Encyclopaedia Britannica Online Shop

0-9

educational system ... Egyptian language

educational system: the formal institutions, agencies, and organizations of a country that transmit knowledge and cultural heritage and that influence the social and intellectual growth of the individual. This generally includes legislation ...
Edward: Anglo-Saxon king in England, the son of Alfred the Great. As ruler of the West Saxons, or Wessex, from 899 to 924, Edward extended his authority over almost all of ...
Edward: son of King John de Balliol of Scotland and claimant to the title of King of Scots, who was crowned in September 1332. Expelled in December 1332, he was restored ...
Edward: king of England from 975 to 978. His reign was marked by a reaction against the promonastic policies of his father and predecessor, King Edgar (reigned 959-975). Upon Edgar's death ...
Edward: king of England from 1042 to 1066. Although he was a listless, ineffectual monarch overshadowed by powerful nobles, his reputation for piety evidently preserved much of the dignity of the ...
Edward: king of Portugal whose brief reign (1433-38) witnessed a strengthening of the monarchy through reform of royal land-grant laws, a continuation of voyages of discovery, and a military disaster in ...
Edward I: son of Henry III and king of England in 1272-1307, during a period of rising national consciousness. He strengthened the crown and Parliament against the old feudal nobility. He subdued ...
Edward II: king of England from 1307 to 1327. Although he was a man of limited capability, he waged a long, hopeless campaign to assert his authority over powerful barons.
Edward III: play in five acts sometimes attributed to William Shakespeare, though without much evidence other than the resemblances of this play to Shakespeare's early history plays and an occasional passage. It ...
Edward III: king of England from 1327 to 1377, who led England into the Hundred Years' War with France. The descendants of his seven sons and five daughters contested the throne for ...
Edward IV: king of England from 1461 until October 1470 and again from April 1471 until his death in 1483. He was a leading participant in the Yorkist-Lancastrian conflict known as the ...
Edward The Black Prince: son and heir apparent of Edward III of England and one of the outstanding commanders during the Hundred Years' War, winning his major victory at the Battle of Poitiers (1356). ...
Edward V: king of England from April to June 1483, who was deposed and possibly murdered by King Richard III.
Edward VI: king of England and Ireland from 1547 to 1553.
Edward VII: in full Albert Edward king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British dominions and emperor of India from 1901, an immensely popular and affable ...
Edward VIII: prince of Wales (1911-36) and king of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British dominions and emperor of India from Jan. 20 to Dec. 10, ...
Edward, Lake: one of the great lakes of the Western Rift Valley in eastern Africa. It lies astride the border of Congo (Kinshasa) and Uganda at an elevation of 2,992 feet (912 ...
Edwards, Alfred George: the first archbishop of Wales, who sought successfully to create a native church more reflective of Welsh culture than was the Anglican Church.
Edwards, John: U.S. senator who in 2004 was selected as the running mate of John Kerry, the Democratic Party's nominee for president.
Edwards, Jonathan: greatest theologian and philosopher of British American Puritanism, stimulator of the religious revival known as the "Great Awakening," and one of the forerunners of the age of Protestant missionary expansion ...
Edwards, Jorge: Chilean writer, literary critic, and diplomat who gained notoriety with the publication of Persona non grata (1973; Eng. trans. Persona non grata), a memoir of his experiences as the Chilean ...
Edwards, Lewis: Welsh educator and minister of the Calvinistic Methodist Church of Wales whose literary and theological essays greatly influenced the development of Welsh culture.
Edwards, Sir Owen Morgan: Welsh writer and educator who greatly influenced the revival of Welsh literature and the development of Welsh national consciousness.
Edwards, Teresa: American basketball player, who was the most decorated player in the history of the U.S. national team. From her point-guard position, Edwards guided the U.S. national team to gold medals ...
Edwin: Anglo-Saxon king of Northumbria from 616 to 632. He was the most powerful English ruler of his day and the first Christian king of Northumbria.
Edwin Smith papyrus: (c. 1600 BC), ancient Egyptian medical treatise, believed to be a copy of a work dating from c. 3000 BC. Apparently intended as a textbook on surgery, it begins with ...
Eeckhout, Gerbrand van den: Dutch biblical, genre, and portrait painter, a gifted and favourite pupil of Rembrandt (1635-40), to whom he remained a close friend. His usual style is based so closely on that ...
Eeden, Frederik Willem van: Dutch writer and physician whose works reflect his lifelong search for a social and ethical philosophy.
Eekhoud, Georges: one of the first important Belgian regionalist novelists.
eel: any of more than 500 species of fish of the order Anguilliformes.
eelgrass: any of two different groups of ribbonlike aquatic plants. Vallisneria species (family Hydrocharitaceae), also called tape grass, are native to temperate and tropical waters; V. spiralis, often grown in aquariums, ...
eelpout: any of about 80 species of elongated marine fishes of the family Zoarcidae, found in cold waters and abundant in Arctic and Antarctic regions. Eelpouts are thick-lipped, eel-shaped fishes with ...
eelworm: any of several worms of the class Nematoda (phylum Aschelminthes), so called because they resemble miniature eels. The term is most often applied to smaller members of the class Nematoda ...
Eemian Interglacial Stage: major division of Pleistocene time and deposits in Europe (the Pleistocene Epoch began about 1,600,000 years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago). The Eemian Interglacial followed the Saale Glacial ...
Eemian Sea: marine transgression during the Eemian Interglacial Stage of the Pleistocene Epoch (the Pleistocene began about 2,500,000 years ago and ended about 10,000 years ago). The Eemian Sea flooded much of ...
Efate: most important island of Vanuatu, in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. Volcanic in origin, it occupies an area of 353 sq mi (915 sq km), and its highest peak is Mt. ...
effective atomic number: number that represents the total number of electrons surrounding the nucleus of a metal atom in a metal complex. It is composed of the metal atom's electrons and the bonding ...
effective population size: in genetics, the size of a breeding population, a factor that is determined by the number of parents, the average number of children per family, and the extent to which ...
Effen, Justus van: Dutch essayist and journalist whose straightforward didactic pieces, modelled on foreign examples, had a wholesome influence on the contemporary Dutch fashion of rococo writing. His other occupations included private tutor, ...
effigy mound: earthen mound in the form of an animal or bird found throughout the north-central United States. The effigy mounds are sometimes mistakenly classified with the numerous mounds that dot the ...
Effigy Mounds National Monument: area of 4 square miles (10 square km) containing numerous ancient Native American burial and ceremonial mounds in northeastern Iowa, U.S., on the Mississippi River, a few miles north of ...
Effingham: city, seat (1860) of Effingham county, east-central Illinois, U.S. It lies near the Little Wabash River, about 65 miles (105 km) southeast of Decatur. Settled about 1814 by farmers, the ...
efflorescence: spontaneous loss of water by a hydrated salt, which occurs when the aqueous tension of the hydrate is greater than the partial pressure of the water vapour in the air. ...
Effon-Alaiye: town, Ondo state, southwestern Nigeria, in the Yoruba Hills, at the intersection of roads from Ilesha, Ondo, and Ado-Ekiti. It was probably founded in the late 19th century, when both ...
Efik: people inhabiting the lower Cross River in Cross River state, Nigeria; their dialect of Efik-Ibibio (in the Benue-Congo branch of Niger-Congo languages) has become the literary language of all educated ...
Egadi Islands: small mountainous group of islets belonging to Italy, in the Mediterranean just off the western coast of Sicily, with a total area of 15 square miles (39 square km). The ...
Egan, Pierce, The Elder: sporting writer whose works were considered indispensable reading for English men-about-town in the early 19th century.
Egas Moniz, Antonio: Portuguese neurologist and statesman who was the founder of modern psychosurgery. With Walter Hess he was awarded the 1949 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for the development of prefrontal ...
Egbert: also spelled Ecgberht, or Ecgbryht king of the West Saxons from 802 to 839, who formed around Wessex a kingdom so powerful that it eventually achieved the political unification of ...
Eger: town, seat of Heves megye (county), northern Hungary. It lies in the valley of the Eger River, which is a tributary of the Tisza, between the Matra and the Bukk ...
Egeria: in Roman religion, a water spirit worshiped in connection with Diana at Aricia and also with the Camenae in their grove outside the Porta Capena at Rome. Like Diana, she ...
Egerszegi, Krisztina: Hungarian swimmer, the youngest athlete ever to win an Olympic gold medal in swimming.
egg: the content of the hard-shelled reproductive body produced by a bird, considered as food.
egg: in biology, the female sex cell, or gamete. In botany the egg is sometimes called a macrogamete. In zoology the Latin term for egg, ovum, is frequently used to refer ...
egg and dart: in architecture, design shape used in moldings. It consists of a series of bas-relief ovals alternating with pointed, narrow, dartlike carvings.
egg tooth: tooth or toothlike structure used by the young of many egg-laying species to break the shell of the egg and so escape from it at hatching. Some lizards and snakes ...
Egg, Augustus: genre painter and actor.
egg-eating snake: any of the five species of the genus Dasypeltis of sub-Saharan Africa and Elachistodon westermanni of northeastern India. These snakes comprise the subfamily Dasypeltinae, family Colubridae. They eat only eggs. ...
Eggjum Stone: inscribed stone that bears 200 runic characters. It is the longest known text in the old-style futhark (runic alphabet) and was discovered inside a tomb in western Norway in 1917. ...
Eggleston, Edward: clergyman, novelist, and historian who realistically portrayed various sections of the U.S. in such books as The Hoosier School-Master.
eggplant: (Solanum melongena), tender perennial plant of the nightshade family (Solanaceae), closely related to the potato. Eggplant requires a warm climate and is grown extensively in eastern and southern Asia and ...
eggshell porcelain: Chinese porcelain characterized by an excessively thin body under the glaze. It often had decoration engraved on it before firing that, like a watermark in paper, was visible only when ...
Egill Skallagrimsson: one of the greatest of Icelandic skaldic poets, whose adventurous life and verses are preserved in Egils saga (c. 1220; translated in The Sagas of Icelanders), attributed ...
Egk, Werner: German composer primarily of music for the theatre.
Eglevsky, Andre: Russian-born American ballet dancer and teacher widely regarded as the greatest male classical dancer of his generation.
Egmond, Lamoraal, Count van: leader in the early opposition to the policies of Philip II of Spain in the Netherlands. Although Egmond did not favour the overthrow of Spanish sovereignty, he became one of ...
Egmont, John Perceval, 2nd earl of, 1st Baron Lovel And Holland: eccentric British politician and pamphleteer, a confidant of George III.
Egmont, Mount: mountain, west central North Island, New Zealand, on the Taranaki Peninsula. Named after the British earl of Egmont, the symmetrical volcanic cone rises from sea level to 8,260 ft (2,518 ...
ego: in psychoanalytic theory, that portion of the human personality which is experienced as the "self" or "I" and is in contact with the external world through perception. It is said ...
egoism: (from Latin ego, "I"), in philosophy, an ethical theory holding that the good is based on the pursuit of self-interest. The word is sometimes misused for egotism, the overstressing of ...
egret: any member of several species of herons (family Ardeidae, order Ciconiiformes), especially members of the genus Egretta. Most egrets have white plumage and develop long ornamental nuptial plumes for the ...
Eguren, Jose Maria: poet considered one of the leading post-Modernist poets of Peru.
Egypt: country located in the northeastern corner of Africa. It has a total area of about 385,230 square miles (997,740 square kilometres). Its land frontiers border Libya in the west, The ...
Egypt, ancient: civilization in northern Africa dating from the 3rd millennium BC. Its many achievements, preserved in its art and monuments, hold a fascination that continues to grow as archaeological finds expose ...
Egyptian calendar: dating system established several thousand years before the Christian era, the first calendar known to use a year of 365 days, approximately equal to the solar year, or year of ...
Egyptian language: extinct language of the Nile valley that constitutes a branch of the Afro-Asiatic (formerly Hamito-Semitic) language family, along with the Semitic, Cushitic, Chadic, and Berber language groups. On the basis ...