The 12th Planet Read Free Page B

comprising the same number of letters, in the same order, as in Hebrew; it was the only Greek alphabet when the Trojan War took place. The number of letters was raised to twenty-six by the poet Simonides of Ceos in the fifth century B.C.
     
    That Greek and Latin writing, and thus the whole foundation of our Western culture, were adopted from the Near East can easily be demonstrated by comparing the order, names, signs, and even numerical values of the original Near Eastern alphabet with the much later ancient Greek and the more recent Latin. (Fig. 4)
     
    The scholars were aware, of course, of Greek contacts with the Near East in the first millennium B.C. , culminating with the defeat of the Persians by Alexander the Macedonian in 331 B.C. Greek records contained much information about these Persians and their lands (which roughly paralleled today's Iran). Judging by the names of their kings—Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes—and the names of their deities, which appear to belong to the Indo-European linguistic stem, scholars reached the conclusion that they were part of the Aryan ("lordly") people that appeared from somewhere near the Caspian Sea toward the end of the second millennium B.C. and spread westward to Asia Minor, eastward to India, and southward to what the Old Testament called the "lands of the Medes and Parsees."
     
    Yet all was not that simple. In spite of the assumed foreign origin of these invaders, the Old Testament treated them as part and parcel of biblical events. Cyrus, for example, was considered to be an "Anointed of Yahweh"—quite an unusual relationship between the Hebrew God and a non-Hebrew. According to the biblical Book of Ezra, Cyrus acknowledged his mission to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem, and stated that he was acting upon orders given by Yahweh, whom he called "God of Heaven."
     

     
    (1) "H", commonly transliterated as "H" for simplicity, is pronounced in the Sumerian and Semitic languages as "CH" in the Scottish or German "loch".
     
    (2) "S", commonly transliterated as "S" for simplicity, is pronounced in the Sumerian and Semitic languages as "TS".
     
    Fig.4
     
    Cyrus and the other kings of his dynasty called themselves Achaemenids—after the title adopted by the founder of the dynasty, which was Hacham-Anish. It was not an Aryan but a perfect Semitic title, which meant "wise man." By and large, scholars have neglected to investigate the many leads that may point to similarities between the Hebrew God Yahweh and the deity Achaemenids called "Wise Lord," whom they depicted as hovering in the skies within a Winged Globe, as shown on the royal seal of Darius. (Fig. 5)
     

     
    Fig. 5
     
    It has been established by now that the cultural, religious, and historic roots of these Old Persians go back to the earlier empires of Babylon and Assyria, whose extent and fall is recorded in the Old Testament. The symbols that make up the script that appeared on the Achaemenid monuments and seals were at first considered to be decorative designs. Engelbert Kampfer, who visited Persepolis, the Old Persian capital, in 1686, described the signs as "cuneates," or wedge-shaped impressions. The script has since been known as cuneiform.
     
    As efforts began to decipher the Achaemenid inscriptions, it became clear that they were written in the same script as inscriptions found on ancient artifacts and tablets in Mesopotamia, the plains and highlands that lay between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. Intrigued by the scattered finds, Paul Emile Botta set out in 1843 to conduct the first major purposeful excavation. He selected a site in northern Mesopotamia, near present-day Mosul, now called Khorsabad. Botta was soon able to establish that the cuneiform inscriptions named the place Dur Sharru Kin. They were Semitic inscriptions, in a sister language of Hebrew, and the name meant "walled city of the righteous king." Our textbooks call this king Sargon II.
     
    This capital of the Assyrian king had as its center