Young Cyrus, on the verge of entering his third year of life, had directed his boundless curiosity towards his surroundings. He was no longer just a calm infant; his eyes were constantly seeking to discover the unknown, and his small hands reached out towards every new object. Within the royal palace of Anshan, his ancestral home, there was a place that drew his attention more than anything else: a small, dimly lit room, filled with wooden shelves on which thousands of clay tablets, with strange and incomprehensible writings, were stacked. This was the family library or a collection of important tablets that held the knowledge of generations.
The library space carried the scent of old earth and mystery. A faint light filtering through a small opening cast dancing shadows on the stone walls and wooden shelves. Cyrus, every time his parents or nurses brought him into this room, was involuntarily drawn towards the tablets. He ran his small hands over the clay tablets, as if wanting to feel the secrets hidden within their raised cuneiform scripts.
Throughout the days and nights, in the silence of his mind, Cyrus began to decipher these tablets. Sumerian and Akkadian cuneiform scripts, which were prevalent as languages of knowledge and government in Mesopotamia and its surrounding regions during that era, proved to be a fascinating challenge for him. He recalled that in his previous life, as a history professor, he had a general familiarity with these languages and scripts, but he had never delved into their details and complexities to this depth.
Each tablet was a world of words and symbols. Cyrus, using his extraordinary photographic memory, began to analyze and match the signs and sounds. He realized that these scripts, unlike simple modern alphabets, consisted of hundreds of signs, each capable of representing a word, a syllable, or even a concept. This complexity was bewildering for a 21st-century mind accustomed to simplicity and efficiency.
Gradually, the markings on the tablets began to make sense to him. He could not only read the words but also grasp the concepts behind them. Mythological stories, laws, commercial documents, and even letters from ancient kings, all came alive before his eyes. This astonishing ability to read and comprehend these ancient languages at a very young age turned him into a phenomenon in Anshan.
Amidst this clay treasure trove, Cyrus's gaze was drawn to a particular tablet; a smaller tablet but with more precise engravings, as if it contained a royal family tree. As he deciphered its lines, his eyes sparkled with wonder. This tablet traced the Persian lineage from their great ancestor, Achaemenes, the legendary founder of the dynasty. He discovered that after Achaemenes, his son Teispes took leadership of the Persians. It was Teispes who divided the Persian family into two main branches so that both generations could rule over important parts of the realm.
One branch of this family, descended from Cyrus I (son of Teispes), assumed the rulership of Anshan. This was the very branch to which young Cyrus himself belonged, and his ancestors, including his father Cambyses, ruled there. This discovery not only strengthened his connection to the real history of his family but also gave him a deeper understanding of his place in the royal dynasty.
The other branch originated from Teispes's other son, Ariaramnes. This tablet clearly showed that these two branches shared a common root but had taken separate paths for ruling different regions of Parsa. This knowledge made Cyrus ponder; he now knew that in the future, he would face not only external challenges but also internal potentials and even hidden rivalries within the great Achaemenid dynasty.