The Esther story, presumably fictitious, is the earliest attestation of the Pattern. Its author (4th c. BCE) took for granted that the Pattern was familiar to readers. Otherwise the details wouldn't make sense: why did Haman invent his conspiracy theory? (It's still alive today.)

A story survives for millennia not because it is factual, but because it encodes an explanatory pattern about human error. In The Beginning of Infinity, you argue that progress depends on good explanations replacing bad ones. Haman’s conspiracy is a bad explanation weaponized, a closed system immune to criticism. The antidote, then as now, is not power but criticism guided by reason.