ellauri099.html on line 221: What was the garden for? Was it a space for leisure, strolling and quiet dialectical chitchat? Was it a mini-laboratory for botanical observation and experimentation? Or was it — and I find this the most intriguing possibility — an image of paradise? The ancient Greek word paradeisos appears to be borrowed etymologically from Persian, and it is said that Darius the Great had a "paradise garden," with the kinds of flora and fauna with which we are familiar from the elaborate design of carpets and rugs. A Persian carpet is like a memory theater of paradise. It is possible that Milesian workers and thinkers had significant contact with the Persian courts at Susa and Persepolis. Maybe the whole ancient Greek philosophical fascination with gardens is a Persian borrowing, and an echo of the influence of their expansive empire. But who knows?
ellauri190.html on line 352: Darius The Great, King of Persia
ellauri190.html on line 353: Darius I was the third king of the Persian Achaemenid Empire. Also called Darius the Great, he ruled the empire at its peak, when it included much of West Asia, the Caucasus, parts of the Balkans (Thrace-Macedonia and Paeonia), most of the...
ellauri248.html on line 244: In Daniel 6, Daniel is raised to high office by his royal master Darius the Mede. Daniel's jealous rivals trick Darius into issuing a decree that for thirty days no prayers should be addressed to any god or man but Darius himself; anyone who disobeys this edict is to be thrown to the lions. Pious Daniel continues to pray daily to the God of Israel; and the king, although deeply distressed, must condemn Daniel to death, for the edicts of the Medes and Persians cannot be altered. Hoping for Daniel's deliverance, Darius has him cast into the pit. At daybreak the king hurries to the place and cries out anxiously, asking if God had saved his friend. Daniel replies that his God had sent an angel to the jaws of the lions, "because I was found tasteless before them". The king commands that those who had conspired against Daniel be thrown to the poor overfed lions in his place with their tasty wives and children, and that the whole world should tremble and fear before the God of Daniel. Although Daniel is sometimes depicted as a young man in illustrations of the incident, James Montgomery Boice points out that he would have been over eighty years old at the time. No wonder perhaps that he did not entice the lions.
xxx/ellauri114.html on line 274: THAT WAS ONLY THE BEGINNING. But this did not fulfill Jeremiah’s prophecy, which wouldn’t even be given for at least another 50 years. Susa was rebuilt, only to be conquered again, this time by the Persian King Cyrus. It was rebuilt again and renovated by King Darius the Great to serve as the capital of the Persian Empire. Susa was mentioned in Daniel 8:2 as the location where the prophet received a vision recorded in Daniel 8 of the subsequent conquest of the Persian Empire by Alexander the Great. This prophecy was fulfilled two hundred years later when Susa surrendered without a battle to Alexander.
xxx/ellauri114.html on line 277: WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? A case can be made for the view that “Persian” and “Elamite” are not two names for the same people but that having conquered Elam, Persia became the successor to Elam, whose original inhabitants, as Jeremiah’s prophecy indicates, have been scattered to the four winds and absent from the pages of history for over 2,500 years. Evidence of the difference in origin between the Elamites and the Persians came from the mouth of none other than Persian King Darius the Great who said, “I am Darius, the great king, the king of kings, the king of many countries and many people, the king of this expansive land, the son of Wishtaspa of Achaemenid, Persian, the son of a Persian, ‘Aryan’, from the Aryan race” (From Darius the Great’s Inscription in Naqshe-e-Rostam).
xxx/ellauri186.html on line 238: Cuneiform evidence from Babylon proves that Cyrus died around December 530 BC, and that his son Cambyses II had become king. Cambyses continued his father's policy of expansion, and captured Egypt for the Empire, but soon died after only seven years of rule. He was succeeded either by Cyrus's other son Bardiya or an impostor posing as Bardiya, who became the sole ruler of Persia for seven months, until he was justifiably killed by Darius the Great.
xxx/ellauri280.html on line 462: ZULKARNAIN on vanhurskas henkilö, joka mainitaan Koraanissa (18:83-98). Ei tiedetä varmasti, oliko hän Allahin lähettiläs vai ei. Joissakin legendoissa häntä kutsutaan Iskandariksi; jotkut ihmiset tunnistivat hänet Aleksanteri Suureen, toiset Persian kuningas Darraan (Darius); kaikki nämä oletukset ovat perusteettomia.
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