Iran-ban was ill for fifteen days, and on the fifteenth day she bade farewell to life. At the very hour that the woman passed away, the people of the city of Sialk, by unanimous consent, declared her daughter-in-law Rud to be their new Iran-ban (ruler).
Iran-ban died at sunset. The next morning her body was carried out of the city, and after travelling about one farsakh, they reached a mound called Gom.
On that mound they laid the body so that her face turned eastward—toward the rising sun. All the inhabitants of Sialk were present that day, standing upon the mound of Gom, bidding farewell to Iran-ban.
“Gam” was a mound especially reserved for the dead, and from this word comes the Persian gham and ghamgin (“sorrow,” “sorrowful”).(Ref: Mohl)
Zab, the son of Iran-ban, knew that after some time nothing would remain of his mother’s body but bones. Being her nearest relative, it was his duty to return to the mound of Gom, gather the bones, and place them in a pit within the same mound, so that the space above it would not become crowded with other corpses.
Rud, who succeeded her mother-in-law as ruler of Iran, lacked her experience, yet—like all women of Iran—she was intelligent. One must remember that the rule of women in Sialk was a natural privilege, not an artificial custom or imitation of fashion.
Women governed because they possessed more wisdom and reason than men and, through their sensible guidance, made life easier for the people.
In the days following Rud’s accession, the city of Sialk became a house of mourning, for the townsfolk, one after another, died of the same sickness that had carried Iran-ban to the other world. No one knew the cause of that disease or how to cure it.
One day Rud, as she lifted a clay cup to drink, noticed a foul smell rising from the water. She called her husband Zab, handed him the vessel, and said:
“Smell this water.”
Zab sniffed it and caught the same putrid scent.
“This smells of a carcass,” he said.
Suddenly Rud exclaimed:
“It is the smell of the deer carcasses we threw into the ravine! The water we drink must flow over their bodies—that is why it reeks!”
Indeed, the drinking water of Sialk came from that very ravine where the carcasses of deer had been cast.
The young Iran-ban ordered the people of Sialk to fetch water from elsewhere. Though the nearest town lay at some distance, they brought their drinking water from there, and thereafter no one in Sialk was stricken by that deadly illness.
Today we know that the disease which killed Iran-ban and many of her people was typhoid fever. The deer carcasses had polluted the stream; by drinking that water, the townsfolk became infected and perished.
Then the rains began, and people no longer had to travel far in search of drinkable water, for after the first downpour, brooks flowed from the hills toward the salty lake, and the people drank the rainwater.
After the rains came, Rud—like all the citizens of Sialk—spent most of her time indoors. Sometimes she cared for her child; at other times she helped her father, who made earthenware jars and baked them in fire.
One day, as Rud was removing the seeds from pomegranates and a dark liquid oozed from their skins, she fancied colouring her father’s jars with that juice. With her fingers she traced patterns—like those she sometimes drew on her palms—upon the surface of the clay, then placed the jars into the fire.
When the jars were taken from the fire, Rud and her father were astonished to see that the designs had fixed upon the surface in a deep black tone.
Thus Rud became the first woman to invent the art of painting on pottery. After she had decorated her father’s jars with the juice of pomegranate peel, she wished to colour them with the juice of the seeds, hoping for a crimson hue. But when the jars came out of the fire, the red had vanished and a dark shade appeared instead.
From that failure Rud learned a lesson: whatever colour is painted upon a pot does not remain the same once it has been in the fire; only the black colour from pomegranate-peel juice endures after firing.
Rud, intrigued by the craft, tested many other pigments—all extracted from plants—and found that only the colour of pomegranate peel persisted, while others disappeared. Hence she abandoned further attempts and continued to decorate her father’s pottery with that enduring black dye.
During that rainy season the young ruler of Iran also succeeded in making her father’s work easier.
Until then, he had shaped each vessel entirely by hand, a laborious and time-consuming process.
Rud placed a flat clay disc upon a wooden cylinder shaped like a spindle and told her father to put the clay in the centre. While he worked the clay, Rud slowly turned the disc upon the cylinder.
The potter, delighted and amazed, found his task far easier: the clay could be moulded smoothly and evenly, its centre hollowed with little effort.
By this simple device Rud laid the foundation of the potter’s wheel.
Though that flat plate and wooden spindle were not yet the true wheel, they were its first prototype. Just as she had taught Iranians and humankind the art of decorating pottery, she also inspired the invention of the potter’s wheel—and the world owes that gift to an Iranian woman.
One day, while Rud was by the kiln watching the baking of the pots, she saw a stream of liquid descend from the fire and run along the ground before it cooled and stopped.
The young Iran-ban called her father and showed him the liquid.
“Father,” she said, “I think this is the same substance that makes some of your pots as hard as stone. Can you not obtain it separately?”
The next day her father tried. By the heat of the fire he extracted the liquid, which flowed out and congealed. When it cooled, it formed a large lump of copper.
Although Iran-ban did not yet know how such metal could be used, the Age of Copper had begun—potentially—in the city of Sialk.
