Religion Compass 8/6 (2014): 175187, 10.1111/rec3.12110Achaemenid Religion

Prods Oktor Skjrv*Harvard University

AbstractAchaemenid religion was the religion of the rulers of Iran in the second half of the rst millenniumBCE and the local form of Zoroastrianism, the ancient religion of the Iranians. The earliest form ofZoroastrianism is known from the Avesta, their sacred texts, which probably originated in the last halfof the second and rst half of the rst millennium BCE, but were transmitted only orally until priestsbegan writing them down in the seventh century. The Achaemenid religion is known fromcuneiform inscriptions in the local Iranian language, Old Persian, and from tablets in Elamite foundat Persepolis, as well as from other sources. It was a dualist religion, postulating the existence of goodand evil from the beginning, as well as a polytheistic religion, but with one god, Ahura-Mazd,outranking the others. Scholarly discussion has centered on the question whether the Achaemenidswere 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 arenow focusing on the interpretation of the inscriptions, notably from the point of view of the orality ofIranian traditions and their relationship with the Avesta, but also increasingly on the editing of theElamite tablets and mining them for information.

The Iranians

The old Iranian religion, Zoroastrianism, was the religion of successive empires ruling theMiddle East and beyond for over a millennium, beginning with the Medes, who sackedAshur (614 BCE) and Niniveh (612 BCE) under Cyaxares, and the Achaemenid empire (ca.550330 BCE), founded by Cyrus II the Great (ca. 558 BCE) and ruled by a succession ofkings from Persia (Wiesehfer 1996, pp. 153, 313), among them Darius (r. 522486 BCE)and Xerxes (r. 486465 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 toCentral Asia, and including Anatolia and the Greek coastal colonies, but was conquered byAlexander 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 rst millennium, several tribes hadmigrated south into the area of modern Afghanistan, as well as onto the western edges ofthe Iranian Plateau, where we nd references in ninth-century and eighth-century Assyrianannals to Persians (Parsuwash/Parsumash) and Medes (Waters 1999, Zadok 200128; on themigrations, see also Lecoq 1997, pp. 3437, 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, ofwhich the older part was probably composed during the second half of the secondmillennium 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 timeof the Arab conquest in the seventh century CE (Kellens 1998). Here, we nd the rstreferences to Aryan lands, including Sogdiana (appr. Uzbekistan), Bactria (northern Afghanistan), 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd

and the Helmand river and Arachosia, the area of modern Kandahar (Gnoli, 1980, 1987, Skjrv

While the Medes settled in the western central regions of modern Iran, the Persians movedfurther south into Prsa, the area of modern Fars, to which they gave their name, where they

176 Prods Oktor Skjrvbuilt their own capital cities Susa and Persepolis near the ancient Elamite capitals at Susain 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 Prsa 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 Kambjiya), but Darius (Draya-vahush upholder of good things)and his predecessors and successors all have Iranian names with Zoroastrian avor: Ershma(Greek Arsames) with the force of males, Ariyramna (Ariaramnes) bringing the peaceof the Aryans(?), and Hakh-manish (Achaemenes) having his friends in mind(?); Xerxes(Khshaya-rsha) ruler of males, Erta-khshassa (Artaxerxes) having command according tothe cosmic order). Supercially, at least, it would seem that the break between the twobranches of Dariuss family involved ethnicity and religion. See, most recently, Vallats(2011) reconstruction of the royal line. Earlier discussions in Boyce 1982a, p. 41, 1992,p. 28, Dandamayev 1983, Schmitt 1983, Briant 1996, pp. 12224, Kellens 2002, pp. 41734: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 mostimportant non-old-Persian ones are the innumerable Elamite cuneiform clay tabletsexcavated by the Chicago Oriental Institute at Persepolis during excavations in 193334and published as the Fortications tablets (years 509494 of the reign of Darius I; Cameron1948) and the Treasury tablets (years 492458 of the reigns of Darius I, Xerxes, andArtaxerxes I; Hallock 1969). Many found later are now kept in Iran. Recent work includesKoch 1988, 1991, Razmjou 2001, 2004, Henkelman 2008, 2013; see also the bibliographyin Wiesehfer (1996, pp. 27273). 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 fth 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 descendantof Old Persian (OPers.), the language of the Achaemenid inscriptions, which until then hadboth remained undeciphered. By 1850, both the Middle and Old Persian inscriptions had been1995, pp. 16365, texts in Malandra 1983, p. 60; Skjrv 2011a, pp. 5051, 159). WhetherRaghmentioned in the Avesta is the Classical Rhags inMedia, modern Ray, remains uncertain(Gnoli 1980, pp. 2326, 6466, 1987, p. 44a, Boyce 1982a, pp. 89, 1992, pp. 68, 1819,Ahn 1992, pp. 12324, Skjrv 1995, p. 165).

The Persians 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Religion Compass 8/6 (2014): 175187, 10.1111/rec3.12110

deciphered. See Schmitt (1989, 1993b), Huyse (2009), Tavernier (2013). Translations in

(wrote during the reign of Artaxerxes II, r. 405359 BCE); and Ctesias of Cnidus (physician at

Achaemenid Religion 177the court of Artaxerxes II; Schmitt 1993a). Their Iranian sources, too, must have been affectedby oral traditions.

Good and Evil

It was known from Antiquity that the Zoroastrians were dualists, that is, they believedthere 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 conrmed, rst by the texts translated by Anquetiland 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. 1718), Skjrv(2011b); on the denial of Zoroastrian dualism among early scholars, who advocated Zoroas-trianism as a monotheistic faith, see Boyce (1982a, p. 232, bottom), for whom Zoroastriandualism was taught by Zarathustra (1975, pp. 19293), and Gnoli, who suggested that amonotheistic tendency and a strong dualism coexisted in Zoroasters Zoroastrianism(1996, p. 576b).The Avesta and the Old Persian inscriptions share numerous basic concepts. According to

the Avesta, it was Ahura-Mazd (originally, the all-knowing Lord, but by Achaemenidtimes simply a name), the greatest among gods (Av. yazata) and ruler of the cosmos, whoKent (1953), Schmitt (1989, 1991a, 2000), Lecoq (1997, pp. 1930).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 Akkadiantexts to be deciphered was the Cyrus cylinder (Dandamayev 1993b, Finkel ed. 2013, Curtis2013); since the text was intended for local propaganda, it does not say much about Cyrussown beliefs or his religious policies at home, which have been the subject of much debate(Duchesne-Guillemin 1962, pp. 15254, Boyce 1988, pp. 2631, Dandamayev 1993a; seealso Faulkner 2013, Stolper 2013).The Achaemenid inscriptions represent the rst attempts by Iranians, a fundamentally oral

society (Skjrv 20052006, 2012b, pp. 39), to write narratives. Here, Darius and Xerxeshad their deeds incised on rock to preserve their stories of how they came to the throne andto present their beliefs and contrast them with those of the Elamites and other non-Iranianneighbors (DB 72, XPh 5, Kent 1953, pp. 134, 151, Malandra 1983, pp. 49, 51, Schmitt2009, pp. 89, 167, Skjrv 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. 45859), as we see, for instance, in the story of the false Smerdis (Bardiya) in DariussBisotun inscription (see Shayegan 2012). See also Briant 1996, pp. 1418 and, on oral historyin 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. 484425 BCE, under Artaxerxes I,r. 465425, wrote about Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, and a multitude of Iranian topics); Xenophon 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Religion Compass 8/6 (2014): 175187, 10.1111/rec3.12110

(by his thought) produced the orderliness of the cosmos (Av. asha) by setting in place heaven

178 Prods Oktor Skjrvand earth and who maintains peace and happiness for mankind. He and his followers,including numerous deities, among them Anhit, the goddess of the heavenly waters, andMithra, the god overseeing agreements made between gods and men and between men,ght the forces of chaos embodied in the Lie (Av. drug/druj) the cosmic deception andthe 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 misledwere the old gods (Av. dawas), whom the worshippers of Ahura-Mazd must abjure.In the Old Persian inscriptions, which are not religious texts, but royal proclamations, we

see the dualism from the kings cosmo-political point of view. He praises Ahura-Mazd as thegreat (vazerka) god (OPers. baga) and the greatest of the gods (e.g., DPd 1, Kent 1953,p. 136, Schmitt 2009, p. 115, Skjrv 2011a, p. 232), who set in place the earth and heavenand who made him king; he worships Ahura-Mazd and the other gods; and he discards thewrong gods, the daivas (Kellens 1994, pp. 8687, 12425, 13342, Herrenschmidt andKellens 1993, pp. 6002). It was by Ahura-Mazds greatness (vashn) that the kingachieved what he did. Here, vashn is the expected grammatical form from *vazar/ngreatness, which underlies vazer-ka great (Szemernyi 1975, pp. 32543, supportedby Skjrv 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 ofthe gods and the one who championed him.Like Ahura-Mazd, 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. 1023, 16667, Skjrv 2011a,p. 236), and, like the Avestan worshippers, the king assures us that he was an active participant inthe battle against the Lie (OPers. drauga). He regards his opponents as bewildered and deceivedby the Lie (DB 10, 54, Kent 1953, pp. 119, 131, Schmitt 2009, pp. 41, 7879, Skjrv2011a, pp. 22930) and prays to Ahura-Mazd 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 bel, Skjrv 2011a, pp. 231, 233). He also assures us thathe was not in the camp of the Evil one (ahrka, fromAhraManyu, 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. 4041 treulos, Skjrv 2011a, pp. 22829).By their sacrices, the Avestan worshipper and the king both ensure Ahura-Mazds

assistance in maintaining order in their domains and rooting out transgression againstAhura-Mazds/the kings Law (dta). To the king, this implied bringing back to the straightpath those who had veered from it; to the subjects of the god and the king, it meant not leavingthe straight path (DNa 60, Kent 1953, p. 138, Schmitt 2009, p. 104, Skjrv 2011a, p. 231).One should speak only what is true or real, behaving with rectitude, doing and speaking what isstraight, not falseness, and not mislead others, behaving crookedly or deviously (DB 63 DNa6, Kent 1953, pp. 132, 138, Schmitt 2009, pp. 83, 104, Skjrv 2011a, p. 231).The kings activity in the political sphere matches that of the priests in the religious sphere.

Like Zarathustra, Ahura-Mazds prophet and the rst to praise and sacrice to Ahura-Mazd,the king is Ahura-Mazds chosen and functions as mediator between gods and men. In thisway, he becomes like Zarathustra, in the same way that the Avestan sacricer sacrices likeZarathustra, the prototype of human sacricers (Yasna 8.7; cf. Herrenschmidt 19951996,p. 230, 1996, pp. 11517, and, less directly, Herrenschmidt and Kellens 1994, p. 62, 2003,pp. 1617; Skjrv 2011a, pp. 132, 21617). Darius thus reunites in one and the same personthe functions of supreme king and supreme sacricer (Skjrv 2005, pp. 7576).The purpose of the Avestan sacricer was to help place Ahura-Mazd 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 Religion Compass 8/6 (2014): 175187, 10.1111/rec3.12110

discussed, but which originally probably referred to the universe being relled with fecundity

Achaemenid Religion 179after periods of lifelessness (Skjrv 1999, pp. 5557, 2005, pp. 7475, 79, 2011a, p. 30), ameaning that had probably been lost by the time the king apparently interpreted it as a callfor him to produce matching work on earth: The great god is Ahura-Mazd, who set inplace this frasha that is seen, who set in place the happiness of man, who bestowed onDrayavaush wisdom and agility (DNb 1); King Drayavaush announces: In Susa muchfrasha was ordered to be made, (and) much frasha was made (DSf 4, Kent 1953, pp. 140,144, Schmitt 2009, pp. 105, 134, Skjrv 2011a, pp. 176).

Polytheism

In the later parts of the Avesta, numerous male and female deities receive sacrices. Thesituation in the older parts is less transparent, but several deities appear to be mentioned there,as well (e.g., Boyce 1975, p. 195, Skjrv 2011c, pp. 34445). The king, althoughAhura-Mazd was the greatest among the gods, had his helpers in the other world, too:Ahura-Mazd bore me aid as well as the other gods there are (DB 63, Kent 1953,p. 132, Schmitt 2009, p. 83, Skjrv 2011a, p. 231; Boyce 1992, p. 126: divine helpers;Kellens 1994, p. 124, who connects who are with Av. hant (those) being, which hethinks includes all good and bad gods, p. 117). These expressions in particular causedproblems for the assumption of Dariuss monotheism. Boyce (1982a, p. 83 n. 16) dismissedthe latter expression as translation Akkadian, but it is a perfect t in the context, whereDarius contrasts his appurtenance with that of those in the other camp: For this reasonAhura-Mazd bore me aid, as well as the other gods who are, because I did not sidewith the Evil one, I was not a liar (draujana). On the discussions around Zarathustrasmonotheistic reform, see Herrenschmidt (1987); also Skjrv (2011c, pp. 32128).Only two other gods are mentioned in the inscriptions and only by the later kings: Anhit

and Mithra (Ahn 1992, pp. 22127, Briant 1996, pp. 26265, Stausberg 2002, pp. 17476).Boyce also suggested that Dariuss six helpers were the earthly representations of the sixamesha spentas, the Life-giving Immortals, which play a prominent role in the Gths, thusensuring for Darius another condition for being Zoroastrian (1982a, pp. 9194; see below).Further evidence is provided by the non-Old Persian sources. In the Aramaic letters,

beside Mazda-yazna who sacrices to (Ahura-)Mazd and Mithra-dta (child) given byMithra, Mithra-yazna who sacrices to Mithra, and Mithra-pta protected by Mithra,we nd names such as Hauma-dta (child) given by Hauma, god of the sacred drink haoma,as well as rma(n)ti-dta given by (Av. Spent) rmaiti, Ahura-Mazds daughter and divinityof the earth and one of the six Life-giving Immortals (see, further, Schmitt 1991b).In the Elamite tablets, we nd Spent rmaiti (Ispandramaiti; Razmjou 2001), beside

Mithra, Naryasanga (Av. Nairya Sangha) and Ertna Fraverti (Av. Ashunm Frawashi),originally the (pre-existing) souls of the righteous. The tablets also mention offerings tonon-Iranian gods, such as the Elamite god Humban, and the Babylonian weather god Adadand KI, the Earth. Whether these were actually worshiped as Elamite gods or whether thenames cover Iranian ones, we do not know. In addition, offerings were made to divinitiesof rivers, mountains, places, and cities (Koch 1988, pp. 4012; cf. the Avestan Yasna38.3-5, a hymn to the waters, see Skjrv 2011a, pp. 4445).

The Rituals

The kings sacrice to Ahura-Mazd is seen in the royal reliefs (survey in Garrison 2013; cf.Briant 1996, pp. 25962). On the royal tomb reliefs, we see the king standing before a realter, raising his hand toward Ahura-Mazd in the winged disk hovering above between 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Religion Compass 8/6 (2014): 175187, 10.1111/rec3.12110

the king and the altar (e.g., Boucharlat 2013, p. 517). The omnipresent winged disk

180 Prods Oktor Skjrv(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-Mazd stands wielding a ring, probably symbolizing royal command (as under the laterSasanians, e.g., Canepa 2013, p. 864 g. 453). Its symbolism has been much discussed: somehave interpreted the gure as the kings fravashi, the kings guardian spirit, an interpretationcontradicted by the fact that the fravashis are nowhere described as guardian spirits, but as femalewarriors (Skjrv in Alram et al. 2007, pp. 2829, and 2011a, pp. 1819); others haveinterpreted the symbol as representing the xwarnah, Fortune or Glory (but of uncertainmeaning and function) or even two different manifestations of it (Shahbazi 1974, 1980) but thisinterpretation is ad hoc, as there are no descriptions in the literature to support it (see discussionsin Boyce 1982a, pp. 1005, Stausberg 2002, pp. 17780; on the xwarnah, see also Skjrv2011a, p. 18, 2013a, pp. 16768).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 havebeen 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 Mazd himself is onlyrarely mentioned in the tablets, it has usually been assumed that the lan was the ritual forthe supreme deity, who therefore was not mentioned by name himself, although, with moreevidence, 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, chiey involved

with the lan, exceptionally also in rituals for other deities, a river, and a mountain; the yasht(Av. yashta), sacricer; and the terwakhsha (Av. trewakhsha ertc), originally in chargeof the re.We know from the Aramaic texts from Persepolis that the haoma ritual was performed, as

proved by the inscribed mortars (hwan, Av. hwana) and pestles (abishwan) found there. Theritual is the well-known Zoroastrian yasna sacrice ritual, the central component of whichwere the preparations and offering of the haoma juice (the Indic soma) and the sacrice of ananimal (see, e.g., Stausberg 2004, pp. 30635; short overview in Skjrv 2011a, pp. 3436).It has long been thought that the reliefs along the great staircase in the Apadna at Persepolis,

where representatives from all the provinces of the empire are shown bearing gifts to the king,refer to a New Years ceremony, but this is uncertain. They may also have depictedtraditional-epic events (cf. Briant 1996, p. 198), in this case perhaps derived from the epic narrativeof king Jamshid, with which the reliefs have often been compared (Skjrv 2008, p. 504a).

Pollution and Burials

The Greek historians provide the rst evidence for the Persians concern about pollution ofwater and re by dead matter and the earth by dead bodies, which features prominently inthe Avesta in the Videvdad, which deals with pollution (cf. Skjrv 2007). The disposal ofthe dead presented a special challenge, and the kings had themselves buried in rock-cuttombs at Naqsh-e Rostam, except Cyrus the Great, who was buried in a stone monumentat Pasargadae (Zournatzi 1993), presumably to minimize the possibility of contaminatingthe 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 subduingand punishing local rebellions, notably that of the Elamites, who sacriced to daivas (DB 72, 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Religion Compass 8/6 (2014): 175187, 10.1111/rec3.12110

Kent 1953, p. 134, Schmitt 2009, p. 89). In particular, Xerxes says he destroyed a daivadna (lit-

system in the younger Avesta, was commonly thought to represent a corruption of Zarathustras

Achaemenid Religion 181teachings (cf. Gershevitch 1968, p. 12, Boyce 1992, p. 113: Zarathustra was transformed fromthe recognizably real gure of the Gathas into a revered, semi-legendary one). It was alsocommonly agreed that the Gths were extremely difcult to understand (e.g., Gershevitch1968, pp. 13, 17), but they were nevertheless extensively interpreted according to the laterprophetic legend and on the basis of individual scholars opinions of what Zarathustra had stoodfor. Only a few scholars refused to accept Zarathustras historicity, and only from the late 1950swere the underlying assumptions questioned (Herrenschmidt 1987, Kellens 1991, pp. 8485,Skjrv 1997, pp. 1047; 2011b, pp. 7689; 2011c, pp. 32137; 2013b, pp. 12327).Real Zoroastrianism was thus understood as Zarathustras original teachings, and being a

real Zoroastrian meant following these teachings. As for the Achaemenids, it was argued thatthe lack of any mention of the prophet himself and key terms of his doctrine, such as the sixamesha 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 anew, reformed, religion, founded by Zarathustra (thus, still Boyce 19751982a). As there isno evidence that Zarathustra was a historical person, a prophet, or a reformer, the denitionof a Zoroastrian orthodoxy is also problematic.erally, receptacle for daivas; XPh 4b/5, Kent 1953, pp. 15152, Schmitt 2009, p. 167,Skjrv 2011a, p. 129). Scholars have identied the sanctuary Xerxes destroyed variously,ranging from the Parthenon in Athens to the more likely Marduk temple in Babylon, but itis today usually not specied (Gnoli 1993).In the same passage, Xerxes says that, where the daivadnas had been, he sacriced to

Ahura-Mazd, followed by the formula ertc berazmaniy, which has been variouslyinterpreted (e.g., Boyce 1982a, pp. 17476, Schwartz 1985, pp. 68990, Herrenschmidt inHerrenschmidt and Kellens 1993, p. 61). In ertc, scholars have usually recognized theold word *erta, whence Avestan asha, the cosmic-ritual order, and ertc as the equivalent ofAvestan asht hac in accordance with the order. The main alternative interpretation is bySchmitt (latest 2000, p. 95), who suggested ert was a form of *ertu, which in Indic refers totime, interpreting ertc as at the right (ritual) time (on which see Skjrv 2011d). Thesecond term, berazmaniy, was interpreted as ritual (behavior) and connected with Indicbrahman by Henning (1944), an interpretation commonly accepted. Skjrv (2011d),however, attempts to show that Hennings arguments are faulty and has proposed to interpretberazmaniy as in the height, that is, I sacriced to Ahura Mazd, according to the cosmic-ritual order, in the height, as represented in the reliefs (also Skjrv 1999, pp. 4143).

Were the Achaemenids Zoroastrians?Questions of Methodology

Doubt was expressed by Iranists in the 20th century whether the Achaemenids were realZoroastrians, based primarily on a certain number of omissions and discrepancies in theAvestan and Old Persian texts (see Duchesne-Guillemin 1958, pp. 5269, 1962, pp. 16568,and 1972: lucid summing up of evidence and opinions; Herrenschmidt 1980: survey of recentstudies; Boyce 1983, p. 428b, Ahn 1992, pp. 95101, Stausberg 2002, p. 157 with refs.). Tounderstand 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 oldestparts, the ve Gths. In these texts, the historical Zarathustra was supposed to have preached areformed religion, diverging from the current beliefs inherited from Indo-Iranian times. The belief 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Religion Compass 8/6 (2014): 175187, 10.1111/rec3.12110

A special problem arose from the fact that about 490 BCE, the calendar known from post-

182 Prods Oktor SkjrvAvestan Zoroastrian texts had been adopted in Cappadocia and, presumably, in the entire em-pire (de Blois 1996, Panaino 1990, pp. 66566, 2010, 2013). In Dariuss Bisotun inscription(520518 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 ismade likely by the form of the rst month Artana, the only close match for which is the formErtna Fraverti in the Elamite tablets (Koch 1988, p. 401), and Panaino (2002, p. 229) hassuggested that we are witnessing a complex of inuences on the local Achaemenid calendar,both from local calendars and from the Zoroastrian calendar. An entertaining history of thecalendar 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., Widengren1965, pp. 14445, 15455: as non-Zoroastrian as possible [p. 154 bottom]; Boyce, 1982a,pp. 56, 11012: built so as to minimize danger to earth and water; Ahn 1992, pp. 12230).This problem was often nessed by classifying the Videvdad as late or post-Achaemenid (seeSkjrv 2007, pp. 11216, 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 Achaemenidswere not Zoroastrians; at the other end, Duchesne-Guillemin and Boyce concluded theywere Zoroastrians, Shaked (1991, p. 90) believes the assumption that they were Zoroastriansis correct, while Schwartz (1985) and Schmitt (1983, p. 424) appear to have taken it forgranted that the Achaemenids were Zoroastrians. De Blois (2000, p. 3) even suggested thatZoroastrianism was adopted as the state religion of the Achaemenid empire (cf. Stausberg2002, p. 157). Boyce (1982a, pp. 79 and p. 39) argued from the absence in our sources of anykind of religious reform at the time in question that both the Medes and the Persians wereconverted earlier (2005, p. 6b). Similarly, Duchesne-Guillemin (e.g., 1962, pp. 16667) hadargued that the fact that the introduction of the new calendar made so little noise implied thatZoroastrianism 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 practicesreected in the Achaemenid Avesta. As put by Kellens (1991, p. 84): Poser la question duzoroastrisme des achmnides, cest proposer implicitement la confrontation entre une ralitmal connue, la religion achmnide, et une ralite moins mal connue, le zoroastrisme(echoing Duchesne-Guillemin 1972, p. 61: deux quantits disparates deux inconnus).De Jong (2010) also criticizes the traditional approaches to the study of Achaemenid religionusing the Avesta as a normative source, whereby the kings are denied every kind ofagency in religious matters (p. 537); rather, he suggests that [i]nstead of being dened bytheir 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 perceivedvariouslyby theauthors (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 intoconsideration (see Skjrv 20052006).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. 4041; Gnoli 2000,p. 165: 618541 BCE) face the problem of the absence of any mention of him in thecontemporary sources, as well as a linguistic problem (Skjrv 20032004). 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Religion Compass 8/6 (2014): 175187, 10.1111/rec3.12110

If we take Achaemenid religion to refer to the religious beliefs expressed in the various primary

Achaemenid Religion 183and secondary sources at our disposal and Zoroastrianism as the religion expressed in the entireAvesta, it becomes clear that the Achaemenids were Zoroastrians and that the Achaemenid kingperformed his Zoroastrian duties faithfully. When the Zoroastrian reform is removed from thediscussion, keeping in mind the geographic-historical background, the question can then beposed differently, whether the Achaemenids had always been Zoroastrians or became Zoroastrianat some point before recorded history. The fact that eastern Iran (see Genito 2013) is mentionedin the Avesta certainly points to the population being Zoroastrian (Boyce 1982a, p. 42). So howdoes Persian Zoroastrianism t with this, since the Persians apparently came to Persia along atotally different route along the westernmost part of the Plateau? For references and sometimesspeculative answers to these questions, see Boyce 1982a, pp. 143; speculations also in Skjrv2005, pp. 8081. Note also Kreyenbroek 2010, p. 108: a non-confrontational expansion ofZoroastrianism 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 difcult to form likely hypotheses about the geographicalspread of Zoroastrianism, but, as more tablets, both in Chicago and Iran are edited andcurrent archeological research progresses (see Briant et al. [eds.] 2008, Boucharlat 2013,Henkelman 2013), our knowledge of all things Achaemenid is bound to be rened.

Short Biography

Prods Oktor Skjrvs research interests have covered pre-Islamic Iranian languages, literatures,and religions, as well as modern Iranian dialectology. He has authored and co-authored bookson Middle Persian inscriptions and Khotanese texts and philology and written numerous articlesin journals and collective volumes, among them Encyclopdia Iranica, The Cambridge Historyof Religions in the Ancient World, The Oxford Handbook of Iranian History, The OxfordHandbook of Ancient Iran, and The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity (forthcoming),Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics, and New Interpreters Dictionary of the Bible. Hisrecent book of translations from Avestan and Old and Middle Persian, The Spirit of Zoroastrian-ism, was aimed at making Zoroastrian literature accessible to a wider audience. He also has twovolumes 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 lit-erature as oral literature, and he is currently also working with Talmudists on old Iranian legaltexts. After graduating from the University of Oslo in 1974, he spent ve years there as ResearchFellow, before becoming Scientic Assistant to Prof H. Humbach at the Johannes GutenbergUniversity, Mainz. In 1985, he took up the position as Assistant Editor (then Senior AssistantEditor) of the Encyclopdia Iranica at Columbia University, New York, which he left in 1991to become Aga Khan Professor of Iranian at Harvard. He has held fellowships from theUniversityof Oslo, the Norwegian Research Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, andhas guest lectured at La Sapienza, Rome, the Sorbonne and Collge de France, Paris, and EtvsLornd Tudomny University, Budapest. He holds a PhD from the University of Oslo 1981 anda Dr habil from the Johannes Gutenberg University 1984.

Note* Correspondence: Harvard University, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations (NELC), Cambridge, Massachusetts, US.Email: skjaervo@fas.harvard.edu

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Further Readings

On Zoroastrianism, see the comprehensive descriptions by Boyce (1975, 1982a) and Stausberg (20022004); shorter

overviews in Gnoli (1980, pp. 199225), Boyce (1984), Stausberg (2008), Rose (2011), Skjrv (2013b), and, with

translations of texts, Malandra (1983), Lecoq (1997), Skjrv (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), Skjrv (2011a, 2012a).

On things Achaemenid: The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 2 (1985), Potts (ed.).

On Achaemenid religion, see Duchesne-Guillemin (1962, pp. 16568), Widengren (1965, pp. 11755), Boyce (1982a,

1983, 1984, pp. 4877, 1992, pp. 12532), Schwartz (1985), Ahn (1992, pp. 95130), Wiesehfer (1996, pp. 94101),

Stausberg (2002, pp. 15786). See also the brief overview in Skjrv 2013c, pp. 54754.

Comparison of Zoroastrianism and Achaemenid religion in Knpper 2011.

Comparisons between Zoroastrian and Achaemenid texts in Skjrv (1999, 2005, 2012b, pp. 1215).

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),

Wiesehfer (1996), Huyse (2005).

On Achaemenid imperial discourse, see Lincoln, B. (1996). Old Persian fraa and vana: Two terms at the intersection of

religious and imperial discourse, Indogermanische Forschungen, 101, pp. 14767; 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/achaeme-

nids/achaemenids.php, http://www.livius.org/aa-ac/achaemenians/achaemenians.html, http://oi.uchicago.edu/re-search/projects/persia.html.See also Encyclopdia Iranica, E. Yarshater (gen. ed.), Various publishers, 1982-. Also online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/. 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd Religion Compass 8/6 (2014): 175187, 10.1111/rec3.12110