but why did the Old Chinese postulate five elements, when the Ancient Near East -- which may have initiated the idea that natural elements exerted influence in human life and activities -- recognized only four??

An abbot ( from Old English abbod, abbad, from Latin abbas (“ father ”), from Ancient Greek ἀββᾶς ( abbas ), from Aramaic ܐܒܐ / אבא (’ abbā, “ father ”); confer German Abt ; French abbé ) is the head and chief governor of a community of monks, called also in the East hegumen or archimandrite.

It has recently been suggested that the regional decline at the end of the Akkadian period ( and First Intermediary Period of the Ancient Egyptian Old Kingdom ) was associated with rapidly increasing aridity, and failing rainfall in the region of the Ancient Near East, caused by a global centennial-scale drought.

This climate-induced collapse seems to have affected the whole of the Middle East, and to have coincided with the collapse of the Egyptian Old Kingdom.

Roman Catholics recognize the validity of the apostolic successions of the bishops, and therefore the rest of the clergy, of the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Church of the East, and the Old Catholic Church ( Union of Utrecht only ).

Within the Catholic Church, Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Anglican, Old Catholic, Independent Catholic Churches, and in the Assyrian Church of the East, bishops claim apostolic succession, a direct historical lineage dating back to the original Twelve Apostles.

* The Old Burgundian language, an East Germanic language spoken by the Burgundians.

This was despite noticeable tensions between East Cambridge, Cambridgeport, and Old Cambridge that stemmed from differences in in each area's culture, sources of income, and the national origins of the residents.

Among those noted by the Irish annals, the Chronicle of the Kings of Alba and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle are Ívarr — Ímar in Irish sources — who was active from East Anglia to Ireland, Halfdán — Albdann in Irish, Healfdene in Old English — and Amlaíb or Óláfr.

This language began to undergo new changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, which resulted in the appearance of two similar dialects, Old West Norse ( Norway and Iceland ) and Old East Norse ( Denmark and Sweden ).

Old East Norse is in Sweden called Runic Swedish and in east Denmark Runic Danish, but until the 12th century, the dialect was roughly the same in the two countries.

A change that separated Old East Norse ( Runic Swedish / Danish ) from Old West Norse was the change of the diphthong æi ( Old West Norse ei ) to the monophthong e, as in stæin to sten.

Several other English words also derive from Old East Norse, for example, " knife " ( kniv ), " husband " ( husbond ), " cold " ( kalde ) and " egg " ( æg ).

Deuterocanonical is a term coined in 1566 by the theologian Sixtus of Siena, who had converted to Catholicism from Judaism, to describe scriptural texts of the Old Testament considered canonical by the Catholic Church, but which are not present in the Hebrew Bible, and which had been omitted by some early canon lists, especially in the East.

The First Council of Constantinople is recognized as the Second Ecumenical Council by the Oriental Orthodox, the Church of the East, the Eastern Orthodox, the Roman Catholics, the Old Catholics, the Anglican Church, and a number of other Western Christian groups.

The Old East Norse term for both Goths and Gotlanders seems to have been Gutar ( for instance, in the Gutasaga and in the runic inscription of the Rökstone ).

Muslims and their religion have greatly impacted the political, economic, and military history of the Old World, especially the Middle East, where lies its roots.

Hastings Old Town is in a sheltered valley between the East Hill and West Hill ( on which the remains of the Castle stand ).

Christianity was founded in the 1st century in the Levant region of the Middle East by Jesus Christ of Nazareth ( Matthew 16: 18 ) Jesus of Nazareth as prophesied in the Old Testament ( Micah 5: 2-5 ) to be the Christ or chosen one of God.

North Jakarta contains part of Jakarta Old Town, formerly known as Batavia since the 17th century, and was a centre of VOC trade activity in Dutch East Indies.

*" The 2000 Year Old Middle East Policy Expert ", a chapter from Give War A Chance by P. J. O ' Rourke

In Norse religion, Asgard ( Old Norse: Ásgarðr ; meaning " Enclosure of the Æsir ") is one of the Nine Worlds and is the country or capital city of the Norse Gods surrounded by an incomplete wall attributed to a Hrimthurs riding the stallion Svaðilfari, according to Gylfaginning.

One of them, Múnón, married Priam's daughter, Tróán, and had by her a son, Trór, to be pronounced Thor in Old Norse.

According to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Asgard is derived from Old Norse āss, god + garðr, enclosure ; from Indo-European roots ansu-spirit, demon ( see cognate ahura ) + gher-grasp, enclose ( see cognates garden and yard ).< ref >; See also ansu-and gher -< sup > 1 </ sup > in " Appendix I: Indo-European Roots " in the same work .</ ref >

Álfheim as an abode of the Elves is mentioned only twice in Old Norse texts.

* Gylfaginning in Old Norse

In Norse mythology, Ask and Embla ( from Old Norse Askr ok Embla )— male and female respectively — were the first two humans, created by the gods.

Old Norse askr literally means " ash tree " but the etymology of embla is uncertain, and two possibilities of the meaning of embla are generally proposed.

Ægir ( Old Norse " sea ") is a sea giant, god of the ocean and king of the sea creatures in Norse mythology.

( from Icelandic for " Æsir faith ", pronounced, in Old Norse ) is a form of Germanic neopaganism which developed in the United States from the 1970s.

is an Icelandic ( and equivalently Old Norse ) term consisting of two parts.

The term is the Old Norse / Icelandic translation of, a neologism coined in the context of 19th century romantic nationalism, used by Edvard Grieg in his 1870 opera Olaf Trygvason.

( plural ), the term used to identify those who practice Ásatrú is a compound with ( Old Norse ) " man ".

A Goði or Gothi ( plural goðar ) is the historical Old Norse term for a priest and chieftain in Norse paganism.

Ægir is an Old Norse word meaning " terror " and the name of a destructive giant associated with the sea ; ægis is the genitive ( possessive ) form of ægir and has no direct relation to Greek aigis.

The exact derivation is unclear, with the Old English fiæll or feallan and the Old Norse fall all being possible candidates.

Bornholm (; Old Norse: Burgundaholmr, " the island of the Burgundians ") is a Danish island in the Baltic Sea located to the east of ( most of ) the rest of Denmark, south of Sweden, and north of Poland.

This would have been a burial fitting a king who was famous for his wealth in Old Norse sources.

The first known use of the word ball in English in the sense of a globular body that is played with was in 1205 in in the phrase, "" The word came from the Middle English bal ( inflected as ball-e ,-es, in turn from Old Norse böllr ( pronounced ; compare Old Swedish baller, and Swedish boll ) from Proto-Germanic ballu-z, ( whence probably Middle High German bal, ball-es, Middle Dutch bal ), a cognate with Old High German ballo, pallo, Middle High German balle from Proto-Germanic * ballon ( weak masculine ), and Old High German ballâ, pallâ, Middle High German balle, Proto-Germanic * ballôn ( weak feminine ).

All but the most rabid of Confederate flag wavers admit that the Old Southern tradition is defunct in actuality and sigh that its passing was accompanied by the disappearance of many genteel and aristocratic traditions of the reputedly languid ante-bellum way of life.

The first news stories had it that this blaze was started by a bolt of lightning, as though Miriam could call down fire from heaven like a prophet of the Old Testament.

It was Baker, working through Provost Marshal Enoch Crowder and Major Hugh S. ( `` Old Ironpants '' ) Johnson, who arranged for a secret printing by the million of selective service blanks -- again before the Act was passed -- until corridors in the Government Printing Office were full and the basement of the Washington Post Office was stacked to the ceiling.

In Boston, Edwin Booth was winding up a performance of A New Way To Pay Old Debts.

The readers of the Providence Daily Post, however, learned that it was generally conceded that `` Old Brown '' had a fair trial.

The trial will be held, probably the first week of March, in the famous Old Bailey central criminal court where Klaus Fuchs, the naturalized British German born scientist who succeeded in giving American and British atomic bomb secrets to Russia and thereby changed world history during the 1950s, was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

He said that drawings of the Dreadnought and printed details about the ship were found reproduced in an undeveloped roll of film taken from Lonsdale when he was arrested with the two civil servants outside the Old Vic theater Saturday afternoon, Jan. 7.

It was during `` Old Music '' at the St. James Theater that Hollywood's Louis B. Mayer spotted her.

At one time I became disturbed in the faith in which I had grown up by the apparent inroads being made upon both Old and New Testaments by a `` Higher Criticism '' of the Bible, to refute which I felt the need of a better knowledge of Hebrew and of archaeology, for it seemed to me that to pull out some of the props of our faith was to weaken the entire structure.

Although the primary mathematical properties of the middle number at the center of the Lo Shu, and the interrelation of all the other numbers to it, might seem enough to account for the deep fascination which the Lo Shu held for the Old Chinese philosophers, this was actually only a beginning of wonders.

One of those delightful surprise additions, which so frequently occur in jazz programs, was an excellent stint at the drums by the great Joe Jones, drumming to `` Old Man River '', which seems to have been elected the favorite solo for the boys on the batterie at this year's concerts.

The Old Man was unimportant.

but here he was just Signore or the Old Man.

Sameness for the Old Man was framed in by a wall of ginkgo trees which divided these quarters from the city.

The Glagolitic alphabet was the initial script of the liturgical language Old Church Slavonic and became, together with the Greek uncial script, the basis of the Cyrillic script.

" This was borrowed into Arabic as al-tub ( الط ّ وب al " the " + tub " brick ") " brick ," which was assimilated into Old Spanish as adobe, still with the meaning " mud brick.

In Old Babylonian astronomy, Ea was the ruler of the southernmost quarter of the Sun's path, the " Way of Ea ", corresponding to the period of 45 days on either side of winter solstice.

The vernacular name daisy, widely applied to members of this family, is derived from its Old English meaning, dægesege, from dæges eage meaning " day's eye ," and this was because the petals ( of Bellis perennis ) open at dawn and close at dusk.

Around 500 BCE, following the Achaemenid conquest of Mesopotamia under Darius I, Old Aramaic was adopted by the conquerors as the " vehicle for written communication between the different regions of the vast empire with its different peoples and languages.

Imperial Aramaic was highly standardised ; its orthography was based more on historical roots than any spoken dialect and was inevitably influenced by Old Persian.