Zahhak and Prometheus

You might notice that the ending of the story of Zahhak is similar to the ancient Greek story of Prometheus. In Prometheus Bound by Aeschylus (460 BC), Prometheus steals fire from the gods and gives it to men, and is punished by being tied to a rock in the mountains. An eagle eats his liver, which then regrows, forever.

Over two thousand years after Aeschylus, Percy Shelley (the husband of Mary “Frankenstein” Shelley) wrote a sequel called Prometheus Unbound (1820). Unlike Zahhak, Prometheu...