The Sheet Theory Of History

I periodically gather postings of similar subject matter into compound postings.

History tends to repeat itself, sometimes intentionally but often not. In a region that has a very long history, the ancient history usually repeats itself while covered by some modern "sheet", which may be an ideology like Communism or a religion like Islam.

In nations that have a long history, modern history tends to operate like a box covered by a sheet. History tends to repeat itself and the box represents the reenactment of history while the sheet that covers it represents the modern ideology or religion that the reenactment is apparently done in the name of.

We have already seen examples of this in the Middle East. The militias near Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah, are actually reenactments of the medieval orders of knights that protected Christian pilgrims and tried to liberate the Holy Land from Moslems, although the modern sheet that covers them is Islam.

CAMBODIA IN THE 1970S

In the Far East, from 1975-1979, Cambodia was ruled by what is known as the Khmer Rouge. This was a group that wanted to turn Cambodia into a rural rice-growing society that practiced pure communism. Unlike in other Communist countries, there would be no intermediate steps to this state of pure communism. 

The entire population of Cambodia was forced into camps in the countryside, where they were put to work growing rice. There was no religion allowed, no individualism and, no private property. People had to dine in communal groups with their neighbors. 

Anyone suspected of not fitting in with the new order were simply killed. Up to a quarter of the country's population were either killed, or died as a result. So many people were executed that, to save bullets, execution was usually done by impact to the head from a tool like a hammer or axe. The dead were buried in what became known as the "Killing Fields".

But Communism was a sheet. What this really was is an attempt to reenact the glory of the Khmer Empire, and it's great city of Angkor, a thousand years before. The city of Angkor revolved around the temple known as Angkor Wat, which is today considered as the largest religious monument in the world. During the rule of the Khmer Rouge the country was renamed "Kampuchea ", which comes from the name that the Khmer Empire called itself. 

The flag of Kampuchea had the outline of Angkor Wat in the center, as does the flag of Cambodia today. The following image is the flag of Kampuchea, from the Wikipedia article "Flag of Cambodia".

The Khmer Rouge leadership called itself "Angkar" and the goal of a rice-growing society was based on the great city of Angkor having also revolved around growing rice. Like the city of Angkor, the Khmer Rouge planned irrigation to facilitate year-round rice growing, in order to get around the dependence on seasonal rains.

The great city of Angkor had been abandoned, around the time that the present capital of Phnom Penh was founded, and it is not certain why. Angkor Wat had originally been built as a Hindu temple, but the country moved toward Buddhism and Phnom Penh was built where some Buddhist icons had been found. It could be that the Hindu city had to be abandoned so that Buddhism could take over, although Angkor Wat was later remodeled as a Buddhist temple.

But Angkor had been Hindu at it's height, so that the coming of Buddhism could be said to represent it's decline. This is reflected in the Khmer Rouge retaliating by abandoning the Buddhist city, Phnom Penh, that had supplanted Angkor. The Khmer Rouge was very hostile to Buddhism, probably thousands of monks were killed, although Pol Pot, the leader of the Khmer Rouge, had once been a monk himself. It is also reflected in the Khmer Rouge seeking purification, by killing, anyone who was educated or spoke French, or even wore eyeglasses.

The nation of Kampuchea had border clashes with all three countries that bordered it, most notably Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge was all about restoring the glory of the Khmer Empire and these clashes reflected their desire to regain lost territories. The following image, from the Wikipedia article "Khmer Empire", shows the vast territory of the empire at it's height, centered around the city of Angkor.

The following image, from the Wikipedia article "Khmer Nationalism", shows modern Cambodia, in the center, with the areas that the Khmer feel that they have a claim to.

It was border clashes with Vietnam that ultimately brought about the overthrow of the Khmer Rouge, and the end of Kampuchea. The Khmer Rouge wanted the southern part of Vietnam back, that had once belonged to the Khmer Empire.

Certainly there were outside influences on the Khmer Rouge, starting with the French Revolution. Cambodia had been a French colony and many top figures of the Khmer Rouge had spent time in France. Pol Pot had gotten married on Bastille Day and had declared time as starting over when the Khmer Rouge came to power, designating it as "Year Zero". In the style of the French revolutionaries, Pol Pot planned a ten day workweek. Pol Pot spent quite a bit of time in China and this was during the era of the Cultural Revolution and the "Great Leap Forward".

But where could the idea have come from to slaughter thousands upon thousands of their own people, just because they didn't fit in to their version of how society should be? A mostly forgotten part of recent history is the slaughter of Communists in neighboring Indonesia, in the mid-1960s. Many thousands of people were killed, anyone even suspected of having Communist sympathies. The Khmer Rouge could have been retaliating, a decade later, and similarly massacring anyone opposed, or just not fitting into, their version of Communism.

Yet Communism, to the Khmer Rouge, was just a sheet. This could just as easily have been done in the name of any other ideology. The nations of Southeast Asia were all Communist. But their common ideology didn't stop them from going to war with each other. These nations with long histories were reenacting those histories and just needed an ideology or religion to do the reenactment in the name of, and that is what the sheet is. 

BABYLON STRIKES BACK 

During my youth there was a war that went on for eight years. It was the Iran-Iraq War that began in 1980. It was a nasty war, with a heavy death toll on both sides. Much of the war was a stalemate, with the use of poison gas that was reminiscent of World War One.

At first the west paid close attention to the war. The staff of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran was still being held hostage and there was concern for their safety. But after the hostages were released and it became apparent that the war was unlikely to spread, and that neither side was going to gain a quick victory, the west's interest somewhat faded.

I didn't have the knowledge then that I do now but I realized that there must be something behind this war to make it go on for so long, with neither side really gaining anything from it. Iraq is generally considered as having initiated the war, with an invasion of Iran in September 1980, following border clashes. 

The history behind this was clear, a reenactment of the conquest and conversion to Islam of the Sasanian Empire by the Rashidun Caliphate in the early days of Islam. The Sasanians had been in disarray following a civil war in the same way that Iran was in revolutionary turmoil when Iraq invaded in 1980.

Does anyone wonder why Iran is so close to the Houthis in distant Yemen? It is rooted in history going back to before Iran was Islamic. The following map from the Wikipedia article "Sasanian Empire" shows what is now part of Yemen at the bottom in blue.

This shows that although the name of the country is the Islamic Republic of Iran the country has a long history and has only been Islamic for about half of that history. Although it may be done in the name of Islam, Iran's relationships and policies are often rooted in it's history long before the beginning of Islam. Pre-Islamic Iran is still very much present, for example in the New Year celebration of No Ruz.

The Iranian Revolution, which began in 1979 and was going on at the time of the Iraqi invasion, was itself well-rooted in history. First, it was very much a reenactment of the French Revolution which I consider as the "Big Bang" of the modern political era. I consider the Iranian Revolution as the second major reenactment of the French Revolution, after the October Revolution of 1917. Second, it was a reenactment of the Persian Safavid Dynasty converting the country from Sunni to Shiite Islam.

Now, finally, I think I understand the Iran-Iraq War.

Remember that this is a part of the world where history goes very far back, and that history is very important. To really understand the Iran-Iraq War we have to go all the way back to ancient times. Persia began as a great power with it's victory over Babylon, in 539 BC. The Medes had earlier fought together with Babylon to vanquish Assyria, the previous great power. The Persians were a vassal state of the Medes but then they rose up, so that the Medes and Persians were still together but now the Persians were in control.

Conflict began between Persia and Babylon. While a drunken royal party was going on inside the walled city of Babylon, the Persian engineers managed to partially dam the Euphrates River, which flowed through the walled city, and the Persian warriors were able to get inside the walls. There is little evidence of conflict after they had gotten inside the walls and it seems that the people had welcomed them as liberators.

Babylon is located in what is now Iraq. In modern times Saddam Hussein was very interested in Babylon and had much of it rebuilt. Saddam greatly admired Nebuchadnezzar II. This was the Babylonian emperor who destroyed the Jews' original Temple and took them captive to Babylon. A different dynasty was ruling Babylon at the time of it's overthrow by Persia. The Persians allowed the Jews to return to their homeland, where they built the Second Temple. The majority of Jews are believed to have chosen to remain in Babylon, where they were doing quite well, and played an important role in Jewish history up until modern times. 

What has to be understood about the Iran-Iraq War, and why this deadly war went on for so long despite the fact that neither side was gaining anything from it, is that it was a rematch in this all-important ancient conflict. It might have been more fitting if it had involved the overthrown Shah of Iran, since this had been the same 2500-year old monarchy that had conquered Babylon, but the Iranian Revolution had overthrown the Shah by the time Saddam Hussein had consolidated his power, and Iran was now led by Ayatollah Khomeini.

It is so important to understand history because we tend to repeat it. Sometimes the repetition is intentional but it is more often done without realizing it. But this is how history works. The repetition or reenactment is usually not neat. It is rarely one event reenacting a single previous event. There are usually several threads, as we can see here with the Iran-Iraq War, but a very important thread of this war, that I have not seen discussed before, is that it was a rematch of the ancient battle between Persia and Babylon. It doesn't really matter whether Saddam Hussein wanted a rematch either consciously or subconsciously. 

To understand why Saddam Hussein would want a rematch of this ancient battle we have to understand that Babylon became a great power by such a rematch of a historical event. The Babylon that we are most familiar with, the one with Nebuchadnezzar II destroying the Jews' Temple and taking them captive to Babylon before being conquered itself by Persia, is actually Neo-Babylon. Babylon had been a great power a thousand years earlier, before being conquered by the Hittites. Babylon later found itself being conquered by Assyria until it rose up and overthrew it's conqueror. Now Saddam, seeing Iraq as the modern incarnation of Babylon, would lead it to again rise up against a conqueror.

Before the war started the conflict between Persia and Babylon was already being reenacted. Just as the Persians had gotten inside the walls of Babylon the Iranian revolutionaries had gotten inside the walls of the U.S. Embassy compound and taken the staff hostage. This storming of the U.S. Embassy also served to establish the budding revolution as a reenactment of the French Revolution. We have seen that the signature event of the French Revolution was the Storming of the Bastille. So, in terms of history, the takeover of the U.S. Embassy was like the conquest of Babylon and the French Revolution coming together. The French Revolution was like the Big Bang of the modern political era and every reenactment of it has some corresponding "storming". America's would-have-been January 6 Revolution was the Storming of the Capitol Building. 

A minor factor in the Iran-Iraq War is that both countries had undergone repetitions of the French Revolution, where monarchs had been overthrown. But while Iraq had remained "true" to the French Revolution, with Saddam in a military uniform reminiscent of Napoleon that had replaced the monarch, Iran had gone off in a different direction, with the overthrown monarch being replaced by religious leaders. 

Just as the ancient Persian conquest of Babylon revolved around a river so the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War revolved around a river. The Tigris and Euphrates Rivers join together to form the Shatt-al-Arab River, which empties into the Persian Gulf. This river forms part of the boundary between the two countries and the ill-feelings between the two began over where exactly in the river the border was.

For the tremendous amount of death and destruction in this war to be over the jurisdiction of a few meters of river doesn't seem to make the slightest bit of sense. But we have to remember how important history is and how this war is a reenactment of an ancient conflict that revolved around the same river. 

The following image of the river, from Google Street View, is looking across at Abadan, from the Iraqi side, around where the invasion of Iran began.

Just as the Persians had gotten inside the walls of Babylon by way of a river, Saddam's forces got into Iran by way of the same river. Just as the population of ancient Babylon seems to have welcomed the Persians as liberators so Saddam Hussein, representing the comeback of Babylon, was hoping that the population of Iran's Arab-majority and oil-rich Khuzestan province would welcome his forces as liberators. Just as the Persian conquest of Babylon had freed the Jews from captivity in Babylon so this invasion indirectly and inadvertently freed the U.S. hostages being held in Iran. With Iran actually being invaded the hostages were no longer needed as a rallying point for the revolution, their guards were needed at the battlefront, and soon the hostages were released.

But by invading Iran, which was convulsed by it's revolution at the time, Saddam Hussein inadvertently gave Iran a crusade around which to consolidate that revolution. Except that, while done in the name of Islam, Iran's crusade against Iraq was also a reenactment of this ancient battle against Babylon, which is what made Persia into a great power. Iran's objective in the war was, of course, opposing that of Iraq. Iran was trying to reaffirm it's ancient conquest of Babylon.

The population of Babylon seems to have welcomed the Persians as liberators once they got inside the walls. In the same way the Iranians were hoping that their fellow Shiites in Iraq would join them against Saddam, who was a Sunni Moslem and favored Sunnis even though the majority of the population of Iraq was Shiite. One of the reasons for the war was likely that Saddam feared the Iranian Revolution spreading to his own majority Shiite population. 

Saddam Hussein repeatedly offered to negotiate an end to the war but the Iranian leadership ignored him, despite the tremendous cost of the war to Iran. But this is the way it had to be. Iran's revolutionary leadership wasn't just competing against Iraq, it also had to show that it was worthy of replacing the 2500 year-old monarchy that came before it. Persia had become a great power with it's ancient victory over Babylon. Now since Babylon, in the form of modern Iraq, had invaded Iran during it's revolution it was necessary for revolutionary Iran to show that it could repeat the victory over Babylon. To have the war end in a draw was simply unacceptable, no matter what the cost.

Here is something amazing about how history repeats itself. In 1981, during the war, the Iranian Air Force pulled off one of the most successful air raids in history. On the far side of Iraq there was an air base where a large number of warplanes were kept, safely out of reach of the Iranians. In a brilliant and complex operation, dozens of these aircraft were destroyed on the ground. Iranian planes, which had to be refueled in the air several times, flew, at low altitude, along the Iraqi-Turkish border to get to the air base. 

The air attack has been analyzed in the west but what I have never seen referred to is that it was effectively a modern aerial reenactment of the Persians getting inside the walls of Babylon. In the following image from the Wikipedia article "Airstrike On H3", the red arrows show how the Iranian formation went around the borders of Iraq, which was a reenactment of the complex operation to get inside the walls of Babylon. The modern borders of Iraq represented the ancient walls of Babylon.

This complex air operation was also a jab at America as it had succeeded where the attempt to rescue the hostages the year before had failed.

Nowhere is this reenactment of "getting inside the walls" more prominent than in the Haft e Tir Bombing, of June 1981. A massive bomb got inside the walls of Iran's Islamic Republican Party headquarters and killed most of the top figures in the government, more than seventy people. Ayatollah Khomeini was not there. It is a great credit to the Iranian Revolution that it survived this bombing. An Iranian dissident group, the Mujahedeen e Khalq which later sided with Iraq in the war, is generally suspected of the bombing. The walls of the building represented the walls of Babylon.

I believe that this war would never have happened if the ruins of Babylon had not been excavated, and brought into the world's consciousness. This must also include events that resulted from this war, such as Saddam's seizure of Kuwait after he failed to get Khuzestan province from Iran. This resulted in the founding of Al Qaeda, due to the resentment of outside armies in the Holy Land of Islam, which ultimately led to the attacks of 9-11.

We have to wonder about the Second World War also. I have never seen that the Nazis linked themselves to Babylon. But it was German archeologists that were instrumental in excavating Babylon and the Ishtar Gate was reassembled in Berlin. Babylon had risen up and conquered those who had earlier conquered them, the Assyrians, and then it took the Jews captive. The Nazis led Germany in a similar situation, rising up against the Allies that had been victorious in the First World War.

What is so interesting is that Saddam Hussein, who brought Babylon back, was ultimately deposed by the U.S. The Book of Revelation, Chapter 18, describes a great and powerful nation in the Last Days of the world, that will be destroyed in the Apocalypse. It is called "Mystery Babylon".

There is more to ancient history being reenacted in what is now Iraq. It is about where the un-Islamic barbarity of Islamic State really came from. Assyria, in ancient times, was known for it's barbarity. Assyria once ruled Babylon until Babylon was able to rise up and overthrow Assyria, and then supplant it as the predominant power. The Assyrian capital of Nineveh is now the Iraqi city of Mosul, and that is where the Islamic State caliphate was proclaimed from. The area ruled by Islamic State was roughly the same as that ruled by Assyria. So Islamic State was the comeback of Assyria just as Saddam Hussein's Iraq was the comeback of Babylon. 

What has to be understood about Islam in the Middle East is that, while Islam is a younger religion than Christianity and Judaism, the Middle East has a history going far back into ancient times. That history gets reenacted, but the reenactment is often done in the guise of Islam. This makes modern Islam the "sheet" under which the ancient history is reenacted.

For more about the long-term effects of the Iran-Iraq War on the world see "When The Last Forty Years Began", October 2022. 

ASSYRIA AND SUMER STRIKE BACK 

Remembering how important symbolism can be, there is a simple explanation for the barbarity that has taken place during the uprisings in Syria and it's civil war.

What about the name of the country?

Syria is named for the Assyrian Empire, of ancient times, even though the cities that were successive capitals of the empire were in what is now neighboring Iraq. What the Assyrians were known for, plainly and simply, was brutality. They maintained an empire basically by terrifying subject peoples into submission. 

There is some reason to doubt this view of the Assyrians. They did make a lot of enemies and they were defined by their enemies, after ultimately being conquered by them, as barbaric savages that the world is better off without. 

Although there is certainly some truth to the stories of barbarity, it is also true that Assyria was one of history's great civilizations. It is now known for it's art, architecture, literature and, effective government. But the Assyrians have gone down in history as brutal warriors who maintained their rule mainly by terrifying subject peoples into submission.

Although Damascus and Aleppo were part of the Neo-Assyrian Empire, it was centered in what is now Iraq. But the ancient Greeks, who came later, were the ones who named much of the region. Egypt and Ethiopia are both Greek names. The names of the three famous pyramids at Giza are given in either the Egyptian or Greek form. The Greek name of Khufu is Cheops, of Khafre is Chephren, and of Menkaure is Mycerinus. 

The Phoenicians were an ancient people along the coast to the north of Israel. They are renowned for sailing the Mediterranean and so many of the important cities there began as Phoenician settlements. They are also known for developing the first alphabet, based on the sounds of speech. The Phoenicians are where the name of your phone comes from. The country is now called Lebanon. But it is now believed that the Phoenicians were actually a group of independent coastal city states that didn't consider themselves as one nation, but were given the collective name by the Greeks.

Readers of the Bible know the Philistines as the persistent enemy of Israel in it's early days. But the Philistines had five cities and I believe that these were independent city states that cooperated with each other but didn't consider themselves as one nation. Notice that no king of all the Philistines, like the Phoenicians, is ever mentioned in the Bible, much unlike Israel's other neighbors. If the Philistines had been a nation, as opposed to independent city states, they certainly would have had a king. But since they cooperated together they were given a name, and Philistine is a Greek name.

The name of Jesus is actually the Greek form of "Joshua".

The name of Syria is ultimately from the Greeks, who came centuries later, for Assyria even though Assyria had been centered more to the east.

Another possible example of such misplacement is the fabled Hanging Gardens of Babylon. While it seems unlikely that the gardens are only a legend, no trace of them have been found. But it does seem that there were such gardens in Assyria and there are those who believed that Greek writers, several centuries later, misplaced the gardens in Babylon.

But what should we expect from the rulers of a country that was named for Assyria? What would Assyrian emperors like those named Tiglath-Pileser, Sennacherib, Salmaneser, Esarhaddon or, Ashurbanipal have done if there was an uprising against them? 

When the Assad Dynasty of Syria conducted air raids on their own cities, isn't that what one of the Assyrian emperors would have done if they had an air force? The Assads did have the name of Assyria to live up to. If any city rose up against Assyrian rule they would make an example out of it so that no one else would dare to rise up. Until finally, the Assyrians had made so many enemies that they couldn't deal with them all at once.

As I have written here before, Syria wasn't the only way that Assyria has struck back in recent times. IS was more barbaric than the Assad family. But IS was declared in Mosul, which was once the Assyrian capital of Nineveh, and their territory was roughly the original territory of Assyria.

Another example in the region of how a name can invoke history is Gaza. The Philistines actually consisted of five independent city states that cooperated, and were the scourge of Israel for about 200 years. Gaza was one of those city states, and the present region of Gaza is named for it. This explains the hostility to Israel. The others were Ekron, Ashkelon, Ashdod and, Gath. The Philistines are not mentioned after the return of the Jews from exile in Babylon so it seems that the Babylonians also eliminated the Philistines.

In these cases, names caused ancient history to be reenacted with the modern nations acting as the sheet.

SUMER STRIKES BACK

One of the places where civilization began was Mesopotamia, which means "The Land Between The Rivers". This means between the Tigris And Euphrates Rivers. The southern part of Mesopotamia was once called Sumer, and the northern part Akkad. Later, the southern part would be called Babylon, and the northern part Assyria. All four would be among the early civilizations. Sumer is often considered as the first civilization, and Assyria as the first major empire.

Mesopotamia is within what is now known as Iraq. The name of Iraq may have come from the city of Uruk, which was an important ancient city of Sumer. It is apparently not certain that the name of Iraq came from Uruk, but it was widely believed that it did.

Iraq surprised the world in 1990 by seizing neighboring Kuwait, which led to the First Gulf War. But what we have to remember is that the territory of oil-rich Kuwait had been part of Sumer, considering that the coast has receded since ancient times, probably because of glacial rebound. 

We saw why Iraq invaded Iran, in 1980. This explains why Iraq invaded Kuwait ten years later. The ancient kingdoms are very much still with us. But their history tends to get reenacted while covered by a modern "sheet".