* Nebuchadnezzar II completes ziggurat of Marduk, repeating the claim for
the Tower of Bab-el that his own god-gate also gets into heaven, destroys
Jerusalem and its competing god-gate, and deports the House of Judah to
Babylonia--after which merchant banking is invented
* Thales admits that the source of his astronomical knowledge is Chaldaean,
which he is said to have used to predict a total solar eclipse that
stopped a battle between Lydians & Medians on Wednesday 28 May 585
* First year of Shaka Era (582)
* Pythagoras of Samos born; in the East learns among other things that the
Milky Way is made up of stars; teaches that one must deny the self via
asceticism to purify one's Spark of divine logos from the narcissistic
defilement of the body entrapping It--even over multiple lifetimes, if
salvation from being born again into the flesh needs further iterations
in ever less corrupt bodies until It may return to the divine realm (~580)
* Persian Empire established by Cyrus II of Persia's Achaemenid dynasty
when he overthrows the yoke of the Medes and becomes their ruler (553)
* Confucius born in China; later works out a system of ethics to maintain
social harmony & stability so as to establish & preserve the basic social
structure, values & rites of traditional Chinese culture (551)
* Epoch of the Buddhist Era (Sasana Sakaraj), 13 May 544
* Cyrus "the Great" allows House of Judah to return from the Exile, and to
rebuild the Temple on the condition that they pray for his well-being;
many exiles do so, even declaring him to be their savior, and thereby
the Lord's messiah ("annointed" as in Isaiah 45); Jews bring back from
Babylonia its script for Aramaic to be used for Hebrew even to this day,
much of the Temple's seized accoutrements, as well as some heathen
practices with them (e.g. use of the lunar calendar of its moon god, Sin,
based at Harran where Abraham & Jacob had lived), and set up Judaism
quite hypocritically at cross-purposes to Samaritanism
* Persian Empire establishes its twentieth satrapy in Gandhara; one of its
many tribes are the Germanii, described as "tillers of the soil" (533)
[Herodotus]
* Cyrus crucified by Scythian magi, succeeded by his son Cambyses, whose
older brother, Crown Prince Bardiya, had been secretly murdered (530);
Gaumata, a Median magus claiming to be Bardiya, seizes the throne while
Cambyses campaigns against Egypt--who then conveniently dies (525)
[Diodorus; Darius I, Behistun Rock.]
* Darius becomes 9th Achaemenid ruler with the aid of 6 conspiring noblemen
who behead the magian usurper & his brother; their heads are shown to
other Persians who go on the rampage, stab as many magi as they can find,
and proclaim a feast called Magophonia, whose spirit of revenge is to be
transfigured by Jewish inhabitants into the feast of Purim
[Herodotus; Josephus, Antiquitates Judaicae. XI,iii,1]
* Scythian campaign ends with the capture of Skunkha, who is represented as
Darius' last triumph on the Behistun Rock alongside the Silk Road, and as
king of the Saka in one, but of the Gimiri in another, translation of the
Old Persian original (written in a new cuneiform script influenced by
Persia's Aramaic consonantal script--not a development of Mesopotamia's,
although still including syllabic signs; its inclusion in an official
inscription that displays three versions of identical content will lead
to 19th century decipherment of older cuneiform systems, & to viewpoints
different from entrenched sources--classical as well as Biblical) (519)
[Henry Rawlinson]
* Darius I decrees: Zoroastrianism to be Persia's official religion, a sea
route to India, and eventually one to Heliopolis by restarting work on
the canal begun by Necho II; causes the earliest official script in India
to be Kharoshthi (derived from Aramaic)--the source of 'Arabic' numerals
* Abacus' forerunner credited to Chinese Spring & Autumn Period (722-481)
[Xu Yue, Notes on Traditions of Arithmetic Methods.]
* Rome's kingdom becomes a republic led by two consuls (509)
500 B.C.E.
* Chaldaean astronomer Naburimannu collates Akkadian lunar & stellar
observations, determines sidereal year to within 7 minutes
* New Year observed at Persepolis via a square stone aligned with the
first rays of the rising sun at the vernal equinox (487)
* Darius I extends Silk Road by beginning construction of Royal Road
* Completion of Red Sea canal extends Spice Route into the Mediterranean
* Some Chinese adopt nomadic lifestyle, wear trousers and ride horses.
* Chinese start a Great Wall to defend against northern Yanyun nomads
* Artaxerxes adopts the Zoroastrian calendar, using regnal eras (463)
* Cincinnatus becomes first de facto dictator of Rome (458)
* Herodotus visits Greek trading colony of Olbia to gather information on
Scythians--never using pigs sacrificially or even as livestock (450)
* "When Thrasybulus was bringing back exiles from Phyla and he marched
over a trailless region as he wished to elude observation, a cylinder
became his guide, the sky being moonless & stormy. A fire appeared,
leading the way, and having conducted them safely, left them near
Munychia, where is now the altar of the light-bringer (Lucifer)" (404)
[Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, Book I, 24.]
400 B.C.E.
