The Influence of the Zoroastrian religion on Judaism

by Peter Myers

Date December 31, 2002; update February 17, 2019.

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David Ben Gurion on the First Persian Empire:

"1) This great empire of Cyrus was established within a very short period of time: in the 11 years which passed from the conquest of Achmetah, capital of Media, in the year 550 B.C., to the conquest of Babylonia in 539. 2) The Persian empire endured for 200 years under the rule of the Cyrus dynasty, while the empire of Alexander the Great, which was, as is known, the inheritor of the Persian empire, survived only during his lifetime, and fell apart immediately after he died. 3) Cyrus exhibited a compassionate spirit toward his enemies and a unique tolerance toward all religions; 4) He played a decisive role in the first return to Zion." bengur-bible.html.

The religion of that empire was Zoroastrianism, and it has shaped Judaism, Christianity, Manichaeism, Islam, Marxism and Radical Feminism.

In contrast to the positive Jewish assessment, the main Western tradition sees the Persian Empire through disparaging Greek eyes:

"Persia, the name used for centuries, mostly in the West, for the kingdom of Iran in south-western Asia. It originated from a region of southern Iran formerly known as Persis, alternatively as Pars or Parsa, modern Fars. During the rule of the Persian Archaemenid dynasty (559-330 BC) the ancient Greeks first encountered the inhabitants of Pars on the Iranian Plateau, and the name was extended. The people of Iran have always called their country Iran, Land of the Aryans."

- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, Volume VII, Chicago, 1974, p. 890.

Alexander defeated the imperial army, and thereby inherited the Persian Empire, initiating the Hellenistic era.

The Persian Emperor was not the first to be called King of Kings: this had been a title of whichever king was head of a major empire covering much of the Middle East - Sargon had initiated the process, and Egypt, Assyria and Babylonia had taken turns for 1000 years. Conquest of the imperial army led to inheritance of its empire and, with it, this title.

The First Persian Empire is said to be the first multi-cultural empire, but its rulers had a religion universal yet exclusive - the Zoroastrian religion - whose god Mazda (Light) was so to influence Jewish thinking, that Yahweh was changed from a tribal God into a universal one. Important parts of the Jewish Bible were written or edited AFTER this Zoroastrian influence.

Zoroastrianism's apocalyptic struggle between Good and Evil (God and the Devil), was adopted by Christianity and Islam; has inspired religious fundamentalisms ever since; and bequeathed the secular fundamentalist mindset of Marxism and Radical Feminism.

Unabashed American Nazi, Professor Revilo P. Oliver wrote, "The Zoroastrian cult and all the cults derived from it can be summarized in one sentence. They replace race with a church" (The Origins of Christianity, Historical Review Press, England, 2001, p. 152. The publisher's address is given as Uckfield, Sussex; but the title page gives the place of publication simply as "England"): http://www.revilo-oliver.com/rpo/RPO_NewChrist/toc_ol.htm.

In The Religion of the Occident (Philosophical Library, New York 1959), also published as The Story of Christian Origins, Martin Larson writes,

"Zoroastrianism ... was for centuries embraced by those Caucasians known as Aryans or Iranians; and it became for them an instrument of national policy in their bitter conflicts against surrounding nomadic tribes and Semitic nations ... With the emergence of the first Persian Empire under Cyrus and its further expansion under Darius the Great Hystaspes, 521-486, the worship of Ahuramazda dominated twenty-three nations." (p. 83).

Larson notes that Ahuramazda not only had seven archangels, but he also had "the Spirit of Wisdom, his active, creative agency in the universe: a concept startlingly similar to the logos of Zeno the Stoic, Philo Judaeus, and the Fourth Gospel" (p.93).

The influence of the Zoroastrian (Median) religion upon Greece is also argued in Ruhi Muhsen Afnan's Zoroaster's Influence On Anaxagoras, the Greek Tragedians, and Socrates, and in Geiger and Windischmann's Zarathustra in the Gathas and in the Greek and Roman Classics.

Even more startlingly, Avesta scholar Lawrence H. Mills derives Heraclitus' metaphysics - the cosmic war of opposites, and Logos (an underlying unity) as Reason embedded in Nature - from Zoroastrian inspiration, in his book Zoroaster, Philo and Israel Part 1: Zoroaster and the Greeks (F.A. Brockhaus, Leipzip, 1903-4; reprinted by AMS Press, New York, 1977).

G. S. Kirk and J. E. Raven endorse Aristotle's opinion that Pythagoreanism was fundamentally dualistic, and write, "Zoroastrianism, like Pythagoreanism, was based upon a dualism between a good principle, Ormazd, and a bad, Ahriman" (The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge University Press, London, 1962, p.241).

Also, "Zoroaster was well established as a sage by the early Hellenistic period, and Aristoxenus had stated that Pythagoras visited Zoroaster in Babylon. Of the vast mass of pseudo-Zoroastrian literature produced in the Hellenistic epoch ... A second wave of Zoroastrian literature was produced in the first two centuries A.D. by various Gnostic sects" (op. cit., p.65).

Zoroastrian thought articulates antagonistic polarity, in which one pole (the evil) must be destroyed. In contrast, Taoist thought is based upon complementary (yin/yang) polarity.

Heraclitus articulates a mix of antagonistic polarity (in which strife prevails between the poles) and complementary polarity (both poles being essential parts of the whole).

Acknowledgment of the Zoroastrian influence need not undermine the Greek contribution, the experimental science and free-thinking dialectic (rational debate) not found in Persia; it merely locates the Greek effort within the dominant Persian cultural context.

Unlike Greek freethinking, Zoroastrianism was a revealed religion like Ezra's reconstructed Judaism: Zoroaster being its Prophet, the Avesta its Bible, the Gathas its Psalms, the Zend its Talmud (commentary). In a most unusual discussion, Martin Buber in his book Good and Evil devotes as much attention to the Avesta as to the Bible.

Zoroastrianism, then, was the first fundamentalist religion, spread by missionaries, embraced by King Cyrus and King Darius, prepared to use war as a means of enlightenment, the first form of Internationalism. It pressed the Greeks at the gates of their cities, and within, as the above authors show.

(1) Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism Volume Two: Under the Archaemenians (2) Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism Volume Three: Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman Rule (3) Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (4) Mary Boyce, Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism (5) The Zend-Avesta (6) The multi-racial army of the Persian Empire (7) Zoroastrian influence on the Pre-Socratic Greek Philosophers

Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism Volume One: The Early Period , E. J. Brill, Leiden 1975.

Some quotes from this volume are at zoroastrianism.html.

(1) Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism Volume Two: Under the Archaemenians , E. J. Brill, Leiden 1982.

{p. 42} Archaeological discoveries in Seistan and the ancient epics of Sumer, show that there were prehistoric links between Anshan and eastern Iran; and it has been suggested that the Achaemenians themselves were a clan of eastern Iranian origin, who perhaps joined the Persians in the southwest only in the eighth century B.C. The proselytizing of Pars from Drangiana-Arachosia, a region with a strong and ancient Zoroastrian tradition, would thus seem possible and indeed some evidence for an early religious connection with the area has been found in the dialectology of the surviving Avestan texts. This, however, may be due to these texts having been committed to writing in Pars during the Sasanian period, partly at the dictation of eastern Iranian priests; for, despite all the above considerations, it still seems more probable that the Persians received Zoroastrianism through Median mediation, hence through Raga from northeastern Iran. Thi is is because, although they eventually gained dominance over the Medes, and although their priests were evidently full of religious zeal during both the Achaemenian and Sasanian periods, the Persians always acknowledged the claim of the Medes to the greater antiquity and authority of their Zoroastrian tradition, and never fabricated (as did other major regions of Iran) an independent claim of their own to possess the holy places of the faith.

The Achaemenians evidently had close contact with the Deiocids, as their oldest and nearest royal vassals; and Cyrus the Great is said by Herodotus to have been married to Mandana, daughter of Astyages. There is no difficulty, therefore, in supposing that thev learnt their Zoroastrianism from Median sources. Missionary influences emanating from Raga may have been reinforced at this period, as we have seen by diplomatic marriages contracted with eastern Iranian princesses, and it was perhaps one such marriage which led to the giving of the first

{p. 43} Avestan name, Hystaspes/Vistaspa, among the Achaemenians. Conceivably it was also this eastern family tie which caused the Persian Vitaspa to be appointed eventually to be governor of the eastern regions.

The major political event in western Iran in the sixth century was the successful rebellion by Cyrus against Astyages, leading to the establishment of a Persian Empire in succession to the Median one; and a remarkable feature of that rebellion was that Cyrus was actively supported by numbers of the Median nobility, who thereby brought about the subordination of their own people to the Persians. The folkloric tale by which Herodotus accounts for this carries little conviction; and evidence of religious and political propaganda made beforehand on Cyrus' behalf suggests that one of the main causes may have been that Astyages held to the Old Iranian faith of his forefathers, whereas Cyrus put himself forward as a champion of Zoroastrianism, and so attracted support from adherents of the eastern religion among Medes as well as Persians.

Religious and political propaganda on behalf of Cyrus in Babylon

Cyrus became king in Anshan, it seems, in 558 B.C., and it was not until 550 that he finally defeated Astyages in battle. During the intervening years there is evidence of propaganda on his behalf in Babylonia, once more a great power after Assyria's downfall. Thus an oracle composed probably in 553, and delivered to King Nabonius, contains a prophecy concerning the 'Umman-Manda', in this context the Medes: 'The Umman-Manda of whom you spoke, he himself [i.e. Astyages], his land, and the kings who march beside him, shall be no more. In the third year, when it arrives, they [i.e. the gods of Babylon] have caused Cyrus, king of Anzan, to arise against him, his petty vassal with his small army: he will overcome the farflung Umman-Manda, and will take hlm in bonds to his own land'. This is held to be genuine prophecy, not ex evetu, and it suggests that there were skilful Persian propagandists at work among the priests of Babylon who had convinced them of the success of Cyrus' planned uprising.

Striking testimomy to the religious import of some of their propaganda comes from the verses of Second Isaiah, that is, from chapters 40-48 of the Book of Isaiah, generally held to be the work of an anonymous

{p. 44} poet-prophet of the Captivity. Second Isaiah speaks joyfully to his fellow Jewish exiles of the deliverance which is to come for them through Cyrus, whom Yahweh, god of Israel, addresses thus by his mouth: 'You shall be my shepherd to carry out all my purposes, so that Jerusalem may be rebuilt and the foundations of the temple may be laid. Thus says Yahweh to Cyrus his annointed, Cyrus whom he has taken by the hand to subdue nations before him and undo the might of kings before whom gates shall be opened and no doors be shut; I will go before you and level the swelling hills; I will break down gates of bronze and hack through iron bars. I will give you treasures from dark vaults hoarded in secret places, that you may know that I am Yahweh, Israel's God who calls you by name. For the sake of Jacob my servant and Israel my chosen I have called you by name and given you your title, though you have not known me' (44.28-45.4). Further, Yahweh declares through the prophet to the Jews: 'I alone have roused this man [i.e. Cyrus] in righteousness and I will smooth his path before him; he shall rebuild my city and let my exiles go free' (45.13).

To this message of hope, Second Isaiah joined a prophecy of degradation and woe for Babylon, concerning which Yahweh proclaims to the Jews: 'He whom I love [i.e. Cyrus] shall wreak my will on Babylon and the Chaldeans shall be scattered' (47.14). 'I will lay the Chaldeans prostrate as they flee, and their cry of triumph will turn to groaning (43.14) The prophet dwells at length on the coming sufferings of the Jews' oppressors; but such prophecies do not accord with the fact that in the end Cyrus made a bloodless entry into Babylon, and ruled mildly as its accepted king. Second Isaiah also foretells that the 'toilers of Egypt and Nubian merchants' will submit to the Persian (45.14), and this likewise was not to be. These false predictions have led scholars to conclude that the Jewish prophet, like the Babylonian priests, was indeed foretelling the uncertain future when he composed his utterances.

The verses of Second Isaiah are remarkable in that in them alone, out of all the Old Testament, the term 'messiah', in the sense of an annointed deliverer of the Jewish nation, is used of a foreigner, a non-Jew. This

{p. 45} in itself appears a measure of the exalted trust in Cyrus which the unknown Persian propagandist had instilled in the prophet. To this striking usage Second Isaiah joins startlingly original theological utterances; and what seems to have been new and unfamiliar in these for Jewish ears is markedly Zoroastrian in character - so much so that parallels have been drawn between it and one of Zoroaster's own Gathas. Concerning these parallels the scholar who remarked them has observed: 'There is little absolute novelty in theological thought, so it is rarely possible to point out the absolutely first occurrence of any important idea, even in the preserved material, or to explain many chance and isolated occurrences. What can be seen clearly and what does require historical explanation is the way in which certain ideas, formerly sporadic and unimportant, suddenly find frequent expression and are made the central concerns of important works. A notorious case of this is the history of the notion that Yahweh created the world. In the preserved works of Hebrew literature it plays no conspicuous role in those which can be dated by conclusive demonstration before the time of II Isaiah. (As everyone knows, the dating of Genesis I and of the Psalms is a matter of dispute; they may be later than II Isaiah.) The notion does occur in occasional prophetic passages ..., but such occasional occurrences merely render conspicuous the prophets' usual neglect of the subject. Then suddenly it becomes one of the main themes of II Is. 40-48. But it was not necessary to II Isaiah's primary purpose, which was to prepare the Judeans for their proximate deliverance and convince them that it was Yahweh who would deliver them. For this, all that was needed in the deity was sufficient power to perform the acts proposed. Of course, II Isaiah's conception of Yahweh as the sole, omnipotent creator God gave absolute assurance to his announcement of the impending deliverance, but it was not necessary to that announcement and cannot be derived from it. His immediate predecessor, Ezekiel, would have made the same announcement without any such cosmological framework. It is true that when presenting this idea II Isaiah several times suggests that it was no new doctrine, but one with which his readers should have been familiar from of old (40.12, 28 etc.). But innovators often claim antiquity for their innovations ... And the insistence with which II Isaiah returns to

{p. 46} this doctrine again and again indicates that he expected it to be unfamiliar to his hearers and not readily accepted or even understood by them'.

The particular Gatha which provides striking parallels for Second Isaiah is Yasna 44. This is formed as a series of questions addressed to Ahura Mazda, each with an expected answer of 'I am' or 'I do'. 'Not only is the use of such rhetorical questions a conspicuous peculiarity of the style of II Isaiah, but almost all of those particular questions which make up the cosmological part of the Gatha (vss. 35) are either asked or answered in II Isaiah, with Yahweh taking the place of Ahura Mazda'. Thus Y 44.3.1-2: 'This I ask Thee, tell me truly, Lord, who in the beginning, at creation, was the father of justice?' is echoed by Is. 45.8: 'Rain justice, you heavens ... this I, Yahweh, have created.' For Y 44.3.3-5: 'Who established the course of sun and stars? Through whom does the moon wax, then wane?' there is Is. 40.26: 'Lift up your eyes to the heavens; consider who created it all, led out their host one by one.' Y 44,4.14 runs: 'Who has upheld the earth from below and the heavens from falling ? Who (sustains) the waters and plants? Who yoked swift (steeds) to the wind and clouds?'; and it is matched by Is. 40.12, 44.24 'Who has gauged the waters in the palm of his hand, or with its span set limits to the heavens? ... I am Yahweh who made all things, by myself I stretched out the skies, alone I hammered out the floor of the earth.' Further, the question to Ahuramazda, Lord of Wisdom, in Y 44.4.5: 'Who, O Mazda, is the Creator of good thought?' has for counterpart Is. 40.13: 'With whom did [Yahweh] confer to gain discernment? Who taught him how to do justice or gave him lessons in wisdom?'; and the demand in Y 44.5.13: 'What craftsman made light and darkness?' is matched by Is. 45.7: 'I am Yahweh, there is no other, I make the light, I create darkness'.

These parallels, it is pointed out, 'hardly suffice to suggest literary dependence of II Isaiah on Yasna 44. But they do suggest relationship to the same tradition'; and, given the time and circumstances, this tradition would appear to be the teachings of Zoroaster. That Ahura-Mazda is the Creator of all things good is a major Zoroastrian doctrine and 'Creator' is his most constant title, which on occasion replaces his proper name. It would seem, therefore, that Cyrus' agent stressed in his subersive talks with the Jewish prophet the majesty and might of his

{p. 47} Lord, Ahuramazda, and his power to work wonders through his chosen instrument, Cyrus; and that Second Isaiah, rooted in the traditions of his own people, accepted the message of hope and the new concept of God, but saw the Supreme Being in his own terms as Yahweh.

It is moreover reasonable to suppose that the agent in this case was a magus, one of the learned men of Iran, who could travel to Babylon in ostensible quest for knowledge, and hold discussions there with a man of religion such as Second Isaiah without arousing suspicion. A magus vvho knew the Gathic teachings must have been a Zoroastrian; and the fact that he was evidently ardently and dangerously active in the cause of Cyrus seems good evidence that the Persian king was not only a believer, but one committed to establishing the faith throughout his realms if he could overthrow Astyages, an undertaking for which he needed the acquiescence of powerful neighbouring kingdoms.

Religious and political propaganda on behalf of Cyrus in Ionia

The Persian propagandists who thus succeeded in inspiring both Second Isaiah and the Babylonian priests with confidence in Cyrus clearly used a variety of effective approaches; and there is some evidence for the activity of yet other skilful and learned propagandists for the Persian king in Asia Minor. The cosmological teachings of Anaximander of Miletus (who seems to have flourished just before Cyrus' armies conquered Ionia) have been held to show marked Zoroastrian influences. These the philosopher assimilated to his own Greek tradition, as Second Isaiah assimilated such influences to his Jewish one; and the probability appears that he in his turn encountered a Zoroastrian priest, one so journing in Miletus, the metropolis of Ionia - again a case of one man of faith and learning seeking out another. A scrap of supporting evidence for the presence of Cyrus' agents in the region survives in the indication that the invading Persians subsequently received a favourable oracle from priests of an Apollo shrine near Magnesia on the Meander. This helpful act Cyrus rewarded generously with a grant of perpetual privileges in the form of exemption from tax and forced labour. The grant is known from the reproduction of a letter written about half a century later by Darius the Great to Gadatas, his satrap in those parts, whom he reproaches 'in that you do not respect my disposition with regard to the gods ... For you have exacted tribute from the sacred gardeners of Apollo, and have forced them to cultivate profane ground, ignoring the

{p 48} intention of my ancestors towards the god who told the Persians the true course of events.' The 'ancestors' thus referred to, it has been pointed out, can only in fact be Cyrus (whom Darius never chooses to name, except in genealogies, in any of his recorded utterances).

Propagandists in Ionia in the Deiocid era are more likely (for geographical reasons) to have been Medes than Persians; and the data suggest that they too were Zoroastrian magi, presumably in enforced or voluntary exile, remote from the wrath of Astyages. The imprint of Zoroastrian doctrines on the works of both Second Isaiah and Anaximander shows that these priestly agents were well instructed in the theology of their faith; and it is likely that they were gifted as well as bold men, able to talk persuasively in Aramaic and Greek, and concerned to sway political events in order to gain recognition for the religion they served. As so often in the history of Zoroastrianism, developments within Iran itself have to be deduced from the ripples which they caused abroad, but the widespread activities of Cyrus' agents undoubtedly suggest the growing strength of Zoroastrianism among the Medes and Persians in the mid sixth century B.C., and the energy and determination of its adherents.

{p. 49} In 550 Cyrus defeated Astyages in battle, probably on the plain of Pasargadae, in the north of Pars. The Median general Harpagos went over to him with a large part of the Median army. Astyages was captured, and the victorious Persians pressed on to sack the Deiocid capital of Ecbatana. After the first flush of victory, however, Cyrus set himself to rule as king of the Medes and Persians. Ecbatana remained a royal residence, Median nobles had prominent places at his court, and Median generals commanded his armies; and the subsequent history of Zoroastrianism suggests that those Median magi who had embraced the faith had a leading part, together with their Persian fellow-priests, in the religious life of the new empire.

However sincerely Cyrus may have wished to achieve power in order to establish Zoroastrianism as the religion of state, he was clearly driven also by vast territorial ambitions. For the next two years, it seems, he had to fight to subdue the kingdoms of the Iranian plateau which had been subject to Astyages. Then he turned westward and by 546, having crossed the Halys, had conquered Lydia and most of Ionia. Strabo records a tradition that the great Persian temple at Zela in Pontus had its origin in a sanctuary created in thanksgiving during these Asia Minor campaigns. This sanctuary was originally, he says, an artifical mound encircled by a wall - a manmade hill, not a building, which presumably priests and worshippers ascended for sacrifice and prayer. From this time onwards, for well over a millennium, there was a Zoroastrian presence in Asia Minor; and much of what is recorded about the ancient observances of the faith comes from that relatively well documented region.

Thereafter Cyrus turned eastward, and between 545 and 539 made

{p. 49} himself master of all the eastern Iranian kingdoms, and some Indian borderlands as well. He thus became the ruler of a number of old Zoroastrian communities. Finally came his richest conquest, Babylonia many of whose citizens were awaiting him as a deliverer - not only groups of political exiles, worked upon by his agents (of whom the Jews were but one), but also the powerful priesthood of Marduk, deeply resentful of the conduct of the reigning king, Nabonidus. In 539 - a date which was to be memorable in the annals of the Near East - Cyrus invaded the land, marched through it, and finally entered the great city of Babylon itself without resistance or bloodshed. The western territories of the Babylonian empire - Syria and Palestine to the borders of Egypt - submitted to him voluntarily; and he also occupied Susa to the east, and so at last completed the Persian domination of Elam.

Pasargadae and its monuments

The Achaemenian Empire, succeeding those of the Assyrians and Medes, and in many ways heir to both, was far larger than either. The Persians now ruled over many kingdoms and peoples, and it was natural that Cyrus should seek to build for himself a new and fittingly majestic capital. The site which he chose was Pasargadae; and for the task he brought together an army of workmen, among them mastermasons and stonecutters from Ionia and Lydia, and sculptors from Babylon. ...

The palaces of Cyrus were set amid gardens and orchards within a walled precinct on the plain; and the ruins have been identified of a monumental gateway, an audience hall and a private palace. ...

{p. 51} The fireholders

One of the features of a Median manorhouse had been the hall, the centre of its life. Here presumably (as in the great houses of medieval Europe) the lord and his people sat, and meals were cooked at the wide hearth, which would have given out a comfortable warmth on winter days and nights. Even through the summer the fire would have burned there continually, blanketed when not needed under a layer of ash; and three times a day, in the pagan period, it would have received the ritual offerings. The intention of these offerings was to gratify Atar, the god of fire; and they could be made accordingly by any adult member of the household who was in a state of ritual purity. The great innovation made in this ancient cult by Zoroaster had been to appoint fire as the symbol of righteousness, before which every member of his community should pray five times a day; and down the ages in Zoroastrian households family devotions have duly taken place by the hearthside each day at the established times.

In the lofty palaces of Pasargadae there seems to have been no place for a fixed hearth, and no need for a domestic source of warmth; for the new King of kings could readily escape the cold winters of the plateau by moving with his court to one of his lowland capitals - Susa or Babylon. Yet the duty of prayer before fire is encumbent on all Zoroastrians, and cannot be performed vicariously; and it would plainly have been indecorous for him to visit the palace kitchens - the only place in royal Pasargadae where fire would have had a practical function. How this problem was solved is shown by the remains of elegant fireholders, discovered as surface finds at the site.

These fireholders were carved of white stone, with the fine work manship of the early Pasargadae period; and fragments of two or possibly three of them have been found at three places in the southwest corner of the plain. From these fragments the fireholders can be reconstructed as consisting of a three-stepped top and base, joined by a slender square shaft. ...

{p. 62} Cyrus and alien faiths

Cyrus' tolerance towards alien faiths has been used as another argument against his orthodoxy; and there is no doubt that this tolerance was widely exercised. The earliest known instance of it, which we have already met, is his granting of privileges to the priests of Apollo near Magnesia; and richer evidence comes from Babylon. In 1879 a remarkable find was made among the palace ruins of the ancient city - a cylinder of baked clay, damaged, but bearing 45 lines of an edict by Cyrus. A broken piece of the cylinder has since been identified, which helps to restore the text. The edict is in Akkadian, in a style which has been

{p. 63} characterized as standard scribal usage of the period; but though composed evidently by the priests of Marduk, it must have had the approval of their new overlord, Cyrus, before it could be promulgated. The text runs in part as follows: 'Marduk ... scanned (and) inspected the assemblage of lands. He found then a righteous prince, according to his heart, whose hand he took. He pronounced the name of Cyrus, king of the city of Anshan ... He made the country of Guti and the armies of Manda [i.e. the Medes] bow beneath his feet. The blackheaded people [i.e. the Babylonians] whom he delivered into his hands, he (Cyrus) treated them rightfully and justly ... All the people of Babylon ... bent very low before him, they kissed his feet, they rejoiced in his royalty'.

In the latter part of the edict, words are put into Cyrus' own mouth: 'I am Cyrus, king of the world, great king, mighty king, king of Babylon, king of the land of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four corners of the earth ... whose rule Bel and Nebo love ... Marduk, the great Lord, rejoices at my pious acts, and extends the grace of his blessing upon me, Cyrus the king, and upon Cambyses, son of my flesh, as well as upon all my army ... From ... Niniveh, Assur and also from Susa, from Akkad, Eshnunna, Zamban, Me-Turnu, Der, up to the land of the Guti, to the cities beyond the Tigris ... the gods who inhabit them, I returned them [i.e. their images] to their place, and I made their habitation very great for ever. I gathered all their peoples and led them back to their abodes. And the gods of Sumer and Akkad, whom Nabonidus had brought into Babylon, at the order of Marduk, the great lord, I had them installed in joy in their sanctuaries ... May all the gods whom I have led back to their cities wish daily before Bel and Nebo for the length of my days'.

The claim attributed here to Cyrus, that he restored the dwellings of gods, is borne out by a fou-rline text on a tablet found at Erech, which states: 'I am Cyrus, son of Cambyses, the mighty king, [re-]builder of Esagila and Ezida'. Esagila was the great temple of Marduk in Babylon, and Ezida was Nabu's chief temple at Borsippa, to the south of that city. A long poem survives composed by a priest of Esagila on the downfall of Nabonidus, which dwells on the injustices of the Babylonian king, and ends with a curse on him, and a prayer for Cyrus; and the acceptance of the Persian king as the new ruler of Babylon was publicly de-

{p. 64} monstrated when his son Cambyses (Kambujiya), then still very young, undertook the ritual royal duties in the Babylonian New Year Festival Of 538. He was accordingly associated with Cyrus in the dating of that year (reckoned by the Babylonian scribes as that of 'Cyrus, king of the lands' and 'Cambyses, king of Babylon'.)

On the Babylonian side there was nothing remarkable in casting Cyrus in the role of the beloved of Marduk and his appointed ruler over Babylon. The victor must always be the chosen of the gods, for this was the only way to reconcile the fact of his victory with the doctrine of their power; and there is, it has been pointed out, a striking parallel from later times when another alien king, the Seleucid Antiochus I Soter, is called the 'provider for Esagila and Ezida', and is caused to declare: 'After my heart had inclined me to (re)build Esagila and Ezida, I made by my pure hands, with choice oil, the bricks for Esagila and Ezida in the land of Khattu, and I brought them to lay the foundations of Esagila and Ezida'.

For a polytheistic Hellene there can have been no problem in accepting the pious role thus verbally assigned to him, while for Cyrus acquiescence appears to have been a matter of traditional diplomatic courtesy rather than one involving faith. Thus he not only permitted the priests of Babylon to represent him as a worshipper of Marduk, but allowed those of Ur to cause him to state that it was the 'great gods' of that city who 'had delivered all the lands' into his hand, while those of Sin claimed that it was the Moon-God who had brought about his triumph. Of his proclamations to the many exiled peoples whom he permitted to return to their own lands only one survives - that to the Jews, too insignificant a group in the eyes of the Babylonian priests to be named in the cylinder text. As preserved in Hebrew this proclamation runs: 'Thus saith King Cyrus of Persia: "All the kingdoms of the earth has Yahweh, the God of heaven, given me, and he has charged me to build a house for him in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whosoever is among you of all his people, his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and bulld the house of Yahweh, the God of Israel. He is the God who is

{p. 65} in Jerusalem'. Similar proclamations, with due changes in the name of the god and the place, were made, it is assumed, to all the exiled peoples hamed on the cylinder text, whose temples also had been razed.

Cyrus presumably pursued this benign course for a mixture of motives, some of them pragmatic. From the earliest days of his kingship in Anshan he appears to have used diplomacy as an ally to force, and one to be preferred when possible, and his tolerant policies won him a general harvest of goodwill, and numerous practical advantages as ruler. His religion too may have strengthened a natural inclination towards constructive and kindly action. Doctrinally it is impossible to reconcile his verbal acknowledgements of alien great gods with his own acceptance of Ahura mazda as the one true God, Creator of all; but in this he was only acting, however illogically, in accordance with the conventions of the civilizations he had subdued. Thus it has been said of the Near Eastern religions of his day: 'The belief in the universal dominion of a supreme god, the idea that a local deity, let us say Koshar of Ugarit, reigns also over Crete and Memphis, changed the formula of homage but left intact its content. A new ruler received the lordship from each universal god simultaneously, and established his relations to each god separately as before'. Cyrus probably accepted these conventions the more readily because he would inevitably himself have felt that Ahuramazda, even though Creator and Lord of all, was above all God of the Iranians, his chosen people, to whom he had revealed himself through his prophet Zoroaster, not being equally accessible to alien, 'anarya' prayers. ('Anarya', that is 'non-Iranian', is a term somewhat similar in its overtones to Greek 'barbaros'.)

Even had the instinctive beliefs of conqueror and conquered not been of this kind, it would plainly have been impossible for the Persians to impose their own religion on the numerous and diverse peoples of the ancient lands they now ruled. A parallel is furnished in modern times by the British, observant Christians in their imperial days, who never made any official attempts to spread their own religion among their 'heathen' subjects, and who would, for political reasons, have been much perturbed if the sons of rajahs and sultans who were educated in England

{p. 66} had become converted there to the 'European' faith. Yet no one doubts, on this account, the piety and orthodoxy of Queen Victoria.

Yet although the British Government deliberately refrained from proselytizing, individuals and private societies were active in trying to spread Christian beliefs; and even apart from their efforts, Christian doctrines and observances gradually became known, and had a marked influence on groups of educated Hindus, Zoroastrians and others. The parallel can still be pursued with the Achaemenian Empire; for there too, though there appears to have been no official proselytizing, individuals (like the earlier propagandists for Cyrus) evidently spoke ardently about their faith, while the beliefs and practices of the imperial court and provincial governors naturally became generally known to some extent, and influenced other men in their ideas and observances, even while these continued to adhere to their own religions.

The magi

The written records of Cyrus' reign are virtually all from foreign sources, Babylonian and Greek, and concerned largely with political events; and so the role of the magi at that period has to be inferred or pieced together from scraps of evidence. Zoroastrian magi may be supposed to have held an authoritative place at court from the time of his accession; and their influence is indeed attested in the remains at Pasargadae, where the fireholders and tombs both testify to orthopraxy. The transmission of Avestan texts by Persian priests of the Achaemenian period has been deduced on linguistic grounds, and it is certainly to be expected that an important priestly college would have been founded then in Pars itself, even though the religious authority of Raga still seems to have been recognized.

The testimony of Second Isaiah, as we have seen, suggests the presence of a Zoroastrian priest living and probably studying in Babylon; and after the conquest more Zoroastrian priests must have gone to live there, some to care for the needs of Persian officials and others, some probably simply to study further - for Babylonian lore, especially in the fields of astronomy and astrology, was to contribute largely to the development of Zoroastrian scholasticism by western Iranian priests.

{p. 67} The only actual mention of magi in a work referring to the lifetime of Cyrus occurs in the romance of Cyrus as related by Herodotus. He tells how Astyages, having dreamt an ominous dream concerning his daughter Mandana, repeatedly consulted 'those of the magi who interpreted dreams'. They expounded its meaning to him accurately and in full, whereat he was much alarmed. However, in subsequent deliberations they decided that the omen which the dream had brought had been harmlessly fulfilled; but events proved them wrong, and when Cyrus finally revolted Astyages seized them and had them impaled.

The tale which Herodotus tells cannot be regarded as historical, but it belongs to its time in the serious regard paid in it to dreams, a regard shared by, among others, Aristotle, who held that 'when the soul is isolated in sleep, it assumes its true nature and foresees and foretells the future'. Among the magi who embraced Zoroastrianism there were some who continued to practise the interpretation of dreams, as well as other forms of divination and manticism; and they must have had many things in common with the magi who adhered to the old religion, from whom, however, they would have been divided in doctrine and also in worship (using as they must have done prayers and liturgies in the Avestan language, as well as following various different observances). Pagan priests evidently continued to exist in the land, and even with a Zoroastrian king on the throne it must have bn a matter of generations before the eastern religion prevailed generally. Indeed pockets of paganism appear to have persisted in remote areas down into Islamic times. This slow progress is not surprising when one considers how long traces of pagan beliefs and practices survived in, for instance, so small and closely governed a Christian country as England. Probably also there were Zoroastrians who had recourse occasionally to old practices, such as are recorded by Herodotus and by Plutarch, some of which demanded the services of magi prepared to have dealings with the dark powers. For this too, Christian Europe can provide parallels in all too great abundance, with black masses and other rites. But just as such aberrances, when recorded, do not prove that Europe in general was not Christian, so occasional heterodox doings cannot be taken to impugn the Zoroastrian orthodoxy of the majority of western Iranians in and after the reign of Cyrus.

{p. 71} Cambyses in Egypt

Having performed his filial duties towards his dead father and estab lished his own rule in the land, Cambyses set out in 525 to accomplish what Cyrus had, it seems, long planned, namely the conquest of Egypt, 'taking with him, with others subject to him, some of the Greeks over whom he held sway'. Service in this way in the imperial armies must have vied with trade throughout the Achaemenian epoch as a means of bringing peoples together and spreading customs and ideas.

Egypt was then under the rule of Psammetich III, who had just succeeded his father Amasis - a usurper who in 569 had seized the throne from Apries, the last legitimate pharaoh of the 26th (Saite) dynasty. There was considerable discontent in the land; and at Cambyses' coming some Greek mercenaries deserted to him from the Egyptian side, and the Egyptian admiral, Udja-Horresenet, surrendered the fleet without a blow. A hard-fought battle on land ended in victory for the Persians. Thereafter Memphis was taken, and Psammetich made captlve.

Egyptian records show that, though pillage and disorder followed the conquest, Cambyses soon restrained his troops and tried to repair much of the damage they had done. This was evidently part of a policy similar to that which his father had pursued in Babylon, whereby he strove to be recognized as the legitimate ruler of the land. In his efforts to present himself as rightful successor to the Saites and founder of a

{p. 72} 27th dynasty, Cambyses had as counsellor Udja-hor-resenet, who was himself the son of a priest of Sais (the dynastic city of the 26th dynasty) and a man of learning as well as active in affairs of state. He was appointed by Cambyses as his chief physician, and entrusted with ordering his court in Egypt, and (it would seem) with advising on protocol and diplomacy there.

One measure taken to legitimize Cambyses' rule seems to have been to put it about that he was the son of Cyrus by princess Nitetis, a daughter of the deposed Apries. According to Herodotus, however, Cambyses' mother was the Achaemenian Cassandane; and the chronoiogy of the claimed Egyptian marriage would present striking difficulties, since Apries was put to death in 566 - eight years before Cyrus became a vassal king in Anshan. Nevertheless, consistent with this claim to be the true heir to the Saite pharaoh, Cambyses dated his rule over Egypt to 530, the year of his accession in Persia, rather than to 525, the year of his Egyptian conquest. He also had the mummy of Amasis taken from its resting-place in Sais and scourged, presumably 'to demonstrate that Amasis was a usurper on the throne of Egypt'. Herodotus adds that finally Cambyses ordered the body to be burned, which he says was a sacriligious command, since the Persians held fire to be a god, and therefore considered it not right to burn the dead,'as they say it is wrong to give the dead body of a man to a god'. However, since other stories about Cambyses' wickedness have been shown to be false, it may be that this detail was no more than a particularly black slander, invented to his further detriment.

In support of his claim to be the rightful successor to Apries, Cambyses exerted himself to restore order and dignity in Sais, which had been occupied by his soldiery. He brought back its priests, restored the temple revenues, revived the cult, and presented libations for Osiris. Finally he attended in person to offer veneration to the dynastic goddess of the Saites, Neith, and to make gifts to the other gods of the city. All this is recorded in carvings on statues from Sais, which have been preserved. In one of these Udja-hor-resenet declares: 'His Majesty did this because I had enlightened him about all the useful work done in

{p. 73} this sanctuary by every king' - a statement which brings out the official and dynastic nature of Cambyses' actions. He was in fact doing as his father had taught him to do, when as a young prince he had 'taken the hand of Marduk' at the Babylonian New Year festival, and so fulfilled the ritual part assigned to a Babylonian king.

It was not only in Sais that Cambyses performed royal duties towards Egyptian cults. A stele in the Serapeum at Memphis records the death there of an Apis bull in the sixth year of his official reign, i.e. 524, and this bull was buried in a sarcophagus on which the inscription runs: 'Horus, Samtowi, king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Mestiu-Re, son of Re, Cambyses, may he live for ever. He made as his monument to his father, Apis-Osiris, a great sarcophagus of granite, which the king of Upper and Lower Egypt, Mestiu-Re, son of Re, Cambyses, dedicated, who is given all life, all stability, and good fortune, all health, all gladness, appearing as king of Upper and Lower Egypt'. The titles used here by the Persian king were traditional Egyptian ones; and on the accompanying stele he is shown in Egyptian royal costume, kneeling in reverence before the sacred bull.

The next Apis bull lived for over eight years, dying when Darius was king, and these facts together disprove the story transmitted by Herodotus that Cambyses, as part of a general mockery of the Egyptian gods, stabbed an Apis bull and left it to die and be buried secretly by its priests. This story appears to belong to a sustained campaign of vilification of Cambyses, which was so effective that history knows him as half-mad, cruel and irresponsible - a king who, in the words of Aeschy-

{p. 74} lus, 'shamed his country and his ancestral throne'. In fact he seems to have been a rational and statesmanlike ruler, who strove like his father Cyrus to reconcile territorial ambitions and military conquest with the reestablishment of peace and order. But with such aims went the desire for substantial tribute; and it was presumably both for this reason, and to reduce the enormous power of the Egyptian priesthood, that Cambyses issued a decree limiting the revenues and privileges of Egyptian temples, which had been exceedingly lavish under the Saites. It is thought to have been this action of his, together with the spoliation by his troops immediately after the conquest, which provided the basis for the legend that he destroyed temples. This legend, fostered no doubt by Egyptian priests, is not only recorded by Greeks, but finds expression in a letter written by the Jews of Elephantine in 41O B.C. - some three generations after the events. These Jews were apparently the descendants of mercenaries who had entered the service of the Saite pharaohs and been put in charge of the fortresses of Yeb (on the island of Elephantine) and Syene, to defend Egypt's southern frontier. The letter in question concerns the destruction at the end of the fifth century 'of the temple of the God Yahu', concerning which they wrote to the governor of Judea: 'Already in the days of the kings of Egypt our fathers had built that temple in Yeb, [and when Cambyses came into Egypt] he found that built, and the temples of the gods of the Egyptians, all of them they overthrew, but no one did any harm to that temple'. In an answering letter, this Jewish temple is referred to as 'the altar-house of the God of Heaven, which was built in the fortress of Yeb formerly, before Cambyses'. The reason why it was spared harassment, it is suggested, is that the Jewish soldiers had readily changed masters at the Persian conquest, and become loyal servants of the new rulers. Moreover, their temple clearly had no rich endowments to be curtailed, for when eventually it was destroyed they had to seek help from elsewhere to rebuild it.

It is natural that the Egyptian priests should have felt bitter towards the alien conqueror, whose troops had pillaged their temples, and who himself deliberately sought to lessen their wealth and power; and the traducing of Cambyses' name appears due to this bitterness meeting and

{p. 75} being encouraged by the political hostility felt towards him by his cousin, Darius the Great - a hostility which meant that Cambyses lacked for his reputation the protection usually extended to its individual members by a ruling dynasty.

{p. 90} DARIUS THE GREAT (522-486 B.C.)

The establishing of his rule

The first year of Darius' reign was thus one of hard fighting, as each . of the lands ruled by Cyrus and Cambyses, Iranian and non-Iranian alike, strove again for independence; and it was by one of the great feats of arms in history that he and his generals succeeded in subduing them all. Egypt was the last to be reconquered; and thereafter, in intermittent campaigns, Darius extended the bounds of the Achaemenian Empire to their furthest extent, so that in the end he could proclaim: 'This is the kingdom which I hold, from the Scythians who are beyond Sogdiana, thence unto Ethiopia; from Sind, thence unto Sardis'.

For his title to rule over non-Iranians, the lesser breeds of 'anarya', Darius was content to rely on right by conquest. Thus on a surviving stele he states simply: 'I am a Persian. From Persia I seized Egypt'. But among the Medes and Persians themselves he strove in diverse ways to strengthen his claim to rule as an Achaemenian in due succession to Cyrus, the great founder of the empire. He fostered therefore the traditions of his predecessors, and maintained their pious institutions. So the daily and monthly rites were continued at the tomb of Cyrus, and the terms of Cyrus' charter to the priests of Apollo on the Meander were duly honoured. It must, moreover, have been Darius who began or adopted the royal custom of going to Pasargadae after being crowned for a religious service of initiation, during which the new king put on a robe once worn by Cyrus. This remained usage for each of his successors, being in fact first recorded for Artaxerxes II, but it is most unlikely that it was one of them who revived or instituted such an observance. For them, heirs to Darius, the founder of their line, it would have had little symbolic significance; but for Darius himself it must have been yet another way to declare to the Iranians that he ruled legitimately as the kinsman of Cyrus, and not simply as a usurper, by force of arms.

Darius further strengthened his claim to legitimate possession of the throne by his marriage to Atossa, daughter of Cyrus. He also took to wife her younger sister, Artystone, as well as an unnamed daughter of Bardiya's.7 (Cambyses, Heredotus records, left no issue.) Yet another of his queens, who like Atossa had before been wedded to Cambyses and Bardiya, was a daughter of a Persian nobleman, Utana, 3 and it is an indication of the crosscurrents and complexities of the times that Utana was himself one of those who aided Darius in killing Bardiya.

The six noble conspirators and the six Amesa Spentas

Darius himself names the six Persians who joined with him in the assassination in the following terms: 'These are the men who were there at the time when I slew Gaumata the Magus who called himself Bardiya; at that time these men strove together as my followers. Vindafarnah ... Utana ... Gaubaruva ... Vidarna ... Bagabukhsa ... Ardumanis ... Thou who shalt be king hereafter, protect well the family of these men'. Herodotus in his account gives the Greek equivalents of the first five names as Intaphernes, Otanes, Gobryas, Hydarnes and Megabyus. Only the sixth is different, Aspathines instead of a rendering of Ardumanis. One suggested explanation of this is that Ardumanis (who is not mentioned except in this one passage of the Behistun inscription) may have died either in the actual attack on Bardiya or soon afterwards. In the carving over his tomb Darius had himself represented flanked by six nobles; and inscriptions identify the first two as Gaubaruva and Aspacana, the latter being presumably the Aspathines of Herodotus. According to the Greek historian, Aspathines had a son called Prexaspes, and this makes it very probable that he was himself the son of the Prexaspes who was (according to Herodotus) the reputed killer of Bardiya, advanced, it would seem, into the ranks of the six in place of Ardumanis. His own loyalty to Darius was perhaps genuine from the outset, perhaps secured initially by this high honour.

Three of the six - Vidarna, Vindafarnah and Gaubaruva - are said in the Behistun inscription to have led Darius' armies during the first

{p. 92} fateful year of his reign; and Utana or Otanes, Herodotus records later commanded a Persian force which took the Greek island of Samos. Darius showed his gratitude to the six by according special privilege to them and their descendants. He also rewarded them with lavish grants of lands. Otanes received his share in Cappadocia, and his descendants held these, virtually as vassal kings, until the coming of Alexander. In Pontus too in the Hellenic period the royal family still traced its line 'from one of the seven Persians'. The tradition that there were seven great families in the realm - that of the king and six others - whose fortunes were linked by tradition, by position, and by intermarriage, became so firmly established in the Achaemenian period that the theory at least was maintained in both the succeeding Iranian empires.

The importance of this for an account of Zoroastrianism is that Darius undoubtedly exploited an accident of history for the purposes of religlous and political propaganda: that is to say, he used the fact that the Persian Empire was ruled by a king who had had six noble helpers to draw an analogy between it and the kingdom of heaven, ruled by Ahura-mazda with the six great Amesa Spentas {archangels}; and thus he was able to suggest that there was a divinely inspired order and pattern in this state of affairs. That his kingship was divinely ordained he claims again and again in his inscriptions, for example in the following passage: 'Unto Ahuramazda thus was the desire, he chose me as (his) man in all the earth; he made me king in all the earth. I worshipped Ahuramazda. Ahuramazda bore me aid. What by me was commanded to do, that he made successful for me. What I did, all by the will of Ahuramazda I did'. Another passage runs: 'A great god is Ahuramazda ... who made Darayavahu king, one king of many, one lord of many'. This thought of the one god and the one king could readily be expressed in words, for there were existing patterns in Mesopotamian formulas, but the new idea of an earthly heptad as a counterpart to a divine one found expression visually. Two examples have survived, in stone and metalwork.

{p. 93} The example in stone is to be found in the carving already mentioned above Darius' tomb - a carving which was to be repeated over the tomb of every one of his successors. ...

The example in metal is provided by a pair of exquisite Achaemenian earrings, made of gold cloisonne inlaid with carnelian, turquoise and lapis lazuli. ...

This striking composition cannot, it has been pointed out, represent Ahuramazda himself with the six Amesa Spentas, since three of the latter were conceived of as female; ...

{p. 120} Orthodox Zoroastrian theology found further positive expression in Darius' inscriptions in lines which celebrate Ahuramazda as Creator of the physical world: 'A great god is Ahuramazda, who created this earth, who created yonder sky, who created man, who created happiness for man'. A likeness has been traced between these lines and verses of Second Isaiah, which similarly exalt Yahweh as Creator; but Darius' particular praise of Ahuramazda as the Creator of 'happiness for man' is significant. According to Zoroaster's teachings the supreme Lord is the Creator only of what is good, whereas to the Jewish prophet Yahweh is the 'author alike of prosperity and trouble'. {like Shiva}

The corruptions of the Hostile Spirit in the world are acknowledged by Darius through frequent references to drauga. This word has a range of meanings opposed to those of arta, i.e. falsehood, disorder, wickedness. The similar antithesis between Avestan drug and asa, and (more faintly) Sanskrit druh and rta shows that the concepts go back to Indo-Iranian times; and sometimes indeed Darius uses the term drauga in a wholly traditional way. Thus in one inscription he prays on behalf of Persia that Ahuramazda 'may protect this country from a hostile army, from famine, from drauga'; and in doing so, it is suggested, he was seeking protection from three stereotyped evils which might assail society. In other passages Drauga appears rather as a personification, in the spirit of Zoroaster's own teachings. Thus Darius declares: 'All the countries which were rebellious, it was Drauga which made them rebellious'; and he urges his successor: 'You who shall be king hereafter, protect yourself vigorously from Drauga. The wicked, treacherous or rebellious man is defined as draujana, and Darius admonishes future kings to punish him. He also declares that Ahuramazda has borne him aid because he himself is not draujana. It seems a little strange that the concept of virtue should be thus negatively expressed ...

The positive concept of arta, in the sense of good social order, even if not expressed, was clearly constantly present in Darius' thoughts; and he was firm in his conviction that the divine will was that he himself should maintain arta by ruling over mankind. So he declares: 'When Ahuramazda saw this earth turbulent, then he bestowed it on me. He made me king ... By the will of Ahuramazda I set it again in its place'. 'Much that was ill done, that I made good. Countries were turbulent, one man smiting another. The following I brought about by the will of Ahuramazda, that no one ever smites another, each one is in his place. My law - of that they are afraid, so that the stronger does not smite nor destroy the weaker'. Since he saw himself as ruling by the will of Ahuramazda, his law was plainly identical with the law ordained by God, and so he could say: 'O man, that which is the command of Ahuramazda, let this not seem repugnant to thee. Do not leave the right path. Do not rise in rebellion!' Should any man be so wicked, then Darius prided himself on visiting him with just retribution: 'It is not my desire that a man should do harm; nor indeed is that my desire, if he should do harm, he should not be punished'. Ahuramazda had endowed him with 'wis dom and energy', and he was able to bridle his wrath through self discipline, as a true Zoroastrian should, and so administer an even handed justice: 'I am a friend to right, I am not a friend to wrong. It is not my desire that the weak man should have wrong done to him by the mighty, nor is that my desire, that the mighty man should have wrong done to him by the weak. What is right, that is my desire'.

By such aims and actions Darius was serving not only Asa Vahista, the great Amesa Spenta who hypostatizes justice and right, but also Khsathra Vairya, who is honoured through all properly exercised author-

{p. 122} ity. The king tells us further that he disciplined and trained his own body, inviting thus the Amesa Spentas of health and long life, Haurvatat and Ameretat, into his being. Thus he declares: 'I am trained, hand and foot. As a rider I am a good rider. As an archer I am a good archer, both on foot and mounted. As a spearman I am a good spearman, both on foot and mounted. And the manly skills which Ahuramazda has bestowed on me, and which I have had the strength to use - what I have done through the will of Ahuramazda, I have done with these skills which Ahuramazda has bestowed on me'. Down the centuries Darius' successors likewise are shown by alien writers - Herodotus, Xenophon, Plutarch - to have maintained the Zoroastrian ideal of physical health and hardihood, despite the luxuries of palace life.

Devotion and good purpose, hypostatized by the other two Amesa Spentas, Spenta Armaiti and Vohu Manah, find ample expression in Darius' words, as for example in the following: 'After Ahuramazda made me king in this earth, by the will of Ahuramazda all (that) I did was good'; 'Ahuramazda is mine, I am Ahuramazda's. I worshipped Ahuramazda, may Ahuramazda bear me aid'. Whatever political element there may be in some of Darius' religious utterances (with the exaltation of Ahuramazda reflecting on the greatness of his worshipper), there is no reason to doubt the sincerity and force of the king's personal beliefs, or the soundness of his Zoroastrian theology, which he chose also to declare visually through the iconography of his tomb.

Yet although Zoroaster's teachings shape the theology of Darius' utterances, no mark of Avestan influence is to be found in their vocabulary. Persian, not Avestan, religious terms are used, with the word baga 'god' appearing instead of the characteristic Zoroastrian yazata, and invocation of 'all the gods' being made instead of only the 'bounteous' (spenta) divinities. Clearly in this Darius and his priests were maintaining familiar usages. Zoroastrian missionaries to Persia must have presented their prophet's teachings there in the Persian language and idiom (as Cyrus' agent in Babylon presented them, presumably, in Aramaic to Second Isaiah); and they do not seem to have felt impelled to challenge the traditional religious vocabulary. The use of baga as the general term for 'god' persisted for many generations in Persia (as in other parts of Iran); and still in the third century A.C. the Persian

{p. 123} high priest Kirder was able to refer to heaven by an archaic phrase as bayan gah 'place of the gods'. The collection of Avestan hymns to the yazatas received the Middle Persian title of Bayan Yat, 'Worship of the gods', and there are numerous other instances of pre-Zoroastrian usages continuing. Such differences between liturgical and ordinary vocabulary seem the more natural since the language of the holy texts, Avestan, differed markedly from the western Iranian vernaculars, and would not have been literally understood by most worshippers.

It has also often been remarked that the name of Ahuramazda's great Adversary, Anra Mainyu, is missing from Darius' inscriptions, and that it is Drauga alone who there represents the world of evil; but in the Gathas themselves the Drug is mentioned more often than Anra Mainyu, and the Hostile Spirit's name does not occur at all in the Fravarane, where it is the Daevas who are collectively abjured as 'the most Drug-like of beings'. There is nothing anomalous, therefore, in the usage of Darius' priests in this respect.

Another omission which has been a perplexity to scholars is that of Zoroaster's own name; but again this is matched by a similar reticence on the part of the Sasanian Kirder, who never uttered the prophet's name in any of his inscriptions, even though these, unlike the inscriptions of Darius, were explicitly concerned with religious matters. At that same period the Pahlavi books were full of references to Zoroaster. It would seem, therefore, that the silence of the inscriptions was peculiar to them - just conceivably, in the Achaemenian era, because the scribal traditions of Assyria and Urartu, Babylon and Elam, provided no conventional pattern for referring to a prophet in royal proclamations. It is not likely that Darius' priests would have pressed for the difficulty to be overcome, because for them the alien art of writing had little properly to do with holy matters.

Even with these omissions there is a strong religious content in Darius' major inscriptions, which through the public and general proclamation of some of the texts must have become known throughout the empire; for proof has been found that it was not only the Behistun text which was disseminated in translation, since lines have been identified from one of Darius' tomb inscriptions surviving in an Aramaic version on papyrus. This religious element in his words is consistently Zoro-

{p. 124} astrian in character, as are the ethics of Darius' utterances, with their stress on wisdom and justice, self-discipline and resoluteness in right action.

Darius' policy towards alien faiths

i) The Egyptians

In his attitude towards the faiths of the 'anarya', the non-Iranian peoples, Darius followed the tolerant, pragmatic policy of his predeces sors. In Egypt he still used as his agent Udja-Hor-resenet, who was, it seems, at Susa when Darius attained the throne. From there the king sent him back to his homeland to restore the 'Houses of Life' which were associated with the Egyptian temples-places where the holy books and inscriptions were kept, and where medicine and theology were studied. One of these was at Sais, and an inscription there describes the king, in the same terms used of Cambyses, as 'Darius, born of Neith, mistress of Sais; image of Re, whom Re has placed upon his throne'.

To make these undertakings possible, Darius restored in part the temple revenues curtailed by Cambyses; and benefactions by him towards individual temples are also recorded in inscriptions. His greatest lavishness in this respect was the building of a huge temple to Amun-Re in the oasis of El Khargeh. Traces of his activities have been found also at Abusir and perhaps at El Kab; and he gave support to the Apis-Osiris cult at Memphis, where pious graffiti were left by Persian officials during his reign. Polyaenus says that Darius offered a reward for the finding of a new Api sbull, when one had died; but this story probably refers properly to Cambyses, and has merely been transferred to Darius, who not only succeeded in presenting himself to the Egyptian priests (despite his reconquest of their land) as a benefactor, but who remained in power, and so was a ruler to be praised and conciliated. Yet with Darius too tolerance depended naturally on the loyalty of his subjects, and he took measures to prevent the Egyptian priests regaining too much power. Thus documents survive containing his instructions to

{p. 125} Pherendates, satrap of Egypt, to intervene in certain circumstances in the appointment of the high priest at the temple of Khnum in Elephantine.

A statue of Darius has been found at Susa, larger than lifesize, which, being carved of local limestone, is thought to have been a copy made there by Egyptian craftsmen of an original erected in the temple of the god Atum at Heliopolis. The statue is set on a rectangular block, on whose sides are carved small kneeling figures, who raise their hands, palms upward, as if supporting the ground on which the king treads. They are identified by Egyptian hieroglyphs as representing the peoples of the empire - a familiar motif of Achaemenian art. On the folds of Darius' robe are cut equally familiar words in Old Persian, Babylonian and Ela mite cuneiform; 'A great god is Ahuramazda, who created this earth, who created yonder sky, who created man, who created happiness for man, who made Darayavahu king'. The inscriptions continue, more specifically: 'Behold the statue of stone which Darayavahu the King had made in Egypt in order that he who hereafter shall see it may know that a Persian man holds Egypt ... I am Darayavahu ... May Ahuramazda protect me and all that has been done by me'.

Beside these orthodox Zoroastrian sentiments quite others are expressed in Egyptian hieroglyphs delicately carved on the statue and base. These declare Darius to be 'the perfect god who rejoices in Maat, he whom Atum, lord of Heliopolis, has chosen to be master of all that is encompassed by the solar orb, for he recognizes him as his son, his steward .. The goddess Neith has given him the bow which she loosens, in order that he may defeat all his enemies'. The inscriptions accord Darius a series of traditional Pharaonic titles ('perfect god' being one of them), and end by describing the statue itself as an 'image made in the exact likeness of the perfect god, master of the Two Lands, which His Majesty had made in order that a monument of him should be set up abidingly, and that his person should be remembered beside his father, Atum ... for the length of eternity'.

Atum was a name by which the Egyptian sungod, Re, was worshipped, and in the syncretic pantheon Re was regarded as the child

{p. 126} of Neith, goddess of Sais. The Egyptian priests taught that he had created this ordered world - that is, Egypt and the lands ruled by its Pharaohs; and that his will was that it should be governed according to Maat, the personification of a principle 'which is at once truth, justice, private morality and public order, and which is opposed to disorder in customs and institutions, and to wickedness and falsehood. This harmony is reestablished each morning when the sun drives away the powers of darkness. On the level of political life here below, it is menaced by those who plot against authority, and by the revolts and attacks of barbarous peoples. The king of Egypt is the representative chosen by [Re] to maintain order.

The Egyptian concept of Maat was thus closely parallel to the Zoroastrian one of Asa, and the relationship claimed for the Pharaoh with Re to that claimed for the Persian king with Ahuramazda. Udja-Hor-resenet doubtless expounded these matters to Darius and his priests, as he had done earlier to Cambyses and the magi of his day; and so the acceptance by the Persian king of the Pharaoh's role in Egypt, politically highly desirable, could have been shown to contain little that was actively objectionable in Iranian eyes. In cult the two peoples were far apart, a fact illustrated by the Egyptian representation of the goddess Maat as a gracious little lady, seated and wearing an ostrich plume on her head; her statue, carried in the hollow of their hands like a doll was regularly given by the Pharaohs as an offering to her 'father' Re. But Egyptian observances were enacted only in Egypt - a remote place for most of Darius' subjects; and for the Zoroastrians who saw Darius' great statue in Susa the Egyptian hieroglyphs would in any case have been no more than elegant ornamentation, and a symbol of their king's conquest of yet another foreign land. ...

{p. 127} iii) The Jews

The exiled Jews who had returned to Jerusalem in the time of Cyrus had failed to rebuild the temple there; but 'in the second year of Darius the king' the prophets Haggai and Zechariah began to urge that the work be taken in hand, and the foundations were at last laid. The Persian satrap challenged the legality of this act, and when the Jews claimed the authority of an edict by Cyrus, he wrote to Darius asking that search might be made among the royal records at Babylon concerning the matter. A memorandum of the edict was eventually found, not there but at Ecbatana, 'in the palace that is in the province of the Medes'; and Darius not only, in this as in other matters, upheld Cyrus' decree, but commanded that funds for the rebuilding should be provided out of the tribute of the satrapy, and that sacrificial animals, corn, wine and what ever else was necessary should be given to the priests in Jerusalem, so

{p. 128} that they might offer sacrifices there to their God, 'and pray for the life of the king, and of his sons'.

The king's generosity (no different in essence from that which he showed the Egyptians and the Elamites) had an obvious political ingredient, in that Palestine was strategically placed on the road from Persia to Egypt, and there was clear advantage in having the Jews as loyal and quiet subjects; but however pragmatic his motives, Darius undoubtedly gave the Jews renewed cause to feel gratitude to their Zoroastrian rulers. His orders were swiftly carried out, and the Jews finished building the temple 'according to the commandment of the God of Israel, and according to the commandment of Cyrus and Darius ... king of Persia ... in the sixth year of Darius the king'. Thereafter down the generations prayers must have gone up regularly in Jerusalem for the welfare of the Achaemenian King of kings.

{p. 188} ARTAXERXES I (465-424 B.C.) ...

Artaxerxes I and the Jews

i) Nehemiah

Palestine, part of Megabyzus' satrapy, lay strategically on the way to Egypt, and this doubtless was one reason why the Achaemenians showed an active benevolence towards the Jews. In Babylonia the 'Yahweh-alonists (those who offered their worship exclusively to Yahweh) appear to have enjoyed good relations with their Persian rulers from the time when Second Isaiah, who was one of their number, hailed

{p. 189} Cyrus as deliverer; and in the twentieth year of his reign, in 444, Artaxerxes appointed a 'Yahweh-alonist', Nehemiah, to govern Jerusalem. The Achaemenians regularly set local rulers over cities and small provinces, so that such an appointment was not in itself remarkable; but its results were to be of great significance for mankind. At that time there were syncretists among the Babylonian Jews, men who worshipped Yahweh but venerated other gods also, and syncretism appears to have predominated in Judea itself; and it was, it seems, the authority given to Nehemiah by the Persian King of kings which enabled him to gain more adherents for Yahweh-alonism in Jerusalem, and then throughout Judea, so that this became the faith of most of the inhabitants of the land, and could thereafter truly be termed Judaism. Without Nehemiah, it is suggested, the monolatrous worship of Yahweh might have remained principally a religion of synagogue-worship in the diaspora. 'The national, political, territorial side of Judaism ... was, as a practical matter, the work of Nehemiah. He secured to the religion that double character - local as well as universal - which was to endure, in fact, for 500 years, and, in its terrible consequences, yet endures'.

Zoroastrianism itself had long had this double character, being both universal in its message and yet special to the Iranian peoples. Parallels in matters of belief between the two faiths are best considered in connection with the work of Ezra; but there is a similarity in an area of observance where Nehemiah's own life seems of significance. Before he was appointed to his governorship he had been, he says, cupbearer to Artaxerxes; and anyone who served the King of kings in such a capacity would have had necessarily to keep the Zoroastrian purity laws, so as not to bring pollution on his royal master. These laws, as we have seen, had their doctrinaL basis in the belief that the good world created by Ahuramazda is under continual assault from the Hostile Spirit, Anra Mainyu, among whose weapons, it was held, were dirt, stench, blight, decay, disease and death. To reduce or banish any of these things was therefore to contribute, however humbly, to the defence of the good creation, and its ultimate redemption; whereas to come into serious contact with them was to contaminate a member of God's noblest creation, man, who thereby became unfit for prayer or worship, or the company of the pure. Down the centuries the Zoroastrian priests elaborated rules

{p. 190} in defence of both actual and ritual purity, and so created in time an iron code which raised an effective barrier between Zoroastrians and any unbeliever who did not observe it; indeed the existence of this code must have been a major factor in preventing the spread of Zoroastrianism as a coherent faith beyond the Iranian peoples themselves, since in its stringency it made demands of a kind to which it is easiest to grow accustomed in infancy. (This did not, of course, hinder the widespread influence of its immensely powerful individual doctrines.)

After years of necessary keeping of the Zoroastrian purity code (which has nothing in it repugnant to Jewish laws) it is hardly surprising that Nehemiah, although a layman, should have concerned himself in Jerusalem with questions of purity among the Jews. Nor does it seem overbold to suppose that it was Zoroastrian example, visible throughout the Empire, which led to the gradual transformation of the Jewish purity code from regulations concerning cultic matters to laws whose observance was demanded of every individual in his daily life, their setting being no longer only the Temple, but 'the field and the kitchen, the bed and the street', and their keeping a matter which set the Jews in their turn apart from other peoples, in self-imposed isolation.

ii) Ezra

Scholarly opinion is still divided as to whether it was Artaxerxes I, in 458, or his grandson Artaxerxes II, in 398, who sent 'Ezra the scribe' to Jerusalem. Ezra was, it seems, Commissary for Jewish Religious Affairs (in Biblical terms 'scribe of the law of the God of heaven'); and the Bible preserves the letter of authority given him by 'Artaxerxes, King of kings', which runs in part as follows: 'You are sent by the King and his seven counsellors to find out how things stand in Judah and Jerusalem with regard to the law of your God with which you are

{p. 191} entrusted. You are also to convey the silver and gold which the King and his counsellors have freely offered to the God of Israel whose dwelling is in Jerusalem ... In pursuance of this decree you shall use the money solely for the purchase of bulls, rams and lambs, and the proper grain-offerings and drink-offerings, to be offered on the altar in the house of your God in Jerusalem ... The vessels which have been given you for the service of the house of your God you shall hand over to the God of Jerusalem; and if anything else should be required for the house of your God, which it may fall to you to provide, you may provide it out of the King's Treasury. And I, King Artaxerxes, issue an order to all treasurers in the province of Beyond Euphrates that whatever is demanded of you by Ezra the priest, a scribe learned in the law of the God of heaven, is to be supplied exactly, up to a hundred talents of silver, a hundred kor of wheat, a hundred bath of wine, a hundred bath of oil, and salt without reckoning. Whatever is demanded by the God of heaven, let it be diligently carried out for the house of the God of heaven; otherwise wrath may fall upon the realm of the King and his sons. We also make known to you that you have no authority to impose general levy, polltax or landtax on any of the priests, Levites, musicians, door keepers, temple-servitors or other servants of this house of God'. The terminology 'the house of your God in Jerusalem' reflects that of the edict of Cyrus; and the privileges granted to the priests and other servants of the temple in Jerusalem resemble those granted by Cyrus to the priests of the Apollo-shrine in Asia Minor.

iii) The Priestly Code and Zoroastrian inflences

Jewish tradition honoured Ezra, called also 'a scribe learned in the law of Moses', by attributing to him the writing down of all the canonical books of the Old Testament, while many modern scholars associate him specifically with the 'Priestly Code', the fourth strand in the Pentateuch whose compilation is ascribed largely to the Persian period. This he is thought either to have edited himself, or at least to have imposed at this time on the Jewish community. Although it is accepted that all parts of the Pentateuch contain both pre-exilic and post-exilic materials, the latter appear most abundantly in the 'Priestly Code'; and it is here, not surprisingly, that Zoroastrian influences seem apparent.

{p. 192} To it is assigned the 'Holiness Code' (Leviticus XVIII-XXVI), which, though wholly Jewish, may owe its place and something of its emphases to the deepening interest in matters of purity. To it also belongs the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, which gives an account of creation wholly different from that in the second chapter, with its story of the garden of Eden. The first account resembles the Zoroastrian cosmogony in two striking particulars. First there is the great declaration: 'In the beginning God (Elohim) created the heaven and the earth ... And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters'. This is the only place in the Old Testament where the Spirit of God is associated with creativity; and attempts have been made accordingly to give ruah a special meaning here, such as wind or storm; but a recent commentator insists that 'to use modern terms, the Spirit is the active principle, which was wholly necessary in order to accomplish a creation. It was . . . the driving factor ... Where God was, there too his Spirit was at work'. It is precisely in such terms that scholars have sought to define Zoroaster's teachings about the Holy Spirit through which Ahuramazda is 'Creator of all things'.

Then there is the division of the acts of creation into seven stages. The Zoroastrian and Biblical stages are not identical, and in particular the creation of fire, which is the culmination of the Zoroastrian creation story, is given a less conspicuous place in Genesis, with the luminaries being set between the plants and the birds and fishes. Yet there is a broad likeness between the two cosmogonies; and since cosmogony was of fundamental importance in the teachings of Zoroaster, being linked with his doctrines concerning the seven great Amesa Spentas and God's purpose in creating the world, it can be expected that knowledge of the Zoroastrian account would have become known to theologians of other faiths throughout the empire.

As prominent in Zoroastrianism, because vitally important for each believer, were the Gathic teachings about fate after death (with individual judgment, heaven and hell), and at the last day (with the Last Judgment, and annihilation for the wicked but eternal bliss for the saved in company with Ahuramazda in his kingdom to come upon earth). The contrast is sharp between these beliefs and the oldest layer of Jewish ones concerning the hereafter, of which it has been said: 'One of

{p. 193} the most astonishing things about Israel's religious faith is the warmth and intensity of fellowship with God which was experienced against the sombre background of a belief in nothing but the most shadowy and unsatisfactory kind of survival after death. In Amos (Ch. 9) and Psalm 139 we find the belief that Yahweh's writ extended even to the underworld of Sheol, but there is little evidence till the end of the Old Testament period that there was any belief in a blessed existence after death'. The earliest reference to such a belief has been seen in what is regarded as a post-exilic verse, Isaiah 26.19: 'But thy dead live, their bodies will rise again. They that sleep in the earth will awake and shout for joy; for ... the earth will bring those long dead to birth again'. The new hope of joy in the hereafter was thus expressly linked with the characteristic Zoroastrian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, alluded to, it seems, in Y. 30.7, and constantly reiterated as an article of faith. The teaching was duly ascribed to Zoroaster by Theopompos, who was born about 380, in the reign of Artaxerxes II. Since it and the other elements of Zoroastrian apocalyptic find their counterparts eventually in Jewish and Christian eschatology, not disjointedly but as parts of that same fixed scheme which is to be discerned in the Gathas, it is difficult not to concede to Zoroastrianism both priority and influence; the more especially since elements of Zoroaster's teachings can be traced far back in the ancient Indo-Iranian religious tradition, whereas those of Jewish apocalyptic first appear after the time of contact with the Persian faith.

{note that Resurrection is a bodily thing, whereas Reincarnation is the rebirth of the Spirit but not the body; another, new, body is used instead, with a new personality. These two viewpoints are based on divergent views of the composition of the person: body & blood in the Jewish case; body & soul or spirit in the Buddhist/Hindu/Platonic one}

A doctrine which appears to be wholly original to Zoroaster was that at the end of 'limited time' death will cease, together with its evil creator, Anra Mainyu. This doctrine too was alien to ancient Jewish thought; but it finds expression in another late verse in Isaiah, which prophesies that 'on that day' Yahweh will destroy death, 'that veil that shrouds all the peoples, the pall thrown over all the nations; he will swallow up death for ever' (Is. 25.78). In general it seems that Zoroastrian teachings, first assimilated by Second Isaiah with his proclamation of Yahweh as God and Creator, were adopted also by other prophets of the Isaianic school and make sporadic appearance in their verses, although not yet as part of an integrated system of belief. The dating of many of those verses remains controversial, and with regard to the section made up of Chapters 24-27 (from which both the above citations come) 'from the exile down to the end of the Old Testament development, i.e. the end of

{p. 194} the second century B.C., every century has been proposed as the period of its composition. Problems attend also the dating of Chapters 56-66, which some scholars assign to a single author, Third Isaiah, living in the time of Artaxerxes I, while others apportion them to some dozen different members of the Isaianic school. In these chapters past present and future are seen at times in ways which, although expressed in Jewish terms, bear striking resemblances in substance to the Zoroastrian world picture. Thus both past and present are perceived as afflicted by evil, which not only injures man but blights the whole cosmos. Salvation from this state can come only through a mighty act of judgment by Yahweh, who will 'create new heavens and a new earth'. Then his servants 'shall shout in triumph in the gladness of their hearts', whereas those who did evil, and chose what was against his will, 'shall cry from sorrow and wail from anguish of spirit', and be given over to death. The doctrine of a future lot depending on present choice is fundamental to Zoroaster's teachings, while the simultaneous announcement of happiness and misery, salvation for the righteous and suffering and annihilation for sinners, is strikingly characteristic of the Gathas but was new in Jewish utterances, although it became a prominent feature of later Jewish apocalyptic.

Although the Jews accepted the belief in heaven and hell, they rejected Zoroaster's fundamental dualistic teaching, that the power of God is limited in the present time by that of a mighty and evil Adversary, the source of all the wickedness and suffering in the world. Indeed Second Isaiah, perhaps the first Jew to have heard Zoroaster's doctrines, seems to have made this rejection explicit with the words: 'I am Yahweh, there is no other ... author alike of prosperity and trouble' (Is. 45.7). He thus adopted the Zoroastrian belief in God the Creator, but attributed to Yahweh the creation of all things, evil as well as good, regarding him as all-powerful. As then Jews came widely to accept the doctrine that Yahweh was not simply the one Being whom they as a people should worship, that is; their tribal god, but rather God omnipotent, they found,

{p. 195} it seems, an ever more urgent need to seek explanations, in the light of this doctrine, for undeserved suffering in the present life. 'The question as to why the godless so often prosper while the pious suffer was being repeatedly discussed ... in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.' It is to this period that the Book of Job is by general assent attributed.

Further, as the Jews came to venerate Yahweh as the all-powerful Creator, they appear to have felt an increasing need to acknowledge lesser immortal beings, his servants, who would bridge the vast gulf that now opened between him and his worshippers. The earliest reference to such a belief appears to be in Isaiah 24.21: 'the host of heaven in heaven'. It is generally held that Jewish angelology, which became highly developed, reflects to a large extent Zoroastrian belief in the yazatas, with the 'seven angels that stand in the presence of God' (Rev. 8.2) corresponding to the Amesa Spentas themselves. A demonology also steadily evolved, until in the Jewish apocalyptic literature of the Parthian period Satan is conceived, like Anra Mainyu, as a cosmic force, an essentially evil being who leads his wicked hordes to trouble mankind. Zoroastrian dualism, consciously rejected, it seems, by Second Isaiah, thus came in time to influence Judaism deeply.

An interesting historic parallel to these developments is furnished by the Parsis in respect to Christianity. Those devout Zoroastrians found themselves, like the Jews before them, a tiny minority in a vast empire. Like the Jews of the diaspora they were aliens in their chosen land, and they too came to be on excellent terms with its alien rulers, the British. Like the Jews they held staunchly to their own ancestral faith; but, unknown to themselves, they were deeply influenced nevertheless by Christianity, whose doctrines and observances, although never officially propagated, became familiar in countless random ways, and were in part unconsciously absorbed.

Democritus of Abdera

In 449 a peace was at last negotiated between Persia and Athens, known to the Greeks as the 'Peace of Callias'. This brought a respite in hostilities, and for a few years thereafter mainland Greeks could travel more freely through the Persian Empire. One who did so was the noted scholar Democritus from Aodera in Thrace, reputedly the author of more than seventy-two learned works. He visited Babylonia to study the

{p. 196} Science of the Chaldeans'; and he is also said to have interested himself in the learning of the magi, and to have written on this. Indeed according to one tradition he had as a boy listened to the discourses of Ostanes, Xerxes' chief magus, when the Persian army halted at Abdera in 480, and had received inspiration from his words.

Artaxerxes I and Babylonia

Babylonia, the richest of all the satrapies, was regularly governed by an Achaemenian from the time that Cambyses first ruled it as crown prince. Darius had built a palace in the ancient royal quarter of Babylon, and Xerxes lived there as satrap before he succeeded to the throne. Artaxerxes I also spent time in Babylonia, and was the first Achaemenian king, as far as is known, to take Babylonian ladies to wife. According to the Greek Ctesias (for seventeen years physician at the Persian court), his Queen of queens was a Persian, Damaspia, who bore him his oldest son and acknowledged heir, Xerxes II. Another son, Darius, was born to him by the Babylonian Cosmartidene; and by yet another Babylonian queen he had a daughter, Parysatis. A khvaetvadatha-marriage was arranged between Darius and Parysatis.

There are numerous instances among the Achaemenians and Sas anians of kings taking foreign wives; and occasionally it is known that the wife kept her alien faith - although plainly all would have had to observe the Zoroastrian purity laws. The admixture of foreign blood in the royal line could be ignored because of the widespread ancient belief (held by, among others, Aristotle) that woman was no more than a vessel into which man cast his seed. So the child of an Iranian male could be thought of as purely Iranian. (This belief persisted down to modern times in the Zoroastrian community, and not a single woman's name appears in the long genealogies of Parsi priests.) This conviction might seem to destroy the justification for khvaetvadatha-unions; but the basis for these was presumably in origin a desire to unite true believers, born of the same stock and with the same inheritance of faith and piety; for however much the mother's physical role might be diminished, her capacity to mould a child's thoughts and habits had to be acknowledged. Thus in the light of subsequent developments it seems very probable that Artaxerxes' Babylonian queens maintained their

{p. 197} ancestral faith and observances, and that Darius and Parysatis saw their mothers in their private quarters making their devotions before images of great Ishtar, and so learnt from them to honour the goddess in this way, although as Persians they knew her cult as that of Anahiti, Lady of the planet Venus. The likelihood that Artaxerxes would have tolerated such observances in his household is strengthened by the fact that he is recorded as having himself erected a stele to Ishtar in Babylon, as well as restoring property and estates to the priests of Marduk.

{p. 198} DARIUS II (423-404 B.C.)

Artaxerxes I died in 424, and his body, according to Ctesias, was brought from Susa to Persepolis, where it was laid in a tomb at Naqsi Rustam, beside those of Darius and Xerxes. The stereotyped reliefs were carvd above and around the door; and within, as in the tomb of Xerxes, there was provision for three bodies, there being three vaults each with a single stone cist. Ctesias' account indicates that one of these vaults was occupied by the body of Queen Damaspia, who died on the same day as her husband, and the other by that of their son Xerxes II, who was assassinated after a few weeks' reign by one of his half-brothers. Darius II was then in Babylon, where he succeeded in rallying support for himself. He marched eastward, deposed and put to death the assassin, and was crowned king in 423.

The inscriptions of Darius II

Unlike his forbears, the half-Babylonian l)arius II appears to have preferred the plains to the Iranian plateau, favouring his capitals of Susa and Babylon. He added no further buildings at Persepolis, and the only inscriptions of his which are known are two short ones from column bases in Susa. One of these contains a few lines derived from Darius the Great's inscription at Naqsi Rustam, with the added words: 'Saith Darayavahu the King: This palace Artakhsasa built, who was my father; this palace, by the will of Ahuramazda, I afterwards completed'. The other is even briefer: 'This palace of stone, with its columns, Daraya vahu the Great King built; may Ahuramazda, with the gods, protect Darayavahu the King'. This inscription is in Old Persian only, the other in Old Persian and Akkadian. ...

{p. 199} Darius II and the Jews

Darius II appears to have maintained his family tradition of active patronage towards the Jews. The evidence comes from a damaged scrap of Aramaic papyrus recovered from Elephantine. According to this, in 419 the king sent an order to the Egyptian satrap Arsama (Arsames), which was transmitted by the Jew Hananiah. This order commanded the Jews of Elephantine to keep the Festival of Unleavened Bread in that

{p. 200} year for seven days. It was probably made, it is suggested, to ensure that the Egyptian authorities allowed the Jews time off to observe the feast; and the fact that the Great King troubled himself in the matter suggests continuing good relations between leaders of the Jewish community and the court at Susa. When Nehemiah's governorship of Jerusalem ended is not known; but it has been pointed out that he had a brother named Hananiah. The Hananiah of Darius' order appears in another Elephantine papyrus, as one whose sojourn among the Jews of Egypt was a memorable event for them.

In the fourteenth year of Darius, in 408, while Arsama was absent from Egypt, the priests of the god Khnum in Elephantine, in collusion it seems with the Persian governor (frataraka) of the fortress there, one Vidarnag, cut off the water supply of the Jewish garrison and destroyed their temple to 'Yahu', which had stood since before the time of Cambyses. This appears to have been an incident in one of the many Egyptian revolts against Persian rule, with the Jews, as foreigners in the service of foreigners, suffering in the course of it. The motives of Vidarnag (possibly the grandson of the man who built the brazmadana in Elephantine during Xerxes' reign) are obscure. The Jews appealed to their brethren in Palestine for help to rebuild the temple, and also addressed themselves to Bagoas, the Persian governor of Judah at that time. He wrote to Arsama in Egypt, requesting him to have the temple 'rebuilt in its place, as it was formerly', but this appears never to have been done. ...

{p. 201} The promotion of the cult of Anahiti/Anahita

When eventually Artaxerxes came to succeed his father, Plutarch (relying on older sources) says that he underwent an inaugural ceremony, performed by Persian priests, at 'a sanctuary of a warlike goddess whom one might conjecture to be Athene'. This goddess has been generally identified as the Persian divinity known to the Greeks as 'Anaitis'. Plutarch sets her temple at Pasargadae, but no traces of any such building have found there. It is possible, however, that this is simply a topographical mistake, made through a conflation of material, or present in the work of the often inaccurate Ctesias. If reliance can otherwise be placed on what Plutarch relates, then it would seem that when Artaxerxes succeeded to the throne there was already in existence somewhere in Persia proper, or perhaps Babylonia, a temple dedicated to 'Anaitis' and served by Persian magi.

Further, Tacitus records that in his own day the people of Hierocae sarea in Lydia claimed that they possessed a shrine 'dedicated in the reign of Cyrus to the Persian Diana', while coins of Hierocaesarea in the Hellenic period bore the head of Diana with the legend 'Persike'. Despite Tacitus' use of the word 'reign' it seems probable that the shrine to this divinity was founded by Cyrus the Younger ...

{end of quotes}

(2) Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism Volume Three: Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman Rule , E. J. Brill, Leiden 1991.

{p. 363} Zoroastrianism was regularly characterized by Greeks as the "Persian religion", as if it were an ethnic faith like the others which they encountered; but (however true this had become in part) it was in fact a credal religion, the oldest known in history. A person was not born a Zoroastrian, nor did he enter the religious community through a physical rite (such as the Jewish one of infant circumcision); but he became a Zoroastrian on attaining maturity by choosing to profess the doctrines taught by Zoroaster. Among the distinctive elements in these doctrines were: belief in God (Ahura Mazda), the one eternal Being, and in a likewise self-existing, wholly independent Spirit of evil (Anra Mainyu); belief

{p. 364} that Ahura Mazda created the world in order to destroy that Spirit; and that a struggle is being waged here and now by celestial beings, just men and the whole good creation against him and his legions, who have malignly invaded the world; that this struggle will end with the triumph of the good, which will mark the last day of measurable time and human history, this glorious moment being known as Fraso-kereti, the "Making wonderful"; belief that the bones of the dead will then be raised up, so that all humanity, with those still living, can undergo a last judgment by fiery ordeal. The wicked will be thereby destroyed as part of the cleansing of the cosmos from evil, and the earth, likewise cleansed, will be once more wholly good, as Ahura Mazda had created it. Then his kingdom will come upon it, in which the just, made immortal in the flesh, will live in bliss for ever.

Before the 