Purim at the Museum - The Jewish Chronicle

On the second landing of the East Stairs in the British Museum in London, you will find a huge concrete relief. It shows a Persian king clasping his royal sceptre. He sits on a throne held up by three rows of men all in different attire, representing the many nations he ruled. This king is almost certainly Xerxes, son of Darius the Great, who reigned over the vast Persian Empire from 485 to 465 BCE.

What most people do not realise, though, is that Xerxes is none other than Achashverosh, the pompous king of the Purim story.

I have been leading Jewish-themed tours at the British Museum for many years and the people who come on them never fail to be fascinated by just how many artefacts relate to biblical stories. Our Holy Scriptures are not fanciful tales; they are complex narratives, rich in theological content and grounded in ancient history.

Xerxes was the Greek name of the king, but in the original Persian cuneiform, the system of writing used in the ancient Middle East, it was Khshayarsha, which is linguistically similar to the Hebrew “Achashverosh”. Realising that Achashverosh and Xerxes were the same man helps to deepen our understanding of the Megillah, the biblical book of Esther read each year on the festival of Purim.

Cast of a Persian Palace doorway depicting King Xerxes[Missing Credit]

Herodotus, described as “the father of history”, was a young Greek citizen during the reign of Xerxes. In his major work, The Histories, he details the Greco-Persian wars. The seventh book gives an account of the life of Xerxes, stating that his main seat of power was the imperial city in Susa. In the Megillah the city is called Shushan.

The Megillah opens with a huge celebration in Shushan which could well have been the rallying party described by Herodotus at which Xerxes persuaded numerous neighbouring nations – including the Medes, Assyrians, Scythians and Parthians – to fight alongside him against the Greeks. The Megillah suggests this when it states, “the military power of Persia and Media” were in attendance.

Queen Vashti famously refused to make an appearance at this party and was removed from the royal court. As we all know, this led to a beauty pageant to find her replacement. Hiding her Jewish identity, Esther won, and was married to the king.

In a typical Purim play, Vashti’s exit is directly followed by the pageant, but the Megillah is clear that the first took place “in the third year of the king’s reign,” while the second occurred “in the seventh year of his reign”. What happened in the intervening four years?

The account of Herodotus dovetails beautifully here. He writes that Xerxes spent those years at war with the Greeks, and losing terribly. Having failed on the battlefield, we are told, he tries his fortune in the bedroom and takes up with many women. This may also explain the reckless way the king acts throughout the Megillah. Lacking military triumph, he lets himself be distracted by palace intrigue and court squabbles.

Title page of 'Herodotus's Histories' printed in Venice in 1533[Missing Credit]

According to Herodotus, Xerxes’ 20-year reign came to an end when he was assassinated by two palace guards. This is echoed in the Megillah when Mordechai, Esther’s cousin, overhears Bigtan and Teresh, two palace guards, plotting to kill the king, and foils the plot by informing Esther.

We discussed how diaspora Jews try to survive and thrive under a vacillating despot. Contemporary parallels are hardly a stretch

Last year I interviewed Professor Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones at London School of Jewish Studies. He holds the Chair in Ancient History at Cardiff University and has written a bestselling book on the ancient Persians. He then produced an academic analysis of the Book of Esther. Lloyd told me he has been fascinated by the story ever since he was a boy hearing it read in his local church.

We discussed the political undercurrents of the book and especially how diaspora Jews try to survive and thrive under a vacillating despot. Contemporary parallels are hardly a stretch.

The villain in the Megillah, of course, is the conniving Haman. Not Persian by origin, he was in fact a descendant of King Agag the Amalekite who was no friend of the Jews. This reveals another layer of the Purim story.

Rabbinic sources suggest Haman was hired by an anti-Judean faction in the land of Israel to convince Achashverosh to wipe out all the Jewish communities in his empire, especially in Judea, thus preventing the Jews from restoring their Temple in Jerusalem. A century prior, the Babylonians had sacked the first Temple, ending the first Jewish state and exiling most of its inhabitants. And so the Megillah masks the real story: the Jewish dream of rebuilding their homeland.

Cyrus, the Persian ruler two generations before Xerxes, was regarded as a benevolent king. The renowned “Cyrus Cylinder” is the centrepiece of Room 52 in the British Museum. In fact, it is more barrel-shaped than cylindrical and was uncovered during excavations led by Hormuzd Rassam in 1879, on behalf of the museum.

In lines 20-32, Cyrus declares that having defeated the Babylonians, he allowed all displaced peoples to return to their native lands and rebuild their settlements and shrines. This multiethnic approach, revolutionary for its time, caused the cylinder to be hailed as the world’s first charter of human rights. There is a replica housed in the UN Headquarters in New York City.

This text perfectly parallels the narrative in the first chapter of the biblical book of Ezra in which Koresh (Cyrus in Hebrew) allowed the Jews to return to Israel to begin to rebuild their Temple. He even returned to them the holy Temple vessels confiscated by the Babylonians. This is the prelude to the Megillah.

The Cyrus Cylinder was uncovered during excavations led by Hormuzd Rassam in 1879[Missing Credit]

Thus, the clash between Haman and Mordechai was politically motivated. Mordechai’s mission was to stop Haman from preventing a second Jewish state in Israel. This clash took place at the Persian court, hundreds of miles from Israel itself.

Similarly, in the early 1900s, the future of a third Jewish state in Israel was being determined even further away, in the UK Parliament, as the British Mandate came to an end. And today, the fate of a two-state solution for the Israelis and Palestinians is in the remote hands of the White House. The Megillah could be said to have foreshadowed modern diplomacy.

We know so much about Xerxes because archaeologists such as Jean Perrot led excavations in Susa and mapped out its complex of foundations. In the 1970s, Perrot and his team identified the King’s Gate, Main Palace Hall, Outer and Inner Courtyards, as well as the King’s Residence and Throne Room. Incredibly, every one of these structures is referred to in the Megillah.

When I stare at the artefacts I see my ancestry --not alien cultures of a bygone age

Discoveries such as these, as well as the Cyrus Cylinder, bring the Bible to life. Even Xerxes’ sceptre, as depicted on the East Stairs, makes a critical appearance in the Megillah. When Esther anxiously approached Achashverosh to plead for her people, she knew she found favour when “the king held out to Esther the golden sceptre that was in his hand.”

Most visitors to the British Museum see ancient civilisations which are wholly detached from their own lives. For them, the past is another world entirely. But not for me. When I stare at the artefacts I see my ancestry – not alien cultures of a bygone age, but peoples among whom my forebears lived, following their faith and keeping their traditions, just as I do today.

Rabbi Dr Raphael Zarum is dean of the London School of Jewish Studies where he holds the Rabbi Sacks Chair of Modern Jewish Thought, established by the Zandan family. See www.lsjs.ac.uk for Jewish tours of the British Museum.

jewishliteraryfoundation.co.uk/events/purim-persia-tour-of-the-british-museum

To get more from Life, click here to sign up for our free Life newsletter.

Topics:

Purim