Cyrus the Great

Cyrus II (Kūruš in Old Persian) founded the Persian Empire (550-330 BC). Once ruler of an insignificant city, he overthrew his Median overlords and established the greatest empire of its time. Cyrus is revered in Iran and is the Hebrew Bible’s only non-Jewish messiah. Like his admirer Alexander the Great, who would conquer his empire, Cyrus was among the greatest rulers of the ancient world. Unlike Alexander, his empire outlasted him by two hundred years.

When Cyrus was born, four powers ruled the known world:

• Median Empire (Iran)
• Babylonian Empire (Iraq and the Levant)
• Lydia (Turkey)
• Egypt

According to Herodotus, who wrote the oldest account on Cyrus’s life, King Astyages of Media had a daughter called Mandane who married his vassal the king of Persia. One day Astyages had a disturbing dream: Mandane urinating over the world. The court magi interpreted it as prophecy. Her child would overthrow Astyages and destroy his empire. When Mandane gave birth to a son, the king dispatched his commander Harpagus to kill him. Unwilling to murder a baby, however, Harpagus gave the infant to a shepherd couple and presented their stillborn baby to the king instead. Years later Cyrus, now king of Persia, rebelled against Astyages. Harpagus defected to him and Cyrus overthrew his grandfather and seized his empire.

Cyrus then invaded Babylon. After defeating its unpopular king, he entered the city peacefully and portrayed himself not as a conqueror but a saviour restoring legitimate rule. Cyrus allowed the captive people of Babylon to return to their respective homelands, declaring so in the famous Cyrus Cylinder (below), which Iranians claim to be the first declaration of human rights.

Hearing of this upstart king, Croesus of Lydia consulted the Oracle of Delphi, at least according to Herodotus. The oracle told him that if he goes to war with Persia, a great empire will fall. Croesus sent his armies against Cyrus, only to find the empire that fell was his own.

Cyrus ruled his empire indirectly. The Persians were far more merciful and less imposing than the Babylonians and Assyrians who went before them. Cyrus often spared his enemies; he retired Astyages to a summer house and made Croesus a leading advisor.

So revered was Cyrus, that for centuries later, Persia’s male beauty standards were based on one’s resemblance to him.

Scholars disagree on Cyrus’s fate. Herodotus claims he died fighting Tamyris of the Massagetai, a barbarian queen to the east. Other accounts claim he died peacefully in his capital. His tomb still stands in modern-day Iran. Though the inscription has faded away, Strabo recorded it saying:

Passer-by, I am Cyrus, who gave the Persians an empire and was king of Asia. Begrudge me not, therefore, this monument.

Since the early 2000s, thousands of Iranians gather at his tomb to celebrate ‘Cyrus the Great Day’ every October 29th, the day Cyrus entered Babylon. Iran’s government does not recognise or condone the event.

Xenophon’s ‘Cyropaedia’ depicts Cyrus as an ideal ruler all others should emulate. Its fans included Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Machiavelli, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

Cyrus promoted religious freedom. Although likely Zoroastrian himself, he portrayed himself as chosen by the gods of all his subjects, be it Ahura Mazda, Marduk or Yahweh and patronised temples across his empire. Cyrus ended the Jews’ 70 year ‘Babylonian Exile’ and helped rebuild their temple in Jerusalem. Of this ‘Second Temple,’ only the Western Wall stands today and is the religion’s holiest site. The Persian king’s decrees ensured the Jews did not assimilate into mainstream Babylonian culture. Without Cyrus’s intervention, there might be no Judaism, no Christianity or Islam today.

Sources: Encyclopedia Iranica, Herodotus – The Histories, Reuters

See Also: 

• The Historical Babylon
• The Allegorical Babylon
• Iranian Civilization
• Second Temple Judaism

The Epic of Gilgamesh

The Epic of Gilgamesh is the world’s oldest written story. First composed by the ancient Sumerians around 2,200 BC, it tells the tale of the mighty king Gilgamesh, his friend Enkidu and their adventures in a mythical Bronze Age world.

The Epic comprises of eleven stone tablets found in modern-day Iraq. Like the Greek Iliad and the Hindu Maharabatha, it is an epic poem that rhymed and flowed in its original languages. It would have been read aloud to large audiences and likely draws on older oral tradition. Some of the tablets are damaged, for which scholars fill in the blanks with later Akkadian and Babylonian transcriptions. Archetypes like the hero’s journey, trickster serpent, femme-fatale, wildman and Great Flood originate in the Epic. The original author is unknown.

I listened to John Harris’s prose rendition in audio. His translation is succinct and dramatic while retaining the poetry of the original narrative and delivered with a warm and clear narration.

Gilgamesh is the king of the city of Uruk. One-third human and two-thirds god, his physical strength is rivalled only by his tyranny. Gilgamesh is a stalwart warrior and a stern king, but his oppressive rule and habit of sleeping with brides on their wedding night angers his subjects. Not daring to oppose him, the people of Uruk turn instead to the gods. To quell Gilgamesh’s hubris they create his equal – the wildman Enkidu. After first clashing, Gilgamesh and Enkidu become inseparable. Gilgamesh tames his new friend’s wilder instincts and Enkidu helps him become a better king. They set off to slay the monster Humbaba in the distant Forest of Cedars.

Main characters:

• Gilgamesh (right), king of Uruk
• Enkidu (left), the wildman.
• Shamhat, a temple prostitute
• Anu, king of the gods
• Shamash, god of the sun
• Ishtar, goddess of love and war
• Siduri, tavern-keeper at the end of the world
• Urshanabi, a ferryman and companion to Gilgamesh
• Utnapishtim, a Noah like figure who lives at the ends of the earth

Gilgamesh proves his worth by challenging the forces of the world. The Epic is framed as such:

1. Man vs man: Gilgamesh’s conflict with Enkidu
2. Man vs nature: Gilgamesh challenges Humbaba the Terrible
3. Man vs god: Gilgamesh incurs the wrath of Ishtar and the Bull of Heaven
4. Man vs death: Gilgamesh wanders the earth in search of immortality

Tablet Eleven recounts the Babylonian Flood Myth, from which the Biblical story is derived.

Table Twelve, which was written later in Akkadian, is inconsistent with the story and is seldom included in retellings.

A dominant theme in the Epic of Gilgamesh concerns death and mortality. When Enkidu dies, Gilgamesh mourns for seven days and does not accept his death until a worm crawls out from his dead friend’s nose. Overcome with an existential horror that the same fate awaits him, Gilgamesh abandons his crown and roams the ‘open country’ on a quest for immortality.

Before taking him to the immortal Utnapishtim, the alewife Siduri grants him this wisdom:

 “What you want you cannot have. You will not find a life that does not die. When mankind was created by the gods they kept undying life for themselves, they gave death to man.

So Gilgamesh, fill your stomach, enjoy yourself, take pleasure every day and every night in every way you can, play, dance, refresh yourselves with baths. Wash your hair, put on clean clothes, take your child’s hand in yours and take your wife on your lap. That is life.”

After failing his final quest Gilgamesh returns to Uruk and accepts what cannot change. He emerges a better man for it.

See Also:

• The Historical Babylon

Rewriting ‘The Historical Babylon’

As noted in September, it’s high time to rewrite an old post and assess my writing progress. I wrote ‘The Historical Babylon’ on October 25^th 2017, two years ago when this blog was young. Why this one? Well, it’s old, I like the subject, and it could be better. As the original ranks higher on Google, I will replace the old post with the new edit.

• The Original:
  

Babylon (2300 BC – 1000 AD) was an ancient Mesopotamian city and the first true metropolis. It was the capital of four different empires and, from 1770 – 1670 BC and 609 – 539 BC, the largest city in the world. Centuries before Classical Greece Babylon was the centre of ancient astronomy, philosophy and science. As a cosmopolitan city peopled by myriad cultures and nationalities, the first ever to reach 200,000 inhabitants, Babylon set the example for later cities such as Alexandria, Rome and Constantinople. New York fills this role today.

Most of our knowledge of Babylon and the Babylonians today comes from the Hebrew Bible, the Greeks and archaeology. The Babylonians themselves called the city ‘Babila’, thought to mean ‘gate of the gods’, while the Hebrews called it Babel.

King Hammurabi expanded Old Babylon from city state to empire in the 1700s when he conquered Mesopotamia (modern day Iraq) and neighbouring Elam (southwestern Iran). He is famous for dictating the first known code of laws, inscribed on a 2.25 metre stone stele. Hammurabi’s Code covers everything from payment and contract to slavery and family inheritance. His laws followed an ‘eye-for-an-eye’ doctrine but applied differently to slaves, freed men, property owners, women and men.

One thousand years of foreign rule separate the kingdom of Hammurabi from Babylon’s second age of glory. The Hittites sacked the city in 1595, followed by the Kassites, who ruled for five centuries and left few records. After the Kassites came the Elamites, and then the Assyrians; Babylon’s traditional nemeses. Babylon prospered as Assyria’s second capital and the centre of Mesopotamian religion.

In the 700 and 600s BC a series of ambitious princes exploited local resentment to launch rebellions from Babylon. The first was Meradoch-Baladan, who proclaimed himself king of Babylon and contested the Assyrians on three separate occasions. In 689 BC Sennacherib, king of Assyria, defeated him and razed the city to the ground. So sacrilegious was this act that his murder at the hands of his own sons was attributed to divine justice. Esarhaddon, Sennacherib’s youngest, restored the city and governed well, but was executed after rising against his brother.

The fifth uprising, led by the Chaldean Nabopolassor was successful. In alliance with the Cimmerians, Scythians and Medes he sacked Nineveh and overthrew the Assyrian yoke. His brief but vibrant ‘Neo-Babylonian Empire’ (626-539 BC) is the Babylon best known today.

Nabopolassor’s son Nebuchadnezzar led Babylon to its zenith. New conquests brought riches and slaves to the capital to fund his ambitious projects. First Nebuchadnezzar rebuilt the old city walls and its eight entrances. This included the famous ‘Ishtar Gate’, an opulent structure adorned with lapis lazuli and the images of aurochs, lions and dragons. He also rebuilt the city’s ziggurats; notably Esagila and the 91-metre tall Etemenaki. Both were dedicated to Marduk, Babylon’s chief god.

Nebuchadnezzar’s most famous construction was the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. According to legend he built it to quell the homesickness of Amytis, his Median queen, who longed for the verdant wooded hills of her homeland. Possibly apocryphal, the gardens were a multi-layered pyramid filled with artificial forests and waterfalls. Herodotus named it one of Seven Wonders of the World.

Babylon was always a centre of mathematics and science. Their numeric system was based on the number 60, which is how we tell the time today. Babylonians invented algebra in the 1600s BC, and their discoveries inspired the Greeks and Arabs. Babylonian astronomers were the first to recognise the planets and discover they revolved around the sun. They even calculated the frequency of lunar and solar eclipses. A less boastful achievement was the foundation of western astrology.

Babylon fell to the Persians in 539 BC. As Persia’s administrative capital the city continued to prosper. It was briefly Alexander the Great’s capital too before he died there in 323 BC. The new millennium began a slow decline, fallen to ruin by the year 1000.

651 words

• The Rewrite:

Babylon (2300 BC – 1000 AD) was the world’s first metropolis. On the banks of the Euphrates river in modern-day Iraq, it was the capital of four empires and twice the largest city in the world. Babylon was the centre of ancient astronomy, philosophy and science centuries before Greece and the first city with 200,000 inhabitants. Like Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople and New York, it was the cosmopolitan capital of its day.

Archaeologists unearthed Babylon and translated its stone tablets in the 1800s. Before then our only records came from the Hebrews and Greeks. The Babylonians called their city ‘Babila’, meaning ‘Gate of the Gods’ in Akkadian, while the Hebrews called it Babel. ‘Babylon’ comes from the Greeks.

Hammurabi’s Code of laws was the first of its kind. Inscribed on a 2.25 metre stone stele, it covers everything from inheritance to payment and contract. The king of Babylon’s laws followed an ‘eye-for-an-eye’ philosophy that applied differently to slaves, freedmen, property owners, women and men. Hammurabi founded the Old Babylonian Empire when he conquered Mesopotamia and Elam (southwestern Iran) in the 1700s BC.

Foreigners ruled for the next thousand years. The Hittites sacked Babylon in 1595, then the Kassites ruled for five centuries, leaving few records. The Elamites, Aramaeans and Assyrians followed. Though Babylon and Assyria were traditional enemies, under the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-609 BC), Babylon prospered as a secondary capital and centre of Mesopotamian religion.

In the 700s and 600s BC, ambitious princes rebelled from Babylon. Merodach-Baladan II seized the throne three times. Sennacherib of Assyria finally defeated him in 689 BC and razed Babylon to the ground. When Sennacherib was murdered by his own sons, Babylonians called it divine justice. Esarhaddon, his youngest, restored the city and named his younger son Shamash-Shum-Kin governor. When Shamash-Shum Kin rose against his brother Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian king burned down the palace with him inside it.

The fifth uprising, led by Nabopolassar, was successful. In alliance with the Cimmerians, Scythians and Medes he sacked Nineveh and ended the Assyrian yoke. His brief but vibrant ‘Neo-Babylonian Empire’ (626-539 BC) is the Babylon best known today.

Nebuchadnezzar II led Babylon to its peak. On succeeding his father Nabopolassar, he conquered the old Assyrian lands and brought slaves and treasure to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar built new walls with eight entrances that included the ‘Ishtar Gate’ made of lapis lazuli and adorned with aurochs, lions and dragons. He rebuilt the ziggurats Esagila and 91-meter tall Etemenaki, dedicating them to Marduk, Babylon’s chief god.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were a Wonder of the World. According to legend, Nebuchadnezzar built them for Amytis, his homesick Median queen who longed for the verdant hills of her homeland. A terraced pyramid filled with forests and waterfalls, the Hanging Gardens were Nebuchadnezzar’s greatest achievement. Though famous in the ancient world, no trace of them remains today.

Babylon led the world in mathematics and science. Based on the number 60, their numeric system is how we tell the time today. Babylonians invented algebra in the 1600s BC and their discoveries inspired the Greeks and Arabs. Babylonian astronomers were the first to name the planets and figure they orbit the sun. They also calculated the frequency of lunar and solar eclipses and founded western astronomy.

Babylon fell to the Persians in 539 BC. As Persia’s administrative capital the city continued to prosper. It was briefly Alexander the Great’s capital too before he died there in 323 BC. By the new millennium, Babylon was in decline and by AD 1000 in ruins.

586 words

What I changed:

1. Bolding the focus of each section, instead of keywords. This makes nicer to look at and easier to read.
2. Tautologies: cosmopolitan city peopled by myriad cultures and nationalities
3. Shortening sentences: to direct, punchy ones, over waffly long ones.
4. Active voice over passive voice where applicable.
5. Removing fluffy, descriptive words like opulent. Let the descriptions speak for themselves.
6. Trying to say more with fewer words
7. Fact-checking: Esharhaddon was king of Assyria. His son rebelled from Babylon. Shame on me.

See Also:

• The original post
• From the Parapet Turns Two
• The Allegorical Babylon

The Allegorical Babylon

The Allegorical Babylon (400 BC -) is a city rooted in the Judeo-Christian imagination, first referenced in the Hebrew Bible and the Book of Revelation. It is a bustling, cosmopolitan, decadent and oppressive place that symbolises human ambition and vanity in equal measure. It is the Mecca of the material world and the Ilium of the spiritual. Detractors see the Allegorical Babylon as the manifestation of the modern world and all its evils. Millenarian sects frequently invoke it in their theologies.

According to Genesis, Babylon (Babel in Hebrew) was founded by Nimrod, a mortal king and great-grandson of Noah. He turned his people from the worship of Yahweh and had them construct a tower so big it would not only survive another deluge but reach to heaven itself. Yahweh punished the people of earth by turning their one language into many and scattering them across the globe so, in the resulting confusion, the tower of Babel could never be completed.

Following the ascendance of the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the sack of Nineveh, a war ensued between the Babylonians and a coalition of Egyptians, Assyrian remnants and Greek mercenaries led by the Pharaoh Necho. Jehoachim, the king of Judah, sided with the Egyptians and his kingdom was crushed. Three years later, in 586 BC, the Jews rebelled again. This time the Babylonians sacked Jerusalem, destroyed its temple and enslaved its people. Nebuchadnezzar, their king, exiled the Jewish elite to Babylon. This was called the Babylonian Captivity.

In exile, the Jews penned the Talmud and gave form to their religion. Their writings immortalised their Babylonian oppressors as not only the enemies of the Jews but of monotheism and spirituality in general.  The book of Isiah prophesied Babylon`s doom, and the Jewish people rejoiced when the Persians destroyed their empire and returned its displaced peoples to their homes.

From Isiah chapter 21:

^“ And he cried, A lion: My lord, I stand continually upon the watchtower in the daytime, and I am set in my ward whole nights:

And, behold, here cometh a chariot of men, with a couple of horsemen. And he answered and said, Babylon is fallen, is fallen; and all the graven images of her gods he hath broken unto the ground.”

The Book of Revelations, in the New Testament, talks of Babylon again. Described is the terrible ‘Whore of Babylon’, riding a multiheaded monster; an instrument of the antichrist in the End Days. The ‘Mystery Babylon’ is described in apocalyptic terminology as a sinful and corrupt but all-powerful empire as it had been in the Old Testament.

The Book of Revelation was written in the 1^st century AD however, centuries after the historical Babylon was destroyed. It is likely a reference to Ancient Rome, which fits the same characteristics as the Babylon of the Old Testament:

1. A metropolitan and diverse state
2. Seat of an empire oppressing different peoples and states
3. Enemy of the Allegorical Zion
4. Perceived as immoral, decadent and corrupt
5. Pagan

The millenarian Jehovah’s Witnesses liken ‘Babylon the Great’ to the ostensibly corrupted world religions that govern the world today. Jehovah’s Witnesses hold them responsible for all the bloodshed suffered by mankind.

Some fundamentalist groups, including 7th day Adventists, explicitly identify the Whore of Babylon’s ‘purple and scarlet robes and golden cup’ with the Roman Catholic Church.

Identifying the African Diaspora with the exiled Jews of the Old Testament, Rastafari equates Babylon with the western world order. Babylon is the enemy of Zion. More broadly Babylon refers to any oppressive force – be it the slave trade, white imperialism, the Christian church, the USA, Great Britain, corrupt governance or the police.  This is why references to Babylon appear frequently in reggae music. The capitalist world order, or ‘Babylon System’, clearly demonstrates characteristics 1, 3 and 4, the British Empire all but 5. Similar discourse is found in the ‘African Zionism’ of Swaziland and South Africa.

Sources: King James Bible, JW.Org, Jewishhistory.org. Society of Biblical Literature

See also:

• The Historical Babylon
• Cyrus the Great
• Empire
• Second Temple Judaism
• Society of Biblical Literature – Babylon in Rastafarian Discourse
• The Melodians – Rivers of Babylon – The original reggae song Boney M famously covered. Alludes to the Babylonian Captivity.
• Jimi Hendrix – All Along the Watchtower – Based on the quoted Isaiah passage. The original Bob Dylan track is also worth listening to but not available on YouTube.

 

The Historical Babylon

Babylon (2300 BC – 1000 AD) was the world’s first metropolis. On the banks of the Euphrates river in modern-day Iraq, it was the capital of four empires and twice the largest city in the world. Babylon was the centre of ancient astronomy, philosophy and science centuries before Greece and the first city with 200,000 inhabitants. Like Alexandria, Rome, Constantinople and New York, it was the cosmopolitan capital of its day.

Archaeologists unearthed Babylon and translated its stone tablets in the 1800s. Before then our only records came from the Hebrews and Greeks. The Babylonians called their city ‘Babila’, meaning ‘Gate of the Gods’ in Akkadian, while the Hebrews called it Babel. ‘Babylon’ comes from the Greeks.

Hammurabi’s Code of laws was the first of its kind. Inscribed on a 2.25 metre stone stele, it covers everything from inheritance to payment and contract. The king of Babylon’s laws followed an ‘eye-for-an-eye’ philosophy that applied differently to slaves, freedmen, property owners, women and men. Hammurabi founded the Old Babylonian Empire when he conquered Mesopotamia and Elam (southwestern Iran) in the 1700s BC.

Foreigners ruled for the next thousand years. The Hittites sacked Babylon in 1595, then the Kassites ruled for five centuries, leaving few records. The Elamites, Aramaeans and Assyrians followed. Though Babylon and Assyria were traditional enemies, under the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-609 BC), Babylon prospered as a secondary capital and centre of Mesopotamian religion.

In the 700s and 600s BC, ambitious princes rebelled from Babylon. Merodach-Baladan II seized the throne three times. Sennacherib of Assyria finally defeated him in 689 BC and razed Babylon to the ground. When Sennacherib was murdered by his own sons, Babylonians called it divine justice. Esarhaddon, his youngest, restored the city and named his younger son Shamash-Shum-Kin governor. When Shamash-Shum Kin rose against his brother Ashurbanipal, the Assyrian king burned down the palace with him inside it.

The fifth uprising, led by Nabopolassar, was successful. In alliance with the Cimmerians, Scythians and Medes he sacked Nineveh and ended the Assyrian yoke. His brief but vibrant ‘Neo-Babylonian Empire’ (626-539 BC) is the Babylon best known today.

Nebuchadnezzar II led Babylon to its peak. On succeeding his father Nabopolassar, he conquered the old Assyrian lands and brought slaves and treasure to Babylon. Nebuchadnezzar built new walls with eight entrances that included the ‘Ishtar Gate’ made of lapis lazuli and adorned with aurochs, lions and dragons. He rebuilt the ziggurats Esagila and 91-meter tall Etemenaki, dedicating them to Marduk, Babylon’s chief god.

The Hanging Gardens of Babylon were a Wonder of the World. According to legend, Nebuchadnezzar built them for Amytis, his homesick Median queen who longed for the verdant hills of her homeland. A terraced pyramid filled with forests and waterfalls, the Hanging Gardens were Nebuchadnezzar’s greatest achievement. Though famous in the ancient world, no trace of them remains today.

Babylon led the world in mathematics and science. Based on the number 60, their numeric system is how we tell the time today. Babylonians invented algebra in the 1600s BC and their discoveries inspired the Greeks and Arabs. Babylonian astronomers were the first to name the planets and figure they orbit the sun. They also calculated the frequency of lunar and solar eclipses and founded western astrology.

Babylon fell to the Persians in 539 BC. As Persia’s administrative capital the city continued to prosper. It was briefly Alexander the Great’s capital too before he died there in 323 BC. By the new millennium, Babylon was in decline and by AD 1000 in ruins.

Rewritten 24/11/2019

See also:

• The Allegorical Babylon
• Rewriting ‘The Historical Babylon’
• Cyrus the Great
• Mani of Babylonia
• Empire