12 апреля 1985 г. – 12 апреля 2025 г.: 40 лет авторства, устно-письменных, печатных и онлайн-публикаций - II
In a first commemorative article written on the anniversary of the completion of 40 years of authorship, I evoked the circumstances under which I wrote and published my first article about the Iran-Iraq war, back in 1985, in Greece. As I said, the text was written in several Iranian cities during my first sojourn there and in Turkey while I was returning to Greece. But why did I take the decision to write a report about the Iran-Iraq war and all the historical, religious, social, political and military parameters that determined the exit of the catastrophic event? To this question I never managed to offer a complete and convincing response to myself.
Pictures from my early period of authorship: Naqsh-e Rustam, Iran 1986; in a public lecture (on Assyrian Babylonian Mathematics and Astronomy) organized by the quarterly Astronautiki in Athens, Greece 1987
Cover pages of magazines and reviews in which my early articles were published
Contents
I. How it all started
II.
Snapshots of my early publications
III. The early feedback
IV.
Authorship without payment and without a job position
V. When
authorship brings about comments, encounters, assessments, and predictions
VI. My
periods of authorship
1985-1991:
first period
1991-1998:
second period
2001-2013:
third period
2014-today:
fourth period
VII. My
tendency to correspondence
VIII.
Entries to Encyclopedias
IX.
Scholarly Articles and Public Lectures and Seminars
A- Scholarly
articles
B- Public
lectures
C- Public
seminars
X. The
culmination of my first period of publications
XI. My Conclusions
Содержание
I. Как все
начиналось
II. Краткие
обзоры моих ранних публикаций
III. Ранние отзывы
IV. Авторство без
оплаты и без должности
V. Когда
авторство приносит комментарии, встречи, оценки и прогнозы
VI. Периоды
моего авторства
1985-1991:
первый период
1991-1998:
второй период
2001-2013:
третий период
2014-сегодня:
четвертый период
VII.
Моя склонность к переписке
VIII.
Записи в энциклопедиях
IX.
Научные статьи и публичные лекции и семинары
A-
Научные статьи
B-
Публичные лекции
C-
Публичные семинары
X. Кульминация первого периода моих публикаций
XI. Мои выводы
I. How it all
started
Was it the desire to make known to others a multitude of facts and situations, conditions of life, mentalities and attitudes that were totally unknown in Greece and the rest of Western Europe?
Was it the need to put down the numerous astonishing circumstances that I lived and the extraordinary occurrences that the rich hours of the Iranian villagers, farmers, craftsmen and shepherds revealed to me?
Was it my bewilderment about the socio-cultural context that I encountered in the mostly mountainous Western Iranian provinces, i. e. an unadulterated environment that contrasted with the everyday life rhythm as this was known in either soviet or capitalist economies and societies?
Was it the fact that for the first time in my adult life I had unexpectedly found in the Zagros Mountains and the Iranian plateau a reflection of my grandfather's narratives about early 20th c. Ottoman Anatolia?
Was it the result of an already drawn, albeit subconsciously, conclusion about the ultimate futility of the modern world and the unendurable vanity of its victims?
Perhaps I wanted to help others with that text, which would easily become a point of controversy and polarization; alternatively, maybe, I desired to assist myself with a landmark text, which would inevitably never allow me to go back to my earlier mindset and world view.
Writing that text, I lived a very bizarre experience; I was conscious that I was writing a text that no other person had written until then or would ever write in the future. Of course, every text is unique and so is every author; but I had the odd feeling that the people about whom I was writing did not need to write such a text, because all its contents were already known to them and viewed as normal and regular.
From the other side, the people for whom I was writing the text, namely all those who had never traveled to the regions that I visited and studied, would not need to read such a text, because all its contents, which were certainly unknown to them, would reveal to them situations of life that they would never wish to encounter let alone live.
All the same, the experience of writing proved to be quite revelatory for me; during the process, which involved ruminations and contemplations, assessments and re-considerations, I was able to give answers to several questions that I had first made when a postgraduate student in Paris (1979). The fact that the Islamic revolution in Iran appeared able to motivate masses, when the two major states, which were based on different versions and interpretations of Marxism-Leninism (USSR and China), had become established bureaucracies and nomenklatura-based administrations, was for me an alarming indicator. In Iran, I understood that, although the Western bias, involvement and interference in the Islamic revolution are undeniable, the success of the event was due to the reliance of the urban political elite on the spiritually, culturally and intellectually earnest and fervent populations of the provinces.
Writing for Politika Themata and for several other Greek reviews, magazines and daily newspapers became then for me a permanent and indispensable extension of my studies, notes, researches, readings, inquiries and explorations. This development reminded me of some odd words that my former Assyriologist professor Florence Malbran Labat had told me in the École pratique des hautes etudes (IVème section) back in the late 1970s; "teaching, i.e. conducting courses, helps you study and learn better"!
Writing for the general readership was a typical activity of the Soviet Orientalists; it was also a common practice for 19th c. pioneering scholars. However, in the 1970s and the 1980s, academic conformism and intellectual conventionalism had prevailed with disastrous results. Most of the specialists used to write for peers, whereas the general readership was abandoned to fraudsters, crooks, uneducated liars, cheaters and professional falsifiers.
The protracted elaboration of my academic
positions, my archaeological studies, the composition of my thesis, the
multiplication of my publications, and the researches that I undertook
confirmed my fears about the deviation of the modern scholarship. People acted
as if believing that the science is carried out in libraries, museums and
universities, and not among humans. This attitude separated scholarship from
real life and made young generations of specialists to think that field work is
not needed. That's why today's science looks like a dead endeavor very far from
human life, faith and moral.
Applying my conclusions not only as regards the textual contents but also at the level of visualization, I illustrated an article of mine about Iran (published in 1986 in Anexigito) with pictures, which were more relevant of the culture, the spirituality, and the traditions of the Iranian people than of political, social and theological issues. Seven out of the twelve pictures helped the reader understand what the critically important element for the everyday life of the Iranians was. So, yes indeed! The political rejection of the Western world was evident; the Islamic veil was enforced but it was not as important as the legendary poetry about the idyllic lovers Farhad and Shirin, about whom the Iranians cherish to incessantly read. People went to the war and many died to defend the Iranian world, but the interminable fights of the past were more often in their hearts and minds of all. The prayers gathered many people in the mosques, but the battles of the old times, the festivities, the banquets and the dances in the Safavid, Samanid, Buyid or Ghaznavid palaces, and the spiritual explorations of the vaults with the Seven Beauties by Bahram Gur always fascinated the Iranians more than anything else. And if the Islamic faith directs the faithful toward Hussein in Kerbala, Ali ibn Abi Taleb in his standardization of the Quran, and prophet Muhammad in his celestial voyage, all streams (schools/tariqas) of Iranian spirituality reserved a great deal of admiration and respect for Jalal al-Din Rumi Mevlana, who proved able to easily communicate even with an otherwise unrecognizable aquatic human.
------------------------------------------------------------
The development, the clarification,
and the consolidation of this approach proved to be all due to my writing
activities; more I was writing, more confident I used to become about my
perception of the world. Soon, I realized that the political reality was a
minimal part of the everyday life of the people whom I was studying in parallel
with the antiquities of their locations, and the land itself. It was therefore
clear to me that I could not direct the totality of my contributions to just
one political review; I therefore started contributing to very different, if
not heteroclite, reviews, magazines, weeklies and monthlies.
II. Snapshots of my early publications
In Apodimos ('Expatriate'), I wrote about the small Greek community of Iran.
In Tetarto ('Fourth'; then published by the Greek composer Manos Hatzidakis), I presented cultural and spiritual topics from Iran and India.
In Arhaiologia, my first academic article concerned the Caverns as Chthonian locations according to the Semitic (mainly Assyrian-Babylonian) beliefs.
In Dipli Eikona ('Double Icon'), I made available a comprehensive presentation of the Egyptian hieroglyphic writing system, giving also details about its decipherment. My article about Mithraism was my best presentation of the topic in Greek.
In Anexigito ('Inexplicable'), a great number of my articles covered historical, literary and cultural topics about Mesopotamia, Iran, Anatolia, Canaan-Phoenicia-Israel, and the Eastern Roman Empire. A series of 12 articles featured the twelve most important Eastern Roman cities of Anatolia, including Caesarea (Kayseri), Sebasteia (Sivas), Melitene (Malatya), Theodosiopolis (Erzurum), Antioch, Edessa of Osrhoene (Urhoy-Urfa), etc. My two most important articles featured Assurbanipal Emperor of the Universe (669-625 BCE) as the "Righteous Suffering" (which -long before becoming a Biblical theme- was a fundamental element of the Assyrian culture, tradition, faith and spirituality) and as the "Coming Messiah" (an Assyrian ontological topic which was later diffused among the Iranian Zoroastrians, the Jews, the Christians, and the Muslims).
In Nea Oikologia, I contributed a feature about the use of chemical weapons in the War between Iraq and Iran.
In Antilogos ('Counter-argument' weekly newspaper), I wrote about the Iran-Iraq war and delivered several presentations of Iranian archaeological sites that are mentioned in Ancient Greek texts (Persepolis, Pasargadae, Ecbatana, and Susa).
In (the Iranian monthly) Soroush (سروش), I presented (in English) a devastating criticism of the Greek political life, of the parliamentary experience, and of the calamitous choices made by the disreputable government of Andreas Papandreou and his bogus-socialist party 'PASOK'.
In Diavazo
('I read' bi-monthly), I published numerous book reviews, book notes, and
review articles; two of them were very lengthy. The first concerned the famous
novel written by Umberto Eco 'Il pendolo di Foucault' (Foucault's Pendulum); in
fact, it was an effort to shed light on the Ancient Oriental origins of Western
mysticism and esotericism. The other lengthy review-article revealed and
denounced the execrable mistakes and the shameless attitude of a disreputable
fraudster and preposterous impostor named Konstantinos Patelos, who -without having
ever studied (in a college, institute or university) a single course on the
History of Islam and without having ever graduated in any discipline related to
Islamic studies- was appointed 'professor' in the bogus-university Panteion and
outrageously 'taught' to his students 'Political History of the Islamic Area',
writing for this purpose a totally ridiculous manual full of mistakes, which
distorted the historical truth and presented a partly, nonsensical and
otherwise absurd view of the History of Islamic states. It is quite interesting
that the ludicrous bogus-professor, because of his ignorance and stupidity, promoted
Islamic terrorism by teaching execrable fallacies and villainous lies, which
suit the extremist version of Islamic History that the ignorant and uneducated
Wahhabis and all the affiliations of the so-called 'political islam' have
propagated with USAID money, as it is now well known.
In Epopteia ('Supervision'), I contributed several articles about the Middle East, the political life in Iran, the foreign policy of the Islamic Republic, and the Finlandization of Greece (as being attempted by the absurd, highly controversial, and nonsensical policies of Andreas Papandreou). My presentation of the Sunni-Shia divide was the first written by an insider in Greece about the topic, although it echoed conventional approaches to the Islamic world, history and faith.
In Evdomi ('Seventh') daily, I expanded on the Iran-Iraq war and I featured the major sites, cities and monuments of Iran.
In Ena ('One') magazine, which was one of the three top circulation Greek weeklies, I published an itinerary under the title: °In the traces of Alexander the Great"; some of my best pictures (color slide films) taken from archaeological sites of Iran were used for the illustration of the article.
In Synchroni Ekpaideusi ('Contemporary Education'), I published a lengthy criticism of the manual 'Ancient History', which was taught in secondary education, and more specifically of the chapter on the Ancient Oriental civilizations; my review article was published in three parts.
In Techni kai Logos ('Art and Word'), my article about Jerusalem revealed that Muslims, Christians and Jews have far more reasons to cohabitate in peace and to share their heritage with one another in terms of spirituality, faith, traditions and culture than to argue and quarrel.
In Epiloges ('Selected articles') from the Reader's Digest, I published the first and the most concise (in Greece) report about the many different nations and numerous ethnic-religious-linguistic groups that the Western colonial gangsters collectively call 'Kurds' and depict as supposedly one nation, in view of the future establishment of a fake Kurdistan which will only be the explosive caldron where all those tribes that are now portrayed as supposedly calling for a free Kurdistan will be massacring one another pitilessly, so that the Western cannibals continue selling arms and living because others are killed because of them.
In Astronautiki ('Astronautics' quarterly), I contributed a series of three articles about the Assyrian-Babylonian cosmology, worldview and ecological considerations; in addition, the management of the review organized public lectures in which I spoke about several ancient writing systems (notably Sumerian, Elamite, Akkadian and Assyrian-Babylonian cuneiform, as well as Egyptian hieroglyphics) and on Mathematics and Astronomy-Astrology in Ancient Mesopotamia.
For the Turkish monthly Middle East Business and Banking (MEBB), which was published by my good friend, Prof. Erol Manisali (Faculty of Economics, Istanbul University), and to which also contributed his colleague from the same faculty, Prof. Tansu Çiller, former prime minister, I wrote several articles of political, economic and historical contents.
In Eleftherotypia ('Free press'; one of Greece's three top circulation newspapers), I published a historical analysis (one page of the newspaper; broadsheet size) about the Canaanite-Phoenician origin of the Greek alphabet, expanding for the first time in Greece on the alphabetic cuneiform alphabet of Ugarit. In this article, I denounced the systematic yet absurd attitude of the Neo-Nazi Greek politicians and pseudo-intellectuals, who propagate the Greco-centric fallacy that the Ancient Greeks 'invented' the alphabet. In this regard, I profoundly deplored the unbalanced monthly Davlos ('Torch'), a filthy publication of the lowest class, which had become the nest of paranoid nationalists and mendacious bogus-patriots who endlessly published racist nonsense about the so-called grandeur of Ancient Greece in order to gradually engulf many Greeks into false identity, ignorance, racism, and anti-Turkish, anti-Bulgarian, anti-Macedonian, anti-Albanian and anti-Islamic odium. Publicly derided, the heinous publishers of Davlos sued me for insult and slander, but I was acquitted, because there was nothing personal in my condemnation of the charlatanesque yet dangerous periodical.
In Photografos quarterly, I contributed several articles with extensive photographic coverage; features about the Iran-Iraq war, Mithraism, and several archaeological sites in the Middle East (Eastern Turkey, Syria, North Iraq, and Iran) were illustrated with many photographs that I had taken in the locations mentioned.
In Exormisi ('Sortie') daily newspaper, I published a monumental article (18th April 1990; one page of the newspaper) about the great potentialities that Greece has had in the wider Middle East and North Africa region. Thanks to that article, I was the first and until now I have been the only Greek to have publicly demanded the official recognition of the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) by Greece. Stupidly enough, numerous Greek chauvinists have repeatedly expressed an outcry against my position in favor of reciprocal recognition and terminal solution of the Cyprus problem, but to no avail. They are idiotic enough to be permanently manipulated by colonial diplomats who continuously promise them magnificent solutions in order to drag them to irredentist positions; but the down-to-Earth reality is one: Greece was indeed the reason of the very legitimate Turkish intervention in Cyprus (20th July 1974). Even worse, by rejecting to accept the facts, Greece has been entrapped in permanent idleness, disastrous impossibility to go beyond the very embarrassing situation of a quasi-permanently divided island of Cyprus, total lack of innovative approach to the role of Greece in the region, calamitous absence of national, regional and international creativity, and geopolitical nothingness.
In Avgi ('Dawn') daily, I published few refutations of book reviews and review articles that had appeared in this newspaper.
In Hypatia quarterly (launched by Prof. Voula Lambropoulou), I presented an article about Love and Sex in Ancient Mesopotamia, being the first specialist to write in Greece about topics related to everyday life in Sumer, Akkad, Assyria and Babylon.
All the
same, Politika Themata remained the central point of reference and the
main publishing center for me during the period 1985-1991; as I was only
passing from Greece, sometimes my father delivered my articles to them,
conveying my messages to them and letting them know my faraway whereabouts. It
was a period in which I used to write in compartments of trains, boats,
airplanes, buses, average restaurants and poor cafés in any possible city, town
or village, not to mention hotel rooms and lobbies or hotel restaurants. My
home and libraries of archaeological schools or institutes, and universities were
used only occasionally when references to specific texts and publications were
needed or I wanted to add a selected bibliography.
III. The early feedback
The feedback was intensively ambivalent; there were people fascinated with my knowledge, my life experience, and my fields of specialization, which were totally unknown in Greece as I was the first Greek Orientalist; they were happy to learn about the present and the past of countries about which no other newspaper or weekly published anything.
And there were people, who were deeply annoyed because of the total absence of anything Greek in my texts, in the mindset and in the mentality that they reflected, and in my personal attitude when dealing with others. More embarrassing were to many of my readers the omnipresent concept and the underlying sense that all my texts distinctively embodied: Greece is 'nothing'. As a matter of fact, all other nations do not care about Greece; all other peoples are indifferent to Greeks; for all other governments, Greece is just another country like Sudan, Yemen or Sri Lanka. There is no influence or impact of the Greek civilization on other nations, countries, cultures, faiths and worldviews; throughout History, Greece was marginal to the center of world civilization and far from the sites where the major facts of History took place.
In other words, my articles about Turkey (Anatolia), Syria and Iraq (Mesopotamia), Iran, Turan (Central Asia), India, China, and Africa revealed to my readers not only the minor significance of what they had been told that it was the world's greatest civilization, but also the uselessness and the fallacy of their education and the really stunting nature of their execrable culture and of their bogus-identity. In a way, the experience of reading my articles was for many average readers painful, excruciating and unacceptable. I must confess that as technique of writing, it was also entrapping!
In February and March 1986, I published (in Politika Themata) a most controversial article under the title 'Greece, Turkey and Democracy' (in three parts); in this daring essay, I presented my conclusions as per which Turkey, as a secular state, was far more advanced, progressive and effectively modern state than obsolete Greece. I also included a brief unit to describe the contrast that exists between secular and faith-based societies and states. In that part, I stated that, in the latter type of realms, many people are guided by the belief in supernatural forces and circumstances, e. g. that Abraham was able to survive in the fiery furnace in which Nimrud had him thrown. This Biblical theme is not explicitly stated in the Old Testament and in Christian texts. However, it is extensively mentioned in Jewish Apocrypha (notably in the Book of Jubilees), the Talmud, and the Quran. This was a sophisticated trap for the average Greek reader.
One of my
readers was a typical, deeply ignorant and totally idiotic Greek; assuming a
lot, he thought that he 'caught' one mistake in my text, although this did not
concern the main part of the argumentation (which he totally reviled of
course). That's why he happily wrote a letter to 'triumphantly' reveal my
mistake to all! In a letter to the editor, he said that I confused the story of
the three young Jewish men (Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego/Hebrew names: Hananiah,
Mishael, and Azariah) in the fiery furnace, and that I made a historical jump
of 1200 years! Of course, it was easy for me to reply to him and add all the
textual references, as well as academic bibliography, about the Biblical and
Islamic topic of Abraham having been thrown in a fiery furnace by Nimrud long
before the three chaste men were thrown in another kiln by Nebuchadnezzar, king
of Babylonia. You can read further commentary on the issue and the exchange of
letters (in Greek) here:
https://www.academia.edu/126424599/Άθλια_Αμορφωσιά_και_Σιχαμερό_Θράσος_των_Εθνικιστών_και_των_Ρατσιστών_Οπαδών_του_Ελληνοκεντρισμού
or
https://megalommatis.wordpress.com/άθλια-αμορφωσιά-και-σιχαμερό-θράσος-τ/
All the same, it would be wrong to put the blame on this reader personally; he was a victim of the average Greek educational system and of the standard mindset and sick mentality that the corrupt and worthless, racist Greek ruling class (or elite) imposed for no less than two centuries on the pseudo-state of Greece which was exclusively created for the colonial needs of England and France, and not because of the wish of the Eastern Roman (not 'Greek') inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire. As a matter of fact, within the Anglo-French prison named 'Greece', the Eastern Roman captives after 1821-1828 lost their cultural and spiritual integrity, were forced to accept a false identity, and became the slaves of their colonial masters. For Paris and London, it was imperative to make it sure that dark ignorance prevails in the minds of the average Greeks.
Contrarily
to that situation, which was characterized by the total ignorance of the
'other' (i. e. of all the rest of the world), my articles presented a) the
truth about many other parts of the world, b) the light of other historical cultures
and civilizations (that had been deliberately left unknown to the average
'Greek'), and c) the everyday life rhythm of diverse nations, which managed to
preserve their ethnic identity, cultural integrity, and socio-behavioral
originality far better than the Eastern Romans, who were reduced to the otherwise
nonexistent Greeks.
In any case,
the feedback mattered little to me. It was only useful as a landmark with
respect to the environment in which I found myself. In a way, my writing
activities showed to me the real face of Greece, which was something that I had
not learned or known earlier for a simple reason; I did not care about it, for
since my childhood I have been passionate about Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Syria
and Egypt, about studying these lands, their history, and their civilizations,
and about living there.
IV. Authorship without payment and without a job position
Of course, I was flattered with the positive comments that I received from my father, numerous family friends, my acquaintances, and the publishers themselves. But this was not critical to me. What was of seminal importance was clearly the experience itself, i. e. the process of writing. The need to constantly feel the experience was in fact the extension of my earlier encounter with writing, which was limited within the sphere of primary, secondary, graduate, and postgraduate studies, and of all my personal notes.
The more the publications were multiplied, the more the need was felt for further writing; but there was not a target. I did not intend either to produce a corpus of texts about the Ancient Orient or to come up with a systematized series of books.
As there was no specific target or a particular plan in my mind when I instinctively started writing my first article in Iran, no particular thought was ever developed as regards the continuation or the termination of this activity; merely, writing became part of my daily life. In most of the cases, I was not paid. And I never thought of becoming a journalist or an author.
Money was never a matter of concern; and this is the correct occurrence to happen to all. The people, who care about money, are not human; they are monsters. My family supported my studies; and after the death of my mother (1976), my father continued doing so. Parents who expose their children to banks, bank loans, and trivial affairs with money are not relatives but enemies. In my life, I met many idiotic people who thought they had a financial problem; in parallel, they had vivid, lovely and even exquisite interests for study and research. But they thought logical to first 'solve' their financial problem and then deal with or cultivate their interests. The end result was that these people did nothing in their lives because the money drastically magnetized them and fully absorbed their hearts and minds, thus irrevocably obliterating the earlier noble interests.
Money was never a concern when I was a student; money was never a worry when I became a Ph. D. candidate acknowledged as a young researcher and author. By this, I do not mean that I ever thought that others should have to pay for me, but that for someone, who has similar interests with mine, the identification of potential sources is a secondary and easy affair, which should not even be mentioned.
During my postgraduate
studies, research travels, explorations, and the early stage of authorship, I
obtained several scholarships and I undertook diverse professional projects,
which enabled me to have the money that was necessary for me to cover the cost
of my life and movements; from translations and private courses to military intelligence
projects, the range was at times really impressive. Certainly, not all the
sustaining activities of a person can always be included in a CV. Particularly,
when a young researcher translates books without agreeing with their contents;
thank God, my family name offered diverse chances of effective, if not
fanciful, modification. Actually, 'Megalommatis' is merely the Greek
translation of my Turkish family name 'Gözübüyükoğlu'. Both names denote 'the
person with big eyes'. In Greek, with one consonant less and with one consonant
more, it becomes 'Megalomantis', which means the 'great soothsayer' (Μεγαλομάντης).
The total
removal or rather the permanent absence of the notions of money and job
position (or professional career), which characterized my authorship since its
early stage was also attested in my graduate, postgraduate, and doctoral
studies. You cannot possibly study something in order to find a job or identify
a source of income. That's abject misery. Your inclination, your passion, your
drive for a topic of search and exploration is either shamelessly profaned or
dangerously contaminated, if not ultimately desiccated, if you append them to
the misery of money or the restrictions of the professional life.
For this
reason, I never thought about finding a regular job position of editorialist or
photo-journalist specializing in the Middle East in a Greek or other newspaper
or review/magazine. First, it would prevent me from completing my Ph.D.;
second, it would not allow me to move free and according to my research needs;
and third, it would force me to accept guidelines for my contents, and this
would be intolerable. Why this was so is easy to explain. As there had not been
other Orientalists and specialists on the Middle East, any possible editorial
guideline would reflect mere interests (of companies, governments, political
parties or statesmen) and not a real knowledge based on moral-historical
considerations that only an expert can possibly develop. When you write on a
topic in which you are an expert, if you accept content guidelines issued by a
non-specialist, you simply ridicule your knowledge, you cease to be a
respectful connoisseur, and by becoming the filthy slave of the money, you
commit a crime, for which you will pay dearly one day or another.
V. When authorship brings about comments, encounters, assessments, and
predictions
Sometimes, the early feedback enabled me to better assess how others valued the contents of my contributions; my attention was proportional to the identity, the specialization and the knowledge of the commentator. This situation started quite early, namely with my first, lengthy, 5-part article about the Iran-Iraq war. Even before the 5th part appeared, the management of Politika Themata called my father (as I was absent in Germany for a few days) to notify that the Embassy of Iraq in Athens had called them and asked for a meeting with the author; the conversation was held in Greek, as many staffers were Iraqi students in Greek universities.
As soon as I arrived back (in the very last days of April 1985), I called them and fixed the appointment. I realized immediately what I had to include in my folder: my CV, copies of my degrees from various universities, letters of recommendation issued by my professors, notably those specializing in Assyriology, Egyptology, and Iranology, plus a very special, 3-page letter of presentation (typewritten in Arabic) dispatched to me (autumn 1983) by the Syrian Prof. Muhammad Harb Farzat (محمد حرب فرزات; he had studied in Paris under the direction of the same professors as I did) in order to be submitted to the Syrian Embassy in Athens so that I get a special visa for studies prior to my travel to and sojourn in Damascus (at this point, it is to be reminded that Iraq and Syria did not have diplomatic relations at the time, and their borders were closed for many years).
I met first
several middle level diplomats, successively speaking with them in Greek,
English and Arabic, and then I had a long conversation with the Iraqi
ambassador. The first comment that he made was that, as soon as he read the
Arabic translation that his staffers produced of the first parts of the
article, he thought that the author was a 60-year old professor and that the
picture that the Greek weekly published in every part was an old picture. Of
course, I replied that I was 28.5 years old at the time.
I met the Iraqi diplomats in Athens several times; meanwhile, they had read other articles of mine and they had gone through the documentation that I had left with them. Prof. Harb Farzat's letter of presentation had indeed impressed them very much; one of these diplomats, named Khaled, said to me that he could not believe his eyes when reading it; I asked why. He replied: "he makes of you an ayatollah"! The meaning of this sentence was that the description of my achievements would make every average reader of the 3-page presentation letter think that I was an exceptional, great connoisseur of my field and a middle aged person. I replied that this was the result of truly long studies for many years in different countries and always above the level of 60 hours of courses and seminars per week attendance.
Progressively, I met also with the Iranian diplomats and ambassador; they also were impressed with my knowledge about their country, Iraq, Turkey and the Middle East and they were translating my articles into Farsi. But my feelings about all of them were very sorrowful and truly regretful, and my consideration for them was really low; this was so because their ignorance of the historical past, of the cultural heritage, and of the present situation of their respective countries fully reduces their chances to properly govern and successfully represent their states. Topics that they had to know and effectively propagate when abroad were known to them only by name; the Yazidis, the Ahl-e Haq (also known as Yarsanis), the Shabak and the Mandaean Aramaeans were for them 'some marginal people', and not 'the wealth of their land'.
The Iraqi diplomats could not make even a sentence about these ethnic-religious groups or nations; the truly critical importance of Mesopotamia for the spread of Nestorianism (the Christian world's most widely diffused denomination before the colonial times), the opposition among the Nestorian Aramaeans, the Monophysitic Aramaeans and the Orthodox Eastern Romans, the significance of the Sumerian-Akkadian-Assyrian-Babylonian heritage, and many other topics that were vital for their country totally escaped the confines of their minds. Of course, I heard sentences of the type "Nebuchadnezzar is our ancestor" and "Kurosh (Cyrus) was the greatest Iranian shah" from the mouths of the Iraqi and the Iranian diplomats whom I met.
But all this was too little, too superficial, and too inadequate. In fact, those diplomats did not represent their countries but their regimes. What they knew and could speak much about was their modern ideology (Ba'athism for Iraq and Wilayat al Faqih, i. e. 'guardianship of the Islamic jurist' for Iran). Even the Iranians, who were supposedly religious and they had established a so-called 'theocratic' system, did not know at all Islamic spirituality, sciences, history and civilization. Their religion, like that of the Iraqis (who were more secular), was not a true religion, but a depleted theological system turned into a repugnant, bogus-Islamic political ideology.
All these signs did not bode well for both nations; they only heralded disasters. It was therefore possible for me to assess as early as 1985 the dangers that were lurking for Iraq and Iran; but the reasons for these threats were not the 'others', irrespective of the numerous evil plans that the Western colonial powers may have mounted against the two countries. The reasons were the Iraqi and Iranian ruling classes and governmental elites; they were not properly prepared for the tasks they wanted to carry out. I had managed to understand this situation through my background in Humanities and Orientalism.
Several decades later, living in Mogadishu (Somalia) in the early 2010s, I met a Somali military officer, who -through his own viewpoint and expertise- had indeed concluded the same denouement for Iraq, when he lived in Mosul, having been dispatched by the Somali military intelligence of Pres. Siyaad Barre for training. We both laughed much because of the bizarre coincidence, for -having different origin, studies, background, career and perspectives- we lived in 1985 in the same place (without however meeting one another at the time) and through quite different approaches and considerations we both anticipated the calamitous destiny of Iraq that we met 27 years later to narrate to one another and interpret.
Few years later (in 1989), back in Athens, in the premises of the Encyclopedia Hydria (where I contributed many entries pertaining to my fields of study), I encountered a female employee, who was the wife of one of the Iraqi diplomats whom I used to meet in 1985-1986 whenever I happened to pass from Athens; she commented on several other articles about Iran that I had meanwhile published (in Tetarto, Ena, and Anexigito), saying that, when reading them, she had thought that I may have been married to an Iranian woman, because the texts were always written with love and care, ostensibly revealing the author's enthusiasm and passion with the topic. This comment, coming particularly from a woman, opened my eyes.
I then became fully conscious of the fact that my certainly pro-Iranian articles did not include a single word of pro-regime or pro-government propaganda, did not contain any positive comment about Ayatollah Khomeini's thesis, and did not express any approval of the Iranian political life. Trying to reflect what I observed, I expanded on the everyday life in provinces, towns, villages and mountains, I described the feeling of the Iranian people against the Iraqi attack and the worldwide support to Saddam Hussein, I narrated numerous traditions, I portrayed examples of life, I highlighted several moments of the historical past, and I put in relief the values that nomadic or settled populations in Iran cherished so much.
So, I
replied stating first that no explicit political support to the Islamic
Republic could be found in my texts, which she accepted. Then, having concluded
about the nature of the contents of my articles that this woman helped me
discover, I added:
- For if, as
they say, there is encephalic feeling, then there must also be cordial
thinking!
VI. My periods of authorship
My first of period of authorship covers the years from 1985 until 1991. During this time, not only I also published many letters and responses to letters (in the section 'Dialogue with our readers' of various reviews, magazines and newspapers), but I expanded my writing activities to different encyclopedias and academic periodicals. In addition, I gave public speeches and conducted seminars. In a forthcoming third part of the present article, I will describe in brief the main activities, the major traits, and the basic trends of my authorship, but at this point, I will herewith enumerate them, also offering the chronological frames.
1985-1991: first period – freelance contribution of articles and photography, letters, (to reviews, magazines, newspapers); publication of encyclopedia entries; scholarly articles in academic periodicals, public lectures and seminars in Greece; languages used: French, German, English and Greek.
1991-1998: second period – the aforementioned, plus: university courses and seminars in Turkey; participation in academic congresses and political conferences in Turkey; publication of books in Turkey, Albania, Egypt and Greece; languages used: French, German, English, Turkish, Arabic, Albanian and Greek; during this period, I adhered to Islam, changing my personal name from 'Cosmas' to 'Muhammad Shamsaddin'.
2001-2013:
third period – publication of printed books and articles in Egypt,
Yemen and worldwide (in English, French and Spanish); technical writing for
companies of the Egyptian IT, Telecom and Cabling-Interconnect sectors (in
English); public lectures in Egypt and Somalia, university courses and seminars
in Somalia; top management of monthlies and Internet portals in Egypt (in
English); interviews with leading Egyptian statesmen and heads of
organizations; contribution of ca. 1800 online articles in the US portals
American Chronicle, Buzzle and AfroArticles: many of them were republished,
quoted, and mentioned in other sites and blogs, included in the bibliography of
printed books and articles, and also discussed in online fora. More than 450 of
these articles (i.e.25% of the total) have been republished (it is an ongoing
project): https://independent.academia.edu/ShamsaddinMegalommatis
A smaller number of articles are re-uploaded in several other sites of mine; and an unidentified, yet significant, number of articles can be read in the different sites and blogs where they were republished; languages used: English and French; a small number of articles (from the first three periods) were transformed (by friends) into slides of PowerPoint docs and with the addition of selected music uploaded as videos (MP4).
2014-today: fourth period - publication of printed books and e-books worldwide; composition of hundreds of new online articles (at times as lengthy as books) that are uploaded in many different sites of mine (in English, Russian, French, Turkish and Greek); online publication (in various sites) of my printed books, scholarly articles, entries to encyclopedias, and articles for general readership (following the scanning of printed material from the first two periods); more than 100 articles (from all three previous periods) were transformed by friends into slides of PowerPoint docs and with the addition of music uploaded as videos (MP4).
It is to be
noted that during the years 1999, 2000, 2015, and 2019, I did not publish any
text.
VII. My tendency to correspondence
As I already said in the above Part III, the average Greek readership is characterized "by the total ignorance of the 'other' (i. e. of all the rest of the world)", thus being the victim "of the average Greek educational system, and of the standard mindset and sick mentality that the corrupt and worthless, racist Greek ruling class (or elite) imposed". Nonetheless, even the non-racist part of ruling class in Greece is made up of people who are totally unaware of "a) the truth about many other parts of the world, b) the light of other historical cultures and civilizations (that had been deliberately left unknown to the average 'Greek'), and c) the everyday life rhythm of diverse nations, which managed to preserve their ethnic identity, cultural integrity, and socio-behavioral originality". In other words, what truly happens in Greece is a most vicious case of theoretical, ideological, educational, intellectual, academic and political self-intoxication which is tantamount to self-poisoning, self-harm, and parasuicide.
Passing by Greece every three or five months back in the 1980s, I therefore realized that even numerous influential and otherwise respectable people in the ill-fated land (professors, academicians, deputies, ministers, successful businessmen, senior journalists, and editors-in chief of the country's major newspapers, weeklies and monthlies) had very narrow horizons, lived like provincial clerical employees in an international world, and knew nothing of the world. In their best, the most educated of them bragged that they studied in one of the four educationally and academically more advanced Western European countries (Germany, France, Italy and England), and, in a most disgustingly servile manner, exalted the local culture and presented the land as the center of the world.
In fact, they did not deserve the positions they held whatsoever, they had to be all laid off, and the Greek state had to be disbanded and re-established from scratch with other personnel and with true values, correct concepts, sound methods, and internationally trustworthy processes. But, of course, this was neither my concern nor my target; and, above all, it was not and it would not be my job. I had never thought about living or making a career in Greece; but I was always an excellent observer.
All the same, if I had 10 minutes to write a letter in order to decry, reject and deplore a worthless trash, which -due to a) the omnipresent darkness and the prevailing ignorance, b) the total lack of meritocracy, and c) the calamitous prevalence of nepotism and sectarianism- held an important position that he did not deserve, I would pleasantly make publicly known my total rejection of him, duly revealing his foremost misery and his nauseating ineptitude.
A very bad habit that all the Greek publishers of newspapers, editors-in chief, and journalists had was their totally unprofessional practice as regards news, reports and information about most of the world, which was totally unknown to them personally and nonexistent as field of study in any university in Greece. They stupidly thought that international news agencies and leading Western newspapers, reviews and magazines could possibly be a reliable source of information (because there were academics and journalists specializing in the Soviet and the Third worlds in those countries).
This was entirely misplaced and utterly absurd due to the detrimental colonial past, nature and identity of several Western countries and establishments. This situation means that these countries, which were thought to be academically superior, were uninterruptedly diffusing falsehood, distortions and deliberate lies that suited their evil colonial interests. Even worse, it was a sheer madness for any Greek to imagine either that he can see parts of the world with someone else's eyes or that for example the interests of Greece in Iran, Somalia or Algeria could possibly be the same as those of France, Belgium, Holland, England and the US.
As a matter
of fact, Greek dailies, weeklies and monthlies systematically, endlessly and
calamitously reproduced the pathetic anti-Iranian propaganda of the Western
mass media without having ever imagined that things may not have been as
written in Le Monde, Frankfurter Allgemeine, La Stampa, The Guardian or the
Washington Post and that the overall situation in Iran may have been very
different. Had they proceeded so, they would have certainly dispatched unbiased
journalists to search and impartially report, and more importantly, they would
have taken good care to send a certain number of students for studies in the
fields of Assyriology, Iranology and Turkology, as well as in several other
sectors of Orientalism, so that they create several departments of Oriental
studies and properly empower the country with trustworthy scholars who would
have been duly formed in a way to reject English colonial lies and French
Eurocentric falsehood about Iran, and about many other Asiatic and African countries.
But they did not act in this manner; even worse, they did not presume that this
was their normal and natural task.
An otherwise ludicrous and tragi-comical figure of the execrable Greek journalism was Giannis Marinos, a pathetic moron who was appointed as editor-n chief of the political-economic weekly Oikonomikos Tahydromos ('Economic Courier') without having ever in his life studied economics or any related field! For a normal society and country, this fact would be enough for people to consider it an outrage; but for parochial Greece, this was part of the everyday normalcy! That is why people tend to view Greece as a Third World country in a First World organization (EU), i.e. an encumbering burden or an absurd oddity. The illustrious German statesman's, the late Wolfgang Schäuble's, opinion about Greece is the worldwide most accurate,
Idealizing rationalism, materialism and liberalism, Giannis Marinos and his otherwise boring publication, which served as venue for tirades against the inconsequential, populist, chauvinist, and bogus-socialist governments of Andreas Papandreou, became the meeting point for all the silly Greeks, who viewed in the Western World the Celestial Jerusalem, believed that the soviet countries were the "focus of evil", and identified socioeconomic progress with the stock markets, the skyscrapers, and offshore accounts in tax havens.
Having failed to comprehend anything out of the complex circumstances, which characterized the last century of Iranian History, having been totally ignorant about the Iranian culture, social life, and politics, having got no clue about colonialism, its dimensions and its impact, and having remained unaware of anything pertaining to Central Asia, Middle East, Caucasus region, India and China, this little fanciful man, Giannis Marinos, found it normal to endlessly use his angry jargon against Iran by merely translating into Greek shallow reports and hollow diatribes first published in various Western European and North American mass media. This was a good reason for me to send him brief but truly devastating letters of criticism, denouncing his "ruminant manner" and portraying him as a pathetic animal.
This was exactly what that execrable jerk deserved; the foolish way he reacted is the perfect revelation of his miserable ineptitude. Without refuting any sentence or word of my rather brief letter, without going through my hitherto published articles or asking about their contents, and without getting some basic information about me, he insulted me personally, repeating all the nonsensical points of the nauseating disinformation that he had published without being ever able to check and crosscheck.
Few days later, Iranian diplomats found it necessary to demand a visit and to denounce his criminal attitude of systematically misinforming, perniciously falsifying, and dictatorially promulgating the anti-Iranian falsehood of various Western mass media as the supposed truth. Considering as 'Islamist' a young specialist, who did not support politically the Islamic Republic of Iran even in a single sentence but presented Iran as a more civilized land than the West, was to my eyes part of a behavior and form of an expression that originated from a gravely sick environment and a repugnant atmosphere, which could never possibly bode well for the country in which they existed. So corrupt societies, which are in drastic collision with reality and deeply engulfed in paranoia, cannot survive; they get putrefied and disappear.
So, when people tell me now that Oikonomikos Tahydromos anticipated in the 1980s that Greece would go bankrupt in 30 years, I respond that I predicted in the 1980s that Greece will disappear in 40 years. Those journalists, editorialists and economists examined the country's disastrous socioeconomic conditions in order to issue their prediction; and I observed the sick academic, intellectual, educational, journalistic, religious and political environment, which -instead of improving- worsened in a precipitated manner, as the unrestrained deterioration of the symptoms heralded only the forthcoming death of Greece. This was enough for me to draw the correct conclusion.
My tendency to
correspondence, which enriched my knowledge and deepened my comprehension, was
of course only normal for someone who only few years earlier had attended a
course on 'le roman epistolaire' (the epistolary romance) during the
preparation of a university degree in French Literature. When one is accustomed
to studying texts like 'Les Lettres Persanes', 'Julie ou la Nouvelle Héloïse', 'Les
Liaisons Dangereuses', and 'Paul et Virginie', he certainly turns out to be
fond of textual conversations.
VIII. Entries to Encyclopedias
As early as summer 1985, I started contributing to encyclopedias in Greece (on freelance basis); in the beginning and for a few years, I wrote several entries for the World Biographical Lexicon of Ekdotike Athenon publishing house; this multi-volume edition was part of the Greek Pedagogical Encyclopedia. As the publication had already started, my alphabetically first entries were categorized under the letter N; I featured 50 entries about ancient Oriental kings, emperors, and pharaohs, epic poets, philosophers, and mystics of the Islamic times, as well as modern Orientalists and decipherers of ancient Oriental languages. In total, my entries cover 87 columns of pages (of 4 columns each), if we don't count the pictures-illustrations.
Later
(1988-1989), I contributed no less than 260 entries to the 2-volume World
Mythology, which was another part of the aforementioned encyclopedia,
covering alphabetically the entire opus. I featured ancient Sumerian, Elamite,
Assyrian-Babylonian, Hurrian, Hittite, Luwian, Urartu, Canaanite, Phoenician,
Aramaean, Carthaginian, Egyptian, Cushitic-Ethiopian, Yemenite, Arab, and
Iranian gods, goddesses, myths, epics, spiritual entities, heroes, and legends.
In total, my entries cover 159 columns of pages (of 4 columns each), if we
don't count the pictures-illustrations.
To the Great General Encyclopedia Hydria, I contributed (1988-1989) 176 entries of general Orientalist interest, notably about archaeological sites, writing systems, ancient nations, historical monuments, myths and gods, religious topics, modern cities, important events, ancient Oriental kings, emperors, and pharaohs, epic poets, philosophers, and mystics of the Islamic times, as well as modern Orientalists and decipherers of ancient Oriental languages. As the publication had already started, my entries were categorized under the letter S and all the rest (of the Greek alphabet) to the end (including the supplement of the 55-volume encyclopedia); indicatively, my alphabetically first entry was the 'Cuneiform Writings' (in Greek: 'Sphenoeideis Grafes'/'Σφηνοειδείς Γραφές'). My overall contribution amounts to ca. 240000 words.
At a
subsequent time, I contributed 38 entries to the 2-volume World History,
which was part of the encyclopedia of Ekdotike Athenon (1989-1990); I featured
historical articles about many lands and ancient and/or modern nations of the
Middle East, North Africa, Caucasus region, and India. My cooperation was
terminated due to my publicly expressed support to the EU-sponsored book
'Europe, A History of its Peoples', which was written by the French
academician, Professor Jean Baptiste Duroselle (see below, unit IX); this
pertinent and voluminous book, which is the cornerstone of today's European secondary
education (as it was translated into all the official languages of EU except
Greek and is currently taught in the schools), was idiotically considered in
Greece as deliberately written in order to minimize the role of Greece in
European History. My overall contribution amounts to ca. 146000 words.
Meanwhile, I also contributed one entry ('Ancient Egyptian religion' - ca. 6000 words) to the volume Religions of the encyclopedia of Ekdotike Athenon S.A.
Out of my contributions to encyclopedias, I will now enumerate the most significant entries that I elaborated.
World Biographical Lexicon: Nebuchadnezzar II, Nechao II, Nefertiti, Ramesses II, Ramesses III, H. Cr. Rawlinson, J. F. Champollion, Shalmaneser III, Shapur I, Shapur II, Shapur III, Sargon of Akkad, Sargon of Assyria, Semiramis (Shammuramat), Sennacherib, Sesostris II, Tiglath-pileser III, Jelaleddin Rumi (Mevlana), Tiridates I, Tutankhamun, Thutmose III, Ferdowsi, Hammurapi, Chosroes (Khusraw) I, and Chosroes (Khusraw) II
World Mythology: Ishtar, Assur, Isis, Mithras, Gilgamesh, Atrahasis, Apsu, Tiamat, Horus, Anu, Ea, Enlil, Anubis, Seth, Osiris, Ra, Verethragna, Etana, Ninurta, Nabu, Marduk, Maat, Illuyanka, Zervan, Zu, Tasmisu, Teshub, Kumarbi, Lilith, Shamash, Sin, Shu, Tefnut, and Kubaba
Great General Encyclopedia Hydria: Cuneiform writing systems, Hittites and other Anatolian peoples, Tiglath-pileser III, Takht-e Suleyman, Taq-e Bostan, Tukulti Ninurta I, Thutmose IV, Chogha Zanbil, Phoenician alphabet and writing system, Peoples and ethnic groups in the Middle East, Hamitic-Semitic peoples, languages and writings systems, Hammurapi - Diplomacy and international relations at the times of Hammurapi in the light of Mari texts, Canaan, Hurri land-nation-history-religion-language, Iran-Iraq war, Cheops, Khafre, Khomeini, Khusraw I, Khusraw II, Husayn ibn Ali, Mithras-Chronos (as god of time), Psammetichus I-VI and Greek presence in Egypt at the times of the Psammetichus, Ostanes, Horapollo, Djoser, and Khorsabad (Dur Sarrukin).
World
History: Akkad, Assyria, Aramaeans, Babylonia, Elam, Islamic caliphates,
Ancient Hebrews, Egypt, Iran, India (up to the arrival of Islam), Caucasus
region, Yemen, Abyssinia, and Cimmerians
IX. Scholarly Articles and Public Lectures and Seminars
A- Scholarly articles
To academic
periodicals I started contributing articles in 1989; as most important among
those published until 1991, I would distinguish the following 4 contributions:
- Mithraism and Zoroastrianism in North – Western Iran during the Sassanid period (in Greek with German summary); in: Byzantinos Domos, Athens, 4 (1989), p. 13 - 52
- L' URSS et les événements en Chypre en Juillet et Août 1974 (in French with English summary); in: Journal of Oriental and African Studies (JOAS), Athens, 2 (1990), p. 141 – 180 (This was my D.E.A. thesis submitted and accepted in July 1981; see note in: Revue française de science politique, 1982 (vol. 32) no 3, p. 593 – 599 and more specifically: p. 597, no 432)
- The Canaanites and the Phoenicians in Western Mediterranean and North – Western Africa (in Greek with French summary); in: JOAS, Athens, (3) 1991, 24p.
- Les Peuples de la Mer et la fin du Monde Mycenien. Essai de synthese historique in: Atti e Memorie del Secondo Congresso Internazionale di Micenologia,
Roma - Napoli 1991, GEI, Incunabula Graeca, 98, 1-3 vols, Gruppo editoriale
internazionale, 1996, 1770 p.
B- Public lectures
During the period 1985-1991, I gave several public speeches; as most important among them, I would distinguish the following:
For the Greek Iranian friendship association (of which I was the secretary general for period of three years: 1986-1989), I gave a public speech (Park Hotel, Athens; on the 2nd November 1986) under the title 'A visit to Iran'.
In the
School of Philosophy New Acropolis (Greek section), I gave several
lectures, notably 'Oriental and occidental Mithraisms' (on the
8th November 1986), 'The ecological concepts of the Ancient Assyrians'
(on the 9th May 1987), 'Who is Isis?" (on the 28th April
1990), and 'Myth and revelation from the Hurrians and the Hittites to the
Revelation by John' (on the 24th November 1990).
In the Association of Friends of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, I was invited and delivered a speech on the 'Political ideology of the Assyrian Empire' (on the 13th January 1988).
On the 23rd January 1988, I was asked to offer a lecture in an event organized by the Association of the Greeks of Palestine; in my speech 'Emperor Sennacherib of Assyria marches on Jerusalem', I presented and analyzed all historical texts relating to the event (701 BCE), which is the first in World History to be documented in three different languages, namely Assyrian-Babylonian (in the Annals of Sennacherib, i. e. in three different Imperial Prisms with cuneiform inscriptions), Ancient Hebrew (Old Testament; Books of Kings), and Ancient Greek (by Herodotus).
The Theatrical Group Chorikios invited me to speak in the Cultural Center of Kallithea (Athens) about 'Forms of theater in Ancient Mesopotamia'; the lecture took place on the 19th November 1988. For the same association in the same venue, I gave a speech on 'Forms of theater in Ancient Egypt' (on the 10th December 1988).
The top management of Astronautiki Quarterly extended an invitation to me to offer a lecture in the Cultural Center of Cholargos on the 14th December 1988; the topic of the speech was 'The Scientific Knowledge of the Ancient Assyrians: Mathematics and Astronomy'.
The Iranian
Embassy in Athens (on behalf of the Ministry of Culture and Islamic
Guidance) invited me to participate in the 4th International Conference on
Islamic Thought, which was held in Tehran from 28th to 31st January 1990. The
topic of my communication was 'The historical, philosophical and
religious background of Imam Khomeini's thought and position as regards the
problem of separation of religion from politics'.
C- Public seminars
In the School of Philosophy New Acropolis (Greek section), I conducted a seminar during February 1988 (on Wednesdays, 7-9 pm); the topic was 'Introductory course of Classical Egyptian (hieroglyphics)'. In the 8-hour seminar, I familiarized the participants with the writing system itself, basic vocabulary, grammar and syntax, and the first five lessons of Alan Gardiner's Egyptian Grammar, which is one of the most widely used academically methods of studying Ancient Egyptian.
In the Goulandris
Horn Foundation, I conducted a 51-hour, 17-course seminar (October-December
1989, twice per week, three hours per course) under the title 'The Greeks
and the Orient during the Antiquity' (Οι Έλληνες και η Ανατολή κατά την Αρχαιότητα). After a
general diagram of the History of the Ancient Oriental Empires, the seminar
covered following topics: a) the Hittites and the Achaeans (Ahhiyawa), b)
Ancient Egypt and the South Balkans, c) the Canaanites and the different nations
of Western Anatolia, South Balkans, the islands and Crete (all three topics
covering the 2nd millennium BCE), d) the Sea Peoples, their Invasions and their
Defeat in Egypt (end of 2nd millennium BCE), and e) Assyrians, Babylonians and
the various nations of Western Anatolia and South Balkans (1st millennium BCE).
The last courses covered an introduction into the History of Religions of
Mesopotamia, Anatolia, Canaan and Egypt. Handwritten notes (in Greek) taken by
participants (and duly revised by me will be gradually published in the
forthcoming weeks and months; as the seminar was also recorded, the audio-files
(MP3) will be uploaded in the future.
X. The culmination of my first period of publications
In spite of the great variety that characterized my writing and lecturing activities in my first period of publications, involving thematically, academically, linguistically different texts that targeted diverse readerships, my most important, most mature, and most worthwhile publication until 1991 proved to be a lengthy letter, which was a 'Plea for the (book of) History by Prof. Duroselle'. This is so, because this verdict was the truest, the most critical, and the most determinant text that I wrote until I started publishing books. I will first explain in brief this bizarre -and deplorable for a 20th c. state- affair and I will draw the conclusions in the next, last unit of this long auto-biographical article.
The famous French academician Jean Baptiste Duroselle was commissioned by the Commission of the European Union ('European Communities' at the time) and Jacques Delors personally to author a European History of Europe, which would justify the establishment of the European Union in the 2nd half of the 20th c. as the crown of all earlier efforts to establish one state across the continent. The book was written in French (L’Europe: histoire de ses peuples, Paris, Perrin, 1990, 708 p.) and it was geared to become (as it really did) the basic textbook of European History for the secondary education of all EU member states. For this reason, numerous translations were produced at the local level, and the book became in this manner the cornerstone of the European identity; as regards countries that were not member-states in 1990 but became later, the book was translated into the official language(s) of each country after its adhesion.
However, this normal procedure did not occur in Greece. On the contrary, the country reached the level of paranoia, as the chauvinist pseudo-Greek mob's anger and hysteria were vehemently and absurdly expressed against a book that they had not read and a superb academic figure that they had never known, namely Prof. Jean Baptiste Duroselle, member of the French Academy.
More specifically,
in 1990, due to the EU demand for a Greek translation of Prof. Duroselle’s
book, all the mental sewerage of the uneducated, ignorant and decrepit Greek
mob flooded the mass media spreading unprecedented insults against Duroselle,
EU, Europe, European universities and … the rest of the world! The
intellectually felonious, academically malodorous, and mentally pathetic
professors of universities and academicians of Greece either kept silent or
sided with the mob to become more popular as supposedly defending the 'rights'
of the 'Greek' nation. This situation testifies to a well-concealed reality;
the fake Greeks of the last two centuries, who are in reality a defaced
populace deprived of their true Eastern Roman (not 'Byzantine') Orthodox
identity, never felt as a 'European' nation. Their immense psychological
complex of inferiority is therefore expressed every time a real event
underscores that they are a second class, uneducated pseudo-country with no
integrity, no discipline, no rule, no morals, and no reason to exist.
The Plea was
published in the Greek weekly Oikonomikos Tahydromos (see also above,
Unit VII) on the 7th February 1991, although it was written and sent on 30th
August 1990. It generated more than 30 nonsensical, insulting, and ridiculous
responses from either biased academics (who wrote against me only to 'justify'
the positions that they had held without being properly qualified – which is
the very common case in the meritless pseudo-state ‘Greece’) or uneducated mob
that mistook the defense of the historical truth by me as personally insulting
for them! Such was their depravity that they could not realize that the only
thing that they will finally achieve in this manner is the total destruction
and the irrevocable obliteration of Greece. About (in Greek, French, English
and Russian):
https://www.academia.edu/86544955/Κοσμάς_Μεγαλομμάτης_Συνηγορία_υπέρ_της_Ιστορίας_Ντυροζέλ_1990_
https://www.academia.edu/86619540/Plaidoyer_pour_le_livre_brillant_de_Jean_Baptiste_Duroselle_LEurope_une_histoire_de_ses_peuples
https://www.academia.edu/86600089/Plea_for_Jean_Baptiste_Duroselles_Brilliant_Book_Europe_A_History_of_its_Peoples
https://www.academia.edu/86625441/Призыв_к_блестящой_книге_Жана_Батиста_Дюрозеля_Европа_история_ее_народов_
https://www.academia.edu/86836991/From_Jean_Baptiste_Duroselle_and_his_Book_to_the_Making_and_Unmaking_of_Europe_to_the_Rise_of_the_Final_Empire_in_Russia
https://www.academia.edu/50793544/_Μόνον_ο_Ντυροζέλ_δικαιώθηκε_Αρβελέρ_Μεγαλομμάτης_και_η_Ελληνική_Παθογένεια
https://www.academia.edu/50797147/Ντυροζέλ_Αρβελέρ_Μεγαλομμάτης_κι_η_Ελληνική_Παθογένεια_ΙΙ_Ο_Αμόρφωτος_Ελύτης_κι_οι_Βλακείες_του
https://www.academia.edu/50816877/Ντυροζέλ_Αρβελέρ_Πλούταρχος_Όσιρις_και_η_Ακαδημαϊκή_Ζωή_της_Γαλλίας_η_Ελένη_Αρβελέρ_στις_όντως_Μικρές_Διαστάσεις_της_και_η_εν_Ελλάδι_Άθλια_Άγνοια
Ασσουρμπανιπάλ
Ερχόμενος – Β’ / Ashurbanipal: the Coming King – Part II (1987)
https://megalommatis.wordpress.com/ασσουρμπανιπάλερχόμενος-β-ashurbanipal-the-coming-king-part-ii/
https://www.academia.edu/89482189/Ασσουρμπανιπάλ_Ερχόμενος_Β_Ashurbanipal_the_Coming_King_Part_II_1987_
XI. My Conclusions
Undeniably, 34 years after the publication of the Plea, I feel fully vindicated with all my assertions justified, my claims confirmed, my conclusions corroborated, and my denunciations substantiated. Greece is an unsustainable state fabricated not because of the will of the indigenous populations of the early 19th c. (which were not Greek at all) but due to colonial (English and French basically) involvement; the evil elites of the Western powers wanted to use the Modern Greek state in many ways and, in order to totally uproot the Eastern Roman identity of the populations, imposed (via local stooges duly brainwashed in the Western centers of falsification that are named 'universities'), in a tyrannical manner, a biased education, a bogus-historical dogma, and a demoniacal Greco-centric forgery of World History, according to which the world's most important civilization was the so-called 'Classical Antiquity'.
To duly eliminate challenges, they prevented the colonized, pseudo-Greeks from studying other cultures and civilizations, thus plunging them into an evil self-exaltation that brings about contempt for all the surrounding nations and absolutely racist anti-Albanian, anti-Macedonian, anti-Bulgarian, anti-Turkish, anti-Islamic, anti-Syrian, anti-Lebanese, anti-Palestinian, anti-Jewish, anti-Egyptian, anti-Libyan, and anti-Tunisian feelings, attitudes and behaviors. Whatever 'national normalcy' may have been for every pseudo-Greek of the last two centuries is definitely utter, disgusting racism ostensibly accompanied with ethnic cleansing.
Sickly intoxicated with the evil forgery of the otherwise nonexistent Hellenism and effectively duped with the lie of the absolutely fictional continuity from 'Ancient Greece', through the 'Byzantine Empire' (which is another falsification), to 'Modern Greece', today's pseudo-Greeks are crippled morons and impotent automatons that endlessly repeat the silly fallacy as per which the Ancient Greeks created the world civilization, and they, as the supposed descendants, are superior to all the other nations. The idiots cannot even understand that, by expressing disdain against their neighbors, they are naturally loathed and correctly rejected by all of them, only to be thus left at the hands of their colonial masters as soulless instruments and as stupid puppets.
My grandparents and my parents were born in the Ottoman Empire; my fatherland and my motherland are currently Turkish soil. My land is Anatolia, not the Balkans. Since my childhood I wanted to study the ancient civilizations of Mesopotamia, Iran and Egypt, which I did. During my explorations and researches, I started writing and publishing texts at the age of 28.5 years. By so doing, I helped myself systematize the already acquired knowledge and question a great number of topics; I left my texts as a testimony of my studies; I enlightened my readership, opening for them horizons that they had never imagined and presenting topics that were totally unknown or falsely presented by non-specialists in Greece; and, last but not least, I realized how correct I was in my decision never to care about living or working in Greece. For a 35-year old scholar (as I was in 1991) this was quite an achievement; even more so since I always reviled conventional life or career.
In a
subsequent, third text of this series of commemorative
articles for my 40 years of authorship, I will briefly describe a few
interesting snapshots of the next three periods of my authorship (as per above,
Unit VI).
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