The Dream of Astyages

Asleep in his bed, King Astyages, last king of Media (part of present-day Iran), dreams that vines springing forth from his daughter Mandane will one day occupy all of Asia, including his own kingdom. The prophetic dream eventually came true when Mandane's son Cyrus overthrew Astyages in the mid-500s B.C. and united the tribes of Persia. Founder of a vast new kingdom in Asia, he became known as Cyrus the Great. This miniature comes from a section of the manuscript that speedily conducts the reader through sacred and secular history from the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt (roughly around the 1700s B.C. to the 1400s B.C.) to the reign of Constantine (305-337 A.D.), a vast span of human existence.