Why is there little or no reference in books about the influence of the Assyrians and Persians in Egyptian history?
Granted, the longest period of time Egypt was actually ruled by 'Eastern powers' is equivalent to the time the Romans were in Britain; but we are taught all about the effect the Romans had on British life, even though a lot of it -'they gave us central heating-- is not terribly accurate.
I don't doubt that there is recorded history from Ancient Egypt: Manetho (circa 350 BC) and Herodotus (circa 450 BC) for sure, but by then the Assyrians and Persians had gone.
Why I'm interested in the effect of ideas brought in to Egypt by 'Assyrians and Persians' is that this time period corresponds specifically with that time the Greeks were- according to so many text books -busy 'creating' Western civilisation.
Homer circa 800 BC.
Hesiod circa 600 BC.
The Assyrian king Esarhaddon captured Memphis in 671 BC, leaving Necho 1 as the chief king of twelve rulers. After the Assyrians came the Persians: Cambyses II (525 BC) is the next conqueror, followed by Darius.
Then Alexander the Great conquered Persia in 331 BC.
Trying to decipher the history is complicated by the terms and language historians use: 'Persian,' Phoenician, Babylon, Oriental, Baal, even Assyrian, are terms used interchangeably and in a relative way.
'We three kings from Orient are'...just about sums it up!
In asking myself why an exchange and influence of ideas between the 'East' and Egypt is disregarded I assumed no one could read cuneiform, and until cuneiform was translated, the Greeks were clearly ahead of their time...basically for thousands of years Mesopotamian mathematics lay in fragments of clay. Until they were read it was reasonable to think that Pythagoras and Euclid had invented geometry!
Babylon was 'found' in the early nineteenth century, Claudius James Rich visited 'Babylon' and wrote: Memoirs on the ruins of Babylon in 1818. It was published in London in 1839- Google books has it as a free download.
The 'Assyrian' language, cuneiform, began to be deciphered in 1857 and approximately one hundred years latter scholars began to publish books about 'Babylonian' mathematics, the sudden increase in Greek knowledge was explained as a result of Alexander the Great's conquest of 'Persia'.
But even today I read modern articles and books insisting upon a kind of cultural purity: books and articles that do not consider the probability that an influx of first Assyrians and then Persians (including rule by a Persian king) could possibly have any effect at all upon an existing culture!
Even though the idea of 'The Axial Age' is easily disproved, there is something about it that appeals to people, even now.
The term: Axial Age came from Karl Jaspers in his book: Vom Ursprung und Ziel der Geschichte (The Origin and Goal of History) written in 1949. The Axial Age, according to Karl Jaspers, is the period between 800 to 200 B.C.E.
"It was the time in which all foundations that underlie current civilization came into being".The trouble is, writing first appeared in Sumer in 3200 BC, likewise irrigation canals and great cities. In 1952 Samuel Kramer was translating the Code of Ur-Nammu (one of the oldest legal texts in existence dated to 2000 BC).
I suppose cities, writing and law are not fundamental to civilisation....
"…After An and Enlil had turned over the Kingship of Ur to Nanna, at that time did Ur-Nammu, son born of Ninsun, for his beloved mother who bore him, in accordance with his principles of equity and truth... Then did Ur-Nammu the mighty warrior, king of Ur, king of Sumer and Akkad, by the might of Nanna, lord of the city, and in accordance with the true word of Utu, establish equity in the land; he banished malediction, violence and strife, and set the monthly Temple expenses at 90 gur of barley, 30 sheep, and 30 sila of butter. He fashioned the bronze sila-measure, standardized the one-mina weight, and standardized the stone weight of a shekel of silver in relation to one mina... The orphan was not delivered up to the rich man; the widow was not delivered up to the mighty man; the man of one shekel was not delivered up to the man of one mina."800 BC used to be thought of as the time Homer was writing the Iliad and Odyssey, so I guess that is why that particular date was chosen as a starting point.
Karl Jaspers idea of individual, key axial age thinkers having a profound influence on future philosophies and religions; in other words- one man making a big difference- is a concept that has a lot in common with Helena Blavatsky's idea (circa 1875) that human culture is advanced by Golden Ones, or The Shining Ones (an idea repackaged by Philip Gardener).
As Karl Jaspers risked being sent to a concentration camp for being less than perfectly Aryan, he may have had an inexplicit agenda in believing that 'Aryans' a word derived from Arya (noble, noble ones) and defined by anthropologists of his time as Indo-Iranian, could not have had any connection with the increase in knowledge during the so called Axial Age...
...maybe?
Worse, I've heard it said (the Internet will tell you by whom) in response to this concept of an Axial age that:
"...violence and suffering seem to be a sine qua non of a spiritual quantum leap forward"Is it true that war, famine and plague are good for people, that suffering teaches people compassion? Or is it as equally reasonable to believe that children who have been brought up with violence accept its inevitability?
For what ever reason Iranian and Assyrian influences on Greek and Egyptian culture (let alone on Tibetan Buddhism- don't get me started!!!) are invisible; they are there though, wrapped up in 'Pythagoras', 'Orpheus' and 'Mithras' and finally in Christianity.
Ideas don't respect borders or nationalities. Granted. there is more evidence of Hittite (Hesiod's theogeny) and Phoenician (alphabet) influence...than Zoroastrian, but it is demonstrably true that ideas don't stay put.
Herodotus in The Histories gives us some information about the role of the Magi. According to Herodotus, the Magi were the sixth tribe of the Medians (until the unification of the Persian empire under Cyrus the Great, all Iranians were referred to as "Mede" or "Mada" by the peoples of the Ancient World), who appear to have been the priestly caste of the Mesopotamian-influenced branch of Zoroastrianism today known as Zurvanism.
Links:
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/ancient/herodotus-persians.asp
http://www.avesta.org/mp/zadspram.html#chapter1
Well the Greeks influenced the Iranians, who influenced the Greeks who were influenced by the Egyptians. The Hittites and Phoenicians too. My point is that images and ideas are copied and reinterpreted, trends -such as a rejection of the gods as fallible beings and a desire for redemption -draw in new ideas from other cultures and religions until something new is made.
The new idea feels more truthful to those who desire it to be so.
Soul trapped in matter...
The Eleusinian mysteries altered to take care of this thought; initiation promised a better after-life. But the location of the Elysian fields requiring flight, as an ascension of the soul up to heaven was at first an esoteric idea, and probably an imported idea.
More often than not, the location of the promised, blissful next world is simply far away, the Islands of the Blessed, like The Canary isles, somewhere far away over the horizon.
The idea that perhaps the soul is made of a spark of Aethyr, and could ascend above the earth to other planets is an Orphic idea, recalling the Sepheroth of the Cabala, and the Akkadian idea of the stars as domains of the gods..only latter with the cult of Mithras does the Zoroastrian journey to the Isles of the Blessed, the realm of 'The lights without end' finally become a ladder to the stars:
The first step that the soul of man made,
placed him in the good thought paradise;
the second step . . . in the good word paradise;
the third step . . . in the good deed paradise;
the fourth step . . . in the endless lights."
—The Abodes Of The Soul, Zend-Avesta
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