History of Achaemenid Iran 1B, Course I – Achaemenid beginnings 1B

Prof. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

Outline

Western Orientalist historiography; early sources of Iranian History; Prehistory in the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia

6- Western Orientalist historiography

The modern Western European specialists on Iran were first based on the Ancient Hebrew, Ancient Greek and Latin sources and on travelers’ records and descriptions. On his way to China, the Italian Franciscan monk Odoric of Pordenone was the first European to probably visit (in 1320) the ruins of Parsa (Persepolis) that he called ‘Comerum’. The site was then known as Chehel Minar (چهل منار /i.e. forty minarets) and later as Takht-e Jamshid (تخت جمشید/i.e. the throne of Jamshid, a great hero of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and of the Iranian legendary historiography about which we discussed). The Venetian Giosafat Barbaro visited the same location in 1474 and, being the victim of the delusions about which I spoke already, he attributed the erection of the majestic monuments to the Jews!

After the rise of the Safavid dynasty and the formation of the two alliances (the French with the Ottomans and the English with the Iranians), an English merchant visited Persepolis in 1568 and wrote a description that was included in Richard Hakluyt’s ‘Voyages’ (1582). Old Achaemenid cuneiform inscriptions were first noticed and reported by the Portuguese António de Gouveia, who visited the site in 1602 and wrote about it in 1611. It is only in 1618 that the Spanish ambassador (to the court of the Safavid Shah of Iran Abbas I/1571-1629; reigned after 1588) García de Silva Figueroa associated the location with the great Achaemenid capital that was known as Persepolis in the Ancient Greek and Latin sources.

The Italian Pietro Della Valle spent five years (1616-1621) in Mesopotamia and Iran, visited Persepolis (1621), made copies of several inscriptions that he noticed there and took them back to Europe, along with clay tablets and bricks that he found in Babylon and Ur. This was the first cuneiform documentation brought to Europe. With respect to Persepolis he wrote that only 25 of the 72 original columns were still standing.

Good indication of the lunacy that Western Europeans experienced at those days due to their erroneous reading of the untrustworthy Ancient Greek historical sources about Achaemenid Iran is the following fact: after traveling in Asia and Africa, Sir Thomas Herbert wrote in his book (1638) that in Persepolis he saw several lines of strange signs curved in the walls. These were, of course, Old Achaemenid cuneiform inscriptions, but at the time, the modern term ‘cuneiform’ had not been invented; however, excessively enthused with Greek literature about Ancient Iran, he ‘concluded’ that these characters ‘resembled Greek’! He mistook cuneiform for Greek! So biased his approach was!

The term ‘cuneiform’ (‘Keilschrift’ in German) was coined (1700) by the German scholar and explorer Engelbert Kaempfer, who spent ten years (1683-1693) in many parts of Asia. The monumental site of the Achaemenid capital was also visited by the famous Dutch artist Cornelis de Bruijn (1704) and the famous jeweler Sir Jean Chardin, who also worked as agent of Shah Abbas II for the purchase of jewels. He was the first to publish (1711) pertinent copies of several cuneiform inscriptions.

The German surveyor Carsten Niebuhr took the research to the next stage when he copied and published (1764) the famous rock reliefs and inscriptions of Darius the Great; in fact, he brought complete and accurate copies of the inscriptions at Persepolis to Europe. He realized that he had to do with three writing systems and that the simpler (which he named ‘Class I’) comprised 42 characters, being apparently an alphabetic script. Niebuhr’s publication was used by many other scholars and explorers, notably the Germans Oluf Gerhard Tychsen, who published the most advanced research on the topic in 1798, and Friedrich Münter, who confirmed the alphabetic nature of the script (in 1802). 

The reconstitution of the Iranian past proved to be far more difficult a task than that of the Ancient Egyptian heritage. This is so because, if we consider the Old Achaemenid Iranian cuneiform and the Egyptian hieroglyphics as the earliest stages of the two respective languages and scripts, Coptic (the latest stage of the Egyptian language) was always known in Europe throughout the Christian and Modern times, whereas Pahlavi and Middle Persian (the corresponding stages of the Iranian languages) were totally unknown. For this reason, Abraham Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron, the first French Iranologist and Indologist, played a key role in the decipherment of the cuneiform writing, although he did not spend time exploring it. But having learned Pahlavi and Farsi among the Parsis of India, he managed to study Avestan and he translated the Avesta as the sacred text of the Zoroastrians was preserved among the Parsi community. Pretty much like Coptic was essential to Champollion for the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphic, the pioneering work of Anquetil-Duperron and the knowledge of Avestan, Pahlavi, Middle Persian and Farsi helped the French Antoine Isaac Silvestre de Sacy and the German Georg Friedrich Grotefend make critical breakthroughs and advance the decipherment of the Old Achaemenid.   

Grotefend’s Memoir was presented to the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities in 1802, but it was rejected; in fact, he had deciphered only eight (8) letters until that moment, but most of his assumptions were correct. He had however to wait for an incredible confirmation; after Champollion completed his first step toward the decipherment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics in 1822, he read the Egyptian text of a quadrilingual inscription on the famous Caylus vase (named after a 18th c. French collector). Then, Champollion’s associate, the Orientalist Antoine-Jean Saint-Martin, announced that Grotefend’s reading of the imperial Achaemenid name ‘Xerxes’ did indeed correspond to what the Egyptian hieroglyphic text testified to. This situation generated an impetus among Orientalist scholars and explorers; until the late 1830s and the early 1840s, Grotefend, the French Eugène Burnouf, the Norwegian-German Christian Lassen, and Sir Henry Rawlinson completed the task.

Shush (Susa), an Elamite and later an Achaemenid capital, was explored in 1851, 1885-1886, 1894-1899, and then systematically excavated by the French Jacques de Morgan (1897-1911), whereas Pasargad (the early Achaemenid capital) was first explored by the German Ernst Herzfeld in 1905. Persepolis was excavated quite later, only in the 1930s by Ernst Herzfeld and Erich Schmidt of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago.

Not far from Hamadan (the ancient capital Hegmataneh/Ekbatana of the Medes), the splendid site of Mount Behistun (Bisotun) had become world-famous even before it was excavated (initially in 1904) by Leonard William King and Reginald Campbell Thompson (sponsored by the British Museum). This was due to the fact that the famous trilingual Behistun inscription and the associated reliefs were carved at about 100 m above ground level on a cliff, and explorers had to scale the cliff. Several fascinating descriptions of the extraordinary location were written by travelers and visitors, before academic work was carried out there. Putting his life in risk, Rawlinson copied the Old Achaemenid text in 1835, and this helped him advance considerably the decipherment of the script. 

Without the decipherment of the Old Achaemenid, it would be impossible for Rawlinson to decipher the Assyrian-Babylonian cuneiform, and later for others to read the Hittite script which enabled us to have access to the most important and the most original Anatolian literature of pre-Christian times.

Behistun (Farsi: Bisotun / Old Iranian: Bagastana, i.e. ‘the place of God’) was mentioned by Ctesias, who totally misunderstood the inscription, attributing it to the ‘Babylonian’ Queen Semiramis and describing it as a dedication to Zeus! In reality, the text is part of the Annals of Emperor Darius I the Great, duly detailing his victory over a rebellion; the Iranian monarch dedicated his triumph to Ahura Mazda. Now, Semiramis seems to be an entirely misplaced Ancient Greek legend about the historical Queen of Assyria (not Babylonia!) Shammuramat. The Assyrian queen was consort of Shamshi Adad V and co-regent with her son Adad-nirari III (during his reign’s early phase). But the Assyrian Queen had nothing to do with Mount Behistun and the Achaemenid Iranian inscription.

In the early 17th c., Pietro della Valle was the first Western European to come to Behistun and sketch the remains. As a matter of fact, many European travelers and explorers visited Behistun, saw the impressive inscription, and disastrously misinterpreted it, due to their preconceived ideas, mistaken readings, and unrealistic assumptions.

A foolish English diplomat and adventurer, Robert Sherley, visited the location in 1598, and he considered the astounding reliefs and the inscriptions as ‘Christian’! Napoleon’s subordinate, General Claude-Matthieu, Comte de Gardane, visited the place in 1807 only to see in the monuments the representation of ‘Christ and his twelve apostles’! In 1817, Sir Robert Ker Porter thought that the impressive relief and inscriptions detailed the deeds of Emperor Shalmaneser V of Assyria and the transportation of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel to the NE confines of Assyria. Last, quite interestingly, the German spiritual-scientific society Ahnenerbe, which used Hitler for their non-Nazi, highly secretive projects, explored Behistun in 1938.

7- Early sources of Iranian History: Assyrian-Babylonian Cuneiform  

The early sources of Iranian History are Assyrian-Babylonian historical documents pertaining to the military, commercial and/or administrative activities of the Neo-Assyrian kings in the Zagros mountains and the Iranian plateau; these sources shed light on the earliest stages of Median, Persian and Iranian History, when the ancestors of the Achaemenids were just one of the many tribes that settled somewhere east of the borders of the Assyrian Empire.

Since the 3rd millennium BCE, Sumerian and Akkadian historical sources referred to nomads, settlers, villages, cities, strongholds and at times kingdoms situated in the area of today’s Iran. Mainly these tribes and/or realms were barbarians who either partly damaged or totally destroyed the Mesopotamian civilization and order. That’s why they were always described with markedly negative terms. On the other hand, we know through archaeological evidence that several important sites were located in the Iranian plateau, constituting either small kingdoms or outstanding entrepôts and commercial centers linking Mesopotamia with either India or Central Asia and China.

For instance, settled somewhere in the Middle Zagros, the Guti of the 3rd millennium BCE constituted a barbaric periphery that finally destroyed Agade (Akkad), the world’s first empire ever; and in the middle of the 2nd millennium BCE, the Kassites descended from Middle Zagros to Babylon, after the Old Babylonian kingdom was destroyed (in 1596) by the Hittite Mursilis I, and they set up a profane kingdom (Kassite dynasty of Babylonia) that the Assyrians never accepted as a heir of the old Sumerian-Akkadian civilization.

As both ethnic groups learned Akkadian / Assyrian-Babylonian, their rulers wrote down their names, and thus we know that neither the Guti nor the Kassites were a properly speaking Iranian nation; the present documentation is still scarce in this regard, but there are indications that some of these people bore Turanian (or Turkic) names. 

For thousands of years, South Zagros and the southwestern confines of today’s Iran belonged to Elam, the main rival of Sumer, Akkad, Babylonia, and Assyria. Viewed as the true negation of the genius of Mesopotamian civilization, Elam was ruled by the ‘kings of Shushan and Anshan’; the two regions corresponded to Susa (and the entire province of Khuzestan in today’s Iran) and South Zagros respectively. The name that modern scholarship uses to denote this nation and kingdom is merely the Sumerian-Akkadian appellation of that country. In Elamite, the eastern neighbors of the Sumerians called their land ‘Haltamti’. Their language was neither Indo-European (like Old Achaemenid and Modern Farsi) nor Semitic (like Assyrian-Babylonian); it was also unrelated to Sumerian, Hurrian and Hattic, the languages of the indigenous populations in Mesopotamia and Anatolia. Recent linguistic research offers tentative approaches to the relationship between Elamite and the Dravidian languages, thus making of it the ancestral language of more than 250 million people.

Elamite linear and cuneiform writings bear witness to the life, the society, the economy, the faith and the culture of the Elamites, as well as to their relations with the Sumerians, the Akkadians, the Assyrians and the Babylonians. But they cannot help us reconstitute the History of the Iranian plateau, because the Elamites never went beyond the limits of South Zagros.

With the rise, expansion and prevalence of Assyria (from the 14th to the 7th c. BCE), we have for the first time a Mesopotamian Empire that showed great importance for the Zagros Mountains and the Iranian plateau; consequently, this means that, for the said period, we have more texts about these regions, which earlier constituted the periphery of the Mesopotamian world, but were gradually incorporated into the ever expanding Assyrian Empire. Thanks to Assyrian cuneiform texts, we know names of tribal chieftains and petty kings, cities, fortresses, ethnic groups, etc., and we can assess the various degrees of Assyrianization of each of them; but it is only at the time of Shalmaneser III (859-824 BCE) that we first find a mention of the Medes and the Persians. The former are named ‘Amadaya’ and later ‘Madaya’, whereas the latter are called ‘Parsua’ (or Parsamaš or Parsumaš).

Assyrian cuneiform texts about the Medes and the Persians more specifically are abundant during the reign of Tiglath-pileser III (745-727 BCE) and at the time of the Sargonids (722-609 BCE). It is noteworthy that the Parsua were first located in the region of today’s Sanandaj in Western Iran and later they relocated to the ancient Elamite region of Anshan (today’s Iranian province of Fars), which was devastated and emptied from its population by Assurbanipal (640 BCE). After the great Assyrian victory, which also involved the destruction of Susa, Assyrian texts mention the grandfather of Cyrus the Great, Cyrus I, as Kuraš, king of Parsumaš. He sent gifts to Nineveh and he also dispatched his eldest son (‘Arukku’ in Assyrian from a hypothetical ‘Aryauka’ in Ancient Iranian) there – nominally as a hostage, but essentially as a student of Assyrian culture, sacerdotal organization, and imperial administration and procedures.

The Black Obelisk of Shalmaneser III

Tiglathpileser III

Sarrukin (Sargon of Assyria) with his son and successor Sennacherib (right)

8- Pre-History in the Iranian plateau, and Mesopotamia

During the 4th, the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BCE, the major hitherto excavated Iranian archaeological sites are the following:

Tepe Sialk

Located near the modern city of Kashan, in the center of the Iranian plateau, and excavated in the 1930s by the Russian-French Roman Ghirshman, the site was first occupied in the period 6000-5500 BCE. The remains of the zikkurat (dating back to around 3000 BCE) show that it was the largest Mesopotamian style zikkurat. Tepe Sialk IV level (2nd half of the 4th millennium BCE) testifies to evident links with Sumer (Jemdet Nasr, Uruk) and Elam (Susa III). The site was abandoned and reoccupied in the 2nd half of the 1st millennium BCE (Tepe Sialk V and VI). Its location and the archaeological findings let us understand that the site was a key commercial center that linked Mesopotamia with Central Asia and China.

Tureng Tepe

Located close to Gorgan in Turkmen Sahra (NE Iran) and excavated by the American Frederick Roelker Wulsin in the 1930s and by the French Jean Deshayes in the 1950s, the site was inhabited in the Neolithic and then continually from 3100 to 1900 BCE, when it appears to have been the major among many other regional settlements and in evident contact with both, Mesopotamia and Central Asia. There was a disruption, and the site was occupied again only in the 7th c. BCE (Tureng Tepe IV A) by newcomers.

Tepe Yahya

Located at ca. 250 km north of Bandar Abbas and 220 km south of Kerman, the site was of crucial importance for the contacts between Mesopotamia and the Indus River Valley; it was also in contact with Central Asia. Excavated by the Czech-American Clifford Charles Lamberg-Karlovsky, the site was inhabited from ca. 5000 to 2200 BCE and then again after 1000 BCE. The genuine ‘Yahya Culture’ covered the first half of the 4th millennium BCE. The Proto-Elamite phase started around 3400 BCE (Tepe Yahya IV C); few proto-Elamite tablets have been unearthed from that stratum. This period corresponds to the strata Susa Cb and Tepe Sialk IV. During the 3rd millennium BCE, the site appears to have been the center of production of hard stone carving artifacts; dark stone vessels produced here were found / excavated in Mesopotamia. Similar vessels and fragments of vessels have been found in Sumerian temples in Mesopotamia, in Elam, in the Indus River Valley, and in Central Asia.

Not far from Tepe Yahya are situated several important sites that testify to the strong ties that the entire region had with Sumer and Elam in the West, the Indus River Valley in the East and Central Asia in the North; Jiroft gave the name to the ‘Jiroft culture’ which is better documented in the nearby site of Konar Sandal and covers the 3rd millennium BCE. Further in the east and close to the triangle border point (Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan), Shahr-e Sukhteh was an enormous site which thrived between 3200 BCE and the end of the 3rd millennium BCE. It was associated with both, the ‘Jiroft culture’ and the Helmand culture, which was attested in several sites in South Afghanistan. Elamite texts were also found in that site, which already offered many surprises, involving the first known artificial eyeball and the earliest tables game with dice.

Several important prehistoric Mesopotamian sites demonstrate parallels and contacts with the aforementioned sites, notably

– Tell Halaf (near Ras al Ayn in NE Syria; the Neolithic phase lasted from 6100 to 5400 BCE, and the Bronze Age covers the 3rd and the 2nd millennium BCE),

– Tell al Ubaid (near Ur in Dhi Qar governorate; 6500-3700 BCE),

– Tell Arpachiyah (near Nineveh; the site was occupied in the Neolithic period, like Tell Halaf and Ubaid),

– Tepe Gawra (close to Nineveh; the site was occupied from 5000 to 1500 BCE),

– Tell Jemdet Nasr (near Kish in Central Iraq; 3100-2300 BCE), and

– Uruk {near Samawah in South Iraq; type site for the Uruk period (4000-3100 BCE), it was a major Sumerian kingdom and it was the world’s most populated city in the middle of the 4th millennium BCE with ca. 40000 inhabitants and another 90000 residents in the suburbs}.

In the next course, I will present a brief diagram of the History of the Mesopotamian kingdoms and Empires down to Sargon of Assyria – with focus on the relations with Zagros Mountains and the Iranian plateau.

Tepe Sialk

Tureng tepe

Tepe Yahya

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To watch the video (with more than 110 pictures and maps), click the links below:

HISTORY OF ACHAEMENID IRAN – Achaemenid beginnings 1Α

By Prof. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

https://vk.com/video429864789_456239757

https://ok.ru/video/5416043547224

https://www.brighteon.com/ca749192-7c1b-4a9d-901d-5f530611c965

HISTORY OF ACHAEMENID IRAN – Achaemenid beginnings 1B

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_9011%2Fall

https://ok.ru/video/5452334828120

https://www.brighteon.com/491e7afe-d4f6-4100-909c-3f35b9c57323

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To listen to the audio, clink the links below:

HISTORY OF ACHAEMENID IRAN – Achaemenid beginnings 1 (a+b)

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_8990%2Fall

https://megalommatis.podbean.com/e/history-of-achaemenid-iran-1a-course-i-achaemenid-beginnings-1a/

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Download the course in PDF:

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History of Achaemenid Iran 1A, Course I, Achaemenid beginnings 1A

Prof. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

Tuesday, 27 December 2022

Outline

Introduction; Iranian Achaemenid historiography; Problems of historiography continuity; Iranian posterior historiography; foreign historiography; Western Orientalist historiography; early sources of Iranian History; Prehistory in the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia

1- Introduction

Welcome to the 40-hour seminar on Achaemenid Iran!

It is my intention to deliver a rather unconventional academic presentation of the topic, mostly implementing a correct and impartial conceptual approach to the earliest stage of Iranian History. Every subject, in and by itself, offers to every researcher the correct means of the pertinent approach to it; due to this fact, the personal background, viewpoints and thoughts or eventually the misperceptions and the preconceived ideas of an explorer should not be allowed to affect his judgment.

If before 200 years, the early Iranologists had the possible excuse of studying a topic on the basis of external and posterior historical sources, this was simply due to the fact that the Old Achaemenid cuneiform writing had not yet been deciphered. Still, even those explorers failed to avoid a very serious mistake, namely that of taking the external and posterior historical sources at face value. We cannot afford to blindly accept a secondary historical source without first examining intentions, motives, scopes and aims of it.

As the seminar covers only the History of the Achaemenid dynasty, I don’t intend to add an introductory course about the History of the Iranian Studies and the re-discovery of Iran by Western explorers of the colonial powers. However, I will provide a brief outline of the topic; this is essential because mainstream Orientalists have reached their limits and cannot provide us with a real insight, eliminating the numerous and enduring myths, fallacies, and deliberately naïve approaches to Achaemenid Iran.

In fact, most of the specialists of Ancient Iran never went beyond the limitations set by the delusional Ancient ‘Greek’ (in reality: Ionian and Attic) literature about the Medes and the Persians (i.e. the Iranians), because they never offered themselves the task to explain the reasons for the aberration that the Ancient Ionian and Attic authors created in their minds and wrote in their texts about Iran. This was utterly puerile and ludicrous.

And this brings us to the other major innovation that I intend to offer during this seminar, namely the proper, comprehensive contextualization of the research topic, i.e. the History of Achaemenid Iran. To give some examples in this regard, I would mention

a – the tremendous, multilayered and multifaceted impact of the Mesopotamian World, Civilization and Heritage on the formation of the Achaemenid Empire of Iran, and more specifically, the determinant role played by the Sargonid Empire of Assyria on the emergence of the first Empire on the Iranian plateau;

b – the ferocious opposition of the Mithraic Magi to the Zoroastrian Achaemenid court; 

c – the involvement of the Anatolian Magi in the misperception of Iran by the Ancient Greeks; and

d- the utilization of the Ancient Greek cities by the Anti-Iranian side of the Egyptian priesthoods, princes and administrators.  

To therefore introduce the proper contextualization, I will expand on the Neo-Assyrian Empire and the Sargonid times, not only to state the first mentions of the Medes and the Persians in History, but also to show the importance attributed by the Neo-Assyrian Emperors to the Zagros Mountains and the Iranian plateau, as well as the numerous peoples, settled or nomadic, who inhabited that region. 

There is an enormous lacuna in the Orientalist disciplines; there are no interdisciplinary studies in Assyriology and Iranology. This plays a key role in the misperception of the ancient oriental civilizations and in the mistaken evaluation (or rather under-estimation) of the momentous impact that they had on the formation of the World History. There are no isolated cultures and independent civilizations as dogmatic and ignorant Western archaeologists pretend.

Only if one studies and evaluates correctly the colossal impact of the Ancient Mesopotamian world on Iran, can one truly understand the Achaemenid Empire in its real dimensions.

2- Iranian Achaemenid historiography

A. Achaemenid imperial inscriptions produced on solemn occasions

Usually multilingual texts written by the imperial scribes of the emperors Cyrus the Great, Darius I the Great, Xerxes I, Artaxerxes I, Darius II, Artaxerxes II, and Artaxerxes III, as well as of the ancestral rulers Ariaramnes and Arsames.

Languages and writing systems:

– Old Achaemenid Iranian (cuneiform-alphabetic; the official imperial language)

– Babylonian (cuneiform-syllabic; to offer a testimony of historical continuity and legitimacy, following the Conquest of Babylon by Cyrus the Great, who presented himself as king of Babylon)

– Elamite (cuneiform-logo-syllabic; to portray the Persians in particular as the heirs of the ancient land of Anshan and Sushan that the Assyrians and the Babylonians named ‘Elam’ and the indigenous population called ‘Haltamti’ / The first Achaemenid to present himself as ‘king of Anshan’ is Cyrus the Great and the reference is found in his Cylinder unearthed in Babylon.)

and

– Egyptian Hieroglyphic (if the inscription or the monument was produced in Egypt, since the Achaemenids were also pharaohs of Egypt, starting with Kabujiya/Cambyses)

Imperial inscriptions are found in: Babylon (Cyrus Cylinder), Pasargad, Behistun, Hamadan, Ganj-e Nameh, Persepolis, Naqsh-e Rustam, Susa, Suez (Egypt), Gherla (Romania), Van (Turkey), and on various items

B. Persepolis Administrative Archives

This consists in an enormous documentation that has not yet been fully studied; it is not written in Old Achaemenid as one could expect but mainly in Elamite cuneiform. It consists of two groups, namely

– the Persepolis Fortification Archive, and

– the Persepolis Treasury Archive.

The Persepolis Fortification Archive was unearthed in the fortification area, i.e. the northeastern confines of the enormous platform of the Achaemenid capital Parsa (Persepolis), in the 1930s. It comprises of more than 30000 tablets (fragmentary or entire) that were written in the period 509-494 BCE (at the time of Darius I). The tablets were written in Susa and other parts of Fars and the territory of the ancient kingdom of Elam that vanished in the middle of the 7th c. (more than 130 years before these texts were written). Around 50 texts had Aramaic glosses. More than 2000 tablets have been published and translated. These texts are records of transactions, distribution of food, provisioning of workers, transportation of commodities, etc.;  few tablets were written in other languages, namely Old Iranian (1), Babylonian (1), Phrygian (1) and Greek (1).

The Persepolis Treasury Archive was found in the northeastern room of the Treasury of Xerxes. It contains more than 750 tablets and fragments (in Elamite) and more than 100 have been published. They all date back in period 492-458 BCE. These tablets are either letters or memoranda dispatched by imperial officials to the head of the Treasury; they concern the payment of workmen, the issue of silver, and other administrative procedures.  Only one tablet was written in Babylonian.

The entire documentation offers valuable information as regards the function of various imperial services, namely the couriers, the satraps, the imperial messengers, the imperial storehouse, etc. The archives shed light on the origin of the imperial administrators, as ca. 1900 personal names have been recorded: 10% were Elamites (who had apparently survived for long far from their country after the destruction of Susa by Assurbanipal (640 BCE), fewer were Babylonians, and the outright majority consisted of Iranians (Persians, Medes, Bactrians, Sakas, Arians, etc.).

C. Imperial Aramaic

The diffusion of the use of Aramaic started already in the Neo-Assyrian times and during the 7th c. BCE; the creation of the ‘Royal Road’, the systematization of the transportation, the improvement of communications, and the formation of the network of land-, sea- and desert routes that we now call ‘Silk-, Spice- and Perfume- Road’ during the Achaemenid times helped further expand the use of Aramaic. The linguistic assimilation of the Babylonians, the Jews and the Phoenicians with the Aramaeans only strengthened the diffusion of the Aramaic, which became the second international language (‘lingua franca’) in the History of the Mankind (after the Akkadian / Assyrian-Babylonian). Gradually, Aramaic became an official Achaemenid language after the Old Achaemenid Iranian.

Except the Aramaic texts attested in the Persepolis Administrative Archives, thousands of Aramaic texts of the Achaemenid times shed light onto the society, the economy, the administration, the military organization, the trade, the religions, the cults, the culture and the spirituality attested in various provinces of the Iranian Empire. At this point, only indicatively, I mention few significant groups of texts:

– the Elephantine papyri and ostraca (except Aramaic, they were written in Hieratic and Demotic Egyptian, Coptic, Alexandrian Koine, and Latin) – 5th and 4th c. BCE,

– the Hermopolis Aramaic papyri,

– the Padua Aramaic papyri, and

– the Khalili Collection of Aramaic Documents from Bactria (48 texts written on leather, papyrus, stone or clay, dating from the period 353-324 BCE, and mainly from the reign of Artaxerxes III whereas the most recent dates from the reign of Alexander the Great).

Here I have to add that the widespread use of Imperial Aramaic and its use as a second official language for Achaemenid Iran brought an end to the use of the Elamite (in the middle of the 5th c.) and, after the end of the Achaemenid dynasty and the split of the state of Alexander the Great, contributed to the formation of two writing systems, namely Parthian and Pahlavi which were in use during the Arsacid and the Sassanid times. Imperial Aramaic helped establish many other writing systems, but this goes beyond the limits of the present seminar.

3- Problems of historiography continuity

There are no historical references to the Achaemenid dynasty made at the time of the Arsacids (Ashkanian: 250 BCE-224 CE) and the Sassanids 224-651 CE); this situation is due to many factors:

– the prevalence of another Iranian nation of probably Turanian origin, namely the Parthians and the Arsacid dynasty,

– the rise of the anti-Achaemenid, anti-Zoroastrian Magi who tried to impose Mithraism throughout Iran during the Arsacid times,

– the formation of an oral epic tradition and the establishment of a legendary historiography about the pre-Arsacid past during the Sassanid times, and

– the scarcity of written sources and the terrible destructions that occurred in Iran during the Late Antiquity, the Islamic era, and the Modern times (early Islamic conquests, divisions of the Abbasid times, Mongol invasions, Safavid-Ottoman wars, Western colonial looting, etc.).

This situation raised Western academic questions of Iranian identity, continuity, and historicity. But this attempt is futile. Iranian historiography of Islamic times shows that these questions were fully misplaced.

4- Iranian posterior historiography (Iranian historiography of Islamic times)

With Tabari (839-923) and his voluminous History of Prophets and Kings we realize that there were, in spite of the destructions caused because of the Islamic conquests, historical documents on which he was based to expand about the Sassanid dynasty; actually one out of the 40 volumes of the most recent translation of Tabari to English (published by the State University of New York Press from 1985 through 2007) is dedicated to the History of Sassanid Iran (vol. 5). And the previous volume (vol. 4) covers the History of Achaemenid and Arsacid Iran, Alexander the Great, Nabonid Babylonia, Assyria and Ancient Israel and Judah.  

Other important Iranian historians of the Islamic times, like Abu’l-Fadl Bayhaqi (995-1077), Rashid al-Din Hamadani (1247-1318) who wrote the truly first World History, Alaeddin Aṭa Malik Juvaynī (1226-1283), and Sharaf ad-Din Ali Yazdi (ca. 1370-1454), did not expand much on pre-Islamic periods as the focus of their writing was on contemporaneous developments.

However, the aforementioned historians and all the authors, who are classified in this category, represent only one dimension of Iranian historiography of Islamic times. A totally different approach and literature have been illustrated by Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh (Book of Kings). Abu ‘l Qasem Ferdowsi (940-1025) was not the first to compose an epic in order to standardize in mythical terms and legendary concepts the pre-Islamic Iranian past; but he was the most successful and the most illustrious. That is why many other epic poets followed his example, notably the Azeri Nizami Ganjavi (1141-1209) and the Turkic Indian Amir Khusraw (1253-1325).

Within the context of this poetical historiography, historical emperors of pre-Islamic Iran appear as legendary figures only to be then viewed as materialization of divine patterns. The origin of this transcendental historiography seems to be retraced in the Sassanid times, but all the major themes are clearly of Zoroastrian identity and can therefore be attributed to the Achaemenid world perception and world conceptualization.

It is essential at this point to state that, until the imposition of modern Western colonial academic and educational standards in Iran, Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and the corpus of Iranian legendary historiography was the backbone of the Iranian cultural, intellectual and educational identity.

It is a matter of academic debate whether an original text named Khwaday-Namag, written during the Sassanid times, and now lost, is at the very origin of Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh and of the Iranian legendary historiography. The 19th c. German Orientalist Theodor Nöldeke is credited with this theory that has not yet been proved.

All the same, the spiritual standards of this approach are detected in the Achaemenid times.

5- Foreign historiography

Ancient Greek (in reality, Ionian and Attic), Ancient Hebrew and Latin sources of Achaemenid History exist, but first they are external, second they appear to be posterior in their largest part, and third they often bear witness to astounding inaccuracies, fables, untrustworthy data, misplaced focus, excessive verbosity without real substance, and -above all- an enormous and irreconcilable misunderstanding of the Iranian Achaemenid reality, values, world view, mindset, and behavior.

The Ancient Hebrew sources shed light on issues that were apparently critical to the tiny and unimportant, Jewish minority of the Achaemenid Empire; however, these Biblical narratives concern facts that were absolutely insignificant to the imperial authorities of Parsa. One critical issue is concealed by modern scholars though; although all the nations of the Empire were regularly mentioned in the Achaemenid inscriptions and depicted on bas reliefs, the Jews were not. This undeniable fact irrevocably conditions the supposed ‘importance’ of Biblical texts like Ezra, Esther, Nehemiah, etc. All the same, these foreign historical sources are important for the Jews.

The Ionian and Attic accounts of events that were composed by the Carian renegade Herodotus, the Dorian Ctesias, and the Athenian Xenophon present an even more serious problem. They happened to be for many centuries (16th – 19th c.) the bulk of the historical documentation that Western European academics had access to as regards Achaemenid Iran. This situation produced grave biases among Western academics, because they took all these sources at face value since they had no access to original documentation. The grave trouble persisted even after the decipherment of the Old Achaemenid cuneiform writing and the archaeological excavations that brought to daylight original Iranian imperial documentation.

Only recently, at the end of the 20th c., leading Iranologists like Heleen Sancisi-Weerdenburg started criticizing the absolutely delusional History of Achaemenid Iran that modern Western scholars were producing without even understanding it by foolishly accepting Ancient Ionian myths, lies and propaganda against the Iranian Empire at face value. This grave problem had also two other parameters:

– first, there was an enormous gap of civilization and a tremendous cultural difference between the Iranian imperial world view, the spiritual valorization of the human being, and the Zoroastrian monotheism from one side and the chaotic, disorderly and profane elements of the western periphery of the Empire. The so-called Greek tribes in Western Anatolia and in the South Balkans were not only multi-divided and plunged in permanent conflict; they were also extremely verbose on common issues, they desecrated the divine world with their nonsensical myths and puerile narratives, and they defiled human spirituality with their love stories about their pseudo-gods. But, very arbitrarily and quite disastrously, the so-called Ancient Greek civilization had been erroneously taken as ‘classics’ by modern Europeans at a time they had no access to Ancient Oriental sources.

– second, the vertical differentiation between Imperial Iran as the blessed land of divine mission and the disunited and peripheral lands of conflict, discord and strife that were inhabited by the Greek tribes was reflected on the respective, impressively different types of historiography; to the Iranians, few words written by anonymous scribes were enough to describe the groundbreaking deeds of divinely appointed rulers. But for the Greeks, the useless rumors, the capricious hearsay, the intentional lie, the nefarious expression of their complex of inferiority, the vicious slander, and the deliberate ignominy ‘had’ to be recorded and written down.

The fact that Herodotus’ and Xenophon’s long narratives have long been taken as the basic source of information about Achaemenid Iran demonstrates how disoriented and misplaced modern Western scholarship is. But by preferring to rely mainly on the Ancient Greek lengthy and false narratives, and not on the succinct, true and chaste Old Achaemenid Iranian inscriptions, they totally misrepresent Ancient Iranian History, preposterously extrapolating later and corrupt standards to earlier and superior civilizations.

And whereas Ancient Roman authors, who wrote in Latin (Pliny the Elder, Seneca the Younger, etc.), and Jewish or Christian historians, who wrote in Alexandrine Koine, like Flavius Josephus and Eusebius of Caesarea Maritima, reproduced the style of lengthy narratives that turns History to mere gossip, the great Babylonian scholar Berossus was very reluctant to add personal comments to his original sources or to allow subjective considerations and thoughts to contaminate his text.

In any case, the vast issue of the multilayered damages caused by the untrustworthy Ancient Greek historiography to modern Western academics’ perception and interpretation of Achaemenid Iran is a topic that deserves an entirely independent seminar.

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To watch the video (with more than 110 pictures and maps), click the links below:

HISTORY OF ACHAEMENID IRAN – Achaemenid beginnings 1Α

By Prof. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

https://vk.com/video429864789_456239757

https://ok.ru/video/5416043547224

https://www.brighteon.com/ca749192-7c1b-4a9d-901d-5f530611c965

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To listen to the audio, clink the links below:

HISTORY OF ACHAEMENID IRAN – Achaemenid beginnings 1 (a+b)

https://vk.com/megalommatis?w=wall429864789_8990%2Fall

https://megalommatis.podbean.com/e/history-of-achaemenid-iran-1a-course-i-achaemenid-beginnings-1a/

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Download the course in PDF:

achaemenid-iran-course-1a-textDownload

achaemenid-iran-course-1a-frameDownload

The Medes will not return! The Freemasonic Forgery of a ‘Kurdish Nation’ and the US False Christians

How Historical Falsifications Go Viral

By Prof. Muhammad Shamsaddin Megalommatis

Ancient Medes, their Precarious Empire, and the Historical Truth

Few remember today the Ancient Medes, one of the Iranian nations that rose to prominence in the Ancient Orient when, making an alliance with the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar, managed to eliminate the few remaining Assyrian garrisons from the abandoned heartland of the Assyrian Empire and, with his Babylonian ally, divide the greatest empire that had grown in the then 2500 years old History of the Mankind. The Median Empire flourished under king Cyaxares (625 – 585 BCE), known as Umakishtar to Assyrians and Babylonians and as Uvak-shatra to Medes and Persians; today, his name in English is derived from the Ancient Greek deformation of the Assyrian-Babylonian name.

Modern maps reflecting political needs of the colonial powers are the result of the forgery of Freemasonic and Zionist Orientalists, who are payed (: bribed) to write what is convenient for those who spread animosity, enmity, fratricidal wars, and bloody conflicts; that’s why these maps show a huge empire of Media stretching from today’s Central Turkey to …. Kyrgyzstan ( ! ). These maps are entirely false. Media was smaller than Babylonia. It certainly spanned from Central Turkey to Central Iran, but neither Fars (today’s Iran’s south) nor Khorasan (today’s Iran’s northeast) were controlled by Cyaxares – let alone territories further to the east.

Map forgery carried out to portray the Median Empire more than double of what its was in historical reality

Made by paranoid, hysterical and heinous pseudo-Christians, Zionists and Freemasons – who quite shamefully revile personally, and fill their sick hearts with great hatred against, the illustrious Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar who turned the tiny and worthless state of Judah to ashes, transporting  its entire population captive to Babylonia -, these fake maps only help these pseudo-Christians implement their odium by dramatically reducing the demarcated Babylonian borderlines as much as possible ( !! ). It sounds childish and sick, but it is true; these forgers of Ancient Oriental History do therefore their ingenious best to deliver a minimalistic view of Babylonia stretching only between today’s southern Iraq and Palestine. That’s absolutely false and totally ridiculous.

The last (and weakest) Babylonian king Nabonidus’ second palace was located nowhere else than in Tayma, an oasis not far from Yathribu, which is the Assyrian-Babylonian name of Yathrib, the pre-Islamic name of Medina. In fact, it was not a matter of the last Babylonian King. For almost two centuries before Nabonidus, the successive Assyrian Sargonid Emperors and Babylonian Nabonid Kings controlled the northern half of the Arabian Peninsula and received tribute from the vassal Yemenite states of the peninsula’s southern confines.

This is a brief excerpt from a scholarly, albeit summarizing, presentation of the archaeological evidence in Aramaic (administrative language of the Neo-Babylonian kingdom) that was unearthed in the area:

“Aramaic was probably introduced into North Arabia as an official written language by the last king of Babylon, Nabonidus. In 553 BC, he conquered Taymāʾ, Dadan (modern al-ʿUlā), Yathrib (modern Medina) and three other oases on the frankincense route and stayed at Taymāʾ for 10 years. Since Imperial (or Official) Aramaic was the administrative language of the Neo-Babylonian empire, it would almost certainly have been used by Nabonidus’ officials in Taymāʾ, though we know that some of them could also write in Taymanitic, and some fragmentary cuneiform inscriptions from this period have also been found in the excavations. After Nabonidus returned to Babylon in 543 BC, it appears that Imperial Aramaic remained one of the written languages at Taymāʾ and seems gradually to have displaced Taymanitic”. (from: OCIANA – Online Corpus of the Inscriptions of Ancient North Arabia / http://krc.orient.ox.ac.uk/ociana/index.php/home/155-english/home/aramaic-scripts-of-north-arabia/355-the-aramaic-scripts-of-north-arabia).

Introductory readings can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tayma / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabonidus / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabonidus_Chronicle / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinders_of_Nabonidus

To continue about Cyaxares, we know quite well that his capital was located at Ecbatana (Hangmatana in Old Achaemenid Persian), which is today’s Hamadan (NW Iran), and that the Median capital was protected by seven concentric walls. However, the Medes were a very small people, and the fact that they controlled an already large (for their capacities) territory did not bode well for the future of the newly risen kingdom. Their homeland constituted a minimal portion of the territory they controlled, and north of Media was located Atropatene (Azerbaijan) that stretched from the Middle Zagros Mountains to Caucasus and the Caspian Sea. With a multitude of nations under their control in Anatolia (today’s Turkey) in the west and with a rising strong Persian kingdom in the southeast of their country, the Medes could not last long due to the total lack of homogeneity in their territory, and to the weakness of their traditions. When Cyaxares died fighting against Lydia in the west, it became clear that the days of Media were numbered.

Ganj-e Nameh inscriptions from Hamadan (Ecbatana) in Old Achaemenid Persian, dating back from the reigns of Darius and Xerxes – not the earlier Median times

Hamadan – 16th c. map (Matrakçı Nasuh)

And truly, few decades later, Cyaxares’ granddaughter Mandane’s son, the Persian King Kurosh (Cyrus) – thanks to the mixed marriage of his father – united once forever Media and Persia (550 BCE), only to subsequently add other Iranian plateau territories (through suppression of minor rulers), Eastern Anatolia (already a Median territory), the kingdom of Lydia (Western Anatolia), and more importantly, Babylonia itself in 539 BCE. There is an enormous literature available in different ancient sources (Babylonian, Old Achaemenid Persian, Ancient Greek, Latin, Hebrew) about Cyrus whereby historical truth is perplexedly intertwined with legends, involving a great deal of eulogy and mythologizing. But the Median Empire’s only posterior memory is to be retraced in the Achaemenid Persian Empire of Iran. The Ancient Greeks may have called their wars with the Iranian Empire (which are today conventionally called ‘the Greco-Persian Wars’) ‘τά Μηδικά’ (the Median affairs), but in reality, there were only few thousands of Medes fighting in South Balkan lands in the early 5th c. BCE.

There has not been found even one inscription in Median language thus far, and it is quite possible that the mother tongue of king Cyaxares was actually never written. The only pre-Achaemenid inscription unearthed thus far is written in Assyrian-Babylonian cuneiform, which is quite normal because the western half of Iran was integral part of the Sargonid Empire (722 – 609 BCE) at least until the end of Ashurbanipal’s reign (669 – 625). What is reconstructed by modern linguists, epigraphists, philologists and historians as Median language is just a list of unusual occurrences in Old Achaemenid Persian inscriptions that are considered loanwords from the Median.

This is the brief diagram of the historical reality as known to us through an objective, neutral, and unbiased reconstruction of the Antiquity on the basis of philological and archaeological evidence.

Ancient Medes: totally Unrelated to Different Modern Nations that have been criminally Baptized as ‘Kurds’

Now from this point up to making of Cyaxares the …. ancestor of many – different from one another – nations that live today from Zagros Mountains (in the borders between Iran and Iraq) to the eastern plains of Syria to the Antitaurus Mountains (SE Turkey) there is as much distance as between the serious and the ridiculous.

In a previous article and video-presentation (http://www.turkishnews.com/en/content/2014/09/07/there-is-no-kurdish-nation-it-is-a-freemasonic-colonial-orientalist-hoax/ – http://www.turkishnews.com/en/content/2014/09/19/there-is-no-kurdish-nation-unmasking-an-orientalist-fabrication-able-only-to-generate-conflicts/ – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKJh-6bdGFk), I demonstrated that there is no Kurdish Nation, and that the collective appellation, which has been given in Arabic (Akrad) to the – different from one another nations – that live in the aforementioned geographical area, and which is translated in Modern English as ‘Kurds’, cannot be considered as the ethnic name of one nation, due to the tremendous racial, linguistic, religious, and cultural differences that exist among the different ethno-religious entities regrouped under this appellation.

The vicious plan providing for a state named ‘Kurdistan’ was conceived by French, English and American Orientalists, and other Freemasonic agents, politicians and diplomats, and the entire preparation has lasted decades. In the process, for the fake nation, a fake historicity was sought after, and the result ended with the usurpation of the Median past and heritage, which was conveniently and suitably attributed to the past-less ‘Kurds’, who certainly cannot have one common past and heritage, because they are not one nation but many.

Even worse, all these different modern nations (Kurmanji, Zaza, Sorani, Gorani, Hawrami, Faili, Yazidi, Ahl-e Haq to name only the major ethno-religious groups among those who are fallaciously named ‘Kurds’) do not have written monuments in their respective languages (which are of course different from one another) that go beyond 500-600 years. Before that level, all these modern nations are known through very few references in other languages (Arabic, Farsi, Turkish, Azeri, Armenian, Syriac Aramaic, Georgian), but the scarce textual evidence is not enough to duly reconstruct their past. Earlier mentions in ancient languages (Latin, Ancient Greek, Old Achaemenid Persian, and even Assyrian-Babylonian) are even scarcer and cannot help us understand whether they all refer to the same ethnic group or different.

We cannot conclude whether the Assyrian-Babylonian ‘Zikurtu’, the Old Achaemenid Persian ‘Asagartiya’, the Ancient Greek ‘Kardouhoi’, the Ancient Roman ‘Cyrtii’ and the land known as Gordyene in Ancient Greek and Latin have anything to do

a) with one another, and/or

b) with one of the modern Kurmanji, Zaza, Sorani, Gorani, Hawrami, and Faili – the main ethno-linguistic groups that are mistakenly called altogether as ‘Kurds’.

Attributing to these disparate ethnic elements an almost totally undocumented past (the Median heritage) is purely absurd and testifies only to extremely vicious and even criminal needs of distortion and falsification. In fact, the Medes did not have any posteriority after the end of the Achaemenid Empire and its substitution by the ephemeral empire of Alexander the Great. The term ‘Media’ was shrunken into a merely geographic description; the Medes were certainly assimilated to the Atropatene Azeris and/or to Persians, and no Median cultural identity can be traced in any possible way during the subsequent periods of Seleucid (312 – 63 BCE), Arsacid (250 BCE – 224 CE) and Sassanid (224 – 651 CE) rule.

The Ludicrous Usurpation of the Median Past by bogus-Kurdish Nationalists – agents of the Intelligence Service

The story of this purely childish effort can make every saddened heart explode in laughter. At the very beginning of the falsehood about a hypothetical connection between the extinct ancient nation of the Medes and the non existent nation of the ‘Kurds’, one finds an unfortunate Iraqi Sorani young man who died under mysterious circumstances (most probably assassinated by the English secret services because he knew ‘too much’ of their internships and projects, while failing to keep his mouth closed) and in very young age and after never having studied History. This is Yûnis Reuf (1918–1948), who is widely known through his pen name Dildar (an Indian name that no Sorani Iraqi would have ever imagined to use it for himself because simply no one knew in Iraq this name at that time – and actually before being used as pen name, this name was his code name among the English secret services agents and diplomats who were those who made the name known to his silly bearer). Yûnis Reuf was a naive, idealistic, enthusiastic, daydreaming, and rather romantic youngster who failed to identify the criminal minds and the heinous hearts that were hidden behind the smiley faces of the Baghdad-based English gangsters, i.e. all those who befriended him for a while (before poisoning him – which occurred only after they extracted from him what they intended to duly utilize for their ignominious purposes). Born in Koy Sanjaq, near Suleymaniyeh, ‘Dildar’ studied Law in Baghdad, and there he was picked up by the English agents who used to include in their payroll youngsters originating from different ethnic background as tools for their nefarious and evil colonial rule that brought about the destruction that we have attested in the ancient land of Mesopotamia over the past decades.

Qyzqapan (near Sulaymaniyah, North Iraq). The rock-hewn tomb that bears no inscription and cannot therefore be identified may be Median, Persian, Azeri or other. It became however a matter of great speculation when the Soviet Assyriologist Prof. Diakonov suggested that it is probably a royal tomb and that if it is royal it is the tomb of Cyaxares.

During the period he is referred to as imprisoned (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dildar), he was in fact interned, and then he attended various seminars offered to duly selected audience by distinct members of the perfidious and criminal, colonial elite including Max Mallowan, the Assyriologist and archaeologist who happened also to be the husband of Agatha Christie.

During this process of falsehood indoctrination (I should say intoxication), he was told all the irrelevant points of which he made the cornerstones of his misplaced, baseless and futile ‘nationalism’. Ideas of a ‘Kurdish’ past related to the Medes (of whom he had never heard before) were deleteriously instilled into his ignorant mind, while his youthful and innocent enthusiasm was criminally exploited in a way to make him deliver in Sorani poetry what the English wanted the Soranis to be stupid enough to believe.

The rest was easy. ‘Dildar’ composed in Sorani (there is no ‘Kurdish’ language) the silly and heinous pseudo-poem Ey Reqib, and his colonial masters – happy that after 20 years of murderous, illegal presence on Ottoman territory they had in their dirty hands at last a useful document written by a naive, idiotic and therefore easily manipulated local youngster – managed within no time that the ‘poem’ was accepted by their other ‘Kurdish’ stooges as a ‘national anthem’ of the bogus-Kurdish nation that they intended to create. More about the fake anthem of the bogus nation can be read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ey_Req%C3%AEb

Simple philological analysis can prove that the ‘poem’ is not a normal national anthem. National anthems reflect the identity of one nation or the aspiration of one people at a particular moment. In striking contradiction with what a national anthem is or can be, this ‘poem’ defines the supposed nation for which it is written as per their imaginary opponent! Ey Reqib (which is both the title and the first verse) in Sorani means ‘oh enemy’. The pathetic verses of the pseudo-poem constitute a series of affirmations so viciously Freemasonic of content that certainly not one Sorani, Gorani, Zaza, Kurmanji, etc. would dare accept. Through English treachery, mendacity, and perfidy, people who have nothing in common as ethno-religious groups are made to believe that (as one verse states) “Kurdistan is our religion”. This is a shame and an abomination for every Muslim, Yazidi or Ahl-e Haq (the main religions among all these different nations of which the villainous gangsters of the Freemasonic lodges intend to make one monstrous ‘Kurdish’ fabrication).

In the worthless text, which comprises of just 20 verses, the sentences “Let no one say Kurds are dead, they are living. They live and never shall we lower our flag” are repeated five times, being thus half of the rather short ‘anthem’!

However, in the fourth stanza, it is stated in Sorani that “Ême roley Mîdya u Keyxusrewîn”. This is the first time the word Mîdya is written or said in Sorani, because no local had studied Orientalism and Iranology until that time in order to come across with this ancient nation which is not mentioned in Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and Azeri literature – let alone the literature of the indigenous Sorani, Gorani, Zaza, Kurmanji, etc.

It is really cute to notice that the naive boy that composed the worthless verse did not even bother to localize in his native language the previously unknown to him, English name of the ancient kingdom, and so ‘Media’ was merely transliterated into Mîdya without the slightest effort of an eventual localization – Midistan, etc.!

Translated in English, this verse reads: “We are the descendants of Media and Keykhosrow”. However, in the conventionally accepted and diffused, false English translation of the Sorani verse, ‘Media’ is replaced by ‘Medes’. This is an enormous falsification, because ‘the descendents of Media’ can mean in general the heirs of earlier civilizations developed by other nations on the same land, which poses no problem as it can be a normal case of cultural historicity. Quite contrarily to this, the false translation presents today’s bogus-Kurds as the offspring of the Ancient Medes, which is absolutely wrong and absurd.

What is really comical as falsification and, at the same time, demonstrates how fake the whole effort is can be attested in the false translation of the verse’s last word, e.g, the name Keykhosrow (‘Keyxusrewîn’).

Who is Keykhosrow?

Modern Iranian imaginative painting. Departure of Kaykhosrow’s mother and grandmother toward Iran. (Kai Khosrow is seen with the old man in the middle)

Conventionally written in English as Kai Khosrow or Kay Khosrow, the legendary king is attested in Iranian and Azeri literature that goes as back as the 10th c. CE and reflects views over the origins of the Central Asiatic civilization, namely an heroic era of mythical kings, of their deeds of their and exploits, at a historically undefined time, when prevalence, superiority and sovereignty was vindicated by both, Turks and Persians, who – according to the narrative – are in fact the offspring of the same royal family.

Certainly, this heroic king’s name was not invented in the 10th c. CE as it is attested in earlier texts and even in the Avesta. But the Avestan term Kavi Husravah does not mean any legendary king but the ideal, primordial concept of fame. In other words, within different religious-cultural backgrounds the same name takes diverse connotations – Zoroastrian, Zendist, Mazdeist, etc., and the latest connotation is the Islamic Iranian one within which the earlier concept of fame is merely personified as a famous king.

Reading and interpreting epic poems like the famous Shahname by Ferdowsi (10th c. CE) is totally out of the limits of the present article, but here we have to stress the point that there are several different compositions and narratives of the same epic circle and they all reflect varied interpretations, Azeri / Turkic or Persian, of the common, Central Asiatic heritage and past that these nations had recorded  to have had. One must add at this point that the epic circle in and by itself demolishes the modern linguists’ long venerated assumption of a division between two distinct ethno-linguistic groups, namely the Indo-European and the Uralo-Altaic (or Turco-Mongolian); however, this is a different topic.

Armies of Iran, led by Key-Khosrow, and of Turan, under the command of Afrasiab. From a miniature included in the Bayasanghori Shâhnâmeh, made in 1430 for Prince Bayasanghor (1399–1433)

On the other hand, one must specify that the consideration of ‘Iran’ as a matter of Persian history, homeland, nation, language, culture and civilization is only the result of Western Orientalist and Iranologist biases. Of course, this forgery was subsequently utilized by Persian nationalists, who turned the Iranian Empire into a nationalist monarchy under the pseudo-dynasty of Pahlavi, but this consists in a typical nationalistic nonsense. Iran is equally Azeri / Turkic and Persian, and the full proof for this is demonstrated by the fact that several Seljuk (Turkish) Sultans were also named Kay Khosrow. In fact, different narratives and diverse interpretations of the same heroic era heritage were equally appropriated by Azeris / Turks and Persians.

About the legendary king, introductory information can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kai_Khosrow / http://www.cais-soas.com/CAIS/Literature/Shahnameh/keykhosrow.htm

About the three Seljuk Turkish historical kings, basic info can be read here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaykhusraw_I / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaykhusraw_II / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaykhusraw_III

A last point that I would like to add to the aforementioned is that it is not only for the name Kay Khosrow that a) the aforementioned set of the existing different connotations as per diverse religious context and b) the Azeri / Turkish – Persian polarization can be encountered. Other names, like Kay Kaus, Kay Qubad, etc. present respective parallels at both levels, a and b – each involving several different connotations (Zoroastrian, Zendist, Mazdeist, etc.) and the said polarization.

– What is the relation that Kay Khosrow may have with the Soranis and the other nations that the Western colonial forgers regroup under the name of ‘Kurds’?

– Ethnically – racially none, but culturally great!

The mention of Kay Khosrow in the few childish verses composed by ‘Dildar’ to be selected by the English colonials, and by their idiotic pseudo-‘Kurdish’ stooges, as ‘Kurdish’ national anthem (Ey Reqib) reveals only the following points:

1. there was a tremendous cultural impact, exercised on two axes, namely a) Seljuk – Ottoman (Turkish) over the Kurmanji and the Zaza and b) Timurid – Safavid – Afhar – Zend – Qajar (Iranian, so partly Persian and partly Azeri / Turkish) over the Sorani and the Gorani
2. there was a sheer identification of the diverse small nations (that today’s colonials attempt to portray them as one and independent ‘Kurdish’ nation) with the common Turkish – Azeri – Iranian historical and mythical national background,
3. there was an evident overwhelming appropriation of Turkish – Azeri – Iranian concepts, values and virtues, ideals, prototypes and paradigms for the social-behavioral and cultural life’s needs of these marginal mountainous nations that did not have a significant heritage of their own, and
4. Turkish – Azeri – Iranian concepts, values and virtues, ideals, prototypes and paradigms prevailed even in the minds of those selected in Iraq by the English colonials as their own tools as recently as the middle of the 20th c.

Now, it is high time for me to unveil why I started my article by expanding briefly on Cyaxares, the only significant king of the Ancient Medes. The reason is that the UK-US bribed, fake Kurdish gangsters, who – in Iraq, Syria, Turkey and Iran – promote the fake Kurdish nationalism and demand an independent Kurdistan, have been ‘taught’ by their secret Western masters to posture as the descendents of Cyaxares!

– What is their proof?

The false English translation of the verse of the fake national anthem Ey Reqîb that refers to Kay Khosrow!

The Sorani verse “Ême roley Mîdya u Keyxusrewîn” was falsely translated in English as “We are the descendants of the Medes and Cyaxares” (see Wikipedia link above), and this is presented by the idiotic thugs of the fake Kurdish nationalism, the likes of Talabani and Barzani, as the ‘proof’ of their supposedly Median ancestry.

Why do I specify that these idiotic thugs and gangsters have been taught all this fallacious nonsense by their Freemasonic / Zionist masters?

Simply because not one Sorani or Kurmanji specialized in Old Achaemenid Persian (cuneiform), Ancient Greek, Latin and Hebrew to have thus direct access to original sources and subsequently form a correct view of the specific historical period to which it is impossible to establish any link for themselves and their resolutely non-Median past.

All the bribed fake Kurdish nationalists repeat therefore the lies and the falsehood that the incestuous Freemasonic tyrants, diplomats and agents of France, England, Holland, Canada, America and Australia and the inhuman beasts of the fake, Anti-Jewish state of Israel order them to say, although it is very well known that all their instructions are false and that ‘Key Khosrow’ cannot possibly be translated as ‘Cyaxares’!

Fake Christians propagating the Anti-Christian, Satanic Falsehood

It would however be wrong to imagine that the pathetic and ignorant fake Kurdish thugs are the only victims to have been misled and deceived through the Satanic poison that the Anti-Christian rulers of the Freemasonic – Zionist tyrannies of the West have systematically and incessantly diffused. There are many millions of Western fake Christians who are equally or even worse victimized. How? By unquestionably accepting the aforementioned falsehood as truth and by trying to adjust it to their evil ministries and childish teachings.

Scores of ‘pastors’, ‘ministers’ and other ignorant commentators – of all sorts of heretical backgrounds involving Protestant, Evangelical, Baptist, Anabaptist, Pentecostal, Methodist and other villainous deviations – ‘inform’ their supposedly Christian, but genuinely unsuspicious, naive and gullible readership about the plans of their criminal and Satanic elites that these pseudo-Christian ‘ministers’ serve by deceitfully presenting these plans as godly of origin (which is a foremost sin) and as supposedly prophesied across their misinterpreted Bibles!

Their followers, all those who accept the filthy scam, are being used by the ruling Freemasonic – Zionist, Satanic elites of America, France, England and their allies. By accepting this falsehood, sizable Christian populations are demotivated from scrupulously examining the Christian or Anti-Christian character of their rulers’ deeds, plans and policies and thus remain inactivated, pathetic and lethargic, which in turn eliminates obstacles and reactions from the path of their rulers towards establishing a global Satanic state of falsehood and distortion.

Even worse, the devilish ‘pastors’ and ‘ministers’, by identifying the Satanic policies and deeds of the Western rulers with supposedly Biblical prophecies and with the will of God, force their followers into slavery and submission to Satan, as they – by rejecting the historical truth and deeply plunging into ignorance – directly oppose Jesus’ order “Γνώσεσθε τὴν ἀλήθειαν, καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια ἐλευθερώσει ὑμᾶς” (Vulgata:  “et cognoscetis veritatem et veritas liberabit vos” / English: And shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free – from John 8:32).

You probably don’t know Jack Kelley; you certainly don’t miss much. This ignorant and uneducated person found it necessary to compose a nonsensical article under title ‘The Return of the Medes’ (http://gracethrufaith.com/end-times-prophecy/the-return-of-the-medes/). The article starts with a fake map of an otherwise non existent country, ‘Kurdistan’. Not even in their wildest dreams did the fake Kurdish thugs and gangsters (who are closely guided controlled by the Satanic organizations CIA and the Mossad) dare to imagine that such a big bone would be thrown to them! Fake, non-existent Kurdistan is depicted in extraordinary dimensions on this forged map in order to look as vast as the precarious Median Empire!

Map forgery included in the ridiculous, false article published by the False Prophet Jack Kelley

Do you know what exactly the Anti-Christian gangster Jack Kelley does by suggesting the formation of a fake this big?

He heralds the butchery of the Oriental Christians of Urumiyeh, Salmas, Miandoab and other locations in Iran who are presented as forthcoming subjects of the fake Kurdish state, since all these cities and the surrounding territories of the Iranian provinces of West and East Azerbaijan have been included in the fictional state that Jack Kelley’s criminal masters want to set up. To serve his Satanic masters, the inhuman beasts of the CIA and the Mossad, this false preacher does not give a damn about the fate of the true Christians – which in and by itself is the best proof that he is a Satanist impersonating the Christian priest. I can already see Aramaean Christian blood in Jack Kelley’s hands because, if such an evil state is formed, the Christians will be the first targeted by the fake Kurdish nationalists and their lawless militias.

This silly person, who never attended the first hour of a first year course in History of Ancient Iran, repeats the hereby refuted falsehood of the Median ancestry of the non-existent Kurdish nation (“The Kurds are the modern descendants of the Medes”) in his trashy text, which is full of stupid mistakes, nonsensical assumptions, and deliberate distortions. In fact, every line of his text is full of mistakes.

Example: “The Medes, an Indo-European people who were joined by the Persians in their successful effort to overthrow Babylon and establish themselves as a world power in the 6th century BC”!

This pathetic and dangerous liar ignores that the Medes were not joined by the Persians in any effort against Babylon, simply because the Persians merged with Media by means of mixed royal marriage of Cyrus’ father, and that the unification of the two kingdoms (Media and Persia) took place more than a decade before Iran attacked Babylonia.

Why does this ludicrous Kelley man want to desperately include the Medes in the invasion of Babylonia which was undertaken exclusively by the Persians under Cyrus? The reason is simple. The Western pseudo-Christians’ and Satanists’ ‘art’ of impressing innocent and naive Western Christian readership involves the establishment of parallels between a misinterpreted past and a falsely prophesied future. Scores of villainous gangsters, who incessantly, purposefully and mercilessly kill Christians’ souls – through lies, systematic falsehood, and multilevel deception – insist on ‘inventing’ prophetic parallels in past events and teach their otherwise unsophisticated audiences that what happened in the past was an archetypal form of crucial events that ‘will’ happen at the End of Times. In fact, they commit a double forgery; they misinterpret several excerpts from prophetic – apocalyptic texts, then they deliberately falsify the past events as per their needs, and at the end, they establish the parallelism, thus uttering their bogus-prophecies!

Concerning the ludicrous assumption of a double Median-Kurdish (past and future) Anti-Babylonian action, Jack Kelley’s paranoid forgery involves the following 3-step argumentation and the ensuing conclusion:

1. The Medes overthrew Babylonia (which is proven wrong).

2. The Medes are the ancestors of the ‘Kurds’ (which is proven wrong).

3. So, the ‘Kurds’ will overthrow Babylonia at the End of Time.

– That’s why the West should help ‘Kurds’ setup their state, so that they later overthrow …. Babylonia (that does not exist anymore, but the idiotic author makes a laughable effort to resuscitate it!!).

What does Jack Kelley does not say?

He does not confess that he intends to write another ‘article’ in the future, and similarly ‘prove’ to his unfortunate readership that today’s ‘Babylonia’ is Islam or Turkey or Saudi Arabia and that the ‘allegorical’ notion of the Biblical term has been meanwhile ( ! ? ) transferred to Istanbul, Medina, Mecca or any other place whereby his shadowy masters and payers may order him to locate it!!

So, unrelated to the Medes and non-existent as one nation, the fake Kurds are ‘prophesied’ by this vicious liar to become “God’s agency for the never before fulfilled judgment against Babylon at the End of the Age”. And although ‘Babylon’ is a metaphor within Biblical and Christian prophetic texts (so, totally unrelated to any possible ‘state’, past or future), the miserable and idiotic liar Jack Kelley tries to identify it with the location of the ancient Mesopotamian city!!

This is a brief part of his toxic text: “Those who say the restoration of Babylon will require billions of dollars and many years have not considered that its preparation has been under way for several years now. For example, if you take a close look at the dimensions and capabilities of the US embassy in Baghdad you will see how easily it could be converted into a world governmental headquarters. With a compound covering 104 acres, it is the largest and most expensive embassy in the world, and is nearly as large as Vatican City. Babylon is only about an hour away by car.

In addition, one of Saddam Hussein’s palaces sits on a hill overlooking ancient Babylon and has been completely restored as a hotel and tourist destination. It could easily house the anti-Christ and his entourage.  And there are several large military installations nearby as well.  In short, preparing Babylon to become the capitol of the world won’t take anywhere near as long as most people think.  And remember, this is Satan’s city on Earth”.

Do you want to know how it will all end?

False Prophet Jack Kelley has it ready for you in his McDonald’s style ‘prophecy’: “Through the Kurds, the Medes have stepped out of history and onto the world stage once again, and another player in the End Times Scenario is taking its place. One day soon, the King of the Medes will again lead a vast army against Babylon, and this time her destruction will be complete, and the Lord’s words will be fulfilled”. Absolute nonsense and deliberate forgery for which Jack Kelley will be deservedly thrown in the bottomless pit.

So, now you understand that, when you read in Matthew 24:4 “Βλέπετε μή τις ὑμᾶς πλανήσῃ” (Vulgata: “videte ne seducamini ” – English: See that no one mislead you), you know that Christians have already been ordered to reject the vicious fallacy of Jack Kelley.

Where does Jack Kelley’s mistake lie?

His reading of the Biblical and Christian texts is very superficial, schematic, immoralist and materialistic. He views these texts, which are above all reflecting moral standards and principles, eternal values and virtues, as simple mechanical tools able to be adjusted to his dirty heart’s vicious plans and desires that are all materialistic of nature. There is no spirituality and there is no morality in the Biblical texts in the way he reads them. I will terminate my article with an example. His worthless text starts with a Biblical excerpt referring to the Ancient Medes (the true ones, who are unrelated to today’s fake Kurds).

This is the Biblical text’s English translation that he has chosen: “See, I will stir up against them the Medes, who do not care for silver and have no delight in gold. Their bows will strike down the young men; they will have no mercy on infants nor will they look with compassion on children. Babylon, the jewel of kingdoms, the glory of the Babylonians’ pride, will be overthrown by God like Sodom and Gomorrah. She will never be inhabited or lived in through all generations; no Arab will pitch his tent there, no shepherd will rest his flocks there”. (Isaiah 13:17-20)

This text should not be taken as historically wrong because it mentions Medes and not Persians destroying Babylon; the selection of the ethnic names by scribes, translators and copyists in the Antiquity reveals several times a preference for a certain archaic style, and one has to take into consideration that the Septuagint (the 72 scholars), who translated from Biblical Hebrew to Ancient Greek the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), delivered their work to Pharaoh Ptolemy II in Alexandria 250 years after the Persian invasion of Babylonia (539 BCE). Even more so because the Achaemenid Empire of Cyrus had already ceased to exist in their time, following the conquests of Alexander the Great that took place at least 50 years before the Jewish scholars traveled to the Mediterranean city where they worked on this project in a royal facility made available to them at the island of Pharos.

However, the first sentence of the text is a key for us to understand the moral standards involved in Hebrew god’s decision to use a nation against another as chastisement. The Medes, as per the text, “do not care for silver and have no delight in gold”. This sets a very specific contextualization of how things like that can happen. The Medes are described as fully disinterested in materialistic goods, because even the two most precious metals of those days did not attract their attention.

This irrevocably concludes the case of the corrupt mind and worthless text of the False Prophet Jack Kelley. Even if today’s fake nation of the so-called ‘Kurds’ had been a true nation (and not a collective appellation of many different nations that evil colonial interests want to put together in the next ‘fratricidal’ scheme), even if today’s ‘Kurds’ as a hypothetically one nation had been the latest offspring of the Ancient nation of the Medes (which is certainly not the case), today’s ‘Kurds’ – in order to be eventually used again by the Hebrew god for the role that the ignorant author pretends that they will play – would have obligatorily reflected the same moral principles, concepts, values and virtues as those attributed by the Biblical text to the Ancient Medes (meant by the Septuagint translators as ‘Persians’).

Anyone who lives in our world knows that the fake Kurdish nationalists and their thuggish leaders, who are the puppets of France, England, America and Israel, are lewd and villainous persons of exclusively materialist interests of the lowest sort. These are the gangsters who killed scores of Iraqi Turkmen in order to ensure some millions of petrodollars for their filthy bank accounts and disreputable pockets. These are the inhuman beasts who can let others (particularly the Christian Aramaeans) die if this is the way their Satanic masters order them to act (they did so in Mosul where they had the time to prepare for battle when they first got the news of the ISIS plan – but their CIA / Mossad masters ordered them to abstain from any involvement). These are the masters of corruption, perversion, and lawlessness; they sell drugs wherever they settle and they manage their illegal business of human trafficking which has marked an extraordinary growth over the past 11 years. They feel no moral compunction to perform the most monstrous deeds for a handful of dollars. Only a False Prophet would find in them the tool of his god, but this lower god’s name would be Satan. And the False Messiah that a False Prophet like Jack Kelley expects is only the Antichrist (Masih Dajjal) and none else.

The very bad news for America’s fake Christians and False Prophets is that a genuine interpretation of sacred texts reflecting moral values cannot be undertaken by people who find it normal to live in a genocidal country that has systematically and mercilessly persecuted the indigenous population of the occupied territories for more than two centuries in the most abominable manner.

Truth and Faith do not permit a country to have Wall Street or Federal Reserve. If there are true Christians in America, their only possible target is the immediate rejection of the Satanic tyranny that has been imposed on them and on their forefathers since Day 1 the cursed Freemasonic – Zionist state was incepted.