A story that only gets stranger and sadder.

May 25, 2001 12:14 AM

A story that only gets stranger and sadder. A gold-masked mummy, whose sensational discovery last year sparked an ownership row between Pakistan, Iran and Afghanistan, has turned out not only to be a modern fake but also the apparent victim in a macabre murder mystery.
posted by lagado (3 comments total)

As a side point, I was intrigued to find out that the religion Zoroastrianism was not only a foundation stone for judaism but also of Germanic pre-christian culture born from Aryan nobility in 1800BC!!!
see
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~zarathus/zor33.html
posted by kramer_101 at 6:05 AM on May 25, 2001

Pretty unlikely. You gotta very skeptical in this area. That's a classic "my religion is the basis for all the other religions" blurb. One of the warning signs for this particular type is the overuse of the often abused idea of "the Aryan peoples." You see a similar (but completely incompatible) use of it by some Hindu fundamentalists to show that India is the source of [your religion here].

The Iranian (which this guy muddles with "Aryan") people and the Germanic peoples had been separated for a long time by the time of Zoroaster. I wouldn't be surprised if Zoroastrianism had some influence on later developments in Judaism, but "a foundation stone"? No.
posted by rodii at 3:56 PM on May 25, 2001

Zoroastrianism may have had more influence on Germanic mythology circa 1900 AD

Thus Spake Zarathustra
posted by lagado at 5:55 PM on May 25, 2001