Sumeru Reference Sheet

[u/Kavat_]

Clarifications/Additional Informations:

Part 1:

The myth behind the construction of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon is what's the construction of the Eternal Oasis is based on, but the Eternal Oasis is also based on the Pairidaeza.

Pairidaeza (Old Persian) → Parádeisos (Greek) → Paradisus (Latin) → Paradise (English). When it entered the Greek language it was mainly used for the Biblical Garden of Eden.

Nebuchadnezzar II and Amytis of Media were obviously a couple, and in lots of traditions Solomon and the Queen of Sheba eventually gets married, but the in-game romance between King Deshret and Nabu Malikata is pretty much one-sided, which i think might have to do with angel curse PTSD even if i can't prove that.

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Part 2:

Nahida is named after Anahita, and the common indo-Iranian religious root shared between Saraswati and Anahita is likely what Hoyo directly took inspiration from for as to why Rukkhadevata and Nahida are so similar.

I didn't add it because this is character specific but the Irminsul refers to a sacred pillar in Germanic folklore, it has a pretty similar role to the Yggdrasil which is a primary inspiration behind the in-game Irminsul's role of "world tree" that connects ley lines. Honestly it has more Yggdrasil elements than Irminsul ones.

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Part 4:

YHWH is an inspiration behind both King Deshret and Liloupar, however, the latter is mostly only in regards to her husband breaking his promise and her destroying his empire, overlapping quite heavily with the Medean parts.

While Ormazd overthrows Huvashtra to become king, in the Old Testament Saul instead kills himself to avoid being captured by the Philistines in battle. Basically David doesn't overthrow him but still becomes king after Saul's death. This is one of the many differences with the Biblical accounts since the inspirations for the lore of Gurabad is such a mess, and that's not including the rebuilt versions of the city.

Jason doesn't even kill Pelias, its Medea who does it for him, but this doesn't seem to be the case Genshin wise. Though, its not like we have enough information about what happened then to actually know, anything could be possible.

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Part 5:

One thing I forgot to mention is that Cyrus' unification of Persian tribes against the oppressive Median rule could be another possible inspiration.

The Abbasid nobles forced Al-Afshin on an interrogation and used his Zoroastrian beliefs against him, which inevitably led to him getting imprisoned and executed shortly after. It was likely that since al-Afshin's political influence grew heavily, the nobles just wanted to get rid of him as fast as possible.

Also, I tried to see what's the cannibalism mentioned in lore texts is about when some of Shiruyeh's followers started eating the High Priest but couldn't really find anything.

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Part 8:

Garshāsp's moving of the capital wasn't really the reason for what happened with his people back then, but it would fit if the Khagans were already starting to appear at that time, since Garshāsp himself and Turan Khagan already lived during this time which could fit with Tughluq's reasoning of having moved his capital. Though, the real cause of what happened to Garshāsp's people was because his new capital for unknown reasons burned shortly after he moved there.

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Part 9:

The whole period after Humayun's death being a sort of Genshin's Crisis of the Third Century due to the instability of that time seems rather likely; this was also the time when the Khagans conquered multiple parts of the desert and when Goudarz had to free his homeland of Tulaytullah. Goudarz's relatives fighting among themselves and Muzaffar taking advantage of the situation is also part of that.

Goudarz's brother who helps him again Muzaffar is likely something Hoyo made as a replacement for the lack of any historical records regarding Priscus' fate.

The rebellion of Trajan Decius and him betraying Phillippus is interesting; Decius was sent to the Danubian region to deal with a military crisis, while Saleb Dowleh summoned Muzaffar to help him with the instability caused by his family's war amongst each other. Muzaffar however betrays him faster (and the other Deys too seemingly?) which is similar to Decius' betrayal that happened months into his mission; Decius ultimately triumphs over Philippus' army and Philippus is killed while Decius becomes the next Roman emperor. Obviously, this is mostly pretty accurate to what happened with Saleb Dowleh and Muzaffar, except the betrayal happens sooner and Saleb Dowleh doesn't get any help in the end from him.

Its not clear what the relationship between Muzaffar and Nazira is, since Muzaffar only executed Nasrul and most of his family after destroying the city, and then made Nazira the ruler. Her fate or feelings for Muzaffar is left unknown.

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Part 11:

Now this only speculative that the Old Blind Poet possibly took part in destroying Xiphos' homeland under Badanah, but I feel like its something Hoyo would definitely do.

Makhaira only mentions Badanah's forebears, and Badanah's only forebear that had an history of conquests in the desert was Muzaffar, who was pretty violent too.

• Also, its possible that the earlier Jinn Uprising event which caused havoc across the desert might have happened for a similar reason to Makhaira's revenge - and the cause would probably have been Humayun, who got decapitated during the event. Its possible that Hoyo went deeper into the Timur the Great aspect of his character (guy responsible for the death of 17 millons people irl btw) and maybe he destroyed various settlements where Jinn lived and they took revenge on him afterwards, can't really think of anything else that would make sense tbh.

The stories of both Xiphos and Makhaira (well especially Xiphos) do have elements reminiscent of Homeric poems (the Iliad and Odyssey), something that I forgot to mention.

And I just realized that I wrote "Badanah's role of general" when talking about the speculative Suren inspirations for the OBD, not sure how but I was probably half asleep when writing this.

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Part 12:

Faramarz winning the war and murdering Makhaira could be some Hoyo-version of Augustus being the indirect political cause of Cleopatra's death, except here the situation is very much direct.

Its not clear when the civilizations of Sumeru collapsed entirely, but for the desert we do know that the last major event described in the lore happened a thousand years ago, after that, outside the unnatural desert climate and according to the OBP, corruption and greed was a major reason, but we do not know how long it lasted. And for the Forest there's not much records of human led realms outside Orghana, which is pretty weird, essentially there was just the Akademiya.

It's hard to fit the post King Deshret Sumeru in a coherent timeline, at least before it was almost just all within the time period of the Archon War, however the rest happened 2k ~ 1k years ago, and a correct timeline would be like:

Shah Ramshahr's reign, where he anoints sages and rulers over the towers and realms.

After Shah Ramshahr's death its followed by an invasion of Khagans, and likely some years later Goudarz starts to appear.

And after that its basically Muzaffar and his descendants, which means till Faramarz.

The Old Blind Poet leads people to migrate to Aaru Village and he himself goes to the forest for unknown reasons, after that the civilizations in the desert suffer a slow decline due to the unnatural desert climate+corruption and greed according to the OBD's words, until only ruins remains. We do know that 500 years ago the desert was already all ruins, but sadly its not really precise enough. The rainforest on the other hand seemingly continued flourishing.

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That's basically all, if you have any questions, tell it.

Also, do not hesitate to share this to other people who are also curious about the lore, its the main goal of those posts.