title: Victoria Wood

text: Wood wrote the one-off ITV serious drama "Housewife, 49" (2006), an adaptation of the diaries of Nella Last, and played the eponymous role of an introverted middle-aged character who discovers new confidence and friendships in Lancashire during the Second World War. "Housewife, 49" was critically acclaimed, and Wood won BAFTAs for both her acting and writing for this drama; a rare double. The film also starred Stephanie Cole and David Threlfall as well as, in a small role, Sue Wallace with whom Wood had worked before and studied alongside at Birmingham.


title: Victoria Wood

text: In November 2006, Wood directed a revival production of "Acorn Antiques: The Musical!" with a new cast. The musical opened at the Lowry in Salford in December and toured the United Kingdom from January to July 2007.


title: Victoria Wood

text: In January 2007, she appeared as herself in a series of advertisements featuring famous people working for the supermarket chain Asda. They featured Wood working in the bakery and introduced a catchphrase – "there's no place like ASDA". Wood was the subject of an episode of "The South Bank Show" in March 2007, and is the only woman to be the subject of two "South Bank" programmes (the previous occasion was in September 1996).


title: Victoria Wood

text: Wood appeared in a three-part travel documentary on BBC One called "Victoria's Empire", in which she travelled around the world in search of the history, cultural impact and customs the British Empire placed on the parts of the world it ruled. She departed Victoria Station, London, for Calcutta, Hong Kong and Borneo in the first programme. In programme two she visited Ghana, Jamaica and Newfoundland and in the final programme, New Zealand, Australia and Zambia, finishing at the Victoria Falls.


title: Victoria Wood

text: In a tribute to Wood, the British television station UKTV Gold celebrated her work with a weekend marathon of programmes between 3 and 4 November 2007, featuring programmes such as "Victoria Wood Live" and "Dinnerladies" and "Victoria Wood: As Seen on TV" – its first screening on British television since 1995.


title: Victoria Wood

text: Wood returned to stand-up comedy, with a special performance for the celebratory show "Happy Birthday BAFTA" on 28 October 2007, alongside other household names. The programme was transmitted on ITV1 on Wednesday 7 November 2007. On Boxing Day 2007 she appeared as "Nana" in the Granada dramatisation of Noel Streatfeild's novel "Ballet Shoes".


title: Victoria Wood

text: In December 2007, when a guest on the radio programme "Desert Island Discs", Wood said she was about to make her first foray into film, writing a script described as a contemporary comedy about a middle-aged person. On Thursday, 12 June 2008, Wood was a member of the celebrity guest panel on the series "" on BBC Two. In June 2009, she appeared as a panellist on the first two episodes of a series of "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue".


title: Victoria Wood

text: In 2009, Wood provided the voice of God for "Liberace, Live From Heaven" by Julian Woolford at London's Leicester Square Theatre. Wood returned to television comedy for a one-off Christmas sketch-show special, her first for nine years, "Victoria Wood's Mid Life Christmas", transmitted on BBC One at 21:00 on Christmas Eve 2009. It reunited Wood with Julie Walters in "Lark Pies to Cranchesterford", a spoof of BBC period dramas "Lark Rise to Candleford", "Little Dorrit" and "Cranford"; a spoof documentary, "Beyond the Marigolds", following "Acorn Antiques" star Bo Beaumont (Walters); highlights from the "Mid Life Olympics 2009" with Wood as the commentator; parodies of personal injury advertisements; and a reprise of Wood's most famous song "The Ballad of Barry and Freda" ("Let's Do It"), performed as a musical number with tap-dancers and a band. "Victoria Wood: Seen On TV", a 90-minute documentary looking back on her career, was broadcast on BBC Two on 21 December, whilst a behind-the-scenes special programme about "Midlife Christmas", "Victoria Wood: What Larks!", was broadcast on BBC One on 30 December.


title: Victoria Wood

text: On New Year's Day 2011, Wood appeared in a BBC drama "Eric and Ernie" as Eric Morecambe's mother, Sadie Bartholomew.


title: Victoria Wood

text: For the 2011 Manchester International Festival, Wood wrote, composed and directed "That Day We Sang", a musical set in 1969 with flashbacks to 1929. It tells the story of a middle-aged couple who find love after meeting on a TV programme about a choir they both sang in 40 years previously. Although the characters are imaginary, the choir sang with the Hallé Youth Orchestra in Manchester's Free Trade Hall on a record that sold more than a million copies. Apart from the pieces on the 1929 recording (Purcell's "Nymphs and Shepherds" and the Evening Benediction from "Hansel and Gretel") the score for the musical was written by Wood. She also narrated the 2012 miniseries "The Talent Show Story".


title: Victoria Wood

text: On 22 December 2012, Wood was a guest on BBC Radio Two's Saturday morning "Graham Norton Show". On 23 December BBC One screened "Loving Miss Hatto", a drama written by Wood about the life of concert pianist Joyce Hatto, the centre of a scandal over the authenticity of her recordings and her role in the hoax. In April 2013, Wood produced a documentary about the history of tea named "Victoria Wood's Nice Cup of Tea". In 2013 she played retired constable-turned-security-guard Tracy in BBC Scotland's "Case Histories" starring Jason Isaacs. She appeared in an episode of "QI", broadcast on 13 December 2013, and around the same time made two return appearances on "I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue" during the show's 60th series in which she joined in the game One song to the tune of Another, singing the "Bob the Builder" theme "Can We Fix It?" to the tune of "I Dreamed a Dream". In March 2014, Wood voiced the TV advertisement for the tour of the old set of "Coronation Street". On 5 December 2014 Wood was a guest on BBC's "The Graham Norton Show". On 26 December 2014, a television movie adaptation of "That Day We Sang", directed by Wood, starring Michael Ball and Imelda Staunton, was shown on BBC Two.


title: Victoria Wood

text: In early 2015, Wood took part in a celebrity version of "The Great British Bake Off" for Comic Relief and was crowned Star Baker in her episode. She co-starred with Timothy Spall in Sky television's three-part television adaptation of "Fungus the Bogeyman", which was first shown on 27, 28 & 29 December 2015, her final acting role.


title: Victoria Wood

text: Wood was known for using many of the same actors in her projects, which comedian Tiff Stevenson later described as "this core of people who she knew she worked well with, and why would [she] want to walk away from that?" Duncan Preston said of these recurring appearances, "I wouldn't say that we were her favourite actors; I think we were like a company that she had." Celia Imrie commented that Wood's "team" approach "meant that we could work together very fast." An overview of these recurring cast members is shown below:


title: Victoria Wood

text: In 1979, Wood received Charles Wintour Award for Most Promising Playwright at the Evening Standard Theatre Awards for her play "Talent (play) ".


title: Victoria Wood

text: In 1997, Wood was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1997 Birthday Honours. Earlier in 1994, she was made an honorary Doctor of Letters by the University of Sunderland. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours.


title: Victoria Wood

text: In 2003, she was listed in "The Observer" as one of the "50 Funniest Acts in British Comedy". In the 2005 Channel 4 poll the "Comedians' Comedian", she was voted 27th out of the top 50 comedy acts by fellow comedians and comedy insiders. She was the highest-ranked woman on the list, above French and Saunders (who paid tribute to her in their "Lord of the Rings" spoof, where a map of Middle-Earth shows a forest called 'Victoria Wood'), Joan Rivers and Joyce Grenfell.


title: Victoria Wood

text: Her sketch show "" won BAFTA awards for its two series and Christmas Special. In 2007, she was nominated for and won the BAFTA awards for "Best Actress" and for "Best Single Drama" for her role in the British war-time drama "Housewife, 49", in which she played the part of a housewife dominated by her moody husband. Wood's character eventually stands up to him and helps the WRVS (Women's Royal Voluntary Service) in their preparations for British soldiers.


title: Victoria Wood

text: Her popularity with the British public was confirmed when she won 'Best Stand-Up' and 'Best Sketch Show' by "Radio Times" readers in 2001. Wood was also voted 'Funniest Comedian' by the readers of "Reader's Digest" in 2005 and came eighth in ITV's poll of the public's "50 Greatest Stars", four places behind long term regular co-star Julie Walters.


title: Victoria Wood

text: Wood was the recipient of six British Comedy Awards: Best stand-up live comedy performer (1990); Best female comedy performer (1995); WGGB Writer of the year (2000); Best live stand-up (2001); Outstanding achievement award (jointly awarded to Julie Walters) (2005); Best female TV comic (2011). Wood was nominated for the 1991 Olivier Award for Best Entertainment for "Victoria Wood Up West".


title: Victoria Wood

text: Wood was a 14-time BAFTA TV Award nominee, winning four. She received a special BAFTA at a tribute evening in 2005.


title: Victoria Wood

text: Wood married stage magician Geoffrey Durham in March 1980 and they had two children: Grace, born 1 October 1988 and Henry, born 2 May 1992. The couple separated in October 2002 and divorced in 2005, but continued to live near one another and were on good terms. Her son Henry made a cameo performance as a teenager in "Victoria Wood's Mid Life Christmas". He also appeared in the accompanying 'behind the scenes' programme "Victoria Wood: What Larks!". Both children had already made appearances as extras on "Victoria Wood with All the Trimmings" in 2000.


title: Victoria Wood

text: Wood attended Quaker meetings with her husband and was a vegetarian, once remarking, "I'm all for killing animals and turning them into handbags; I just don't want to have to eat them."


title: Victoria Wood

text: Wood was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus in late 2015, but kept her illness largely private. She died on 20 April 2016 at her Highgate home, in the presence of her children and former husband.


title: Victoria Wood

text: Her family celebrated her life with a humanist funeral and cremation at Golders Green Crematorium on 5 May 2016.


title: Victoria Wood

text: A memorial service was held for Wood on 4 July 2016 at St James, Piccadilly. The event was accessible via invitation only and tributes were given by Jane Wymark, Daniel Rigby, Harriet Thorpe and Julie Walters. Ria Jones and Michael Ball each performed one of Wood's songs and Nigel Lilley accompanied on the piano.


title: Victoria Wood

text: In 2017, Wood was the subject of a seven-part show dedicated mainly to extracts from her TV and live work. The main series, titled "Our Friend Victoria", aired on BBC One between 11 April and 9 May and concluded later in the year with a Christmas special on 23 December 2017. The seven episodes were presented by Julie Walters, Richard E. Grant, Michael Ball, Maxine Peake, The League of Gentlemen, Daniel Rigby and Anne Reid.


title: Ptah

text: Ptah (, reconstructed ; ; ; Phoenician: 𐤐𐤕𐤇, ptḥ) is an ancient Egyptian deity, a creator god and patron deity of craftsmen and architects. In the triad of Memphis, he is the husband of Sekhmet and the father of Nefertem. He was also regarded as the father of the sage Imhotep.


title: Ptah

text: Ptah is an Egyptian creator god who conceived the world and brought it into being through the creative power of speech. A hymn to Ptah dating to the Twenty-second Dynasty of Egypt says Ptah "crafted the world in the design of his heart," and the Shabaka Stone, from the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty, says Ptah "gave life to all the gods and their "ka"s as well, through this heart and this tongue."


title: Ptah

text: He bears many epithets that describe his role in ancient Egyptian religion and its importance in society at the time:


title: Ptah

text: Like many deities of ancient Egypt he takes many forms, through one of his particular aspects or through syncretism of ancient deities of the Memphite region. Sometimes represented as a dwarf, naked and deformed, his popularity would continue to grow during the Late Period. Frequently associated with the god Bes, his worship then moved beyond the borders of Egypt and was exported throughout the Eastern Mediterranean. Through dissemination by the Phoenicians, we find figures of Ptah in Carthage.


title: Ptah

text: Ptah is generally represented in the guise of a man with green skin, contained in a shroud sticking to the skin, wearing the divine beard, and holding a sceptre combining three powerful symbols of ancient Egyptian religion:


title: Ptah

text: These three combined symbols indicate the three creative powers of the god: power (was), life (ankh) and stability (djed).


title: Ptah

text: From the Old Kingdom, he quickly absorbs the appearance of Sokar and Tatenen, ancient deities of the Memphite region. His form of Sokar is found contained in its white shroud wearing the Atef crown, an attribute of Osiris. In this capacity, he represents the patron deity of the necropolis of Saqqara and other famous sites where the royal pyramids were built. Gradually he formed with Osiris a new deity called Ptah-Sokar-Osiris. Statuettes representing the human form, the half-human, half-hawk form, or simply the pure falcon form of the new deity began to be systematically placed in tombs to accompany and protect the dead on their journey to the West.


title: Ptah

text: His Tatenen form is represented by a young and vigorous man wearing a crown with two tall plumes that surround the solar disk. He thus embodies the underground fire that rumbles and raises the earth. As such, he was particularly revered by metalworkers and blacksmiths, but he was equally feared because it was he who caused earthquakes and tremors of the earth's crust. In this form also, Ptah is the "master of ceremonies" for Heb Sed, a ceremony traditionally attesting to the first thirty years of a pharaoh's reign.


title: Ptah

text: The god Ptah could correspond with the sun deities Re or Aten during the Amarna period, where he embodied the divine essence with which the sun god was fed to come into existence, that is to say to be born, according to the Memphite mythological/theological texts. In the "holy of holies" of his temple in Memphis, as well as in his great sacred boat, he drove in procession to regularly visit the region during major holidays. Ptah was also symbolized by two birds with human heads adorned with solar disks, symbols of the souls of the god Re: the Ba. The two Ba are identified as the twin gods Shu and Tefnut and are associated with the djed pillar of Memphis.


title: Ptah

text: Finally, Ptah is embodied in the sacred bull, Apis. Frequently referred to as a "herald of Re", the sacred animal is the link with the god Re from the New Kingdom. He even received worship in Memphis, probably at the heart of the great temple of Ptah, and upon the death of the animal, was buried with all the honours due to a living deity in the Serapeum of Saqqara.


title: Ptah

text: Scholars have also associated Ptah with the Mandaean angel Ptahil outside of Egypt, due to their somewhat similar features and closely related names.


title: Ptah

text: The cult of the god Ptah quickly spread throughout Egypt. With the major royal projects of the Old Kingdom, the high priests of Ptah were particularly sought after and worked in concert with the vizier, filling the role of chief architects and master craftsmen, responsible for the decoration of the royal funerary complexes.


title: Ptah

text: In the New Kingdom, the cult of the god would develop in different ways, especially in Memphis, his homeland, but also in Thebes, where the workers of the royal tombs honoured him as patron of craftsmen. For this reason, the oratory of "Ptah who listens to prayers" was built near the site of Deir el-Medina, the village where the workers and craftsmen were housed. At Memphis, the role of intercessor with humans was particularly visible in the appearance of the enclosure that protected the sanctuary of the god. Large ears were carved on the walls, symbolizing his role as "god who listens to prayers".


title: Ptah

text: With the Nineteenth Dynasty, his cult grew and he became one of the four great deities of the empire of Ramesses. He was worshipped at Pi-Ramesses as master of ceremonies and coronations.


title: Ptah

text: With the Third Intermediate Period, Ptah returned to the centre of the monarchy where the coronation of the pharaoh was held again in his temple. The Ptolemies continued this tradition, and the high priests of Ptah were then increasingly associated with the royal family, with some even marrying princesses of royal blood, clearly indicating the prominent role they played in the Ptolemaic court.


title: Ptah

text: Memphis was believed to be under the protection of the god Ptah, the patron of craftsmen. Its great temple, Hut-ka-Ptah (meaning "Enclosure of the ka of Ptah"), was one of the most prominent structures in the city. This word entered Ancient Greek as Αἴγυπτος ("Aiguptos"), which entered Latin as "Aegyptus", which developed into Middle French "Egypte" and was finally borrowed into English first as "Egipte" in Middle English and ultimately as "Egypt".


title: Ptah

text: Ptah is one of the deities mentioned in Giuseppe Verdi's opera "Aida". He is invoked in a chorus, "Possente Fthà" ("O Mighty Ptah"), in Act 1, scene 2; this chorus is reprised as "Immenso Fthà" ("Immense Ptah"), at the end of the opera as the protagonists Aida and Radamès die.


title: Ptah

text: Ptah appears as a minor character in Rick Riordan's novel "The Throne of Fire". While searching for a scroll in the catacombs beneath Bahariya, protagonist Sadie Kane discovers a statue of Ptah and attempts to summon him to help them without success. Later, Ptah suddenly arrives in the body of a date farmer, having merely been delayed in his arrival. Ptah sends an army of rats to destroy an army of mummies sent to attack them the same way as Ptah had once defeated an army of invaders by having a horde of rats eat their bowstrings and sandals in myth. Ptah gives the two some advice and opens a portal for them to reunite with Sadie's brother Carter before being forced to depart the farmer's body.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: Asghar Farhadi (, ; born 7 May 1972) is an Iranian film director and screenwriter. He has received critical acclaim for his international films which focus on the human condition as well as portray intimate and challenging stories of internal family conflicts. His films include the dramas "About Elly" (2009), "A Separation" (2011), "The Past" (2013), "The Salesman" (2016), "Everybody Knows" (2018), and "A Hero" (2021).


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: Farhadi's films "A Separation" (2011) and "The Salesman" (2016) are both recipients of the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, making him one of the few directors worldwide who have won the category twice. He also received the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Screenplay for his film "The Salesman". In 2021, he received the Cannes Film Festival's Grand Prix for his film "A Hero".


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: In 2012, he was included on the annual "Time" 100 list of the most influential people in the world. That same year he also received the Legion of Honour from France.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: Farhadi was born in Homayoon Shahr, a city located in the Isfahan Province near the city of Isfahan. At the age of 15, in 1987, he joined the Isfahan branch office of the Iranian Youth Cinema Society, which had been established for 4 years earlier and he made several short films. He is also a graduate of theatre, with a BA in dramatic arts and MA in stage direction from University of Tehran and Tarbiat Modares University, respectively.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: At the start of his career, Farhadi made numerous short 8 mm and 16 mm films in the Isfahan branch of the Iranian Young Cinema Society, before moving on to writing plays and screenplays for IRIB. He also directed such TV series as "A Tale of a City" and co-wrote the screenplay for Ebrahim Hatamikia's "Low Heights". In 2003, Farhadi made his feature film debut with "Dancing in the Dust". He followed with "The Beautiful City", released in 2004. His third film, "Fireworks Wednesday", won the Gold Hugo at the 2006 Chicago International Film Festival.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: In 2009, Farhadi directed his fourth film, "About Elly", which won him the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 59th International Berlin Film Festival and also Best Picture at the Tribeca Film Festival. The latter film is about a group of Iranians who take a trip to the Iranian beaches of Caspian Sea that turns tragic. Film theorist and critic David Bordwell has called "About Elly" a masterpiece.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: His film "A Separation" premiered on 9 February 2011 at the 29th Fajr International Film Festival in Tehran and received critical acclaim from the Iran Society of Film Critics. It earned Farhadi four awards including Best Director (for the third time after "Fireworks Wednesday" and "About Elly"). On 15 February 2011, it also played in competition at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival, which received a Golden Bear for best film, becoming the first Iranian film to win that award. In June 2011, "A Separation" won the Sydney Film Prize in competition with Cannes Festival's winner "The Tree of Life", directed by Terrence Malick. It also won the Best Film award at the 2011 Asia Pacific Screen Awards.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: On 19 December 2011, Farhadi was announced as being a jury member for the 62nd Berlin International Film Festival, which was held in February 2012.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: On 15 January 2012, "A Separation" won the Golden Globe for the Best Foreign Language Film. The film was also the official Iranian submission for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 2012 Academy Awards where, in addition to being nominated in this category, it was also nominated in the Best Original Screenplay category. On 26 February 2012, "A Separation" became the first Iranian movie to win the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film, at the 84th Academy Awards. This marked Farhadi as the first Iranian to have won an Academy Award in any of the competitive categories. He was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in June 2012, along with 175 other members. "A Separation" also won the César Award for Best Foreign Film and the Independent Spirit Award for Best International Film in 2012.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: In 2013, Farhadi's film "The Past" starring Bérénice Bejo and Tahar Rahim was released. This would be Farhadi's first film in the French language. The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Bejo won the Best Actress Award at Cannes for her performance in the film.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: The film received universal critical acclaim. It holds a 93% "certified fresh" rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on 144 reviews with a weighted average score of 8.2/10 and the site's consensus: "Beautifully written, sensitively directed, and powerfully acted, "The Past" serves as another compelling testament to Asghar Farhadi's gift for finely layered drama." On Metacritic, the film has a normalized score of 85 out of 100 based on 41 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: The film was selected as the Iranian entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the 86th Academy Awards, but it was not nominated.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: His 2016 film "The Salesman", starring Shahab Hosseini and Taraneh Alidoosti, competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival, where it won two awards: Best Actor for Shahab Hosseini and Best Screenplay for Farhadi.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: On 26 February 2017, Farhadi won his second Oscar for Academy Award for Best International Feature Film for "The Salesman" at the 89th Academy Awards. "The Salesman" had already won the award for the Best Screenplay at the Cannes Film Festival. Following Donald Trump's executive order barring Iranians from entering the country, Farhadi said he would not attend the 2017 Academy Awards, despite being nominated, and then winning, for the best foreign-language film. He announced that two prominent Iranian Americans, Anousheh Ansari and Firouz Naderi would represent him in the ceremony. Anousheh Ansari is famed for being the first female space tourist and first Iranian in space, and Naderi as director of Solar Systems Exploration at NASA. A few hours before the ceremony, he addressed a group of protesters in London via a video link from Iran. The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, screened the movie publicly in Trafalgar Square as a celebration of the city's diversity. "This solidarity is off to a great start", he told them. "I hope this movement will continue and spread, for it has within itself the power to stand up to fascism, be victorious in the face of extremism and say no to oppressive political powers everywhere."


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: After winning the Academy Award for the second time, Farhadi had a prepared statement read by Anousheh Ansari. "I'm sorry I'm not with you tonight", Farhadi's statement read. "My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and those of the other six nations who have been disrespected by the inhumane law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S. Dividing the world into the us and our enemies categories creates fear, a deceitful justification for aggression and war. These wars prevent democracy and human rights in countries which themselves have been victims of aggression. Filmmakers can turn their cameras to capture shared human qualities and break stereotypes of various nationalities and religions. They create empathy between us and others -- an empathy that we need today more than ever." Prior to the ceremony, all five directors nominated for foreign language film issued a joint statement, obtained by "USA Today", that condemned "the climate of fanaticism and nationalism" in the United States, among other countries. The directors – Farhadi, Maren Ade ("Toni Erdmann"), Hannes Holm ("A Man Called Ove"), Martin Zandvliet ("Land of Mine") and Bentley Dean and Martin Butler ("Tanna") – said that no matter which film wins, the Oscar is dedicated to "all the people, artists, journalists and activists who are working to foster unity and understanding, and who uphold freedom of expression and human dignity – values whose protection is now more important than ever."


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: In 2018, Farhadi directed his eighth feature film titled, "Everybody Knows" starring Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz and Ricardo Darin. The film, a Spanish psychological thriller debuted at the 71st Cannes Film Festival where it played in competition for the Palme d'Or.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: At the Toronto premiere of "Everybody Knows", the director shared with "Ikon London Magazine" his plans to "Come to London West End with his play". He said "I know there is a lot of great plays every day. And I wish one day I do a play there. It is not far. It is our plan."


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: The film has earned critical acclaim earning a 78% on Rotten Tomatoes, with critics praising the two leads, but adding that the film is below Farhadi's usually high standards.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: "A Hero" is Farhadi's 9th feature film. Alexandre Mallet-Guy co-produced the work. This film was shot in Marvdasht, Iran, and narrates a social theme. In this film, Amir Jadidi, Mohsen Tanabandeh, Fereshteh Sadre Orafaee, Sarina Farhadi and Sahar Goldoust play roles. The film was introduced as the representative of Iranian cinema on October 20, 2021, to compete in the 94th Academy Awards.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: In April 2022, "The Hollywood Reporter" mistakenly reported that Farhadi had been found guilty, when in fact he was indicted, by an Iranian court on charges of plagiarism for allegedly stealing the premise for "A Hero" from an earlier documentary made by Azadeh Masihzadeh, a former film student of Farhadi. The case is now before the criminal court; if convicted, Farhadi could face up to three years in prison. In October 2022, "The New Yorker" published an article, which included more information about the case and exclusive interviews with those who had previously worked with Farhadi. Many came forward that Farhadi had also used their ideas or work without asking for permission or giving credit, and often credited himself. Among these people are Farhadi’s former classmate and playwright Ali Khodsiani, Iranian author and playwright Abbas Jahangirian, Iranian director Mani Haghighi and another former student, Mostafa Pourmohammadi. "A Separation"’s executive producer Negar Eskandarfar has also accused Farhadi of signing a deal without her knowledge, which she alone had the authority to sign. After the film was considered for submission for an Academy Award, she said she felt as if “she had no choice but to write a letter stating that she transferred her rights to Farhadi—and to backdate it, so it appeared as if it had been drafted before Farhadi signed the international contract.” Iranian actress Taraneh Alidoosti, who has worked on four of Farhadi’s movies, has also supported Masihzadeh’s claims, saying that she believes her, and called Farhadi a “premier gaslighter”. Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani, who has worked with Farhadi on "About Elly", also came forward about how Farhadi managed to make her feel “guilty” and advised her to write a letter and ask for forgiveness, stating that she now regrets appearing in public without hijab. She described him as a person who wants to benefit from both sides (the people and the government).


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: Farhadi's films present a microcosm of modern Iran and explore the inevitable complications that arise via class, gender, and religious differences. For example, his 2011 film "A Separation" portrays various intractable conflicts and arguments that force the characters to reflect on the moral grounds of their own decisions.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: In her article, "Through the Looking Glass: Reflexive Cinema and Society in Post-Revolution Iran", Norma Claire Moruzzi writes:


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: The film critic Roger Ebert in his Movie Yearbook 2013 writes this about Farhadi's craft depicting social relations:


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: In the introduction to her 2014 book "Asghar Farhadi: Life and Cinema", film critic Tina Hassannia writes:


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: In Farhadi's films, Iran is depicted as having a rigid class system that endures across the history of pre- and post-revolutionary Iran. Farhadi films the complexities of everyday life in contemporary Iran, with a particular focus on the ways in which diverse perspectives are embedded within social structures such as class and gender. Farhadi has his own style like "open ending movies", being realistic and "narrative gaps".


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: Farhadi's films frequently criticize divisions in Iranian society along class, gender and religious lines. However, they are notable for their subtlety of treatment. Farhadi himself has never rejected Iran, most of his films are deeply rooted in urban Iranian society, and he has frequently expressed his commitment to the country and its people, most notably on the two occasions when he won the Academy Award. When he picked up the award for "A Separation", he dedicated the win to the Iranian nation. When "The Salesman" won the prize a few years later, Farhadi declined to attend the event in protest at the policies of the American administration.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: What is less noticed is his veiled criticism of religious standards in Iran. His debut feature "Dancing in the Dust" opens with the Islamic invocation "Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim" ("In the name of Allah, the most benevolent, the most merciful") just as a hand cleans a car window to reveal a large statue of a man, situated on a pedestal in a street. Idolatry is forbidden in Islam, and the construction of human statues likewise discouraged in strict interpretations. For his second film, "Beautiful City", Farhadi repeated a similar cinematic trick; as a prison microphone blares out the Bismillah phrase, it is revealed that a young man is carving human figurines. Neither film has been released in the West, and they have not been seen as widely as his latter films.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: In 2012, Farhadi participated in the "Sight & Sound" film polls of that year. Held every ten years to select the greatest films of all time, contemporary directors were asked to select ten films of their choice. Farhadi's choices are listed below:


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: Farhadi is one of a select list of directors who have won the Best Foreign Film Oscar more than once. The others are Vittorio de Sica and Federico Fellini (four times each), Ingmar Bergman (three times), and René Clément and Akira Kurosawa (twice each). The following is a selection of his major awards.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: "A Separation" won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2012, becoming the first Iranian film to win the award. The film was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: "The Salesman" won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2017. However, Farhadi did not attend the 89th Academy Awards ceremony in protest of the U.S. Executive Order 13769.


title: Asghar Farhadi

text: "A Hero" won the Hafez Award for Best Director – Motion Picture and Best Screenplay – Motion Picture (both original and adapted) in 2021.


title: Diane Disney Miller

text: Diane Marie Disney-Miller (December 18, 1933 – November 19, 2013) was the eldest daughter of Walt Disney and his wife Lillian Bounds Disney. Diane co-founded the Walt Disney Family Museum alongside her family. She was president of the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Family Foundation. The museum, which opened in 2009, was established to promote and inspire creativity and innovation and celebrate and study the life of Walt Disney.


title: Diane Disney Miller

text: Diane Marie Disney was born in Los Angeles on December 18, 1933. She attended Los Feliz Grammar School before moving to Immaculate Heart High School (Los Angeles) for junior high school and high school. Disney went on to study English at the University of Southern California.


title: Diane Disney Miller

text: When she was 20 years old, Disney was introduced to 21-year-old University of Southern California student Ron Miller, a member of the USC Trojans football team, on a blind date after a University of California–USC game. They married in a small Episcopal church ceremony in Santa Barbara on May 9, 1954. Together, the couple had seven children whom they were survived by: Christopher (b. 1954), Joanna (b. 1956), Tamara (b. 1957), Jennifer (later Miller-Goff; b. 1960), Walter (b. 1961), Ronald (b. 1963), and Patrick (b. 1967). Her husband then served in the Army and played professional football before Walt Disney convinced him to work for the Walt Disney Studios, and ascended from film directing and production to president and CEO of what is now The Walt Disney Company.


title: Diane Disney Miller

text: Miller was a patron of the arts, as well as a lifelong classical music enthusiast and a generous philanthropist.


title: Diane Disney Miller

text: Miller published a series of eight pieces for the "Saturday Evening Post" in 1956 titled "My Dad, Walt Disney", co-written with Pete Martin. In 1957 she published the book "The Story of Walt Disney". After her husband was removed from his executive position at Walt Disney Productions in 1984, Miller began to limit her involvement with the company. In an interview with Miller in 2005, she recalled that she and Sharon lived a typical life, as both parents were very protective, caring and loving.


title: Diane Disney Miller

text: After her husband joined the Disney company, Miller traveled to Napa Valley with her mother, Lillian, to visit several wineries. The trip inspired Miller to start a vineyard, with the possibility of a winery. With the children grown, Ron left the company and the entertainment industry in 1984. Both he and Diane went on to develop the renowned Silverado Vineyards Winery in Napa, which became their home. In 1976, the family purchased a large property along the Silverado Trail in the Stags Leap District. They planted Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay and started making wine in 1981. They expanded the winery to only using estate-grown grapes, and Diane helped create a home and a family-like atmosphere rather than just a business.


title: Diane Disney Miller

text: Miller was instrumental in pushing ahead with the Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles. In 1988, Lillian Disney, her mother, announced plans to contribute $50 million to the Los Angeles Concert Hall in Downtown Los Angeles, which Miller would later come to support throughout her life. More than 70 architectural firms submitted proposals to the head director, Frank Gehry. By 1996, the project was almost dead, but Miller persuaded Gehry to move forward with it, despite problems with poor management and disagreements over the design, and Los Angeles County officials' attempts to cancel it. It was supposed to be worth $10 million by 1997. Diane arranged for the Walt Disney Family Foundation to contribute about $25 million to keep Gehry in control, and the hall finally opened in 2003, at the cost of $247 million. Although Lillian Disney died in 1997 and never saw a concert there, Miller continued to support the concert hall.


title: Diane Disney Miller

text: After devoting her earlier life to raising her seven children, Miller undertook an active advocacy to document the life and accomplishments of her father, who she perceived to have been the subject of poorly researched biographies and inaccurate rumors. She was also concerned that his name had become more of a corporate identity than a reference to the man himself. In 2001, the Walt Disney Family Foundation released "The Man Behind the Myth", a documentary film about Walt Disney's life featuring interviews with his colleagues, peers, and family. In 2009, Miller co-founded the Walt Disney Family Museum with her son Walter Elias Disney Miller, who is a movie producer, and Miller was also the President of the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Family Foundation at the time of her death, which is a nonprofit organization that owns and operates the Walt Disney Family Museum, located in Presidio in San Francisco.


title: Diane Disney Miller

text: In 2015, the inaugural Diane Disney Miller Lifetime Achievement Award was created to honor the Museum's founder, to recognize those who have made an outstanding impact in the field of arts, education, community involvement, or technological advancements.


title: Diane Disney Miller

text: Miller died on November 19, 2013, at age 79 (less than one month short of her 80th birthday) from medical complications that developed after a fall.


title: Diane Disney Miller

text: The film "Saving Mr. Banks" is dedicated to her memory; Miller died shortly before it opened theatrically.


title: Alice in Chains discography

text: The discography of Alice in Chains, a Seattle-based rock band, consists of six studio albums, three extended plays (EP), three live albums, five compilations, two DVDs, 44 music videos, and 32 singles (as of September 2019).


title: Alice in Chains discography

text: Alice in Chains was formed in 1987 by guitarist Jerry Cantrell and drummer Sean Kinney, who then recruited bassist Mike Starr and singer Layne Staley. The band signed to Columbia Records in 1989 and released its first EP, "We Die Young", in July 1990. Later that year, the band released its debut studio album, "Facelift". The single "Man in the Box", which reached number 18 on the Mainstream Rock chart, helped "Facelift" achieve double Platinum status. The band toured in support of the album for two years before releasing the acoustic EP "Sap" in early 1992. In September 1992, Alice in Chains released "Dirt". The critically acclaimed album, also the band's most successful, debuted at number six on the "Billboard" 200, and was certified quintuple Platinum. The band did not tour in support of "Dirt" for very long, due to Staley's drug addiction. While touring, Starr left the band due to personal reasons and was replaced by Mike Inez. 1994 saw the release of Alice in Chains' second acoustic EP, "Jar of Flies". It entered the charts in the top slot, making it the first Alice in Chains release—and the first EP in history—to debut at number one. In 1995, the band released a self-titled album, which debuted at the top of the "Billboard" 200, and has since been awarded—along with "Facelift"—double Platinum status while "Jar of Flies" maintains Quadruple Platinum status. Alice in Chains entered a hiatus after not touring since the release of "Dirt".


title: Alice in Chains discography

text: From 1996 to 2002, the band was mostly inactive, releasing two live albums, including the successful "Unplugged", and three compilations. On April 19, 2002, Staley was found dead in his home after overdosing on heroin and cocaine, causing the group to break up. In 2005, the band reunited with new vocalist William DuVall. On April 25, 2009, it was announced that Alice in Chains had signed to Virgin/EMI making it the band's first label change in their 20-plus year career. "Black Gives Way to Blue", the group's first album with DuVall, was released on September 29, 2009. In 2011, Alice in Chains began work on their fifth studio album, "The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here", which was released on May 28, 2013. Alice in Chains' sixth studio album, "Rainier Fog", was released on August 24, 2018.


title: Alice in Chains discography

text: As of 2019, Alice in Chains has had 18 Top 10 songs and five No. 1 hits on "Billboard"s Mainstream Rock chart.


title: Etruscan language

text: Etruscan () was the language of the Etruscan civilization, in Italy, in the ancient region of Etruria (modern Tuscany, western Umbria, northern Latium, Emilia-Romagna, Veneto, Lombardy and Campania). Etruscan influenced Latin but was eventually completely superseded by it. The Etruscans left around 13,000 inscriptions that have been found so far, only a small minority of which are of significant length; some bilingual inscriptions with texts also in Latin, Greek, or Phoenician; and a few dozen purported loanwords. Attested from 700 BC to AD 50, the relation of Etruscan to other languages has been a source of long-running speculation and study, with its being referred to at times as an isolate, one of the Tyrsenian languages, and a number of other less well-known theories.


title: Etruscan language

text: The consensus among linguists and Etruscologists is that Etruscan was a Pre–Indo-European, and a Paleo-European language and is closely related to the Raetic language that was spoken in the Alps, and to the Lemnian language, attested in a few inscriptions on Lemnos.


title: Etruscan language

text: Grammatically, the language is agglutinating, with nouns and verbs showing suffixed inflectional endings and gradation of vowels. Nouns show five cases, singular and plural numbers, with a gender distinction between animate and inanimate in pronouns.


title: Etruscan language

text: Etruscan appears to have had a cross-linguistically common phonological system, with four phonemic vowels and an apparent contrast between aspirated and unaspirated stops. The records of the language suggest that phonetic change took place over time, with the loss and then re-establishment of word-internal vowels, possibly due to the effect of Etruscan's word-initial stress.


title: Etruscan language

text: Etruscan religion influenced that of the Romans, and many of the few surviving Etruscan language artifacts are of votive or religious significance. Etruscan was written in an alphabet derived from the Greek alphabet; this alphabet was the source of the Latin alphabet. The Etruscan language is also believed to be the source of certain important cultural words of Western Europe such as "military" and "person", which do not have obvious Indo-European roots.


title: Etruscan language

text: Etruscan literacy was widespread over the Mediterranean shores, as evidenced by about 13,000 inscriptions (dedications, epitaphs, etc.), most fairly short, but some of considerable length. They date from about 700 BC.


title: Etruscan language

text: The Etruscans had a rich literature, as noted by Latin authors. Livy and Cicero were both aware that highly specialized Etruscan religious rites were codified in several sets of books written in Etruscan under the generic Latin title . The dealt with divination by reading entrails from a sacrificed animal, while the expounded the art of divination by observing lightning. A third set, the , might have provided a key to Etruscan civilization: its wider scope embraced Etruscan standards of social and political life, as well as ritual practices. According to the 4th-century Latin writer Maurus Servius Honoratus, a fourth set of Etruscan books existed; dealing with animal gods, but it is unlikely that any scholar living in that era could have read Etruscan. However, only one book (as opposed to inscription), the "Liber Linteus", survived, and only because the linen on which it was written was used as mummy wrappings.


title: Etruscan language

text: In 30 BC, Livy noted that Etruscan was once widely taught to Roman boys, but had since become replaced by the teaching of only Greek, while Varro noted that works of theatre had once been composed in Etruscan.


title: Etruscan language

text: The date of extinction for Etruscan is held by scholarship to have been either in the late first century BC, or the early first century AD. Freeman's analysis of inscriptional evidence would appear to imply that Etruscan was still flourishing in the 2nd century BC, still alive in the first century BC, and surviving in at least one location in the beginning of the first century AD; however, the replacement of Etruscan by Latin likely occurred earlier in southern regions closer to Rome.


title: Etruscan language

text: In southern Etruria, the first Etruscan site to be Latinized was Veii, when it was destroyed and repopulated by Romans in 396 BC. Caere (Cerveteri), another southern Etruscan town on the coast 45 kilometers from Rome, appears to have shifted to Latin in the late 2nd century BC. In Tarquinia and Vulci, Latin inscriptions coexisted with Etruscan inscriptions in wall paintings and grave markers for centuries, from the 3rd century BC until the early 1st century BC, after which Etruscan is replaced by exclusive use of Latin.


title: Etruscan language

text: In northern Etruria, Etruscan inscriptions continue after they disappear in southern Etruria. At Clusium (Chiusi), tomb markings show mixed Latin and Etruscan in the first half of the 1st century BC, with cases where two subsequent generations are inscribed in Latin and then the third, youngest generation, surprisingly, is transcribed in Etruscan. At Perugia, monolingual monumental inscriptions in Etruscan are still seen in the first half of the 1st century BC, while the period of bilingual inscriptions appears to have stretched from the 3rd century to the late 1st century BC. The isolated last bilinguals are found at three northern sites. Inscriptions in Arezzo include one dated to 40 BC followed by two with slightly later dates, while in Volterra there is one dated to just after 40 BC and a final one dated to 10–20 AD; coins with written Etruscan near Saena have also been dated to 15 BC. Freeman notes that in rural areas the language may have survived a bit longer, and that a survival into the late 1st century AD and beyond "cannot wholly be dismissed", especially given the revelation of Oscan writing in Pompeii's walls.


title: Etruscan language

text: Despite the apparent extinction of Etruscan, it appears that Etruscan religious rites continued much later, continuing to use the Etruscan names of deities and possibly with some liturgical usage of the language. In late Republican and early Augustan times, various Latin sources including Cicero noted the esteemed reputation of Etruscan soothsayers. An episode where lightning struck an inscription with the name Caesar, turning it into Aesar, was interpreted to have been a premonition of the deification of Caesar because of the resemblance to Etruscan , meaning 'gods', although this indicates knowledge of a single word and not the language. Centuries later and long after Etruscan is thought to have died out, Ammianus Marcellinus reports that Julian the Apostate, the last pagan Emperor, apparently had Etruscan soothsayers accompany him on his military campaigns with books on war, lightning and celestial events, but the language of these books is unknown. According to Zosimus, when Rome was faced with destruction by Alaric in 408 AD, the protection of nearby Etruscan towns was attributed to Etruscan pagan priests who claimed to have summoned a raging thunderstorm, and they offered their services "in the ancestral manner" to Rome as well, but the devout Christians of Rome refused the offer, preferring death to help by pagans. Freeman notes that these events may indicate that a limited theological knowledge of Etruscan may have survived among the priestly caste much longer. One 19th-century writer argued in 1892 that Etruscan deities retained an influence on early modern Tuscan folklore.


title: Etruscan language

text: Around 180, the Latin author Aulus Gellius mentions Etruscan alongside the Gaulish language in an anecdote. Freeman notes that although Gaulish was clearly still alive during Gellius' time, his testimony may not indicate that Etruscan was still alive because the phrase could indicate a meaning of the sort of "it's all Greek (incomprehensible) to me".


title: Etruscan language

text: At the time of its extinction, only a few educated Romans with antiquarian interests, such as Marcus Terentius Varro, could read Etruscan. The Roman emperor Claudius (10 BC – AD 54) is considered to have possibly been able to read Etruscan, and authored a treatise on Etruscan history; a separate dedication made by Claudius implies a knowledge from "diverse Etruscan sources", but it is unclear if any were fluent speakers of Etruscan. Plautia Urgulanilla, the emperor's first wife, was Etruscan.


title: Etruscan language

text: Etruscan had some influence on Latin, as a few dozen Etruscan words and names were borrowed by the Romans, some of which remain in modern languages, among which are possibly 'vulture', 'trumpet', 'sheath', 'people'.


title: Etruscan language

text: Inscriptions have been found in northwest and west-central Italy, in the region that even now bears the name of the Etruscan civilization, Tuscany (from Latin 'Etruscans'), as well as in modern Latium north of Rome, in today's Umbria west of the Tiber, in Campania and in the Po Valley to the north of Etruria. This range may indicate a maximum Italian homeland where the language was at one time spoken.


title: Etruscan language

text: Outside Italy, inscriptions have been found in Corsica, Gallia Narbonensis, Greece, the Balkans. But by far, the greatest concentration is in Italy.


title: Etruscan language

text: In 1998, Helmut Rix put forward the view that Etruscan is related to other members of what he called the "Tyrsenian language family". Rix's Tyrsenian family of languages—composed of Raetic, spoken in ancient times in the eastern Alps, and Lemnian, together with Etruscan—has gained acceptance among scholars. Rix's Tyrsenian family has been confirmed by Stefan Schumacher, Norbert Oettinger, Carlo De Simone, and Simona Marchesini. Common features between Etruscan, Raetic, and Lemnian have been found in morphology, phonology, and syntax. On the other hand, few lexical correspondences are documented, at least partly due to the scant number of Raetic and Lemnian texts. The Tyrsenian family, or Common Tyrrhenic, in this case is often considered to be Paleo-European and to predate the arrival of Indo-European languages in southern Europe. Several scholars believe that the Lemnian language could have arrived in the Aegean Sea during the Late Bronze Age, when Mycenaean rulers recruited groups of mercenaries from Sicily, Sardinia and various parts of the Italian peninsula. Scholars such as Norbert Oettinger, Michel Gras and Carlo De Simone think that Lemnian is the testimony of an Etruscan commercial settlement on the island that took place before 700 BC, not related to the Sea Peoples.


title: Etruscan language

text: Some scholars think that the Camunic language, an extinct language spoken in the Central Alps of Northern Italy, may be also related to Etruscan and to Raetic.


title: Etruscan language

text: Over the centuries many hypotheses on the Etruscan language have been developed, many of which have not been accepted or have been considered highly speculative. The interest in Etruscan antiquities and the Etruscan language found its modern origin in a book by a Renaissance Dominican friar, Annio da Viterbo, a cabalist and orientalist now remembered mainly for literary forgeries. In 1498, Annio published his antiquarian miscellany titled (in 17 volumes) where he put together a theory in which both the Hebrew and Etruscan languages were said to originate from a single source, the "Aramaic" spoken by Noah and his descendants, founders of the Etruscan city Viterbo.


title: Etruscan language

text: The 19th century saw numerous attempts to reclassify Etruscan. Ideas of Semitic origins found supporters until this time. In 1858, the last attempt was made by Johann Gustav Stickel, Jena University in his . A reviewer concluded that Stickel brought forward every possible argument which would speak for that hypothesis, but he proved the opposite of what he had attempted to do. In 1861, Robert Ellis proposed that Etruscan was related to Armenian, which is nowadays acknowledged as an Indo-European language. Exactly 100 years later, a relationship with Albanian was to be advanced by Zecharia Mayani, but Albanian is also known to be an Indo-European language.


title: Etruscan language

text: Several theories from the late 19th and early 20th centuries connected Etruscan to Uralic or even Altaic languages. In 1874, the British scholar Isaac Taylor brought up the idea of a genetic relationship between Etruscan and Hungarian, of which also Jules Martha would approve in his exhaustive study (1913). In 1911, the French orientalist Baron Carra de Vaux suggested a connection between Etruscan and the Altaic languages. The Hungarian connection was revived by Mario Alinei, Emeritus Professor of Italian Languages at the University of Utrecht. Alinei's proposal has been rejected by Etruscan experts such as Giulio M. Facchetti, Finno-Ugric experts such as Angela Marcantonio, and by Hungarian historical linguists such as Bela Brogyanyi.


title: Etruscan language

text: The idea of a relation between the language of the Minoan Linear A scripts was taken into consideration as the main hypothesis by Michael Ventris before he discovered that, in fact, the language behind the later Linear B script was Mycenean, a Greek dialect. It has been proposed to possibly be part of a wider Paleo-European "Aegean" language family, which would also include Minoan, Eteocretan (possibly descended from Minoan) and Eteocypriot. This has been proposed by Giulio Mauro Facchetti, a researcher who has dealt with both Etruscan and Minoan, and supported by S. Yatsemirsky, referring to some similarities between Etruscan and Lemnian on one hand, and Minoan and Eteocretan on the other. It has also been proposed that this language family is related to the pre-Indo-European languages of Anatolia, based upon place name analysis.


title: Etruscan language

text: Others have suggested that Tyrsenian languages may yet be distantly related to early Indo-European languages, such as those of the Anatolian branch. More recently, Robert S. P. Beekes argued in 2002 that the people later known as the Lydians and Etruscans had originally lived in northwest Anatolia, with a coastline to the Sea of Marmara, whence they were driven by the Phrygians "circa" 1200 BC, leaving a remnant known in antiquity as the Tyrsenoi. A segment of this people moved south-west to Lydia, becoming known as the Lydians, while others sailed away to take refuge in Italy, where they became known as Etruscans. This account draws on the well-known story by Herodotus (I, 94) of the Lydian origin of the Etruscans or Tyrrhenians, famously rejected by Dionysius of Halicarnassus (book I), partly on the authority of Xanthus, a Lydian historian, who had no knowledge of the story, and partly on what he judged to be the different languages, laws, and religions of the two peoples. In 2006, Frederik Woudhuizen went further on Herodotus' traces, suggesting that Etruscan belongs to the Anatolian branch of the Indo-European family, specifically to Luwian. Woudhuizen revived a conjecture to the effect that the Tyrsenians came from Anatolia, including Lydia, whence they were driven by the Cimmerians in the early Iron Age, 750–675 BC, leaving some colonists on Lemnos. He makes a number of comparisons of Etruscan to Luwian and asserts that Etruscan is modified Luwian. He accounts for the non-Luwian features as a Mysian influence: "deviations from Luwian [...] may plausibly be ascribed to the dialect of the indigenous population of Mysia." According to Woudhuizen, the Etruscans were initially colonizing the Latins, bringing the alphabet from Anatolia. For both archaeological and linguistic reasons, a relationship between Etruscan and the Anatolian languages (Lydian or Luwian) and the idea that Etruscans were initially colonizing the Latins, bringing the alphabet from Anatolia, have not been accepted, just as the story of the Lydian origin reported by Herodotus is no longer considered trustworthy.


title: Etruscan language

text: Another proposal, pursued mainly by a few linguists from the former Soviet Union, suggested a relationship with Northeast Caucasian (or Nakh-Daghestanian) languages.


title: Etruscan language

text: The Latin script owes its existence to the Etruscan alphabet, which was adapted for Latin in the form of the Old Italic script. The Etruscan alphabet employs a Euboean variant of the Greek alphabet using the letter digamma and was in all probability transmitted through Pithecusae and Cumae, two Euboean settlements in southern Italy. This system is ultimately derived from West Semitic scripts.


title: Etruscan language

text: The Etruscans recognized a 26-letter alphabet, which makes an early appearance incised for decoration on a small bucchero terracotta lidded vase in the shape of a cockerel at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, ca. 650–600 BC. The full complement of 26 has been termed the model alphabet. The Etruscans did not use four letters of it, mainly because Etruscan did not have the voiced stops "b", "d" and "g"; the "o" was also not used. They innovated one letter for "f" ().


title: Etruscan language

text: Writing was from right to left except in archaic inscriptions, which occasionally used boustrophedon. An example found at Cerveteri used left to right. In the earliest inscriptions, the words are continuous. From the 6th century BC, they are separated by a dot or a colon, which might also be used to separate syllables. Writing was phonetic; the letters represented the sounds and not conventional spellings. On the other hand, many inscriptions are highly abbreviated and often casually formed, so the identification of individual letters is sometimes difficult. Spelling might vary from city to city, probably reflecting differences of pronunciation.


title: Etruscan language

text: Speech featured a heavy stress on the first syllable of a word, causing syncopation by weakening of the remaining vowels, which then were not represented in writing: "Alcsntre" for "Alexandros", "Rasna" for "Rasena". This speech habit is one explanation of the Etruscan "impossible" consonant clusters. Some of the consonants, especially resonants, however, may have been syllabic, accounting for some of the clusters (see below under Consonants). In other cases, the scribe sometimes inserted a vowel: Greek "Hēraklēs" became "Hercle" by syncopation and then was expanded to "Herecele". Pallottino regarded this variation in vowels as "instability in the quality of vowels" and accounted for the second phase (e.g. "Herecele") as "vowel harmony, i.e., of the assimilation of vowels in neighboring syllables".


title: Etruscan language

text: The writing system had two historical phases: the archaic from the seventh to fifth centuries BC, which used the early Greek alphabet, and the later from the fourth to first centuries BC, which modified some of the letters. In the later period, syncopation increased.


title: Etruscan language

text: The alphabet went on in modified form after the language disappeared. In addition to being the source of the Roman and early Oscan and Umbrian alphabets, it has been suggested that it passed northward into Veneto and from there through Raetia into the Germanic lands, where it became the Elder Futhark alphabet, the oldest form of the runes.


title: Etruscan language

text: The Etruscan corpus is edited in the "Corpus Inscriptionum Etruscarum" (CIE) and "Thesaurus Linguae Etruscae" (TLE).


title: Etruscan language

text: The Pyrgi Tablets are a bilingual text in Etruscan and Phoenician engraved on three gold leaves, one for the Phoenician and two for the Etruscan. The Etruscan language portion has 16 lines and 37 words. The date is roughly 500 BC.


title: Etruscan language

text: The tablets were found in 1964 by Massimo Pallottino during an excavation at the ancient Etruscan port of Pyrgi, now Santa Severa. The only new Etruscan word that could be extracted from close analysis of the tablets was the word for 'three', .


title: Etruscan language

text: According to Rix and his collaborators, only two unified (though fragmentary) texts are available in Etruscan:


title: Etruscan language

text: The main material repository of Etruscan civilization, from the modern perspective, is its tombs, all other public and private buildings having been dismantled and the stone reused centuries ago. The tombs are the main source of Etruscan portables, provenance unknown, in collections throughout the world. Their incalculable value has created a brisk black market in Etruscan "objets d'art" – and equally brisk law enforcement effort, as it is illegal to remove any objects from Etruscan tombs without authorization from the Italian government.


title: Etruscan language

text: The magnitude of the task involved in cataloguing them means that the total number of tombs is unknown. They are of many types. Especially plentiful are the hypogeal or "underground" chambers or system of chambers cut into tuff and covered by a tumulus. The interior of these tombs represents a habitation of the living stocked with furniture and favorite objects. The walls may display painted murals, the predecessor of wallpaper. Tombs identified as Etruscan date from the Villanovan period to about 100 BC, when presumably the cemeteries were abandoned in favor of Roman ones. Some of the major cemeteries are as follows:


title: Etruscan language

text: One example of an early (pre-fifth century bce) votive inscription is on a bucchero oinochoe (wine vase): "ṃiṇi mulvaṇịce venalia ṡlarinaṡ. en mipi kapi ṃi(r) ṇuṇai" = “Venalia Ṡlarinaṡ gave me. Do not touch me (?), I (am) "nunai" (an offering?)." This seems to be a rare case from this early period of a female (Venalia) dedicating the votive.


title: Etruscan language

text: A speculum is a circular or oval hand-mirror used predominantly by Etruscan women. is Latin; the Etruscan word is or . Specula were cast in bronze as one piece or with a tang into which a wooden, bone, or ivory handle fitted. The reflecting surface was created by polishing the flat side. A higher percentage of tin in the mirror improved its ability to reflect. The other side was convex and featured intaglio or cameo scenes from mythology. The piece was generally ornate.


title: Etruscan language

text: About 2,300 specula are known from collections all over the world. As they were popular plunderables, the provenance of only a minority is known. An estimated time window is 530–100 BC. Most probably came from tombs.


title: Etruscan language

text: Many bear inscriptions naming the persons depicted in the scenes, so they are often called picture bilinguals. In 1979, Massimo Pallottino, then president of the "Istituto di Studi Etruschi ed Italici" initiated the Committee of the "Corpus Speculorum Etruscanorum", which resolved to publish all the specula and set editorial standards for doing so.


title: Etruscan language

text: Since then, the committee has grown, acquiring local committees and representatives from most institutions owning Etruscan mirror collections. Each collection is published in its own fascicle by diverse Etruscan scholars.


title: Etruscan language

text: A cista is a bronze container of circular, ovoid, or more rarely rectangular shape used by women for the storage of sundries. They are ornate, often with feet and lids to which figurines may be attached. The internal and external surfaces bear carefully crafted scenes usually from mythology, usually intaglio, or rarely part intaglio, part cameo.


title: Etruscan language

text: Cistae date from the Roman Republic of the fourth and third centuries BC in Etruscan contexts. They may bear various short inscriptions concerning the manufacturer or owner or subject matter. The writing may be Latin, Etruscan, or both. Excavations at Praeneste, an Etruscan city which became Roman, turned up about 118 cistae, one of which has been termed "the Praeneste cista" or "the Ficoroni cista" by art analysts, with special reference to the one manufactured by Novios Plutius and given by Dindia Macolnia to her daughter, as the archaic Latin inscription says. All of them are more accurately termed "the Praenestine cistae".


title: Etruscan language

text: Among the most plunderable portables from the Etruscan tombs of Etruria are the finely engraved gemstones set in patterned gold to form circular or ovoid pieces intended to go on finger rings. Around one centimeter in size, they are dated to the Etruscan apogee from the second half of the sixth to the first centuries BC. The two main theories of manufacture are native Etruscan and Greek. The materials are mainly dark red carnelian, with agate and sard entering usage from the third to the first centuries BC, along with purely gold finger rings with a hollow engraved bezel setting. The engravings, mainly cameo, but sometimes intaglio, depict scarabs at first and then scenes from Greek mythology, often with heroic personages called out in Etruscan. The gold setting of the bezel bears a border design, such as cabling.


title: Etruscan language

text: Etruscan-minted coins can be dated between the 5th and 3rd centuries BC. Use of the 'Chalcidian' standard, based on the silver unit of 5.8 grams, indicates that this custom, like the alphabet, came from Greece. Roman coinage later supplanted Etruscan, but the basic Roman coin, the "sesterce", is believed to have been based on the 2.5-denomination Etruscan coin. Etruscan coins have turned up in caches or individually in tombs and in excavations seemingly at random, and concentrated, of course, in Etruria.


title: Etruscan language

text: Etruscan coins were in gold, silver, and bronze, the gold and silver usually having been struck on one side only. The coins often bore a denomination, sometimes a minting authority name, and a cameo motif. Gold denominations were in units of silver; silver, in units of bronze. Full or abbreviated names are mainly Pupluna (Populonia), Vatl or Veltuna (Vetulonia), Velathri (Volaterrae), Velzu or Velznani (Volsinii) and Cha for Chamars (Camars). Insignia are mainly heads of mythological characters or depictions of mythological beasts arranged in a symbolic motif: Apollo, Zeus, Culsans, Athena, Hermes, griffin, gorgon, male sphinx, hippocamp, bull, snake, eagle, or other creatures which had symbolic significance.


title: Etruscan language

text: Wallace et alia include the following categories, based on the uses to which they were put, on their site: abecedaria (alphabets), artisans' texts, boundary markers, construction texts, dedications, didaskalia (instructional texts), funerary texts, legal texts, other/unclear texts, prohibitions, proprietary texts (indicating ownership), religious texts, tesserae hospitales (tokens that establish "the claim of the bearer to hospitality when travelling").


title: Etruscan language

text: In the tables below, conventional letters used for transliterating Etruscan are accompanied by likely pronunciation in symbols within the square brackets, followed by examples of the early Etruscan alphabet which would have corresponded to these sounds.


title: Etruscan language

text: The Etruscan vowel system consisted of four distinct vowels. The vowels "o" and "u" appear to have not been phonetically distinguished based on the nature of the writing system, as only one symbol is used to cover both in loans from Greek (e.g. Greek > Etruscan 'pitcher').


title: Etruscan language

text: Before the front vowels is used, while and are used before respectively unrounded and rounded back vowels.


title: Etruscan language

text: Etruscan also might have had consonants ʧ and ʧʰ, as they might be represented in the writing by using two letters, like in the word ('great-nephew' or 'great-grandson'). However, this theory is not widely accepted.


title: Etruscan language

text: The Etruscan consonant system primarily distinguished between aspirated and non-aspirated stops. There were no voiced stops. When words from foreign languages were borrowed into Etruscan, voiced stops typically became unvoiced stops; one example is Greek , which became Etruscan and Latin . Such a lack of voiced stops is not particularly unusual; it is found e.g. in modern Icelandic, in Scottish Gaelic, and in most Chinese languages. Even in English, aspiration is often more important than voice in the distinction of fortis-lenis pairs.


title: Etruscan language

text: Based on standard spellings by Etruscan scribes of words without vowels or with unlikely consonant clusters (e.g. 'of this (gen.)' and 'freeman'), it is likely that were sometimes syllabic sonorants (cf. English "little, "button). Thus and .


title: Etruscan language

text: Rix postulates several syllabic consonants, namely and palatal as well as a labiovelar spirant , and some scholars such as Mauro Cristofani also view the aspirates as palatal rather than aspirated but these views are not shared by most Etruscologists. Rix supports his theories by means of variant spellings such as "/", "/", "/".


title: Etruscan language

text: Etruscan was an agglutinative language, varying the endings of nouns, adjectives, pronouns and verbs with discrete endings for each function. It also had adverbs and conjunctions, whose endings did not vary.


title: Etruscan language

text: Etruscan substantives had five cases—nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, and locative—and two numbers: singular and a plural. Not all five cases are attested for every word. Nouns merge the nominative and accusative; pronouns do not generally merge these. Gender appears in personal names (masculine and feminine) and in pronouns (animate and inanimate); otherwise, it is not marked.


title: Etruscan language

text: Unlike the Indo-European languages, Etruscan noun endings were more agglutinative, with some nouns bearing two or three agglutinated suffixes. For example, where Latin would have distinct nominative plural and dative plural endings, Etruscan would suffix the case ending to a plural marker: Latin nominative singular , 'son', plural , dative plural , but Etruscan , and . Moreover, Etruscan nouns could bear multiple suffixes from the case paradigm alone: that is, Etruscan exhibited "Suffixaufnahme". Pallottino calls this phenomenon "morphological redetermination", which he defines as "the typical tendency ... to redetermine the syntactical function of the form by the superposition of suffixes." His example is , 'in the sanctuary of Juno', where" -al" is a genitive ending and "-θi" a locative.


title: Etruscan language

text: Steinbauer says of Etruscan, "there can be more than one marker ... to design a case, and ... the same marker can occur for more than one case."


title: Etruscan language

text: Personal pronouns refer to persons; demonstrative pronouns point out English "this", "that", "there".


title: Etruscan language

text: The first-person personal pronoun has a nominative ('I') and an accusative ('me'). The third person has a personal form ('he' or 'she') and an inanimate ('it'). The second person is uncertain, but some, like the Bonfantes, have claimed a dative singular ('to thee') and an accusative singular ('thee').


title: Etruscan language

text: The demonstratives, and , are used without distinction for 'that' or 'this'. The nominative–accusative singular forms are: "," "," "," "," ; the plural: "," . There is a genitive singular: "," "," and plural . The accusative singular: "," "," "," "," "," ; plural 'these/those'. Locative singular: ; plural .


title: Etruscan language

text: Though uninflected for number, adjectives were inflected for case, agreeing with their noun: 'good' versus genitive 'of (the) good...'


title: Etruscan language

text: Adverbs are unmarked: , 'again'; , 'now, here'; , 'at first' (compare 'one'). Most Indo-European adverbs are formed from the oblique cases, which become unproductive and descend to fixed forms. Cases such as the ablative are therefore called adverbial. If there is any such widespread system in Etruscan, it is not obvious from the relatively few surviving adverbs.


title: Etruscan language

text: The two enclitic coordinate conjunctions "‐ka/‐ca/‐c" 'and' and "-um/‐m" 'and, but' coordinated phrases and clauses, but phrases could also be coordinated without any conjunction (asyndetic).


title: Etruscan language

text: Verbs had an indicative mood, an imperative mood and others. Tenses were present and past. The past tense had an active voice and a passive voice.


title: Etruscan language

text: Etruscan used a verbal root with a zero suffix or "-a" without distinction to number or person: "," , 'he, she, we, you, they make'.


title: Etruscan language

text: Adding the suffix to the verb root produces a third-person singular active, which has been called variously a "past", a "preterite", a "perfect." In contrast to Indo-European, this form is not marked for person. Examples: 'gives, dedicates' versus 'gave, dedicated'; 'lives' versus 'lived'.


title: Etruscan language

text: The imperative was formed with the simple, uninflected root of the verb: 'dedicate!', 'put!', 'speak!' and 'invoke!').


title: Etruscan language

text: Verbs with the suffix "‐a" indicated the jussive mood, with the force of commanding, or exhorting (within a subjunctive framework).


title: Etruscan language

text: Verbs formed participles in a variety of ways, among the most frequently attested being "-u" in 'dead' from 'die'.


title: Etruscan language

text: Participles could also be formed with "‐θ". These referred to activities that were contemporaneous with that of the main verb: '(while) speaking', '(while) invoking', and '(while) pouring (?)'.


title: Etruscan language

text: Typical of SOV agglutinative languages, Etruscan had postpositions rather than prepositions, each governing a specific case.


title: Etruscan language

text: Only a few hundred words of the Etruscan vocabulary are understood with some certainty. The exact count depends on whether the different forms and the expressions are included. Below is a table of some of the words grouped by topic.


title: Etruscan language

text: Some words with corresponding Latin or other Indo-European forms are likely loanwords to or from Etruscan. For example, 'nephew', is probably from Latin (Latin "," ; this is a cognate of German , Old Norse ). A number of words and names for which Etruscan origin has been proposed survive in Latin.


title: Etruscan language

text: At least one Etruscan word has an apparent Semitic/Aramaic origin: 'girl', that could have been transmitted by Phoenicians or by the Greeks (Greek: ). The word 'house' is a false cognate to the Coptic 'house'.


title: Etruscan language

text: In addition to words believed to have been borrowed into Etruscan from Indo-European or elsewhere, there is a corpus of words such as which seem to have been borrowed into Latin from the older Etruscan civilization as a superstrate influence. Some of these words still have widespread currency in English and Latin-influenced languages. Other words believed to have a possible Etruscan origin include:


title: Etruscan language

text: Much debate has been carried out about a possible Indo-European origin of the Etruscan cardinals. In the words of Larissa Bonfante (1990), "What these numerals show, beyond any shadow of a doubt, is the non-Indo-European nature of the Etruscan language". Conversely, other scholars, including Francisco R. Adrados, Albert Carnoy, Marcello Durante, Vladimir Georgiev, Alessandro Morandi and Massimo Pittau, have proposed a close phonetic proximity of the first ten Etruscan numerals to the corresponding numerals in other Indo-European languages.


title: Etruscan language

text: For higher numbers, it has been determined that is 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and and any two in the series 70–90. is 100 (clearly 10, just as Proto-Indo-European 100 is from 10). Further, mean 'once, twice, and thrice' respectively; and 'first' and 'third'; 'one by one', 'two by two'; and and are 'double' and 'quadruple'.


title: Georgia May Jagger

text: Jagger was born at Portland Hospital in West End, London, England, to British Rolling Stones lead singer Mick Jagger and American supermodel Jerry Hall. She has three siblings from her parents, Elizabeth, James, and Gabriel. Additionally, she has several half-siblings from her father's other relationships: Karis, Jade, Lucas, and Deveraux. She was raised near Richmond Park and moved to New York City in autumn 2010.


title: Georgia May Jagger

text: In 2008, Jagger signed with Independent Models, and is currently represented by TESS Model Management. She debuted at Chanel's Resort 2011 show, which she closed. She has also walked for Tommy Hilfiger, Balmain, Vivienne Westwood, Alexander Wang, Miu Miu, Sonia Rykiel, Thierry Mugler, Marchesa, Versace, Fendi, Tom Ford, rag & bone, Isabel Marant, Louis Vuitton, Marc Jacobs, and Just Cavalli among others.


title: Georgia May Jagger

text: In 2009, Jagger was named Model of the Year at the Fashion Awards by the British Fashion Council. She was the face of Hudson Jeans from 2009 to 2013. In 2009, she began a contract with English cosmetics company Rimmel. She has appeared in advertisements for the Thierry Mugler fragrance, Angel.


title: Georgia May Jagger

text: Jagger took part in the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony with Kate Moss, Naomi Campbell and Lily Donaldson, representing British fashion.


title: Georgia May Jagger

text: In 2014, she appeared in an international campaign for German jewellery concern Thomas Sabo's Glam & Soul and Karma Beads ladies' collections. The basis of the campaign was a short film by photographer Ellen von Unwerth.


title: Moff Gideon

text: Moff Gideon is a fictional character in the "Star Wars" franchise who first appeared in the Disney+ television series "The Mandalorian". Gideon is the leader of a remnant of the fallen Galactic Empire, and attempts to capture the young alien Grogu, who is being protected by the title character of the series.


title: Moff Gideon

text: Gideon is portrayed by Giancarlo Esposito. He was recruited for the part by "The Mandalorian" creator and showrunner Jon Favreau, who had previously worked with Esposito on several projects. Gideon is portrayed as a dangerous and fierce man who, "seems to know everything about everyone", and does not hesitate to kill anyone to get what he wants, including his own men. The character did not make his first appearance until the of the first season, but played a larger role in the second season with four episodes.


title: Moff Gideon

text: Esposito has rejected simple classifications of Gideon as a "good" or "bad" character, noting that he is attempting to restore order to a lawless galaxy and could arguably be seen as a "savior for the galaxy". Gideon's all-black costume has been compared to that of "Star Wars" character Darth Vader, and reviewers have noted similarities in their personalities and behavior as well. Moff Gideon has been received positively by reviewers and fans. Esposito was nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actor in a Drama Series for his performance in the first season, while also earning a nomination for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for the second.


title: Moff Gideon

text: Few details of his backstory have been revealed. Gideon was previously an operative in the Imperial Security Bureau, a covert intelligence arm and secret police for the Galactic Empire. Prior to the events of "The Mandalorian", Gideon played a role in the Great Purge, an oppressive combat operation against a culture known as the Mandalorians, which resulted in many of them being killed and the survivors becoming scattered across the galaxy. Gideon knows information about the show's title character, otherwise known as "The Mandalorian", including his identity, due to his role in the Purge. The term "Moff" is a title for a high-ranking Imperial official who served as a governor of a specific sector of space for the Empire. Its first use dates back to the original "Star Wars" (1977) film, most notably with the character Grand Moff Tarkin, though the word "Moff" is not used in that film and the character is only identified by that title in the end credits.


title: Moff Gideon

text: Gideon's life drastically changed after the fall of the Empire, and he became a warlord leading his own Imperial remnant. As the character Cara Dune states in the show, it was widely believed Gideon had been executed for war crimes before the series began. In "The Mandalorian", Gideon is attempting to capture a young alien Grogu, also known as "The Child", to extract its blood for Dr. Pershing's secret experiments.<ref name="Vulture 12/20"></ref><ref name="Esquire 11/20"></ref> Just prior to Gideon's first appearance on "The Mandalorian", he dispatched his forces to eliminate the Mandalorian tribe on the planet Nevarro after they revealed their presence there during the episode "".


title: Moff Gideon

text: Gideon made his first appearance in "", the penultimate episode of the first season of "The Mandalorian". He first appears when he contacts "The Client", an unnamed operative working to obtain Grogu for Gideon. The Client is meeting with the bounty hunter Greef Karga and his associate Cara Dune at a cantina on the planet Nevarro. He is under the impression that Greef has brought Grogu to him, along with the imprisoned Mandalorian, who had been trying to protect Grogu from the Empire. In reality, Grogu is not with them, and the meeting is a trap arranged by the Mandalorian and his allies to kill the Client and his stormtoopers. When Gideon contacts the Client during the meeting, the Client assures him he has Grogu in his custody. Gideon suggests that is not the case, then orders a squadron of his death troopers to open fire on the cantina, killing the Client and his troops. Afterwards, the cantina is surrounded by stormtroopers and death troopers, and Gideon lands his modified TIE fighter outside the building and emerges, informing the trapped Mandalorian, Cara, and Greef that he wants Grogu.


title: Moff Gideon

text: Gideon returns in the season finale episode, "", in which he speaks to the Mandalorian and his party from outside the cantina, demanding they turn Grogu over to him. Gideon reveals he knows secret details about all of them, and refers to the Mandalorian by his real name, Din Djarin, marking the first time this name was revealed in the show. When the droid IG-11 arrives to assist the Mandalorian and his allies, a brief gunfight breaks out between them and the stormtroopers. During this fight, Gideon seriously injures and nearly kills the Mandalorian by shooting a power generator near him, causing an explosion.


title: Moff Gideon

text: The Mandalorian and his party escape from the Imperials, but Gideon later encounters them elsewhere on the planet, where Gideon attacks them from above with his TIE fighter while they are on the ground. The Mandalorian uses his jetpack to fly after and attack Gideon's starfighter, connecting his grapple hook to the wing after briefly clinging to the top of the TIE fighter in mid-air. He places an explosive charge on the ship and it explodes, causing the damaged TIE fighter to crash in the distance, which allows the Mandalorian and his allies to escape. In the final scene of the episode and season, Gideon is shown to have survived the crash, and he extracts himself from the wreckage by cutting through the TIE fighter's metal exterior with the Darksaber, a black-bladed lightsaber which is an ancient Mandalorian artifact.


title: Moff Gideon

text: In "", Gideon is contacted by the captain of an Imperial freighter on the oceanic moon Trask, which was come under siege by the Mandalorian and a group of other Mandalorian warriors led by Bo-Katan Kryze, who is targeting Imperial cargo ships in the hopes of reclaiming the Darksaber. Deeming the ship doomed, Gideon orders the captain to destroy it and everyone aboard. The Mandalorians manage to prevent the ship's destruction, though the captain commits suicide, more afraid of Gideon than Bo-Katan Kryze.


title: Moff Gideon

text: Gideon's plan is partially revealed in "", in which the Mandalorian, Greef, Cara, and their Mythrol companion infiltrate a secret cloning facility at an Imperial base on Nevarro. There, they discover several bodies encased in tanks and a recorded message from Dr. Pershing to Gideon. Pershing states that he requires access to Grogu's blood, which is needed to provide a body with Force-sensitivity. However, several of the experiments have resulted in failure. Gideon makes a physical appearance at the end of the episode, standing in a chamber filled with Dark Troopers, aboard his cruiser. An officer informs him that the Mandalorian is still in possession of Grogu and that a tracking beacon has been placed on his ship, the "Razor Crest".


title: Moff Gideon

text: In "", Gideon tracks the Mandalorian to Tython and sends two shuttles of stormtroopers to capture Grogu. While the Mandalorian and the recently arrived Boba Fett and Fennec Shand fight them off, they fail to prevent Grogu from being taken by four of Gideon's Dark Troopers, and the "Razor Crest" from being destroyed by an orbital strike from Gideon's cruiser. Escaping with Grogu, Gideon witnesses him using his Force powers on two stormtroopers that he throws around his holding cell, before stunning him and preparing to take him to Dr. Pershing to complete the blood transfusion.


title: Moff Gideon

text: In "", the Mandalorian and his team infiltrate Gideon's ship, where Grogu is held hostage. Gideon offers Grogu to the Mandalorian on the condition that he leave the ship. However, Gideon attacks the Mandalorian with the Darksaber. The Mandalorian wins the duel and hands Gideon over to Cara Dune. When the Mandalorian tries to give the Darksaber to Bo-Katan, Gideon reveals that the wielder of the blade has a claim to the throne of Mandalore and the blade can only be won in battle. A squadron of dark troopers attempt to rescue Gideon, but they are destroyed by Luke Skywalker, who has come to take Grogu for him to be trained as a Jedi. Defeated, Gideon attempts suicide, but is foiled by Cara Dune and taken into custody.


title: Moff Gideon

text: Gideon is briefly mentioned in the spinoff show "The Book of Boba Fett", set after season two of "The Mandalorian". In "Chapter 5: Return of the Mandalorian", the Mandalorian explains to the survivors of his tribe that he had defeated Gideon, one of the perpetrators of the "Purge of Mandalore", to claim the Darksaber, and that Gideon had been turned over to the New Republic to be tried for his crimes. The Armorer explains to the Mandalorian that ownership of the Darksaber made Gideon the "Heir to Mandalore" before the Mandalorian had won it from him, a title that is now his, although due to removing his helmet, he cannot be considered a Mandalorian by their tribe before bathing in the caves beneath the ruined Mandalore.


title: Moff Gideon

text: Gideon is a dangerous and fierce man, who does not hesitate to harm or kill anyone to get what he wants. Though leading a remnant of the Galactic Empire, Gideon freely admits that he acts in his own self-interest, and in the first-season finale of "The Mandalorian" he explicitly states to the Mandalorian and his allies that they cannot trust him and he would gladly kill them all. Gideon does not hesitate to kill his own men when they fail him, or even for mere annoyances, like when they interrupt him. Sly, intimidating, and unforgiving, Gideon is extremely determined to achieve his goals, and is willing to sacrifice the lives of his men to get Grogu. His motivation to get Grogu appears personal, as he tells the Mandalorian: "it means more to me than you will ever know".


title: Moff Gideon

text: Gideon is a strong military strategist, and despite the fall of the Empire still wields power, commanding a considerable number of Imperial forces, including people, equipment, and spaceships. Stephanie Dube Dwilson of "Heavy.com" noted that while many of the remnant Imperial stormtroopers featured throughout the first season had worn and dirty armor, the troopers under Gideon's command had new and pristine armor, reflecting Gideon's stature. Through his past association with the Imperial Security Bureau, Gideon had access to a great deal of classified intelligence, and as a result he is extremely knowledgeable about topics unknown to most other characters in the series. Giancarlo Esposito said the character "seems to know everything about everyone", as illustrated in the season finale, when he reveals he knows the names and biographical details of the Mandalorian, Cara Dune, and Greef Karga.


title: Moff Gideon

text: Esposito has rejected simple classifications of Gideon as a "good" or "bad" character, noting that he is attempting to restore stability to the galaxy following the fall of the Empire. Esposito felt Gideon becomes "sort of the guardian of the people" after the Empire's decline, and that in attempting to bring order to a lawless time, the character could be seen as a "savior". Esposito said of the character: "Is he good? Is he bad? We don't know. We do know that the world needs someone to put it back together." He felt this moral ambiguity was particularly applicable to the real world at the time in which the series was released, saying: "Leaders who exhibit kind of a faulty power because they still have ideas that they want to aggrandize themselves; we're in that world now." Gideon has a vision for the future, and a strong personal sense of order, one of the driving principles of the Empire, which had a militaristic approach to policing the galaxy that Gideon also embraces.


title: Moff Gideon

text: Several reviewers have suggested that Gideon may be actively attempting to emulate Darth Vader, one of the major characters from the "Star Wars" franchise who had been an agent of the Empire. Gideon's personality and behavior also bear similarities to Vader, including his tendency to execute underlings who disappoint him. Kevin Melrose of "Comic Book Resources" also noted that Gideon's TIE fighter crash near the end of the first-season finale is similar to Vader's final scene in the original "Star Wars" film, when his own TIE Advanced fighter is sent spiraling out of control into space.


title: Moff Gideon

text: Moff Gideon is portrayed in "The Mandalorian" by Giancarlo Esposito. He was recruited for the part by series creator and showrunner Jon Favreau. Esposito and Favreau had previously worked together on several previous projects, starting with the pilot for the post-apocalyptic science fiction television series "Revolution", which Favreau directed and in which Esposito starred. Favreau next directed Esposito in a commercial for the video game "Destiny", which led to Favreau casting him in his film adaptation of "The Jungle Book" (2016). Esposito said one of the first things he did after accepting the role was to contact his friend Samuel L. Jackson, the actor who portrayed Mace Windu in the "Star Wars" prequel trilogy, and say: "Yo man, I'm in that series too, dude!"


title: Moff Gideon

text: The casting of Esposito was announced on December 12, 2018. Details about his character were not immediately revealed, though there was early speculation he might be playing a villain due to his past performance as Gus Fring, one of the primary antagonists of "Breaking Bad" and an important character in its spinoff "Better Call Saul". Footage of Gideon was first publicly shown at the "Star Wars" Celebration convention in Chicago on April 14, 2019, which included a brief shot of the character flying his TIE Fighter. Esposito was on-hand at the D23 Expo on August 23, 2019, for the release of the first public trailer of "The Mandalorian". Gideon also appeared briefly in a second trailer released on October 28, 2019.


title: Moff Gideon

text: In preparation for the role, Esposito rewatched the "Star Wars" films to get a sense of the "style of the films" and to try to get feeling for what it would be like to be in that fictional universe. Esposito was a fan of the original "Star Wars" trilogy film prior to joining "The Mandalorian", though he said he was less interested in the later prequel films because they "became more and more in a different vein than what I wanted to be in". Regarding the original "Star Wars" films, Esposito said:


title: Moff Gideon

text: Esposito was disappointed with the lack of diversity in the older "Star Wars" films and appreciated that there were more minority actors in the later productions, as well as in the cast of "The Mandalorian", which he credited to Favreau. He called being cast as Moff Gideon "a dream come true", and said of the role: "He's a very interesting character and I'm so honored to be a part of this production." After the show aired, Giancarlo said two of his four daughters sent him text messages urging him not to hurt the Child, who had become an internet sensation. Esposito said he jokingly responded: "I will squash that little big-eared bastard."


title: Moff Gideon

text: Moff Gideon's costume was designed by Brian Matyas, concept designer and artist for "The Mandalorian". He called designing Gideon's costume "one of the highlights for me on the show, and for my career as a whole". The costume was created based upon the design by costume designer Joseph Porro, with props and costume fabrication by Frank Ippolito via Ippolito's company Thingergy Inc. The costume is all-black and includes body armor, a cape, and an elaborate chest piece, and several reviewers have noted the costume's similarities to that of "Star Wars" character Darth Vader. Esposito called his costume "incredible", and said he wanted to keep his costume and props after filming, but was not able to: "They said to me, it's all going to wind up in a museum. You're going to be so honored when you see it there in a couple of years. But you can't have it now."


title: Moff Gideon

text: Esposito's scenes for "The Mandalorian" were filmed on a sound stage in Southern California on a "Volume", a large warehouse-like motion-capture stage with green screens and tracking cameras spread throughout the space. Using a combination of physical set pieces and images projected onto the screens, the Volume allows the actors to be filmed and placed into a digital environment. Esposito said of filming scenes in the Volume: "we can control the physical atmosphere of what is projected on the walls and control how gravity is; you get a feeling that gravity is being played with".


title: Moff Gideon

text: Esposito particularly enjoyed working with Taika Waititi, the director of the season finale, who he described as "in his own world creatively" and called "a very different and odd human being, but aren't we all as creative artists?" The sequences with Moff Gideon flying his TIE Fighter were filmed in the Volume, and Waititi was very detail-oriented in working with Esposito on the scenes. For example, Waititi gave Esposito very specific feedback on what he felt Esposito should be doing with his feet during the final scene when he cuts himself free of the crashed TIE Fighter. Esposito found this direction confusing, saying: "What's bugging you about the way my feet are? I'm on [a] globe 30 feet in [the] sky." Esposito said he enjoyed seeing and interacting with the animatronic puppet of Grogu during filming, saying: "It melts my heart, because the reality is, this little baby does things that you could never imagine and when you look at those eyes and that little body, how can you not help but fall in love?" Esposito had not seen the finished footage of "The Mandalorian" until a few months before the show aired.