The earth, like mother Tiamat, can replace us with monsters.

Who Lies Sleeping?

Zoroastrian Influences on Judaism and Christianity 2.1

Numerically considered, Zoroastrianism is today the smallest of the world’s living religions… Yet it lives, unrecognized, in the churches of its successful rivals and quietly influences their most cherished doctrines.
Charles Potter

The Avesta
Zoroaster’s Reforms

Abstract

Evil in the world is presupposed. Zoroaster created a supreme god of good, Ahura Mazda (Ahuramazda, Ormudz), in his exalted majesty, the figure of an ideal Oriental king, and a new god of evil, Angra Mainyu (Ahriman). Ahura Mazda existed before the world began, made it, and guides it with his forethought, the Good Spirit. The Evil Spirit created death when Ahuramazda created life and went on to create the evil opposites of good things, like darkness, filth, sin, sodomy, menstruation, pests and vermin, serpents—whatever plagued people and stopped earth from being Paradise. The Vedic daevas became devils, creations of the evil god. From the first, the two gods strived to destroy each other. Their armies locked in a struggle for mastery of the universe, a war between Good and Evil. Either would rule if it conquered. At the end of history, the world will return to its original perfection, endless time begins and everything is perfect for eternity.

The Avesta

The tenth century Arab historian, Masudi, says Zoroaster invented the writing of religion, his work, the Nards, being a book in 21 parts consisting of 2 million verses requiring 21,000 cow hides, more evidence perhaps that Zoroaster represented a prophetic tradition rather than just one person. The Nards were split into three categories of seven, one each for science, devotion and history. The science section was largely astronomical and astrological.

Avestan was the language of Iranian tribes to the east of Iran but west of the Indian frontier states. It was similar to the language spoken in Chorasmia until the 2nd century AD. The Gathas are judged to be about 200 years older than any other part of the Avesta, but both are entirely eastern with no allusians to western peoples like the Persians and Medes, or western customs or cities. If the Medes were introduced to Zoroastrianism by the merchants of Rhages in about 700 BC, then the ancient religious works were already fixed, so that the meeting with the great western tribes of Iranians did not impact on them. Zoroaster therefore lived no later than 900 BC.

The Avesta is all that remains of the 21 Nards, and these were only part of an even larger collection of works that existed before Alexander destroyed the sacred texts of the Persians, as Diodorus, the historian, relates. The Zoroastrian bible was probably complete by about 400 BC. The Persian archives were held at Persepolis yet Alexander uncharacteristically burnt the city and murdered many of Persia’s leading scholars, though they had willingly surrendered exoecting mercy. The Dinkard, a ninth century Persian work says there were only ever two copies of Zoroaster’s monumental work, one of which was burned and the other was confiscated by the Greeks.

Alexander and Darius III at the Battle of Issus—a mural uncovered at Pompeii

Alexander was not normally disposed to offending the people he conquered. He had just captured Babylon where the priests of Marduk welcomed him, and he had showed respect to them, consulting them on the proper way to worship the Babylonian god, Marduk, taking him by the hand, and offering animal sacrifices to him. He ordered Marduk’s statues and temples to be restored. Earlier he had honoured the Jewish god, and the God, Amun, in Egypt. Perhaps Alexander was merciful to those who surrendered without trouble but, after the battle of Issus, Darius was practically offering surrender to Alexander, so the brutality must have been in revenge for the Greek war with Xerxes.

The priests collected what remained of the burnt fragments, together with portions that had been copied for special devotional purposes and whatever could otherwise be remembered and, in the second century BC, Volosges (Valkash), one of the Arsacid kings, had the fragments preserved and sought to reconstruct the holy works. Evidently it was a long slow process because it was not finished until the Sassanids ruled in the third or fourth century AD. This also was savaged a few centuries later by the Moslems and the Tartars, so the Avesta is only scraps of a vast collection of Zoroastrian sacred work.

The only complete Nard extant is the Vendidad, one of the parts of the Avesta. The other books of the Avesta are either fragments of the lost Nards or precompiled extracts of them that survived the destruction. Fortunately Zoroaster’s Gathas, being particularly sacred, seem to have existed in enough copies to have survived essentially unaltered.

The books of the Avesta are the Yasna, Vispered, Vendidad, Yashts and Little Avesta. The Gathas are universally considered to be the work of Zoroaster and are part of the Yasna. The relative age of the books is estimated by the purity of the grammar, the correct books—the Gathas and the poetic Yashts—being considered original. The language of the Gathas is archaic, though seven verses of them are in prose and are obviously not as old as the rest and must have been inserted at an early stage of editing. Their style and doctrine are later than the others. Ahuramazda is still the most high god, but the old nature deities have returned and prayers are offered to the Amesha Spentas, just as Christians, supposedly monotheistic as they claim, offer prayers to saints.

The Yashts are old hymns describing Persian sacred mythology. Possibly Vedic verses akin to the Gathas were in use by the Indo-European tribes that entered Iran in the first millennium and Zoroaster revized them about the time that the tribes settled, around the 9th or 8th century BC. Mary Boyce declares:

The fluidity of the oral tradition by which almost all Avestan hymns have been transmitted makes it impossible to date their subject matter at all clearly.

Yet, I Gershevitch from the Avestan Hymns to Mithras, considered among the most ancient in style of the Avestan hymns, thinks the conditions described in them are those of the mid-sixth century, the time of the rise of the Achaemenid kings.

The Vendidad is an account of the Zoroastrian dualist philosophy explaining the law and rituals needed to defeat Ahriman (Satan) and his demons in their plans. It is in the form of Ahuramazda’s answers to the prophet’s questions. It covers the rules of cleanliness in detail, explaining the puzzles of the Jewish impurity laws, though the striking difference is the honour awarded the dog, quite unlike the Jewish law. The Vendidad is plainly developed from the original teaching of the Gathas and Ahriman is the equal to all intents and purposes of Ahuramazda. Whatever Ahuramazda creates, Ahriman creates the negation of it.

James Darmesteter, who translated the Zend-Avesta says Persian religion has two ideas:

there is a law in nature
there is a war in nature.

The law in nature makes Ahuramazda the Wise Lord. The war in nature happens because Ahriman intrudes into the creation of Ahura with his wicked creations meant to oppose all that Ahuramazda does. The human world is constantly at war—Good will save us, but Evil will drag us into the abyss. Hope is in Ahuramazda being on our side so long as we make the right choice. The law of warfare is stark. Zarathushtra says:

None of you shall find the doctrine and precepts of the wicked, because thereby he will bring grief and death in his house and village, in his land and people! No, grip your sword and cut them down!
Yasna, 31:18

This passage shows that Persians were not pussy cats, as the Christians and Jews like to pretend. Cyrus spread his religion by warfare, gripping his swrod and cutting down all those who opposed him—that being his measure of their wickedness—to create the greatest empire ever seen before. A thousand years’ later, the Moslems did the same. Here is its root.

Zoroaster’s Reforms

The Aryan folk religion was polytheistic. In Hittite inscriptions Mitra, Varuna, and Indra, among others—all Indian gods—are mentioned as gods of the Iranian Mitannians at the beginning of the fourteenth century BC. Zoroaster taught a new religion, but it was rooted in the old Iranian or Aryan religion. He transformed Aryan folk belief to a consistent theory of the universe and a logical dualistic moral principle, but this dualism is a temporally limited dualism—an episode in the world—and is destined to end in the victory of Good over Evil. Zoroaster´s teachings are of a high moral level. They were a great advance in civilization. Ethically, too, the new doctrine is on a higher plane.

The existence of evil in the world is presupposed. Zoroaster created a supreme god of good, whom he called Ahura Mazda (Ahuramazda, Ormudz), in his exalted majesty the figure of an ideal Oriental king, and a supreme god of evil, whom he called Angra Mainyu (Ahriman). Angra Mainyu is entirely Zoroaster’s invention, and he made all the Vedic “daevas” into devils, the creations and servants of his one supreme god of evil. Ahura Mazda, in one reading of the Gathas, is the primeval spiritual being, the All-father, who existed before the world began, who made it, and who guides it with his power of forethought. His guidance is given by the Holy or Good Spirit, which is opposed by its twin. In the beginning, only these two great spirits existed, but they were antagonists from the first, each striving his utmost to destroy the other and all of the other’s works. Each spirit created for himself subordinate generals and legions of supernatural troops to fight for him in the Cosmic War. Either of the two gods would be omnipotent if the other were conquered, and they and their vast armies are now locked in a desperate struggle for supremacy and mastery of the whole universe, a perpetual war between pure Good and pure Evil. But the Good Spirit soon had an encouraging partial victory, banishing the Evil Spirit (Yasna 45:2) to the Abyss where he is confined to organize his opposition as the principle of ill—the arch-devil—the equivalent of Satan.

Zoroaster does not explain in the Gathas the origin of two antagonists, but his reference to them as twins (Y 30:3) suggests that he thought of both as existing from the beginning of time, or as having been created together. Some read in the Gathas, that the Good Spirit of Mazda and the Evil Spirit, the two great opposing forces in the world, are both subject to a certain extent to Ahuramazda, so one explanation, also early, is that Ahuramazda, the Good God, inadvertently created the Evil God by having a moment of doubt.

The later Zurvanites represented the Holy Spirit as being identical with Ahuramazda. So, in the beginning, either the two spirits of good and evil (Y 30:3) already existed, or Ormazd and Ahriman are twin sons proceeding from the more fundamental principle, Zurvana Akarana (Limitless Time). Zurvana Akarana gave birth to the time of human history—“the time of long dominion” (Zurvana Dareghovadata). Plato in his discussion of time and eternity in the Timaeaus is plainly influenced by this Persian duality, and biblical notions of time also spring directly from it, as some Christians have accepted:

The religion of the bible—and this view is shared with the Persian religion, and would seem to derive from it—clearly distinguishes between the time of the world, and the eternity of God.
Pastor Hermann Sasse

As the past was associated with death and decay, and future with better things to come, the evil spirit as the spirit of corruption and death, and the good spirit as the spirit of new things to be created emerge naturally, whence the slogan, “Here Ormazd, there Ahriman”. This might have been Zoroaster’s original belief.

Both spirits had power—the evil spirit had the power to corrode, corrupt and destroy, the good spirit had the power to generate, procreate and create. Ahuramazda is light and life, and creates all that is pure and good in the ethical world of law, order and truth. His antithesis is darkness, filth, death, and produces all that is evil in the world. Until then the two spirits had counterbalanced one another. As soon as the two separate spirits encounter one another, their creative activity and at the same time their permanent conflict begin. The history of this conflict is the history of the world—all creation divides itself into that which is Ahura’s and that which is Ahriman’s—though they leave it to be fought out by their respective creations and creatures which they sent into the field, including humanity.

Ahura Mazda is Zoroaster’s invention, or the name is at least, though he was probably Varuna, embellished with the traits of other gods that Zoroaster thought were desirable ones. The oldest hymns in the Rig-Veda are the earliest expression of the primitive Indo-European religion, and are earlier than Zoroaster. In one hymn of the Rig-Veda (4:42), Varuna and Indra define their respective spheres of authority, and the former represents himself as the deity of law and order, of what is morally right, and so resembles Ahura Mazda, while Indra, a god whom Zoroaster denounced by name, says he is the patron of the aristocracy and delights in war and poetry. Nevertheless, the two gods are friendly and not rivals. Atharvaveda 4:16, credits Varuna with knowing every man’s inmost thoughts and with maintaining an army of invisible spirits who report on all the actions of men. In Rig-Veda 5:85, a worshipper begs Varuna to forgive his sins, if ever he sinned against someone he loved or wronged a brother, friend, comrade, neighbour, or even stranger. Varuna does boast that he is the greatest of the “asuras” and his will (law and order) is obeyed by other gods.

So, Varuna is one of the few gods who have the title “asura” in the Vedas, and he is a god of order. “Asura” is most frequently applied to three gods in the old Vedic hymns, Dyaus, Varuna, and Mitra. Dyaus is the Greek Zeus but fades out of the Indian pantheon in later times. Mitra likewise fades out, but appears in the later Zoroastrian cult as Mithras. Varuna continues to be worshipped in India as one of the Thirty-Three Gods and is assigned jurisdiction over the ocean, as the Hindu equivalent of Neptune, and is the Regent of the West, one of the four gods who preside over the four cardinal points of the compass and the foreign lands that lie on that bearing.

The most striking difference between Zoroaster´s doctrine of God and the old religion of India lies in that, while in the Avesta the evil spirits are called “daeva”, the Aryans of India, in common with the European branches of the Aryans, gave the name of “daeva” to their good spirits, the spirits of light. Another name of gods in the Rig-Veda is “asura”. “Asura/daeva” were two races of gods, like the Scandinavian Aser and Vaner. “Asura” inspired reverence and awe, while “daeva” inspired a more vulgar, more sensuous, more anthropomorphic, more friendly thought of the familiar gods of light. In the later hymns of the Rig-Veda and the later Indian religion, the “asuras” are evil spirits, while in Iran the corresponding word “ahura” is the title of God as Lord. In India, the thought of “asura” had degenerated to that of the dreadful and the feared, but Zoroaster, while keeping a sense of transcendent awe, also kept the idea of goodness and truth. The daevas, however, he declared as malicious spirits and devils. Thus “ahura/daeva”, “daeva/asura” in Zoroastrian and in later Brahman theology are opposite in their meanings.

So, Zoroaster damns all the “daevas”, but makes an exception for the gods who are called “asuras” in the Vedas, since he calls his own god an “asura”. “Asura” means “lord”. One asura—originally Varuna in the Aryan pantheon—Zoroaster made the supreme god, conferring upon it the title of “the wise or illustrious” (mazda), and so, he called his good god Ahura Mazda, “Illustrious Lord”, suggesting a sun god. In post-Vedic Sanskrit the word “asura” becomes the generic name of a race of supernatural beings who are the enemies of the Indian gods, although the gods who are called “asura” in the early Vedas never appear among the “asuras” of the later myths.

The daevas, still in the Gathas the gods of old popular belief, are the corrupted agents of Ahriman, causing all that is evil in the world—the idols of the people—the true enemies of mankind whose priests and votaries are to Zoroaster idolaters and heretics. Later, these become a multitude of harmful devils. The daevas are foes to cattle and to cattlebreeding, and friends to those who work ill to the cow. Idolaters slay the ox for sacrifice. To Zoroaster, this is an abomination, for the cow is a sacred animal, the gift of Ahuramazda to man, and to be protected. In an old confession of faith, the convert is pledged to abjure the theft and robbery of cattle and the ravaging of villages inhabited by worshippers of Mazda (Y 12:2). Here is a religion of the settled cowherd. The daeva-cult is the religion of uncivilized maurauding tribes.

Some daevas, though, retained a good role as an intermediary between the earthly and heavenly planes. Among them was the god of fire, deliberately kept by Zoroaster, and another power of light, Mitra, the god of day (Iranian, Mithra), who survived in popular belief to be reabsorbed into Zoroastrian religion as a yazata, angel. The Gathas excluded any cult of Mithra and had no use for the Haoma. Beside the Lord and his Fire, the Gathas only accepted archangels and some ministers of Ahuramazda, as aspects of the supreme Lord, who are personifications of abstract ideas. The essence of Ahuramazda is Truth and Law (asha, arta = Vedic, rita). Ahuramazda is the embodiment of these abstractions, much as the Christian God is seen as the personification of Love. The essence of the wicked spirit is falsehood, and falsehood, as the embodiment of the evil principle, is much more frequently mentioned in the Gathas than Ahriman himself.

Any Iranian gods that Zoroaster may have exempted from his general damnation of all other gods must have been created by Ahura Mazda or the archangels as spirits (yazatas) subordinate to the six and therefore subordinate to the supreme god. Ahuramazda was the power that transcended the heavens and regulated their motions, so that Mithras, a solar deity, is necessarily his son, and, as the sun moves between the earth and the vault of the sky, so was he the intermediary between mortals and his inaccessible Father. He had been born fully mature on earth with a miraculous nativity first witnessed by the shepherds who reappear in the Christian legend, and the Christians eventually selected the birthday of Mithras as the birthday of Jesus, the Semitic Mithras. As in Christianity, the Son replaced his aloof Father in practice producing the late derivative of Zoroastrianism that long competed with Christianity in the dying Roman Empire—Mithraism.

Ahuramazda is, according to the Gathas, the creator of heaven and earth, the material and spiritual worlds. He is the source of the alternation of light and darkness, the Lord of Light, and the very centre of nature, as well as the sovereign lawgiver, the originator of the moral order and judge of the entire world.

Ahura Mazda created six or seven (depending on whether the Holy Spirit is counted or not) archangels to help him in the war against Angra Mainya. They were personifications of abstract qualities that the later Avesta calls Amesha Spentas, “glorious immortals”. The idea of gods coming in sevens is ancient. In Canaan, there were seven storm gods called Baalim. An Akkadian text has seven Adads and so does an Assyrian text from Assur. In the Sumerian “Hymn to Iskur”, Enlil gives seven storm winds to Iskur.

Since Mazda was Varuna or Zeus, a sky god, Zoroaster is surely here personifying the colours of the rainbow, variously seen as six or seven. The names of the Amesha Spentas frequently recur throughout the Gathas and characterize Zoroaster’s thought and his concept of god. The six Amesha Spendas are:

Universal Order as reflected in Righteousness, Truth and Law (Asha Vahista; Aletheia). It is the genius of truth, the constant companion of Ahuramazda, Asha as Light and Flame, and effectively an aspect of God Himself, and the embodiment of all that is true, good and right, law and rule—all practically the same thing for Zoroaster. Since all these were qualities of Mithras, perhaps Asha was identified as Mithras even by Zoroastrians. Mithras was the sun and the sun always denotes Justice and Fairness because its light penetrates everywhere. Asha is found in Persian names as Arta, the older root.
The Good Thought or Principle (Vohu Mano; Eunioa) is at its simplest “Good Sense” the good principle, the idea of the good, the principle that works in man inclining him to what is good. And yet is what the Christians would call “Grace” and the Jews “Lovingkindness” or “Piety”. It is the effect of Ahuramazda working within human beings—the result of people receiving God and living according to His wishes. It is a state of earthly paradise—experiencing God’s kingdom in life.
The Wished-for Power and Kingdom of God (Khshathra Vairya; Eunomia) is Ahuramazda’s original perfect kingdom of God that ultimately will be realized again when evil is defeated but meanwhile has been spoiled by the machinations of the Evil One.
Devotion, Reverence for the Divine or Holy Harmony (Aramaiti; Thopsia) is a female genius, thought of as a daughter of Ahuramazda who lived in the real world because she is the bond of unity between the righteous person and God, and also with all other humans who are brothers and sisters. Aramaiti means “Earth” and in the Vedas is Earth. She is identified by the Greeks as Demeter and in Armenia she is known as Spendaramet.
Perfection or Salvation (Haurvatat; Ploutos) and,
Immortality (Ameretat; Athanasia) are always considered together, and stand for the state of Ahuramazda’s original good creation, and therefore qualities to be had only by the righteous. Both are feminine.

Other angelic spirits in Mazdaism include:

The Good Spirit (Spenta Mainyu) who makes up the seventh spirit. The Menorah, the Jewish seven branched candlestick, represents these six spirits, three on either side of Spenta Mainyu, exactly the way the Persian kings were represented on their tombs, with six attendants, three on either side of the king. The Jewish Star of David might have been another symbol of the six spirits, radiating from God, though it was never a symbol of Judaism until the Middle Ages.
The Evil Spirit (Angra Mainyu), later called Ahriman.
For Zoroaster, Falsehood or the Lie (“Druj”) is the manifestation of the Evil One in the world, the essence of evil, and appears more often in the Gathas than the name of the Evil Spirit. Since Zoroaster was reforming an earlier nature religion, the word “Druj” is possibly at root the same as the words “Druid” and “Dryad”. O Schrader in his Prehistoric Antiquities of the Aryan Peoples, thinks the name had been applied to malevolent ghosts, conceivably the same nature spirits that the Druids were supposed to have guarded against. When Ahriman became the opponent of Ahuramazda, the Druj was equated with him.
The Defender of Animals or Ox-soul (Geush Urvan) reflects Zoroastrianism’s concern for useful animals as well as mankind, a concern not yet implemented by Christianity and not even addressed for a thousand years until Francis of Assisi. There is no mention in the Gathas of sowing or reaping. The people were herders. Cattle were specially revered animals and remained so by the Persians, but they herded them for entirely practical reasons and the reverence merely meant they should not be ill-treated. In India the cow became unreasonably revered—it became sacred. Was this common element from the common origins of the Persians and Indians or did the Indians learn a reverence for cattle from Zoroaster’s missionaries and misunderstand and abuse it?
Obedience and faithful hearing (Sraosha)

For Zoroaster, spirits and mankind are to obey the same laws. The good qualities could be had by the followers of Ahuramazda by their adherence to his commands. Holding up the Truth, Zoroaster thought the Lie would perish.

Persian kings considered they ruled by the favour of Ahuramazda, whose commands the king fulfilled, but he was not their only god. Herodotus says the Persians worship the sun (Mithras), moon (Mah), earth (Zam), fire (Atar), water (Apam Napat) and wind (Vahu), though the inscriptions of early Persian kings mention none of these other gods by name. Note that the last four Persian “gods” are the traditional elements of the Greek philosophers of the fifth century BC, when Herodotus wrote his histories. Did the Greek philosophers get these ideas from Persian religion? From the time of Artaxerxes II the gods Mithras and Anahita are mentioned on inscriptions.

Mithras which means “covenant” is the Vedic Mitra, a sun god who has little place in Zoroaster’s original scheme to judge from the Gathas, but evidently was restored under Artaxerxes. He was probably tolerated by Zoroaster as a good angel, having the qualities of Asha—Truth, Justice and Righteousness—but was later identified with Ahuramazda (the tenth Yasht says Ahuramazda and Mithras are gods of like power) and effectively replaced him in some cults, one of which emerged in the Roman sphere. Xenophon says Persian soldiers pitched their tents to face the morning sun so that, on waking, they could automatically follow Zoroastrian practice of praying first thing to the rising sun. The magi then offered sacrifices. Whether the Persians can be regarded as proper Zoroastrians is a moot point, but no one denies that they retained a great reverence for Truth and the quality of uncorruptible honesty transferred to Mithras and thence to the figure, also called Mithras, that became popular in the Roman empire. In view of the importance of Easter to Christians, it is curious that the days of the equinoxes were especially sacred to Mithras, Jesus taking one and the angel Michael the other.

The Goddess (Anahita; Aphrodite) is thought not to have had any place in the religious scheme of Zoroaster, because she does not appear in the Gathas, but was supposedly introduced later as one of the trinity of Ahuramazda, Mithras and Anahita—the inscriptions of Artaxerxes II having prayers to this trinity. Xenophon says that Cyrus the Younger led his processions with three empty chariots for the gods, the second specifically for the sun and the third dressed in red finery. They seem to have been for Ahuramazda, Mithras and Anahita respectively, red being a warrior colour for the war goddess. Artaxerxes II actually calls upon all three of these gods in his inscriptions.

In the Vedas, Aryaman is the aspect of the sun responsible for sacrifices. Varuna and Mithras are responsible for universal order (Vedic, Rita; cf Arta or Asha) with Mithras the sun of the daytime, and Varuna the sun of the night (and therefore the moon), but both having ethical responsibilities too. They form a trinity whose mother is Aditi, a sun or sky goddess, but considered by most to be a later invention, although the name has echoes of Anahita.

Was the Amesha Spenta, Aramaiti, as Mother earth, the original third member of the trinity? Was she reduced to an angelic quality, as was Mithras, by Zoroaster, then restored, along with Mithras, but as Anahita? Anahita is recognized as partly non-Iranian, and was perhaps introduced to fill a gap. Herodotus thought she came from Assyria or Arabia, but he thought her name was Mithras, an odd mistake unless the Persians so closely identified them as to make them twins. Achaemenian insciptions do associate the two closely, and another link was that she had a bull sacrificed in her honour (suggesting she became Cybele), and Mithras is traditionally depicted in the Roman mithraea as slaughtering a bull.

In the reign of Darius II, two temples to Anahita already existed, one according to Plutarch probably citing Ctesias, at Pasargardae, and one, according to Tacitus, set up in Asia Minor (Hierocaesarea) by Cyrus. No sign of a temple to Anahita has been found at Pasagardae but the source could have meant Babylon, Darius’s practical capital city. The other will have been set up by Cyrus the Younger, a son of Darius, not Cyrus the Great, in about 405 BC. So, Darius, a Babylonian accustomed to the veneration of the goddess Ishtar, seems to have stimulated a growth of interest in the Persian Ishtar, Anahita.

The Persian cults of Anahita identified her with Venus, the morning star, and the Greeks therefore called her Aphrodite, but also saw her as Athene, a warrior goddess. Persians sculpt her as a beautiful young woman wearing a fine cloak and sandals and a jewelled coronet. She carries twigs of a sacred bush. She is so important in the later cult that the Aban Yasht describes Ahuramazda himself as offering libations to her for the moral protection of Zoroaster. Pliny and Strabo both attest to her popularity—her cult spreading to Armenia, Cappadocia, Pontus and Cilicia. Independent proof comes from Lydia where there are inscriptions to her as a goddess of waters, fertility and procreation, like Ishtar and Nin-Ella.

Anahita was identified with the mythical Persian river Harahvaiti, an accepted yazata, rersponsible for fertility and procreation, and source of all the water in the world. As a yazata, Harahvaiti was commonly addressed by her titles and epithets rather than her name, and among them was “anahita” meaning “pure”. The divinity was properly “Anahiti”, meaning the “Pure One”, so the two originally separate entities could easily have been identified. The older goddess, represented by Venus, had no association with water, and nor did Ishtar and Inanna, the Babylonian goddesses, yet Anahita became known as a water goddess, though retaining the war-goddess aspect of the planetary deity. She became in Sassanian times almost to be an Iranian Kali, and warriors placed the skulls of defeated enemies in her shrine at Istakhr.

Tiri, who is Nabu, was absorbed into Zoroastrianism at this time too, by association with the yazata, Tishrya, Sirius. It must have been a clever Mage to equate Mercury with Sirius, but it was done. The Babylonians regarded Sirius and Spica to be aspects of a single goddess, a manifestation of Ishtar—presumably the constellation of the Virgin. The sixth month was presided over by Ishtar, and Spica was its star.

Anahita hands the ring to a Sassanid king, her covenant with him

Once instituted, the cult of Anahita seems to have become popular, because it became rich. In 209 BC, Antiochus III, the Greek king of Seleucia, stripped the temple of Anahita (Aine) at Egbatana (Hamadan). It incorporated gold and silver bricks, gold plated columns and silver roof tiles, a tribute to generosity in poverty, ignorance and superstitious fear. The priestesses of Aine of Egbatana seem to have remained chaste, like nuns. Artaxerxes also seems to have invested special public fire temples where a sacred flame burned perpetually in a sacred enclosure that could only be entered by people who were ritually pure to pray.

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Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.