Tag Archives: Silk Road

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – V

In the four earlier texts of this series, I described the bilateral needs that Egypt and China have to urgently address, therefore entering in an advantageous, multileveled and grand alliance, which will not only consolidate Egypt’s national security and boost China’s expansion in Africa, but also help drastically transform, pacify and unify the Black Continent’s northeastern corner, notably Sudan and Libya. All previous parts (titles, contents and links to the publications) are to be found at the end of the present article.

In the present, last article of the series, I will focus on the final targets that the Egyptian-Chinese alliance should set in view of Africa’s complete decolonization, de-Westernization, and rehabilitation. These issues are relevant to educational, cultural and political-military affairs; to eliminate the curse that fell on the Black Continent, Africans should

a) remove English and French as foreign languages,

b) interrupt the educational, academic and scientific links that almost all the African countries have been forced (through means of colonial interference) to maintain with England, France, Belgium, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the US,

c) terminate the economic subordination of almost all the major African private companies, corporations and state institutions or organizations to the above mentioned countries and to the international schemes that the Western countries have established (IMF, World Bank), and

d) minimize if not obliterate the presence of Western diplomats, military or tourists on Africa.

And China must help the Black Continent do exactly this. Africa was never part of the Western World, and no African needs to be part of this corrupt and ailing part of the Mankind.

Contents

Introduction

I. Chinese as the First Foreign Language in Egypt

II. Systematic Dissociation and Separation from Western Europe and North America

III. The Egypt – Sudan – Libya Confederation

IV. How the Chinese-Egyptian Alliance will reshape Africa into Five Mega-States

Introduction

For China to achieve an irrevocable breakthrough in Africa, it is essential that the Chinese statesmen, diplomats, administrators, military advisers, academics and businessmen envision their presence and activities on the African soil in a long term perspective.

Any short term perspective vision of China’s presence in Africa will fail exactly as it happened with the USSR. For some time, several African countries became the allies of Soviet Union; later, in different moments and for variant reasons, they broke their relations with the USSR or Russia and started unfortunately being again dependent on their former colonial masters, namely France and England, and/or America, which has ceaselessly tried to substitute itself for the traditional colonial powers. I presented this topic in brief, in an attempt to identify the reasons; my article was first published in 2008 and then republished recently here:

https://www.academia.edu/26278889/Why_Russia_always_failed_in_the_Middle_East_by_Prof_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis

The article was translated into Russian by the Russian News Agency INOSMI, and it was widely read, quoted, discussed, mentioned in the bibliography of Ph.D. dissertations, and republished;

https://inosmi.ru/20080203/239339.html

https://iv-g.livejournal.com/1390092.html

https://yury108.blogspot.com/2015/09/obsrvr.html

https://obsrvr.livejournal.com/1604305.html

https://vahegaro.livejournal.com/7111.html

https://www.dissercat.com/content/otnoshenie-sssrrossii-k-palestino-izrailskomu-konfliktu-v-kontse-1940-kh-nachale-2000-kh-god (note 143)

https://www.academia.edu/23504786/Мухаммед_Шамсаддин_Мегаломатис_Почему_Россия_всегда_терпела_неудачи_на_Ближнем_Востоке

In that article, I explained why other superpowers or great powers will always fail when expanding influence on earlier colonized lands. The reason is simple; Western colonization involved the establishment of an enormous infrastructure at the mental, educational, academic, scientific, intellectual, religious, spiritual, socio-behavioral and cultural levels. As this extensive infrastructure has been dictatorially imposed, intensively propagated, incessantly reasserted, highly documented and greatly deep, it generates a new ‘world’ for the misfortunate, colonized individual, clan, tribe and/or nation. This is apparently an alien, undeserved and execrable ‘world’ -or a prison if you prefer- and consequently it does not / cannot subside with a simple regime change, military coup or superficial economic infiltration. Even more so, since it also appears to be advantageously rewarding with the colonial slave’s promotion, namely the perspective of being a rubbish collector or a sexual tool in the colonial metropolis!

The complete failure of the USSR in Africa: Western rationalism and materialism in Africa help only perpetuate the Anglo-Saxon and French colonialism.

The colonized nations were thus turned to altered beings, automatons or subaltern populations; they were made to think, reflect and act according to patterns invented by the colonial powers as per their own interests. Africa’s colonized nations were not properly westernized; their colonial masters did not want them to be like them. They wanted them to become functional tools of the Western supremacy, and this is what most of the Africans have become without even understanding it and irrespective of religion, ethnic background, and origin. Certainly, several anti-colonial intellectual forces were formed and socio-political reactions expressed in Africa; all the same, they mostly formulated their rejection of the colonial powers in colonial languages and terms. As it can be easily understood, this situation has highly jeopardized their chances to bring forth tangible results.

Consequently, one could safely conclude that only a long term vision of the Chinese-African partnership can be possibly beneficial to both, Chinese and Africans. Egypt’s position, background, identity and colonial experience are extremely helpful in this regard. That’s why Kemet (or Masr) is by definition China’s gateway to Africa.

I. Chinese as the First Foreign Language in Egypt

Inaugurated before 20 years (in 2004), during the early period of the first tenure of President Hu Jintao, the Confucius Institutes are non-profit educational institutions affiliated with the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China; more specifically, they are operated by Hanban (namely the Office of Chinese Language Council International, which became known as Center for Language Education and Cooperation in 2020). They are established jointly in a great number of countries and they always operate in cooperation with local partners. As of 2019, there were more than 500 Confucius Institutes all over the world. The stated aims are the promotion of Chinese language and culture, the support of local Chinese teaching, and the facilitation of bilateral cultural exchanges.

Basically, there are two Confucius Institutes in Egypt; the first is associated with Cairo University and the second with Suez Canal University. More recently, in 2015, an agreement was signed between Pharos University in Alexandria and Confucius Institute – Cairo University, thus creating the first Confucius unit to teach Chinese in Alexandria. As it happens in numerous other cases, professors from the largest Chinese universities teach in the Alexandria-based Confucius unit. Background:

https://ci.cn/

https://ci.cn/en/gywm/pp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius_Institute

Quite interestingly, NATO StratCom (Strategic Communication Center of Excellence) considered it necessary to meticulously spy on Confucius Institutes and to publish the following document, thus demonstrating their deep and awful fears that the days of the Western hegemony are numbered. https://stratcomcoe.org/cuploads/pfiles/confucius_institutes.pdf

Although the aforementioned beginning was quite successful and well-done, by now it is not anymore sufficient. Focusing on the bright future of the Chinese-Egyptian cooperation, the administration of Confucius Institutes should set up a committee to study the ways needed to intensify the process of Chinese language penetration and to suggest a plan as to how Chinese will replace English as first foreign language in Egypt – in a mid-term perspective.

China has to deploy all the necessary resources in order to systematically, resolutely and comprehensively terminate the 2-century long, colonial period of predominance of French and English languages at all costs. In this great endeavor, Beijing should bring its influential allies into the game; Russia, India, Brazil, Iran and Turkey must also develop their Africa-de-Westernization policies, opening cultural institutes, establishing partnerships, promoting their languages, and founding bilingual universities. Chinese, Hindi/Urdu, Russian, Portuguese, Farsi and Turkish are far more useful for Africans than English and French.

One thing must be made clearly understood to all Africans: the ‘easiness’ of the ‘already known’ (namely English and French) is the curse that plunged Africa into darkness, slavery, corruption and evilness, while also enabling the colonial gangsters to develop plans providing for Africa’s depopulation. It is as simple as that:

– Learn English and French, so that the Western colonial gangsters kill you all and repopulate the Black Continent with White supremacists!

Chinese language penetration in Egypt will then serve as a model and as a success story to implement in other African countries; while developing stronger bilateral relations with every state in the Black Continent, Beijing should dedicate special interest to help increase sound bilateral relationships among all African lands and nations. There are many speaking about ‘peace in Africa’, but there will never be peace in the Black Continent, as long as between an Sudanese and a Somali stands English as a means of communication, while a Malian and an Algerian converse in French.

When Nigerians and Egyptians communicate in English or Algerians and Malagasy speak to one another in French, problems appear always. In my proposals for the establishment of the first Afrocentric University in Africa, I made it clear that the proper end of the colonial period will never take place before 20 major African languages are regularly taught, each in a separate department of university, in at least all the major states of the Black Continent. See (notably Unit 4):

https://www.academia.edu/22843510/AFRICAN_RENAISSANCE_UNIVERSITY_A_VISION

Western languages are parasitic plants in Africa. Mande, Fulani, Igbo, Yoruba, Hausa, Tuareg, Oromo, Somali, Berber, Malagasy, Zulu, Shona, Sidama, Afar, Arabic and several other languages should become the official languages of a truly non-colonial African Union with duly de-Westernized member states. Consequently, by supporting African languages’ international status upgrade, China will demonstrate Beijing’s good will and readiness to contribute to Africa’s de-Westernization. At any given moment, China should not become and should not look like a colonial or neocolonial power. This will be the ultimate success of Confucius Institutes in Africa.

II. Systematic Dissociation and Separation from Western Europe and North America

China’s role in Africa will never be effective and fruitful without a complete de-Westernization at all levels; the Chinese-African partnership depends on extensive exchange of experience, study of colonial examples common and repugnant to both partners, quest for national heritage, re-affirmation of cultural identity, and defense of moral integrity. In striking opposition to the racist, colonial practices, Chinese and Africans should reciprocally identify the exact correspondence between the moral-behavioral values of their respective cultures and civilizations and examine how every single of their values is differently contextualized in China and in Africa. The ensuing cultural interexchange and mutual understanding of the ‘other’ will then help form the foundations of the Chinese Africology and the African Sinology.  

Chinese and African academics, intellectuals, and scholars should then undertake the common, bilateral rejection and refutation of the Western model and the Eurocentric pseudo-historical dogma at a worldwide stage, also involving their partners in India, Russia, Iran, Turkey and many other Asiatic and Latin American countries. World History should therefore be written in an unbiased, trustful, and honest manner for the first time in the History of Mankind.

This is what anti-Western Chinese and African scholars, academics, intellectuals, scholars and explorers should understand deeply and up to the point of making it the foundation of their common description of the deeds, the thoughts, and the faiths of the humans: to be perfectly anti-Western and to constitute the full refutation of the racist Eurocentric model of historiography, one does not need to be either Sinocentric or Afrocentric; on the contrary, he must be humanocentric.  

Afrocentric approaches and substantive criticism of the colonial academics, although positive and necessary, have not yet helped people grasp even a tiny portion of the Ancient Oriental Spirituality, Science, Moral, Wisdom, Universality, and Divinity. The Assyrian-Babylonian (Mesopotamian) and the Egyptian heritage has only been profaned within the barbaric, ignorant and dark periphery of the so-called Hebrews, Greeks and Romans. The Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Quran have only a reminiscence of the Sacred as revealed in the Sumerian, Akkadian, Assyrian-Babylonian, Egyptian, and Iranian scriptures.

Not even one king among the Ancient Hebrews, Greeks, Macedonians and Romans managed to attain the sacredness and the spiritual force of Thutmose III.

Within the context of the fallacious Eurocentric model of historiography, which was based on the aberration of ‘Judeo-Christian civilization’ and the absurdity of ‘Greco-Roman civilization’ (that the colonials imposed worldwide), Africa occupies a truly marginal, subordinate position, as if the entire Black Continent depended on the developments that took place in South Balkans and in Rome. This racist construct consists in total distortion of the History of Mankind; it was established as a mere reflection of the 19th c. colonial invaders’ disdain of the African nations that they colonized at the time. They narrated as ‘History’ what they viewed as their own African subjects whom the Europeans never bothered to truly and deeply study as per the local African, standards and measures, thus erroneously, unjustly and undeservedly evaluating them after the worthless, malignant and utterly racist European criteria.

The correct, Chinese view over, and version of, the Silk Road

The false, Eurocentric view of the Silk Road

Within the context of the fallacious Eurocentric model of historiography, which was based on the aberration of ‘Judeo-Christian civilization’ and the absurdity of ‘Greco-Roman civilization’ (that the colonials imposed worldwide), China occupies a really peripheral position ‘at the very end of the world’, somewhere in the East. The History of the Silk Road is not the same for Western and for Chinese academics, scholars and explorers – let alone diplomats, politicians and statesmen. Within the Western bogus-narrative, China has always been depicted as if it has been a faraway country only periodically, slightly and occasionally connected with the Mediterranean World, which was erroneously presented as the supposed center of the world or the axis around which the History of Mankind revolved.

China, Egypt and all the other African countries should work systematically to totally dismantle and obliterate the Eurocentric Western fallacy. There will never be decolonization without complete de-Westernization, and this apparently demands a major effort of full de-Mediterraneanization of the World History, which is a racist, false and poisonous product made in the West. Over the last six millennia, all the humans lived in a great variety of locations and lands, often developing different cultures and civilizations, but contact has always been maintained; so, the criminal conquistadors of the barbarian and pseudo-Christian Pope of Rome never ‘discovered’ anything.

More importantly, the axis of World History revolved always around the arc that links Egypt -through Mesopotamia, Iran and Central Asia- with China, involving also concavities and convexities that end in the African Atlas, in the Horn of Africa, in Yemen, in India, in Anatolia and the Balkans, in the Caucasus region, and in Siberia. On these basic lines took place all the major events of World History.

That is why it is essential that China, India and Egypt launch together a major anti-colonial project named ‘歷史 – इतिहास- تاريخ’ (Lishi Itihaas Tarih/’History’ in Chinese, Hindi and Arabic respectively) and involve in it their numerous Asiatic and African partners in order to genuinely compose -for the first time in World History- a truly unbiased, multilateral and comprehensive History of the Mankind, plainly reveal the importance of the major lands of History (as stated in the previous paragraph), and irrevocably reduce the role of European peoples to their true proportions, secondary dimensions and negative impact. This collective work should then be translated to all the Asiatic, African and Latin American languages and subsequently serve as the fundamental documentation which all the school manuals and the textbooks will reproduce, thus eliminating the hitherto prevailing false, colonial Eurocentric historiography. About the three terms:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/歷史

https://hi.wiktionary.org/wiki/इतिहास

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/تاريخ

Even the notion of ‘Europe’ must be deleted; actually, it does not truly exist. It never did – for the overwhelming majority of the world population. The lands located west of the plains of Russia, of the Black Sea, and of the Anatolian plateau are also parts of Asia. As a matter of fact, what Westerners called ‘Europe’ is the most western and the most troublesome peninsula of Asia. The undeniable fact that Ancient Greek and Latin texts make this distinction does not concern Africans, Caucasians, Turkic nations, Iranians, Arabic-speaking people, Indians, Siberians, Chinese and other Asiatic nations, because those sources are alien, unknown, unimportant, indifferent and useless to them. Europe does not have the status of a continent by any means.

Working together at the academic, scientific, intellectual, and cultural levels, China and Egypt will thus put an end to the colonial links that have been imposed on Asia and Africa over the past 250 years. The campaign motto for China, Egypt, and their partners should be: “No Oriental student in Occidental universities”.

III. The Egypt – Sudan – Libya Confederation

After re-establishing the national unity and sovereignty of Sudan and Libya due to full scale military intervention and political pacification processes, China and Egypt should work hard with local authorities in Khartoum and Tripoli as to how to best interconnect and bind all three nations. In the third article of the series (see below; units IV and V), I offered few examples in this regard, stressing particularly the sector of Transport. High-speed railways will certainly bring closer the three capitals, the three elites, and the three nations. With ca. 175 million people and an area of about 4.6 million km2, the three lands make the 7th state of the world in terms of surface and the 8th largest country by population.

As it can be surmised, the desire for a concerted unification of Egypt, Sudan and Libya does not reflect a delusional target like going higher in the list or just looking bigger; it addresses the common need of all the local societies and governments to acquire greater economic depth and have a faster rhythm of development. With the help of China, mega-projects similar to those I proposed in the fourth article of the series (see below: units I-V) have to be launched also in Sudan and Libya. With interconnected systems of canals and associated irrigation plans that carry water from the Nile, parts of the Butana desert in the eastern part of Sudan can become cultivated lands, thus exponentially increasing the agricultural production of the country. About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butana

The three countries will always have three seats in the UN General Assembly, also maintaining independent governments and separate parliaments; however, they can launch a one-year long rotating presidency and engage in several unification projects at the political, military, economic and educational levels. With full respect for all the existing ethnic groups, their languages, traditions and cultures, with concertation and synergy among the respective private sectors, with a unitary vision as regards their common vast territory and past, and with the strong support of China, the three countries can engage in the path of reunification on a purely secular basis. This will finally be the beginning of the end of the colonial era in Africa.

As it is well known, borders anywhere in Africa do not reflect ethnic territories and national realities, as they should have, but remind us of aspects of the colonial past. They are all false, and that’s why the criminal colonial gangsters, namely the English, the French and the Americans, want still to preserve the present, impermissible and untenable, borders in Africa. The reason for this vicious, insidious and inhuman policy is simple; practically speaking, there are no proper borders among nations throughout the Black Continent. There are only limits between the graves into which all the African nations have been buried by the guilty White Man.

Because the colonial powers want to preserve these illegal borders, these lines of sin, shame and hatred must be abolished. China should not have any illusion in this regard; the very existence of the colonial borders, the terrible absence of substantive infrastructure, and the imposed historical distortion, which is taught in the schools as an undisputed dogma, constitute the three major hindrances to Africa’s liberation and to Beijing’s perspectives in Africa. Of course, it will not be an easy thing to abolish the colonial borders in the Black Continent.

The effort should start with the formation of regional alliances and small unions of few states in several zones. Thus, the establishment of a confederation among Egypt, Sudan and Libya will mark a critical step in this regard. It is important for Beijing to methodically conceive and gradually carry out this project, because a successful union of three major African states will certainly stimulate many others to undertake similar efforts in other parts of Africa.

For this project, China should dedicate dozens of thousands of specialists, explorers, scholars and advisers; first, Beijing should create them. It is essential for the Chinese leadership to understand that, despite their good will and all the hitherto deployed efforts, China still does not truly know Africa; at least, not up to the level the colonial powers do. That is why China will urgently need 20000 Africanists, departments of African Studies in at least 50 Chinese universities, a plethora of linguists specializing in all the African languages, and researchers in Ethnography. A true Chinese army of explorers must disembark in Africa.

Similarly, in striking opposition to the highly ideologized, extremely biased, and utterly insidious Western academic policy against the Northern African Hamites and the Eastern African Cushites, China should become the worldwide center of Hamitic, Berber, Tuareg, Hausa, Cushitic, Oromo and Somali Studies.

Last but not least, China will certainly need 2000 Egyptologists and Coptologists with parallel background in Phoenician-Carthaginian, Latin and Ancient Greek in order to help present and future Egyptian and African scholars overwhelmingly refute the Eurocentric bogus-historical dogma, which prevails in the propagandist pseudo-universities of Western Europe and North America. They will have to plainly demonstrate to the world academic community the fact that the African Genius of the Hamitic Kemetians (Egyptians), Berbers and Cushites-Meroites and the Asiatic-Semitic Intelligence of the Carthaginians brought civilization to the islands of the Mediterranean Sea and to the southern extremities of the Balkan, the Italian and the Iberian peninsulas.

The topic is certainly interrelated with the urgent need of the Chinese academia to undertake a real overhaul of the Western disciplines of Orientalism, but this topic demands a new series of articles about the development of the Chinese disciplines of Assyriology, Hittitology, Iranology, etc. on entirely anticolonial and anti-racist basis. Establishing parallels between the Chinese Hundred Schools of Thought and Ancient Oriental (Assyrian-Babylonian, Egyptian, Iranian, Aramaean, Phoenician) schools of wisdom, universalism, spirituality and science or the Gnostic systems of Northern Africa or Western Asia would help all the people better perceive and fully assess the enduring interconnectedness of Asiatic and African cultures and civilizations. About: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Schools_of_Thought

IV. How the Chinese-Egyptian Alliance will reshape Africa into Five Mega-States

It may be a long process, but an early vision and a correct approach always matter. In order to totally change Africa, effectively block the presence or the return of the colonial powers, and instinctively trigger pro-Chinese feelings among all Africans, thus permanently consolidating Beijing’s leading role in the Black Continent, China must totally undo everything that the Western colonials did in Africa.

Taking into consideration the ethnic identity, the cultural integrity, the historical heritage of all the African and non-African nations that currently live in Africa, and taking into account the demanded conditions of socioeconomic development and international life, one can come to the conclusion that Africa should be re-organized in five great confederate states:

1- Kemet/Egypt, Cush/Sudan, and Rebu-Libu/Libya

This confederate state will be made out of the three ancient lands of civilization and modern countries, as briefly described in the present article. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cush_(Bible)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemetism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kmt_(magazine)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Km_(hieroglyph)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Kush

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cush_(Bible)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napata

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mero%C3%AB

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ancient_Libya

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libu

https://www.academia.edu/34407589/Egypt_Ethiopia_Sudan_Abyssinia_the_Freemasonic_Orientalist_Fallacy_of_Ethiopianism_and_Nubia

https://www.academia.edu/34398553/Fake_Sudan_Real_Ethiopia_and_Fake_Ethiopia_Real_Abyssinia_what_is_at_stake

https://www.academia.edu/34406896/Sudan_Real_Ethiopia_Abyssinia_Fake_Ethiopia_Evil_Progeny_of_Pan_Arabism_and_Ethiopianism

https://www.academia.edu/34407589/Egypt_Ethiopia_Sudan_Abyssinia_the_Freemasonic_Orientalist_Fallacy_of_Ethiopianism_and_Nubia

https://www.academia.edu/35045597/The_Secret_Reasons_of_the_Darfur_Genocide_fake_Arabic_imposed_on_Non_Arabs_2006_

https://www.academia.edu/24440061/Arab_Nation_Hoax_Geared_to_Falsify_Islamic_History_Ruin_Varied_Nations_disfiguratively_Named_Arab_by_Prof_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis

https://www.academia.edu/44995994/Contrary_to_Oromos_and_Somalis_the_Masriyin_Christian_or_Muslim_Egyptians_as_subjects_of_the_Mamluks_and_the_French_have_had_no_National_Identity_Part_V

2- Cush/Ethiopia, Punt/Somalia, and Eastern Africa (with a small enclave for Amhara-Tigray Abyssinia)

This confederate state will be established out of lands, which are currently parts of Ethiopia, Eritrea, Djibouti, Somalia (Somaliland being not a state but a local MI6 office), Kenya, and most of the Swahili-speaking Muslim inhabitants of the coast of Tanzania. Apparently, the Cushitic nations of the Oromos and the Somalis will be the largest entities within the confederacy, which will comprise Cushitic, Nilotic and Bantu people.

Taking into consideration the fact that the Semitic Amhara and Tigray tribes (: the Abyssinians) have had a most tumultuous and very negative relationship with the regional Cushitic majority, repeatedly made war upon them, and persistently persecuted them, it will be wise to envision an Abyssinian enclave within the confederacy; this will be formed out of lands belonging to the Eritrean North and to the Tigray and Amhara regions of today’s untenable Ethiopia. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oromo_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swahili_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amhara_Region

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tigray_Region

https://www.academia.edu/45605780/Cush_Meroe_Kemet_Egypt_Punt_Other_Berberia_Azania_and_the_Orientalization_of_the_Roman_Empire_Common_Origin_Migrations_Ancestral_Culture_and_Lands_of_Oromos_Sudanese_and_Other_Cushites

https://www.academia.edu/43443326/Ethiopia_a_Panacea_for_Tyrants_a_Stiletto_in_Colonial_Hands_2007

https://www.academia.edu/48806338/The_West_s_Ethiopian_Aberration_the_kingdom_of_Prester_John_between_Myth_and_Reality

https://www.academia.edu/43445873/40_Centuries_and_20_Years_of_Inexorable_Infinite_Punt_Somalia_East_Africas_Most_Radiant_Nation_Part_I_2011_

https://www.academia.edu/43453731/40_Centuries_and_20_Years_of_Inexorable_Infinite_Punt_Somalia_East_Africa_s_Most_Radiant_Nation_Part_II_2011_

https://www.academia.edu/34472471/Meroitic_Oromo_Ethiopian_Continuity_Call_for_a_Research_Project https://www.academia.edu/50299787/Links_to_my_articles_about_Egypt_Kemet_Sudan_Kush_Ethiopia_Abyssinia_Fake_Ethiopia_and_todays_Nubians

https://www.academia.edu/43645563/Links_to_my_articles_about_Official_Czarist_Russian_Envoy_Alexander_Bulatovichs_books_on_1890s_Abyssinia_and_his_expedition

https://www.academia.edu/106272084/Gadaa_Waaqeffannaa_Occupied_Oromia_Africa_the_Western_World_and_its_Racist_Malignant_Universities

https://www.academia.edu/44797482/Oromo_History_and_African_Christianity_Nobatia_Makuria_and_Alodia_the_Cushitic_Christian_Kingdoms_of_Ethiopia_in_Sudan_Axum_Agaw_and_Pseudo_Solomonic_Abyssinia

https://www.academia.edu/43433032/Sudan_Ethiopia_Abyssinia_Egypt_Somalia_Yemen_and_the_Anti_African_Plans_of_the_Colonial_Orientalists_and_of_their_local_stooges

Somalis

Map of Oromo dialects

Cushitic-Ethiopian Oromo flag

3- Carthage-Tunisia/Algeria, Berber Atlas, and Hamitic Sahara

This confederate state will be formed out of several NW African states that draw on the Carthaginian, Berber, Tuareg, Hausa and Saharan Muslim heritage and tradition of the wider region, i.e. Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Western Sahara, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and the northern half of Nigeria. An ominous and excessive colonial project of linguistic Arabization and extremist Islamization (based on disastrous, pseudo-Muslim and Anti-Islamic theologies) has been carried out in this region for long in order to totally transform the identity of the indigenous nations, eliminate the originality of their heritage, destroy their cultural integrity, divide the local societies, trigger divisions, split the families, and produce useless bloodshed only for the benefit of the colonial powers of the West.

The paramount target achieved due to the Western (mainly French) colonization concerned the establishment of a fake dilemma that was imposed on all the local societies (since the 19th c.), namely to

– either imitate the French and get intoxicated with Western lies and pseudo-science

– or become an extremist and die for a fake Islam that did not reflect the well-known historical civilization, culture and religion.

It is within this abominable divide that the traditional popular religion, wisdom, and culture have been sidestepped by the fanaticism of the ferociously anti-African and deeply anti-Islamic Hanbali, Ibn Taimiyyah, and Wahhabi theologies and forgeries.

By bringing to surface and reviving old traditions, forgotten identities, and moral integrity, and by interconnecting them with modern Afrocentric trends, China will be able to help permanently uproot extremism and obliterate French, English and American presence from the vast region which can certainly unite in a powerful, wealthy and progressive African confederacy.

Carthage, 218 BCE

For Chinese scholars and diplomats to see the hidden reality of the African Atlas and the wider Sahara region, four major academic fallacies have to be totally disregarded, refuted and dismantled by them first, notably

a- the false construct of ‘Afro-Asiatic languages’ (a fabrication that enables Western scholars to occasionally change their earlier conclusions as per the political needs of their criminal governments);

b- the colonial promotion of Arabic, which was never an identitarian element or a national language in Africa (it was basically a lingua franca for Muslims, and it was promoted by the French in order to deliberately destroy the Berber identity of the vast region);

c- the systematized effort to discredit the ethno-linguistic Hamitic group (by calling it ‘Hamitic hypothesis’), which is due to Western colonial biases against the Hamitic-Cushitic ethnic-linguistic-cultural unity that can help bring together the northern half of Africa (namely parts 1, 2 and 3 of the present unit) in just one state; and

d- the vicious attempt of the racist French colonials to uproot the national Berber identity of all the North African populations that have been deceitfully categorized by the colonial gangsters into Berber speaking people, bilinguals and Arabs. There were never Arabs in North Africa; today’s Arabic-speaking populations from Sudan to Morocco are Cushites and Hamites who have been gradually Arabized because they accepted Islam as religion. However, they remained culturally and ethnically African (Hamitic and Cushitic); consequently, in the Atlas region, there are only Arabic speaking Berbers, bilinguals, and Berbers who do not speak Arabic at all. We have therefore to conclude that Arabic can have only status of religious language throughout Northwestern Africa. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berber_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuareg_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hausa_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afroasiatic_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_Africa

https //en.wikipedia org/wiki/File:Map_of_African_language_families.svg

https://www.academia.edu/97110465/Nubianization_of_the_Cushites_Linguistic_Denigration_of_Berbers_Denial_of_Hamitic_Identity_the_Next_Genocide_in_Africa

https://www.academia.edu/46024986/Fake_Nubia_a_Colonial_Forgery_to_deprive_Cushitic_Nations_from_National_Independence_Historical_Identity_and_Cultural_Heritage

https://www.academia.edu/97224639/Distortion_of_Cushitic_and_Hamitic_Berber_History_by_Western_Forgers_Africas_Endless_Enslavement

https://www.academia.edu/23218437/Anc%C3%AAtre_des_guerres_et_de_la_tyrannie_le_mensonge_Pan_Arabe_Par_Prof_Muhammad_Shamsaddin_Megalommatis

https://www.academia.edu/49634034/The_Only_Way_for_China_to_destroy_the_West_is_to_outfox_and_dismantle_the_Fallacious_Colonial_Model_of_History_first

Berber flag – https://www.yaden-africa.com/the-culture/african-tribes/berber

https://www.temehu.com/tuareg-confederacies.htm

Hausa people flag

4- Manding, Atlantic Congo, Volta-Congo and Central Africa

This confederate state will consist of numerous ethnic groups and coastal nations of Western Africa that speak Manding, Atlantic Congo, Volta Congo and Central African languages, notably Wolof, Mende, Bambara, Dogon, Dyula, Yoruba, Igbo, Gbaya, Zande, etc. Including states like Senegal, the Gambia, Guinea Bissau, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Ivory Coast, Burkina Faso, Ghana, Togo, Benin, the southern half of Nigeria, parts of Cameroon, and the Central African Republic, this confederation will also incorporate the Fula (Peul) people, who live in the southern part of their lands and have not therefore been comprised within the borders of the confederate state no 3 (see above). About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolof_language

https //en.wikipedia org/wiki/Manding_languages#/media/File:Map_of_the_Manding_language_continuum png

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manding_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mande_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bambara_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogon_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dogon_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoruba_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoruba_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yorubaland

https //upload.wikimedia org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/Map_of_the_Niger%E2%80%93Congo_languages svg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niger%E2%80%93Congo_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igbo_language

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fula_people

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fula_language

West Africa 1875

5- Bantu Central & South Africa

This confederation will constitute the southernmost of Africa’s five mega-states. It will comprise Bantu people from coast to coast, therefore uniting all African lands south of a hypothetical line going from Equatorial Guinea to Uganda and thence to Tanzania and Mozambique. A Khoisan enclave should be instituted in order to gather together these ethnic-linguistic groups. About:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_languages

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bantu_peoples

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khoisan_languages

By helping set up five mega-states in Africa, Beijing will not only bring unity, concord and cooperation to the Black Continent, but it will also make it sure that peace is no further endangered due to the interests of the Western White Man, his heinous mentality, and his anti-Black stance. The absence of the divisive and merciless American, English and French colonial gangsters, racist missionaries, and plotting diplomats from Africa will certainly enable African nations to establish major states the size of Brazil or Russia and thus acquire the main prerequisite to socioeconomic development, namely economic depth. Empowered by China, India and Russia, the aforementioned five African mega-states will then be able to throw the barbarians of England, France and America into the dustbin of World History.

This will certainly constitute China’s greatest revenge for the Opium Wars.  

Bantu languages

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Previous articles of the series (titles, contents, and links to the publications):

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – I

I. Western Hatred against Egypt and Plans against Mankind

II. The End of Egypt may be very close

III. Egypt and the Pulverization of Sudan and Libya

IV. The Renaissance Dam in the light of the Abyssinian ‘Prophecy’ against Egypt and Sudan

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – II

I. The War in Gaza and the Destabilization of the Red Sea Region

II. The Rise of China as a World Super-power

III. The Irrevocable Prerequisites of China’s Worldwide Predominance

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – III

I. Grave Threats for Egypt’s Existence and Serious Danger for China’s Expansion

II. Perspectives of the Strategic Alliance between Egypt & China

III. Two Chinese Military Bases in Egypt: One Million Chinese Military on African Soil

IV. Joint Chinese-Egyptian Military Operations in Sudan and the Perspectives of a Chinese-Egyptian-Sudanese Alliance

V. Joint Chinese-Egyptian Military Operations in Libya and the Perspectives of a Chinese-Egyptian-Libyan Alliance

A Special Military Alliance with China is Egypt’s Only Chance for Survival – IV

Introduction

I. Toshka or New Valley Project

II. Water Desalination Plants

III. Relocation of a Sizeable Part of Egypt’s Population

IV. The Rafah-Taba Canal 

V. Twenty (20) Chinese Universities to operate in Egypt

Groups of Bantu languages

Khoisan languages

Islamic schools of Jurisprudence in Africa

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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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