The Ancient Persian Empire
By Eni Kazemi ~ July 23rd, 2010. Filed under: Ancient, Ancient Iran (Persia), Dynasty Parthian.
Parthian Prince, from Sham-Izeh, Malamir, 50 BCE
The early history of man in Iran goes back well beyond the Neolithic period, it begins to get more interesting around 6000 BC, when people began to domesticate animals Continue reading »
Spiritualists versus the Materialists in Ancient India
By Eni Kazemi ~ July 23rd, 2010. Filed under: Ancient, Ancient India.
In India, philosophy had its origins in a search of relations between self and the universe, done by people who were religious in outlook. These were people less interested in the monotonous routines of the ritual sacrifices and more interested in probing relations between self and the universe. Continue reading »
Septuagint & Greek translation of the Torah
By Eni Kazemi ~ June 10th, 2010. Filed under: Ancient, Ancient Greek (Greece).
Perhaps because most literate Jews could no longer read Hebrew, Jewish scribes in Alexandria were put to work translating into Greek the Five Books of Moses. The finished product became known as the Septuagint. Demonstrating their conviction that the Septuagint was the final word on Jewish history, the high priests in charge of the work proclaimed a curse upon any changes that might be made to it. Judaic doctrine would hold that seventy-two translators had worked independently of each other on the translation and had produced exactly the same result, word for word — a miracle in keeping with the belief that the books were the works of divine intervention. Continue reading »
Hellenism & Jews
By Eni Kazemi ~ June 10th, 2010. Filed under: Ancient, Hellenism, Jude Religion (Judaism).
With Alexander’s conquests also came significant cultural change. In West Asia and North Africa, well-to-do tradesmen, intellectuals and aristocrats who were neither Greek nor Macedonian, including those who were Jews, had begun developing an interest in things Greek — to the annoyance of those who believed that the old ways were best. From Marseille to India, Greek became the language of intellectuals. The Greek gymnasium became popular. It was a place for bathing and physical exercise Continue reading »
Persecutions during Sassanid Rule
By Eni Kazemi ~ May 30th, 2010. Filed under: Ancient, Ancient Iran (Persia), Ancient Zoroastrians, Dynasty Sassanid, Zoroastrian Religion (Zoroastrianism), Zoroastrianism.
The high-priest of Zoroastrianism, Kartir Hangirpe, believed that he represented the one true religion. He was an absolutist,
Sasanid Dynasty Map
believing that there was good and evil, with nothing in between. Into the later half of the 200s CE, he continued with his persecution of competing religions: the Manichaeans, Christians, Jews and Buddhists. Then, sometime during the reign of Bahram II (276-293), Kartir died, and religious tolerance began to reassert itself. Continue reading »
Queen Hatshepsut’s Temple Deir El Bahri
By Eni Kazemi ~ May 25th, 2010. Filed under: Ancient, Ancient Egypt, Ancient Temples & Tombs, Temple (palaca).
By the banks of the Nile, across the river from Thebes, a three-tiered temple was found beneath hundreds of tons of sand tens of centuries after its construction. The temple is a reflection of the mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II, and was constructed alongside that eleventh-dynasty structure. However, the temple of Hatshepsut is far larger than that of Mentuhotep. The architect was Senmut, Hatshepsut’s lover and a member of her court with more than 20 titles. Senmut designed the temple Continue reading »