title: George Cole (actor)

text: Aged 15, Cole was cast in the film "Cottage to Let" (1941) opposite Scottish actor Alastair Sim. Sim liked Cole, and agreed with his family to take in Cole and his adoptive mother to their home. Acting as his mentor, Sim helped Cole lose his Cockney accent; Cole stayed with the Sim family until he was 27. He later attributed his career success to Sim, with whom he appeared in a total of 11 films, ending with a filmed version for television of "The Anatomist" (1956), from the play by James Bridie. Cole also acted opposite Laurence Olivier in "The Demi-Paradise" (1943) and Olivier's film version of "Henry V" (1944), of which he was the last surviving cast member. His career was interrupted by his national service in the Royal Air Force from 1944 to 1947, where he was temporarily a radio operator.


title: George Cole (actor)

text: Returning to his acting career, he became familiar to audiences in British comedy films in the 1950s. Cole appeared with Alastair Sim in "Scrooge" (as the young Scrooge) in 1951, including a scene with fellow actor Patrick Macnee who played the young Jacob Marley. His best known film role was as "Flash Harry" in the "St Trinian's" films (two of which also star Sim), and in the comedy "Too Many Crooks" (1959). He also starred in the film "Take Me High" (1973) alongside Cliff Richard and Deborah Watling. Cole was also known for his lead role in the radio comedy "A Life of Bliss" (1953–69), in which he played an amiable but bumbling bachelor, David Alexander Bliss, (initially played by David Tomlinson); it lasted for six series and 118 episodes. It became a TV series in 1960, running for two series, but no recordings of the TV episodes are known to survive.


title: George Cole (actor)

text: "The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh" (1963) is a three-part serial which formed part of the "Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color" TV series. It was shot on location in England and stars Patrick McGoohan as Doctor Syn, with Cole as Mipps.


title: George Cole (actor)

text: In 1964, Cole guest-starred as 'Bishop', an increasingly deranged arsonist, in the episode "Firebug" in the ITV series "Gideons Way". In 1968, he starred as Max Osborne in the TV series "A Man of Our Times".


title: George Cole (actor)

text: Cole appeared as a guest star in the Gerry Anderson-produced television series "UFO" in the episode "Flight Path" (1971), and he appeared as a storyteller on the BBC children's programme "Jackanory", narrating in six episodes between 1969 and 1971. He also made a guest appearance as Mr Downs, a bank manager, in a 1978 episode of the sitcom "The Good Life", performed in the presence of Queen Elizabeth II.


title: George Cole (actor)

text: His best-remembered television role was as the crafty wheeler-dealer Arthur Daley in the popular and successful Thames Television series "Minder", which he played from 1979 to the show's conclusion in 1994. Prior to this, he had played a struggling writer in the BBC sitcom "Don't Forget To Write!" (1977–79).


title: George Cole (actor)

text: Although he is most associated with the character of Arthur Daley, it was one which produced mixed emotions in him, describing variously his support for the character as well as citing in his autobiography how much he loathed the type of person Daley was.


title: George Cole (actor)

text: Cole also played Sir Giles Lynchwood in the BBC's adaptation of the Tom Sharpe novel "Blott on the Landscape" (1985). Cole starred in a number of comedies, such as "The Bounder" (1982–83), "Comrade Dad" (1984–86), "Dad" (1997–98) and "My Good Friend" (1995–96).


title: George Cole (actor)

text: Cole appeared in a "New Tricks" (BBC), series 4 Episode 5 "Powerhouse" (2007) and the Midsomer Murders episode "Shot at Dawn" (2008).


title: George Cole (actor)

text: Cole was married twice, first to actress Eileen Moore (b.1932) from 1954 until 1962 (when they divorced), and then to actress Penny Morrell (1967–2015, his death). Cole had four children, two from each marriage. His son from his first marriage, Cris Cole, is a screenwriter for film and television.


title: George Cole (actor)

text: He was invested as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1992. He resided for over 70 years in Stoke Row, Oxfordshire. His autobiography "The World Was My Lobster", a phrase taken from an episode of "Minder" that made George smile, was published in 2013.


title: George Cole (actor)

text: Cole died at the age of 90 on 5 August 2015 at the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading, Berkshire, after a short illness. His funeral took place at Reading Crematorium on 13 August. The "Minder" theme song was played and Cole's "Minder" co-star Dennis Waterman gave a eulogy.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Cyrus Cylinder is an ancient clay cylinder, now broken into several pieces, on which is written a declaration in Akkadian cuneiform script in the name of Persia's Achaemenid king Cyrus the Great. It dates from the 6th century BC and was discovered in the ruins of the ancient Mesopotamian city of Babylon (now in modern Iraq) in 1879. It is currently in the possession of the British Museum, which sponsored the expedition that discovered the cylinder. It was created and used as a foundation deposit following the Persian conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, when the Neo-Babylonian Empire was invaded by Cyrus and incorporated into his Persian Empire.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The text on the Cylinder praises Cyrus, sets out his genealogy and portrays him as a king from a line of kings. The Babylonian king Nabonidus, who was defeated and deposed by Cyrus, is denounced as an impious oppressor of the people of Babylonia and his low-born origins are implicitly contrasted to Cyrus' kingly heritage. The victorious Cyrus is portrayed as having been chosen by the chief Babylonian god Marduk to restore peace and order to the Babylonians. The text states that Cyrus was welcomed by the people of Babylon as their new ruler and entered the city in peace. It appeals to Marduk to protect and help Cyrus and his son Cambyses. It extols Cyrus as a benefactor of the citizens of Babylonia who improved their lives, repatriated displaced people and restored temples and cult sanctuaries across Mesopotamia and elsewhere in the region. It concludes with a description of how Cyrus repaired the city wall of Babylon and found a similar inscription placed there by an earlier king.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Cylinder's text has traditionally been seen by biblical scholars as corroborative evidence of Cyrus' policy of the repatriation of the Jewish people following their Babylonian captivity (an act that the Book of Ezra attributes to Cyrus), as the text refers to the restoration of cult sanctuaries and repatriation of deported peoples. This interpretation has been disputed, as the text identifies only Mesopotamian sanctuaries, and makes no mention of Jews, Jerusalem, or Judea. Nonetheless, it has been seen as a sign of Cyrus's relatively enlightened approach towards cultural and religious diversity. The former Director of the British Museum, Neil MacGregor, said that the cylinder was "the first attempt we know about running a society, a state with different nationalities and faithsa new kind of statecraft".


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: In modern times, the Cylinder was adopted as a national symbol of Iran by the ruling Pahlavi dynasty, which put it on display in Tehran in 1971 to commemorate the 2,500-year celebration of the Persian Empire. Princess Ashraf Pahlavi presented United Nations Secretary General U Thant with a replica of the Cylinder. The princess asserted that "the heritage of Cyrus was the heritage of human understanding, tolerance, courage, compassion and, above all, human liberty". Her brother, Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, promoted the Cylinder as a "charter of human rights", though this interpretation has been described by various historians as "rather anachronistic" and tendentious.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Assyro-British archaeologist Hormuzd Rassam discovered the Cyrus Cylinder in March 1879 during a lengthy programme of excavations in Mesopotamia carried out for the British Museum. It had been placed as a foundation deposit in the foundations of the Ésagila, the city's main temple. Rassam's expedition followed on from an earlier dig carried out in 1850 by the British archaeologist Austen Henry Layard, who excavated three mounds in the same area but found little of importance. In 1877, Layard became Britain's ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, which ruled Mesopotamia at the time. He helped Rassam, who had been his assistant in the 1850 dig, to obtain a "firman" (decree) from the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II to continue the earlier excavations. The "firman" was only valid for a year but a second "firman", with much more liberal terms, was issued in 1878. It was granted for two years (through to 15 October 1880) with the promise of an extension to 1882 if required. The Sultan's decree authorised Rassam to "pack and dispatch to England any antiquities [he] found ... provided, however, there were no duplicates". A representative of the Sultan was instructed to be present at the dig to examine the objects as they were uncovered.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: With permission secured, Rassam initiated a large-scale excavation at Babylon and other sites on behalf of the Trustees of the British Museum. He undertook the excavations in four distinct phases. In between each phase, he returned to England to bring back his finds and raise more funds for further work. The Cyrus Cylinder was found on the second of his four expeditions to Mesopotamia, which began with his departure from London on 8 October 1878. He arrived in his home town of Mosul on 16 November and travelled down the Tigris to Baghdad, which he reached on 30 January 1879. During February and March, he supervised excavations on a number of Babylonian sites, including Babylon itself.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: He soon uncovered a number of important buildings including the Ésagila temple, a major shrine to the chief Babylonian god Marduk, although its identity was not fully confirmed until the German archaeologist Robert Koldewey's excavation of 1900. The excavators found a large number of business documents written on clay tablets buried in the temple's foundations where they discovered the Cyrus Cylinder. Rassam gave conflicting accounts of where his discoveries were made. He wrote in his memoirs, "Asshur and the land of Nimrod", that the Cylinder had been found in a mound at the southern end of Babylon near the village of Jumjuma or Jimjima. However, in a letter sent on 20 November 1879 to Samuel Birch, the Keeper of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum, he wrote, "The Cylinder of Cyrus was found at Omran [Tell Amran-ibn-Ali] with about six hundred pieces of inscribed terracottas before I left Baghdad." He left Baghdad on 2 April, returning to Mosul and departing from there on 2 May for a journey to London which lasted until 19 June.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The discovery was announced to the public by Sir Henry Rawlinson, the President of the Royal Asiatic Society, at a meeting of the Society on 17 November 1879. He described it as "one of the most interesting historical records in the cuneiform character that has yet been brought to light", though he erroneously described it as coming from the ancient city of Borsippa rather than Babylon. Rawlinson's "Notes on a newly-discovered Clay Cylinder of Cyrus the Great" were published in the society's journal the following year, including the first partial translation of the text.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Cyrus Cylinder is a barrel-shaped cylinder of baked clay measuring by at its maximum diameter. It was created in several stages around a cone-shaped core of clay within which there are large grey stone inclusions. It was built up with extra layers of clay to give it a cylindrical shape before a fine surface slip of clay was added to the outer layer, on which the text is inscribed. It was excavated in several fragments, having apparently broken apart in antiquity. Today it exists in two main fragments, known as "A" and "B", which were reunited in 1972.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The main body of the Cylinder, discovered by Rassam in 1879, is fragment "A". It underwent restoration in 1961, when it was re-fired and plaster filling was added. The smaller fragment, "B", is a section measuring by . The latter fragment was acquired by J.B. Nies of Yale University from an antiquities dealer. Nies published the text in 1920. The fragment was apparently broken off the main body of the Cylinder during the original excavations in 1879 and was either removed from the excavations or was retrieved from one of Rassam's waste dumps. It was not confirmed as part of the Cylinder until Paul-Richard Berger of the University of Münster definitively identified it in 1970. Yale University lent the fragment to the British Museum temporarily (but, in practice, indefinitely) in exchange for "a suitable cuneiform tablet" from the British Museum collection.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: Although the Cylinder clearly post-dates Cyrus the Great's conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, the date of its creation is unclear. It is commonly said to date to the early part of Cyrus's reign over Babylon, some time after 539 BC. The British Museum puts the Cylinder's date of origin at between 539 and 530 BC.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The surviving inscription on the Cyrus Cylinder consists of 45 lines of text written in Akkadian cuneiform script. The first 35 lines are on fragment "A" and the remainder are on fragment "B". A number of lines at the start and end of the text are too badly damaged for more than a few words to be legible.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The beginning of the text is partly broken; the surviving content reprimands the character of the deposed Babylonian king Nabonidus. It lists his alleged crimes, charging him with the desecration of the temples of the gods and the imposition of forced labor upon the populace. According to the proclamation, as a result of these offenses, the god Marduk abandoned Babylon and sought a more righteous king. Marduk called forth Cyrus to enter Babylon and become its new ruler.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: Midway through the text, the writer switches to a first-person narrative in the voice of Cyrus, addressing the reader directly. A list of his titles is given (in a Mesopotamian rather than Persian style): "I am Cyrus, king of the world, great king, powerful king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters [of the earth], son of Cambyses, great king, king of Anshan, descendant of Teispes, great king, king of Anshan, the perpetual seed of kingship, whose reign Bel [Marduk] and Nebo love, and with whose kingship, to their joy, they concern themselves." He describes the pious deeds he performed after his conquest: he restored peace to Babylon and the other cities sacred to Marduk, freeing their inhabitants from their "yoke," and he "brought relief to their dilapidated housing (thus) putting an end to their (main) complaints". He repaired the ruined temples in the cities he conquered, restored their cults, and returned their sacred images as well as their former inhabitants which Nabonidus had taken to Babylon. Near the end of the inscription Cyrus highlights his restoration of Babylon's city wall, saying: "I saw within it an inscription of Ashurbanipal, a king who preceded me." The remainder is missing but presumably describes Cyrus's rededication of the gateway mentioned.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: A partial transcription by F. H. Weissbach in 1911 was supplanted by a much more complete transcription after the identification of the "B" fragment; this is now available in German and in English. Several editions of the full text of the Cyrus Cylinder are available online, incorporating both "A" and "B" fragments.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: A false translation of the textaffirming, among other things, the abolition of slavery and the right to self-determination, a minimum wage and asylumhas been promoted on the Internet and elsewhere. As well as making claims that are not found on the real cylinder, it refers to the Zoroastrian divinity Ahura Mazda rather than the Mesopotamian god Marduk. The false translation has been widely circulated; alluding to its claim that Cyrus supposedly has stated that "Every country shall decide for itself whether or not it wants my leadership." Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi in her acceptance speech described Cyrus as "the very emperor who proclaimed at the pinnacle of power 2,500 years ago that … he would not reign over the people if they did not wish it".


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The British Museum announced in January 2010 that two inscribed clay fragments, which had been in the Museum's collection since 1881, had been identified as part of a cuneiform tablet that was inscribed with the same text as the Cyrus Cylinder. The fragments had come from the small site of Dailem near Babylon and the identification was made by Professor Wilfred Lambert, formerly of the University of Birmingham, and Irving Finkel, curator in charge of the Museum's Department of the Middle East.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: In 1983 two fossilized horse bones inscribed with cuneiform signs surfaced in China which Professor Oliver Gurney at Oxford later identified as coming from the Cyrus Cylinder. The discovery of these objects aroused much discussion about possible connections between ancient Mesopotamia and China, although their authenticity was doubted by many scholars from the beginning and they are now generally regarded as forgeries.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The history of the putative artifact goes back almost a century. The earliest record goes back to a Chinese doctor named Xue Shenwei, who sometime prior to 1928 was shown a photo of a rubbing of one of the bones by an antiquities dealer named Zhang Yi'an. Although not able to view the bones at that time, Xue Shenwei later acquired one of them from another antiquities dealer named Wang Dongting in 1935 and then the second via a personal connection named Ke Yanling around 1940. While Xue did not recognize the script on the bones he guessed at its antiquity and buried the bones for safekeeping during the Cultural Revolution. Then, in 1983 Xue presented the bones to the Palace Museum in Beijing where Liu Jiuan and Wang Nanfang of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage undertook their study. These officials identified the script as cuneiform and asked the Assyriologists Chi Yang and Wu Yuhong to work on the inscriptions. Identification of the source text proceeded slowly until 1985, when Wu Yuhong along with Oxford Assyriologist Stephanie Dalley and Oliver Gurney recognized the text in one bone as coming from the Cyrus Cylinder. One year later Wu Yuhong presented his findings at the 33rd Rencontre Assyriologique and published them in a journal article.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: After that the second bone inscription remained undeciphered until 2010, when Irving Finkel worked on it. In that same year the British Museum held a conference dedicated to the artifacts. Based on the serious textual errors in the inscription, including the omission of a large number of signs from the Cyrus Cylinder, Wu Yuhong argued the inscriptions were most likely copied from the cylinder while housed in the British Museum or from an early modern publication based upon it. However he acknowledged the remote possibility it was copied in late antiquity. Irving Finkel disputed this conclusion based on the relative obscurity of the Cyrus Cylinder until recent decades and the mismatch in paleography between the bone inscriptions and the hand copies found in early editions from the 1880s.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: Finally, after the workshop concluded, an 1884 edition of the Cyrus Cylinder by E. A. Wallis Budge came to Irving Finkel's attention. This publication used an idiosyncratic typeface and featured a handcopy for only a section of the whole cylinder. However the typeface in that edition matched the paleography on the bone inscriptions and the extract of the cylinder published in the book matched that of the bone as well. This convinced Finkel that the bone inscriptions were early modern forgeries and that has remained the majority opinion since then.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: According to the British Museum, the Cyrus Cylinder reflects a long tradition in Mesopotamia where, from as early as the third millennium BC, kings began their reigns with declarations of reforms. Cyrus's declaration stresses his legitimacy as the king, and is a conspicuous statement of his respect for the religious and political traditions of Babylon. The British Museum and scholars of the period describe it as an instrument of ancient Mesopotamian propaganda.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The text is a royal building inscription, a genre which had no equivalent in Old Persian literature. It illustrates how Cyrus co-opted local traditions and symbols to legitimize his conquest and control of Babylon. Many elements of the text were drawn from long-standing Mesopotamian themes of legitimizing rule in Babylonia: the preceding king is reprimanded and he is proclaimed to have been abandoned by the gods for his wickedness; the new king has gained power through the divine will of the gods; the new king rights the wrongs of his predecessor, addressing the welfare of the people; the sanctuaries of the gods are rebuilt or restored, offerings to the gods are made or increased and the blessings of the gods are sought; and repairs are made to the whole city, in the manner of earlier rightful kings.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: Both continuity and discontinuity are emphasized in the text of the Cylinder. It asserts the virtue of Cyrus as a gods-fearing king of a traditional Mesopotamian type. On the other hand, it constantly discredits Nabonidus, reviling the deposed king's deeds and even his ancestry and portraying him as an impious destroyer of his own people. As Fowler and Hekster note, this "creates a problem for a monarch who chooses to buttress his claim to legitimacy by appropriating the 'symbolic capital' of his predecessors". The Cylinder's reprimand of Nabonidus also discredits Babylonian royal authority by association. It is perhaps for this reason that the Achaemenid rulers made greater use of Assyrian rather than Babylonian royal iconography and tradition in their declarations; the Cylinder refers to the Assyrian king Ashurbanipal as "my predecessor", rather than any native Babylonian ruler.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Cylinder itself is part of a continuous Mesopotamian tradition of depositing a wide variety of symbolic items, including animal sacrifices, stone tablets, terracotta cones, cylinders and figures. Newly crowned kings of Babylon would make public declarations of their own righteousness when beginning their reigns, often in the form of declarations that were deposited in the foundations of public buildings. Some contained messages, while others did not, and they had a number of purposes: elaboration of a building's value, commemoration of the ruler or builder and the magical sanctification of the building, through the invocation of divine protection.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The cylinder was not intended to be seen again after its burial, but the text inscribed on it would have been used for public purposes. Archive copies were kept of important inscriptions and the Cylinder's text may likewise have been copied. In January 2010, the British Museum announced that two cuneiform tablets in its collection had been found to be inscribed with the same text as that on the Cyrus Cylinder, which, according to the Museum, "show that the text of the Cylinder was probably a proclamation that was widely distributed across the Persian Empire".


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: A statue of the cylinder is now on exhibit in Los Angeles on the Avenue of the Stars as a gift from the Persian people to the city of Los Angeles


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Cyrus Cylinder bears striking similarities to older Mesopotamian royal inscriptions. Two notable examples are the Cylinder of Marduk-apla-iddina II, who seized the Babylonian throne in 722/1 BC, and the annals of Sargon II of Assyria, who conquered Babylon twelve years later. As a conqueror, Marduk-apla-iddina faced many of the same problems of legitimacy that Cyrus did when he conquered Babylon. He declares himself to have been chosen personally by Marduk, who ensured his victory. When he took power, he performed the sacred rites and restored the sacred shrines. He states that he found a royal inscription placed in the temple foundations by an earlier Babylonian king, which he left undisturbed and honored. All of these claims also appear in Cyrus's Cylinder. Twelve years later, the Assyrian king Sargon II defeated and exiled Marduk-apla-iddina, taking up the kingship of Babylonia. Sargon's annals describe how he took on the duties of a Babylonian sovereign, honouring the gods, maintaining their temples and respecting and upholding the privileges of the urban elite. Again, Cyrus's Cylinder makes exactly the same points. Nabonidus, Cyrus's deposed predecessor as king of Babylon, commissioned foundation texts on clay cylinderssuch as the Cylinder of Nabonidus, also in the British Museumthat follows the same basic formula.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The text of the Cylinder thus indicates a strong continuity with centuries of Babylonian tradition, as part of an established rhetoric advanced by conquerors. As Kuhrt puts it:


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The familiarity with long-established Babylonian tropes suggests that the Cylinder was authored by the Babylonian priests of Marduk, working at the behest of Cyrus. It can be compared with another work of around the same time, the "Verse Account of Nabonidus", in which the former Babylonian ruler is excoriated as the enemy of the priests of Marduk and Cyrus is presented as the liberator of Babylon. Both works make a point of stressing Cyrus's qualifications as a king from a line of kings, in contrast to the non-royal ancestry of Nabonidus, who is described by the Cylinder as merely "maţû", "insignificant".


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The "Verse Account" is so similar to the Cyrus Cylinder inscription that the two texts have been dubbed an example of "literary dependence"not the "direct" dependence of one upon the other, but mutual dependence upon a common source. This is characterised by the historian Morton Smith as "the propaganda put out in Babylonia by Cyrus's agents, shortly before Cyrus's conquest, to prepare the way of their lord". This viewpoint has been disputed; as Simon J. Sherwin of the University of Cambridge puts it, the Cyrus Cylinder and the "Verse Account" are "after the event" compositions which reuse existing Mesopotamian literary themes and do not need to be explained as the product of pre-conquest Persian propaganda.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The German historian Hanspeter Schaudig has identified a line on the Cylinder ("He [i.e. Marduk] saved his city Babylon from its oppression") with a line from tablet VI of the Babylonian "Epic of Creation", "Enûma Eliš", in which Marduk builds Babylon. Johannes Haubold suggests that reference represents Cyrus's takeover as a moment of ultimate restoration not just of political and religious institutions, but of the cosmic order underpinning the universe.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Cyrus Cylinder's vilification of Nabonidus is consistent with other Persian propaganda regarding the deposed king's rule. In contrast to the Cylinder's depiction of Nabonidus as an illegitimate ruler who ruined his country, the reign of Nabonidus was largely peaceful, he was recognised as a legitimate king and he undertook a variety of building projects and military campaigns commensurate with his claim to be "the king of Babylon, the universe, and the four corners [of the Earth]".


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Assyriologist Paul-Alain Beaulieu has interpreted Nabonidus's exaltation of the moon god Sin as "an outright usurpation of Marduk's prerogatives by the moon god". Although the Babylonian king continued to make rich offerings to Marduk, his greater devotion to Sin was unacceptable to the Babylonian priestly elite. Nabonidus came from the unfashionable north of Babylonia, introduced foreign gods and went into a lengthy self-imposed exile which was said to have prevented the celebration of the vital New Year festival.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Harran Stela is generally acknowledged as a genuine document commissioned by Nabonidus. In it, Nabonidus seeks to glorify his own accomplishments, notably his restoration of the Elhulhul Temple, which was devoted to the moon-god Sin. In this regard, the Harran Stela verifies the picture that is dwelt on in the Cyrus Cylinder, that Nabonidus had largely abandoned the homage due to Marduk, chief god of Babylon, in favor of the worship of Sin. Since his mother Addagoppe was apparently a priestess of Sin, or at least a lifelong devotee, this helps explain the unwise political decision regarding Marduk on the part of Nabonidus, a decision that Cyrus takes great advantage of in the Cyrus Cylinder. His mother was also a resident of Harran, which affords another reason why Nabonidus moved there in the third year of his reign (553 BC), at which time he “entrusted the “Camp” to his oldest (son) [Belshazzar], the first-born . . . He let (everything) go, entrusted the kingship to him.”


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: In at least one respect, however, the Harran Stela is incongruous with the portrayal of events in the Cyrus Cylinder. In the Stela, Nabonidus lists the enemies of Babylon as “the king of Egypt, the Medes and the land of the Arabs, all the hostile kings.” The significance of this lies in the date the Stela was composed: According to Paul-Alain Beaulieu, its composition dates to the latter part of the reign of Nabonidus, probably the fourteenth or fifteenth year, i.e. 542–540 BC. The problem with this is that, according to the current consensus view, based largely on the Cyrus Cylinder and later Persian documents that followed in its genre, the Persians should have been named here as a major enemy of Babylon at a time three years or less before the fall of the city to the forces under Cyrus. Nabonidus, however, names the Medes, not the Persians, as a main enemy; as king of the realm he would certainly know who his enemies were. By naming the Medes instead of the Persians, the Harran Stela is more in conformity with the narration of events in Xenophon's "Cyropaedia", where Cyrus and the Persians were under the "de jure" suzerainty of the Medes until shortly after the fall of Babylon, at which time Cyrus, king of Persia, became king of the Medes as well.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: A further discussion of the relationship of the Harran Stela (=Babylonian propaganda) to the Cyrus Cylinder (=Persian propaganda) is found on the Harran Stela page, including a discussion of why the Cyrus Cylinder and later Persian texts never name Belshazzar, despite his close association with events associated with the fall of Babylon, as related both in the Bible (Daniel, chapter 5) and in Xenophon's "Cyropaedia".


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: Cyrus's conquest of Babylonia was resisted by Nabonidus and his supporters, as the Battle of Opis demonstrated. Iranologist Pierre Briant comments that "it is doubtful that even before the fall of [Babylon] Cyrus was impatiently awaited by a population desperate for a 'liberator'." However, Cyrus's takeover as king does appear to have been welcomed by some of the Babylonian population. The Judaic historian Lisbeth S. Fried says that there is little evidence that the high-ranking priests of Babylonia during the Achaemenid period were Persians and characterises them as Babylonian collaborators.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The text presents Cyrus as entering Babylon peacefully and being welcomed by the population as a liberator. This presents an implicit contrast with previous conquerors, notably the Assyrian rulers Tukulti-Ninurta I, who invaded and plundered Babylon in the 12th century BC, and Sennacherib, who did the same thing 150 years before Cyrus conquered the region. The massacre and enslavement of conquered people was common practice and was explicitly highlighted by conquerors in victory statements. The Cyrus Cylinder presents a very different message; Johannes Haubold notes that it portrays Cyrus's takeover as a harmonious moment of convergence between Babylonian and Persian history, not a natural disaster but the salvation of Babylonia.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: However, the Cylinder's account of Cyrus's conquest clearly does not tell the whole story, as it suppresses any mention of the earlier conflict between the Persians and the Babylonians; Max Mallowan describes it as a "skilled work of tendentious history". The text omits the Battle of Opis, in which Cyrus's forces defeated and apparently massacred Nabonidus's army. Nor does it explain a two-week gap reported by the Nabonidus Chronicle between the Persian entry into Babylon and the surrender of the Esagila temple. Lisbeth S. Fried suggests that there may have been a siege or stand-off between the Persians and the temple's defenders and priests, about whose fate the Cylinder and Chronicle makes no mention. She speculates that they were killed or expelled by the Persians and replaced by more pro-Persian members of the Babylonian priestly elite. As Walton and Hill put it, the claim of a wholly peaceful takeover acclaimed by the people is "standard conqueror's rhetoric and may obscure other facts". Describing the claim of one's own armies being welcomed as liberators as "one of the great imperial fantasies", Bruce Lincoln, Professor of Divinity at the University of Chicago, notes that the Babylonian population repeatedly revolted against Persian rule in 522 BC, 521 BC, 484 BC and 482 BC (though not against Cyrus or his son Cambeses). The rebels sought to restore national independence and the line of native Babylonian kingsperhaps an indication that they were not as favourably disposed towards the Persians as the Cylinder suggests.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The inscription goes on to describe Cyrus returning to their original sanctuaries the statues of the gods that Nabonidus had brought to the city before the Persian invasion. This restored the normal cultic order to the satisfaction of the priesthood. It alludes to temples being restored and deported groups being returned to their homelands but does not imply an empire-wide programme of restoration. Instead, it refers to specific areas in the border region between Babylonia and Persia, including sites that had been devastated by earlier Babylonian military campaigns. The Cylinder indicates that Cyrus sought to acquire the loyalty of the ravaged regions by funding reconstruction, the return of temple properties and the repatriation of the displaced populations. However, it is unclear how much actually changed on the ground; there is no archaeological evidence for any rebuilding or repairing of Mesopotamian temples during Cyrus's reign.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Persians' policy towards their subject people, as described by the Cylinder, was traditionally viewed as an expression of tolerance, moderation and generosity "on a scale previously unknown". The policies of Cyrus toward subjugated nations have been contrasted to those of the Assyrians and Babylonians, who had treated subject peoples harshly; he permitted the resettling of those who had been previously deported and sponsored the reconstruction of religious buildings. Cyrus was often depicted positively in Western tradition by sources such as the Old Testament of the Bible and the Greek writers Herodotus and Xenophon. The "Cyropaedia" of Xenophon was particularly influential during the Renaissance when Cyrus was romanticised as an exemplary model of a virtuous and successful ruler.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: Modern historians argue that while Cyrus's behavior was indeed conciliatory, it was driven by the needs of the Persian Empire, and was not an expression of personal tolerance per se. The empire was too large to be centrally directed; Cyrus followed a policy of using existing territorial units to implement a decentralized system of government. The magnanimity shown by Cyrus won him praise and gratitude from those he spared. The policy of toleration described by the Cylinder was thus, as biblical historian Rainer Albertz puts it, "an expression of conservative support for local regions to serve the political interests of the whole [empire]". Another biblical historian, Alberto Soggin, comments that it was more "a matter of practicality and economy … [as] it was simpler, and indeed cost less, to obtain the spontaneous collaboration of their subjects at a local level than to have to impose their sovereignty by force".


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: There are scholars who agree that the Cyrus Cylinder demonstrates a break from past traditions, and the ushering in of a new era. A comparison of the Cyrus Cylinder with the inscriptions of previous conquerors of Babylon highlights this sharply. For instance, when Sennacherib, king of Assyria(705-681 BC) captured the city in 690 BC after a 15-month siege, Babylon endured a dreadful destruction and massacre. Sennacharib describes how, having captured the King of Babylon, he had him tied up in the middle of the city like a pig. Then he describes how he destroyed Babylon, and filled the city with corpses, looted its wealth, broke its gods, burned and destroyed its houses down to foundations, demolished its walls and temples and dumped them in the canals. This is in stark contrast to Cyrus the Great and the Cyrus Cylinder. The past Assyrian, and Babylonian tradition of victor's justice was a common treatment for a defeated people at this time. Sennacherib's tone for instance, reflected his relish of and pride in massacre and destruction, which is totally at odds with the message of the Cyrus Cylinder.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: Another difference between the previously mentioned texts and the Cyrus Cylinder is that no other king ever returned captives to their homes as Cyrus did. The Assyrians sometimes gave limited religious freedom to local cults and the people they conquered, but after a military conquest, the conquered people usually had to submit to the 'exalted might' of the Assyrian god Ashur; their own shrines and gods were demolished and people put under 'the yoke of Ashur.' Even Babylon itself did not show tolerance towards other beliefs and cults, for it had destroyed the temple of Jerusalem as well as the temple in Harran; furthermore, Nabonidus took other gods from their sacred shrines, and carried them to Babylon. This clearly shows that the Cyrus Cylinder was not a typical declaration that was keeping with the old traditions of the past.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Bible records that some Jews (who were exiled by the Babylonians), returned to their homeland from Babylon, where they had been settled by Nebuchadnezzar, to rebuild the temple following an edict from Cyrus. The Book of Ezra (1–4:5) provides a narrative account of the rebuilding project. Scholars have linked one particular passage from the Cylinder to the Old Testament account:


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: This passage has often been interpreted as a reference to the benign policy instituted by Cyrus of allowing exiled peoples, such as the Jews, to return to their original homelands. The Cylinder's inscription has been linked with the reproduction in the Book of Ezra of two texts that are claimed to be edicts issued by Cyrus concerning the repatriation of the Jews and the reconstruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. The two edicts (one in Hebrew and one in Aramaic) are substantially different in content and tone, leading some historians to argue that one or both may be a "post hoc" fabrication. The question of their authenticity remains unresolved, though it is widely believed that they do reflect some sort of Persian royal policy, albeit perhaps not one that was couched in the terms given in the text of the biblical edicts.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The dispute over the authenticity of the biblical edicts has prompted interest in this passage from the Cyrus Cylinder, specifically concerning the question of whether it indicates that Cyrus had a "general" policy of repatriating subject peoples and restoring their sanctuaries. The text of the Cylinder is very specific, listing places in Mesopotamia and the neighboring regions. It does not describe any general release or return of exiled communities but focuses on the return of Babylonian deities to their own home cities. It emphasises the re-establishment of local religious norms, reversing the alleged neglect of Nabonidus – a theme that Amélie Kuhrt describes as "a literary device used to underline the piety of Cyrus as opposed to the blasphemy of Nabonidus". She suggests that Cyrus had simply adopted a policy used by earlier Assyrian rulers of giving privileges to cities in key strategic or politically sensitive regions and that there was no general policy as such. Lester L. Grabbe, a historian of early Judaism, has written that "the religious policy of the Persians was not that different from the basic practice of the Assyrians and Babylonians before them" in tolerating – but not promoting – local cults, other than their own gods.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: Cyrus may have seen Jerusalem, situated in a strategic location between Mesopotamia and Egypt, as worth patronising for political reasons. His Achaemenid successors generally supported indigenous cults in subject territories and thereby curried favour with the cults' devotees. Conversely, Persian kings might destroy the shrines of peoples who had rebelled against them, as happened at Miletos in 494 BC following the Ionian Revolt. The Cylinder's text does not describe any general policy of a return of exiles or mention any sanctuary outside Babylonia therein supporting Peter Ross Bedford's argument that the Cylinder is "not a manifesto for a general policy regarding indigenous cults and their worshippers throughout the empire". Amélie Kuhrt notes that "the purely Babylonian context of the Cylinder provides no proof" that Cyrus gave attention to the Jewish exiles or the rebuilding of the Temple in Jerusalem and biblical historian Bob Becking concludes that "it has nothing to do with Judeans, Jews or Jerusalem". Becking also points to the lack of reference to the Jews in surviving Achaemenid texts as an indication that they were not considered of any particular importance.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The German scholar Josef Wiesehöfer summarizes the widely held traditional view by noting that "Many scholars have read into [... the text of Cylinder] a confirmation of the Old Testament passages about the steps taken by Cyrus towards the erection of the Jerusalem temple and the repatriation of the Judaeans" and that this interpretation undergirded a belief "that the instructions to this effect were actually provided in these very formulations of the Cyrus Cylinder".


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Cylinder gained new prominence in the late 1960s when the last Shah of Iran called it "the world's first charter of human rights". The cylinder was a key symbol of the Shah's political ideology and is still regarded by some commentators as a charter of human rights, despite the disagreement of some historians and scholars.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Cyrus Cylinder was dubbed the "first declaration of human rights" by the pre-Revolution Iranian government, a reading prominently advanced by Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, in a 1967 book, "The White Revolution of Iran". The Shah identified Cyrus as a key figure in government ideology and associated his government with the Achaemenids. He wrote that "the history of our empire began with the famous declaration of Cyrus, which, for its advocacy of humane principles, justice and liberty, must be considered one of the most remarkable documents in the history of mankind." The Shah described Cyrus as the first ruler in history to give his subjects "freedom of opinion and other basic rights". In 1968, the Shah opened the first United Nations Conference on Human Rights in Tehran by saying that the Cyrus Cylinder was the precursor to the modern Universal Declaration of Human Rights.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: In his 1971 Nowruz (New Year) speech, the Shah declared that 1350 AP (1971–1972) would be Cyrus the Great Year, during which a grand commemoration would be held to celebrate 2,500 years of Persian monarchy. It would serve as a showcase for a modern Iran in which the contributions that Iran had made to world civilization would be recognized. The main theme of the commemoration was the centrality of the monarchy within Iran's political system, associating the Shah of Iran with the famous monarchs of Persia's past, and with Cyrus in particular. The Shah looked to the Achaemenid period as "a moment from the national past that could best serve as a model and a slogan for the imperial society he hoped to create".


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Cyrus Cylinder was adopted as the symbol for the commemoration, and Iranian magazines and journals published numerous articles about ancient Persian history. The British Museum loaned the original Cylinder to the Iranian government for the duration of the festivities; it was put on display at the Shahyad Monument (now the Azadi Tower) in Tehran. The 2,500 year celebrations commenced on October 12, 1971 and culminated a week later with a spectacular parade at the tomb of Cyrus in Pasargadae. On October 14, the shah's sister, Princess Ashraf Pahlavi, presented the United Nations Secretary General U Thant with a replica of the Cylinder. The princess asserted that "the heritage of Cyrus was the heritage of human understanding, tolerance, courage, compassion and, above all, human liberty". The Secretary General accepted the gift, linking the Cylinder with the efforts of the United Nations General Assembly to address "the question of Respect for Human Rights in Armed Conflict". Since then the replica Cylinder has been kept at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City on the second floor hallway. The United Nations continues to promote the cylinder as "an ancient declaration of human rights".


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: In September 2010, former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad officially opened the Cyrus Cylinder exhibition at the National Museum of Iran. After the Pahlavi era, it was the second time the cylinder was brought to Iran. It was also its longest-running exhibition inside the country. Ahmadinejad considers the Cyrus Cylinder as the incarnation of human values and a cultural heritage for all humanity, and called it the ""First Charter of Human Rights"". The British Museum had loaned the Cyrus Cylinder to the National Museum of Iran for four months.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: Some Iranian politicians such as MP Ali Motahari criticized Ahmadinejad for bringing the Cyrus Cylinder to Iran, although Tehran daily "Kayhan", viewed as an ultra-conservative newspaper, had opined that the Islamic Republic should never have returned the Cyrus Cylinder to Britain (note that the cylinder was not discovered in Iran, but in present day Iraq):


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: At the time, the Curator of the National Museum of Iran, Azadeh Ardakani, reported approximately 48,000 visitors to the Cylinder exhibition, amongst whom over 2000 were foreigners, including foreign ambassadors.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The interpretation of the Cylinder as a "charter of human rights" has been described by various historians as "rather anachronistic" and tendentious. It has been dismissed as a "misunderstanding" and characterized as political propaganda devised by the Pahlavi regime. The German historian Josef Wiesehöfer comments that the portrayal of Cyrus as a champion of human rights is as illusory as the image of the "humane and enlightened Shah of Persia". D. Fairchild Ruggles and Helaine Silverman describe the Shah's aim as being to legitimise the Iranian nation and his own regime, and to counter the growing influence of Islamic fundamentalism by creating an alternative narrative rooted in the ancient Persian past.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: Writing in the immediate aftermath of the Shah's anniversary commemorations, the British Museum's C.B.F. Walker comments that the "essential character of the Cyrus Cylinder [is not] a general declaration of human rights or religious toleration but simply a building inscription, in the Babylonian and Assyrian tradition, commemorating Cyrus's restoration of the city of Babylon and the worship of Marduk previously neglected by Nabonidus". Two professors specialising in the history of the ancient Near East, Bill T. Arnold and Piotr Michalowski, comment: "Generically, it belongs with other foundation deposit inscriptions; it is not an edict of any kind, nor does it provide any unusual human rights declaration as is sometimes claimed." Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones of the University of Edinburgh notes that "there is nothing in the text" that suggests the concept of human rights. Neil MacGregor comments:


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: Some writers on human rights have supported the interpretation of the Cyrus Cylinder as a human rights charter. W.J. Talbott, an American philosopher, believes the concept of human rights is a 20th-century concept but describes Cyrus as "perhaps the earliest known advocate of religious tolerance" and suggests that "ideas that led to the development of human rights are not limited to one cultural tradition." The Iranian lawyer Hirad Abtahi argues that viewing the Cylinder as merely "an instrument of legitimizing royal rule" is unjustified, as Cyrus issued the document and granted those rights when he was at the height of his power, with neither popular opposition nor visible external threat to force his hand. A former Iranian prime minister, Hassan Pirnia, writing in the early 20th century, characterizes the Cylinder as "discuss[ing] human rights in a way unique for the era, dealing with ways to protect the honor, prestige, and religious beliefs of all the nations dependent to Iran in those days".


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Cyrus Cylinder has been displayed in the British Museum since its formal acquisition in 1880. It has been loaned four timestwice to Iran, between 7–22 October 1971 in conjunction with the 2,500 year celebration of the Persian Empire and again from September–December 2010, once to Spain from March–June 2006, and once to the United States in a traveling exhibition from March–October 2013. Many replicas have been made. Some were distributed by the Shah following the 1971 commemorations, while the British Museum and National Museum of Iran have sold them commercially.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The British Museum's ownership of the Cyrus Cylinder has been the cause of some controversy in Iran, although the artifact was obtained legally and was not excavated on Iranian soil but on former Ottoman territory (modern Iraq). When it was loaned in 1971, the Iranian press campaigned for its transfer to Iranian ownership. The Cylinder was brought back to London without difficulty, but the British Museum's Board of Trustees subsequently decided that it would be "undesirable to make a further loan of the Cylinder to Iran."


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: In 2005–2006 the British Museum mounted a major exhibition on the Persian Empire, "Forgotten Empire: the World of Ancient Persia." It was held in collaboration with the Iranian government, which loaned the British Museum a number of iconic artefacts in exchange for an undertaking that the Cyrus Cylinder would be loaned to the National Museum of Iran in return.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The planned loan of the Cylinder was postponed in October 2009 following the June 2009 Iranian presidential election so that the British Museum could be "assured that the situation in the country was suitable". In response, the Iranian government threatened to end cooperation with the British Museum if the Cylinder was not loaned within the following two months. This deadline was postponed despite appeals by the Iranian government but the Cylinder did eventually go on display in Tehran in September 2010 for a four-month period. The exhibition was very popular, attracting 48,000 people within the first ten days and about 500,000 people by the time it closed in January 2011. However, at its opening, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad mingled Islamic Republican and ancient Persian symbology which commentators inside and outside Iran criticised as an overt appeal to religious nationalism.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: On November 28, 2012, the BBC announced the first United States tour of the Cylinder. Under the headline “British Museum lends ancient 'bill of rights' cylinder to US”, Museum director Neil MacGregor declared that “The cylinder, often referred to as the first bill of human rights, ‘must be shared as widely as possible’". The British Museum itself announced the news in its press release, saying "First declaration of human rights’ to tour five cities in the United States". According to the British Museum's website for the Cylinder's US exhibition "CyrusCylinder2013.com", the tour started in March 2013 and included Washington DC’s Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and culminated at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, in October 2013.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The cylinder, along with thirty two other associated objects from the British Museum collection, including a pair of gold armlets from the Oxus Treasure and the Darius Seal, were part of an exhibition titled 'The Cyrus Cylinder and Ancient Persia – A New Beginning' at the Prince of Wales Museum in Mumbai, India, from December 21, 2013 to February 25, 2014. It was organised by the British Museum and the Prince of Wales Museum in partnership with Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, Sir Ratan Tata Trust and Navajbai Ratan Tata Trust, all set up by luminaries from the Parsi community, who are descendants of Persian Zoroastrians, who hold Cyrus in great regard, as many scholars consider him as a follower of Zoroastrianism.


title: Cyrus Cylinder

text: The Freedom Sculpture or Freedom: A Shared Dream () is a 2017 stainless steel public art sculpture by artist and architect Cecil Balmond, located in Century City, Los Angeles, California and modeled on the Cyrus Cylinder.


title: Gul Panag

text: Gul Panag (born Gulkirat Kaur Panag, 3 January 1979; Chandigarh, India) is an Indian actress, voice actress, model, and former beauty queen who competed in the Miss Universe pageant. Panag began her career in Bollywood with the 2003 film "Dhoop". Since then, she has worked in films like "Jurm" and the TV series "Kashmeer". Her films include "Dor", "Dhoop", "Manorama Six Feet Under", "Hello", "Straight", and "Ab Tak Chhappan 2".


title: Gul Panag

text: She played a commoner, fighting hard to save her husband from going to the gallows, in the 2006 Nagesh Kukunoor film, "Dor". In 2008, she acted in the films "Hello" and "Summer 2007". In 2009, she appeared in the movie "Straight". She featured in "Rann" in a role attempting to stop her boyfriend from doing the right thing. Panag appeared on the front page of Maxim with whom she did a photo shoot in September 2008. She debuted in Punjabi movies with "Sarsa." She was the Aam Aadmi Party candidate from Chandigarh for 2014 Lok Sabha Elections.


title: Gul Panag

text: Panag started her education in Sangrur, in Punjab. Her father, Lt. Gen. Panag was in the army and the family moved to different places across India and abroad. As a result of this, she studied in 14 different schools including Kendriya Vidyalayas (Chandigarh, Mhow, Leh and Wellington, Tamil Nadu), The Lawrence School, Lovedale and the International School of Lusaka, Zambia. She did her Bachelors in Mathematics from Punjabi University, Patiala, and Masters in Political Science from Panjab University, Chandigarh. As a student, Panag was interested in sports and public speaking. She won numerous state and national level debate competitions, including two gold medals at the Annual National Inter University Debate competition.


title: Gul Panag

text: Panag won the Miss India title in 1999, and was crowned Miss Beautiful Smile at the same pageant. She participated in the Miss Universe 1999 pageant.


title: Gul Panag

text: She has appeared in numerous advertisements on television and print media and is the brand ambassador for Tata Sky, along with Aamir Khan.


title: Gul Panag

text: Panag was the "Twitter Face" for the "Wills Lifestyle India Fashion Week" held in 2009, to cover the happenings/proceedings on the micro-blogging site.


title: Gul Panag

text: Gul Panag runs the Colonel Shamsher Singh Foundation, an NGO that works towards a variety of causes including gender equality, education and disaster management. She served on the advisory board of the Wockhardt Foundation. She also participated in the India Against Corruption movement. She ran at the Delhi Half Marathon in November 2010, but endured eve teasing (sexual harassment) from male runners at the event. She later remarked that the attitude of men in Delhi needed to change and that the city was unsafe for women.


title: Gul Panag

text: She was the Aam Aadmi Party candidate from Chandigarh for 2014 Indian general election. She came on third position with 1,08,679 votes, while Kirron Kher won the election with 1,91,362 votes.


title: Gul Panag

text: She is a half-marathon runner, a biker, and a certified pilot. She debuted on the racing track at the Mahindra Racing's all new M4Electro at the circuit de Calafat in Catalonia, Spain.


title: Gul Panag

text: A health activist and fitness advocate Gul Panag, co-founded health and fitness startup MobieFit in 2017.


title: Gul Panag

text: Gul Panag is also a director at Tittar Lodge Productions Private Limited, which provides digital, tailor-made TV content, film and documentary content.


title: Gul Panag

text: Panag married her long-time boyfriend, an airline pilot, Rishi Attari on 13 March 2011 in a Gurdwara in Chandigarh in a traditional Punjabi Sikh ceremony. The couple has a son named Nihal born in 2018.


title: George Halas

text: George Stanley Halas Sr. (; February 2, 1895October 31, 1983), nicknamed "Papa Bear" and "Mr. Everything", was an American professional football player, coach, and team owner. He was the founder and owner of the National Football League's Chicago Bears, and served as his own head coach on four occasions. He was also lesser-known as a Major League Baseball player for the New York Yankees.


title: George Halas

text: Halas was one of the co-founders of the American Professional Football Association (now the National Football League (NFL)) in 1920, and in 1963 became one of the first 17 inductees into the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Halas was the oldest person in NFL history to serve as a head coach, as he was 72 years and 318 days old when he coached the final game of his career in December 1967, until Romeo Crennel 54 years later, who was 73 years and 115 days old when he became the interim head coach of the Houston Texans.


title: George Halas

text: Halas was born in Chicago, Illinois, into a family of Czech-Bohemian immigrants. His parents, Barbara (Poledna), who ran a grocery store, and Frank Halas, a tailor, were migrants from Pilsen, Austria-Hungary. George had a varied career in sports. In 1915, Halas worked temporarily for Western Electric, and was planning on being on the "SS Eastland". He was running late, however, as he was attempting to gain weight to play Big Ten football and missed the capsizing, which killed 844 passengers. After graduating from Crane High School in Chicago, he attended the University of Illinois, playing football for coach Bob Zuppke, as well as baseball and basketball, and earning a degree in civil engineering. He also became a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He helped Illinois win the 1918 Big Ten Conference football title.


title: George Halas

text: Serving as an ensign in the Navy during World War I, he played for a team at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, and was named the MVP of the 1919 Rose Bowl. In recognition of his Rose Bowl accomplishments, Halas was inducted into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame in 2018. On a team which included Paddy Driscoll and Jimmy Conzelman, Halas scored a receiving touchdown and returned an intercepted pass 77 yards in a 17–0 win over the Mare Island Marines of California; the team was also rewarded with their military discharges.


title: George Halas

text: Afterward, Halas played minor league baseball, eventually earning a promotion to the New York Yankees, where he played 12 games as an outfielder in 1919. However, a hip injury effectively ended his baseball career. Halas said that he was succeeded as the Yankees' right fielder by Babe Ruth, but in reality, it was Sammy Vick. Later that year, Halas played for the Hammond Pros and received about $75 per game.


title: George Halas

text: On February 18, 1922, Halas married Wilhelmina "Minnie" Bushing, to whom he remained married until her death in 1966.


title: George Halas

text: After one year with the Pros (also known as the All-Stars), Halas moved to Decatur, Illinois to take a position with the A. E. Staley Company, a starch manufacturer. He served as a company sales representative, an outfielder on the company-sponsored baseball team, and the player-coach of the company-sponsored football team the Decatur Staleys. Halas selected his alma mater's colors—orange and navy blue—for the team's uniforms. In 1920, Halas represented the Staleys at the meeting which formed the American Professional Football Association (which became the NFL in 1922) in Canton, Ohio. After the Staleys' season ended, Halas and teammates George Trafton, Hub Shoemake, and Hugh Blacklock joined the Chicago Stayms for a December 19 match against the Chicago Cardinals, marking the only time Halas would be an NFL team's opponent for another team besides the Staleys/Bears. The game ended in a 14–14 tie.


title: George Halas

text: Despite a 10–1–2 record, the Staleys ended the season awash in red ink. The Staleys' financial troubles didn't dissuade Halas from significantly upgrading the roster, to the point that it was a works team in name only. After the first game of the 1921 season, company founder and namesake Augustus E. Staley turned over control of the team to Halas so he could move the team to Chicago, where the team had attracted its biggest gates of the 1920 season. Staley gave Halas a $5,000 bonus for the move to Chicago provided that he keep the Staleys franchise name for the 1921 season. Halas then took on teammate Edward "Dutch" Sternaman as a partner. The newly minted "Chicago Staleys" set up shop at Cubs Park, soon to be known as Wrigley Field; Halas had a good relationship with Chicago Cubs owner William Wrigley Jr. and president Bill Veeck Sr. The Staleys maneuvered their schedule to win their first NFL championship that year. The following year, Halas renamed his team the "Chicago Bears." Years later, he recalled that he wanted to find a way to choose a name that would give a nod to the Cubs. Reasoning that football players were far bigger than baseball players, he concluded, "if baseball players are cubs, then football players must be bears!"


title: George Halas

text: Halas was not only the team's coach but also played end (wide receiver on offense, defensive end on defense) and handled ticket sales and the business of running the club. Named to the NFL's all-pro team in the 1920s, his playing highlight occurred in a 1923 game when he stripped Jim Thorpe of the ball, recovered the fumble, and returned it 98 yards—a league record which would stand until 1972. In 1925, Halas persuaded Illinois star player Red Grange to join the Bears; it was a significant step in establishing both the respectability and popularity of the league, which had previously been viewed as a refuge for less admirable players.


title: George Halas

text: After ten seasons, Halas stepped back from the game in 1930, retiring as a player and handing coaching duties to Lake Forest Academy coach Ralph Jones; but he remained the team's owner, becoming sole owner in 1932. However, severe financial difficulties brought on by the Great Depression put the Bears in dire financial straits even though Jones led them to the NFL title in 1932. Halas returned as coach in 1933 to eliminate the additional cost of paying a head coach's salary. He coached the Bears for another ten seasons. His 1934 team was undefeated until a loss in the championship game to the New York Giants.


title: George Halas

text: In the late 1930s, Halas—with University of Chicago coach Clark Shaughnessy—perfected the T-formation system to create a revolutionary and overwhelming style of play which drove the Bears to an astonishing 73–0 victory over the Washington Redskins in the 1940 NFL Championship Game—still the most lopsided margin of victory in NFL history. Every other team in the league immediately began trying to imitate the format. The Bears repeated as NFL champions in 1941, and the 1940s would be remembered as the era of the "Monsters of the Midway".


title: George Halas

text: Halas and Shaughnessy had created a revolutionary concept with the T-formation offense. The complex spins, turns, fakes, and all-around athletic versatility required to execute the scheme limited the possible players available. Halas believed he'd found the perfect quarterback for his new offense in Sid Luckman, a passing star at Columbia University. Luckman was a single wing tailback; the tailback is the primary runner and passer in that scheme. Luckman launched his Hall of Fame career playing quarterback for the Bears from 1939 to 1950. Halas was not satisfied with other players who succeeded Luckman under center. During this coaching stint, he had on the Bears roster two future Hall of Fame players, Bobby Layne in 1948 and George Blanda from 1949 to 1958. Other notable players included Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Lujack from 1948 to 1951 and Zeke Bratkowski from 1954 to 1960. Blanda played in the NFL until 1975; Bratkowski moved on the Los Angeles Rams before signing with Vince Lombardi's Green Bay Packers in 1963, where he played an important role as "super sub" to starter Bart Starr in winning three straight NFL championships in 1965–'66–'67; and Bobby Layne quarterbacked the Detroit Lions to three NFL championship games between 1952 and 1954, winning two.


title: George Halas

text: Halas entered the Navy again after the advent of World War II in 1942, with the rank of lieutenant commander. He served overseas for 20 months under the command of Admiral Chester Nimitz. His duties were supporting the welfare and recreational activities of the Seventh Fleet. He was awarded the Bronze Star during his recall and released from duty in 1946 with the rank of captain. While Halas was in the Navy, the Bears won another title in 1943 under Hunk Anderson and Luke Johnsos. Returning to the field in 1946, he coached the club for a third decade, again winning a title in his first year back as coach. That same year, Halas met with the Army Chief of Staff, General Dwight Eisenhower, the Navy Chief of Staff, Admiral Chester Nimitz, and the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Carl Spaatz, and offered to set up an annual charity football game, with the Bears as hosts, whose proceeds would go to the relief agencies of the armed forces. By mid-1957, proceeds from this game were $438,350.76 and proceeds from all games the Bears participated in between 1946 and 1957 were over $2 million.


title: George Halas

text: After a brief break in 1956–57, he returned as head coach for a final decade from 1958 to 1967. Despite winning his sixth and last league title in 1963, he did not enjoy the same success as he had before the war, and officially retired on May 27, 1968. He did win his 200th game in 1950 and his 300th game in 1965, becoming the first coach to reach both milestones. His six NFL Championships as a head coach is tied for the most all time with Green Bay's Curly Lambeau and later, New England's Bill Belichick. In 40 years as a coach, he endured only six losing seasons, three of which came during his final stint.


title: George Halas

text: Several former players and assistant coaches of Halas have gone on to their own Head Coaching careers, and are recognized under his coaching tree:


title: George Halas

text: A pioneer both on and off the field, Halas made the Bears the first team to hold daily practice sessions, to analyze film of opponents to find weaknesses and means of attack, place assistant coaches in the press box during games, place tarp on the field, publish a club newspaper, and to broadcast games by radio. He also offered to share the team's substantial television income with teams in smaller cities, firmly believing that what was good for the league would ultimately benefit his own team. A firm disciplinarian, Halas maintained complete control of his team and did not tolerate disobedience and insubordination by players. He also insisted on absolute integrity and honesty in management, believing that a handshake was sufficient to finalize a deal; few, if any, intermediaries were necessary.


title: George Halas

text: Halas's career ledger reads as follows: 63 years as an owner, 40 as a coach, 324 wins, and 8 NFL titles as a coach or owner. His 324 victories stood as an NFL record for nearly three decades, and are still far and away the most in Bears history; they are three times that of runner-up Mike Ditka. He was a charter member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1963.


title: George Halas

text: In 1925, Halas tipped his hand in pro basketball when he helped to create the first professional basketball league in the United States – the American Basketball League – as the owner of the Chicago Bruins. The team played six seasons before folding following the 1930–31 season because of the Great Depression.


title: George Halas

text: The Bruins struggled during their existence, failing to reach the playoffs in every season, but featured several notable names, including two Hall of Famers in player-coach Honey Russell and Nat Holman who played for half a season in 1926. Other notable players included Bears quarterback Laurie Walquist, Robert J. Dunne, Slim Shoun and Chicago Cardinals back Ike Mahoney.


title: George Halas

text: Halas revived the team for four more seasons, 1939 to 1942, and played in the National Basketball League (NBL) and in the World Professional Basketball Tournament. This time around the Bruins were more successful, reaching the World Professional Basketball Tournament finals in 1940, losing to the Harlem Globetrotters 31–29. Notable players were Wibs Kautz, Bill Hapac and Ralph Vaughn. In their second incarnation, the team played in the Chicago Coliseum.


title: George Halas

text: In 1939, Halas followed Tim Mara footsteps who purchase the Stapleton Buffaloes in 1937 and obtained the rights to a former NFL club Newark Tornadoes (now in the American Association) from Piggy Simandl, changed the team's name to Bears and stocked with talent that did not make the Chicago roster. He used the club to incubate talent and for easy return for injured players, thus making it pro football's first true farm team. Newark's most notable names included Joe Zeller as coach and Gene Ronzani who led them to the 1939 championship (with a little help in the playoff from Sid Luckman). Halas folded the team in 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ushered in the United States’ participation in World War II. It would later be revived for one more season (1946) as the Newark Bombers under Halas ownership (not as a farm team), but was folded altogether at the end of the season, and was substituted by the Bloomfield Cardinals.


title: George Halas

text: In 1946, after he returned from service in WWII, Halas also launched the Akron Bears of the American Football League as the Chicago Bears' minor league affiliate. The launch was an attempt to interfere with the territorial rights of the Cleveland Browns, a team in the NFL rival All-America Football Conference (AAFC); Akron is located just 30 miles from Cleveland.


title: George Halas

text: The team was coached again by Ronzani and had notable players like quarterback George Gulyanics, Ed Ecker, Lloyd Reese, Raymond Schumacher and Jack Karwales. The Bears were successful on the field—including reaching the league final before losing 14–13 to the Jersey City Giants—but lost at the box office a sum of $52,000, partly because they had large traveling expenses as most of the league team were located on the East Coast. The team did not return for a second season.


title: George Halas

text: In both 1963 and 1965, Halas was selected by "The Sporting News", the AP and the UPI as the NFL Coach of the Year. In 1997, he was featured on a U.S. postage stamp as one of the legendary coaches of football. He has been recognized by ESPN as one of the ten most influential people in sports in the 20th century, and as one of the greatest coaches. In 1993, Miami Dolphins coach Don Shula finally surpassed Halas' victory total. To this day, the jerseys of the Chicago Bears bear the initials "GSH" on their upper left sleeves in commemoration of Halas. In 1956, Halas was awarded the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award, which is the Navy's highest civilian award.


title: George Halas

text: There are two extant awards named for Halas: the George Halas Trophy (awarded by the NFL to the National Football Conference champion) and the George S. Halas Courage Award (Pro Football Writers Association). From 1966 to 1996, a George Halas Trophy was also awarded to the NFL defensive player of the year by the Newspaper Enterprise Association.


title: George Halas

text: The Chicago Bears retired number 7 in his honor, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame is located on George Halas Drive.


title: George Halas

text: The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign inducted Halas into the Engineering Hall of Fame in 2016.


title: George Halas

text: After the 1967 season, Halas—then the oldest coach in league history—retired as coach. He continued as the team's principal owner, and continued to make the franchise's football decisions until hiring Jim Finks as general manager in 1974. He continued to take an active role in team operations until his death. He was honored in 1970 and 1980 as the only person involved in the league throughout its first 50 and 60 years of existence. His son George, Jr. served as president of the Bears from 1963 until his sudden death at age 54 in 1979. One of Halas's final significant ownership acts was to hire Mike Ditka as head coach in 1982 (Ditka had been a Halas player in the 1960s). He had won 6 NFL championships before retiring.


title: George Halas

text: In the 1971 made-for-television film "Brian's Song", about the friendship between Chicago Bears players Brian Piccolo and Gale Sayers, Halas was portrayed by Jack Warden, who won an Emmy Award for his performance.


title: George Halas

text: Halas died of pancreatic cancer in Chicago on October 31, 1983, at age 88, and is entombed in St. Adalbert Catholic Cemetery in Niles, Illinois. At the time of his death, he was the last surviving participant of the meeting that formed the NFL in 1920.


title: George Halas

text: His eldest daughter, Virginia Halas McCaskey, succeeded him as majority owner, and her son Michael McCaskey served as team president from 1983 to 1999 at which time the elder McCaskey was forced to fire her own son. In the 1985 season when the Bears won their only Super Bowl (and post-merger NFL championship), they recorded a song called "Super Bowl Shuffle." In the song, backup quarterback Steve Fuller rhymes "Bring on Atlanta, Bring on Dallas / This is for Mike [then-current coach Mike Ditka] and Papa Bear Halas."


title: George Halas

text: Super Bowl XVIII was dedicated to Halas. The pregame ceremonies featured a moment of silence and the ceremonial coin toss by former Chicago Bear Bronko Nagurski, the latter of which was previously performed by Halas for Super Bowl XIII. The missing-man formation over Tampa Stadium, performed by airplanes from MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida at the conclusion of Barry Manilow's performance of the National Anthem, was also presented in tribute to Halas.


title: MultiCam

text: MultiCam is a camouflage pattern designed for use in a wide range of environments and conditions which was specifically developed and is produced by American company Crye Precision. As a result of the pattern's effectiveness across disparate environments and regions, it has found extensive adoption globally. Variants of it, some unlicensed, are in use with armed forces worldwide, particularly with special operations units.


title: MultiCam

text: The pattern is also available for purchase for civilian usage. Derived from the original standard pattern, additional specified variants were developed and later introduced, those are "Arid", "Tropic", "Alpine" and "Black".


title: MultiCam

text: First unveiled and designed in 2002, MultiCam was designed for the use of the U.S. Army in varied environments, seasons, elevations, and light conditions. It is a seven-color, multi-environment camouflage pattern developed by Crye Precision in conjunction with United States Army Soldier Systems Center.


title: MultiCam

text: The pattern was included in the U.S. Army's move to replace the 3-Color Desert and Woodland patterns, but in 2004 lost to the Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP) that came to be used in the Army Combat Uniform. Nonetheless, it remained in limited use by the U.S. Army special forces in the mid-to-late 2000s in Iraq and Afghanistan. MultiCam was also continually trialed for its "Future Force Warrior" program demonstrations.


title: MultiCam

text: MultiCam was officially re-commissioned by the U.S. Army in 2010, replacing UCP for units deploying to fight in the War in Afghanistan, under the designation Operation Enduring Freedom Camouflage Pattern (OEF-CP). It had already been used by some American special operations units and civilian law enforcement agencies. The U.S. Army discontinued the use of UCP in October 2019.


title: MultiCam

text: A version of MultiCam has been adopted by the armed forces of the United Kingdom as the Multi-Terrain Pattern (MTP), replacing their previous DPM camouflage. MTP retains the color palette of MultiCam but incorporates shapes similar to the previous DPM scheme. After using the MultiCam scheme in Afghanistan, Australia has also adopted its own version, combining the pattern of MultiCam with the color palette of its earlier DPCU / Auscam pattern.


title: MultiCam

text: On 25 November 2013, Crye Precision unveiled a family of MultiCam variants, which they can reduce the visual and near-IR signature of a person operating in different environments. There are four variants from the original MultiCam. First is arid, for users operating in desert environments. Second is tropic, for users operating in dense jungle environments and areas that predominantly consist of lush vegetation that remains relatively unaffected by seasonal changes. Third is alpine, for users operating in snow-covered environments and intended to be used in every area of operation that receives significant snowfall. Last is black that meets the unique requirements of police tactical units operating in high-risk environments and projects a distinctly authoritative presence appropriate for domestic operations.


title: MultiCam

text: MultiCam has a background of a brown to light tan gradient, overprinted with a dark green, olive green, and lime green gradient and a top layer of opaque dark brown and cream-colored shapes spread throughout the pattern. This allows for the overall appearance to change from predominantly green to predominantly brown in different areas of the fabric, while having smaller shapes to break up the larger background areas.


title: MultiCam

text: The MultiCam color scheme in hex triplet is as follows:(i) Cream 524 B8A78B; (ii) Dark Brown 530 48352F; (iii) Tan 525 967860; (iv) Brown 529 6F573F; (v) Dark Green 528 5A613F; (vi) Olive 527 8C7D50; and (vii) Pale Green 526 85755C.


title: MultiCam

text: On 19 November 2010, after trials by Australian special operations forces, the Australian Defence Force announced that MultiCam will be standard for all regular Australian Army personnel in Afghanistan. MultiCam, it is said, provided "... troops with greater levels of concealment across the range of terrains in Afghanistan – urban, desert and green." Previously, depending upon the terrain, Australian troops had to transition between green and desert colored Australian Disruptive Pattern Camouflage Uniforms (DPCU or "AUSCAM"). On 30 May 2011 the Defence Material Organisation announced that they had obtained licence to produce MultiCam in Australia for US$4.7 million and Crye would also design a new uniquely Australian pattern for another US$3.1 million.


title: MultiCam

text: The Australian Army decided to standardize MultiCam-patterned uniforms starting in October 2014 called the Australian Multicam Camouflage Uniform (AMCU). The Australian derivative retains colour and pattern elements of the previous DPCU pattern. The AMCU is manufactured domestically by Australian Defence Apparel and Pacific Brands Workwear Group and comes in two variations, field and combat, using a tested Australian Multi-Camouflage Pattern that can operate in bush, desert, and jungle conditions. Previous DPCU Uniforms and Australian MultiCam Pattern Operational Combat Uniforms will be worn until all Army personnel have been issued with the AMCU.


title: MultiCam

text: In 2014 the Royal Australian Air Force began fielding a new MultiCam-based uniform to replace the DPCU, called the General Purpose Uniform (GPU), using the blue-and-grey colours of the RAAF. The uniform is not intended to be used as camouflage in warlike operations or environments.


title: MultiCam

text: In 2015, the Royal Australian Navy began their own testing of a new MultiCam uniform with a blue colourway, calling it the Maritime Multicam Pattern Uniform (MMPU) The new uniform and pattern was intended to replace the Navy's grey-and-green Disruptive Pattern Navy Uniform (DPNU) by 2017. In 2019, the Navy announced that it was fielding a variant of the new AMCU including the design and cut of the uniform itself, and reverting to the grey-and-green colours of the DPNU.


title: MultiCam

text: A domestic variant of MultiCam is in use with the Georgian Defense Forces as standard issue for all military branches as well as special units of the MIA and State Security. The pattern was adopted somewhere in 2010 replacing the DWC and MARPAT and since has been produced in a slightly altered version that fits better to the local environment.


title: MultiCam

text: The New Zealand Defence Force announced in late 2019 that it would be replacing its local Multi Terrain Pattern camouflage pattern (NZMTP), in use since 2014, with a variant of British Multi-Terrain Pattern. The rollout began in 2020. Prior to this New Zealand Special Forces in Afghanistan wore uniforms in Crye Precision MultiCam.


title: MultiCam

text: A modified version of MultiCam has been adopted by the some of Polish Special Forces. It is named Suez.


title: MultiCam

text: As part of the "Sistemas de Combate do Soldado" (Soldiers Combat Systems) project, in 2018, the Portuguese Army started to experiment a new individual equipment system for the dismounted soldiers, which includes a new camouflaged MultiCam-style uniform. This new uniform was tested in the field by units deployed to the Central African Republic, Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2019, the MultiCam-style camouflaged was officially adopted as the "Multiterreno" (Multi-terrain), becoming the standard field uniform camouflage of the Portuguese Army, gradually replacing the Disruptive Pattern Material pattern. It was developed in cooperation with the CINAMIL (Research Center for Development and Innovation of the Military Academy.


title: MultiCam

text: MultiCam has also been adopted by some Russian Spetsnaz units, including FSB Alpha, the SSO, and by the Internal Troops of the MVD. It's reported that Russia makes their own MultiCam camos.


title: MultiCam

text: The first use of MultiCam in Ukraine was done by the "Ukrainian Volunteer Battalions": militias and paramilitary groups formed to fight separatists, which were largely self-funded and bought their own equipment.


title: MultiCam

text: Ukraine first adopted MultiCam officially for their special forces units as part of a larger NATO training and modernization program, together with a new digital camo for regular units. However, some regular Ukrainian Armed Forces and the National Guard of Ukraine units have been issued MultiCam uniforms as well. Territorial Defense Forces volunteers, are sometimes issued or buy their own MultiCam uniforms. Members of the special police unit Rapid Operational Response Unit (KORD) of the National Police of Ukraine also use MultiCam.


title: MultiCam

text: The colors of the MultiCam pattern were also used in the development of the British armed forces Multi-Terrain Pattern (MTP). British forces deployed in Afghanistan used MTP uniforms from March 2010 onwards, with these uniforms replacing all Disruptive Pattern Material (DPM) uniforms by 2013. The colors used in Crye's MultiCam technology were determined to be the best performing, across the widest range of environments (by a significant margin) when compared with the two existing DPM designs in use at the time and was subsequently selected as the basis for the new MTP camouflage, combined with the existing DPM base pattern. In June 2020, the Royal Marines announced the adoption of a new uniform made by Crye which uses the original MultiCam pattern instead of MTP, though the compatibility of the two designs means that items of load carrying equipment produced in MTP continue to be on issue; prior to this, usage of original MultiCam as an issued uniform (as opposed to items privately purchased by individual personnel) was limited to United Kingdom Special Forces units.


title: MultiCam

text: MultiCam is currently in use by the U.S. Special Operations Command, and some private military contractors. Several members of the U.S. Army's Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion, 12th Infantry Regiment were also seen wearing MultiCam when followed by ABC News. In 2010, U.S. soldiers deployed to Afghanistan were issued MultiCam versions of the Army Combat Uniform, as the existing Universal Camouflage Pattern (UCP) was found to be inadequate for the terrain.


title: MultiCam

text: In May 2014, the Army selected a pattern similar to MultiCam called Scorpion W2 to replace UCP, naming it the Operational Camouflage Pattern (OCP). The original Scorpion pattern was jointly developed by Crye Precision and the Army for the Objective Force Warrior program in 2002, and Crye made small adjustments for trademark purposes to create MultiCam. Because Scorpion is similar to MultiCam, the same color Velcro, buttons, and zippers can be reused. OCP resembles MultiCam with muted greens, light beige, and dark brown colors, but uses fewer beige and brown patches and no vertical twig and branch elements. On 31 July 2014, the Army formally announced that OCP would begin being issued in uniforms in summer 2015. Soldiers were allowed to continue wearing uniforms and field equipment patterned in MultiCam until they could acquire OCP, which was allowed until the MultiCam uniforms' wear-out date on 1 October 2018. The U.S. Air Force also subsequently adopted OCP uniforms, starting 2018 with full phase-in April 1, 2021 replacing the previous Airman Battle Uniform.


title: MultiCam

text: Some local, state and federal law enforcement agencies also make use of the pattern, including the Drug Enforcement Administration's Foreign-deployed Advisory and Support Teams (FAST) teams operating in Afghanistan as well as the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Special Reaction Team, the Spokane, Washington Police Department, and the Oregon State Police SWAT team.


title: East Malaysia

text: East Malaysia (), or the Borneo States, also known as Malaysian Borneo, is the part of Malaysia on and near the island of Borneo, the world's third-largest island. Near the coast of Sabah is a small archipelago called Labuan. East Malaysia lies to the east of Peninsular Malaysia (also known as the States of Malaya), the part of the country on the Malay Peninsula. The two are separated by the South China Sea.


title: East Malaysia

text: East Malaysia is less populated and has fewer developed settlements than West Malaysia. While West Malaysia contains the country's major cities (Kuala Lumpur, Johor Bahru, and Georgetown), East Malaysia is larger and much more abundant in natural resources, particularly oil and gas reserves. In the pan-regional style, city status is reserved for only a few settlements, including Kuching, Kota Kinabalu, and Miri. Various other significant settlements are classified as towns, including many with over 100,000 residents. East Malaysia includes a significant portion of the biodiverse Borneo lowland rain forests and Borneo montane rain forests.


title: East Malaysia

text: East Malaysia or the Borneo States comprise 2 of the 13 states, and one out of the three federal territories of Malaysia.


title: East Malaysia

text: Some parts of present-day East Malaysia, especially the coastal regions, were once part of the thalassocracy of the Sultanate of Brunei. However, most parts of the interior region consisted of independent tribal societies.


title: East Malaysia

text: In 1658, the northern and eastern coasts of Sabah were ceded to the Sultanate of Sulu while the west coast of Sabah and most of Sarawak remained part of Brunei. In 1888, Sabah and Sarawak together with Brunei became British protectorates. In 1946, they became separate British colonies.


title: East Malaysia

text: Sabah (formerly British North Borneo) and Sarawak were separate British colonies from Malaya, and did not become part of the Federation of Malaya in 1957. Later on however, the then Federation merged with the self-governing State of Singapore and the British Colonies of North Borneo (now known as Sabah) and Sarawak under the Malaysia Agreement as the States of Malaya, the Borneo States of Sabah and Sarawak, and the State of Singapore of the new Federation called Malaysia on 16 September 1963, now known as Malaysia Day. Singapore left the Federation two years later in 1965 after being expelled by then the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Tunku Abdul Rahman. Previously, there were efforts to unite Brunei, Sabah, and Sarawak under the North Borneo Federation but that failed after the Brunei Revolt occurred.


title: East Malaysia

text: The Borneo States retained a higher degree of local government and legislative autonomy than the States of Malaya. For example, both states have their own immigration controls, requiring Malaysian citizens from West Malaysia to carry passports or identity cards when visiting East Malaysia.


title: East Malaysia

text: The islands of Labuan were once part of North Borneo in 1946 before becoming a Federal Territory in Malaysia on 16 April 1984. It was used to establish a centre for offshore finance in 1990.


title: East Malaysia

text: Since 2010, there has been some speculation and discussion, at least on the ground level, about the possibility of secession from the Federation of Malaysia because of allegations of resource mishandling, illegal processing of immigrants, etc.


title: East Malaysia

text: The Borneo States of Sabah and Sarawak joined the Federation of Malaysia as equal partners with Malaya and Singapore. Sabah and Sarawak retained their rights covered under the Malaysia Agreement of 1963 and their degree of autonomy compared to the other states in Peninsular Malaysia. For example, the Malaysian Borneo States have separate laws regulating the entry of citizens from other states in Malaysia (including the other East Malaysian state), whereas, in Peninsular Malaysia, there are no restrictions on interstate travel or migration, including visitors from East Malaysia. There are also separate land laws governing Sabah and Sarawak, as opposed to the National Land Code, which governs Peninsular Malaysia.


title: East Malaysia

text: In December 2021, constitutional amendments were passed to restore the status of Sabah and Sarawak as equal partners to Malaya, with 199 members of Parliament backing the amendment bill without opposition. Apart from restoring Article 1(2) to its pre-1976 wording, the bill defines Malaysia Day for the first time and redefines the federation with the inclusion of Malaysia Agreement (MA63). Previously, only Merdeka Day (independence day of the Federation of Malaya) was defined, and the federation was defined merely by the Malaya Agreement 1957. The Constitution (Amendment) Act 2022 received royal assent on 19 January 2022 and came into force on 11 February 2022.


title: East Malaysia

text: With regard to the administration of justice, the courts in East Malaysia are part of the federal court system in Malaysia. The Constitution of Malaysia provides that there shall be two High Courts of co-ordinate jurisdiction. The High Court in Malaya and the High Court in Sabah and Sarawak (formerly the High Court in Borneo). The current Chief Judge of Sabah and Sarawak is Abang Iskandar Abang Hashim from Sarawak. His office is the fourth highest in the Malaysian judicial system (behind the Chief Judge of Malaya, President of the Court of Appeal, and Chief Justice of Malaysia).


title: East Malaysia

text: Compared to West Malaysia, political parties in Sarawak and Sabah started relatively late. This first political party in Sarawak emerged in 1959 while the first political party in Sabah emerged in August 1961. Sarawak held its first local authorities election in 1959 and did not have any directly elected legislature until 1970. Sabah only held its first district council election in December 1962 and first direct election in April 1967. Both the states were new and had little experience in organised, competitive politics. Therefore, there had been the appearance and rapid disappearance of political parties in Sarawak and Sabah within a short period of time, with some parties took opportunistic moves to form alliances without a definite loyalty to a certain political alignment. The ethnic composition of East Malaysia is also different from West Malaysia. The indigenous people in both Sarawak and Sabah do not form an absolute majority, while the non-native population in East Malaysia mainly consisting of entirely Chinese. Political parties in Sarawak and Sabah were formed largely based on communal lines and can be categorised roughly into native non-Muslim, native Muslim, and non-native parties. With the support of the Malaysia federal government, native Muslim parties in Sabah and Sarawak were strengthened. In Sabah, the native Muslim party United Sabah National Organisation (USNO) first clinged on the chief minister post in 1965 and later consolidated its power in 1967. In Sarawak, native Muslim party named Parti Bumiputera (which later regrouped into Parti Pesaka Bumiputera Bersatu (PBB) held the chief minister post since 1970.


title: East Malaysia

text: In 1976, all the Sabah and Sarawak MPs supported the Malaysian parliament bill which downgraded both the states from being equal partners to Malaya as a whole, to one of the 13 states in the federation.


title: East Malaysia

text: Since 2008, East Malaysia played a more significant role in the national political landscape. The loss of two-thirds majority of Barisan Nasional (BN) government in the West Malaysia caused the BN to rely on East Malaysian politicians to cling on power. After the conclusion of 2013 Malaysian general election, there was an increase in ministers and deputy ministers allocation for East Malaysia in the Malaysian Cabinet from 11 out of 57 portfolios in 2008 election to 20 out of 61 portfolios. However, there has been no prime minister or deputy prime minister coming from East Malaysia yet since its incorporation in 1963.


title: East Malaysia

text: As of 2012, Sarawak, Sabah and Labuan held a total of 57 out 222 seats (25.68%) in the Malaysian parliament. Since 2014, Sarawak have been actively seeking for devolution of powers from the Malaysian federal government.


title: East Malaysia

text: In October 2018, both Sabah and Sarawak chief ministers met to discuss common goals in demanding from the Malaysian federal government regarding the rights stipulated inside the Malaysia Agreement.


title: East Malaysia

text: The landscape of East Malaysia is mostly lowland rain forests with areas of mountain rain forest towards the hinterland.


title: East Malaysia

text: The total area of East Malaysia is 198,447 km, representing approximately 60% of the total land area of Malaysia and 26.4% of the total area of Borneo, which is 50% bigger than Peninsular Malaysia at , comparable with South Dakota or Great Britain.


title: East Malaysia

text: East Malaysia contains the five highest mountains in Malaysia, the highest being Mount Kinabalu at 4095 m, which is also the highest mountain in Borneo and the 10th highest mountain peak in Southeast Asia. It also contains the two longest rivers in Malaysia – Rajang River and Kinabatangan River.


title: East Malaysia

text: Banggi Island in Sabah and Bruit Island in Sarawak are the two largest islands that are located entirely within Malaysia. The largest island is Borneo, which is shared with Indonesia and Brunei. The second largest island is Sebatik Island, in Sabah, which is shared with Indonesia.


title: East Malaysia

text: Sarawak contains the Mulu Caves within Gunung Mulu National Park. Its Sarawak Chamber is the largest (by area) known cave chamber in the world. The Gunung Mulu National Park was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in November 2000.


title: East Malaysia

text: Sabah's attractions include World Heritage Site Kinabalu Park (which includes Mount Kinabalu), and Sipadan Island (a diving and bio-diversity hot-spot).