EARLY 17TH CENTURY

King Ahasuerus (Xerxes) ruled Persia in the 5th century BC. In the Apocrypha book of Esther: Mordecai pleads with the Jewish Queen to intercede with the King to save her people from Haman, the chief minister of Persia, who had decreed to massacre all the Jews in the Persian Empire, whereupon she dresses in her finest robes and enters the royal chamber without being summoned- an offense punishable by death- Ahasuerus holds out his golden sceptre to signify that he would receive her as Esther swoons with relief (her lady-in-waiting mops her face and Diana the Huntress, the protector of virtuous women, holds the executioner's sword in this rendition of the story). The sarcophagus to the right of the scene alludes to the hanging of Haman from the gallows he had prepared for Mordecai.
The deed described here is celebrated in the Jewish festival of Purim, when the story is read aloud in the synagogue.