Changes

[[File:IvoryLabelOfDen-BritishMuseum-August19-08.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|Figure 1. Pharaoh Den from the First Dynasty smiting his enemies from the "east."]]

[[File:Stele Naram Sim Louvre Sb4.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|Figure 2. Naram-Sin, depicted as god, destroying his inferior enemies.]]By the rise of the Achaemenid Empire in Iran, in the 6th century BC, we see a new form of rule emerging. On the one hand, empires now began to expand to much larger areas. In the case of the Achaemenids, their state reached from Egypt to Central Asia, and at times pushed into the northern shores of the Black Sea and southeast Europe to the Danube.<ref>For more information about the territories and regions controlled by the Achaemenid Empire, see: Waters, M. W. 2014. Ancient Persia: a concise history of the Achaemenid Empire, 550-330 BCE. New York, NY, USA: Cambridge University Press.</ref> With such a vast distance between regions, the new ruling dynasties needed new strategies to facilitate the maintenance of large states and enable populations within the large empire to accept their overlords. This may have led to the rise of multiculturalism, as we now begin to see more official celebration celebrations of different cultures within the Achaemenid state.

For instance, in Mesopotamia, the Persian Achaemenid king depicted himself as Babylonian, while in Egypt we see depictions of the Achaemenid king as Pharaoh. The best example of this is from the reign of Darius I (522-486 BC; Figure 3). During the reign of Darius , several representations of him as an Egyptian Pharaoh are depicted, including the rebuilding of important temples in Egypt. Before the reign of Darius, the Achaemenid king Cyrus was considered to write perhaps the world's oldest human rights manifesto. <ref> For information about the Achaemenid kings and their tolerant policies, see: Curtis, John, Nigel Tallis, and Béatrice And́́́́ré-Salvini, eds. 2005. Forgotten Empire: The World of Ancient Persia. Berkeley: University of California Press, pg. 153.</ref>  What is made clear from these kings is that the Persian Achaemenid Empire recognized its multi-cultural aspects and embraced it with open arms as a strength. [[File:4496698964 ed80712436 b.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|Figure 3. Darius I depicted as Pharaoh in Egypt.]]

Perhaps one good example of how multicultural ideas began to persist and penetrate societies can be found in the ancient city of Dura Europos, found in modern day eastern Syria. While this region might be known for strife and ravages created by ISIS today, the reality was very different in the 1 century CE. During that time, Dura Europos was a thriving small city that had such languages as Latin, Greek, Syriac, Persian, and others. The many temples and places of worship represented gods across Europe, the Near East, and India, reflecting perhaps the diversity of people found in the city. Cultures also began to influence each other.  For instance, one famous find in the city is a synagogue with beautiful style frescoes. However, many of these frescoes were influenced or mixed Near East styles with classical art, showing that cultures began to borrow ideas from each other. This is something we call as artistic syncretism (Figure 5).<ref>For more information on how Classical art influences and blends with Near Eastern art and styles, including in religion, see: Reid, P. V. 1987. Readings in Western religious thought. New York: Paulist Press.</ref> What was happening was not bad copies of Classical art in the Near East, but art began to now be influenced by local cultures mixed with new populations who had come to the region, including Greeks and Romans.

[[File:Reliefs.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|Figure 4. Reliefs from Persepolis depict Egyptian (1), Greek (2), and Assyrian (3) style influences (a & b). By the 6th-5th centuries BC, populations were heavily mixed in major population centres.]]Given this rise of multiculturalism, it is perhaps not surprising that when we do get the rise of Christianity and Judaism, religions that were universal and monotheistic, they seem to have been accepted or tolerated in many areas of the Near East ruled by Iranian dynasties, such as the Parthians and Sasanians, by then had a long experience with multiple cultural groups and beliefs. These groups recognized, perhaps, the benefits of keeping a united state through the tolerance to different groups, even those that emphasized a narrower worldview of salvation that Rome found so threatening. <ref> For information on religious tolerance in the Parthian and Sasanian periods, see: Curtis, John, Vladimir Grigorʹevich Lukonin, and British Museum, eds. 2000. Mesopotamia and Iran in the Parthian and Sasanian Periods: Rejection and Revival C. 238 BC-AD 642: Proceedings of a Seminar in Memory of Vladimir G. Lukonin ; Funded by a Gift from Raymond and Beverly Sackler. London: Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum Press.</ref> While this was never a smooth process, and persecutions against groups did exist, we see that attitudes towards multiple cultures allowed also the freedom to develop new thoughts and ideas, giving way to the rise of very different and new religions that attempt to bond people even closer through common and universal faiths.

[[File:Dura Europos fresco worshipping gold calf.jpg|thumbnail|left|250px|Figure 5. This synagogue painting shows a Biblical scene of the burning of the calf. While the story is well known, the art is influenced by Greco-Roman styles and mixes Near East elements.]]With this given history in the Near East, and unlike Europe, multicultural empires persisted long after the fall of Rome and, in fact, continued until the fall of the Ottoman Empire in World War I. However, the rise of nationalism in the 19th-20th centuries and the creation of modern nation -states began to create new realities and opportunities for individuals that have, to some extent, led to the rise of some of the current conflicts in the Near East. Cultural groups now experienced opportunities to express their own beliefs and power more clearly as they were given more opportunities to assert themselves.  In the 20th and 21st centurycenturies, the conflicts in the Near East perhaps reflect this great, long-term conflict that is about the identity of the various regions within the Near East. Regardless of this case, what this shows is that more recent history does not necessarily reflect a historical pattern, where current conflicts between ethnic groups are more likely reflecting new power realities that did not translate to past societies in the region. <ref>For information on how nationalism shaped the more modern Near East, see: Schumann, Christoph, ed. 2010. Nationalism and Liberal Thought in the Arab East: Ideology and Practice. SOAS/Routledge Studies on the Middle East 10. London ; New York: Routledge.</ref>