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* The Bible is a library of different sacred texts written by anonymous Jewish authors much later, during the Babylonian exile from the religiously pure monotheistic point of view of the kingdom of Judah. It was biased against the more cosmopolitan kingdom of Israel. Like all sacred texts, it is filled with obscurities, but it is also sometimes a historical source, sometimes mythological.

* These peoples called themselves ‘Canani’ but the Greeks called them ‘Phoenicians’, after their top brand, the purple dye phoenix, derived from the Murex mollusc.

* Camels, two-humped in Bactria and one-humped in Arabia, had been domesticated for milking in the fourth to third millennium BC, then used as pack animals and ridden mounts. They were already central to the life of the Arabs as currency, transport and food: when an Arab chieftain died, his favourite camel was buried with him or left hobbled by his grave to die. Arab chieftains had already fought the Assyrians, but their troops were also in demand as mercenaries. Camels transported Arab fighters, who then switched mounts and galloped on horseback into battle.

* Shalmaneser III died facing a rebellion by his sons, one of whom emerged as King Shamsi-Adad. His queen was Shammuramat, a Babylonian princess, whom the Greeks called Semiramis. When Shamsi-Adad died in 811 BC, their son Adad-Nirari III was a child, so Semiramis took power, describing herself as ‘King of the Universe, King of Assyria, Daughter-in-Law of Shalmaneser, King of the Four Regions of the World’ – and winning the respect of the martial Assyrians. Like a real king of Assyria, she led her armies into Iran and died in battle. But thanks to the queen, Assyria retained its power.

* The name of Mount Ararat is a rare geographical hint of Urartu’s existence, but there are many excavations of Urartian cities in Türkiye and Armenia. Elam was also a powerful realm; its people spoke a language unlike any other in the region; its capital Susa was a famous walled city while its chief temple was the ziggurat 174 feet high at Choga Zanbil which, writes Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, is ‘the best-preserved ziggurat in existence, a monument to Elamite ingenuity and might’.

* His grandfather was (probably) the conqueror Tiglath-Pileser, but some scholars argue that Sargon was a usurper. The mission of the Assyrian kings was to expand the territory of the god Ashur, legislate and rule justly, enrich the homeland and serve all their gods. Their palace reliefs and historical annals describe the battles and killing, but this is exaggerated for effect. Their deportations were intended to disrupt rebellions and populate core Assyria.

* The House of Alara, still using pharaonic titles and burying their kings in pyramids, ruled Kush for several centuries more, finally moving the capital deeper into Sudan to Meroe to be safer from Egyptian invasion.

* Lion killing was the motif of Assyrian monarchy. Iraqi lions were smaller than those in Africa, but the beasts were corralled by armies of beaters, and driven towards the king by eunuchs holding mastiffs, watched by huge crowds. It was religious, it was sport and it was training for warfare. After the hunt, the king celebrated: ‘I, Ashurbanipal, king of the universe, king of the land of Ashur, whom Ashur and Ninlil endowed with supreme strength, who killed lions with the terrible bow of Ishtar, lady of battle: I offered a libation of wine over them.’

* The Medes and Persians, guided by a class of priestly diviners, the magi (from whom we get the word magic), saw the world as an endless duel between light and darkness, truth and lies, ruled by the fire-giving god of light, wisdom and truth, Ahura-Mazda. They were inspired by an Aryan prophet, Zoroaster, who may have lived in Bactria during the second millennium – or much later in the time of Cyrus or Darius. Only fragments of his life were preserved: his birth as a baby that laughed rather than bawled; his vision at the age of thirty in which he saw a being of lightness who revealed the truth of Ahura-Mazda (Wise Lord), who represented asha – order and truth – while fighting the darkness of Angra Mainyu (Destructive Spirit), who represented druj – the chaos and the lie. Much of Zoroastrianism, expressed in the Persian sacred text the Avesta, is linked to Indian Hindu religion, referring as it does to Indian gods such as Mithra, thus showing a shared Indo-Iranian origin. Unlike Jesus Christ but like Muhammad, Zoroaster married and had children; like Jesus, he died violently aged seventy-seven by an assassin’s dagger.

ACT TWO

100 MILLION

Haxamanis and Alcmaeon: Houses of Persia and Athens

NEBUCHADNEZZAR, HIS QUEEN AND THE WHORE OF BABYLON