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Liber XXXVI · Zoroastrianism

Liber XXXVI · Zoroastrianism

The Achaemenid Kings and Zoroastrianism: Cyrus to Darius

Were the Achaemenid kings Zoroastrians? Cyrus, Darius and Xerxes, the Behistun and daiva inscriptions, the Magi at Persepolis and the scholarly debate.

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The Achaemenid kings of Persia (about 550–330 BCE) worshipped Ahuramazda, the Wise Lord, as the great god who had given them their kingdom, and their inscriptions speak of Truth (arta) and the Lie (drauga) in language very close to the Zoroastrian scriptures. Yet the inscriptions never mention Zarathustra, the kings also honoured other gods, and scholars still debate whether, or from when, the dynasty should be called Zoroastrian.

The Achaemenid Empire and the Question of Its Religion§

Under Cyrus II, "the Great", the Persians of Fars in south-western Iran overthrew their Median overlords around 550 BCE, conquered Lydia in Asia Minor in the 540s and took Babylon in 539 BCE. Cambyses added Egypt, and Darius I (522–486 BCE) extended the empire from the Indus to the Aegean. It ended when Alexander of Macedon defeated Darius III and burned Persepolis in 330 BCE.

The religion of these kings matters for the history of Zoroastrianism because the Achaemenid period is the first in which Iranian religion can be observed in dated, contemporary documents. The Avesta itself, described in what is Zoroastrianism, was transmitted orally and written down only centuries later, and the prophet's own date is uncertain. The royal inscriptions, the reliefs of Persepolis and Naqsh-e Rustam, thousands of clay administrative tablets and the reports of Greek writers such as Herodotus therefore give a precious, if partial, view of how the worship of Ahura Mazda was practised by an imperial court. The inscriptions are royal propaganda, the Greek sources are outsiders' interpretations, and the archives show a more mixed landscape than either.

Cyrus the Great: Tolerance and Silence§

Cyrus has a special place in later memory. The Hebrew Bible calls him the Lord's "anointed" (Isaiah 45) and credits him with allowing the exiled Judeans to return and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem (Ezra 1). The Cyrus Cylinder, a clay cylinder written in Babylonian after the capture of Babylon, presents him as the chosen of Marduk, the city's god, who restored neglected cults and returned displaced peoples and their divine images. These texts reflect a policy of working through local priesthoods, and they were composed for Babylonian and Judean audiences; they say nothing about Cyrus's own beliefs.

No surviving inscription of Cyrus names Ahuramazda. The short inscriptions at his capital, Pasargadae, that speak in his name are thought by many scholars to have been added later, under Darius. Cyrus's tomb at Pasargadae, a stone gabled chamber raised on six steps, has been read by Mary Boyce as consistent with Zoroastrian concern to keep a corpse from polluting earth, but other scholars regard such readings as too hopeful. Cyrus's personal religion therefore remains unknown.

Darius I and Ahuramazda at Behistun§

With Darius I the evidence becomes abundant. Darius came to the throne in 522 BCE after a violent crisis. According to his own account, carved on the cliff at Behistun (Bisitun) in western Iran in Old Persian, Elamite and Babylonian, a Magus named Gaumata had impersonated Bardiya, the brother of Cambyses, and seized power; Darius and six noble companions killed him, and Darius then crushed a series of revolts across the empire. Many historians suspect that the story conceals a usurpation of his own.

Darius repeats that he became and remained king "by the favour of Ahuramazda", that Ahuramazda brought him aid, and that the god gave him the kingdom. The rebels, by contrast, are said to have "lied": the Lie (drauga) made the provinces rebellious. This word is the Old Persian equivalent of the Avestan druj, the cosmic Lie opposed to asha, Truth, which stands at the centre of the Gathas and of the dualism described in Ahura Mazda and Ahriman. The Old Persian equivalent of asha, arta, appears in royal names such as Artaxerxes and in many personal names recorded in the administrative archives.

Darius also says that he restored the places of worship (ayadana) that Gaumata had destroyed. What these were, and why a Magus would destroy them, is disputed, and the text is too brief to support confident reconstructions.

The monuments convey the same theology visually. On Darius's rock-cut tomb at Naqsh-e Rustam near Persepolis, the king stands on a platform upheld by the peoples of the empire, raising his hand before a fire altar, while above hovers a winged figure emerging from a winged ring. Older scholars identified the figure as Ahuramazda; others have suggested the royal glory (khvarenah) or a guardian spirit. Modern Zoroastrians call the symbol the Faravahar and interpret it as the fravashi, the guardian spirit of the righteous. A second inscription on the tomb sets out the king's ethical self-portrait: he is a friend to right, not to wrong, and is not hot-tempered, ideas that echo the Zoroastrian emphasis on good conduct.

Xerxes, the Daivas and the Persepolis Evidence§

Darius's son Xerxes (486–465 BCE) left the most explicitly religious Achaemenid text, the so-called daiva inscription found at Persepolis. In it Xerxes says that among the lands under his rule there was a place where daivas had formerly been worshipped; by the favour of Ahuramazda he destroyed that sanctuary and proclaimed that the daivas should not be worshipped, and where they had been worshipped he worshipped Ahuramazda "in accordance with Truth". The inscription adds that a man who respects the law Ahuramazda has established and worships him properly will be happy while living and blessed (artavan) when dead.

The word daiva is the Old Persian equivalent of the Avestan daeva, which in the Gathas designates false gods and in later Zoroastrianism demons. The daiva inscription therefore reflects the specifically Iranian, and specifically Zoroastrian, rejection of the daevas — although which land and which cult it refers to is unknown, and some scholars think it is a general royal statement rather than a report of a single event.

A very different picture emerges from the Persepolis Fortification Tablets, thousands of clay tablets in Elamite from roughly 509–493 BCE that record the distribution of food in the region around Persepolis. Among them are rations issued for offerings to Ahuramazda, but also to Elamite gods such as Humban, to the Babylonian Adad, to mountains and rivers, and for a sacrifice called lan. The officiants include men called makush — the Magi — who served Iranian and non-Iranian gods alike. As the work of scholars such as Wouter Henkelman has shown, the royal administration supported a plural religious landscape in which Ahuramazda was pre-eminent but by no means alone.

Herodotus, writing in the mid-fifth century, adds an outsider's sketch. The Persians, he says, set up no temples or statues, but sacrifice on the mountain tops to "Zeus" and to the sun, moon, earth, fire, water and winds; a Magus must be present and chants a "theogony" over the offering. He also notes that the Magi kill ants, snakes and other creatures (later Zoroastrian khrafstra, creatures of the Evil Spirit) and that the dead were not buried until a bird or dog had torn the body — an early hint of the practice described in towers of silence. On the Magi as Greek writers saw them, see the Magi: priests of ancient Persia.

Anahita, Mithra and the Later Achaemenids§

Darius and Xerxes name only Ahuramazda in their inscriptions, sometimes adding "the other gods who are". From Artaxerxes II (404–358 BCE) onward, two further deities appear by name: royal inscriptions at Susa and Hamadan invoke Ahuramazda, Anahita and Mithra together to protect the king and his works. Berossus, quoted by Clement of Alexandria, says Artaxerxes first set up statues of Anaitis in the empire's great cities.

Anahita, the goddess of the waters praised in the Avestan hymn known as the Aban Yasht, and Mithra, the god of the covenant praised in the Mihr Yasht, are both venerated as yazatas, beings worthy of worship, in later Zoroastrianism. Their rise at court shows that the "Young Avestan" pantheon was taking shape in the Achaemenid period. Mithra's later career in the Roman world is traced in Mithra and Mithraism. Many scholars, following Boyce, also date to the later Achaemenid period the introduction of the Zoroastrian calendar whose months and days are named after Ahura Mazda and the yazatas (see the Zoroastrian calendar and festivals), though the date remains debated.

Boyce suggested that a reaction against such cult statues encouraged temples in which a sacred fire, not an image, was the focus of worship (see Zoroastrian fire temples and ritual); this remains a hypothesis.

Were the Achaemenids Zoroastrians? The Scholarly Debate§

Modern opinion falls broadly into three positions. Mary Boyce, in the second volume of her History of Zoroastrianism, argued that the Achaemenids were Zoroastrians from Cyrus onward, the differences reflecting royal adaptation. Others have held that the Achaemenids worshipped Ahuramazda as a traditional Iranian god without knowing or accepting Zarathustra's reform, pointing to the silence of the inscriptions about the prophet, the absence of the Amesha Spentas and of Angra Mainyu, and the plural cults of the Persepolis tablets.

A third, now widely shared view avoids an all-or-nothing answer. On this reading the Achaemenids practised a western, imperial form of Mazda-worship that shared with the Avesta its supreme god, its ethics of Truth and the Lie, its rejection of the daivas, and its priests the Magi, but that was not yet the systematised Zoroastrianism known from the Sasanian period and the Pahlavi books.

Later Zoroastrian tradition barely remembered the Achaemenids but remembered Alexander as "the accursed", who burned the scriptures. The organised state church of the Sasanian era, which claimed to restore what Alexander had destroyed, is described in Kartir and the Sasanian Zoroastrian church.

Frequently asked questions§

Was Cyrus the Great a Zoroastrian?§

It is not known. Cyrus left no inscription naming Ahuramazda, and his Babylonian texts honour Marduk for local audiences. Some scholars, notably Mary Boyce, believed he was a Zoroastrian, while others think the evidence does not allow a conclusion.

What is the daiva inscription of Xerxes?§

It is an Old Persian inscription from Persepolis in which Xerxes says he destroyed a sanctuary of the daivas and forbade their worship, worshipping Ahuramazda in its place. It reflects the Iranian rejection of the daevas as false gods, which Zoroastrianism shares.

Do the Achaemenid inscriptions mention Zarathustra?§

No. They name Ahuramazda and, from Artaxerxes II onward, Anahita and Mithra, but never the prophet. This silence is a key argument for those who doubt that the Achaemenids were Zoroastrians in the later sense.

Is the winged symbol at Persepolis Ahura Mazda?§

Its meaning is debated. Older scholars identified it with Ahuramazda, others with royal glory or a guardian spirit; modern Zoroastrians know it as the Faravahar and interpret it as the fravashi, the guardian spirit of the righteous.

Sources and further reading§