title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: Encompassing an area within an approximate radius of the Statue of Liberty National Monument, the port district comprises all or part of seventeen counties in the region. The nine that are completely within the district are Hudson, Bergen, Essex, Union (in New Jersey), and the five boroughs of New York City, which are coterminous with the counties of New York, Bronx, Kings, Queens, and Richmond. Abutting sections of Passaic, Middlesex, Monmouth, Morris, and Somerset in New Jersey, and Nassau, Westchester, and Rockland in New York are also within the district.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The Atlantic Ocean is to the southeast of the port. The sea at the entrance to the port is called the New York Bight; it lies between the peninsulas of Sandy Hook and Rockaway.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: In Lower New York Bay and its western arm, Raritan Bay, vessels orient themselves for passage to the west into Arthur Kill or Raritan River or to the north to The Narrows. To the east lies the Rockaway Inlet, which leads to Jamaica Bay. The Narrows connects to the Upper New York Bay at the mouth of the Hudson River, which is sometimes (particularly in navigation) called the North River. Large ships are able to navigate upstream to the Port of Albany-Rensselaer. To the west lies Kill van Kull, the strait leading to Newark Bay, fed by the Passaic River and Hackensack River, and the northern entrance of Arthur Kill.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The Gowanus Canal and Buttermilk Channel are entered from the east. The East River is a broad strait that travels north to Newtown Creek and the Harlem River, turning east at Hell Gate before opening to Long Island Sound, which provides an outlet to the open sea.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The port consists of a complex of approximately of shipping channels, as well as anchorages and port facilities. Most vessels require pilotage, and larger vessels require tugboat assistance for the sharper channel turns.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The Ambrose leads from the sea to the Upper Bay, where it becomes the Anchorage Channel. Connecting channels are the Bay Ridge, the Red Hook, the Buttermilk, the Claremont, the Port Jersey, the Kill Van Kull, the Newark Bay, the Port Newark, the Elizabeth, and the Arthur Kill. Anchorages are known as Stapleton, Bay Ridge and Gravesend.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The natural depth of the harbor is about , but it was deepened over the years, to a controlling depth of about in 1880. By 1891, the Main Ship Channel was minimally deep. Following the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 over $1.2 million of initial funding was appropriated for the dredging of 40 ft (12.2 m)-deep channels at Bay Ridge, Red Hook, and Sandy Hook. In 1914, Ambrose Channel became the main entrance to the port, at deep and wide. During World War II the main channel was dredged to deep to accommodate larger ships up to Panamax size.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: In 2016, the Army Corps of Engineers completed a $2.1 billion dredging project, deepening harbor channels to in order to accommodate Post-Panamax container vessels, which can pass through the widened Panama Canal as well as the Suez Canal.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: This has been a source of environmental concern along channels connecting the container facilities in Port Newark to the Atlantic. PCBs and other pollutants lay in a blanket just underneath the soil. In June 2009 it was announced that 200,000 cubic yards of dredged PCBs would be "cleaned" and stored en masse at the site of the former Yankee Stadium and at Brooklyn Bridge Park.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: In many areas the sandy bottom has been excavated down to rock and now requires blasting. Dredging equipment then picks up the rock and disposes of it. At one point in 2005, there were 70 pieces of dredging equipment working to deepen channels, the largest fleet of dredging equipment anywhere in the world.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The channel of the Hudson is the Anchorage Channel and is approximately 50 feet deep in the midpoint of Upper Bay. A project to replace two water mains between Brooklyn and Staten Island, which will eventually allowing for dredging of the channel to nearly , was begun in April 2012. The Army Corps has recommended that most channels in the port be maintained at 50 feet deep. Dredging of the canals to 50 feet was completed in August 2016.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The channels also include bridges that limit the heights of vessels that can use the harbor. The Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge has a clearance of at mean high water. The Brooklyn Bridge has of clearance, while the Bayonne Bridge has been raised from to .


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The Sandy Hook Pilots are licensed maritime pilots that go aboard oceangoing vessels, passenger liners, freighters, and tankers and are responsible for the navigation of larger ships through port district.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The estuary was originally the territory of the Lenape, a seasonally migrational people who would relocate summer encampments along its shore and use its waterways for transport and fishing. Many of the tidal salt marshes supported vast oyster banks that remained a major source of food for the region until the end of the 19th century, by which time contamination and landfilling had obliterated most of them.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The first recorded European visit was that of Giovanni da Verrazzano, who anchored in The Narrows in 1524. For the next hundred years, the region was visited sporadically by ships on fishing trips and slave raids.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: European colonization began after Henry Hudson's 1609 exploration of the region with the establishment of New Amsterdam, the capital of the Dutch province of New Netherland at the tip of Manhattan. The British colonial era saw a concerted effort to expand the port in the triangular trade between Europe, Africa, and North America with a concentration of wharves along the mouth of the East River. After the Battle of Brooklyn, the British controlled the harbor for the duration of American Revolutionary War, and prison ships housed thousands at Wallabout Bay.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: In the early 19th century, the Erie Canal (often used for grain) and Morris Canal (mostly used for anthracite) gave the port access to the American interior, leading to transshipment operations, manufacturing, and industrialization. The invention of the steam engine led to expansion of the railroads and vast terminals along the western banks of the Hudson River, complemented by an extensive network of ferries and carfloats, with a large cluster along the Harlem River. The era of the ocean liner around the turn of the 20th century led to the creation of berths at North River piers and Hoboken. This coincided with the immigration of millions, processed at Castle Clinton and later at Ellis Island, some staying in the region, others boarding barges, ships, and trains to points across the United States. In 1910, the port was the busiest in the world.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: During the World Wars the waterfront supported shipyards and military installations such as the Federal Shipbuilding and Drydock Company and the Brooklyn Navy Yard and played an important role in troop transport as a Port of Embarkation. The mid-century also saw the construction of major highways such as the Belt Parkway, East River Drive, and Major Deegan Expressway along parts of the shoreline.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The era of the longshoreman, captured in the classic film "On the Waterfront", faded by the 1970s as much of the waterfront became obsolete due to changing transportation patterns. The nation's first facility for container shipping, which became the prototype, opened in 1958. Expanded intermodal freight transport systems and the Interstate Highway System effected a shift to new terminals at Newark Bay.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: Since the 1980s, sections of waterfront in the traditional harbor have been being redeveloped to include public access to the water's edge, with the creation of linear park greenways such as Hudson River Park, Hudson River Waterfront Walkway, and Brooklyn Bridge Park.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The "CMA CGM" "Theodore Roosevelt," the largest ship to call at an East Coast port"," passed under the raised Bayonne Bridge in July 2017, signalling a new era of container capacity.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: Responsibilities within the port are divided among all levels of government, from municipal to federal, as well as public and private agencies.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: Established in 1921, the bi-state Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, in addition to overseeing maritime facilities, is responsible for the vehicular crossings and the rapid transit system between New York and New Jersey, several of the region's airports, and other transportation and real estate development projects.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The Port Authority maintains its own police force, as does the Waterfront Commission, created in 1953 to investigate, prosecute, and prevent criminal activity.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The United States Army Corps of Engineers, which has been involved in harbor maintenance since about 1826, when Congress passed an omnibus rivers and harbors act, is responsible for bulkhead and channel maintenance.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The United States Coast Guard deals with issues such as floatable debris, spills, vessel rescues, and counter-terrorism.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: Both states, and some municipal governments (New York City, in particular), maintain maritime police units.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The United States Park Police monitors federal properties. The National Park Service oversees some of the region's historic sites, nature reserves, and parks.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The port is a port of entry. The United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) regulate international imports and passenger arrivals. The "green lane" program, in which trusted shippers have fewer containers inspected. There are two foreign trade zones in the port: FTZ 1, the first in the nation, established in 1937, on the New York side of the port; and FTZ 49, on the New Jersey side.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: In March 2006, some of the passenger facilities management was to be transferred to Dubai Ports World. There was considerable controversy over security and ownership by a foreign corporation, particularly one of Arab origin, of a U.S. port operation, despite the fact that the operator was British-based P&O Ports. DP World later sold P&O's American operations to American International Group's asset management division, Global Investment Group, for an undisclosed sum.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: Seamen's Church Institute of New York and New Jersey, the Teamsters, and the International Longshoremen's Association assist and represent some of the port's mariners and dockworkers.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The airports in the Port of New York and New Jersey combine to create the largest airport system in the United States, the second in the world in terms of passenger traffic, and the first in the world in terms of total flight operations. JFK air freight cargo operations make it the busiest in the US. FedEx Express, the world's busiest cargo airline, uses Newark Liberty International Airport as its regional hub.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: Terminals are leased to different port operators, such as A. P. Moller-Maersk Group, American Stevedoring, NYCT, and Global Marine Terminal.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: In June 2010, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey agreed to purchase from Bayonne of land at the Military Ocean Terminal at Bayonne, indicating that additional container port facilities would be created. The agency is expected to develop a terminal capable of handling the larger container ships to be in service once the new, wider Panama Canal opens in 2014, some of which would not have passed under the original Bayonne Bridge at the Kill van Kull. A project to raise to the roadway of the bridge within the existing arch was completed in May, 2019.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The terminal's combined volume makes it the largest on the East Coast, the second busiest in the United States, Handling a cargo volume in the ten months through October 2022 of over 8.2 million TEUs, benefitting post-Panamax from the expansion of the Panama Canal, and surpassing of California seaports in monthly cargo volumes to become the nation's busiest.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: ExpressRail is the rail network supporting intermodal freight transport at the major container terminals of the port. The development of dockside trackage and railyards for transloading has been overseen by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey which works in partnership other public and private stakeholders. Various switching and terminal railroads, including the Conrail Shared Assets Operations (CRCX) on the Chemical Coast Secondary connect to the East Coast rail freight network carriers Norfolk Southern (NS), CSX Transportation (CSX), and Canadian Pacific (CP). In the year period ending October 2014 the total amount of TEUs of Intermodal containers handled at the port included 391,596 rail lifts.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: As of 2014, three ExpressRail systems (Newark, Elizabeth, and Staten Island) were in operation. Construction of a fourth, with connection to the National Docks Secondary, is underway at Port Jersey. Financed by a surcharge on all containers passing through the port by train or truck and the system in 2014 handled just over 14% of total container volume.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: While most consumer goods are transported in containers, other commodities such as petroleum and scrap metal are handled at facilities for marine transfer operations, bulk cargo, and break bulk cargo throughout the port, many along its straits and canals. At some locations, water pollution has led to inclusion on the list of Superfund sites in the United States.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: At one time nearly 600,000 railcars were transferred annually by barge between the region's extensive rail facilities. Today approximately 1,600 cars are "floated" on the remaining car float in the port. The New York New Jersey Rail, LLC transfers freight cars across the Upper Bay between the Greenville Yard in Jersey City and the 65th Street Yard and the Bush Terminal Yard in Brooklyn.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: At the Greenville end, CSX Transportation operates through Conrail's North Jersey Shared Assets Area along the National Docks Secondary. At Brooklyn, end connections are made to the New York and Atlantic Railway's Bay Ridge Branch and the South Brooklyn Railway. The crossing takes approximately 45 minutes. The equivalent truck trip would be 35 to long.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: Freight rail has never used the New York Tunnel Extension under the Hudson Palisades, Hudson River, Manhattan, and East River due to electrified lines and lack of ventilation. Overland travel crosses the Hudson River 140 miles (225 km) to the north using a right of way known as the Selkirk hurdle. The Cross-Harbor Rail Tunnel is a proposed rail tunnel under the Upper Bay. The western portal would be located at Greenville Yard, while the eastern portal is undetermined and a source of controversy.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: In May 2010, the Port Authority announced that it would purchase the Greenville Yard and build a new barge-to-rail facility there, as well as improve the existing railcar float system. The barge-to-rail facility is expected to handle an estimated 60,000 to 90,000 containers of solid waste per year from New York City, eliminating up to 360,000 trash truck trips a year. The authority's board authorized $118.1 million for the project. The National Docks Secondary rail line is being upgraded in anticipation of expanded volumes.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: In September 2014, the PANYNJ announced a $356 million capital project to upgrade and expand the facility, including Roll-on/roll-off operations. Expected to be operational about July 2016, an initial capacity of at least 125,000 cargo container lifts a year is projected.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The Port Inland Distribution Network involves new or expanded transportation systems for redistribution by barge and rail for the shipped goods and containers that are delivered at area ports in an effort to curtail the use of trucks and their burden on the environment, traffic, and highway systems. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (PANYNJ), New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT), and Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission (DVRPC), are involved in initiatives to review and develop this network. To instantiate PIDN, the PANYNJ signed an agreement November 29, 2003 with the Port of Albany to provide twice weekly barge service. By 2014, the service had been discontinued.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: America's Marine Highway is a similar United States Department of Transportation initiative to capitalize on U.S. waterways for the transport of goods. In 2016, MARAD made a grant of $1.6 million to improve the terminal at Red Hook as part of the Marine Highway program. Barges carrying containers on a route between Red Hook and Newark began operation in September 2016.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: In 2010, a private sector service provider began short sea shipping of aggregate products with a barge service between Tremley Point, Linden on the Arthur Kill and the Port of Salem to address a critical, yet weak link in freight transport with ports in the Delaware Valley.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The golden age of the North Atlantic ocean liner lasted from the end of the 19th century to the post–World War II period, after which innovations in air travel became commercially viable. Many berths for the great ships that lined the North River (Hudson River) were more or less abandoned by the 1970s.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: Nowadays most travel is recreational. While many cruises are to points in the Caribbean, there are also ships calling at the port that sail transatlantically and to the Southern Hemisphere, notably RMS Queen Mary 2. The passenger cruise ship terminals in the port are located in the traditional, or "inner", harbor. Collectively the cruise terminals in the Port of New York and New Jersey are the sixth busiest in the United States and 16th busiest in the world for passenger travel.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: There has been continuous ferry service between Staten Island and Lower Manhattan since the 18th century. Travelling across the Upper Bay between South Ferry and St. George Ferry Terminal, the free Staten Island Ferry transports on average 75,000 passengers per day.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: Service on the East River ended in the early 20th century and on the Hudson River in the 1960s. It has been restored and grown significantly since the 1980s providing regular service to points in Manhattan, mostly below 42nd Street. Major terminals are Hoboken Terminal, Battery Park City Ferry Terminal at World Financial Center, Paulus Hook Ferry Terminal, Weehawken Port Imperial, Pier 11/Wall Street, West Midtown Ferry Terminal, and the East 34th Street Ferry Landing. There also are numerous ferry slips that each serve one route only, including the historic Fulton Ferry. In addition to regular and rush hour routes, there are excursions, trips, and seasonal service to Gateway National Recreation Area beaches. Sightseeing boats circumnavigate Manhattan or make excursions into the Upper New York Bay.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: There are both historic and modern lighthouses throughout the port, some of which have been decommissioned


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: Channelization and landfilling began in the colonial era and continued well into the 20th century. The expansion of the land area of Lower Manhattan through encroachment began in the 17th-century Dutch settlement of New Amsterdam and continued into 20th century.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: Early materials were shellfish and other refuse, and later construction debris from projects such as the New York City Subway and Pennsylvania Station. Rubble from the bombing of London was transported for ballast during World War II. New land has been created throughout the port, including large swaths that are now Battery Park City, Ellis Island, Liberty State Park, Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, and the Meadowlands Sports Complex.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: From 1924 until 1986, sewerage sludge was hauled by tugboat and barge to a point offshore in the Atlantic. From 1986 to 1992 it was dumped at a site 106 nautical miles from Atlantic City, after which ocean dumping was banned.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: Barges were also used to transport waste to Fresh Kills Landfill, the world's largest, which operated from 1948 to 1991. Both operations were known to be detrimental to Long Island and Jersey Shore beaches, notably the 1987 Syringe Tide.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The port has many sunken ships, some of which can be seen, others that lie on the floor of the ports waterways.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: The Staten Island boat graveyard is a marine scrapyard located in the Arthur Kill near the Fresh Kills Landfill, on the West Shore of Staten Island.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: In 2010, 4,811 ships entered the harbor carrying over 32.2 million metric tons of cargo valued at over $175 billion.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: Approximately 3.2 million twenty-foot equivalent units (TEU) of containers and 700,000 automobiles are handled per year. In the first half of 2014, the port handled 1,583,449 containers, a 35,000-container increase above the six-month record set in 2012, while the port handled a monthly record of 306,805 containers in October 2014. In 2014, the port handled 3,342,286 containers and 393,931 automobiles.


title: Port of New York and New Jersey

text: In January through June 2015, the top 10 imports that went through the port of New York and New Jersey were:


title: Amitabh Bachchan Corporation

text: Amitabh Bachchan Corporation Ltd. is an Indian entertainment company which is owned by Amitabh Bachchan. It was founded in 1996, it did event-management, film production and distribution work. During 1999 it emerged as fiasco for Amitabh Bachchan. It was gone into bankruptcy and financial losses to owner. Miss World 1996 was organised by this organisation.


title: Amitabh Bachchan Corporation

text: The company specialized in film production and event management. The business was plagued by financial difficulties. The main reason for the bad performance of ABCL was blamed on the gross mismanagement of the company by the, then CEO, Sanjiv Gupta, who went on to become the CEO of Coca-Cola India.


title: Amitabh Bachchan Corporation

text: The company burst into the limelight in 1996 when it was responsible for bringing to India the Miss World Pageant, but was then mired with controversy when the company was not able to pay its dues.


title: Amitabh Bachchan Corporation

text: "Dekh Bhai Dekh" a Hindi sitcom was directed by Anand Mahendru, produced by Jaya Bachchan (via ABCL) and starring Sushma Seth, Navin Nischol, Amar Upadhyay and Shekhar Suman in lead roles.


title: Ask the Stars

text: Ask the Stars () is an upcoming South Korean television series written by Seo Sook-hyang and directed by Park Shin-woo. It stars Lee Min-ho and Gong Hyo-jin in the lead roles. The series follows the fateful encounter of a space-tourist and an astronaut on a space station.


title: Ask the Stars

text: On November 18, 2021, it was revealed that Lee Min-ho and Gong Hyo-jin were in talks to take on the lead roles of a new drama series written by writer Seo Sook-hyang. On January 26, 2022, it was revealed that Oh Jung-se was offered a role and that the proposal is under review. On March 28, 2022, Lee and Gong were confirmed as the leads.


title: Pease pudding

text: Pease pudding, also known as pease porridge, is a savoury pudding dish made of boiled legumes, typically split yellow peas, with water, salt and spices, and often cooked with a bacon or ham joint. A common dish in the north-east of England, it is consumed to a lesser extent in the rest of Britain, as well as in other regions worldwide.


title: Pease pudding

text: Pease pudding is typically thick, somewhat similar in texture to (but perhaps a little more solid than) hummus, and is light yellow in colour, with a mild taste. Pease pudding is traditionally produced in England, especially in the industrial North Eastern areas including South Shields. It is often served with ham or bacon, beetroot and stottie cakes. It is also a key ingredient in the classic saveloy dip. In Southern England, it is usually served with faggots. Also in southern England is the small village of Pease Pottage which, according to tradition, gets its name from serving pease pottage to convicts either on their way from London to the South Coast, or from East Grinstead to Horsham.


title: Pease pudding

text: Peasemeal brose, also known as brosemeal, is a traditional breakfast dish in the north of Scotland. It is made in the traditional way and usually eaten with butter, and either salt or honey.


title: Pease pudding

text: In parts of the Midlands, it replaces mushy peas as a traditional accompaniment to fish and chips, although the distinction is largely the name and tendency for mushy peas to be green. In both cases, the starchy "field peas" used are harvested dry, as opposed to "sweet peas", which are the same species harvested fresh.


title: Pease pudding

text: In Middle English, 'pease' was a mass noun, used in the same way as 'flour' or 'oatmeal'. The modern singular 'pea' and its plural 'peas' derive from this.


title: Pease pudding

text: In German-speaking countries, pease pudding is known under the name "Erbspüree" or "Erbsenpüree". Alternative regional names are "Erbsbrei" or "Erbsmus". It is especially widespread in the traditional cuisine of the German capital Berlin. The best-known German dish which is traditionally served with pease pudding is "Eisbein". A similar dish with ham hock, "karka", is served in Lithuania.


title: Pease pudding

text: In the Netherlands, pea soup is called "snert", or "erwtensoep". It is cooked with dried split peas (yellow, or green), with chopped onions and bay leaf, and a smoked pork sausage, often Polish, which is then sliced, and served with the soup.


title: Pease pudding

text: Traditional Russian cuisine has several pea-based dishes, including pease pudding/puree/soups known as "gorohovaya kasha" () or "goroshnitsa" ().


title: Pease pudding

text: In Beijing cuisine, "wandouhuang" (豌豆黄) is a sweetened and chilled pease pudding made with yellow split peas or shelled mung beans, sometimes flavoured with sweet osmanthus blossoms and dates. A refined version of this snack is said to have been a favourite of Empress Dowager Cixi.


title: Pease pudding

text: In Greek cuisine, a similar dish is called "fava" (Φάβα). Despite the name, it is usually made from yellow split peas, not broad beans. The mashed peas are usually drizzled with olive oil and topped with chopped raw onions.


title: Pease pudding

text: Generally, recipes for pease pudding involve steeping soaked split yellow peas in stock (traditionally ham hock stock) and cooking them for around 40 minutes. The resulting mush is then blended with other ingredients, which depend on the variation. The oldest known written recipe for something similar to pease pudding involves saffron, nutmeg and a little cinnamon in the blending process; modern recipes sometimes beat in an egg at this point to act as an extra binding agent.


title: Pease pudding

text: The song "Food, Glorious Food" from the 1960s West End and Broadway musical (and 1968 film) "Oliver!" has a lyric extolling pease pudding.


title: Pease pudding

text: In "The Princess and the Goblin", Curdie takes bread and pease pudding with him for sustenance when he goes to spy on the King's house.


title: Pease pudding

text: Pease pudding also featured in "Geordie Shore" season 16 episode 10 as the cast members handed out leaflets and samples promoting the product.


title: Scythian religion

text: The Scythian religion refers to the mythology, ritual practices and beliefs of the Scythian cultures, a collection of closely related ancient Iranian peoples who inhabited Central Asia and the Pontic–Caspian steppe in Eastern Europe throughout Classical Antiquity, spoke the Scythian language (itself a member of the Eastern Iranian language family), and which included the Scythians proper, the Cimmerians, the Sarmatians, the Alans, the Sindi, the Massagetae and the Saka.


title: Scythian religion

text: The Scythian religion is assumed to have been related to the earlier Proto-Indo-Iranian religion as well as to contemporary Eastern Iranian and Ossetian traditions, and to have influenced later Slavic, Hungarian and Turkic mythologies.


title: Scythian religion

text: The religion was influenced by that of the populations whom the Scythians had conquered, such as the sedentary Thracian populations of the western Pontic steppe. Due to this, many of the Scythian male deities had equivalents in the pantheon of the Thracian peoples, including those living in Anatolia, and some of the names of these deities were of Thracian origin; the Scythian female deities, and especially their links with special cults and their rites and symbols, were also connected to Thracian and Anatolian culture.


title: Scythian religion

text: During the Scythians' stay in Western Asia, their religion had also been influenced by ancient Mesopotamian and Canaanite religions.


title: Scythian religion

text: According to of, the Scythians worshipped a pantheon of seven gods and goddesses (heptad), which he equates with Greek divinities of Classical Antiquity following the . He mentioned eight deities divided into three ranks, with this structure of the Scythian pantheon being typically Indo-Iranian:


title: Scythian religion

text: This list of the Scythian deities by was a translation of a Scythian hymn to the gods which was chanted during sacrifices and rituals. With the omission of who was worshipped only by the Royal Scythians, the Scythian pantheon was composed of seven gods, with the Sarmatian tribe of the also being attested as worshipping seven deities, and traces of a similar tradition being recorded among Ossetians. This heptatheism was a typical feature of Indo-Iranian religions: seven s led by are worshipped in the Zoroastrian religion of the more southern Iranian peoples, which had significantly transformed the concepts of the Indo-Iranian religion while also inheriting several features of it; the leading deities of the Indo-Aryan Vedic pantheon, the s, were also seven in number.


title: Scythian religion

text: This pantheon was a reflection of the Scythian cosmology, headed by the primeval fire which was the basic essence and the source of all creation, following which came the Earth-Mother and Sky-Father who created the gods, the latter of whom were the four custodians of the four sides of the world regulating the universe. The world inhabited by humans existed between this celestial realm and the chthonic realm below the earth.


title: Scythian religion

text: The Scythian goddess (Hellenised as ; Latinised as ) and was equated by him with the Greek goddess of the Hearth, , was the most venerated of all Scythian deities. The name of meant "the Burning One" or "the Flaming One," and was related to the Avestan term () meaning "to warm," Latin and several other Indo-European terms for heat, as well as to the similar name of the Hindu goddess () and to the verb related to the latter's name, (), meaning "burns" and "is hot." and to the Sanskrit term (), which denoted the cosmic warmth and the original nature, that is the cosmic principle out of which originated the multiple elements of the Universe and the order in the world. Thus, was the primordial fire which alone existed before the creation of the universe, and from her were born (the Earth) and (Heaven).


title: Scythian religion

text: Due to being a deity representing an abstract notion of fire and divine bliss, was rarely depicted in Scythian art, but was instead represented by the fireplace, which constituted the sacral centre of any community, from the family to the tribe.


title: Scythian religion

text: The connections of her name to fire and warmth, as well as her role as the primordial fire attest of the role of as a primordial sovereign deity of fire derived from the common fire-deity of the Indo-Europeans, whose iterations included the Greek , and the Vedic () among the Indo-Aryans and () among the more southern Iranian peoples. was thus similar to the Vedic and the Greek , therefore being connected to the common Iranian cult and concept of fire, although she belonged to an older period in the development of Indo-Iranian religion compared to the other Iranian peoples and the Indo-Aryans, among whom she had been respectively replaced by the male fire-gods and , making her the only attested female Indo-Iranian fire-deity. of 's listing of at the head of the Scythian pantheon was a reflection of the role of the fire-deity among the Indo-European peoples, and parallels the Greek tradition of beginning and ending every sacrificial rite with the sacrifice to , and every appeal to the gods starting by mentioning her name; another parallel is found in the Indo-Aryan , which begins and ends with a hymn addressed to ; thus, the supreme position of in the list of Scythian gods reflected her position in hymns to the gods pronounced during Scythian sacrifices and rituals.


title: Scythian religion

text: Also attesting of the paramount role of the fire-deity in the Iranian pantheon as an omnipresent element, was the primeval fire which was the basic essence and the source of all creation, a concept which was also present among the Indo-Aryan pantheon, where was the fire which could be found throughout the Cosmos and which permeated the whole Universe, including the worlds of the humans and of the gods. The status of as the incarnation of the primordial fire is also confirmed by the story recounted by of the dispute which arose between the Scythians and the Egyptians for the right to the title of the most ancient people, and which consisted of an argument by each side about whether the world was initially fully flooded by water (referring to ) or covered with fire (referring to ).


title: Scythian religion

text: As a goddess of the Hearth, was the patron of society, the state and families who protected the family and the clan, and, as a symbol of supreme authority, she was assigned the superior position over the other gods through her role as the guardian of the king, due to which as well as her to link to the common Iranian cult of fire, she was connected to the importance of fire and of royal hearths in Iranian religions. The king's hearth was hence connected with , and was therefore an inviolable symbol of the prosperity of his people and a token of royal power, and herself was connected with royal power, as attested by the Scythian king calling her the "Queen of the Scythians" in 513 BC, with this characterisation of being possibly linked to the notion of the ( in Avestan), the Iranian divine bliss, or even to that of the fire which protects the king, the (Middle Persian: ). As the guardian of the royal hearth, therefore ensured the well-being of the tribe - an oath by the royal hearths was considered the most sacred and breaking it was believed to cause the king's illness and was punished by death. The (Ancient Greek: ) of were likely the flaming gold objects which fell from the sky in the Scythian genealogical myth and of which the king was the trustee while herself in turn was the protector of the king and the royal hearth, thus creating a strong bond between and the Scythian king, who might have been seen as an intermediary between the goddess and the people, and any offence to the royal was considered as affecting the whole tribe and had to be averted at any cost.


title: Scythian religion

text: The Scythian goddess of the birth-giving chthonic principle was (Hellenised as ; Latinised as ) or Apia (Hellenised as ; Latinised as ), which is reflected by her name, , which was a Scythian cognate of the Avestan word for water, (), and through her equation by of with the Greek goddess of the Earth, . These identifications rested upon the conceptualisation in ancient cosmologies of Earth and water as being two aspects of same the birth-giving chthonic principle, and, within Iranian tradition, the earth was a life-giving principle which was inextricably connected to water, which was held to have fertilising, nourishing, and healing properties. The name was also linked to a child-talk endearing word meaning "mommy," with these various connections of and her name painting the consistent picture of her as a primordial deity from whom was born the world's first inhabitants.


title: Scythian religion

text: As a primordial goddess who gave birth to the first inhabitants of the world, remained aloof from worldly affairs and did not interfere with them after the creation of the world and the establishment of the proper order.


title: Scythian religion

text: The original Scythian form of the name of is uncertain, and has variously been interpreted as meaning either "father," or "guardian," or "protector."


title: Scythian religion

text: According to of, the Scythians considered to be a supreme god. I's statement in the Behistun Inscription that the Scythians did not worship thus had no basis and this declaration of his was a political one resulting from the hostilities between the Persian Empire and the Scythians.


title: Scythian religion

text: The deities of the third rank of the Scythian pantheon were associated to the "middle world" inhabited by humans and physical living beings, and which the Scythian cosmology, like all ancient cosmologies, conceptualised as a square plane with four sides each corresponding to one of the radical coordinates as a structural aspect of space. Each side of this quadrangular earthly plane had a symbol, and was thus associated to one of the four deities of the third rank, who were the collective personification of the four-sided "middle world," with a similar concept being found in Indic mythology in the form of the s, the four guardian-gods of the directions, who each also had their own "sphere of action," such as , the guardian of the South, being the ruler over the world of the deceased ancestors, and , the guardian of the East, being the king of the gods and the personification of the "middle world."


title: Scythian religion

text: The Scythian god ' (meaning "whose might is far-reaching"; Ancient Greek: ) or ' (Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ), appears in the Greek recollections of Scythian genealogical myth where he was called the "Scythian " by of , although he was not the same as the Greek hero . - was born from the union of and a daughter of the river , and he was the divine ancestor of the Scythians.


title: Scythian religion

text: The Scythian "Arēs," that is the Scythian war god equated by of with the Greek god , corresponded to the Iranian deity , and might possibly have been an offspring of . The Scythian and Sarmatian "" was represented by an sword planted upwards at the top of a tall square altar made of brushwood of which three sides were vertical and the fourth was inclined to allow access to it. The Scythian "" was given blood sacrifices and his representation in the form of a sword are evidence of his military function. The Scythian "" was also a god of kingship, and the use of horses and of the blood and right arms of prisoners in his cult was a symbolic devotion of the swiftness of horses and the strength of men to this god who had similar powers.


title: Scythian religion

text: The square shape of the altar of the Scythian "" represented the four-sided "middle world," that is the air space, and the sword placed at its top represented the world axis which represented the vertical structure of the universe and connected its cosmic, central, and chthonic zones; the altar to the Scythian "" was thus a model of the universe as conceptualised within Scythian cosmology, most and represented especially its central zone, the air space. The tallness of the mound which acted as the altar to the Scythian "," as well as the practice of throwing the right arms of prisoners sacrificed to him in the sky, are evidence of the celestial nature of the Scythian "" as a god of the air space, that is the practice of throwing these sacrificed arms in the air indicate that the Scythian "" was associated to the gods of the sky and wind (and), and more especially the wind, since the wind-god was the first incarnation of and a special carrier of /. This is also recorded in the works of the Greek author of, who recorded that the Scythians worshipped the Wind and the Sword as gods, referring to the dual nature of the Scythian "" as a god of both the Wind, which brings gives life, and the Sword, which brings death; the dual nature of this god is also visible in the used to represent him being shaped like a phallus, thus being a deadly weapon which was also shaped in the form of a life-giving organ.


title: Scythian religion

text: According to Tadeusz Sulimirski, this form of worship continued among the descendants of the Scythians, the , through to the 4th century AD; this tradition may be reflected in 's assertion that was able to assert his authority over the Scythians through his possession of a particular blade, referred to as the "Sword of."


title: Scythian religion

text: The hero from the Ossetian might have originated from the Scythian "." In the sagas, appears as a brave but uncontrolled warrior living in the air space and sometimes took the form of a whirlwind, who often protected his peoples from multiple enemies, and who was made of steel and connected to his sword, which provided him with immortality so long as it remained unbroken, thus being the incarnation of himself.


title: Scythian religion

text: The Scythian god (Hellenised as ; Latinised as ), might have been a solar deity, due to which of equated him with the Greek god .


title: Scythian religion

text: The Scythian name is comparable to Avestan () and Vedic Sanskrit (), with the Avestan form being an epithet of as the "Lord of Cattle-Land," that is a deity of cattle culture widely worshipped by the common people in Scythian society. The first term composing this name, , meaning "herd" and "possessions," is a cognate of Avestan (), meaning "cow pasture," and reflects the nature of " " as a Hellenization of the Iranian deity (); the second element , meaning "strong" and "mighty," is the same as the Avestan element "mighty" from the name of the goddess (), and is connected to the Scythians' association of with the goddess , who had absorbed many of the traits of .


title: Scythian religion

text: Due to the connections of 's and his identification with the Greek god , he has been identified with , although this identification is largely tentative, with the multiple functions of contributing to this uncertainty.


title: Scythian religion

text: Depictions of a solar god with a radiate head and riding a carriage pulled by two or four horses on numerous pieces of art found in Scythian burials from the 3rd century BC and later might have been representations of .


title: Scythian religion

text: ' (Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ), often erroneously called ' (Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ) due to a scribal corruption, was a complex androgynous Scythian goddess of fertility who possessed power over sovereignty and the priestly force.


title: Scythian religion

text: (Hellenised as ; Latinised as ) or Thamimasidas (Hellenised as ; Latinised as ) was a god worshipped only by the tribe of the Royal Scythians. Thagimasadas was thus not a member of the pan-Scythian heptatheistic pantheon and was likely the tribal- and ancestor- deity of the Royal Scythians.


title: Scythian religion

text: The name of this deity is uncertain, and element of the god's name might be derived from the Iranian term , meaning "great"; the element might have been a cognate of the Avestan word (, meaning "firmament"), and the Vedic Sanskrit term () or (), meaning "to create by putting into motion."


title: Scythian religion

text: The equation of with might also be due to his possible role as a fashioner of the sky and hence was connected to sky-waters and thunderbolts just like the Greek was.


title: Scythian religion

text: The Scythian deity known in modern day as the "Snake-Legged Goddess," also referred to as the "Anguipede Goddess," so called because several representations of her depict her as a goddess with snakes or tendrils as legs, was associated to the life-giving principle. The Snake-Legged Goddess was a daughter of , likely through a river-god, and belonged to a younger generation of deities of "lower status" who were more actively involved in human life. She appears in all variations of the Scythian genealogical myth as the Scythian fore-mother who sires the ancestor and first king of the Scythians with .


title: Scythian religion

text: The mytheme of the Divine twins, which appears across several Indo-European religions in the form of the Ancient Greek , the Vedic s and the twins from the Dacian tablets - these divine twins had in earlier Indo-European mythology been horses before later evolving into horsemen such as the Aśvins and the English and, who had horse-names. In Indo-European mythology, the divine twins were companions of the Mother-Goddess who flanked her symbol of the Tree of Life, especially in depictions of them as two horses or horsemen who stand symmetrically near a goddess or a tree.


title: Scythian religion

text: In pre-Zoroastrian Iranian religion, , the Iranian inflection of the divine twins, were connected with and were her companions. The cult of the divine twins existed among the Scythians, with of recording the veneration of two twin deities in a Scythian temple whom he identified with the Greek and . Their duality represented the contrast of death against fertility and resurrection, and were related to royalty and warrior society, which thus made them companions of , as depicted in the Karagodeuashkh plate.


title: Scythian religion

text: Depictions of the divine twins among Scythian peoples included some Sarmatian royal brands depicting the theme of the two horsemen standing symmetrically near a tree, a small figure from a Scythian burial at Krasny Mayak depicting two men embracing one another, as well as two Greek-made bronze figurines from depicting the Greek who were identified by the Scythians with the divine twins, together with a terracotta sculpture in the shape of a goddess's head were discovered in an ash altar near a wall of a temple where was worshipped a fertility goddess to whom was associated images of rams.


title: Scythian religion

text: The divine twins' position in Scythian religion was inferior to that of the gods, likely belonging to the rank of heroes, and might possibly have been the same as the two brothers and first Scythian kings born of and the Snake-Legged Goddess in the genealogical myth. The Scythian divine twins, who were most likely the origin of the twin heroes who appear in the Ossetian , are another reflection of the Indo-European mytheme of the divine twins as the progenitors of royal dynasties, also found in the Roman myth of and, the English and, and the Greek as the originators of the dual-monarchy of .


title: Scythian religion

text: Among the Scythians and the Sindo-Maeotians was present the cult of a solar god depicted as a mounted deified ancestor. This deity was believed to be a fighter against evil, and was popular from the late first millennium BC to the first centuries of the Common Era on the Black Sea coast, Central Asia and Transcaucasia, and appeared in South Asia following the migrations of the Saka there.


title: Scythian religion

text: By the 1st centuries AD in the Bosporus, the chariot-riding Scythian solar god had been syncretised with the horse-riding Persian god , imported from the southern and eastern shores of the , to become the Most High God (Ancient Greek: ) of the Bosporan Kingdom. This Most High God, who was depicted as a horseman, enjoyed wide popularity and was raised to the status of divine patron of the royal dynasty.


title: Scythian religion

text: The Most High God was known in as (Ancient Greek: ; Latin: ) derived from Old Iranian , which reflects his nature as a grace- and power-giving solar god.


title: Scythian religion

text: A stele from 104 AD which commemorates the celebration of the Day of depicts the Most High God as a mounted horseman dressed in Sarmatian costume and holding a in his right hand, with a blazing altar in front of him and a tree behind the altar. This scene is consistent with the depictions of the horsemen facing in Scythian art, and represents the communion of the Most High God with the Bosporan evolved from , and is represented by the tree (similarly to , the Bosporan was sometimes represented with tree-shaped limbs or head, with her palm shaped like large leaves on stele, and her head shaped like a tree top and her hands shaped like branches on a stamp), while the altar sanctifies the ceremony.


title: Scythian religion

text: The "" of 's second version and from the 's version of the genealogical myth is not the Greek hero , but the Scythian god , who appears in the other recorded variants of the genealogical myth under the name of (Scythian: ) or as a son of , and was likely assimilated by the Greeks from the northern shores of the Black Sea with the Greek . The mother's traits are consistent across the multiple versions of the genealogical myth and include her being the daughter of either a river-god or of the Earth and dwelling in a cave, as well as her being half-woman and half-snake


title: Scythian religion

text: The Scythian genealogical myth has been tentatively connected to the legend of and the Giants as recorded by , according to which she had been attacked by Giants and called on for help. After concealing , the goddess, under guise of introducing the Giants one by one, treacherously handed them to , who killed them. According to this hypothesis, was the same goddess as the Snake-Legged Goddess of the Scythian genealogical myth, and her reward to "" for defeating the Giants was her love.


title: Scythian religion

text: The Scythian genealogical myth exhibits clear textual and narrative parallels with the Persian story of and his three sons - , , and - from the , and thus ascribes the origin of the Scythians to the Sky Father , either directly or through his son, and to the Snake-Legged Goddess affiliated to , and represented the threefold division of the universe into the Heavens, the Earth, and the Underworld, as well as the division of Scythian society into the warrior, priest, and agriculturalist classes.


title: Scythian religion

text: The names of 's sons in the first version of the genealogical myth - , , and - end with the suffix "," which is a Hellenisation of the Old Iranian term meaning ruler:


title: Scythian religion

text: The first version of the genealogical myth recounted by therefore also explains the division of into three kingdoms of which the king of the Royal Scythians was the High King, which is a structure also recorded in 's account of the Scythian campaign of the Persian king I, where was the Scythian high king while and were sub-kings.


title: Scythian religion

text: The sons of according to the second version of the genealogical myth were each also ancestors of tribes belonging to the Scythian cultures:


title: Scythian religion

text: The myth of the golden objects which fell from the sky was also present among the Saka of Central Asia, and therefore must have been an ancient Iranian tradition. A similar myth was present among the more southern Iranian peoples in the form of the god offering a (, either a pick or a shepherd's flute) and an (, a cattle goad), both made of gold, which used on the earth to increase the size of its part which was inhabitable.


title: Scythian religion

text: The worship of many of the Scythian deities were characteristic of the sedentary Thracian populations of , although the sword-cult of the god of war was a properly Iranian nomadic one.


title: Scythian religion

text: Scythian religion was largely aniconic, and the Scythians did not make statues of their deities for worship, with the one notable exception being the war-god, the Scythian "." Nevertheless, the Scythians did make smaller scale images of certain of their deities for use as decorations, although , Papaios and Api seem to have never been represented in any anthropomorphised form.


title: Scythian religion

text: The only god to which Scythians built sanctuaries was the war-god, the Scythian "," to whom a high place was made out of a pile of brushwood, of which the three sides were upright and vertical and the fourth side formed a slope on which worshippers could walk to the top of the high place, which was itself a square-shaped platform on which the god himself was ritually represented in the form of a sword placed pointing upward. The square shape of the platform might have formed a representation of Scythian religion's conceptualisation of the universe as being four-sided while the sword-idol might have been a cosmic axis which united the human and divine worlds. This tall brushwood high place was a representation of the world mountain. These brushwood high places could be found throughout all regions inhabited by the Scythians, and every year more brushwood was added to the high place to maintain its structure.


title: Scythian religion

text: A holy site of the Scythians was Exampaeus ( ), that is the Holy Ways, located between the Dnipro and the Southern Buh rivers, where was located a large bronze cauldron which of described as "six fingers breadth in thickness" and which could contain the volume of six hundred . According to Scythian legend, this cauldron was made when the king Ariantas ordered every one of his subjects to bring him a single arrowhead so he could know the exact number of his subjects. The great bronze cauldron at Exampaeus was made out of the heap of arrowheads which accumulated from this census. This cauldron located at the Holy Ways was believed to be the centre of the world, and the legend of the arrowheads reflected that all Scythians had collective ownership of it.


title: Scythian religion

text: of mentioned that the worshipped only the Sun-god, to whom they sacrificed horses, which referred to the cult of the supreme Sun-god , who was associated with the worship of fire and horses. When the Persian king II attacked the , their queen swore by the Sun to kill him if he did not return back to his kingdom.


title: Scythian religion

text: The king of the Royal Scythians performed the duties of a priest during the pan-Scythian rituals which involved the of . Among Indo-Iranian peoples, the king had a charisma which took the physical form of gold, held to be a royal metal, and therefore the king displayed his visible extraordinary powers by controlling the gold of Tapatī́.


title: Scythian religion

text: The (meaning "unmanly," and rendered by Greek writers as and ,) were a section of the Scythian clergy composed of tranvestite priests.


title: Scythian religion

text: The were affiliated to an orgiastic cult of in her form strongly influenced by Near Eastern fertility goddesses, and the rites of the thus combined both indigenous Scythians religious practices of a shamanistic nature, as well as ones imported from Levantine religions. The also acted as seers and performed a particular form of divination which, unlike the methods of traditional Scythian soothsayers, used linden bark.


title: Scythian religion

text: The were transvestites who belonged to the most powerful Scythian aristocracy and wore women's clothing as well performed women's jobs and spoke like women; according to indigenous Scythian shamanic traditions the were considered "transformed" shamans who changed their sex, which signaled them as being the most powerful shamans, due to which they inspired fear and were thus accordingly given special respect in Scythian society, and the Scythians ascribed their androgyny to a "female disease" causing sexual impotency. The Scythians believed that the androgyny of the resulted from a curse by the goddess to the perpetrators of the sack of the temple of the goddess (whom the Scythians identified with ) in and their descendants during the Scythian presence in Western Asia in the 7th century BC; the transvestite androgyny of the was thus also typical of the cult of the Levantine celestial . Given the hereditary nature of the and the belief that the curse of ʿAštart affected the looters of her shrine at as well as their descendants, their transvestite transformation likely happened late in their lives.


title: Scythian religion

text: Like all ancient priesthoods, the differentiated themselves from ordinary mortals through their dress, behaviour, and secred rituals. Therefore, in addition to their transvestism, the might also have worn additional regalia, such as drums used in shamanic rituals and antlered headdresses similar to those found in Saka horse burials and those worn in more recent times by Siberian shamans. Sceptres capped with ornate pole tops, which have been discovered throughout the steppe from Mongolia to the Great Hungarian Plain were also used by the as symbols of authority: these pole tops often included rattles, and the oldest of these date from the 8th century BC, are from Tuva and the Minusinsk Basin, and are topped by a stag or ibex standing with its feet together as if perched on a rocky eminence. The more recent pole tops are more elaborate in design, such as one found in the , which is in the shape of a goddess with her hands on her hips, and another one from the same kurgan in the shape of a griffin in a frame from which two bells hang, and a third from that same kurgan which splits into three branches each topped by a bird of prey holding a bell in its beak. The rattling and tinkling of the sceptres' bells invited the audience to the impending rites.


title: Scythian religion

text: The were especially consulted when the king of the Scythians was ill, which was itself believed by the Scythians to be caused by a false oath being sworn upon the king's hearth. Once the had identified the suspect who had sworn the false oath, the said suspect would claim to be innocent. If the maintained the accusation, six more soothsayers were consulted, and if they upheld the original accusation, the suspect was executed by being beheaded. If the additional soothsayers declared the suspect was innocent, the process of consulting more soothsayers was repeated, and if the larger number of soothsayers still declared the suspect to be innocent, the initial accusers were executed by being put into a wagon filled with brushwood which was set on fire, and their sons were all killed.


title: Scythian religion

text: The cult of the Most High God in was performed by (Ancient Greek: ), which were state-recognised all-male of which all the free men of the city were members, including both the rank-and-file citizens and the aristocracy of . These worshippers' associations belonged to the same institution and organised the whole citizenry of into distinct groups which each had a very strict hierarchy, and around half of their memberships was ethnically Greek while the other half was ethnically Iranian.


title: Scythian religion

text: These originated in the Iranian institution of , that is male societies of young warriors, which were present among both the Persians and the Scythians. These male societies had been Hellenised when they were incorporated into the social structure of the Bosporan Kingdom.


title: Scythian religion

text: The typical functions of these Iranian male societies, such as the worship of , the performing of ecstatic cults involving the consumption of , and fire worship were reflected in the syncretised Bosporan cult of the Most High God, such as the depiction of the deity holding of a and facing a blazing altar on the Day of commemoration stele; fire worship was also present among the Bosporan in the form of the fire cult's presence among the funerary rituals of the inhabitants of . The cult of the dead of the male societies was visible in the numerous the Bosporan built in commemoration of their dead members. Iranian male societies also maintained justice and punished law-breakers - reflected in the officials being among the Bosporan synods' leading magistrates -, and were closely connected to royal power, hence the close connection of the and their Most High God with the Bosporan royal family and its cults. And, like the Iranian male societies, the Bosporan were divided into age classes, and required initiations so members could join an ideal community of alive and deceased warriors.


title: Scythian religion

text: The Scythians would annually bring more brushwood to the high place of the Scythian "" to maintain its structure. This ceremony also symbolised a recommitment and created a consciousness of the continuity of worship at the high place, and was also a reaffirmation of tribal identity.


title: Scythian religion

text: Every year, the Scythians held a ceremony to honour their "" during which they sacrificed cattle, horses and every hundredth prisoner of war to him. Libations of wine were poured over the prisoners who were to be sacrificed, following which their throats were cut over a vessel to catch their blood. This vessel was carried to the top of the brushwood high place of the god and the prisoners' blood was poured as libations on the sword functioning as the god's idol, and their right arms were severed and thrown into the sky and left wherever they fell. The use of horses and of the blood and right arms of prisoners in the cult of the Scythian "" was a symbolic devotion of the swiftness of horses and the strength of men to this god of kingship who had similar powers, and the tall brushwood altar on which the blood was offered to the god was a representation of the world mountain.


title: Scythian religion

text: The Scythians held an annual ceremony where everyone who had killed at least one enemy was acknowledged by being allowed to drink from a communal bowl of wine in front of the assembled company, although it is unknown whether or not this festivity was performed at the same time as the yearly sacrifices to the Scythian "."


title: Scythian religion

text: According to of , animal sacrifices among the Scythians to all gods except to the Scythian "" were carried out by tying a rope around the front legs of the sacrificial animal, then the offerer of the sacrifice standing behind the animal and pulling the rope to throw the animal forward, and strangling it to death using a rope tied around the animal's neck and tightened using a stick. The sacrificed animal was then cut up, its flesh was boiled in a cauldron, or, for those who did not have a cauldron, in the animal's own skin, while the bones were added to the fire on which the animal's flesh was cooked so they could be consumed following the approved ritual. Once the meat was cooked, the person who initiated the sacrifice would throw some of cooked meat and entrails into the ground as an offering for the god. This method of sacrifice was typical of the more nomadic Scythians.


title: Scythian religion

text: The Scythian "" was also propitiated using human sacrifice, which involved cutting the throat of one man out of every hundred prisoners and pouring his blood on the sword-idol of the god, and then cutting the sacrificed man's right arm and throwing it into the air and leaving it wherever it fell.


title: Scythian religion

text: The signet ring of the Scythian king , whose bezel was decorated with the image of a woman seated on a throne and holding a mirror in her right hand and a sceptre in her left hand, with () engraved near the figure of the goddess, and on whose band was inscribed in Greek (, "Tell to be with Argotas!"), represented communion with as guaranteeing sovereignty in Scythian religion. The image of the on the ring was therefore a representation of her as a granter of sovereignty, with the ring having been inherited from generation to generation of the Scythian royal dynasty as a token of royal power, and being a former Scythian king from whom his descendant Skula inherited this ring. The ring did not feature any image of the male partner of the goddess because the kings were themselves considered to be these partners, with the Scythian royal investiture having been considered both a communion between man and the goddess as well as a marital union which elevated the king to the status of spouse of the goddess and granted him power through sexual intercourse with the goddess. This was also a reflection of Levantine influence on , since Mesopotamian equivalents of were sometimes represented together with the king in scenes represented sacred marriages, and the stability of royal power in was believed to be derived from intimate relations between , with whom the queen of was identified, and the king, who claimed descent from 's lover .


title: Scythian religion

text: A similar rite of the marriage between the king and the great goddess existed among the Scythians' Thracian neighbours.


title: Scythian religion

text: The ritual sleep was a ceremony during which a substitute ritual king would ceremonially sleep in an open air field along with the gold for a single night, possibly as a symbolical ritual impregnation of the earth. This substitute king would receive as much land as he could ride around in one day: this land belonged to the real king and was given to the substitute king to complete his symbolic identification with the real king, following which he would be allowed to live for one year until he would be sacrificed when the time for the next ritual sleep festival would arrive and a successor of the ritual king was chosen. This ceremony also represented the death and rebirth of the Scythian king and was conducted at the Holy Ways, where the great bronze cauldron representing the centre of the world was located.


title: Scythian religion

text: Traditional Scythian soothsayers used willow withies for divination. This method of divination involved placing a bundle of willow sticks on the ground, untying it, and laying out the individual sticks.


title: Scythian religion

text: A particular form of divination which was performed by the used linden bark; the performed this form of divination by splitting the linden bark and twining the strands among open fingers.


title: Scythian religion

text: The motifs of Scythian cultures' Animal style art reflected the cosmological notion of the ever-present struggle of life which was held to be the essence of being. These motifs consisted of stags (sometimes substituted by elks, moose, and rams), depicted as noble beasts in repose whose legs are tucked underneath their bodies, and which represented Tree of Life which sustained the world which was always in tension. The other components of these motifs were snow leopard-like felines and birds of prey, which were represented competing with each other for the herbivores, thus creating an interlocking style of tension. These compositions featuring predator and prey were present throughout the Scythian cultures, from the Pontic Steppe to the Altai Mountains.


title: Scythian religion

text: In the western regions, under Greek influence, the art of the Pontic Scythians underwent an evolution, with the majestic stags being replaced by docile deer or horses or rams, the felines' designs changing from snow leopard-like into images of lions, and the birds of prey becoming winged griffins, although the central theme of the struggle between predator and prey remained the same. This Greek-influenced Scythian animal art is visible in the lower frieze of the Golden Pectoral from Tovsta Mohyla, where two griffins attack a horse in its centre, while the rest of the frieze depicts lions and cheetahs attacking stags and pigs. The upper frieze instead represents humans interacting with their domesticated animals to counterpose the harmony of the human world with the conflict of the supernatural realm, as well as to equate the humans with the predators with respect to their relationship with the productive power of the earth.


title: Scythian religion

text: In the eastern regions, the predator-prey motif could be found depicted on the Saka saddle covers from the Pazyryk kurgans and leather flasks, as well as tattooed on the bodies of the deceased buried in the kurgans.


title: Scythian religion

text: The Scythians of Ciscaucasia buried their royalty with human sacrifices and burnt horse hecatombs, which were practices adopted by the Scythians from the native West Asian peoples of Transcaucasia and Mesopotamia, and which the Scythians in turn introduced into the Steppe. These customs were however not adopted by the other Scythians of the Pontic steppe.


title: Scythian religion

text: The kurgans where were buried Scythian aristocrats were decorated on their surface with stelae consisting of large slabs of rocks whose surfaces had been carved into crude human figures in relief and which represented armed men whose dress, swords and weapons had been sculpted in detail. This tradition had already existed in the region of the Pontic Steppe since the 3rd millennium BC, and had later been adopted by the Scythians.


title: Scythian religion

text: The rich furnishings of Scythian tombs demonstrate that Scythians devoted significant resources to ensuring the proper burial of their members, especially of nobles. This attested that the afterlife was extremely important in Scythian religion.


title: Scythian religion

text: Sarmatians buried their priestesses with mirrors, which were symbols of feminine principle, eroticism and fertility that played an important role in the wedding rites of Iranian peoples, and were believed to be magical objects used for prophecy and shamanic rites. The Sarmatian citizens of the city of were buried along with weapons as well as with pieces of chalk and realgar which functioned as symbols of fire, while their graves were accompanied by burial constructions shaped as circular stone fences. These, along with horse harnesses being present in pit graves, as well as the burial of horses in , attested of the importance of the solar and fire cults in Sarmatian funerary rites.


title: Scythian religion

text: Due to increasing Scythian and Sarmatian cultural influence in , the deceased were often depicted as mounted horsemen on murals in their funerary vaults and tombstones at the same time as the horseman became a recurring motif in Late Scythian and Sarmatian art in the first centuries of the Common Era.


title: Scythian religion

text: The custom of eating the men of their tribe who had grown old might have reflected among Scythian peoples the presence of age classes, which were a distinguishing aspect of Iranian male societies.


title: Provenance

text: Provenance (from the French "provenir", 'to come from/forth') is the chronology of the ownership, custody or location of a historical object. The term was originally mostly used in relation to works of art but is now used in similar senses in a wide range of fields, including archaeology, paleontology, archives, manuscripts, printed books, the circular economy, and science and computing.


title: Provenance

text: The primary purpose of tracing the provenance of an object or entity is normally to provide contextual and circumstantial evidence for its original production or discovery, by establishing, as far as practicable, its later history, especially the sequences of its formal ownership, custody and places of storage. The practice has a particular value in helping authenticate objects. Comparative techniques, expert opinions and the results of scientific tests may also be used to these ends, but establishing provenance is essentially a matter of documentation. The term dates to the 1780s in English. Provenance is conceptually comparable to the legal term "chain of custody".


title: Provenance

text: For museums and the art trade, in addition to helping establish the authorship and authenticity of an object, provenance has become increasingly important in helping establish the moral and legal validity of a chain of custody, given the increasing amount of looted art. These issues first became a major concern regarding works that had changed hands in Nazi-controlled areas in Europe before and during World War II. Many museums began compiling pro-active registers of such works and their history. Recently the same concerns have come to prominence for works of African art, often exported illegally, and antiquities from many parts of the world, but currently especially in Iraq, and then Syria.


title: Provenance

text: In archaeology and paleontology, the derived term provenience is used with a related but very particular meaning, to refer to the location (in modern research, recorded precisely in three dimensions) where an artifact or other ancient item was found. "Provenance" covers an object's complete documented history. An artifact may thus have both a provenience and a provenance.


title: Provenance

text: The provenance of works of fine art, antiques and antiquities is of great importance, especially to their owner. There are a number of reasons why painting provenance is important, which mostly also apply to other types of fine art. A good provenance increases the value of a painting, and establishing provenance may help confirm the date, artist and, especially for portraits, the subject of a painting. It may confirm whether a painting is genuinely of the period it seems to date from. The provenance of paintings can help resolve ownership disputes. For example, provenance between 1933 and 1945 can determine whether a painting was looted by the Nazis. Many galleries are putting a great deal of effort into researching the provenance of paintings in their collections for which there is no firm provenance during that period. Documented evidence of provenance for an object can help to establish that it has not been altered and is not a forgery, a reproduction, stolen or looted art. Provenance helps assign the work to a known artist, and a documented history can be of use in helping to prove ownership. An example of a detailed provenance is given in the Arnolfini portrait.


title: Provenance

text: The quality of provenance of an important work of art can make a considerable difference to its selling price in the market; this is affected by the degree of certainty of the provenance, the status of past owners as collectors, and in many cases by the strength of evidence that an object has not been illegally excavated or exported from another country. The provenance of a work of art may vary greatly in length, depending on context or the amount that is known, from a single name to an entry in a scholarly catalogue some thousands of words long.


title: Provenance

text: An expert certification can mean the difference between an object having no value and being worth a fortune. Certifications themselves may be open to question. Jacques van Meegeren forged the work of his father Han van Meegeren (who in his turn had forged the work of Vermeer). Jacques sometimes produced a certificate with his forgeries stating that a work was created by his father.


title: Provenance

text: John Drewe was able to pass off as genuine paintings, a large number of forgeries that would have easily been recognised as such by scientific examination. He established an impressive (but false) provenance and because of this galleries and dealers accepted the paintings as genuine. He created this false provenance by forging letters and other documents, including false entries in earlier exhibition catalogues.


title: Provenance

text: Sometimes provenance can be as simple as a photograph of the item with its original owner. Simple yet definitive documentation such as that can increase its value by an order of magnitude, but only if the owner was of high renown. Many items that were sold at auction have gone far past their estimates because of a photograph showing that item with a famous person. Some examples include antiques owned by politicians, musicians, artists, actors, etc.


title: Provenance

text: In the context of discussions about the restitution of cultural objects in museum collections of colonial origin, the AfricaMuseum in Belgium started to publicly present information about such objects in its permanent exhibition in 2021.


title: Provenance

text: The objective of provenance research is to produce a complete list of owners (together, where possible, with the supporting documentary proof) from when the painting was commissioned or in the artist's studio through to the present time. In practice, there are likely to be gaps in the list and documents that are missing or lost. The documented provenance should also list when the painting has been part of an exhibition and a bibliography of when it has been discussed (or illustrated) in print.


title: Provenance

text: Where the research is proceeding backwards, to discover the previous provenance of a painting whose current ownership and location is known, it is important to record the physical details of the painting – style, subject, signature, materials, dimensions, frame, etc. The titles of paintings and the attribution to a particular artist may change over time. The size of the work and its description can be used to identify earlier references to the painting. The back of a painting can contain significant provenance information. There may be exhibition marks, dealer stamps, gallery labels and other indications of previous ownership. There may also be shipping labels. In the BBC TV programme "Fake or Fortune?" the provenance of the painting "Bords de la Seine à Argenteuil" was investigated using a gallery sticker and shipping label on the back. Early provenance can sometimes be indicated by a "cartellino" (a "trompe-l'œil" representation of an inscribed label) added to the front of a painting. However, these can be forged, or can fade or be painted over.


title: Provenance

text: If a painting has been in private hands for an extended period and on display in a stately home, it may be recorded in an inventory – for example, the Lumley inventory. The painting may also have been noticed by a visitor who subsequently wrote about it. It may have been mentioned in a will or a diary. Where the painting has been bought from a dealer, or changed hands in a private transaction, there may be a bill of sale or sales receipt that provides evidence of provenance. Where the artist is known, there may be a catalogue raisonné listing all the artist's known works and their location at the time of writing. A database of catalogues raisonnés is available at the International Foundation for Art Research. Historic photos of the painting may be discussed and illustrated in a more general work on the artist, period or genre. Similarly, a photograph of a painting may show inscriptions (or a signature) that subsequently became lost as a result of overzealous restoration. Conversely, a photograph may show that an inscription was not visible at an earlier date. One of the disputed aspects of the "Rice" portrait of Jane Austen concerns apparent inscriptions identifying artist and sitter.


title: Provenance

text: Provenance – also known as custodial history – is a core concept within archival science and archival processing. The term refers to the individuals, groups, or organizations that originally created or received the items in an accumulation of records, and to the items' subsequent chain of custody. The principle of provenance (also termed the principle of "archival integrity", and a major strand in the broader principle of "respect des fonds") stipulates that records originating from a common source (or fonds) should be kept together – where practicable, physically; but in all cases intellectually, in the way in which they are catalogued and arranged in finding aids. Conversely, records of different provenance should be preserved and documented separately. In archival practice, proof of provenance is provided by the operation of control systems that document the history of records kept in archives, including details of amendments made to them. The authority of an archival document or set of documents of which the provenance is uncertain (because of gaps in the recorded chain of custody) will be considered to be severely compromised.


title: Provenance

text: The principles of archival provenance were developed in the 19th century by both French and Prussian archivists, and gained widespread acceptance on the basis of their formulation in the "Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives" by Dutch state archivists Samuel Muller, J. A. Feith, and R. Fruin, published in the Netherlands in 1898 (often referred to as the "Dutch Manual").


title: Provenance

text: Seamus Ross has argued a case for adapting established principles and theories of archival provenance to the field of modern digital preservation and curation.


title: Provenance

text: In the case of books, the study of provenance refers to the study of the ownership of individual copies of books. It is usually extended to include study of the circumstances in which individual copies of books have changed ownership, and of evidence left in books that shows how readers interacted with them.


title: Provenance

text: Provenance studies may shed light on the books themselves, providing evidence of the role particular titles have played in social, intellectual and literary history. Such studies may also add to our knowledge of particular owners of books. For instance, looking at the books owned by a writer may help to show which works influenced him or her.


title: Provenance

text: Many provenance studies are historically focused, and concentrated on books owned by writers, politicians and public figures. The recent ownership of books is studied, however, as is evidence of how ordinary or anonymous readers have interacted with books.


title: Provenance

text: Provenance can be studied both by examining the books themselves (for instance looking at inscriptions, marginalia, bookplates, book rhymes, and bindings) and by reference to external sources of information such as auction catalogues.


title: Provenance

text: In transactions of old wine with the potential of improving with age, the issue of provenance has a large bearing on the assessment of the contents of a bottle, both in terms of quality and the risk of wine fraud. A documented history of wine cellar conditions is valuable in estimating the quality of an older vintage due to the fragile nature of wine.


title: Provenance

text: Recent technology developments have aided collectors in assessing the temperature and humidity history of the wine which are two key components in establishing perfect provenance. For example, there are devices available that rest inside the wood case and can be read through the wood by waving a smartphone equipped with a simple app. These devices track the conditions the case has been exposed to for the duration of the battery life, which can be as long as 15 years, and sends a graph and high/low readings to the smartphone user. This takes the trust issue out of the hands of the owner and gives it to a third party for verification.


title: Provenance

text: Archaeology and anthropology researchers use provenience to refer to the exact location or find spot of an artifact, a bone or other remains, a soil sample, or a feature within an ancient site, whereas "provenance" covers an object's complete documented history. Ideally, in modern excavations, the provenience is recorded in three dimensions on a site grid with great precision, and may also be recorded on video to provide additional proof and context. In older work, often undertaken by amateurs, only the general site or approximate area may be known, especially when an artifact was found outside a professional excavation and its specific position not recorded. The term "provenience" appeared in the 1880s, about a century after "provenance". Outside of academic contexts, it has been used as a synonymous variant spelling of "provenance", especially in American English.


title: Provenance

text: Any given antiquity may have both a provenience (where it was found) and a provenance (where it has been since it was found). A summary of the distinction is that "provenience is a fixed point, while provenance can be considered an itinerary that an object follows as it moves from hand to hand." Another metaphor is that provenience is an artifact's "birthplace", while provenance is its "résumé", though this is imprecise (many artifacts originated as trade goods created in one region but were used and finally deposited in another).


title: Provenance

text: In this context, the "provenance" can occasionally be the detailed history of where an object has been since its creation, as in art history contexts – not just since its modern finding. In some cases, such as where there is an inscription on the object, or an account of it in written materials from the same era, an object of study in archaeology or cultural anthropology may have an early provenance – a known history that predates modern research – then a provenience from its modern finding, and finally a continued provenance relating to its handling and storage or display after the modern acquisition.


title: Provenance

text: Evidence of provenance in the more general sense can be of importance in archaeology. Fakes are not unknown, and finds are sometimes removed from the context in which they were found without documentation, reducing their value to science. Even when apparently discovered "in situ", archaeological finds are treated with caution. The provenience of a find may not be properly represented by the context in which it was found (e.g. due to stratigraphic layers being disturbed by erosion, earthquakes, or ancient reconstruction or other disturbance at a site. Artifacts can also be moved through looting as well as trade, far from their place of origin and long before modern rediscovery. Many source nations have passed legislation forbidding the domestic trade in cultural heritage. Further research is often required to establish the true provenance and legal status of a find, and what the relationship is between the exact provenience and the overall provenance.


title: Provenance

text: In paleontology and paleoanthropology, it is recognized that fossils can also move from their primary context and are sometimes found, apparently "in-situ", in deposits to which they do not belong because they have been moved, for example, by the erosion of nearby but different outcrops. It is unclear how strictly paleontology maintains the "provenience" and "provenance" distinction. For example, a short glossary at a website (primarily aimed at young students) of the American Museum of Natural History treats the terms as synonymous, while scholarly paleontology works make frequent use of "provenience" in the same precise sense as used in archaeology and paleoanthropology.


title: Provenance

text: While exacting details of a find's provenience are primarily of use to scientific researchers, most natural history and archaeology museums also make strenuous efforts to record how the items in their collections were acquired. These records are often of use in helping to establish a chain of provenance.


title: Provenance

text: Scientific research is generally held to be of good provenance when it is documented in detail sufficient to allow reproducibility. Scientific workflow systems assist scientists and programmers with tracking their data through all transformations, analyses, and interpretations. Data sets are reliable when the processes used to create them are reproducible and analyzable for defects. Security researchers are interested in data provenance because it can analyze suspicious data and make large opaque systems transparent. Current initiatives to effectively manage, share, and reuse ecological data are indicative of the increasing importance of data provenance. Examples of these initiatives are National Science Foundation Datanet projects, DataONE and Data Conservancy, as well as the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Some international academic consortia, such as the Research Data Alliance, have specific groups to tackle issues of provenance. In that case it is the Research Data Provenance Interest Group.


title: Provenance

text: Within computer science, informatics uses the term "provenance" to mean the lineage of data, as per data provenance, with research in the last decade extending the conceptual model of causality and relation to include processes that act on data and agents that are responsible for those processes. See, for example, the proceedings of the International Provenance Annotation Workshop (IPAW) and Theory and Practice of Provenance (TaPP). Semantic web standards bodies, including the World Wide Web Consortium in 2014, have ratified a standard data model for provenance representation known as PROV which draws from many of the better-known provenance representation systems that preceded it, such as the Proof Markup Language and the Open Provenance Model.


title: Provenance

text: Interoperability is a design goal of most recent computer science provenance theories and models, for example the Open Provenance Model (OPM) 2008 generation workshop aimed at "establishing inter-operability of systems" through information exchange agreements. Data models and serialisation formats for delivering provenance information typically reuse existing metadata models where possible to enable this. Both the OPM Vocabulary and the PROV Ontology make extensive use of metadata models such as Dublin Core and Semantic Web technologies such as the Web Ontology Language (OWL). Current practice is to rely on the W3C PROV data model, OPM's successor.


title: Provenance

text: There are several maintained and open-source provenance capture implementation at the operating system level such as CamFlow, Progger for Linux and MS Windows, and SPADE for Linux, MS Windows, and MacOS. Operating system level provenance have gained interest in the security community notably to develop novel intrusion detection techniques. Other implementations exist for specific programming and scripting languages, such as RDataTracker for R, and NoWorkflow for Python.


title: Provenance

text: In the geologic use of the term, provenance instead refers to the origin or source area of particles within a rock, most commonly in sedimentary rocks. It does not refer to the circumstances of the collection of the rock. The provenance of sandstone, in particular, can be evaluated by determining the proportion of quartz, feldspar, and lithic fragments (see diagram).


title: Provenance

text: Seed provenance refers to the specified area in which plants that produced seed are located or were derived. Local provenancing is a position maintained by ecologists that suggests that only seeds of local provenance should be planted in a particular area. However, this view depends on the adaptationist program – a view that populations are universally locally adapted. It is maintained that local seed is best adapted to local conditions, and that outbreeding depression will be avoided. Evolutionary biologists suggest that strict adherence to provenance collecting is not a wise decision because:


title: Provenance

text: Provenance trials, where material of different provenances are planted in a single place or at different locations spanning a range of environmental conditions, is a way to reveal genetic variation among provenances. It also contributes to an understanding of how different provenances respond to various climatic and environmental conditions and can as such contribute with knowledge on how to strategically select provenances for climate change adaptation.


title: Provenance

text: The term "provenance" is used when ascertaining the source of goods such as computer hardware to assess if they are genuine or counterfeit. Chain of custody is an equivalent term used in law, especially for evidence in criminal or commercial cases.


title: Provenance

text: Software provenance encompasses the origin of software and its licensing terms. For example, when incorporating a free, open source or proprietary software component in an application, one may wish to understand its provenance to ensure that licensing requirements are fulfilled and that other software characteristics can be understood.


title: Provenance

text: Data provenance covers the provenance of computerized data. There are two main aspects of data provenance: ownership of the data and data usage. Ownership will tell the user who is responsible for the source of the data, ideally including information on the originator of the data. Data usage gives details regarding how the data has been used and modified and often includes information on how to cite the data source or sources. Data provenance is of particular concern with electronic data, as data sets are often modified and copied without proper citation or acknowledgement of the originating data set. Databases make it easy to select specific information from data sets and merge this data with other data sources without any documentation of how the data was obtained or how it was modified from the original data set or sets.


title: Provenance

text: The automated analysis of data provenance graphs has been described as a mean to verify compliance with regulations regarding data usage such as introduced by the EU GDPR.


title: Provenance

text: Secure Provenance refers to providing integrity and confidentiality guarantees to provenance information. In other words, secure provenance means to ensure that history cannot be rewritten, and users can specify who else can look into their actions on the object.


title: Provenance

text: A simple method of ensuring data provenance in computing is to mark a file as read only. This allows the user to view the contents of the file, but not edit or otherwise modify it. Read only can also in some cases prevent the user from accidentally or intentionally deleting the file.


title: Andrew O'Keefe

text: Andrew Patrick O'Keefe AM (born 1 October 1971) is an Australian former television presenter and lawyer. He is best known for being the host of the game shows "Deal or No Deal" and "The Chase Australia". He was also the co-host of "Weekend Sunrise" from 2005 to 2017.


title: Andrew O'Keefe

text: O'Keefe first started his television career in 2003 in Channel Seven's show "Big Bite". Later the same year he began hosting "Deal or No Deal".


title: Andrew O'Keefe

text: In 2005, O'Keefe co-hosted the tri-network tsunami appeal "Reach Out" for relief efforts around Asia. In the same year, he hosted the short-lived "Dragons Den" and co-hosted the 47th "TV Week Logie Awards".


title: Andrew O'Keefe

text: From 2005 to 2017, O'Keefe co-hosted "Weekend Sunrise" on Saturday and Sunday mornings with journalist Monique Wright. He also regularly substituted for David Koch on "Sunrise". He presented the program for two weeks whilst Koch was on holidays during the summer period of 2013 alongside his former "Weekend Sunrise" co-host Samantha Armytage.


title: Andrew O'Keefe

text: On 31 May 2013, O'Keefe commenced playing the role of King Herod in the Australian tour of the "Jesus Christ Superstar" arena show. However, on 14 June 2013, he was admitted to hospital with a neck injury requiring surgery and was forced to relinquish the role for the rest of the tour. O'Keefe believed the injury was aggravated during a performance of the show.


title: Andrew O'Keefe

text: In December 2017, O'Keefe announced his resignation as co-host of "Weekend Sunrise" after 12 years with the show.


title: Andrew O'Keefe

text: O'Keefe's contract with the Seven Network expired at the end of 2020 and he was replaced by Larry Emdur for "The Chase Australia".


title: Andrew O'Keefe

text: In January 2017 he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia (AM) for his television and charity work.


title: Andrew O'Keefe

text: O'Keefe is one of five children. His father was Barry O'Keefe, a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. He is a nephew of the Australian rock and roll singer Johnny O'Keefe.


title: Andrew O'Keefe

text: He attended Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview, and then studied arts and law at the University of Sydney.


title: Andrew O'Keefe

text: O'Keefe is a former chairman of the White Ribbon Australia, an organisation dedicated to the prevention of violence against women. He was one of the founding members of the campaign in Australia and was an ambassador from 2004, prior to the organisation's dissolution in 2019.


title: Andrew O'Keefe

text: As a result of his work with the White Ribbon Australia, O'Keefe was appointed to the inaugural National Council for the Prevention of Violence Against Women in May 2008, which drafted the report "Time for Action: Australia's National Plan for Reducing Violence Against Women and their Children" on behalf of the federal government.