Backstory:
ZOROASTRIANISM: MARDUK AS PERSIA’S AHURA MAZDA
Around 1000 CE Marduk (AKA Ra, Zeus, Satan), Anunnaki Lord of Babylon, sent his son Nabu north to Persia (Iran) to herald him. Nabu, called Zarathustra in Persia, preached that his dad–both Messiah and Supreme God–would make Persia great. In 550 BCE Persian King Cyrus, conqueror of the Medes and Lydians, embraced Nabu’s monotheistic, messianic, Zoroastrianism, with its post-death judgment to determine Heaven or Hell for the soul.
In 539 BCE, Marduk was said to have welcomed CYRUS, King of Persia, to Babylon–but this “welcome” may be propaganda like modern Georgians “welcoming” Putin. More likely, the Persians intimidated and took authority over Babylon.
Cambyses II, the second King of Persia’s Achaemenid Empire from 530 to 522 BCE, was the son and successor of Cyrus. In 538, BCE Cambyses governed northern Babylonia under Cyrus. In 530 BCE Cyrus made Cambyses his co-ruler of the whole Empire. After Cyrus’s death, Cambyses ruled Empire without any overt opposition.
Cambyses conquered Gaza, Egypt and Ethiopia. In the 525 BCE battle of Pelusium against Egypt’s Pharaoh Psamtic III, Cambyses’ cavalry herded cats, dogs, and sheep before them. Egyptian archers refused to kill the cats since Egyptian law mandated death for anyone killing a cat, so the Persians on horses following the animals took Pelusium with no withering hail of arrows to stop them.
Darius may have murdered Cambyses: he succeeded him. Though Herodotus, who cast ignominy on the Persians (whom Greeks considered bad guys), said that while mounting his horse, the tip of Cambyses’ scabbard broke and his sword pierced his thigh and he died from this. Modern historians, however, suspect that either supporters of his younger brother Bardiya or supporters of Darius, son of a provincial governor in the Empire, killed Cambyses. Darius led a coalition that wanted him as King. Bardiya served as King for a short time, then committed suicide and Darius became the next King of the Persians. [Van De Mieroop, 2003, A History of the Ancient Near East,” in Blackwell History of the Ancient World. Wiley.]
DARIUS
Darius attributed the events and outcome of his struggle to replace Cambyses (detailed in the excellent youtube below), in stone, to the Ahura Mazda–the Persian name for Marduk, whose prophet, Nabu, had brought Zoroastrianism to Persia. Though Darius allowed each culture in the Empire to continue its own religion (ie, worship of various Anunnaki Lords), Darius made Zorasterism the State Religion.
In some accounts, after Darius participated in the murder of Cambyses, he convinced his co-conspirators to form a monarchy under him. When several satraps (regional kings) rebelled, Darius and his mobile army beat them, one by one.
He grew the Persian empire on all sides, and at the expense of his neighboring rivals embraced over 51/2 million acres of land.
To proclaim his rule over diverse cultures, Darius created a monument that showed how the same ideas could be expressed in three different languages. This monument constituted an ancient Google Translate for modern archeologists.
In 499 BCE, Aristagoras, the Tyrant through whom Darius ruled Miletus quarreled with one of Darius’ generals and rebelled against Persia and sought help from the mainland Greeks against Darius. Sparta refused to help but Athens and Eritrea agreed to assist Aristagoras’ break from Persia. Athens and Eritrea sent troops and ships. They razed the city of Sardis.
Darius and his army attacked the rebels, and after 6 years of war, Persia destroyed Eritrea, enslaved its survivors, and regained control of the western Anatolian Greek settlements.
Darius sent his generals Datis and Artaphernes over the Aegean Sea, where they won the Cyclades Islands and attacked both Eretria and Athens, then sailed for Attica and landed near the town of Marathon. The Athenians and their Plataea allies, whom Athenian General Miliades commanded, rushed to Marathon and blocked the Persians’ two exits from the Plain of Marathon so the Persian cavalry could not support the Persian missile throwers on the Plain. The Athenians and Plataeans routed the Persians, and the Persian survivors ran for their ships. The Persian invasion force returned to Asia and Darius raised a huge army to invade Greece.
By this period, Anunnaki Prince Marduk had established himself as “Zeus” to the Mycenean Greeks as well as “Ahura Mazda” to the Persians and employed the Anunnaki strategy of playing Earthling powers against each other to forestall the Earthlings from uniting against them (In Jerusalem, Enlil, as “Yahweh” prevailed).
But Darius’ Egyptian fief rebelled, so Darius spent years fighting to regain Egypt.
XERXES
Xerxes, the first son born to Persian King Darius after he married Dynasty founder Cyrus’ daughter Atossa. Darius rejected his elder brother Artabazes as his successor. Instead, Darius chose Xerxes as his heir apparent. To mollify Artabanus, Xerxes gave him rule of Egypt, and freed Egypt from taxes to Central Persian authority; nonetheless, Artabanus waited for his chance to take the Persian Crown he believed due him.
In 482 BCE, Xerxes sent his wife’s brother Megabyzus, to crush a rebellion in Persia’s Babylonian Satrapy, where Marduk had welcomed the Persians. Megabyzus took and sacked Babylon.
To assert an end to Marduk’s cult in Babylon, Megabyzus carted off and melted down Babylon’s huge gold statue of Bel-Marduk. Babylonian rulers used the statue to legitimize their rule when they held the hands of Marduk’s statue in Babylon’s New Year Festival. But as long as Persia remained Zoroastrian, Marduk, as Ahura Mazda, secretly directed them against the Greeks. Marduk played the Persians and Greeks against each other to gaslight his covert control of both Greece and Persia.
XERXES INVADED ATTICA, BEAT THE GREEKS AT THERMOPYLAE (480 BCE), SACKED ATHENS, LOST HIS SHIPS AT SALAMIS, LEFT BROTHER-IN-LAW MARDONIUS IN THESSALY, THEN RETREATED TO PERSIA
Xerxes dragooned, trained, and in 480 BCE, led 350,000 men supported by 800 ships that traversed a channel he’d ordered dug across the Isthmus of Actium to Attica. The army then moved up through Thrace, in today’s Balkans, and entered Greece after passing through Macedonia, one of Persia’s vassal states.
Xerxes and Mardonius, his wife’s brother, defeated the Athenians at Thermopylae and pillaged Athens. The Greeks sunk the Persian navy at Salamis, which left Xerxes without a fleet to keep his army provisioned. Xerxes went back to Persia and left Mardonius and his army in Thessaly.
In the Battle near Plataea in 479 BCE, the Greeks killed Mardonius. Persian survivors retreated to Lydia. The Persians and Greeks fought on for 13 years, but thenceforth Xerxes retired to Susa and Persepolis. He withdrew into himself and hung out in his harem until Zerxes’ Egyptian Satrap, Artabanus, secretly assisted by Zerxes’ wife’s brother Megabyzus, killed Zerxes and Zerxes’ eldest son.
Another son of Xerxes, Artaxerxes I, killed Artabanus and took Persia’s Crown—but only for seven months. Megabyzus betrayed him to Xerxes’ son Artaxerxes, who killed Xerxes.
ALEXANDER OF MACEDON CONQUERED PERSIA, GOT DYING DARIUS II (Artaxerxes) TO ABDICATE HIS GODSHIP TO ALEXANDER, WHO IN RETURN PROMISED TO HONOR DARIUS’ KIN
ALEXANDER OF MACEDON, WHO BEAT PERSIA
Philip II, King of Macedonia, which had been a Satrap of Persia, won control of vast wealth from goldmines in Macedon. He outfitted infantry and cavalry that united Greece.
Philip II
Macedonia’s Philip II had Aristotle tutor his legal son Alexander. Alexander’s mother, Olympius of Epirus, said she begat Alexander with Marduk (known in Greece as Zeus).
Olympius, Alexander and Philip
Alexander sparked the Macedonian win over the other Greek city-states at Chaeronea, where his cavalry encircled and massacred Thebans who refused surrender.
Philip released his Athenian prisoners and controlled most of Greece.
One of Philip’s bodyguards whom Olympius and Alexander had suborned killed Philip before Philip’s new son with a pure Macedonian (Cleopatra) could displace Alexander.
Alexander’s man killed Philip’s top general as he pursued the bodyguard. Olympius killed Cleopatra’s son and Cleopatra killed herself.
Alexander took Macedonia’s throne. He held Delphi’s Oracle Priestess at swordpoint. “Am I Zeus’ son?” She confirmed him as son the Zeus, the Greek name for Marduk-Ra.
Re-affirmed as Marduk’s son, Alexander, in 334 BCE, with 32,000 infantry and 5,100 cavalry, attacked Persia. While the Persian army quelled a rebellion in Egypt, Alexander’s army crossed the Dardanelles to Abydos in Turkey.
The infantry formed lines that stretched for miles and faced enemies with a phalanx of 18-foot piles before the cavalry.
.
.
Alexander led a cavalry charge that routed the Persian army and its Greek mercenaries at Granicus.
At Gordium, Alexander hacked with his sword into the outer strand of a knot on the oxcart shrine of King Midas. Whoever could untie the knot would, people believed, rule Asia. After he finally severed the outer stand, he simply unwound the rest of the knot.
The Macedonians invaded northern Syria and left their wounded in a base at Issus and marched south to engage the Persians but they cut Alexander’s army off from its supply line to Greece.
Persians crossed a mountain pass and killed all Greek wounded in Issus. The Macedonians returned to Issus. Alexander led his cavalry and defeated the Persian army, which left Syria, Palestine, and Egypt open for conquest by Alexander.
The Macedonians took the Landing Platform at Baalbek; Alexander renamed it Heliopolis. He tore the Greek city of Ephesos from the Persians, then defeated Darius at Issos. Alexander then took Sidon and Aleppo. In 332 BCE he conquered Syria.
In Phoenicia, after a seven-month siege, the Greeks took the main Persian naval base at Tyre.
Tyre’s leaders killed emissaries Alexander sent to ask for a peaceful surrender.
Enraged, Alexander made his men, though under constant arrow fire from Tyrian ships, a causeway with built-in Siege towers to connect the city to an island in the harbor that protected the city.
Tyre sent a ship loaded with Naptha and stopped construction, killing the men building and defending the causeway.
The Macedonians built a second causeway and brought warships from Cyprus. When this second causeway connected to Tyre, the Macedonian infantry attacked Tyre from the North and Alexander led forces down gangways from the ships, then through a gap in Tyre’s wall.
When Tyre fell, the Greeks controlled the eastern Mediterranean. They massacred 8,000 Tyrians and sold 30,000 into slavery.
Alexander reached Babylon in 331 BCE and rushed to the ziggurat temple to grasp the hands of Marduk as conquerors before he had. But Alexander saw Marduk’s corpse preserved in oils in his ziggurat.
Alexander won Egypt in 331 BCE, and he founded there the city of Alexandria.
In 331 BCE at Gaugamela (Iraq), Darius II’s army, with bladed-wheeled chariots, attacked Alexander’s luring positions on his flanks. The attackers left a gap in the center of their forces, between the chariots charging the Macedonian flanks. The gap they created as they took the bait of massed Greek infantry flanks exposed the Persian center to Alexander’s light cavalry. The Greeks killed 300,000 Persians and lost 100 men.
Alexander proclaimed himself the King of Asia and marched to the Persian capital, Susa, which surrendered without a fight.
Alexander took Persepolis, Bactria, Sogdianna and Cyropolis. From Persepolis, Alexander sent the gold home to Macedonia. He let his troops rob, murder the men, rape the women. Alexander and his drunk generals led as the Greeks burned Darius’s palace.
Alexander chased Darius II to make him abdicate as Persia’s God and King. Though Darius’ generals speared Darius and left him for dead, Alexander found him dying. Alexander said he’d honor and exalt Darius’ kin. In return Darius abdicated as god and king–gave the jobs to Alexander–then died.
ALEXANDER OF MACEDON, WHO BEAT PERSIA
Philip II, King of Macedonia, which had been a Satrap of Persia, won control of vast wealth from goldmines in Macedon. He outfitted infantry and cavalry that united Greece.
Philip II
Macedonia’s Philip II had Aristotle tutor his legal son Alexander. Alexander’s mother, Olympius of Epirus, said she begat Alexander with Marduk (known in Greece as Zeus).
Olympius, Alexander and Philip
Alexander sparked the Macedonian win over the other Greek city-states at Chaeronea, where his cavalry encircled and massacred Thebans who refused surrender.
Philip released his Athenian prisoners and controlled most of Greece.
One of Philip’s bodyguards whom Olympius and Alexander had suborned killed Philip before Philip’s new son with a pure Macedonian (Cleopatra) could displace Alexander.
Alexander’s man killed Philip’s top general as he pursued the bodyguard. Olympius killed Cleopatra’s son and Cleopatra killed herself.
Alexander took Macedonia’s throne. He held Delphi’s Oracle Priestess at swordpoint. “Am I Zeus’ son?” She confirmed him as son the Zeus, the Greek name for Marduk-Ra.
Re-affirmed as Marduk’s son, Alexander, in 334 BCE, with 32,000 infantry and 5,100 cavalry, attacked Persia. While the Persian army quelled a rebellion in Egypt, Alexander’s army crossed the Dardanelles to Abydos in Turkey.
The infantry formed lines that stretched for miles and faced enemies with a phalanx of 18-foot piles before the cavalry.
.
.
Alexander led a cavalry charge that routed the Persian army and its Greek mercenaries atGranicus.
At Gordium, Alexander hacked with his sword on the outer strand of a knot on the oxcart shrine of King Midas. Whoever could untie the knot would, people believed, rule Asia. After he finally severed the outer stand, he simply unwound the rest of the knot.
The Macedonians invaded northern Syria and left their wounded in a base at Issus and marched south to engage the Persians but they cut Alexander’s army off from its supply line to Greece.
Persians crossed a mountain pass and killed all Greek wounded in Issus. The Macedonians returned to Issus. Alexander led his cavalry and defeated the Persian army, which left Syria, Palestine, and Egypt open for conquest by Alexander.
After Alexander died, perhaps from poison his cousin Cassandra, who had become ruler of Macedonia, Alexander’s general Seleucus ruled much of what had been Persia.
The Parthian Empire which came to be ruled by the Sassanian Dynasty blocked and fought Roman expansion to the East from the 3rd to the 7th Century BCE.
Roman culture’s Eastern Byzantines fought the Sassanians Persians from the 1st to the 7th Century CE.
