Selina OGrady - And man created God: a history of the world at the time of Jesus

AND MAN
CREATED
GOD

Isis and Horus. Wellcome Library, London

Published in hardback and trade paperback in Great Britain in 2012 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright Selina OGrady, 2012.

The moral right of Selina OGrady to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 84354 696 2
Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 84887 430 5
eISBN: 978 0 85789 876 0

Printed in Great Britain.

Atlantic Books
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To my darling Anna and Sibby
who put up with my obsession

And to Tony who was and is invaluable

Thanks to my ebullient and constantly helpful agent, Ivan Mulcahy; to Toby Mundy, who got me thinking about this book; to all those who read and commented Claudia Fitzherbert, Daniel Jeffreys, Lucy Lethbridge, Kathy OShaughnessy, Graeme and Terrence Mitchison and Oliver Ramsbotham; to my academic readers Dr Lindsay Allen, Nell Aubrey, Professor Timothy Barrett, Dr Tadeusz Skorupski, and William Fitzgerald who saved me from at least some of the oversimplifications which drives experts mad; to Rebecca Fraser, Anthony Grayling and Malise Ruthven for their incredibly generous comments; to my brother Jeremy for his titles and masterly editorial eye; to my ever-supportive sister Jane; to Caroline Law; to my daughters; to Richard Milbank for being a learned and wonderful editor; to Sarah Norman and Margaret Stead, who were my editors for all too short a time; to my copyeditor Helen Gray; and above all, to Tony Curzon Price.

Frontispiece: Isis and Horus. Wellcome Library, London

1. Apollonius. 2006 Alinari / TopFoto

2. Livia. Giovanni DallOrto / Wikimedia Commons

3. House in Marib. Prisma Bildagentur AG / Alamy

4. Maecenas. 2006 Alinari / TopFoto

5. Agrippa. akg-images

6. Tiberius. akg-images

7. Josephus. akg-images

8. The Kiosk at Naqa. Nigel Pavitt/JAI/Corbis

9. Suren. Aytakin / Wikimedia Commons

10. Banqueters, Palmyra. Lessing Photo Archive

11. Temple of Bel. De Agostini / Getty

12. Kushan prince. akg-images / RIA Novosti

13. King Juba. De Agostini / Getty

14. St Paul. Leemage / Getty

15. Coin of Varus. INTERFOTO / Sammlung Rauch / Mary Evans

16. Coin of Gondophares. World Imaging / Wikimedia Commons

17. Antonia fortress. deror avi / Wikimedia Commons

18. Augustus. Alinari via Getty Images

19. Seated Buddha. akg-images

20. Queen Mother of the West. The Granger Collection / TopFoto

Note: Many of these dates are approximate

BC

15001000 Aryan (Indo-Iranian) tribesmen from the steppes of southern Russia move into the Indus Valley in present-day Pakistan and north-west India and begin to compile the hymns of the Rig Veda, the oldest sacred text of Hinduism

1200 The Aryan priest Zoroaster has a vision of the first supreme god Ahura Mazda and begins preaching in ancient Iran

1070 Egypt loses control of Meroe present-day southern Egypt and Sudan and it becomes an independent kingdom

1070AD 350 EMPIRE OF MEROE

Legendary date for the founding of the city of Rome by Romulus and Remus

744609 Assyrian (NEO-ASSYRIAN) EMPIRE

Originally a kingdom of northern Mesopotamia modern-day northern Iraq Assyria acquires a vast territory and has its capital at Nineveh on the banks of the Tigris River

Meroite King Pye invades Egypt and founds the twenty-fifth dynasty of pharaohs which rules Egypt 727653

727653 Twenty-fifth dynasty of Egypt

Assyria conquers northern Israel and Jews are deported

Construction of Marib Dam in South Arabia

Towards the end of the 7th century Rome becomes an organized city-state

The kingdom of Babylonia in southern Mesopotamia part of modern Iraq defeats Assyria

626539 BABYLONIAN (NEO-BABYLONIAN) EMPIRE

587537 Captivity of the Jews in the city of Babylon near present-day Baghdad under Nebuchadnezzar

Babylonia conquers southern Israel (the kingdom of Judah)

563483 The life of Siddhrtha Gautama, the Buddha

558479 The life of Confucius

Babylonian (Neo-Babylonian) Empire falls to the Persian King Cyrus

540331 PERSIAN (ACHAEMENID) EMPIRE

Cyrus allows the Jews to return home

The last king of Rome is expelled; Etruscan rule ends and the Republic is established at Rome

51027 Roman Republic

497425 Vardhamana Mahavira, the son of a chieftain in the Indian kingdom of Magadha, in north-east India, establishes the central tenets of Jainism

Rome begins its conquest of Italy

341270 Life of Epicurus, founder of Epicureanism

335263 Life of Zeno, founder of Stoicism

334328 Alexander of Macedonia defeats Darius and conquers the Persian Empire

334328 EMPIRE OF ALEXANDER THE GREAT

At Alexanders death his general Seleucus inherits the eastern part of the Persian Empire

312204 SELEUCID EMPIRE

Chandragupta Maurya founds Indias first and greatest empire; his chief minister Kautilya writes the Arthashastra

321185 BC MAURYAN EMPIRE

269232 Reign of Ashoka Maurya, first Buddhist emperor of the Indian subcontinent

The first of the Punic Wars between Carthage in present-day Tunisia and Rome; Romes conquest of Sicily signals the beginning of its imperial expansion beyond the borders of peninsular Italy

Parni nomads from Central Asia settle in Parthia in present-day Iran and begin their conquest of the Seleucid Empire

250 BCAD 224 PARTHIAN (ARSACID) EMPIRE