as represented by the Buddhist "Jataka tales" and the Hindu "Panchatantra", share about a dozen tales in common, although often widely differing in detail. There is some debate over whether the Greeks learned these fables from Indian storytellers or the other way, or if the influences were mutual.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Although Aesop and the Buddha were near contemporaries, the stories of neither were recorded in writing until some centuries after their death. Few disinterested scholars would now be prepared to make so absolute a stand as Perry about their origin in view of the conflicting and still emerging evidence.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: When and how the fables arrived in and travelled from ancient Greece remains uncertain. Some cannot be dated any earlier than Babrius and Phaedrus, several centuries after Aesop, and yet others even later. The earliest mentioned collection was by Demetrius of Phalerum, an Athenian orator and statesman of the 4th century BCE, who compiled the fables into a set of ten books for the use of orators. A follower of Aristotle, he simply catalogued all the fables that earlier Greek writers had used in isolation as exempla, putting them into prose. At least it was evidence of what was attributed to Aesop by others; but this may have included any ascription to him from the oral tradition in the way of animal fables, fictitious anecdotes, etiological or satirical myths, possibly even any proverb or joke, that these writers transmitted. It is more a proof of the power of Aesop's name to attract such stories to it than evidence of his actual authorship. In any case, although the work of Demetrius was mentioned frequently for the next twelve centuries, and was considered the official Aesop, no copy now survives. Present day collections evolved from the later Greek version of Babrius, of which there now exists an incomplete manuscript of some 160 fables in choliambic verse. Current opinion is that he lived in the 1st century CE. The version of 55 fables in choliambic tetrameters by the 9th century Ignatius the Deacon is also worth mentioning for its early inclusion of tales from Oriental sources.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Further light is thrown on the entry of Oriental stories into the Aesopic canon by their appearance in Jewish sources such as the Talmud and in Midrashic literature. There is a comparative list of these on the "Jewish Encyclopedia" website of which twelve resemble those that are common to both Greek and Indian sources, six are parallel to those only in Indian sources, and six others in Greek only. Where similar fables exist in Greece, India, and in the Talmud, the Talmudic form approaches more nearly the Indian. Thus, the fable "The Wolf and the Crane" is told in India of a lion and another bird. When Joshua ben Hananiah told that fable to the Jews, to prevent their rebelling against Rome and once more putting their heads into the lion's jaws (Gen. R. lxiv.), he shows familiarity with some form derived from India.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: The first extensive translation of Aesop into Latin iambic trimeters was performed by Phaedrus, a freedman of Augustus in the 1st century CE, although at least one fable had already been translated by the poet Ennius two centuries before, and others are referred to in the work of Horace. The rhetorician Aphthonius of Antioch wrote a technical treatise on, and converted into Latin prose, some forty of these fables in 315. It is notable as illustrating contemporary and later usage of fables in rhetorical practice. Teachers of philosophy and rhetoric often set the fables of Aesop as an exercise for their scholars, inviting them not only to discuss the moral of the tale, but also to practise style and the rules of grammar by making new versions of their own. A little later the poet Ausonius handed down some of these fables in verse, which the writer Julianus Titianus translated into prose, and in the early 5th century Avianus put 42 of these fables into Latin elegiacs.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: The largest, oldest known and most influential of the prose versions of Phaedrus bears the name of an otherwise unknown fabulist named Romulus. It contains 83 fables, dates from the 10th century and seems to have been based on an earlier prose version which, under the name of "Aesop" and addressed to one Rufus, may have been written in the Carolingian period or even earlier. The collection became the source from which, during the second half of the Middle Ages, almost all the collections of Latin fables in prose and verse were wholly or partially drawn. A version of the first three books of Romulus in elegiac verse, possibly made around the 12th century, was one of the most highly influential texts in medieval Europe. Referred to variously (among other titles) as the verse Romulus or elegiac Romulus, and ascribed to Gualterus Anglicus, it was a common Latin teaching text and was popular well into the Renaissance. Another version of Romulus in Latin elegiacs was made by Alexander Neckam, born at St Albans in 1157.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Interpretive "translations" of the elegiac Romulus were very common in Europe in the Middle Ages. Among the earliest was one in the 11th century by Ademar of Chabannes, which includes some new material. This was followed by a prose collection of parables by the Cistercian preacher Odo of Cheriton around 1200 where the fables (many of which are not Aesopic) are given a strong medieval and clerical tinge. This interpretive tendency, and the inclusion of yet more non-Aesopic material, was to grow as versions in the various European vernaculars began to appear in the following centuries.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: With the revival of literary Latin during the Renaissance, authors began compiling collections of fables in which those traditionally by Aesop and those from other sources appeared side by side. One of the earliest was by Lorenzo Bevilaqua, also known as Laurentius Abstemius, who wrote 197 fables, the first hundred of which were published as "Hecatomythium" in 1495. Little by Aesop was included. At the most, some traditional fables are adapted and reinterpreted: The Lion and the Mouse is continued and given a new ending (fable 52); The Oak and the Reed becomes "The Elm and the Willow" (53); The Ant and the Grasshopper is adapted as "The Gnat and the Bee" (94) with the difference that the gnat offers to teach music to the bee's children. There are also Mediaeval tales such as The Mice in Council (195) and stories created to support popular proverbs such as 'Still Waters Run Deep' (5) and 'A woman, an ass and a walnut tree' (65), where the latter refers back to Aesop's fable of The Walnut Tree. Most of the fables in "Hecatomythium" were later translated in the second half of Roger L'Estrange's "Fables of Aesop and other eminent mythologists" (1692); some also appeared among the 102 in H. Clarke's Latin reader, "Select fables of Aesop: with an English translation" (1787), of which there were both English and American editions.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: There were later three notable collections of fables in verse, among which the most influential was Gabriele Faerno's "Centum Fabulae" (1564). The majority of the hundred fables there are Aesop's but there are also humorous tales such as The drowned woman and her husband (41) and The miller, his son and the donkey (100). In the same year that Faerno was published in Italy, Hieronymus Osius brought out a collection of 294 fables titled "Fabulae Aesopi carmine elegiaco redditae" in Germany. This too contained some from elsewhere, such as The Dog in the Manger (67). Then in 1604 the Austrian Pantaleon Weiss, known as Pantaleon Candidus, published "Centum et Quinquaginta Fabulae". The 152 poems there were grouped by subject, with sometimes more than one devoted to the same fable, although presenting alternative versions of it, as in the case of The Hawk and the Nightingale (133–5). It also includes the earliest instance of The Lion, the Bear and the Fox (60) in a language other than Greek.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Another voluminous collection of fables in Latin verse was Anthony Alsop's "Fabularum Aesopicarum Delectus" (Oxford 1698). The bulk of the 237 fables there are prefaced by the text in Greek, while there are also a handful in Hebrew and in Arabic; the final fables, only attested from Latin sources, are without other versions. For the most part the poems are confined to a lean telling of the fable without drawing a moral.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: For many centuries the main transmission of Aesop's fables across Europe remained in Latin or else orally in various vernaculars, where they mixed with folk tales derived from other sources. This mixing is often apparent in early vernacular collections of fables in mediaeval times.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: The main impetus behind the translation of large collections of fables attributed to Aesop and translated into European languages came from an early printed publication in Germany. There had been many small selections in various languages during the Middle Ages but the first attempt at an exhaustive edition was made by Heinrich Steinhőwel in his "Esopus", published . This contained both Latin versions and German translations and also included a translation of Rinuccio da Castiglione (or d'Arezzo)'s version from the Greek of a life of Aesop (1448). Some 156 fables appear, collected from Romulus, Avianus and other sources, accompanied by a commentarial preface and moralising conclusion, and 205 woodcuts. Translations or versions based on Steinhöwel's book followed shortly in Italian (1479), French (1480), Czech (1480) and English (the Caxton edition of 1484) and were many times reprinted before the start of the 16th century. The Spanish version of 1489, "La vida del Ysopet con sus fabulas hystoriadas" was equally successful and often reprinted in both the Old and New World through three centuries.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Some fables were later treated creatively in collections of their own by authors in such a way that they became associated with their names rather than Aesop's. The most celebrated were La Fontaine's Fables, published in French during the later 17th century. Inspired by the brevity and simplicity of Aesop's, those in the first six books were heavily dependent on traditional Aesopic material; fables in the next six were more diffuse and diverse in origin.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: At the start of the 19th century, some of the fables were adapted into Russian, and often reinterpreted, by the fabulist Ivan Krylov. In most cases, but not all, these were dependent on La Fontaine's versions.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Translations into Asian languages at a very early date derive originally from Greek sources. These include the so-called "Fables of Syntipas", a compilation of Aesopic fables in Syriac, dating from the 9/11th centuries. Included there were several other tales of possibly West Asian origin. In Central Asia there was a 10th-century collection of the fables in Uighur.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: After the Middle Ages, fables largely deriving from Latin sources were passed on by Europeans as part of their colonial or missionary enterprises. 47 fables were translated into the Nahuatl language in the late 16th century under the title "In zazanilli in Esopo". The work of a native translator, it adapted the stories to fit the Mexican environment, incorporating Aztec concepts and rituals and making them rhetorically more subtle than their Latin source.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Portuguese missionaries arriving in Japan at the end of the 16th century introduced Japan to the fables when a Latin edition was translated into romanized Japanese. The title was "Esopo no Fabulas" and dates to 1593. It was soon followed by a fuller translation into a three-volume kanazōshi entitled . This was the sole Western work to survive in later publication after the expulsion of Westerners from Japan, since by that time the figure of Aesop had been acculturated and presented as if he were Japanese. Coloured woodblock editions of individual fables were made by Kawanabe Kyosai in the 19th century.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: The first translations of Aesop's Fables into the Chinese languages were made at the start of the 17th century, the first substantial collection being of 38 conveyed orally by a Jesuit missionary named Nicolas Trigault and written down by a Chinese academic named Zhang Geng (Chinese: 張賡; pinyin: "Zhāng Gēng") in 1625. This was followed two centuries later by "Yishi Yuyan" 《意拾喻言》 ("Esop's Fables: written in Chinese by the Learned Mun Mooy Seen-Shang, and compiled in their present form with a free and a literal translation") in 1840 by Robert Thom and apparently based on the version by Roger L'Estrange. This work was initially very popular until someone realised the fables were anti-authoritarian and the book was banned for a while. A little later, however, in the foreign concession in Shanghai, A.B. Cabaniss brought out a transliterated translation in Shanghai dialect, "Yisuopu yu yan" (伊娑菩喻言, 1856). There have also been 20th century translations by Zhou Zuoren and others.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Translations into the languages of South Asia began at the very start of the 19th century. "The Oriental Fabulist" (1803) contained roman script versions in Bengali, Hindi and Urdu. Adaptations followed in Marathi (1806) and Bengali (1816), and then complete collections in Hindi (1837), Kannada (1840), Urdu (1850), Tamil (1853) and Sindhi (1854).


title: Aesop's Fables

text: In Burma, which had its own ethical folk tradition based on the Buddhist Jataka Tales, the joint Pali and Burmese language translation of Aesop's fables was published in 1880 from Rangoon by the American Missionary Press. Outside the British Raj, Jagat Sundar Malla's translation into the Newar language of Nepal was published in 1915. Further to the west, the Afghani academic Hafiz Sahar's translation of some 250 of Aesop's Fables into Persian was first published in 1972 under the name "Luqman Hakim".


title: Aesop's Fables

text: The 18th to 19th centuries saw a vast quantity of fables in verse being written in all European languages. Regional languages and dialects in the Romance area made use of versions adapted particularly from La Fontaine's recreations of ancient material. One of the earliest publications in France was the anonymous "Fables Causides en Bers Gascouns" (Selected fables in Gascon verse, Bayonne, 1776), which contained 106. Also in the vanguard was 's "Quelques fables choisies de La Fontaine en patois limousin" (109) in the Occitan Limousin dialect, originally with 39 fables, and "Fables et contes en vers patois" by , also published in the first decade of the 19th century in the neighbouring dialect of Montpellier. The last of these were very free recreations, with the occasional appeal directly to the original "Maistre Ézôpa". A later commentator noted that while the author could sometimes embroider his theme, at others he concentrated the sense to an Aesopean brevity.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Many translations were made into languages contiguous to or within the French borders. "Ipui onak" (1805) was the first translation of 50 fables of Aesop by the writer Bizenta Mogel Elgezabal into the Basque language spoken on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees. It was followed in mid-century by two translations on the French side: 50 fables in J-B. Archu's "Choix de Fables de La Fontaine, traduites en vers basques" (1848) and 150 in "Fableac edo aleguiac Lafontenetaric berechiz hartuac" (Bayonne, 1852) by Abbé Martin Goyhetche (1791–1859). Versions in Breton were written by Pierre Désiré de Goësbriand (1784–1853) in 1836 and Yves Louis Marie Combeau (1799–1870) between 1836 and 1838. The turn of Provençal came in 1859 with "Li Boutoun de guèto, poésies patoises" by Antoine Bigot (1825–1897), followed by several other collections of fables in the Nîmes dialect between 1881 and 1891. Alsatian dialect versions of La Fontaine appeared in 1879 after the region was ceded away following the Franco-Prussian War. At the end of the following century, Brother Denis-Joseph Sibler (1920–2002) published a collection of adaptations (first recorded in 1983) that has gone through several impressions since 1995. The use of Corsican came later. Natale Rochicchioli (1911-2002) was particularly well known for his very free adaptations of La Fontaine, of which he made recordings as well as publishing his "Favule di Natale" in the 1970s.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: During the 19th century renaissance of Belgian dialect literature in Walloon, several authors adapted versions of the fables to the racy speech (and subject matter) of Liège. They included (in 1842); Joseph Lamaye (1845); and the team of and François Bailleux, who between them covered all of La Fontaine’s books I-VI, ("Fåves da Lafontaine mettowes è ligeois", 1850–56). Adaptations into other regional dialects were made by Charles Letellier (Mons, 1842) and Charles Wérotte (Namur, 1844); much later, Léon Bernus published some hundred imitations of La Fontaine in the dialect of Charleroi (1872); he was followed during the 1880s by , writing in the Borinage dialect under the pen-name Bosquètia. In the 20th century there has been a selection of fifty fables in the Condroz dialect by Joseph Houziaux (1946), to mention only the most prolific in an ongoing surge of adaptation.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: The motive behind the later activity across these areas was to assert regional specificity against a growing centralism and the encroachment of the language of the capital on what had until then been predominantly monoglot areas. Surveying its literary manifestations, commentators have noted that the point of departure of the individual tales is not as important as what they become in the process. Even in the hands of less skilled dialect adaptations, La Fontaine's polished versions of the fables are returned to the folkloristic roots by which they often came to him in the first places. But many of the gifted regional authors were well aware of what they were doing in their work. In fitting the narration of the story to their local idiom, in appealing to the folk proverbs derived from such tales, and in adapting the story to local conditions and circumstances, the fables were so transposed as to go beyond bare equivalence, becoming independent works in their own right. Thus Emile Ruben claimed of the linguistic transmutations in Jean Foucaud's collection of fables that, "not content with translating, he has created a new work". In a similar way, the critic Maurice Piron described the Walloon versions of François Bailleux as "masterpieces of original imitation", and this is echoed in the claim that in Natale Rocchiccioli’s free Corsican versions too there is "more creation than adaptation".


title: Aesop's Fables

text: In the 20th century there were also translations into regional dialects of English. These include the few examples in Addison Hibbard's "Aesop in Negro Dialect" ("American Speech", 1926) and the 26 in Robert Stephen's "Fables of Aesop in Scots Verse" (Peterhead, Scotland, 1987), translated into the Aberdeenshire dialect. Glasgow University has also been responsible for R.W. Smith's modernised dialect translation of Robert Henryson's "The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phrygian" (1999, see above). The University of Illinois likewise included dialect translations by Norman Shapiro in its "Creole echoes: the francophone poetry of nineteenth-century Louisiana" (2004, see below).


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Such adaptations to Caribbean French-based creole languages from the middle of the 19th century onward – initially as part of the colonialist project but later as an assertion of love for and pride in the dialect. A version of La Fontaine's fables in the dialect of Martinique was made by François-Achille Marbot (1817–1866) in "Les Bambous, Fables de la Fontaine travesties en patois" (Port Royal, 1846) which had lasting success. As well as two later editions in Martinique, there were two more published in France in 1870 and 1885 and others in the 20th century. Later dialect fables by Paul Baudot (1801–1870) from neighbouring Guadeloupe owed nothing to La Fontaine, but in 1869 some translated examples did appear in a grammar of Trinidadian French creole written by John Jacob Thomas. Then the start of the new century saw the publication of Georges Sylvain's "Cric? Crac! Fables de la Fontaine racontées par un montagnard haïtien et transcrites en vers créoles" (La Fontaine's fables told by a Haiti highlander and written in creole verse, 1901).


title: Aesop's Fables

text: On the South American mainland, Alfred de Saint-Quentin published a selection of fables freely adapted from La Fontaine into Guyanese creole in 1872. This was among a collection of poems and stories (with facing translations) in a book that also included a short history of the territory and an essay on creole grammar. On the other side of the Caribbean, Jules Choppin (1830–1914) was adapting La Fontaine to the Louisiana slave creole at the end of the 19th century in versions that are still appreciated. The New Orleans author Edgar Grima (1847–1939) also adapted La Fontaine into both standard French and into dialect.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Versions in the French creole of the islands in the Indian Ocean began somewhat earlier than in the Caribbean. (1801–1856) emigrated from Brittany to Réunion in 1820. Having become a schoolmaster, he adapted some of La Fontaine's fables into the local dialect in "Fables créoles dédiées aux dames de l'île Bourbon" (Creole fables for island women). This was published in 1829 and went through three editions. In addition 49 fables of La Fontaine were adapted to the Seychelles dialect around 1900 by Rodolphine Young (1860–1932) but these remained unpublished until 1983. Jean-Louis Robert's recent translation of Babrius into Réunion creole (2007) adds a further motive for such adaptation. Fables began as an expression of the slave culture and their background is in the simplicity of agrarian life. Creole transmits this experience with greater purity than the urbane language of the slave-owner.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Fables belong essentially to the oral tradition; they survive by being remembered and then retold in one's own words. When they are written down, particularly in the dominant language of instruction, they lose something of their essence. A strategy for reclaiming them is therefore to exploit the gap between the written and the spoken language. One of those who did this in English was Sir Roger L'Estrange, who translated the fables into the racy urban slang of his day and further underlined their purpose by including in his collection many of the subversive Latin fables of Laurentius Abstemius. In France the fable tradition had already been renewed in the 17th century by La Fontaine's influential reinterpretations of Aesop and others. In the centuries that followed there were further reinterpretations through the medium of regional languages, which to those at the centre were regarded as little better than slang. Eventually, however, the demotic tongue of the cities themselves began to be appreciated as a literary medium.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: One of the earliest examples of these urban slang translations was the series of individual fables contained in a single folded sheet, appearing under the title of "Les Fables de Gibbs" in 1929. Others written during the period were eventually anthologised as "Fables de La Fontaine en argot" (Étoile sur Rhône 1989). This followed the genre's growth in popularity after World War II. Two short selections of fables by Bernard Gelval about 1945 were succeeded by two selections of 15 fables each by 'Marcus' (Paris 1947, reprinted in 1958 and 2006), Api Condret's "Recueil des fables en argot" (Paris, 1951) and Géo Sandry (1897–1975) and Jean Kolb's "Fables en argot" (Paris 1950/60). The majority of such printings were privately produced leaflets and pamphlets, often sold by entertainers at their performances, and are difficult to date. Some of these poems then entered the repertoire of noted performers such as Boby Forest and Yves Deniaud, of which recordings were made. In the south of France, Georges Goudon published numerous folded sheets of fables in the post-war period. Described as monologues, they use Lyon slang and the Mediterranean Lingua Franca known as Sabir.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Slang versions by others continue to be produced in various parts of France, both in printed and recorded form.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: The first printed version of Aesop's Fables in English was published on 26 March 1484, by William Caxton. Many others, in prose and verse, followed over the centuries. In the 20th century Ben E. Perry edited the Aesopic fables of Babrius and Phaedrus for the Loeb Classical Library and compiled a numbered index by type in 1952. Olivia and Robert Temple's Penguin edition is titled "The Complete Fables by Aesop" (1998) but in fact many from Babrius, Phaedrus and other major ancient sources have been omitted. More recently, in 2002 a translation by Laura Gibbs titled "Aesop's Fables" was published by Oxford World's Classics. This book includes 359 and has selections from all the major Greek and Latin sources.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Until the 18th century the fables were largely put to adult use by teachers, preachers, speech-makers and moralists. It was the philosopher John Locke who first seems to have advocated targeting children as a special audience in "Some Thoughts Concerning Education" (1693). Aesop's fables, in his opinion are


title: Aesop's Fables

text: That young people are a special target for the fables was not a particularly new idea and a number of ingenious schemes for catering to that audience had already been put into practice in Europe. The "Centum Fabulae" of Gabriele Faerno was commissioned by Pope Pius IV in the 16th century 'so that children might learn, at the same time and from the same book, both moral and linguistic purity'. When King Louis XIV of France wanted to instruct his six-year-old son, he incorporated the series of hydraulic statues representing 38 chosen fables in the labyrinth of Versailles in the 1670s. In this he had been advised by Charles Perrault, who was later to translate Faerno's widely published Latin poems into French verse and so bring them to a wider audience. Then in the 1730s appeared the eight volumes of "Nouvelles Poésies Spirituelles et Morales sur les plus beaux airs", the first six of which incorporated a section of fables specifically aimed at children. In this the fables of La Fontaine were rewritten to fit popular airs of the day and arranged for simple performance. The preface to this work comments that 'we consider ourselves happy if, in giving them an attraction to useful lessons which are suited to their age, we have given them an aversion to the profane songs which are often put into their mouths and which only serve to corrupt their innocence.' The work was popular and reprinted into the following century.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: In Great Britain various authors began to develop this new market in the 18th century, giving a brief outline of the story and what was usually a longer commentary on its moral and practical meaning. The first of such works is Reverend Samuel Croxall's "Fables of Aesop and Others, newly done into English with an Application to each Fable". First published in 1722, with engravings for each fable by Elisha Kirkall, it was continually reprinted into the second half of the 19th century. Another popular collection was John Newbery's "Fables in Verse for the Improvement of the Young and the Old", facetiously attributed to Abraham Aesop Esquire, which was to see ten editions after its first publication in 1757. Robert Dodsley's three-volume "Select Fables of Esop and other Fabulists" is distinguished for several reasons. First that it was printed in Birmingham by John Baskerville in 1761; second that it appealed to children by having the animals speak in character, the Lion in regal style, the Owl with 'pomp of phrase'; thirdly because it gathers into three sections fables from ancient sources, those that are more recent (including some borrowed from Jean de la Fontaine), and new stories of his own invention.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Thomas Bewick's editions from Newcastle upon Tyne are equally distinguished for the quality of his woodcuts. The first of those under his name was the "Select Fables in Three Parts" published in 1784. This was followed in 1818 by "The Fables of Aesop and Others". The work is divided into three sections: the first has some of Dodsley's fables prefaced by a short prose moral; the second has 'Fables with Reflections', in which each story is followed by a prose and a verse moral and then a lengthy prose reflection; the third, 'Fables in Verse', includes fables from other sources in poems by several unnamed authors; in these the moral is incorporated into the body of the poem.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: In the early 19th century authors turned to writing verse specifically for children and included fables in their output. One of the most popular was the writer of nonsense verse, Richard Scrafton Sharpe (died 1852), whose "Old Friends in a New Dress: familiar fables in verse" first appeared in 1807 and went through five steadily augmented editions until 1837. Jefferys Taylor's "Aesop in Rhyme, with some originals", first published in 1820, was as popular and also went through several editions. The versions are lively but Taylor takes considerable liberties with the story line. Both authors were alive to the over serious nature of the 18th century collections and tried to remedy this. Sharpe in particular discussed the dilemma they presented and recommended a way round it, tilting at the same time at the format in Croxall's fable collection:


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Sharpe was also the originator of the limerick, but his versions of Aesop are in popular song measures and it was not until 1887 that the limerick form was ingeniously applied to the fables. This was in a magnificently hand-produced Arts and Crafts Movement edition, "The Baby's Own Aesop: being the fables condensed in rhyme with portable morals pictorially pointed by Walter Crane".


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Some later prose editions were particularly notable for their illustrations. Among these was "Aesop's fables: a new version, chiefly from original sources" (1848) by Thomas James, 'with more than one hundred illustrations designed by John Tenniel'. Tenniel himself did not think highly of his work there and took the opportunity to redraw some in the revised edition of 1884, which also used pictures by Ernest Griset and Harrison Weir. Once the technology was in place for coloured reproductions, illustrations became ever more attractive. Notable early 20th century editions include V.S. Vernon Jones' new translation of the fables accompanied by the pictures of Arthur Rackham (London, 1912) and in the USA "Aesop for Children" (Chicago, 1919), illustrated by Milo Winter.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: The illustrations from Croxall's editions were an early inspiration for other artefacts aimed at children. In the 18th century they appear on tableware from the Chelsea, Wedgwood and Fenton potteries, for example. 19th century examples with a definitely educational aim include the fable series used on the alphabet plates issued in great numbers from the Brownhills Pottery in Staffordshire. Fables were used equally early in the design of tiles to surround the nursery fireplace. The latter were even more popular in the 19th century when there were specially designed series from Mintons, Minton-Hollins and Maw & Co. In France too, well-known illustrations of La Fontaine's fables were often used on china.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: In Classical times there was an overlap between fable and myth, especially where they had an aetiological function. Among those are two which deal with the difference between humans and animals. According to the first, humans are distinguished by their rationality. But in those cases where they have a bestial mentality, the explanation is that at creation animals were found to outnumber humans and some were therefore modified in shape but retained their animal souls.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Such early philosophical speculation was also extended to the ethical problems connected with divine justice. For example, it was perceived as disproportionate for an evil man to be punished by dying in a shipwreck when it involved many other innocent people. The god Hermes explained this to an objector by the human analogy of a man bitten by an ant and in consequence stamping on all those about his feet. Again, it was asked why the consequences of an evil deed did not follow immediately it was committed. Hermes was involved here too, since he records men's acts on potsherds and takes them to Zeus piled in a box. The god of justice, however, goes through them in reverse order and the penalty may therefore be delayed. However, where the fault is perceived as an act of defiance, as happens in the fable of Horkos, retribution arrives swiftly.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Some fables may express open scepticism, as in the story of the man marketing a statue of Hermes who boasted of its effectiveness. Asked why he was disposing of such an asset, the huckster explains that the god takes his time in granting favours while he himself needs immediate cash. In another example, a farmer whose mattock has been stolen goes to a temple to see if the culprit can be found by divination. On his arrival he hears an announcement asking for information about a robbery at the temple and concludes that a god who cannot look after his own must be useless. But the contrary position, against reliance on religious ritual, was taken in fables like Hercules and the Wagoner that illustrate the proverb "god helps those who help themselves". The story was also to become a favourite centuries later in Protestant England, where one commentator took the extreme position that to neglect the necessity of self-help is "blasphemy" and that it is "a great sin for a man to fail in his trade or occupation by running often to prayers".


title: Aesop's Fables

text: As the fables moved out of the Greek-speaking world and were adapted to different times and religions, it is notable how radically some fables were reinterpreted. Thus one of the fables collected under the title of the Lion's share and originally directed against tyranny became in the hands of Rumi a parable of oneness with the God of Islam and obedience to divine authority. In the Jewish 'fox fables' of Berechiah ha-Nakdan, the humorous account of the hares and the frogs was made the occasion to recommend trust in God, while Christian reinterpretation of animal symbolism in Mediaeval times turned The Wolf and the Crane into a parable of the rescue of the sinner's soul from Hell.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: In Mediaeval times too, fables were collected for use in sermons, of which Odo of Cheriton's "Parobolae" is just one example. At the start of the Reformation, Martin Luther followed his example in the work now known as the Coburg Fables. Another source of Christianized fables was in the emblem books of the 16th–17th centuries. In Georgette de Montenay's "Emblemes ou devises chrestiennes" (1571), for example, the fable of The Oak and the Reed was depicted in the context of the lines from the Magnificat, "He hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree" (Luke 1.52, AV).


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Once the fables were perceived as primarily for the instruction of children, a new generation of Christian writers began putting their own construction on them, often at odds with their original interpretation. An extreme example occurs in a compilation called "Christian Fables" from the Victorian era, where The North Wind and the Sun is referred to Biblical passages in which religion is compared to a cloak. Therefore, says the author, one should beware of abandoning one's beliefs under the sun of prosperity. Demonstrably, the essence of fables is their adaptability. Beginning two and a half millennia ago with aetiological solutions to philosophical problems, fresh religious applications were continuing into the present.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: The success of La Fontaine's fables in France started a European fashion for creating plays around them. The originator was Edmé Boursault, with his five-act verse drama "Les Fables d'Esope" (1690), later retitled "Esope à la ville" (Aesop in town). Such was its popularity that a rival theatre produced Eustache Le Noble's "Arlaquin-Esope" in the following year. Boursault then wrote a sequel, "Esope à la cour" (Aesop at court), a heroic comedy that was held up by the censors and not produced until after his death in 1701. Other 18th-century imitations included Jean-Antoine du Cerceau's "Esope au collège" (1715), where being put in charge of a school gives the fabulist ample opportunity to tell his stories, and Charles-Étienne Pesselier's "Esope au Parnasse" (1739), a one-act piece in verse.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: "Esope à la ville" was written in French alexandrine couplets and depicted a physically ugly Aesop acting as adviser to Learchus, governor of Cyzicus under King Croesus, and using his fables as satirical comments on those seeking his favour or to solve romantic problems. One of the problems is personal to Aesop, since he is betrothed to the governor's daughter, who detests him and has a young admirer with whom she is in love. There is very little action, the play serving as a platform for the recitation of free verse fables at frequent intervals. These include The Fox and the Weasel, The Fox and the Mask, The Belly and the Other Members, the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, the Fox and the Crow, the Crab and her Daughter, The Frog and the Ox, the Cook and the Swan, The Wolf and the Lamb, The Mountain in Labour, and The Man with two Mistresses. Two others – The Nightingale, The Lark and the Butterfly – appear original to the author, while a third, The Doves and the Vulture, is in fact an adapted version of The Frogs and the Sun.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: "Esope à la cour" is more of a moral satire, most scenes being set pieces for the application of fables to moral problems, but to supply romantic interest Aesop's mistress Rhodope is introduced. Among the sixteen fables included, only four derive from La Fontaine – The Heron and the Fish, the Lion and the Mouse, the Dove and the Ant, the Sick Lion – while a fifth borrows a moral from another of his but alters the details, and a sixth has as apologue a maxim of Antoine de La Rochefoucauld. After a modest few performances, the piece later grew in popularity and remained in the repertory until 1817. Boursault's play was also influential in Italy and twice translated. It appeared from Bologna in 1719 under the title "L'Esopo in Corte", translated by Antonio Zaniboni, and as "Le Favole di Esopa alla Corte" from Venice in 1747, translated by Gasparo Gozzi. The same translator was responsible for a version of "Esope à la ville" ("Esopo in città", Venice, 1748); then in 1798 there was an anonymous Venetian three-act adaptation, "Le Favole di Esopa, ossia Esopo in città". In England the play was adapted under the title "Aesop" by John Vanbrugh and first performed at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London in 1697, remaining popular for the next twenty years.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: In the 20th century individual fables by Aesop began to be adapted to animated cartoons, most notably in France and the United States. Cartoonist Paul Terry began his own series, called "Aesop's Film Fables", in 1921 but by the time this was taken over by Van Beuren Studios in 1928 the story lines had little connection with any fable of Aesop's. In the early 1960s, animator Jay Ward created a television series of short cartoons called "Aesop and Son" which were first aired as part of "The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show". Actual fables were spoofed to result in a pun based on the original moral. Two fables are also featured in the 1971 TV movie "Aesop's Fables" in the US. Here Aesop is a black story teller who relates two turtle fables, The Tortoise and the Eagle and the Tortoise and the Hare to a couple of children who wander into an enchanted grove. The fables themselves are shown as cartoons.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Between 1989 and 1991, fifty Aesop-based fables were reinterpreted on French television as and later issued on DVD. These featured a cartoon in which the characters appeared as an assembly of animated geometric shapes, accompanied by Pierre Perret's slang versions of La Fontaine's original poem. In 1983 there was an extended manga version of the fables made in Japan, "Isoppu monogatari", and there has also been a Chinese television series for children based on the stories.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: There have also been several dramatic productions for children based on elements of Aesop's life and including the telling of some fables, although most were written as purely local entertainments. Among these was Canadian writer Robertson Davies' "A Masque of Aesop" (1952), which was set at his trial in Delphi and allows the defendant to tell the fables "The Belly and the Members", "The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse" and "The Cock and the Jewel" while challenging prevailing social attitudes.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: While musical settings of La Fontaine's Fables began appearing in France within a few decades of their publication, it was not until the 19th century that composers began to take their inspiration directly from Aesop. One of the earliest was Charles Valentin Alkan's "Le festin d'Ésope" ("Aesop's Feast", 1857), a set of piano variations in which each is said to depict a different animal or scene from Aesop's fables. In Victorian England there were several piano arrangements of fables versified (with no particular skill) by their composers. 1847 saw the anonymous "Selection of Aesop's Fables Versified and Set to Music with Symphonies and Accompaniments for the Piano Forte", which contained 28 fables. It was followed in that same year by Olivia Buckley Dussek's selection, illustrated by Thomas Onwhyn. Twelve were also set by W. Langton Williams (c.1832-1896) in his "Aesop’s Fables, versified & arranged for the piano forte" (London, 1870s), the jocular wording of which was strongly deprecated by "The Musical Times".


title: Aesop's Fables

text: More were to follow in the 20th century, with seven settings in Mabel Wood Hill's "Aesop's Fables Interpreted Through Music" (New York, 1920), with the fable's moral at the head of each piece. Many of these works were specifically aimed at young people. They also included Edward Hughes’ "Songs from Aesop's fables" for children's voices and piano (1965) and Arwel Hughes's similarly titled work for unison voices. More recently, the American composer Robert J. Bradshaw (b.1970) dedicated his 3rd Symphony (2005) to the fables with a programme note explaining that the work's purpose "is to excite young musicians and audiences to take an interest in art music". Five more fables set for choir are featured in Bob Chilcott's "Aesop's Fables" (2008).


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Werner Egk's early settings in Germany were aimed at children too. His "Der Löwe und die Maus" (The Lion and the Mouse 1931) was a singspiel drama for small orchestra and children's choir; aimed at 12- to 14-year-olds, it was built on an improvisation by the composer's own children. He followed this with "Der Fuchs und der Rabe " (The Fox and the Crow) in 1932. Hans Poser's "Die Fabeln des Äsop" (Op. 28, 1956) was set for accompanied men's chorus and uses Martin Luther's translation of six. Others who have set German texts for choir include Herbert Callhoff (1963) and Andre Asriel (1972).


title: Aesop's Fables

text: The commonest approach in building a musical bridge to children has involved using a narrator with musical backing. Following the example of Sergei Prokoviev in "Peter and the Wolf" (1936), Vincent Persichetti set six for narrator and orchestra in his "Fables" (Op. 23 1943). Richard Maltz also composed his "Aesop's Fables" (1993) to introduce the instruments of the orchestra to elementary students and to teach them about the elements of music, and Daniel Dorff's widely performed "3 Fun Fables" (1996) has contrasting instruments interpreting characters: in "The Fox and the Crow" it is trumpet and contrabass; in "The Dog and Its Reflection" it is trombone and violin, harp and percussion; in "The Tortoise and the Hare" it is contrabassoon and clarinet. Others simply adapt the narrator's voice to a musical backing. They include Scott Watson's "Aesop's Fables" and Anthony Plog's set of five for narrator, horn and piano (1989).


title: Aesop's Fables

text: A different strategy is to adapt the telling to popular musical genres. Australian musician David P Shortland chose ten fables for his recording "Aesop Go HipHop" (2012), where the stories are given a hip hop narration and the moral is underlined in a lyrical chorus. The American William Russo's approach to popularising his "Aesop's Fables" (1971) was to make of it a rock opera. This incorporates nine, each only introduced by the narrator before the music and characters take over. Instead of following the wording of one of the more standard fable collections, as other composers do, the performer speaks in character. Thus in "The Crow and the Fox" the bird introduces himself with, "Ahm not as pretty as mah friends and I can’t sing so good, but, uh, I can steal food pretty goddam good!" Other composers who have created operas for children have been Martin Kalmanoff in "Aesop the fabulous fabulist" (1969), David Ahlstom in his one-act "Aesop's Fables" (1986), and David Edgar Walther with his set of four "short operatic dramas", some of which were performed in 2009 and 2010. There have also been local ballet treatments of the fables for children in the US by such companies as Berkshire Ballet and Nashville Ballet.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: A musical, "Aesop's Fables" by British playwright Peter Terson, first produced in 1983, was performed by the Isango Portobello company, directed by Mark Dornford-May at the Fugard Theatre in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2010. The play tells the story of the black slave Aesop, who learns that freedom is earned and kept through being responsible. His teachers are the animal characters he meets on his journeys. The fables they suggest include the Tortoise and the Hare, the Lion and the Goat, the Wolf and the Crane, the Frogs Who Desired a King and three others, brought to life through a musical score featuring mostly marimbas, vocals and percussion. A colourful treatment was Brian Seward's "Aesop's Fabulous Fables" (2009) in Singapore, which mixes a typical musical with Chinese dramatic techniques.


title: Aesop's Fables

text: Use of other languages elsewhere in the world have included a setting of four Latin texts in the Czech composer Ilja Hurník's "Ezop" for mixed choir and orchestra (1964) and the setting of two as a Greek opera by Giorgos Sioras (b. 1952) in 1998. And in 2010 Lefteris Kordis launched his 'Aesop Project', a setting of seven fables which mixed traditional East Mediterranean and Western Classical musical textures, combined with elements of jazz. After an English recitation by male narrator, a female singer's rendition of the Greek wording was accompanied by an octet.


title: Merkava

text: The Merkava (, , "chariot") is a series of main battle tanks used by the Israel Defense Forces and the backbone of the IDF's armored corps. The tank began development in 1970, and its first generation, the Merkava mark 1, entered official service in 1979. Four main variants have been deployed. , Merkava mark 4 is the latest version. The Merkava was first used extensively in the 1982 Lebanon War. The name "Merkava" was derived from the IDF's initial development program name.


title: Merkava

text: The tank was developed in the Merkava and Armored Combat Vehicles Division of the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and most of its parts are manufactured in Israel. The Merkava was designed to provide maximum protection for its crew, and therefore its front armor was fortified and the engine placed in the front part of the tank, unlike most other tanks.


title: Merkava

text: Design criteria include rapid repair of battle damage, survivability, cost-effectiveness, and off-road performance. Following the model of contemporary self-propelled howitzers, the turret assembly is located closer to the rear than in most main battle tanks. With the engine in front, this layout is intended to grant additional protection against a frontal attack, so as to absorb some of the force of incoming shells, especially for the personnel in the main hull, such as the driver. It also creates more space in the rear of the tank that allows increased storage capacity and a rear entrance to the main crew compartment allowing easy access under enemy fire. This allows the tank to be used as a platform for medical disembarkation, a forward command and control station, and an infantry fighting vehicle. The rear entrance's clamshell-style doors provide overhead protection when off- and on-loading cargo and personnel.


title: Merkava

text: During the late 1960s, the Israeli Army began collaborating on design notes for the Chieftain tank which had originally been introduced to British Army service, with a view to Israel purchasing and domestically producing the vehicle. Two prototypes were delivered as part of a four-year trial. However, it was eventually decided not to sell the Chieftain to the Israelis, as they were already being supplied to Arab countries, which prompted them to follow their own development programme.


title: Merkava

text: Israel Tal, who was serving as a brigade commander after the Suez Crisis, restarted plans to produce an Israeli-made tank, drawing on lessons from the 1973 Yom Kippur War, in which Israeli forces were outnumbered by those of Middle Eastern Arab nations.


title: Merkava

text: By 1974, initial designs were completed and prototypes were built. After a brief set of trials, work began to retool the Tel HaShomer ordnance depot for full-time development and construction. After the new facilities were completed, the Merkava was announced to the public in the "International Defense Review" periodical. The first official images of the tank were then released to the American periodical "Armed Forces Journal" on May 4, 1977. The IDF officially adopted the tank in December 1979.


title: Merkava

text: The lead organization for system integration of the Merkava's main components is Israel Military Industries (IMI). The Israeli Ordnance Corps are responsible for final Merkava assembly. More than 90% of the Merkava 4 tank's components are produced locally in Israel by Israeli defense industries. Contributors to the vehicle include:


title: Merkava

text: The Merkava Mark I and II were armed with a 105 mm IMI M64 gun, a license built variant of the M68. The Mark III, Mark III "Dor Dalet BAZ kassag", and the Mark IV are armed with an IMI 120 mm smoothbore gun which can fire almost all versions of Western 120 mm smooth bore tank ammunition, as well as the LAHAT anti-tank guided missile.


title: Merkava

text: Each model of the Merkava has two roof mounted 7.62 mm machine guns for use by the commander and loader and another mounted co-axially with the main gun. A 60 mm mortar is also fitted for firing smoke rounds or suppressing dug-in infantry anti-tank teams.


title: Merkava

text: All Merkava tanks are fitted with a remote-controlled M2 Browning .50 heavy machine gun, aligned with the main gun and controlled from within the turret. The .50 machine gun has proven to be useful and effective in asymmetric warfare.


title: Merkava

text: The tank's 1,500 horsepower turbocharged diesel engine was designed by MTU and is manufactured under license by L-3 Communication Combat Propulsion Systems (formerly General Dynamics). The Mark IV's top road speed is 64 km/h.


title: Merkava

text: The Mark I, operational since 1979, is the original design created as a result of Israel Tal's decision, and was fabricated and designed for mass production. The Mark I weighed 63 Tonnes and had a diesel engine, with a power-to-weight ratio of 14 hp/Tonne. It was armed with the 105 millimeter M64 L71A main gun (a licensed copy of the American M68, two 7.62 mm machine guns for anti-infantry defense, and a 60 mm mortar mounted externally, with the mortar operator not completely protected by the tank's hull.


title: Merkava

text: The general design borrows the tracks and road wheels from the British Centurion tank, which had seen extensive use during the Yom Kippur war and performed well in the rocky terrain of the Golan.


title: Merkava

text: The Merkava was first used in combat during the 1982 Lebanon War, where Israel deployed 180 units. Although they were a success, the M113 APCs that accompanied them were found to have several defects and were withdrawn. Merkavas were converted into makeshift APCs or armored ambulances by taking out the palleted ammunition racks in storage. Ten soldiers or walking wounded could enter and exit through the rear door.


title: Merkava

text: After the war, many adjustments and additions were noted and designed, the most important being that the 60 mm mortar needed to be installed within the hull and engineered for remote firing—a valuable feature that the Israelis had initially encountered on their Centurion Mk3s with their 2" Mk.III mortar. A shot trap was found beneath the rear of the turret bustle, where a well-placed shot could jam the turret completely. The installation of chain netting to disperse and destroy rocket propelled grenades and anti-tank rockets before impacting the primary armor increased survivability.


title: Merkava

text: The Mark II was first introduced into general service in April 1983. While fundamentally the same as the Merkava Mark I, it incorporated numerous small adjustments as a result of the previous year's incursion into Lebanon. The new tank was optimized for urban warfare and low intensity conflicts, with a weight and engine no greater than the Mark I.


title: Merkava

text: The Mark II used the same 105 mm main gun and 7.62 mm machine guns as the Mark I, but the 60 mm mortar was redesigned during construction to be located within the hull and configured for remote firing to remove the need to expose the operator to enemy small-arms fire. An Israeli-designed automatic transmission and increased fuel storage for increased range was installed on all further Mark IIs. Anti-rocket netting was fitted for increased survivability against infantry equipped with anti-tank rockets. Many minor improvements were made to the fire-control system. Updated meteorological sensors, crosswind analyzers, and thermographic optics and image intensifiers gave greater visibility and battlefield awareness.


title: Merkava

text: In 2015 the IDF had begun a plan to take the old models out of storage and repurpose them as heavy armored personnel carriers. Cannons, turrets, and spaces used to store tank shells inside the hull were removed to create a personnel carrier that outperforms the lighter M113 APC. Converting hundreds of Mark II chassis provides a low-cost way to upgrade support units' abilities to perform medical, logistical, and rescue missions. By late 2016, after 33 years of service, the last conscripted brigade to operate Merkava IIs was scheduled to transition to Merkava III and Merkava IV tanks for battlefield missions, relegating the vehicles to reserve forces for border patrols during conflicts and conversion to personnel carriers.


title: Merkava

text: The Merkava Mark III was introduced in December 1989 and was in production until 2003. As of 2016, the Merkava III is by far the most numerous tank in frontline IDF service. Compared to the Merkava II, it has upgrades to the drivetrain, powertrain, armament, and electronic systems. The most prominent addition was the incorporation of the locally developed IMI 120 mm gun. This gun and a larger diesel engine raised the total weight of the tank to , but the larger engine raised the maximum cruising speed to .


title: Merkava

text: The turret was re-engineered for movement independent of the tank chassis, allowing it to track a target regardless of the tank's movement. Many other changes were made, including:


title: Merkava

text: The 1995 Mark III BAZ (Hebrew acronym for "ברק זוהר", "Barak Zoher", signifying "Shining Lightning") had several updates and added systems including:


title: Merkava

text: The last generation of the Mark III class was the Mark IIID "Dor-Dalet" (Hebrew: "Fourth Generation"), which included several components as prototypes to be introduced in the Mark IV.


title: Merkava

text: The Merkava Mark IV began development in 1999, and production in 2004. The upgrade's development was announced in an October 1999 edition of the military publication "Bamachaneh" ("At the Camp"). However, the Merkava Mark III remained in production until 2003. The first Merkava IVs were in production in limited numbers by the end of 2004.


title: Merkava

text: Removable modular armor, from the Merkava Mark IIID, is used on all sides, including the top and a V-shaped belly armor pack for the underside. This modular system is designed to allow damaged tanks to be rapidly repaired and returned to the field. Because rear armor is thinner, chains with iron balls are attached to detonate projectiles before they hit the main armored hull. It is the first contemporary tank without a loader's hatch in the turret roof, because any aperture in the turret roof increases risk of penetration by ATGMs. Tank rounds are stored in individual fire-proof canisters, which reduce the chance of cook-offs in a fire inside the tank. The turret is electrically, rather than hydraulically, powered (hydraulic turrets use flammable liquid that ignites if the turret is penetrated) and "dry": no active rounds are stored in it.


title: Merkava

text: Some features, such as hull shaping, exterior non-reflective paints (radar cross-section reduction), and shielding for engine heat plumes mixing with outside air (reduced infrared signature) to confuse enemy thermal imagers, were carried over from the IAI Lavi program of the Israeli Air Force to make the tank harder to spot and target by heat sensors and radar.


title: Merkava

text: The Mark IV includes the larger 120 mm main gun of the previous versions, but can fire a wider variety of ammunition, including high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT), and sabot rounds like the armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding sabot (APFSDS) kinetic energy penetrator, using an electrical semi-automatic revolving magazine for 10 rounds. It also includes a much larger 12.7 mm machine gun for anti-vehicle operations (most commonly used against technicals).


title: Merkava

text: The Mark IV has the Israeli-designed "TSAWS" (tracks, springs, and wheels system) caterpillar track system, called ""Mazkom"" () by troops. This system is designed to reduce track-shedding under the harsh basalt rock conditions of Lebanon and the Golan Heights.


title: Merkava

text: The model has a new fire-control system, the El-Op "Knight Mark 4". An Amcoram LWS-2 laser warning receiver notifies the crew of threats like laser-guided anti-tank missiles, and the fire-control system can launch smoke grenades to obscure the tank from the laser beam. Electromagnetic warning against radar illumination is also installed.


title: Merkava

text: The tank carries the Israeli Elbit Systems BMS (Battle Management System; Hebrew: צי"ד), a centralised system that takes data from tracked units and UAVs in theater, displays it on color screens, and distributes it in encrypted form to all other units in a given theater equipped with BMS.


title: Merkava

text: The Merkava IV has been designed for fast repair and replacement of damaged armour, with modular armour that can be easily removed and replaced. It is designed to be cost-effective in production and maintenance; it costs less than several other tanks used by Western armies.


title: Merkava

text: The tank has a high-performance air conditioning system, and can be fitted with a toilet for long-duration missions.


title: Merkava

text: The Merkava Mark 4M (Mk 4M) Windbreaker is a Merkava Mark IV equipped with the Trophy active protection system (APS), designated "Meil Ruach" (; "Windbreaker" or "Wind Coat"). Mass production of Mark IVm tanks began in 2009, and the first whole brigade of Mark IVms was declared operational in 2011. The Trophy APS successfully intercepted rocket-propelled grenades and anti-tank missiles, including 9M133 Kornets, fired by Hamas before and during Operation Protective Edge in 2014.


title: Merkava

text: A midlife upgrade for the Mk. 4M that is somewhat of a bridge between the Mk. 4M and the Mk. 4 Barak.


title: Merkava

text: The Merkava Mark 4 "Barak" (Lightning) is planned to enter service in 2023. The tank will have an upgraded Trophy APS, 360-degree day/night camera coverage for boosted situational awareness, a fighter jet–style heads-up display for the tank commander, and new sensors enabling it to independently acquire targets and strike them rapidly, as well as having electronic warfare abilities and advanced processing systems, a direct energy systems capable of intercepting drones and cruise missiles.


title: Merkava

text: A main feature of the Barak, unveiled in July 2018, is the integration of the Iron Vision helmet-mounted augmented reality system, using high-resolution cameras arrayed around the tank to provide a 360° virtual reality view of a tank's surroundings to crew members' helmet displays while protected inside. Israeli company Elbit developed the system for the F-35 fighter aircraft.


title: Merkava

text: The Merkava was used widely during the 1982 Lebanon War. The tank outperformed contemporary Syrian tanks (mostly T-62s) and proved largely immune to the anti-tank weapons of the time (the AT-3 Sagger and RPG-7) that were used against it. It was judged to be a significant improvement over Israel's formerly most effective main battle tank, the Centurion. Israel lost dozens of tanks during the conflict, including several Merkavas.


title: Merkava

text: In February 2002, a Merkava III was destroyed by a roadside bomb near Netzarim in the Gaza Strip. The tank was lured into intervening in an attack on a settler convoy. The tank went over a heavy mine (estimated 100 kg TNT), which detonated and totally destroyed the tank. Four soldiers were killed in the blast. This was the first main battle tank to be destroyed during the Second Intifada. A second Israeli tank, a Merkava II or Merkava III, was destroyed a month later in the same area and a further three soldiers were killed. A third Merkava II or III tank was destroyed near the Kissufim Crossing, when one soldier was killed and two wounded.


title: Merkava

text: During the 2006 Lebanon War, five Merkava tanks were destroyed. Most of the tanks engaged were Merkava IIIs and earlier versions; only a few of the tanks used during the war were Merkava Mark IVs, since by 2006 they had entered service in limited numbers. Hezbollah fired over 1,000 anti-tank missiles during the conflict against both tanks and dismounted infantry. Some 45 percent of all tanks and armoured vehicles hit with anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs) during the conflict suffered some form of armour penetration. In total, 15 tank crewmen were killed by these ATGM penetrations. The penetrations were caused by tandem warhead missiles. Hezbollah weaponry was believed to include advanced Russian RPG-29 'Vampir', AT-5 'Konkurs', AT-13 'Metis-M', and laser-guided AT-14 'Kornet' HEAT missiles. The RPG-29 was able to defeat the advanced reactive armor on the Merkava 4. The IDF reported finding the state-of-the-art Kornet ATGMs on Hezbollah positions in the village of Ghandouriyeh. Several months after the cease-fire, reports have provided detailed photographic evidence that Kornet ATGMs were indeed both possessed and used by Hezbollah in this area. Another Merkava IV tank crewman was killed when a tank ran over an improvised explosive device (IED). This tank had additional V-shaped underside armor, limiting casualties to just one of the seven personnel (four crewmen and three infantrymen) on board. In total, five Merkava tanks (two Merkava IIs, one Merkava III, and two Merkava IVs) were destroyed. Of these two Merkava Mark IVs, one was damaged by a powerful IED, and the other being destroyed by a Russian AT-14 'Kornet' missiles. The Israeli military said that it was satisfied with the Merkava Mark IV's performance, and attributed problems to insufficient training before the war. In total, 50 Merkava tanks (predominantly Merkava IIs and IIIs) were hit, eight of which remained serviceable on the battlefield. 21 tanks suffered armour penetrations (15 from missiles, and 6 from IEDs and anti-tank mines).


title: Merkava

text: After the 2006 war, and as the IDF becomes increasingly involved in unconventional and guerrilla warfare, some analysts say the Merkava is too vulnerable to advanced anti-tank missiles, that in their man-portable types can be fielded by guerrilla warfare opponents. Other post-war analysts, including David Eshel, disagree, arguing that reports of losses to Merkavas were overstated and that "summing up the performance of Merkava tanks, especially the latest version Merkava Mark IV, most tank crews agree that, in spite of the losses sustained and some major flaws in tactical conduct, the tank proved its mettle in its first high-saturation combat." On a comparison done by the armor corps newsletter, it was shown that the average number of crewmen killed per tank penetrated by missile/rocket was reduced from 2 during the Yom Kippur War to 1.5 during the 1982 Lebanon War to 1 during the 2006 Lebanon War proving how, even in the face of the improvement in anti-tank weaponry, the Merkava series tanks provide increasingly better protection to its crew. The IDF wanted to increase orders of new Merkava Mark IV tanks, and planned to add the Trophy active defense system to Merkava Mark IV tanks, and to increase joint training between crews and Israeli anti-tank soldiers.


title: Merkava

text: The Merkava IV was used more extensively during the Gaza War, as it had been received by the IDF in increasing numbers since 2006, replacing more of the Merkava II and III versions of the tank that were in service. One brigade of Merkava IVs managed to bisect the Gaza strip in five hours without Israeli casualties. The commander of the brigade stated that battlefield tactics had been greatly revised since 2006. Tactics had also been modified to focus on asymmetric or guerilla war threats, in addition to the conventional war scenarios that the Merkava had mainly been designed to combat.


title: Merkava

text: By October 2010, the IDF had begun to equip the first Merkava IVs with the Trophy active protection system, to improve the tanks' protection against advanced anti-tank missiles which use tandem-charge HEAT warheads. Added protection systems included an Elbit laser-warning system and IMI in-built smoke-screen grenades.


title: Merkava

text: In December 2010, Hamas fired an AT-14 Kornet anti-tank missile at a Merkava Mark III tank stationed on the Israel-Gaza border near Al-Bureij. Before then, it was not suspected that Hamas possessed such an advanced missile. The missile penetrated the tank's armour, but caused no injuries among its crew. As a result of the attack, Israel decided to deploy its first Merkava Mark IV battalion equipped with the Trophy system along the Gaza border.


title: Merkava

text: On March 1, 2011, a Merkava MK IV stationed near the Gaza border, equipped with the Trophy active protection system, successfully foiled a missile attack against it, marking the system's first operational success.


title: Merkava

text: No tanks were damaged during Operation Protective Edge. The Merkava Mk 4M tanks, fitted with the Trophy Active Protection system, intercepted anti-tank missiles and RPGs on dozens of different occasions during the ground operation. During the operation, the system intercepted anti-tank weapons, mostly Kornet, and some Metis-M and RPG-29, proving itself effective against man-portable anti-tank weapons. By identifying the source of fire, Trophy also allowed tanks to kill a Hamas anti-tank team on one occasion.


title: Merkava

text: Giora Katz, head of Rafael's land division, stated that it was a "breakthrough because it is the first time in military history where an active defense system has proven itself in intense fighting."


title: Merkava

text: The 401st Brigade, equipped with Merkava Mk 4M tanks, alone killed between 120 and 130 Hamas militants during the ground fighting phase of Operation Protective Edge, according to the IDF.


title: Merkava

text: In May 2012, Israel offered procurement of Merkava IV tanks to the Colombian Army. The sale would include 25–40 tanks at an approximate cost of $4.5 million each, and several Namer APCs. With the threat of the expanding Venezuelan military, it would strengthen Colombian armored forces against Venezuelan T-72 tanks.


title: Merkava

text: In 2014, Israel reported that exports of the Mk 4 had begun; the purchasing country's name was not disclosed for security reasons.


title: Merkava

text: In July 2022, an armoured vehicle-launched bridge (AVLB) variant of the Merkava was delivered to the Philippine Army as part of a government-to-government deal with Israel.


title: Merkava

text: Following the Second Intifada the Israel Defense Forces modified some of their Merkavas to satisfy the needs of urban warfare.


title: Merkava

text: These are Merkava Mark III BAZ or Mark IV tanks, converted for urban warfare. The LIC designation stands for "low intensity conflict", underlining its emphasis on counter-insurgency, street-to-street inner-city asymmetrical type warfare of the 21st century.


title: Merkava

text: The Merkava is equipped with a turret 12.7 mm caliber coaxial machine gun, which enables the crew to lay down fairly heavy cover fire without using the main gun (which is relatively ineffective against individual enemy combatants). Like the new remote-operated weapon station, the coaxial machine-gun is fired from inside the tank without exposing the crew to small-arms fire and snipers.


title: Merkava

text: The most sensitive areas of a tank, its optics, exhaust ports and ventilators, are all protected by a newly developed high-strength metal mesh to prevent explosive charges being planted there.


title: Merkava

text: Rubber whip pole-markers with LED tips and a driver's rear-facing camera have been installed to improve navigation and maneuverability in an urban environment by day or by night.