That year, the rainy season was even shorter than the year before, and afterward the land grew somewhat green; but soon the sun’s heat withered the greenery. People still relied on wheat for nourishment, cooking it in pots and eating it. Then they realized that wheat, too, was becoming scarce, and that a day might come when, just as the fish had disappeared and ducks and deer had grown rare, wheat would also vanish.
Rud told her followers, “Now that we’re forced to fill our bellies with wheat, do something so at least this plant does not die out.” Her followers asked, “What should we do?” The Iran-ban said, “Do what the earth does—put the wheat into the soil so that it may sprout and ear.” On that day, the queen of Iran laid the foundations of agriculture and taught her followers to sow wheat so they could make use of its yield.¹
The people of Sialk would place the wheat right where they found it—namely, on the mountain slopes—into the soil, leave it to itself, and go away; after the rainy season they would return and gather the harvest. Even today in Iran, farmers sow dryland (rainfed) wheat the same way: anywhere in the country where there is a mountain and soil upon its slopes, they tuck the wheat into the earth and go about their business; autumn, winter, or spring rains make the wheat sprout and ripen. In mid- or late spring (depending on the location of the field), the farmers return and collect the crop. From the day they sow to the day they reap, they do not water their fields even once, and some farmers do not visit their fields even a single time.
What befell the city of Sialk also occurred all along the shores of Iran’s central lake, and in some places it was worse, so that people, from hunger, abandoned their homeland and left their dwellings, going to regions where they could fill their stomachs.
The “Turs”—whose land Iranians called “Turan” and who lived to the east of the central Iranian lake—also fell into hunger; unable to feed themselves, they turned toward Iran to obtain provisions. As has been said, the Turs had black hair and black eyes and were short of stature, and hunger sharpened their savagery.
The inhabitants south of the dried lake, unlike the people of Sialk, still had sheep and horses after the lake dried up, because storm, earthquake, and volcano had not destroyed their towns. Hungry Turs, men and women alike, attacked the southern towns around the dried lake, seizing people’s horses and sheep by force, killing them, and eating them; anyone who resisted was slain by their hands.
Because the lake had dried up, Sialk’s rapid connection with the southern towns was cut off; thus, when the people of Turan attacked Iran’s southern cities, the Iran-ban did not learn of it. The inhabitants of the southern towns united in order to defend themselves against the hungry Turs’ assaults, and their union became the first step toward the unification of Iran. Until then, each town along the shores of the central lake was an independent country ruled by a woman; the people of those independent polities regarded the queen of Sialk as “Mama,”² that is, “mother,” and acknowledged her seniority. But the danger posed by the Turanian inhabitants to the Iranians led several southern towns to unite, and thus the first stone of Iran’s unity was set in place.
As long as the lake had not dried up, the people of Sialk did not suffer from extreme cold or heat. There—and generally throughout the settlements around the lake—the winters were mild in cold and the summers in heat: neither did people shiver in winter nor swelter in summer. But the drying of Iran’s central lake changed Sialk’s climate: summers became very hot and winters very cold—and the same pattern still governs there today.
When winter came, it would rain for several days, then the weather turned cold, and the chill would gradually intensify to the point that people could not leave their homes. In addition to the cold, lack of clothing became a major problem. Formerly—as we have said—deer were plentiful around Iran’s central lake, and the people of Sialk made their clothes from deerskins. When deer disappeared, the making of clothing—especially for winter—became an insoluble problem. Once again Rud solved it, telling the people to do with sheepskin what they had formerly done with deerskin. But sheepskin was hard to come by because sheep had become few, so Rud advised her followers to raise sheep, so they would not be deprived of clothing and could wear sheepskin.
Men’s and women’s clothing in Sialk was the same: everyone wore sheepskin with the fleece turned outward, believing their garments should resemble the sheep’s own coat. People did not know how to tailor garments—that is, how to sew skins—because in the past women had sewn deerskin with needles made from the animal’s bone; when they began to wear sheepskin, they sewed that as well.
Rud (the Iran-ban) had several sons and daughters, and her eldest daughter, also named “Rud”—whom, for clarity, we call “Rud the Second”—came of age. The early Iranians did not have many words; their simplicity kept them from coining new terms, so names were repeated. Dozens of boys named “Zab” and dozens of girls named “Rud” lived among them; after Rud and Zab, the name “Tam” was repeated more than other names.
¹ The earliest reference to the origin of agriculture in ancient Iran.
According to archaeological evidence from the Tepe Sialk excavations, the people of that region were among the first in the world to consciously cultivate wheat and barley, transforming the practice from the gathering of wild grains into organized farming.
See: Roman Ghirshman, Iran: From the Earliest Times to the Islamic Conquest, London, 1954.
² The term “Mama” in Old Iranian languages meant mother and has cognates in other Indo-European tongues. In many Iranian mythological texts, the queen or mother-goddess is referred to by this title.
See: Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices, London, 1979 — explaining the etymology and cultural role of the mother-goddess in ancient Iran.
