It was only when I began revising an essay that I discovered what it was about. I had thought the piece would be a simple meditation on what I’d learned about Cyrus the Great over these past few years – the sexy “messiah” byline, author of the first declaration of human rights, all that… and …
Persian cuisine elevates rice to high art, but it wasn’t always so. When the ten-year-old Cyrus II sat down for his first meal in the palace of his father, Cambyses I, around 568 B.C. he probably didn’t eat rice. As I researched the foods available in ancient Anshan (probably Tel el-Malyan in the modern Iranian …
If Americans know anything at all about Cyrus II, it’s usually positive. The founder of the Persian Empire earned praise then and now for inaugurating a new way to rule: with respect — respect for differences of religion, respect for the wisdom of individual communities, respect (i.e. fair pay) for honest work… and all this …
Referring to the Cyrus Cylinder, Ahmadinejad is reported as saying that it represents the kind of foundation on which people can build a highly developed civilization. So far, so good, as it goes. But he reputedly went on to note the relative lack of such a foundation for the “Zionist regime” — meaning Israel?, Judaism? Let’s see… the Bible?! …
In the Game of Cultural Background: Iran vs. Israel Read More »
Babylon, bab-ilu, Babel, “Gate of the gods” was the Big Apple of its day. Yet we get “the whore of Babylon” and the “Tower of Babel,” Bob Marley’s Babylon site of oppression and reputation for excess. The biblical view of Babylon is no less real in its critique than the grandeur that we know Babylon …
I finally broke down and went all junior-high with my research — different colored pens for the different accounts of Cyrus’ taking Babylon. The most ancient records are notoriously problematic. Each one has a either a bone to pick or a bridge to sell, and they simply don’t agree on the facts. Did or did …
The small clay cylinder, 2500 years old and a bit beat up has quietly moved people all over the world since its very beginnings. Cyrus II, founder of the Persian Empire produced this declaration of intent for liberty and peace. The National Museum of Iran recently reported that besides Iranian schoolchildren, elites, and not-so, officials …
To hear in a cryptic message whatever our innermost self is inclined to hear, right or wrong is timelessly human, or so it would seem. The “Croesus syndrome, ” is how the Asheville Jung Center refers to it. Croesus was a super wealthy and powerful ancient Greek ruler who consulted an oracle (prophet, of a sort) …
I just finished Anne Rice’s Servant of the Bones. From the original queen of vampire writing, who’d have thought? A book that includes not just the gothic but profound questions of purpose and identity and (here’s what’s especially intriguing to me right now) reflects some good research into ancient Near Eastern religion and history. Marduk, …
A small clay object with scratches decipherable by only a few people in the world can nevertheless still move nations. Sometimes called “the first charter of human rights,” this text inscribed on a cylinder of clay comes from Cyrus II, founder of the Persian Empire and called “messiah” by the biblical prophet Isaiah. It dates back to the …
