Abstract

© Dr M D Magee
Contents Updated: Thursday, August 30, 2001
Friday, 03 February 2006

Abstract

The Calendar—Feasts and Dates
Zoroastrian Calendar

The Achaemenians originally had numbers instead of names for the days of the month. Artaxerxes II (405-359 BC) dedicated each day and month to a divine spirit (Y 16:3-6), and appointed a year of twelve months with thirty days each. Each month had four weeks, the first two of seven days and the last two of eight days. Saturday was “Shanbeh”, the same word as “Sabbath”. Four days were devoted to Dadvah (Creator) Ahuramazda, acknowledging Zurvan—the god of time or the year, considered to have four parts (perhaps the four quarterly festivals). Later, the first of the four days was named after Ohrmuzd, and the other three after him as Creator, Dai (Pahlavi for Dadvah). The three “Dai” days are distinguished by adding to each the name of the following day, eg “Daibe Adar”.

The twelve months also received dedications, which coincide with those of twelve of the days. The month names are first attested in Pahlavi (Middle-Persian). Names of the months in New-Persian are:

1. Farvardin
2. Ardibehest
3. Khordad
4. Tir
5. Amordad
6. Shahrivar
7. Mehr
8. Aban
9. Azar
10. Dai
11. Bahman
12. Esfand

The year begins at the vernal equinox (Hamaspathmaidhaya, “Middle of Equal Paths”) on 1 Farvardin, about 21 March, the summer solstice is on 1 Tir, about 22 June, the autumnal equinox is on 1 Mehr, about 23 September, and the winter solstice is on 1 Dai, about 22 December.

The Old Avestan calendar became the religious calendar of the followers of Zoroaster everywhere, including the communities in the south and west. The Pagan Aryans seem to have divided the year (yar) into two seasons, a summer season from the spring equinox to the autumn equinox, and the winter from autumn to spring. The same practice is found in India, testifying to its Aryan origin. The Vedic system, consisted of two equal parts, two ayanas, either divided at the solstices (“uttarayana” and “daksinayana”), or divided at the equinoxes (“devayana” and “pitryana”). In Iran, two festivals marked the beginning (“maidyoshahem”) and the middle of the year (“maidyarem”). Yasht 8:36 speaks of the whole of life watching after the end of the year for the heliacal rise (mid-July) of Tishtrya (Sirius, heralding the rainy season). And elesewhere in the Avesta, the season beginning at the “maidyarem” is described as “the cold bringer”, so it spans winter. “Maidyarem” would therefore be the autumn equinox, and the year began in spring (cf K R Cama). Tir, when Tishtrya rose, was the fourth month (June-July) and Ahuramazda the seventh (September-October), the beginning of the second half year (mid-year).

Today, the seventh month is Mihr which is a name of Mithras, suggesting that Ahurahmazda is Mithras! But even calling it Ahuramazda shows it was a name given to it in the period of the acceptance of Zoroastrianism. It cannot have been its original name. Seeing Ahuramazda as Mithravaruna, the compound noun uniting the two half year seasons into a single god of the year would logically account for the month Ahuramazda being at the mid-year, where the two half years join. It also means Ahuramazda is a multiple god, like the Hebrew Elohim, which means “gods”, and the Christian Trinity! The first day of each month was also called Ahuramazda, suggesting he was like Janus, the opener and closer, looking forward and back. That might imply that the Zoroastrian year originally began at the autumn equinox. Then, the vernal beginning was a later harmonisation with Babylonian practice. Even every week began with a day named after Ahuramazda, so every week began with a Lord’s day.

The feast of Baga, originally a pre-Zoroastrian and old Aryan feast consecrated to the sun god, was a great and popular festival in ancient Iran. It was connected with the worship of the oldest Aryan deities, called by the compound Bagamithra, who were noted as far back as the fourteenth century BC. Baga was identified in the Rig Veda as Varuna, the twin of Mithras, so Bagamithra means the two gods, but the Iranians came to see Mithras as the Baga, as if Bagamithra stood for Mithras with the title Baga. The festival’s place in the calendar must have been the month dedicated to Baga, and later to Mithras. It was called “Bagayadi” or “Bagayadish” and corresponded to the Babylonian month Tishritu, the patron of which was Shamash the Babylonian sun god, who according to Stuart Jones, is identified with Mithras on a tablet in the library of Assurbanipal. This month might have been that of the earlier Iranian New Year festival, when the year began at the autumnal equinox. So, “Bagayadi”, the same month as the later “Mithrakana” and the modern “mihragan” or “mihrjan”, was the feast of Baga, originally the autumnal equinox. The feast of Baga seems to have been celebrated for five days, and five days were intercalated at mid-year to make the year fully 365 days. Herodotus’ story of five days’ uproar after the Magi of Smerdis were killed, suggests it was at this feast.

In Babylon, long before under Hammurabi, the beginning of the civil year was transferred from Tishritu to Nisan, from autumn to spring. The first month of the Babylonian year, Nisan, could start between 24 March and 23 April, according to van der Spek and Mandermakers. So, the Babylonian year began at the vernal equinox when the Iranian year had its New Year at the autumnal equinox. But a calendar of the Babylonian type was adopted early by the south-western section of the Iranian people, who were influenced by the civilizations of Elam and Assyria-Babylon. At some stage, the Achaemenian kings fully adopted the Babylonian calendar, with its luni-solar year, and Babylonian month names, except perhaps in the beginning of the year. A compilation by Thompson, called Reports of the Magicians and Astrologers of Nineveh and Babylon, has a passage where two different dates, Nisan and Tishri, spring and autumn, are mentioned as the beginning of the year. When the Persians ruled in Babylon, there was confusion between the two systems, the compromise being the acceptance by the Persians of a religious and a civil year, as in the Babylonian and Jewish calendars.

Artaxerxes II supervised the introduction of a new calendar, suggesting that he was consciously involved in religious innovation. The old calendar already had some intercalary days, but the original Persian names for the months had been changed to Babylonian ones. The Babylonian calendar had been introduced into Egypt by Darius, and it seems that the modified calendar of Artaxerxes was based on the Babylonian one. The reform of the calendar was to adopt a regular solar year of twelve thirty day months, with five intercalated days, to change the names of the days and months to Zoroastrian ones, and possibly to fix some of the feast days. The calendar of the Essenes seems to reflect it.

The Babylonian calendar had 360 days of twelve months of 30 days. Contemporary Babylonian texts speak of months of thirty days, and even of a year of 6 60 day “months” in Babylon, perhaps an attempt at rationalisation to match their counting system. But Babylonian business documents kept months of standardised thirty days, though the religious calendar seems to have been a luni-solar one. It is no accident that the number of days in a year equalled the number of degrees in a heavenly cycle. The shortfall from the full 365 days was made up by intercalation of the odd days. The Persian calendar was the same because Artaxerxes was reported to have had 360 concubines, one for each day of the year. Presumably his wives were intercalated!

In this scheme, the months and even the days on the month had names taken from yazatas. The tenth month, December to January, was the month of Ahuramazda (as Creator, “Dadvah” or “Dai”), but Mithras had the seventh month (September to October) when he had the great autumn festival. The spring festival was the important New Year festival for Zoroastrians, beginning on “No Roz” (Norouz), New Day in Persian. The Babylonian calendar began in Nisanu (Jewish, Nisan—March to April) at the corn harvest and required an “akitu” or ritual placing of the images of the gods from the temples to the outside of the city boundaries. It was therefore a festival full of pageantry lasting a week. The Persians seem to have copied the whole festival, although for them on the plateau it was at sowing time not harvest time, and they made it their New Year festival. The six seasonal feasts of the Pagan Iranian calendar were rededicated to the Amesha Spentas.

So, the Persians took the ceremonial of their annual renewal festival from the Babylonians, though Old Iranian religion had celebrated the birth of Mithras (Mitra, Mihr, Mica). The Babylonians believed that order that came out of chaos with the defeat of the monster of chaos, Tiamat, by Marduk. Marduk was identified with Mithras. Disorder and chaos ruled at the beginning of the festival, then over its twelve days, representing the twelve months of the year, considered also to stand for twelve periods of long time (millennia), order was restored via bonfires, lights and a succession of rituals, processions and religious dramas. On one of the days chaos is mimicked by a reversal of the normal positions of people in society. Masters became servants, and servants masters. Mithraists took this celebration into Rome after the wars with Macedonia, where it merged with and modified the Saturnalia, the festival of an old rural fertility god. Here began the long-lived tradition of the Lord of Misrule with the coronation of a mock king. Lamps were lit to make the spirits of darkness flee.

The strange story in the book of Esther, was probably written in its present form about 100 BC, as most of the present Old Testament was. The Persian monarch, Ahasuerus (Xerxes), drops the queen, Vashti, and marries Esther, a Jewish woman. This alone is highly important. Neither Zoroastrianism nor Judaism permitted mixed marriages. The king must have regarded a Jewish woman as a Zoroastrian for the marriage to be legal! The implication here therefore is that Judaism and Mazdayasnaism were considered the same religion by the Persian prince and by the Jewish author. The closeness of the relationship between Israel and Persia is indicated by the Semitic words in the later, Pahlavic parts of the Avesta. No such intrusions are found in the Yashts and the Vendidad and obviously therefore not in the Gathas.

Esther’s cousin and foster-father, Mordecai (Marduk), warns the Persian monarch that people are plotting against him. A Persian Grand Vizier, Haman, who opposes Mordecai, convinces the monarch to decree death against Mordecai and other Jews in his empire, selected by lot, on a certain date. Esther, intervenes, and the Grand Vizier is instead hanged (crucified?—crucifixion was the Persian punishment) and Mordecai is appointed Grand Vizier. Instead of being killed themselves, the Jews slay seventy-five thousand of their enemies.

The legend justifies a Jewish feast, the Feast of Lots, held at the Persian New Year, celebrating the Jewish escape and the massacre of their enemies. Yehouah has no role in the story, and the characters are all historically fictitious except for the king. Esther is the goddess Ishtar (Anahita). Mordecai means Marduk (Merodach), who we saw is Ahuramazda and therefore also Yehouah. Haman oddly enough is the king again in another guise (perhaps standing for the king of the old year) because the royal family name Achaemenides in Greek is Hakhamanish in Persian. The story is said to be based on a Persian tale about the shrewdness of Harem queens.

The description in the story of the parade through the streets in royal robes, and of mock combat, features in the Persian New Year celebrations, when the old year lost in mock combat to the New Year and was hanged or crucified. The Jews took this New Year celebration, like the rest of their religion, from the Persians and then had to find a reason for it—much as Christians found reasons for celebrating Pagan festivals as Christian holidays. The Persian and Jewish New years were at the spring equinox—Easter (Esther) to us!

The older autumn festival was again dedicated to Mithras, the Babylonian festival to Shamash being held in October. At “Mithrakana” or “Mihragan”, kings distributed winter clothes. A festival was dedicated to Tiri in June when the festival of Tammuz was bewailed, because it was the start of the Babylonian dry season when plants died off in the heat. The link of Ishtar with both Tammuz and Nabu allowed the Iranians to see Tiri as Tammuz. At Tiragan people bathed in rivers. These were not among the Holy festivals Zoroaster prescribed. At the Adar-jashns they lit fires in their houses, and, at Sada, they lit mid-winter bonfires, to nourish the sun and initiate his strengthening. A grand bonfire was particularly placed near a stream to warm its waters in anticipation of spring.

“Sada” preserves the meaning of the festival, for it is “the hundredth”, the hundredth day from the end of the Zoroastrian winter—which had contracted from a full half year to only five months, from the beginning of Aban (October-November) to the end of Esfand (February-March). This uneven division of the holy year seemed to have given mystical significance to the numbers seven and five. Here too is a hint of the division of the year into pentacosts (fifties), winter neatly dividing into three of them. Summer did not divide so neatly, four pentacosts with a remainder of ten. The extra days might have been combined with the five intercalated days to give the New Year holy festival which needed twelve days to represent the twelve epochal millenia of Zoroastrian cosmic time.

The feast of “hamaspathmaidyem” was in the last days of Esfand, the end of the year. It was connected with a religious ceremony, perhaps including a remembrance of the dead. Originally at the end of the month Azar (November-December) and immediately before the month Dai (December-January), was a festival of the souls (fravashis) of the departed. It corresponds precisely with our All Souls and All Hallows eves. It must have been the original New Year feast at the end of the summer at the autumn equinox, but was transferred in its importance to the beginning of summer at the spring equinox.

So, the Iranians had notable feasts in the spring and the autumn. The spring festival welcomed back the growth of herbage, and the autumn one was the Mithrakana, a harvest festival for the end of the current season and a fertility festival for the coming spring dedicated to Mithras. A sacrifice of a bull to Apollo was made at the Athenian Bouphonia. It will be the practical source of the bull-slaying images in Roman Mithraism, though the myth accounting for it drew on the heavenly Perseus astride the bull Taurus. However, since all domestic animals return to the Ox-soul, any could be used for sacrifice depending on the circumstances. With a different intention, it seems a bull was sacrificed to Anahita too, but here to promote human fertility. In Sasanian times, Mithrakana was the one time when the king could get drunk. Having settled, it seems the Persians had two new years, one in the spring and one in the autumn, but they celebrated other festivals including the solstices. The Jews had different years too:

One the first day of Nisan is the beginning of the year for kings and festivals. On the first day of Elul is the beginning of the tithing of cattle. On the first day of Tishri for the beginning of years, and for the sabbatic years and the jubilee years, for the plants and the vegetables. On the first day of Shabat is the beginning of tree-fruit.

Mishnah

So the Jews had four new years, but the religious one in spring was the most important one in a theocracy, and Rosh ha-Shanah in the autumn preserved the old harvest festival, as the occasion when creation is judged by God.

Herodotus says Persians had no temples, altars or statues of gods, and by Greek standards, that was true. In Achaemenian times, Persian processions were led by an empty chariot drawn by white horses. It was for Ahuramazda. A similar habit is recorded in Urartu, but in Assyria, the chariot carried an image of the god, Ashur or Ishtar. Zoroastrian worship was al fresco—all altars in Persia being, usually in pairs, in open country—but, under the first Achaemenids, temples had appeared in Persia to preserve the sacred flame. Xenophon describes the procession, led by sun chariots, that took the sacrificial animals to the paired altars where they were sacrificed before the king.

The Iranians always used the winged disc which originated in Egypt as a symbol of Horus in the third millennium BC so Herodotus was only relatively correct about this, and from the time of Artaxerxes, statues of Anahita became popular. The many sun names like Surya, Asura, Ahura, Aura, Huar, Hvar, Khor, Hor, Ra and words for gold (Aureus, Or), derived from its bright sun-like colour, betray a common origin and perhaps the winged disc accompanied it. Note that many of these words came to mean a “lord”, and the word “hero”, and names like Hercules will have the same origin, not to mention words like “har” meaning “high” or a “hill”.

The solar disc spread through the near east in the second millenium when Egypt was its most imperial. Standing for the pharaoh who was the sun god incarnate, it came to represent royalty and thence power. In Assyria a figure appears in the disc carrying a bow or a ring in one hand while saluting with the other. The Persians took the motif from the Assyrians. Yasht 19 explains the significance of Xvaranah, an Old Iranian divinity, represented as a raptor, who was adapted to stand for the fravashi of the king or, some think, Ahura Mazda himself. It therefore hovered over the king in symbolic scenes on inscriptions. Bronze objects from Urartu had this symbol in a form thought close to that of Darius’s monument at Behistun, the earliest Persian example. The word Hormuz (Ormuz, from Ahuramazda) still exists in use for the straits in the Persian Gulf, an island and a town.

• For a short readable account of the Persian empire at CAIS, search Google for:
  
  
  +"(HAKHÂMANESHIÂN) The Empire of Achaemenid Dynasty (550-333 BCE)" +CAIS
  
  
  Drag and copy highlighted text to paste into the Google bar while connected to the web.

Skeptical Resources—Internet infidels | Jesus Never Existed | Steven Carr’s Website | Christianism | Early Christian Writings | God is Imaginary | “Religion Detoxification” | Our Judaio-Christian Heritage | Archaeoastronomy | No Deity | No Beliefs | Evil Bible | Bible God | ex-Christians | Jesus Police | Islamic Faith Freedom | Atheist Experience | American Atheists | Jovial Atheist | Askwhy! books
Other Resources—Early Christian Docs | Resources for Study | Traditional Bible-History | Traditional Bible World History | Traditional Bible History | about.com biblical history | Apologetics web sites | Advent Ch Fathers | Orion center links | Wikipedia | Traditional Jewish History