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Achaemenid Religion Prods Oktor Skjærvø* Harvard University
Abstract
“Achaemenid religion” was the religion of the rulers of Iran in the second half of the first millennium BCE and the local form of Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of the Iranians. The earliest form of Zoroastrianism is known from the Avesta, their sacred texts, which probably originated in the last half of the second and first half of the first millennium BCE, but were transmitted only orally until priests began writing them down in the seventh century. The “Achaemenid religion” is known from cuneiform inscriptions in the local Iranian language, Old Persian, and from tablets in Elamite found at Persepolis, as well as from other sources. It was a dualist religion, postulating the existence of good and evil from the beginning, as well as a polytheistic religion, but with one god, Ahura-Mazdā, outranking the others. Scholarly discussion has centered on the question whether the Achaemenids were real Zoroastrians, in the sense of following the reformed teachings of the historical Zarathustra. As the assumed historicity of Zarathustra and his reform are increasingly being questioned, scholars are now focusing on the interpretation of the inscriptions, notably from the point of view of the orality of Iranian traditions and their relationship with the Avesta, but also increasingly on the editing of the Elamite tablets and mining them for information.
The Iranians The old Iranian religion, Zoroastrianism, was the religion of successive empires ruling the Middle East and beyond for over a millennium, beginning with the Medes, who sacked Ashur (614 BCE) and Niniveh (612 BCE) under Cyaxares, and the Achaemenid empire (ca. 550–330 BCE), founded by Cyrus II the Great (ca. 558 BCE) and ruled by a succession of kings from Persia (Wiesehöfer 1996, pp. 153, 313), among them Darius (r. 522–486 BCE) and Xerxes (r. 486–465 BCE). This became the largest empire in the Ancient Near East, stretching from the Indus valley to Libya, from Ethiopia to north of the Black Sea and to Central Asia, and including Anatolia and the Greek coastal colonies, but was conquered by Alexander in 330 BCE. The Iranians, of whom the Medes and Persians were individual tribes, originated in Central Asia in the second millennium BCE. By the first millennium, several tribes had migrated south into the area of modern Afghanistan, as well as onto the western edges of the Iranian Plateau, where we find references in ninth-century and eighth-century Assyrian annals to Persians (Parsuwash/Parsumash) and Medes (Waters 1999, Zadok 2001–28; on the migrations, see also Lecoq 1997, pp. 34–37, Witzel 2013). Zoroastrianism developed among the earliest Iranians, who called themselves Aryans, and we owe to them the individual texts that are now collectively referred to as the Avesta, of which the older part was probably composed during the second half of the second millennium BCE and the later part during the centuries preceding the Achaemenid empire, then transmitted orally for over a millennium before they were written down about the time of the Arab conquest in the seventh century CE (Kellens 1998). Here, we find the first references to Aryan lands, including Sogdiana (appr. Uzbekistan), Bactria (northern Afghanistan), © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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and the Helmand river and Arachosia, the area of modern Kandahar (Gnoli, 1980, 1987, Skjærvø 1995, pp. 163–65, texts in Malandra 1983, p. 60; Skjærvø 2011a, pp. 50–51, 159). Whether Raghā mentioned in the Avesta is the Classical Rhagēs in Media, modern Ray, remains uncertain (Gnoli 1980, pp. 23–26, 64–66, 1987, p. 44a, Boyce 1982a, pp. 8–9, 1992, pp. 6–8, 18–19, Ahn 1992, pp. 123–24, Skjærvø 1995, p. 165). The Persians While the Medes settled in the western central regions of modern Iran, the Persians moved further south into Pārsa, the area of modern Fars, to which they gave their name, where they built their own capital cities Susa and Persepolis near the ancient Elamite capitals at Susa in northwestern Iran (near modern Dezful) and Anshan in the south, near modern Shiraz (see Hansman 1985a, 1985b, Waters 2011, cf. Vallat 2011, p. 276). The Achaemenids called themselves Pārsa “Persian,” but the ethnicity of the founders of the dynasty is still unclear. Cyrus and his three predecessors’ names look non-Iranian (OPers. Chishpish, Kurush, and Kambūjiya), but Darius (Dāraya-vahush “upholder of good things”) and his predecessors and successors all have Iranian names with Zoroastrian flavor: Ershāma (Greek Arsames) “with the force of males,” Ariyāramna (Ariaramnes) “bringing the peace of the Aryans(?),” and Hakhā-manish (Achaemenes) “having his friends in mind(?)”; Xerxes (Khshaya-rsha) “ruler of males,” Erta-khshassa (Artaxerxes) “having command according to the cosmic order”). Superficially, at least, it would seem that the break between the two branches of Darius’s family involved ethnicity and religion. See, most recently, Vallat’s (2011) reconstruction of the royal line. Earlier discussions in Boyce 1982a, p. 41, 1992, p. 28, Dandamayev 1983, Schmitt 1983, Briant 1996, pp. 122–24, Kellens 2002, pp. 417–34: epic model for the dynasty; see also the bibliography in Vallat 2011). Sources There is a large corpus of source texts on the Achaemenids (see Kuhrt 2010). The most important non-old-Persian ones are the innumerable Elamite cuneiform clay tablets excavated by the Chicago Oriental Institute at Persepolis during excavations in 1933–34 and published as the Fortifications tablets (years 509–494 of the reign of Darius I; Cameron 1948) and the Treasury tablets (years 492–458 of the reigns of Darius I, Xerxes, and Artaxerxes I; Hallock 1969). Many found later are now kept in Iran. Recent work includes Koch 1988, 1991, Razmjou 2001, 2004, Henkelman 2008, 2013; see also the bibliography in Wiesehöfer (1996, pp. 272–73). Tablets in Aramaic were also found (not yet published, see Azzoni 2008, Dusinberre 2008). During the excavations, inscribed utensils for preparing the haoma were also found (Bowman 1970, Hinz 1975, Boyce 1982a, p. 149). Aramaic letters from Egypt, mostly from the fifth century, provide important onomastic evidence (see Porten 2011).
THE ACHAEMENID INSCRIPTIONS
In 1771, the French Orientalist A.-H. Anquetil-Duperron (Duchesne-Guillemin 1985) published translations of the Avesta and the later Zoroastrian books in Middle Persian (language of the Sasanian empire), the ancestor of modern Persian (=Farsi) and the descendant of Old Persian (OPers.), the language of the Achaemenid inscriptions, which until then had both remained undeciphered. By 1850, both the Middle and Old Persian inscriptions had been © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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deciphered. See Schmitt (1989, 1993b), Huyse (2009), Tavernier (2013). Translations in Kent (1953), Schmitt (1989, 1991a, 2000), Lecoq (1997, pp. 19–30). As the Achaemenid inscriptions were trilingual in Old Persian, Elamite, and Akkadian, the decipherment of Old Persian also facilitated the decipherment of Elamite (a non-Iranian, non-Semitic language) and Akkadian (a Semitic language). Among the earliest Akkadian texts to be deciphered was the Cyrus cylinder (Dandamayev 1993b, Finkel ed. 2013, Curtis 2013); since the text was intended for local propaganda, it does not say much about Cyrus’s own beliefs or his religious policies at home, which have been the subject of much debate (Duchesne-Guillemin 1962, pp. 152–54, Boyce 1988, pp. 26–31, Dandamayev 1993a; see also Faulkner 2013, Stolper 2013). The Achaemenid inscriptions represent the first attempts by Iranians, a fundamentally oral society (Skjærvø 2005–2006, 2012b, pp. 3–9), to write narratives. Here, Darius and Xerxes had their deeds incised on rock to preserve their stories of how they came to the throne and to present their beliefs and contrast them with those of the Elamites and other non-Iranian neighbors (DB §72, XPh §5, Kent 1953, pp. 134, 151, Malandra 1983, pp. 49, 51, Schmitt 2009, pp. 89, 167, Skjærvø 2011a, p. 236, Vallat 2011). The inscriptions are not to be taken as exact records of true events, since, in the oral tradition, history was quickly adapted to traditional narrative patterns (cf. Kellens 2002, pp. 458–59), as we see, for instance, in the story of the false Smerdis (Bardiya) in Darius’s Bisotun inscription (see Shayegan 2012). See also Briant 1996, pp. 14–18 and, on oral history in general, Vansina 2006. THE EVIDENCE OF THE GREEK HISTORIANS
The Greek historians are our earliest secondary sources for Median and Persian religion (de Jong 1997, Brosius 2013, Vasunia 2007): Xanthus of Lydia (lived slightly before Herodotus, known from quotations in later works); Herodotus (ca. 484–425 BCE, under Artaxerxes I, r. 465–425, wrote about Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and a multitude of Iranian topics); Xenophon (wrote during the reign of Artaxerxes II, r. 405–359 BCE); and Ctesias of Cnidus (physician at the court of Artaxerxes II; Schmitt 1993a). Their Iranian sources, too, must have been affected by oral traditions. Good and Evil It was known from Antiquity that the Zoroastrians were “dualists,” that is, they believed there were two creators, one who created good things and one who created evil things, and that, correspondingly, there were good and evil deities (Herrenschmidt 1987, p. 217). This image of Zoroastrianism was amply confirmed, first by the texts translated by Anquetil and then by the Old Persian and Middle Persian inscriptions. The dualist division between good and evil is seen both in this and the other worlds, where all things, notably gods and humans, must choose to side with one or the other. On Iranian dualism, see Gnoli (1996), de Blois (2000), Stausberg (2002, pp. 17–18), Skjærvø (2011b); on the denial of Zoroastrian dualism among early scholars, who advocated Zoroastrianism as a monotheistic faith, see Boyce (1982a, p. 232, bottom), for whom Zoroastrian dualism was taught by Zarathustra (1975, pp. 192–93), and Gnoli, who suggested that “a monotheistic tendency and a strong dualism coexisted” in Zoroaster’s Zoroastrianism (1996, p. 576b). The Avesta and the Old Persian inscriptions share numerous basic concepts. According to the Avesta, it was Ahura-Mazdā (originally, “the all-knowing Lord,” but by Achaemenid times simply a name), the greatest among gods (Av. yazata) and ruler of the cosmos, who © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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(by his thought) produced the orderliness of the cosmos (Av. asha) by setting in place heaven and earth and who maintains peace and happiness for mankind. He and his followers, including numerous deities, among them Anāhitā, the goddess of the heavenly waters, and Mithra, the god overseeing agreements made between gods and men and between men, fight the forces of chaos embodied in the Lie (Av. drug/druj) the cosmic deception and the evil counterpart of asha, which aims to mislead all things and whose main agent is (Avestan) Ahra Manyu (later Ahrimen), the Evil Spirit. Among those permanently misled were the old gods (Av. daēwas), whom the worshippers of Ahura-Mazdā must abjure. In the Old Persian inscriptions, which are not religious texts, but royal proclamations, we see the dualism from the king’s cosmo-political point of view. He praises Ahura-Mazdā as the great (vazerka) god (OPers. baga) and the greatest of the gods (e.g., DPd §1, Kent 1953, p. 136, Schmitt 2009, p. 115, Skjærvø 2011a, p. 232), who set in place the earth and heaven and who made him king; he worships Ahura-Mazdā and the other gods; and he discards the wrong gods, the daivas (Kellens 1994, pp. 86–87, 124–25, 133–42, Herrenschmidt and Kellens 1993, pp. 600–2). It was “by Ahura-Mazdā’s greatness (vashnā)” that the king achieved what he did. Here, vashnā is the expected grammatical form from *vazar/n “greatness,” which underlies vazer-ka “great” (Szemerényi 1975, pp. 325–43, supported by Skjærvø 1999, p. 39, against the common “by the will of” or, even, “by the grace of”). His “greatness” would refer to the fact that he was, according to Darius, “the greatest of the gods” and the one who championed him. Like Ahura-Mazdā, upholder of the cosmic order, the king has to maintain order in his land (DNa §4, XPh §4, Kent 1953, pp. 138, 151, Schmitt 2009, pp. 102–3, 166–67, Skjærvø 2011a, p. 236), and, like the Avestan worshippers, the king assures us that he was an active participant in the battle against the Lie (OPers. drauga). He regards his opponents as bewildered and deceived by the Lie (DB §§10, 54, Kent 1953, pp. 119, 131, Schmitt 2009, pp. 41, 78–79, Skjærvø 2011a, pp. 229–30) and prays to Ahura-Mazdā to protect the land from the “foulness” (gasta), that is, the evil stench of the Lie (DNa §5, XPh §5/7, A2Sa §3, Kent 1953, pp. 138, 154 “harm,” Schmitt 2009, pp. 104, 169, 192 “übel,” Skjærvø 2011a, pp. 231, 233). He also assures us that he was not in the camp of the Evil one (ahrīka, from Ahra Manyu, DB §63; Kent 1953, p. 170a, against other interpretations), but would punish the one who was (DB §§8, 10; Kent 1953, pp. 119 “evil,” Schmitt 2009, pp. 40–41 “treulos,” Skjærvø 2011a, pp. 228–29). By their sacrifices, the Avestan worshipper and the king both ensure Ahura-Mazdā’s assistance in maintaining order in their domains and rooting out transgression against Ahura-Mazdā’s/the king’s Law (dāta). To the king, this implied bringing back to the straight path those who had veered from it; to the subjects of the god and the king, it meant not leaving the straight path (DNa §60, Kent 1953, p. 138, Schmitt 2009, p. 104, Skjærvø 2011a, p. 231). One should speak only what is true or real, behaving with rectitude, doing and speaking what is straight, not falseness, and not mislead others, behaving crookedly or deviously (DB §63 DNa §6, Kent 1953, pp. 132, 138, Schmitt 2009, pp. 83, 104, Skjærvø 2011a, p. 231). The kings’ activity in the political sphere matches that of the priests in the religious sphere. Like Zarathustra, Ahura-Mazdā’s prophet and the first to praise and sacrifice to Ahura-Mazdā, the king is Ahura-Mazdā’s chosen and functions as mediator between gods and men. In this way, he becomes “like Zarathustra,” in the same way that the Avestan sacrificer sacrifices “like Zarathustra,” the prototype of human sacrificers (Yasna 8.7; cf. Herrenschmidt 1995–1996, p. 230, 1996, pp. 115–17, and, less directly, Herrenschmidt and Kellens 1994, p. 62, 2003, pp. 16–17; Skjærvø 2011a, pp. 132, 216–17). Darius thus reunites in one and the same person the functions of supreme king and supreme sacrificer (Skjærvø 2005, pp. 75–76). The purpose of the Avestan sacrificer was to help place Ahura-Mazdā back in command of the universe, so that he could, in return, make it frasha, the meaning of which has been much © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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discussed, but which originally probably referred to the universe being refilled with fecundity after periods of lifelessness (Skjærvø 1999, pp. 55–57, 2005, pp. 74–75, 79, 2011a, p. 30), a meaning that had probably been lost by the time the king apparently interpreted it as a call for him to produce matching work on earth: “The great god is Ahura-Mazdā, who set in place this frasha that is seen, who set in place the happiness of man, who bestowed on Dārayavaush wisdom and agility” (DNb §1); “King Dārayavaush announces: In Susa much frasha was ordered to be made, (and) much frasha was made (DSf §4, Kent 1953, pp. 140, 144, Schmitt 2009, pp. 105, 134, Skjærvø 2011a, pp. 176).” Polytheism In the later parts of the Avesta, numerous male and female deities receive sacrifices. The situation in the older parts is less transparent, but several deities appear to be mentioned there, as well (e.g., Boyce 1975, p. 195, Skjærvø 2011c, pp. 344–45). The king, although Ahura-Mazdā was “the greatest among the gods,” had his helpers in the other world, too: “Ahura-Mazdā bore me aid as well as the other gods there are” (DB §63, Kent 1953, p. 132, Schmitt 2009, p. 83, Skjærvø 2011a, p. 231; Boyce 1992, p. 126: “divine helpers”; Kellens 1994, p. 124, who connects “who are” with Av. hant “(those) being,” which he thinks includes all good and bad gods, p. 117). These expressions in particular caused problems for the assumption of Darius’s monotheism. Boyce (1982a, p. 83 n. 16) dismissed the latter expression as “translation Akkadian,” but it is a perfect fit in the context, where Darius contrasts his appurtenance with that of those in the other camp: “For this reason Ahura-Mazdā bore me aid, as well as the other gods who are, because I did not side with the Evil one, I was not a liar (draujana).” On the discussions around Zarathustra’s monotheistic reform, see Herrenschmidt (1987); also Skjærvø (2011c, pp. 321–28). Only two other gods are mentioned in the inscriptions and only by the later kings: Anāhitā and Mithra (Ahn 1992, pp. 221–27, Briant 1996, pp. 262–65, Stausberg 2002, pp. 174–76). Boyce also suggested that Darius’s six helpers were the earthly representations of the six amesha spentas, the Life-giving Immortals, which play a prominent role in the Gāthās, thus ensuring for Darius another condition for being Zoroastrian (1982a, pp. 91–94; see below). Further evidence is provided by the non-Old Persian sources. In the Aramaic letters, beside Mazda-yazna “who sacrifices to (Ahura-)Mazdā” and Mithra-dāta “(child) given by Mithra,” Mithra-yazna “who sacrifices to Mithra,” and Mithra-pāta “protected by Mithra,” we find names such as Hauma-dāta “(child) given by Hauma,” god of the sacred drink haoma, as well as Ārma(n)ti-dāta “given by (Av. Spentā) Ārmaiti, Ahura-Mazdā’s daughter and divinity of the earth and one of the six “Life-giving Immortals” (see, further, Schmitt 1991b). In the Elamite tablets, we find Spentā Ārmaiti (Ispandāramaiti; Razmjou 2001), beside Mithra, Naryasanga (Av. Nairya Sangha) and Ertāna Fraverti (Av. Ashāunām Frawashi), originally “the (pre-existing) souls of the righteous.” The tablets also mention offerings to non-Iranian gods, such as the Elamite god Humban, and the Babylonian weather god Adad and KI, the Earth. Whether these were actually worshiped as Elamite gods or whether the names cover Iranian ones, we do not know. In addition, offerings were made to divinities of rivers, mountains, places, and cities (Koch 1988, pp. 401–2; cf. the Avestan Yasna 38.3-5, a hymn to the waters, see Skjærvø 2011a, pp. 44–45). The Rituals The king’s sacrifice to Ahura-Mazdā is seen in the royal reliefs (survey in Garrison 2013; cf. Briant 1996, pp. 259–62). On the royal tomb reliefs, we see the king standing before a fire alter, raising his hand toward Ahura-Mazdā in the winged disk hovering above between © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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the king and the altar (e.g., Boucharlat 2013, p. 517). The omnipresent winged disk (borrowed from Egypt via Assyria; Jacobs 1991) is likely to be the symbol of the sun and asha, which, according to the Avesta, “contains the sun” (xwanwat, Yasna 32.2), and, in its middle, Ahura-Mazdā stands wielding a ring, probably symbolizing royal command (as under the later Sasanians, e.g., Canepa 2013, p. 864 fig. 45–3). Its symbolism has been much discussed: some have interpreted the figure as the king’s fravashi, the king’s guardian spirit, an interpretation contradicted by the fact that the fravashis are nowhere described as guardian spirits, but as female warriors (Skjærvø in Alram et al. 2007, pp. 28–29, and 2011a, pp. 18–19); others have interpreted the symbol as representing the xwarnah, Fortune or Glory (but of uncertain meaning and function) or even two different manifestations of it (Shahbazi 1974, 1980) but this interpretation is ad hoc, as there are no descriptions in the literature to support it (see discussions in Boyce 1982a, pp. 100–5, Stausberg 2002, pp. 177–80; on the xwarnah, see also Skjærvø 2011a, p. 18, 2013a, pp. 167–68). The Elamite tablets provide further details about the rituals performed at Persepolis (Koch 1988). The principal ritual was the (Elamite) lan, which is the only ritual that seems to have been celebrated on a grand scale judging from the large quantity of provisions recorded for it. The lan is often listed together with names of deities, and, as Ahura Mazdā himself is only rarely mentioned in the tablets, it has usually been assumed that the lan was the ritual for the supreme deity, who therefore was not mentioned by name himself, although, with more evidence, this may prove not to be so. Also mentioned are the daussa “libation ritual” (Av. zaothra) and (baga-)daussiya “libation ritual (for the gods)” (on which see Boyce 1982b). Priests included the (Elamite) shaten “priest” (most common); the magush, chiefly involved with the lan, exceptionally also in rituals for other deities, a river, and a mountain; the yashtā (Av. yashta), “sacrificer”; and the āterwakhsha (Av. ātrewakhsha ertācā), originally in charge of the fire. We know from the Aramaic texts from Persepolis that the haoma ritual was performed, as proved by the inscribed mortars (hāwan, Av. hāwana) and pestles (abishāwan) found there. The ritual is the well-known Zoroastrian yasna “sacrifice” ritual, the central component of which were the preparations and offering of the haoma juice (the Indic soma) and the sacrifice of an animal (see, e.g., Stausberg 2004, pp. 306–35; short overview in Skjærvø 2011a, pp. 34–36). It has long been thought that the reliefs along the great staircase in the Apadāna at Persepolis, where representatives from all the provinces of the empire are shown bearing gifts to the king, refer to a New Year’s ceremony, but this is uncertain. They may also have depicted traditional-epic events (cf. Briant 1996, p. 198), in this case perhaps derived from the epic narrative of king Jamshid, with which the reliefs have often been compared (Skjærvø 2008, p. 504a). Pollution and Burials The Greek historians provide the first evidence for the Persians’ concern about pollution of water and fire by “dead matter” and the earth by dead bodies, which features prominently in the Avesta in the Videvdad, which deals with pollution (cf. Skjærvø 2007). The disposal of the dead presented a special challenge, and the kings had themselves buried in rock-cut tombs at Naqsh-e Rostam, except Cyrus the Great, who was buried in a stone monument at Pasargadae (Zournatzi 1993), presumably to minimize the possibility of contaminating the earth (see Russell 1989, Jacobs 2010). Darius and Xerxes and Foreign Gods, the Daivas Both Darius and Xerxes proscribed the worship of foreign gods (daivas) as a means of subduing and punishing local rebellions, notably that of the Elamites, who sacrificed to daivas (DB §72, © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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Kent 1953, p. 134, Schmitt 2009, p. 89). In particular, Xerxes says he destroyed a daivadāna (literally, “receptacle for daivas”; XPh §4b/5, Kent 1953, pp. 151–52, Schmitt 2009, p. 167, Skjærvø 2011a, p. 129). Scholars have identified the sanctuary Xerxes destroyed variously, ranging from the Parthenon in Athens to the more likely Marduk temple in Babylon, but it is today usually not specified (Gnoli 1993). In the same passage, Xerxes says that, where the daivadānas had been, he sacrificed to Ahura-Mazdā, followed by the formula ertācā berazmaniy, which has been variously interpreted (e.g., Boyce 1982a, pp. 174–76, Schwartz 1985, pp. 689–90, Herrenschmidt in Herrenschmidt and Kellens 1993, p. 61). In ertācā, scholars have usually recognized the old word *erta, whence Avestan asha, the cosmic-ritual order, and ertācā as the equivalent of Avestan ashāt hacā “in accordance with the order.” The main alternative interpretation is by Schmitt (latest 2000, p. 95), who suggested ertā was a form of *ertu, which in Indic refers to time, interpreting ertācā as “at the right (ritual) time” (on which see Skjærvø 2011d). The second term, berazmaniy, was interpreted as “ritual (behavior)” and connected with Indic brahman by Henning (1944), an interpretation commonly accepted. Skjærvø (2011d), however, attempts to show that Henning’s arguments are faulty and has proposed to interpret berazmaniy as “in the height,” that is, “I sacrificed to Ahura Mazdā, according to the cosmicritual order, in the height,” as represented in the reliefs (also Skjærvø 1999, pp. 41–43). Were the Achaemenids Zoroastrians?—Questions of Methodology Doubt was expressed by Iranists in the 20th century whether the Achaemenids were “real” Zoroastrians, based primarily on a certain number of omissions and discrepancies in the Avestan and Old Persian texts (see Duchesne-Guillemin 1958, pp. 52–69, 1962, pp. 165–68, and 1972: lucid summing up of evidence and opinions; Herrenschmidt 1980: survey of recent studies; Boyce 1983, p. 428b, Ahn 1992, pp. 95–101, Stausberg 2002, p. 157 with refs.). To understand this situation, a few points need to be made. By the end of the 19th century, at a time when Avestan was still poorly understood, it had become common to regard Zarathustra as the author not of the entire Avesta, but only of its oldest parts, the five Gāthās. In these texts, the historical Zarathustra was supposed to have preached a reformed religion, diverging from the current beliefs inherited from Indo-Iranian times. The belief system in the younger Avesta, was commonly thought to represent a corruption of Zarathustra’s teachings (cf. Gershevitch 1968, p. 12, Boyce 1992, p. 113: Zarathustra was “transformed from the recognizably real figure of the Gathas into a revered, semi-legendary one”). It was also commonly agreed that the Gāthās were extremely difficult to understand (e.g., Gershevitch 1968, pp. 13, 17), but they were nevertheless extensively interpreted according to the later prophetic legend and on the basis of individual scholars’ opinions of what Zarathustra had stood for. Only a few scholars refused to accept Zarathustra’s historicity, and only from the late 1950s were the underlying assumptions questioned (Herrenschmidt 1987, Kellens 1991, pp. 84–85, Skjærvø 1997, pp. 104–7; 2011b, pp. 76–89; 2011c, pp. 321–37; 2013b, pp. 123–27). Real Zoroastrianism was thus understood as Zarathustra’s original teachings, and being a real Zoroastrian meant following these teachings. As for the Achaemenids, it was argued that the lack of any mention of the prophet himself and key terms of his doctrine, such as the six amesha spentas, show that the Achaemenids were at least not orthodox Zoroastrians. What was considered to be Zoroastrian orthodoxy, however, was a construct by Western scholars since the end of the 19th century based on the assumption that Zoroastrianism was a new, reformed, religion, founded by Zarathustra (thus, still Boyce 1975–1982a). As there is no evidence that Zarathustra was a historical person, a prophet, or a reformer, the definition of a Zoroastrian orthodoxy is also problematic. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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A special problem arose from the fact that about 490 BCE, the calendar known from postAvestan Zoroastrian texts had been adopted in Cappadocia and, presumably, in the entire empire (de Blois 1996, Panaino 1990, pp. 665–66, 2010, 2013). In Darius’s Bisotun inscription (520–518 BCE; Schmitt 1989), dates are given according to a local Persian calendar, however, in which the names of the months contain some overt references to Zoroastrian terminology, but others to seasonal phenomena, as well as according to the Elamite and Babylonian calendars. That the Cappadocian calendar was based on an Old Persian form of the Zoroastrian calendar is made likely by the form of the first month Artana, the only close match for which is the form Ertāna Fraverti in the Elamite tablets (Koch 1988, p. 401), and Panaino (2002, p. 229) has suggested that we are witnessing a complex of influences on the local Achaemenid calendar, both from local calendars and from the Zoroastrian calendar. An entertaining history of the calendar changes reconstructed from the scant evidence is found in Boyce (2005). The Achaemenid royal burials, which appeared to contradict the rules laid down in the Videvdad, also provided grist for the discussion of their Zoroastrianism (see, e.g., Widengren 1965, pp. 144–45, 154–55: “as non-Zoroastrian as possible” [p. 154 bottom]; Boyce, 1982a, pp. 56, 110–12: built so as to minimize danger to earth and water; Ahn 1992, pp. 122–30). This problem was often finessed by classifying the Videvdad as late or post-Achaemenid (see Skjærvø 2007, pp. 112–16, on the unlikelihood of this dating). At one end of the spectrum of opinions, Widengren (1965, p. 149, following his teacher Nyberg 1937, p. 416, 1938, p. 373) concluded it was virtually certain that the Achaemenids were not Zoroastrians; at the other end, Duchesne-Guillemin and Boyce concluded they were Zoroastrians, Shaked (1991, p. 90) believes the assumption that they were Zoroastrians is correct, while Schwartz (1985) and Schmitt (1983, p. 424) appear to have taken it for granted that the Achaemenids were Zoroastrians. De Blois (2000, p. 3) even suggested that “Zoroastrianism was adopted as the state religion of the Achaemenid empire” (cf. Stausberg 2002, p. 157). Boyce (1982a, pp. 7–9 and p. 39) argued from the absence in our sources of any kind of religious reform at the time in question that both the Medes and the Persians were converted earlier (2005, p. 6b). Similarly, Duchesne-Guillemin (e.g., 1962, pp. 166–67) had argued that the fact that the introduction of the new calendar “made so little noise” implied that Zoroastrianism was not a “novelty” at that time. The major caveat lies in the nature of the Zoroastrian sources. We do not know precisely what the Avestan corpus was in the Achaemenid period, hence also which were the practices reflected in the “Achaemenid Avesta.” As put by Kellens (1991, p. 84): “Poser la question du zoroastrisme des achéménides, c’est proposer implicitement la confrontation entre une réalité mal connue, la religion achéménide, et une réalite moins mal connue, le zoroastrisme” (echoing Duchesne-Guillemin 1972, p. 61: “deux quantités disparates … deux inconnus”). De Jong (2010) also criticizes the traditional approaches to the study of Achaemenid religion using the Avesta “as a normative source,” whereby the kings are denied “every kind of agency in religious matters” (p. 537); rather, he suggests that “[i]nstead of being defined by their religion … they are the ones who gave it shape” (p. 542). This caveat is imperative because Achaemenid religion more often than not has been discussed from the point of view of the development of Zoroastrianism as perceived—variously—by the authors (e.g., Gnoli 1980, Boyce 1982a, etc.; cf. de Jong 2010, p. 534). Also, importantly, the orality of the Avesta and the problem of the “author” in oral literature were not taken into consideration (see Skjærvø 2005–2006). Those scholars who have dated Zarathustra according to the traditional date of “258 years before Alexander,” i.e., 588 BCE = 330 + 258 (Henning 1951, pp. 40–41; Gnoli 2000, p. 165: 618–541 BCE) face the problem of the absence of any mention of him in the contemporary sources, as well as a linguistic problem (Skjærvø 2003–2004). © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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If we take Achaemenid religion to refer to the religious beliefs expressed in the various primary and secondary sources at our disposal and Zoroastrianism as the religion expressed in the entire Avesta, it becomes clear that the Achaemenids were Zoroastrians and that the Achaemenid king performed his Zoroastrian duties faithfully. When the Zoroastrian reform is removed from the discussion, keeping in mind the geographic-historical background, the question can then be posed differently, whether the Achaemenids had always been Zoroastrians or became Zoroastrian at some point before recorded history. The fact that eastern Iran (see Genito 2013) is mentioned in the Avesta certainly points to the population being Zoroastrian (Boyce 1982a, p. 42). So how does Persian Zoroastrianism fit with this, since the Persians apparently came to Persia along a totally different route along the westernmost part of the Plateau? For references and sometimes speculative answers to these questions, see Boyce 1982a, pp. 1–43; speculations also in Skjærvø 2005, pp. 80–81. Note also Kreyenbroek 2010, p. 108: “a non-confrontational expansion of Zoroastrianism through western Iran in the Achaemenid period.” Achaemenid religion is still very much a work in progress. The uncertainties about the origins of the Persians make it difficult to form likely hypotheses about the geographical spread of Zoroastrianism, but, as more tablets, both in Chicago and Iran are edited and current archeological research progresses (see Briant et al. [eds.] 2008, Boucharlat 2013, Henkelman 2013), our knowledge of all things Achaemenid is bound to be refined. Short Biography Prods Oktor Skjærvø’s research interests have covered pre-Islamic Iranian languages, literatures, and religions, as well as modern Iranian dialectology. He has authored and co-authored books on Middle Persian inscriptions and Khotanese texts and philology and written numerous articles in journals and collective volumes, among them Encyclopædia Iranica, The Cambridge History of Religions in the Ancient World, The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History, The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran, and The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity (forthcoming), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, and New Interpreter’s Dictionary of the Bible. His recent book of translations from Avestan and Old and Middle Persian, The Spirit of Zoroastrianism, was aimed at making Zoroastrian literature accessible to a wider audience. He also has two volumes of translations of Zoroastrian and Iranian Manichean texts into his native language, Norwegian. Much of his recent work has focused on the importance of studying old Iranian literature as oral literature, and he is currently also working with Talmudists on old Iranian legal texts. After graduating from the University of Oslo in 1974, he spent five years there as Research Fellow, before becoming Scientific Assistant to Prof H. Humbach at the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz. In 1985, he took up the position as Assistant Editor (then Senior Assistant Editor) of the Encyclopædia Iranica at Columbia University, New York, which he left in 1991 to become Aga Khan Professor of Iranian at Harvard. He has held fellowships from the University of Oslo, the Norwegian Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and has guest lectured at La Sapienza, Rome, the Sorbonne and Collège de France, Paris, and Eötvös Loránd Tudomány University, Budapest. He holds a PhD from the University of Oslo 1981 and a Dr habil from the Johannes Gutenberg University 1984. Note * Correspondence: Harvard University, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC), Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. Email:
[email protected]
Works Cited Ahn, G. (1992). Religiöse Herrscherlegitimation im achämenidischen Iran: Die Voraussetzungen und die Struktur ihrer Argumentation. Leiden: Brill. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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——. (2012b). The Zoroastrian oral tradition as reflected in the texts. In: A. Cantera (ed.), The Transmission of the Avesta, pp. 3–48. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz. ——. (2013a). Kayāniān i-xiv. Encyclopaedia Iranica, 16, pp. 148–74. ——. (2013b). Zoroastrianism. In: M. R. Salzman & M. A. Sweeney (eds.), The Cambridge History of Religions in the Ancient World, vol. 1: From the Bronze Age to the Hellenistic Age, pp. 102–28. Cambridge, etc.: Cambridge University Press. ——. (2013c). The Avesta and Zoroastrianism in Achaemenid and Sasanian Iran. In: Potts (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran, pp. 547–65. Oxford, etc.: Oxford University Press. Stausberg, M. (2002). Die Religion Zarathustras. Geschichte - Gegenwart - Rituale, vol. 1. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. ——. (2004). Die Religion Zarathustras. Geschichte - Gegenwart - Rituale, vol. 3. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. ——. (2008). Zarathustra and Zoroastrianism: A short introduction. M. Preisler-Weller (trans.). London and Oakville, Conn.: Equinox. Stolper, M. (2013). The Form, Language and Contents of the Cyrus Cylinder. In: T. Daryaee (ed.), Cyrus the Great: An Ancient Iranian King, pp. 40–52. Santa Monica, Calif.: Afshar Publ. Szemerényi, O. (1975). Iranica V. In: Monumentum H. S. Nyberg, vol. 2, pp. 313–94. Tehran and Liège: Bibliothèque Pahlavi. Tavernier, J. (2013). Old Persian. In: Potts (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran, pp. 638–57. Oxford, etc.: Oxford University Press. Vallat, F. (2011). Darius, l’héritier légitime, et les premiers Achéménides. In: Álvarez-Mon & Garrison (eds.), Elam and Persia, pp. 263–84. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Vansina, J. (2006). Oral tradition: A study in historical methodology. New Brunswick, NJ: Aldine Transaction. Vasunia, Ph. (2007). Zarathushtra and the religion of ancient Iran: The Greek and Latin sources in translation. Mumbai: K. R. Cama Oriental Institute. Waters, M. W. (1999). The earliest Persians in southwestern Iran: The textual evidence, Iranian Studies, 32, pp. 99–107. ——. (2011). Parsumaš, Anšan, and Cyrus. In: Álvarez-Mon & Garrison (eds.), Elam and Persia, pp. 285–96. Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns. Widengren, G. (1965). Die Religionen Irans. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Wiesehöfer, J. (1996). Ancient Persia from 550 BC to 650 AD. A. Azodi (trans.). London: I. B. Tauris. Witzel, M. (2013). Iranian migration. In: Potts (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Ancient Iran, pp. 423–41. Oxford, etc.: Oxford University Press. Zadok, R. (2001–28). On the location of NA Parsua. NABU. [Online]. Retrieved from: http://www.achemenet.com [Accessed 1 September 2013]. Zournatzi, A. (1993). Cyrus v. The tomb of Cyrus, Encyclopædia Iranica, 6, pp. 522–4.
Further Readings On Zoroastrianism, see the comprehensive descriptions by Boyce (1975, 1982a) and Stausberg (2002–2004); shorter overviews in Gnoli (1980, pp. 199–225), Boyce (1984), Stausberg (2008), Rose (2011), Skjærvø (2013b), and, with translations of texts, Malandra (1983), Lecoq (1997), Skjærvø (2011a). Older works: Lommel (1930), Nyberg (1937, 1938), Duchesne-Guillemin (1962), Widengren (1965). On Zoroastrian literature, see Hintze (2009); on the Avesta, see Kellens (1987), Skjærvø (2011a, 2012a). On things Achaemenid: The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 2 (1985), Potts (ed.). On Achaemenid religion, see Duchesne-Guillemin (1962, pp. 165–68), Widengren (1965, pp. 117–55), Boyce (1982a, 1983, 1984, pp. 48–77, 1992, pp. 125–32), Schwartz (1985), Ahn (1992, pp. 95–130), Wiesehöfer (1996, pp. 94–101), Stausberg (2002, pp. 157–86). See also the brief overview in Skjærvø 2013c, pp. 547–54. Comparison of Zoroastrianism and Achaemenid religion in Knäpper 2011. Comparisons between Zoroastrian and Achaemenid texts in Skjærvø (1999, 2005, 2012b, pp. 12–15). On the Medes, see Diakonoff (1985), Dandamayev and Medvedskaya (2006) On Achaemenid history, see The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 2 (1985), Dandamaev (1989) Briant (1996; Eng. tr. 2002), Wiesehöfer (1996), Huyse (2005). On Achaemenid imperial discourse, see Lincoln, B. (1996). Old Persian fraša and vašna: Two terms at the intersection of religious and imperial discourse, Indogermanische Forschungen, 101, pp. 147–67; Lincoln, B. (2012). ‘Happiness for mankind’: Achaemenian religion and the imperial project. Leuven: Peeters. Photographs from Persepolis and surroundings in Schmidt (1970) and online at Google images and elsewhere.Websites: http://www.iranicaonline.org/, http://www.achemenet.com/, http://www.iranchamber.com/history/achaemenids/achaemenids.php, http://www.livius.org/aa-ac/achaemenians/achaemenians.html, http://oi.uchicago.edu/research/projects/persia.html. See also Encyclopædia Iranica, E. Yarshater (gen. ed.), Various publishers, 1982-. Also online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd
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