The Shah's 2500-year celebration of Cyrus the Great and the Persian Empire. Persepolis, Iran (1971)
Episode Stats
Harmful content
Misogyny
2
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Hate speech
35
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Summary
In celebration of 2,500 years of nationhood, the Persian people, led by their Shah, made homage at the tomb of Cyrus the Great, the first Shah of all, Cyrus, king of kings, champion long before Magna Carta of human rights and liberties, the mightiest empire in the then history of the world.
Transcript
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Persia, a land of barren mountain and burning desert, a harsh land in which the climate is
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sparing in its bounties, an ancient land which is the meeting point between east and west,
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between Russia and India, between Arabia and the Caspian Sea. Iranians call it Iran,
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beautiful women in a land blessed to this day with beautiful women inspired the miniature
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painters brushes women with silvery voices and melting eyes eyes like the eyes of the gazelle
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which leaps over the tarnished gold of the mountainsides.
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and the nightingales serenaded lovers to their dreamlands.
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Persia was the inspiration of Omar Khayyam and the Thousand and One Nights.
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In later centuries, conquerors trampled on its heritage.
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But through golden ages, the spirit of Persia has always triumphed.
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In this world of beauty was born more than five centuries before Christ,
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the mightiest empire in the then history of the world.
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In celebration of 2,500 years of nationhood, the Persian people, led by their Shah,
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His Imperial Majesty Mohammed Reza Pallavi Arya Meir Shah and Shah,
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make homage at the tomb of Cyrus the Great, the first Shah of all.
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Cyrus, king of kings, champion long before Magna Carta of human rights and liberties.
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Cyrus, the Lord's anointed of the prophet Isaiah in the Old Testament.
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Cyrus, the founder of Persian culture and the father of Iran, the land, five times the size of Great Britain.
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In solemnly dedicating himself to the memory of his predecessor,
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the Shah was keeping a promise he had made ten years earlier.
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As he left the tomb to join his empress and his ten-year-old son,
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the crown prince, he was filled with a sense of occasion.
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It had fallen to him, after a twilight in his nation's long history,
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to remind the world and his own people of Persian pride.
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The king of Hachaman Shib, the king of Iran, from the side of me, the king of Iran, and from the side of my country.
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O Cyrus, great king, king of kings, Hachamanian king, king of the land of Iran, I, the Shah-Nshah of Iran, offer thee salutations from myself and from my nation.
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In the middle of October 1971, 62 heads of state or their direct representatives converged
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on the airport of the fairytale city of Shiraz, set in the desert beside the Persian Gulf.
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in a patchwork of color in a whirl of salutes bowels and curtsies familiar faces in the world
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scene stepped out of their aircraft over red carpets fringed with guards of honor
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For all the arrivals, ceremony and protocol had to be carefully observed.
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So began one of the most historic cultural gatherings the world has ever seen.
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The flags of the guest nations flew in salute as the VIPs flew in.
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This was no party of the year, it was the celebration of 25 centuries.
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Throughout the day, escorted cars drove out through Shiraz into the desert
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towards the ruined palace of the great kings of antiquity,
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The guests were traveling to a reception without precedent,
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Their camp, if you can call it a camp, was shaped like a star with five wings branching
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out from the royal pavilion to represent the five continents.
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Each head of state had an apartment with a sitting room, two bedrooms and two bathrooms
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and a service room with an electric stove and ironing board for their entourage.
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The Shah had personally supervised all the preparations.
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In sight of the ruins of the great palace of his predecessors,
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build. The complex of new building was a major piece of construction, even for modern times.
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One day it is thought that it might become a super hotel for wealthy tourists.
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The great hand weavers of Persian carpets had been using their uncanny skill to make portraits
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in silk of each of the distinguished guests. The portraits were to be hung in their sitting rooms.
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As the famous men and women matched their pictures with their presence,
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they were given an excited greeting. Persia was in gala mood.
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The villagers had heard on radio and television
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that the great people of the world were coming to honor their country.
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A country which had ruled in the past what was the then-known Earth.
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A country which, after centuries of apathy, their Shah was determined to lead into the 20th century.
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He began by inviting the world to stop, look and listen.
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the modern world had half forgotten persia's place on the map the best beginning for the future was to
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sound the trumpets and recall the persian people to the glories of their own past what happened
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Throughout the day and into the night, the Shah was in constant attendance on the newly
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arriving guests. His hand, for a hundred times, was stretched in welcome.
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Looking at these scenes, a poker player might well reflect that here is that rare hand in cards, which is called a royal flush.
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leaders whom we all recognize had a unique opportunity for relaxed conversation
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well perhaps not now with the tv cameras looking on but others were talking elsewhere
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an international congress of 250 scholars were already in session at shiraz the papers they
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read on Persian culture were to be published and circulated to research
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institutes throughout the world. Such a brain's trust of Persian study had never
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In Shiraz, where there is a garden appropriately named Garden of Paradise,
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the lights twinkled like diamonds, like the bubbles in a glass of champagne.
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It is not often that a state occasion like this has been shown to the world, not often, if ever.
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But so many leaders of state have been gathered together simply to honor an anniversary in the history of a civilization.
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In the state reception room of the Royal Pavilion in Persepolis move people who influence the destiny of mankind.
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The order of precedence, the etiquette of who sits where and who leads who to dinner call for all the skills of diplomacy.
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Your Majesties, Honorable Presidents of Republics,
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Highnesses, Eminences, Excellences, Ladies and Gentlemen,
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the Shah was proposing the toast of his guests.
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In our gathering this evening, past history is linked with the realities of today.
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Such a bond of past and present, achieved by understanding and friendship, is surely an omen of good.
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On the following evening, the guests moved out into the star-spangled Persian night toward
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Persepolis, the ruined palace of Cyrus' successor, Darius and his son Xerxes.
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Alexander the Great, the conqueror who reduced it to a shell, is said to have needed 10,000
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mules and 6,000 camels to remove the treasures which were housed in the precincts.
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The climax for the royal guests was a sans-lumière among the great stones, where it all happened.
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From the tomb in the mountainside overlooking the palace where he ruled 500 years before Christ,
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Open the gates guarded by winged bulls with human heads.
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And now comes the procession of the Ambassadors, their beards and ringlets, their hair curled.
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A long procession towards the stairways of stone and black marble, guarded by the lances
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The long train of the horsemen from the steps
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of the Arab camel drivers moving toward the tall forest
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The Iolians and the Aeolians, living on land and sea,
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And when I reconquered Cyprus and the Greek colonies of Asia, I too left them all their liberties.
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Ahura Mazda has dained through the words of my mouth
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to allow his image to cohabit with those of the Greek gods on coins.
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Long, long ago, the ancient Persians invented the postal system with relays of horsemen bringing news from the distant outposts of empire.
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Today, in the company of his guests, in the long shadow of the ruins of Persepolis,
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messengers of good omen bring the Shah the greetings of his Senate in Tehran.
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Today we submit to history the account of the past 2,500 years and we firmly believe
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that the balance is proudly to our credit.
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Persia is on parade, a parade of the great warriors of Persian history, led by the prehistoric
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Here are the war chariots of the Archimenean kings who conquered and civilized the ancient world,
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These were the Persian infantry with wicker shields, sons of Cyrus and Darius, who ruled so many peoples, but awarded them all the rights of free men.
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For more than 10 years, archaeological experts studying the records which remain pieced together
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Every historic detail in this parade, so far as we can know today, is exact.
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This wooden fortress, pulled by a span of oxen, was one of the first siege weapons.
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In these frail oared boats, armies whose soldiers and wagon train were said to have stretched 28 miles, crossed the Mediterranean.
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Over the centuries, through dynasties that have spread long before Christ of modern times, Persia has prevailed.
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Conquerors from the time of Alexander have adopted Persian ways.
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The spirit of the country has risen again and again.
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During the next 500 years, years in which the Great Wall of China was built,
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These were the Parthian soldiers of the Arsacid dynasty.
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The Sassanians, with their sugar loaf hats, which is still worn in Persia today,
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followed during the centuries when Mohammed founded Islam,
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and the powers of ancient Rome sank into final decline.
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when Charlemagne was crowned the Holy Roman Emperor in 800 A.D.
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The Dilemites were contemporaries of William the Conqueror, the Battle of Hastings, 1066 and all that.
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Columbus was discovering America when the Safavids were on the march.
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The Afsharits were a short-lived dynasty in Persian terms
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who belonged to the time when Barney Prince Charlie
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raised the flag of the Stuart Rebellion in Scotland.
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The Afsharits mounted muskets on swivels on their camels.
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The Zans, although they can scarcely have heard about it, fought their battles at the time of the Declaration of American Independence.
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The style of their uniform shows that the Cajas belong to the Napoleonic era.
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The armed services of the latest to the present dynasty in Persia, the Pallavi, gather for a grand assembly.
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These are the household troops of the Shah.
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Here is the new army which the Shah has created to develop literacy, health and international development.
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a peace army to fight poverty, hunger, and social injustice.
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A great international cause in which Persia wishes to play her part.
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The fountains which inspired the poets, philosophers and thinkers of this old land centuries ago
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the way it works is that he doesn't sit down himself
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Moving among his guests, he makes them all happy
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It wouldn't have been complete without the dancing girls.
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It could have been the first occasion in most of the VIP's lives
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that so many of them who are normally whisked about in plush limousines
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have crowded into coaches but what coaches they were carrying them from the pavilions
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at Persepolis to the airport at Shiraz then by air to Tehran the modern capital of Persia
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just in case they were still hungry confections were served on the way
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In the aircraft, the Shah had brief moments in which he was on his own,
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with time to look at what he was saying about the celebrations in the newspapers.
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From a headquarters in Persepolis, the press was tapping and typing comments to the world.
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For most of them it was a surprise to discover how the new Persia was evolving.
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They only remembered the old, when Persia had slept.
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The organization of the Great Parade was in itself an eye-opener.
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The celebrations were the signal that the flame of Persia was burning again.
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A century ago, Persia had been of no importance except to historians, romanticists, and students of archaeology.
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She is making her challenge to join the new world.
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She has started to beat it by building 4,000 new schools in a year.
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schools for adults as well as children her other enemy is her scarcity of water
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by building great dams persia's water too is being brought under control
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she is moving fast into heavy industry the country has to do a lot yet to catch up
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industrially with the western world but one of the wonders of her is that this old sleeping beauty
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During the celebrations of the 2,500 anniversary,
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in tehran the cavalcade of cars swept towards the mausoleum of reza shah the great
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his son wished to do honor to the memory of his father the ceremony was solemn and short
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most of us would wish to pay our own respects to our own fathers his own had founded a new
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in Persia. The Persian people already call him Reza the Great.
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The first glimpse of the floodlit monument outside the airport of Tehran in honor of the present Shah.
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Below the monument is a museum of Persian art and a cinema.
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On the last day of the celebrations, there was a spectacular to mark the inauguration
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of a vast new sports stadium in Tehran designed to seat 100,000 people.
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As the Shah arrived, they seemed to be all there.
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The strongmen of Persia pride themselves on their muscular development.
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Notice that the soldiers are doing their arms drill without orders to the music of the Viennese waltz.
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Towards the end of the celebrations, the Shah heard an address from the religious representatives of the world,
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a confirmation that religious tolerance should be extended to all men.
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As the VIPs said their goodbyes, they left behind them, each in their own language, and over their own famous names, a message of goodwill.
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In our world, we might call them bread-and-butter letters.
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In Persia's world, they remember the words of their great poet and thinker, Sadi, who 700 years ago wrote,
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If ambitious of a great name, make a practice of munificence, for the crop will not shoot till thou shalt sow the seed.
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is likely to become as familiar as London's Big Ben, the Eiffel Tower of Paris, the New
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Symbol des grandes fêtes de l'Iran, ce cylindre en argile cuite de Cyrus proclame que c'est
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ici que pour la première fois les droits de l'homme devinrent loi.