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255 cent symbol crowns every Moslem mosque. And as tradi- tion demands, the mosques are flanked, to this day, by minarets that simulate multistage rocketships ready to be launched (Fig. 119). The last chapter in the Nabunaid saga was linked to the emer- gence on the scene of the ancient world of the Persians—a name given to a medley of peoples and states on the Iranian plateau that included the olden Sumerian Anshan and Elam and the land of the later Medes (who had a hand in the de- mise of Assyria). It was in the sixth century B.c.E. that a tribe called Ach- aemeans by Greek historians who recorded their deeds emerged from the northern outskirts of those territories, seized control, and unified them all to become a mighty new empire. Though deemed to racially be “Indo-Europeans,” their tribal name stemmed from that of their ancestor Hakham-Anish, which meant “Wise Man” in Semitic He- brew—a fact that some attribute to the influence of Jewish exiles from the Ten Tribes who had been relocated to that The End of Days FIGURE 119