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Artakhshayarsha, King of the Persians, ruled for fifty-one of his seventy years, the longest of all the Achaemenid Kings. This was partly because of his insistence at retaining peace wherever possible. During his long reign, Artakhshayarsha and Astur lived happily together in Shushan and the Empire prospered under their wise rule.
Contrary to everyone's expectations, in the fourth year of their reign the twenty-four-year-old Queen of the Persians gave birth to a son whom she insisted on naming Khshayarsha after her first husband and, two years later, another son - Darius. At Astur's suggestion, Nehemiah was appointed to the post of chief attendant to Artakhshayarsha in the place of the murdered Harbona. Twenty years later, it was he who was to be responsible for the reconstruction of much of the Holy City, Jerusalem. Sadly, the aged Mordecai never did return to the Promised Land as he had hoped but died only a year after Artakhshayarsha came to power and before Artaynte could produce a son for the hereditary position of Prime Minister. The beautiful Princess Artaynte, heartbroken at first, suddenly and mysteriously left Persia at the age of twenty and was never seen again by the Persians. She reputedly travelled to Europe, perhaps even England in search of precious tin, and what is thought to be her remains were unearthed during the 1950s in Central France where she had been buried with great honour and the dignity she so rightly deserved. In the meantime, a treaty was drawn up between Persia and Greece whereby the Persians agreed to stay out of the Aegean and the Greeks promised to keep away from Asia. This treaty was repeatedly violated by the Greeks until, in the year 333 BC, the Macedonians under their leader, Alexander III, invaded Asia and raped and pillaged their way across the land. In the process, the Greeks deliberately desecrated or stole everything of any value and destroyed all the historical records of the previous generations. Unlike the conquering hero whom the Greeks portray in their poetry and sketchings, Alexander the Great (as they insisted upon calling him) was a squat, ugly, egomaniac of a man in the mould of Artabanus. He was almost permanently drunk and, at his premature death, he left behind so many illegitimate children all over the Empire that his succession was in doubt for many years. When, specifically, Queen Astur died, no-one knows but somehow, a little of her spirit still remains in the Zagros Mountains and in the fertile valleys of Elam. | ||||
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