This sculpture proves that in the reign of Xerxes (486-465 b.c.) somebody traveled from the Achaemenid Empire to a country where Pygmies and okapis dwelt and returned to tell the tale. Today this would mean that the traveler reached the Ituri Forest of the northeastern Congo. In Xerxes' time, Pygmies were widely spread about Africa and the okapi probably had a wider range than it does now. But, as the okapi is adapted to life in a dense tropical rain forest, it cannot have ranged very far outside the present Congo, because east of the Congo-Uganda line the country becomes open parkland except for gallery forests along the streams. (In ancient times, however, the forest may have been somewhat more extensive because the Africans had not deforested large areas by annual grass burnings.)
Nothing is known about the contact opened up at this time between the Mediterranean world and the Lake Region of Central Africa save the bare fact that it happened. Whoever fetched the three Pygmies and their beast to Xerxes' court must have adventures quite as hair-raising as those attributed to my fictional characters.
The unknown explorer's feat of bringing a living okapi to Persepolis is matched by a similar exploit from later times. D. N. Wilber informs me that, about 1402, the Sultan of Egypt gave a giraffe to Timur, the Tatar king. And that poor giraffe walked all the way, presumably from its home in the Sudan, to Samarqand—well over 3,000 miles.
Afterwards the episode of the okapi was forgotten, except for the knowledge, alluded to by classical authors (Aeschylus, Anaxagoras, Euripides, Aristotle, Poseidonius, Diodorus, Claudius Ptolemaeus, etc.), that the Nile originated in rain or melting snow on tall equatorial mountains. This range was sometimes called the "Silver Mountain" and sometimes the "Mountains of the Moon," probably because of the snows of Mount Ruwenzori. Until the invasion of the country by European explorers in the nineteenth century, it was not generally believed that mountains in so tropical a region could have snow on them. But the discovery of Mounts Kenya, Kilimanjaro, and Ruwenzori proved otherwise.
It seems as if the travel route between the Mediterranean world and Central Africa did not remain open long. I suspect that it closed when the Nilotic Negroes of the southern Sudan learned to smelt iron and put iron heads on their spears. They thus became more formidable than when their spears were tipped only with horn. Having been raided by slavers, they probably attacked any outsiders on sight.
For many centuries the Nilotics kept all foreigners at bay, until the gun gave the outlanders another great advantage. Then slave raiding on the Upper Nile was resumed by the Arabs, Turks, and Egyptians, and by adventurers and riffraff from many nations.
The definitely historical characters in this novel are King Xerxes and his officials and relatives: Achaemenes, Apollonides, Artabanus, Aspamitres, Bagabyxas, Tithraustes, and Zopyrus; Murashu the banker and his son Belhatin; King Saas-herqa (whose cartouche can be read in several ways, such as Sa'as-heriqa, Si'aspiqa, Asâs-heraq, etc.); and various offstage and deceased characters alluded to, such as Amestris, Artaxerxes, Darius, Iranu, Masistes, Naburimanni, Sataspes, Themistokles, and Vaus.
King Takarta is imaginary, though his predecessor Karkamon and his successor Astabarqamon are real. The exact date and cause of the removal of Kushite capital from Napata to Meroê are not known, but the change may have taken place somewhat as set forth in the story.
Three characters are on the border line between history and legend. Salîmat is a legendary Arab warrior princess for whom the Selîma Oasis (called the Fifty-League Oasis in the story) is named. Ostanas (or Osthanes) is a half-legendary magician alluded to by Pliny and Diogenes Laërtius, whose story was further embroidered by later writers on alchemy.
Orontes is based upon two sentences, of no great historical weight, by ancient writers. Strabo the geographer says of the Orontes River (XVI, ii, 7) that: "Though formerly called Typhon, its name was changed to that of Orontes, the man who built a bridge across it." John Zonaras, the Byzantine historian, says of the Orontes (XIII, 8) that it was "... according to some formerly called the Ophites, later named after the son of Cambyses, king of the Persians, who was drowned therein."
Now, Typhon was a dragon of Greek mythology, and ophites is Greek for "serpentine." Other sources call the river the Draco, or dragon. So we can infer that the original Semitic name for the river probably meant something like "serpentine" or "reptilian"; wherefore I have called the river the "Serpentine" in the story. The legend of the channel's having been dug by a flying dragon is based upon that given by Strabo, loc. cit.
However, the river cannot have been really renamed for the suppositious Orontes, because the original name was already very much like Orontes. It appears in Egyptian inscriptions of the fifteenth century B.C. as the Yernet or Yerset (the latter probably a misspelling) and Assyrian inscriptions of the ninth call it the Arantu. If the man Orontes lived, the resemblance between his name (probably something like Auravanda in Old Persian) and that of the river could have given rise to the story of the river's being named for the man, although the name of the river is at least a thousand years older.
The main characters in the story—Myron, Bessas, and their comrades—-are all imaginary. It is not known who first suggested that the earth is round, but the idea appeared some time in the century in which the story is laid. Some ancient writers, such as Aristotle, attribute it to one of the followers of the philosopher Pythagoras—possibly Philolaos of Crotona, who was probably born within a few years of the time Of my story, but of whom very little is definitely known. It may well have been suggested by the changing aspect of the heavens during a journey of exploration that covered many degrees of latitude.
Although the names of Greek, Babylonian, and other non-Persian characters are given in the most convenient approximation of their original forms, those of the Persians are given in their Latinized Greek guise. The reason is that Old, Persian names are difficult. In some cases the Old Persian forms are not known while in others they are inordinately long or hard to pronounce.
For those who are curious about the original forms of these names, I add a list of OP names appearing in the story, whose OP forms are known, both in classical and in OP forms. By the use of diacritical marks, the OP names can be spelled in various ways. As you can see, the Greeks and Romans did not use any consistent system of transliterating Persian names. Starred names I made up by analogy with known forms:
CLASSICAL
Achaemenes
Arsaces, -kes
Arsames
Artabanus, -os, Artapanus
Artaxerxes
Aryandes
Aspamitres
Astes
Bagabyxas*, Bacabasus, Bagazos, Megabyzes, -myxos
Bardias*, Mardos, Merdias, Smerdis
Bessas*, -us, -os, Besas
Cambyses, Kam-
Cyaxares, Ky-
Cyrus, Kyros
Daduchus, -ouchos, Daüchas, Daou-
Darius, Dareios, -eiaios
Datas, -is
Daurises
Embas
Gomates
Haraspes
Hydarnes
Hystaspes
Izates
Masdaeus, Mazae-, -aios
Masistes
Ochus, -os