Another Uppity Woman

As a loyal reader of the IntLawGrrls blog, I was delighted to be invited as their Guest Blogger to make the case for Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee. And President of the USA.

You see, I like Uppity Women.

The post is now up, so go over to IntLawGrrls, see what I said, and by all means comment.

Update 17 Feb.: Big Tent Democrat has this letter from a group of feminist intellectuals who support Hillary Clinton. This one's for all the Grrrls. Good reading.

Sassy Sassanians

The Romans are on hold for a week. By popular demand.

Well, I did get one email from a piqued reader. This is what she said:

"Hi Judith, Zenobia is a blog about a Woman in history. Where are the women of the Sasanian empire? In all that Stuff, you have not written a word about females, mortal or immortal. What gives?"

I am rebuked. I apologize. I repent.

Atonement lies in the hands of Anahita, mighty goddess of the waters and source of the cosmic ocean.

For her brightness and glory, I will offer her a sacrifice....

Strong and bright, tall and beautiful of form, who sends down by day and by night a flow of motherly waters as great in bigness as all the waters that flow forth upon the earth.

As a divinity Anahita is of enormous significance to the Zoroastrian religion: she is 'the waters', in effect the divinity towards whom the sacred liturgy (Yasna) - the primary act of worship - is directed.

May thou be most fully worshipped

She is also a many-sided goddess. The goddess of pure waters is the goddess of healing as well, "wide-flowing and health-giving. "

She is responsible, too, for the fertility of animals and humans. She purifies the seed of men and the wombs of women, and makes all females bring forth in safety, who puts milk into the breasts of all females in the right measure and the right quality.

From water to wisdom: Anahita knows the laws of holiness. Priests pray to her for knowledge, with the wisdom of the tongue, with the holy spells, with the libations, and with the rightly-spoken words. If you know the right words, of course, then you also know how to apply them against demons and other evil powers. That gives her a big edge in the endless fight against Darkness, Deceit and Lies.

Two Goddesses for the Price of One

Anahita takes on many characteristics of the Semitic goddess Ishtar. She assumes the ancient Mesopotamian title of 'the Lady', and borrows Ishtar's lions, too. Faced with the Mistress of Animals, the fiercest lions grow quiet -- look at that lion drinking water tamely from a vase beneath the wheel of Anahita's chariot on the Sassanian plate (above); or the pair held firmly by their front paws (right). I'm not sure, but Ishtar might also be the source of Anahita being portrayed in unPersian semi-nudity.

In the Avesta, she was fully clothed. A beautiful young woman

nobly born of a glorious race, wearing a coat with long sleeves, with rich designs, embroidered with gold. On her head she bound a golden crown, with a hundred stars, with eight rays, with earrings like wheels, with beautiful droplets, a golden necklace around her beautiful neck; she girded her waist tightly, so that her breasts may be well-shaped, that they may be tightly pressed.

She is royally dressed in a garment of the skins of thirty beavers ... for the skin of the beaver that lives in water is the finest-coloured of all skins, and it shines to the eye with full sheen of silver and gold.

But she's not just a pretty face

Anahita also takes on the warlike nature of Ishtar. Blood and guts become her business.

Hear, O good, most beneficent Anahita! I beg of thee this favour: that I, fully blessed, may conquer large kingdoms, rich in horses, with high tributes, with snorting horses, sounding chariots, flashing swords... that I may have at my wish the fullness of the good things of life and whatever makes a kingdom thrive.

Before the battle starts, the wise hero will make an offering she cannot refuse. A sacrifice of 100 stallions, 1,000 cows, and 10,000 sheep is the going rate.

Grant me this, O good, most beneficent Anahita! that I may smite the [enemy] people in their fifties and their hundreds, their hundreds and their thousands, their thousands and their tens of thousands, their tens of thousands and their myriads of myriads.

Slaughter duly accomplished and the battle won, it's time to claim the throne. Blood still wet on his sword, the hero Tusa approaches the goddess

on the back of his horse, begging swiftness for his teams, health for his own body, and that he might smite down his foes, and destroy at one stroke his adversaries, his enemies, and those who hated him.

There's a political point to this story. In the Avesta, Anahita is worshipped by both heroes and anti-heroes alike. The good, the bad and the ugly all pray for her help in the struggle for the Divine Glory (xvarrah): The men of strength will beg of thee swift horses and supremacy of Glory. But her reaction is not at all the same. When the demon Azhi Dahaka -- a monster with three heads, six eyes, and three jaws, whose body is full of lizards and scorpions -- makes the same enormous sacrifice as Prince Tusa, the goddess rejects his beastly holocaust. Needless to say, his fate is sealed.

This mythological confrontation still resonates in Sassanian times. In the previous post, you may remember (and, if you don't, you can scroll down to Zoroastrian Stuff III), Prince Narseh led a rebellion against Bahram III in 293 AD. He left a long inscription to justify his revolt (for he was a younger son of the great Shapur I, not a Bahram boy at all) on a rock wall at Paikuli, northwest of modern Mosul. Narseh claimed that Bahram III had been crowned illegally while he himself was away on business in Armenia. He condemned what looks like a palace coup d’état in the language of good versus evil:

And as for the [Royal] Glory and the realm and his own throne and honour, which his ancestors received from the gods, may [Narseh] take them back from the evil-doers against the gods and men.

At Paikuli, Narseh met up with the 'princes and grandees and nobles and satraps' who supported him. He also had the backing of Kirdir the High-Priest (scroll down, too, to the previous post to read about Kirdir). When his army had assembled,

then in the name of Hormizd and all the gods and Anahita, the Lady, we moved from Armenia towards [Persia].

Anahita never backs a loser so, of course, Narseh won! Too late, Bahram III understood that the gods had given Glory and rulership to Narseh; his own 'sorcery' was useless against the wishes of The Lady. Poor Bahram was brought into Narseh's presence, bound, and mounted on the back of a maimed donkey (O the shame!), and put to death, very likely in an extremely unpleasant manner. Narseh did not forget Anahita's help.

Come, O Anahita, come from those stars down to the earth, that the great lords may worship thee, the masters of the countries, and their sons.

In an astonishing scene, Narseh receives the ribboned royal diadem from the hand of Anahita on the rock walls at Naqsh-e Rostam, near Persepolis. The goddess is wearing a mural crown with her hair arranged in a topknot. A young prince (probably the king's son and successor, Hormizd II) stands between them. It is extraordinary and, as far as I know, the only coronation scene in which the supreme god Hormizd is nowhere to be seen.

But this is not the only time that Anahita directly intervenes at a crucial moment in royal Sassanian affairs.



Centuries later, she participates in the coronation of Khusrau II the Victorious (590-628), the last great king of Persia before the arrival of Islam. On the right, the highest god Hormizd hands over the diadam to Khusrau, who stands facing the audience. Anahita (and notice the little water jar in her left hand) presents the king with a second diadem. The composition is inspired by sixth-century Byzantine paintings (with Christ between two saints). Khusrau defeated the Byzantines on several occasions. He invaded Syria and captured Jerusalem in 614, taking away with him a relic of the True Cross. His armies went on to invade Egypt and in 626, their advance guards paused only a mile from Constantinople . It seemed as if the ancient empire was about to be restored in all its glory.

It was not to be. But it wasn't Anahita's fault.

The Muslims Are Coming!

Her fire temple at Estakhr (near Persepolis) boasted one of the most venerated of all Zoroastrian fires. The line of its high priests was said to have begun with Sasan, the supposed ancestor of the Sassanian dynasty, and runs into historical times with the kings of Pars and the first two Sassanian rulers, Papak and Ardashir I, as her priests. Among the great honours conferred on the High-Priest Kirdir were the offices of Master of Ceremonies and Warden of 'the fire of Anahita the Lady'. Despite his many other privileges and powers, these appointments were among his proudest achievements.

The royal treasury was kept in the temple. It was a repository, too, for sacred books, almost certainly including one of the rare copies of the Great Avesta. It seems to have appealed to the collecting instinct: Ardashir I sent to 'the house of Anahita's fire' the heads of enemies slain in his early wars, and in 340 AD Shapur II had the heads of Christians suspended there.

That may be why, as a later Muslim visitor reported, there was howling about the ruins, and "the winds made a noise like thunder, night and day." Mas´ûdî , who visited in the 10th century, saw still standing, "pillars, made from blocks of astonishing size, surmounted by curious figures in stone representing horses and other animals, of gigantic shapes and proportions."

After the Muslim conquest, the temple was converted into the chief mosque of Estakhr, standing now in the town's bazaar. Before that happened, the sacred fire was taken away and carried to safety in Yazd, where it burns to this day. One of the mountain shrines of the surviving Zoroastrians at Yazd , which lies beside a spring and a confluence of water courses, is devoted to Banu-Pars ('the Lady of Persia'). This shrine continues to be a pilgrimage site (by women only) even in Islamic times.

If any readers have visited Yazd, I would love to learn more.


My thanks to Prof. Agnes Korn and Dr Judith Lerner for their help in gathering information about the goddess.

Zoroastrian Stuff III

I Dare You!

Would you, as a commoner, dare to carve your portrait on the exalted rock wall where the first Sassanian king receives the royal diadem from the great god of Persia?

And then -- in another burst of lèse-majesté -- dare do it again, putting yourself right behind Shapur, King of Kings, as he takes the Roman emperor prisoner with his very own hands?

It seems inconceivable, but a Magus-priest did just that.

Off with his head!

Not a bit of it. The priest Kirdir (also written Kerdîr, Kirdêr, Kartîr, Kartir, etc.) lived to serve six Sassanian kings.

Sassanian Chutzpah*

Here he is for the first time (above), discreetly tucked behind the scene showing Ardashir I, founder of the dynasty, receiving 'Divine Grace' , the xvarrah, from Hormizd, the highest god. Kirdir salutes both king and god with his right fist and pointed index finger, a sign of respect and obedience. In front of him is a long text, which tells us who he is and something of what he did:

I Kirdir have lived in truthfulness in the realm and I have served the gods well and obtained their favour.

Kirdir was Tansar's successor. When he was a mere herbad (teacher) and mobad (priest), he tells us, Ardashir's son, Shapur, first showed him favour, saying to the young man, "Keep doing that which you know is best for the gods and Us!” It was also in the early days of his career, before he had taken the next step up the clerical ladder, that the gods granted him a vision. He tells us about it in a personal style somewhat reminiscent of the early Christian Fathers:

And I prayed to the gods as follows: If you gods once made me, Kirdir, outstanding in this life, then do show me, too, in afterlife, the nature of heaven and hell .... And as I had prayed to the gods, so they did show me heaven and hell and the nature of good and evil of these services. [S]ince the gods did show me in this manner how it is in afterlife, I also served the gods even better and obtained greater favour from them, and I was even more generous and truthful for the sake of my own soul. And I became much more confident about these sacrifices and other services that are performed in the land.

The story of his extraordinary vision survives in part. Kirdir was still a young priest, [thus, before Shapur's son named him High Priest (mobadan mobad)]. Whether he took a magic mushroom or a good dollop of the mysterious beverage haoma, he went into a trance, and this is what he saw:

We see a shining, princely horseman seated on an excellent horse, and he holds a banner in the hand. And now a man has appeared, sitting on a throne with golden ornaments, who looks exactly like Kirdir. And now a woman has appeared, coming from the east, and we have seen no woman more beautiful than her. And the road she is walking on is [very] luminous. And that woman and the man who looks exactly like Kirdir hold hands and proceed toward the east on that luminous road where the woman came. And that road is very luminous, indeed.

Another shining princely man appears, and then another, each leading Kirdir and the beautiful woman onwards. They come to a bottomless well full of serpents, scorpions, lizards, and other evil animals. This is the entrance to hell. Someone says, "[Do not be afraid, but] there is no other way for you than [across that bridge that lies] over that well!"

Another shining, princely man has appeared, who is more excellent than the ones we saw first. And he is coming from the other side forth to the bridge. And now he has arrived at the bridge. And now [he has crossed] the bridge to this side. And he has taken the hands of that woman and the man who looks exactly like Kirdir. And that princely man goes before the man who looks exactly like Kirdir, and the woman goes behind. And now they have crossed the bridge over to the other side and are proceeding toward the east. [And the ....] is excellent and beautiful. And now a palace has appeared, [and a ladder] has appeared in the sky.

They climb the ladder. Far up, they find another palace, and a golden throne. " And they said: 'We have seen nothing more excellent and more luminous than this!'" They enter the palace.

And the man who] looks [exactly like Kirdir has taken meat and wine. [And now] a great [throng] is coming forth, and that man who looks exactly like Kirdir is making portions and giving to them. And that [woman] and that princely man [...], and he keeps pointing toward that man who looks exactly like Kirdir and smiles. [...] paid [homage to ?...].

Maddeningly, the text breaks off here. We learn no more of his visit to heaven.

But I am strongly reminded of the dreams (or trance) of the late first-century AD Christian visionary, Hermas, and his conversations with a female dream-angel as we hear them in his book, The Shepherd. And just as The Shepherd ends with this Christian exhortation

Whoever, therefore, shall walk in these commandments, shall have life, and will be happy in his life; but whosoever shall neglect them shall not have life, and will be unhappy in this life. Enjoin all, who are able to act rightly, not to cease well-doing...

Kirdir, on the rock wall above, admonishes "Whoever sees and reads this inscription", to believe in the gods and the reality of heaven and hell, for "he who is good and behaves well, fame and prosperity will befall his material body, and blessedness will befall his material soul, like it did me, Kirdir."


The Inner Circle



Now Kirdir dares to move inside the picture frame. That's him again on the right, inside my red circle. Of course he was added long after Shapur's lifetime, but it still takes chutzpah to insert yourself into a monument to imperial military glory. Despite his youthful fling with drugs, his story is of a steady rise in rank and power. He tells it (just below his image), king by king -- from his early days under Shapur (242-272 AD) all the way through the reign of Bahram II (276--293). And he still wouldn't die! He appears to have squeaked into the early years of the rebel king Narseh (who ousted young Bahram III after just four months of rule, in 293). It's a quite astonishing autobiography for the time and place.

A career made in heaven.

Step by step, his responsibilities and duties increased:

From the beginning I, Kerdir, have laboured hard for the sake of the gods, rulers, and my own soul.

As High-Priest of Hormizd, he was especially involved with establishing new Victorious fires throughout the country. These fires were the backbone of the fire cult for they were centres of teaching as well as ritual centres for each of the provinces. When he had the opportunity, he acted outside of Persia too --

also in the neighboring lands, wherever the horses and men of the King of Kings went to pillage, burn, and lay waste the land, by the order of the King of Kings, I organized the fires and priests who were there in that land.

Shapur, Hormizd, Bahram I and Bahram II, he tells us, all held him in esteem and honour, but Bahram II (276-293 AD) was most gracious of all ... and the feeling was mutual.

[He] was generous, truthful, friendly, beneficent, and a well-doer in the land, then, out of love for the god Hormizd and all the gods and his own soul, he elevated my position and honour in the land. And he gave me the dignity and honour of a nobleman. And he gave me still greater control and authority over the services to the gods, both at the court, and throughout the entire realm than I had at first. And he made me High Priest and Judge of the empire and made me Master of Ceremonies and put me in charge of the [royal fire at the imperial shrine of the goddess] Anahita.

With these great honours and now a Grandee, Kardir reaches the very heights of authority. He is called the saviour of Bahram's soul. I don't think it's stretching the parallel with later Christian kings to see Kardir playing the role of father confessor to this king.

But such bliss is rarely enough for a militant priest, certainly not one with an army behind him. Kardir was determined to enforce orthodoxy everywhere in the empire. Magi-priests who had lapsed during easier times and heretics who followed rites similar to Zoroastrianism were converted -- or else. He also had no truck with believers in false gods. The sizzors-like emblem of office on his headdress (marked in blue, left) was fitting: he cut down non-Zoroastrians wherever he found them.

And [the devil] Ahriman and the idols was driven out of the land and deprived of credence. And Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Nazoreans [Jewish Christians?] and other Christians, and Manichaeans were struck down, idol temples were destroyed, and the dens of the foreign gods were ruined and turned into thrones and seats for the gods.

Who says that only monotheists are intolerant?

The Magi were whipped into shape, heresy was forbidden, and many foreign gods (and their followers) were dispossessed and proscribed.

The Manichaeans were the chief heretics. The prophet Mani (ca. 216-276 AD) started out in the Syriac-speaking area of southern Mesopotamia. As he travelled through Persia and India, he conceived of a world religion that would replace the local religions of Buddha, Jesus, and Zoroaster. He preached a kind of universalism or syncretism in religion, not unlike present day Bahaism in Iran. Mani arranged for his own missionaries, 'holy men on the move', to spread the good word.

But [my message] will go toward the West, and she will go also towards the East. And they shall hear the voice of her message in all languages and shall proclaim her in all cities. My church is superior in this first point to previous churches, for those previous churches, were chosen in particular countries and particular cities.

In Persia, he started out strongly, having converted the brother of Shapur. The king made him a member of his court and allowed him to preach his doctrine within the state, much to the annoyance of the Zoroastrian clergy. It was Mani's back luck that he had to confront the rising star of Kirdir, an implacable opponent who finally managed to set Bahram I against the prophet. A telling encounter between Mani and this king is preserved. Mani arrives at the royal palace to be told that he is unwelcome. "What wrong have I done?" he asks the king.

The King said: "I have sworn not to let you come to this country". And in his anger he spoke thus to the Lord [ Mani]. "What are you good for since you go neither fighting nor hunting? But perhaps you are needed for this doctoring and this physicking? and you don't even do that!" The Lord replied thus: "I have not done you any wrong. Always I have done good to you and your family. Many were your servants whom I have freed of demons and witches. Many were those from whom I have averted numerous kinds of [illness]. Many were those who were at the point of death, and I have revived them."

A pretty good score, I would have thought, as exorcist and healer and all but able to resurrect the dead. Not good enough, however, when you are up against the likes of Kirdir. Some time between 247 and 276, Mani was imprisoned, crucified (or, more likely, impaled), and his corpse flayed. It was said that Kirdir had his skin stuffed with straw and hung outside the city walls. After his death, the Manichaeans faced their bloodiest period of persecution. They suffered the same fate later in the Christian Roman empire: in both empires, the arch-heretics were always Manichaeans and they were accordingly persecuted viciously.

Despite Mani's condemnation and gruesome death, Manichaeism spread with extraordinary rapidity in both East and West and maintained itself for at least a thousand years. Every time that the Christians thought that it had been rooted out, it cropped up again: in the Middles Ages in sects such as the Cathars, Paulicians, Albigensians, Bogomils, and many others. Through the teachings of St Augustine -- himself a Manichaean before he converted to Christianity -- Manichaeian dualism (the Living Spirit, an emanation of the realm of light, created this world out of the mixture of light and darkness) entered into Christian teachings as the doctrine of original sin. In the East, Mani's faith flourished -- especially along the Silk Road -- from Mesopotamia to Northern India, Western China and Tibet -- where, ca. A.D. 1000, the bulk of the population professed its tenets and where it only died out in ca. 1600 AD.

None of that mattered to Kirdir. As long as he lived, militant Zoroastrian orthodoxy was triumphant in the Persian empire. There he is (left; photo courtesy of OI), standing right behind the king's sons at the court of Bahram II. We last hear of him in 293 when Narseh I revolted against Bahran III. Narseh was proclaimed King of Kings and a bilingual inscription commemorates this event: in line 16 the name 'Kartir, the mobad of Hormizd' appears. He was surely quite elderly and must have died shortly afterwards.

What history remembers (and forgets) is always amazing. No king of the Sassanian period has left such a wealth of inscribed text as Kirdir, certainly no other commoner. Yet, among the sacred books of Zoroasterism, Book VII of the Denkard, which contains a chapter about great men and events between the death of Zoroaster and the end of the Persian kingship, does not even mention him. Tansar, Kirdir's predecessor, is remembered and praised, but Kartir, who laid the basis for the power of the clergy, was entirely forgotten. If he hadn't left his own testimony on usurped rock walls, we would scarcely have known that he had existed. We would only have heard of him from hostile sources, for his name occurs, blackly, in Manichaean books. But, of the achievements that he himself celebrated, not a word comes down to us.

Mere oblivion.



With the next post, Zenobia: Empress of the East leaves Sassanian Stuff behind and returns to Rome. In the last Roman post, Philip the Arab had just murdered his way to the throne [that's Philip, by the way, pictured in Shapur's monument, above, bowing before the King of Kings, as he purportedly becomes tributary to Persia]. Now, an 'Arab' emperor will celebrate the 1,000th anniversary of the founding of Rome. Watch this space.

* An English word of Yiddish origin that you may not be able to find in your dictionary. It's almost untranslatable anyway -- even into English. Chutzpah combines impudence, audacity, with a hell of a nerve. Imagine a person who murders his mother and father and then throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan. That's chutzpah!

Happy Blogger Birthday, Dear Queen

Zenobia's blog is one-year-old today.

That's about the same length of time that she still had to live between the issue of this empress coin in the spring or summer of 271 AD and her final defeat by Aurelian in August 272.

Zenobia Augusta. Dreams, so short-lived.

Her blog was born with a burst of poetry on 3 January 2007. The very next post set out the blog's challenge, Why Did She Do It?

Have I helped answer this question with my 58 posts during 2007? Sometimes I think I've only tied myself up in more and more difficult knots. But I've learnt a lot. And wandered off into many unexpected Zenobian byways.

Archaeologists love tradition. Even if invented a year ago. So I kick off 2008, too, with a snippet from Rosita Copioli's The Blazing Lights of the Sun , which is to me the pure light of archaeology:

While we speak, silence turns in the night
and the setting sun doubles the growing shadows:
and yet it still burns and calls back
an unborn season, the season that neither
turns nor returns, the measureless step
of the yearless year ....

Many happy returns, dear Queen.

R. I. P.

Updated 16 April 2010: Report on Bhutto assassination rips Pakistani government, security agencies

The Magi and Christmas

Who, what, where, and when did the Magi come to Bethlehem?

As Marco Polo entered Persia proper (the province of Fars) in the 1270's, the first city that he came to was Saba,

from whence were the three magi who came to adore Christ in Bethlehem, and the three are buried in that city in a fair sepulchre, and they are all three entire with their beards and hair.

Saba is unknown among Persian towns, ancient or modern. Marco may have confused the name of the city with the religion practiced by its inhabitants -- Sabaism: a sect thought to worship angels living in the stars; and thus they were falsely accused of being star-worshippers. Just down the road, in a town called Kalasata-perinsta ['Castle of the Fire-worshippers'] Marco met the real thing, true 13th C Magians [Zoroastrians], and they told him an extraordinary tale:

This is given as the reason [that the inhabitants worship fire]. Anciently three kings of that country went to adore a certain king who was newly born, and carried with them three offerings, namely, gold, frankincense, and myrrh: gold, that they might know if he were an earthly king; frankincense, that they might know if he were God; and myrrh, that they might know if he were a mortal man.

[I assume that the infant took all three, but the story doesn't actually say that].

When the [three kings] went away the infant gave them a closed box, which they carried with them for several days, and then becoming curious to see what he had given them, they opened the box and found in it a stone. Thinking themselves deluded, they threw the stone into a pit, and instantly fire burst forth in the pit. When they saw this, they repented bitterly of what they had done, and taking some of the fire with them they carried it home. And having placed it in one of their churches, they keep it continually burning, and adore that fire as a god and make all their sacrifices with it.

This is a wonderful example of how religions borrow from one another -- even in Persia, as it was then, under the rule of orthodox Islam. And the story spreads right back to the Christians: on the left, the Church of St Mary in Urmia, Iran, built above the mausoleum of one of the supposed Magi.

In the Gospels, of course, it's never said that the Magi are of Persian origin. They are mentioned only in Matthew 2 1-12, where it says: "After Jesus had been born at Bethlehem in Judaea during the reign of King Herod, some wise men came to Jerusalem from the east."). There is nothing about their coming from Persia, nor being kings, nor even how many men made the trip. Nonetheless, the belief in the early church was that the Magi were Persians. There is even an Apocryphal Arabic Gospel of the Infancy which appears to state that they were indeed Persian magi. It was in Europe that the current image of three kings was created (one gift = one king). To further dramatize the coming of the Nations to Christ, one King was made into a black African, another an Oriental or an Arab, and the other a European. Their names were no longer Persian, but Orientalizing: Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar. The two traditions come together in the 6th C mosaic (above, left) from the Basilica of San Vitale in Ravenna, with Caspar, Melchior, and Balthazar all in Persian garb.

Marco Polo's Persian informants knew about their own Three Kings -- but nothing of the associated Star of Bethlehem that was supposed to have led them to Jerusalem. The story of the star is also mentioned solely in Matthew's Gospel ("Where is the infant King of the Jews?" they asked. "We saw his star as it rose and have come to do him homage." ). That's it really. Ever since, of course, believers have been trying to identify the star. Every Christmas, in fact, a few favourite names get mentioned as being candidates to be the Star of Bethlehem. Over the years some of these objects have been suggested quite regularly: the planet Venus, Halley's comet, a brilliant supernova, a string of bright meteors....

The Star of Bethlehem Solved?



This post began as a comment in reply to the Star of Bethlehem Solved? on the blog Clioaudio. Since I was writing about real Magi in Sassanian Stuff, I wanted to say something about how they got into the Christmas story but, as is my wont, I wandered off into byways and before I knew it, I was writing about Marco Polo in Persia; far too much stuff for a comment. So, with my thanks to Alun Salt for getting me started, let me give the floor to Clioaudio:

The Star of Bethlehem has always seem to be a non-problem to me. If you believe that a god was born to a virgin, then asking what the star was seems pointless. Why shouldn’t it be just another miracle? Similarly if you think the story is fictional then why does there need to be a star? Why couldn’t that be fiction too? Another reason to be wary of Stars of Bethlehem is that they are, by and large, unimpressive from a historian’s point of view. We don’t have a date of birth for Jesus, so there’s an element of guesswork. Nonetheless whatever date you pick, there’s always something around which you can choose for a star. This is especially true if you ignore the text. The description of the star in Matthew 2 is very brief. It simply describes a star which moves around. This could be a planet or a comet, and planets were mundane. Popular explanations tend to be conjunctions, but these were well known and would not be described as stars, nor necessarily associated with kingship. If you can ignore the text’s description of the star, then why not save time and ignore the star altogether?

As he says, however, "people don't like this answer".

Luckily, there is now a new, quite serious theory, just in time for Christmas 2007. It will take some getting used to: Rod Jenkins on the Star of Bethlehem and the Comet of AD 66.

Yes, you read that right: 66 AD!

The important thing is not the date of the events Matthew describes but the date when he was writing his Gospel. For all sorts of reasons, that must have been some time between 70 and 100 AD, that is, at least two generations after the Nativity, most likely between 85-90 AD. So Matthew was neither a witness to the birth of Jesus nor could he have spoken to anyone who was alive at that time. And that means, as always, that he is not so much a reporter for the New York Times as a spiritual adviser to the Pope. Or rather to the Jews. Himself a Jewish-Christian, he set out to convince other Jews that Jesus was the Messiah, with the events surrounding his birth having amply fulfilled the Old Testament prophecy: this said that there would be a star so there had to be a star. Or, as one scholar put it, ‘no star, no Messiah’.

Halley's Comet

In AD 66, Halley’s Comet shone brightly over Jerusalem. With perfect hindsight, it was said to have announced the destruction of the temple in AD 70. According to the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus, "Amongst the warnings, a comet, of the kind called Xiphias, because their tails appear to represent the blade of a sword, was seen above the city."

Jenkins maps the comet's visibility in the Jerusalem area (and similarly for Babylon, but, alas, does not include calculations for Persia):

− When it first appeared it rose in the eastern sky just before dawn (Star in the east, seen at its rising).
− When it was at its brightest, it was visible throughout most of the hours of darkness.
− It moved in a westerly direction – each night it was further west with respect to the background stars (Indicates the direction towards Jerusalem for people in the east).
− Towards the end of its visibility, it was nearly stationary – it stopped moving towards the west (Stopped and stood over). During this period it could be seen high in the southern sky in the evening (Direction of Bethlehem from Jerusalem). However it was now dimming rapidly (Magi had found the child).

So Halley's comet in 66 AD is a good candidate for the messianic 'star' and it was certainly a spectacular sight in the sky that Matthew himself might well have witnessed.

[The painter Giotto may have been looking at the same comet when it passed over Italy in 1301. He was the first artist -- as far as I know -- to show a comet, and not a star, in ‘The Adoration of the Magi’ ( illustrated above). According to Jenkins, the comet should have made an even better spectacle for Matthew than for Giotto.]

And the Magi?

That's the easy part, once you accept 66 AD.

Pliny the Elder was in one of his grumpy moods, but he tells us quite clearly what happened in 66 AD, that is during his own lifetime:

The Magian Tiridates [king of Armenia] was at Nero's court, having repaired thither, in token of our triumph over Armenia, accompanied by a train which cost dear to the provinces through which it passed. For the fact was, that he was unwilling to travel by water, it being a maxim with the adepts in this art that it is improper to spit into the sea or to profane that element by any other of the evacuations that are inseparable from the infirmities of human nature. He brought with him, too, several other Magi, and went so far as to initiate the emperor in the ... craft.

Cassius Dio, writing much later, fills in more details,

Tiridates presented himself in Rome, bringing with him not only his own sons but also those of [other Parthian princes]. Their progress all the way from the Euphrates was like a triumphal procession. Tiridates himself was at the height of his reputation by reason of his age, beauty, family, and intelligence; and his whole retinue of servants together with all his royal paraphernalia accompanied him. Three thousand Parthian horsemen and numerous Romans besides followed in his train.... The prince covered the whole distance to the confines of Italy on horseback, and beside him rode his wife, wearing a golden helmet in place of a veil.

...Nero took him up to Rome and set the diadem upon his head. The entire city had been decorated with lights and garlands, and great crowds of people were to be seen everywhere, the Forum, however, being especially full. The centre was occupied by civilians, arranged according to rank, clad in white and carrying laurel branches; everywhere else were the soldiers, arrayed in shining armour, their weapons and standards flashing like the lightning.... Then, silence having been proclaimed, Tiridates made himself subservient to the occasion.... These were his words: "Master, I am the descendant of Arsaces, brother of the [Parthian] kings Vologaesus and Pacorus, and thy slave. And I have come to thee, my god, to worship thee as I do Mithras. The destiny thou spinnest for me shall be mine; for thou art my Fortune and my Fate."

Nero replied to him as follows: "Well hast thou done to come hither in person, that meeting me face to face thou mightest enjoy my grace. For what neither thy father left thee nor thy brothers gave and preserved for thee, this do I grant thee. King of Armenia I now declare thee, that both thou and they may understand that I have power to take away kingdoms and to bestow them."

His visit to Rome ended, Tiridates "...did not return by the route that he had followed in coming — through Illyricum and north of the Ionian Sea — but instead he sailed from Brundisium to Dyrrachium. He viewed also the cities of Asia, which served to increase his amazement at the strength and beauty of the Roman empire."

It was on his return journey, Jenkins surmises, that "The procession may have passed close to the Greek speaking Jewish/Christian communities of northern and northeastern Syria where it is believed the gospel originated, as Armenia lies to the north east of this area."

Q. E. D. -- or Not?

Clioaudio concludes, "I simply can’t recall a Star of Bethlehem article seriously thinking about the Magi before. I still think the star is fictional, but this explains why it’s a fictional comet rather than a fictional nova or conjunction."

Let me say that I, too, am impressed by Jenkins' arguments and think he's right to have shifted the debate to 66 AD. But I still see three problems: two big ones and a small one. So, in descending order:

1. Matthew clearly speaks of a 'star' (aster), not a comet. The ancients were very well aware of the difference. He could hardly have confused them.

2. Comets bring evil tidings, not good news. They warn of the death of kings (or cities, such as Jerusalem!) not births, nor anything of gladness and joy.

3. Jenkins may have confused Roman 'Asia' with Coele-Syria. Asia was the name for a province that covered most of Anatolia (still called Asia Minor; that is, modern Turkey). The Armenian king's travels back home would have taken him from Dyrrachium on the coast of Albania overland to Byzantium, where he would have crossed the straits, continuing across Anatolia via Ankara (Ancyra) and straight back to Armenia. He would not have passed through any part of Syria, so where would Matthew have seen his procession?

I would be happy to continue the debate in my own or Clioaudio's comment section.

Meanwhile, Happy Holidays to you all. And remember, a copy of Chronicle of Zenobia: the Rebel Queen makes a splendid end-of-year gift for family and friends, and a great reading start to 2008!


Photo of Three Kings worshipping fire: Marco Polo, le livre des merveilles, Paris Bibliothèque National de France, Manuscrit
français 2810, folio 12, Ed. M.T Gousset.

Zoroastrian Stuff II

The Accursed Alexander

It still gives me a shock every time I hear Alexander the Great cursed and despised even though, as I read more Sassanian Stuff, I'm getting used to it.

The Sassanian Persians felt deep indignation and rage when they remembered the harm he had done to the Zoroastrian religion. In their eyes, his sins were much graver than merely sacking and burning their capital city (Persepolis) to the ground-- the Persians themselves were no strangers to severe cruelty and war and devastation. But Alexander had intentionally (or so they thought) destroyed the Zoroastrian holy places and temples, killed the priests [the magi] and worst -- and most unforgivably of all -- had deliberately burnt their holy scriptures, the Avesta.

A beautiful copy of the Avesta, the holy book of Zoroastrianism, was said to have been kept in Persepolis during Achaemenid times. It was written in gold ink on parchment (smoothed, cleaned ox-hide or cow-skin).

And ... all the Avesta and Zand [the original scripture and commentary], written upon prepared cow-skins, and with gold ink, was deposited in the archives in [Persepolis], and the hostility of the evil-destined, wicked evil-doer [the devil, Ahrimen] brought onward Alexander and he burned them up.

One imagines the Avesta looking something like the Hebrew Torah (left), heavy, ornamented parchment scrolls filled with column after column of fine calligraphy and fixed on rollers so the text unrolls either left to right or right to left. Just as Torah simply means 'the law' in Hebrew, âbâsta is the Parthian word for 'the law', which suggests that the main parts of the Avesta were put together during the Parthian era.

But most of the sacred texts are very much older than that. Oldest of all are said to be the Gâthâ's, seventeen hymns in praise of Ahura Mazda (Hormizd), which were written by Zarathustra himself. These hymns were supposed to be recited every day by all Zoroastrians. Equally early are the ritual texts of the Yasna (meaning 'reverence') which describe such things as the use of the trance-inducing beverage haoma, and the sacrifices and offerings to water and fire. Much later, the Yašts, hymns to the lesser deities, were written down, probably in the Achaemenid period (521-331 BC) -- the language of the hymns resembles that of Old Persian inscriptions.

What did Alexander destroy?

Many scholars deny that the Gâthâ's, Yasna, and Yašts were even in writing at the time Alexander came to Persepolis. They argue that the Persians (and perhaps the Parthians, too) relied solely on oral tradition to preserve the sacred texts. I find this difficult to accept. Not only do the Yašts resemble Achaemenid inscriptions (a strong argument, in my opinion), but it relies too much on absence of evidence: just because we don't find sacred literature doesn't mean that it didn't exist. We're missing the texts because the Persians changed their writing material from clay to parchment, which decays in the Persian climate. When Achaemenid administrators did go back to clay, we suddenly get tens of thousands of texts (such as the Persepolis Fortification tablets) which Alexander's arson helped preserve. So, I don't think the Sassanians were angry at Alexander for no reason.

Know that Alexander burnt the book of our religion -- 1200 ox-hides -- at [Persepolis]. One third of it was known by heart and survived, but even that was all legends and traditions, and men knew not the laws and ordinances.

Twelve hundred ox-hides! That seems a wild exaggeration; but is it? The Torah contains the first five books of the Hebrew Scriptures (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy), a total of about 80,000 words. It takes 60 calf-skins to make one Torah. How big was the Avesta? The invaluable Pliny the Elder tells us that the 3rd C BC Alexandrian scholar, Hermippus

wrote most painstakingly about the whole art of magic and interpreted two million verses (bolding mine) by Zarathustra, [and] also added lists of contents....

Pliny hardly blinks at two million verses. What does strike him with surprise him is that the tradition survived for so many ages, although all written commentaries had perished in the meanwhile. Anyway, it all went up in smoke. The loss was irreparable: After the calamity of Alexander, they sought for the books again, they found a portion of each Nask [book], but did not find any Nask in completeness.

Greek writers praise Alexander's policy of toleration and inclusiveness after he conquered Persia. That's not how it looked to the survivors. Sassanian tradition suggests rather that he engaged in a deliberate effort to cripple the Zoroastrian clergy so that Persian 'dead-enders' and 'remnants' could not regroup around them: He seized and slew those who went in the garments of Magians. The terror spread. Acting on Alexander's orders, the victors killed several high priests and judges and priests and the masters of the Magians and upholders of the religion, and the competent and wise of the country of Iran.

A few men and boys, it was said, escaped and fled to Sistan (the extreme southeast of Iran), bearing with them the knowledge of particular 'nasks' or books. A nask would be learnt completely by heart, sometimes by women, sometimes by a child. And in that way indeed the faith was restored in Sistan, re-established and brought afresh into order. Except in Sistan, in other places there was no recollection.

For these evil deeds, Alexander received the surname Guzastag, 'the Accursed', a title that had until then only been used to describe Ahrimen, the Devil.

And [Alexander] cast hatred and strife, one with the other, amongst the nobles and householders of the country of Iran [What he actually did is divide the land among 90 different princes, knowing full well that there would be such disunity and rivalry among them that they would have no time to seek vengeance; the ninety became known as the 'kings of the peoples'] and self-destroyed, he fled to hell.

So much for Alexander! But the factionalism that he had provoked remained in Persian hearts (in the Sassanian version of history) until Ardashir I came to power and wiped out, among many others, the 90 descendants of these kings.

Ardashir I and Tansar

Strangely, it was not just the king (on the left) who put an end to strife, but a Magus-priest:

And that evil strife will not be ended for that land ... until they give acceptance to him, Tansar the priest, the spiritual leader, eloquent, truthful, just. And when they give acceptance to Tansar, [those lands] will find healing, instead of divergence from Zoroaster's faith.

As the chief 'teaching priest' (hērbadān hērbad), Tansar worked hard to establish order after depravity and truth after delusion: he searched out all the sacred writings which survived in any part of the empire and then heard all the priests who preserved the traditions orally, [so that each contributed] their share toward restoring the original Avesta.

He then judged the found texts, accepting one as original and true and rejecting another. In this way, he put together a canon of the laws of religion, prayers, and rituals. So one could almost say that Tansar is the founder of the orthodox Sassanian canon and church. "Do not marvel," he says, "at my zeal and ardour for promoting order in the world, that the foundations of the laws of the Faith may be made firm. It is as if I heard the voices [of the spirits of the virtuous dead] uttering praise, and saw the gladness and radiance of their countenances. When we are united we shall speak of what we have done and be glad."


Restoration or Recreation?

What took place first on earth, though, was a religious coup d'état: First, "through the just authority of Tansar", Ardashir gathered the scattered teachings of the faith at his own court. Then, under the guise of returning to more ancient ways, he brutally monopolized the fire cult. Tansar admits as much. In his own words, in the 3rd C Letter of Tansar (recopied, adapted and enlarged in the 6th C), he answers the accusation of a local king who charged that "the King of kings has taken away fires from the fire-temples, extinguished them and blotted them out." Tansar replies that,

the truth is that after Darius each of the 'kings of the peoples' built his own fire-temple. This was pure innovation, introduced by [the Parthian kings] without the authority of kings of old. The King of kings has razed the temples ... and had the fires carried back to their places of origin.

To destroy dynastic shrines and to carry off royal fires to grow cold by the side of his own burning flames was plainly an effective symbol of conquest. The unity of the empire, for which Ardashir was striving, required that there should be only one royal fire. That was probably the fire burning in the temple at the city of Ardašir Khureh ('fame of Ardašir'; modern Firuzabad). He was said to have founded the city and temple even before he defeated his Parthian overlord; its fame was such that the very last Sassanian king, Yasdajird, a young boy when he assumed the royal power, was crowned at 'Ardashir's fire temple' (or perhaps in his throne room, left) in 632 or 633 AD.

The royal fire appears on the nearby rock relief (above) which shows Ardashir's investiture: Hormizd is on the left: between the god and the king stands a fire altar -- unfortunately vandalized by graffiti -- in the form of a large bowl supported by a pillar on a squared stand. Another royal fire appears on the reverse of Ardashir's coins. This shows again the interconnectedness of fire cult and political legitimacy for the king, a link that continues throughout the Sassanian period. The Parthian kings had placed images of the gods on the reverse. There would be no cult images on Sassanian coins. Replacing these 'idols' by a sacred fire is the first step towards the Zoroastrian iconoclastic movement that will virtually eliminate graven images from Sassanian lands.

Ahriman and the idols suffered great blows and great damages, the work of the next Chief Mobed, Kirdir, who will get his chance to strut the stage in Zoroastrian Stuff III. But first, on the subject of Magi, we'll have a short Christmas-y look at a new take on the Three Magi and the Star of Bethlehem

Zoroastrian Stuff

Thus speaks Shapur I:

And because of the fact that the gods have made Us their 'own property' and We have gone to so many countries and taken possession of them with the help of the gods, therefore We founded a great number of [Victorious] fires in each country and carried out good deeds for many Magi, and We enlarged the establishments [donations?] of the gods.

A clearer statement of do-ut-des : 'I give, so that you give' (that is, the art of mutual back-scratching) is hard to imagine.

The gods give Shapur sovereignty over the kings of Iran and non-Iran. In return for which, Shapur gives prosperity to the Magi (the priests), and founds fire sanctuaries . The gods are gratified and give more good things to Shapur. He further multiplies the shrines for the worship of the gods.


The Victor, the one who rises with the sun

The Sassanian kings established Zoroastrianism as the official religion of the empire, and used religious doctrines to justify state enforcement of Persian law. Shapur and his father before him entitled themselves bay from the old Persian baga 'lord, god' and boast they are 'descended from the gods'. How do they justify this? Because of their religious perfection: the Beneficent Spirit manifests itself on earth in the good and righteous king, one whose ... nature is pure, whose desires for his subjects are righteous.

A righteous ruler, in league with the Good Religion, inevitably improves the kingdom and brings prosperity and peace to all his subjects. That and the successful defence of his empire in battle were signs that legitimate authority was vested in that ruler. The king's success was due to his divine royal glory (xvarrah), and its loss would bring calamity and strife.

That's Ardashir I on the left (below), receiving the xvarrah ribboned diadem from Hormizd (aka Ahura Mazda)


The will of a righteous king was thus held above the soul, mind, wisdom and religion of lesser mortals.

Let your thought transcend your own will, and pass to the supreme will and lord upon the earth, the king recognized by the religion. And let it pass from him to the highest lord of all the spirits, the creator Ahura Mazda [Hormizd].

I'd like to put the king's role a bit in context.

[I, of course, am not an historian of religion and admit to knowing next to nothing about Zoroasterism. No, this short series on Zoroastrian Stuff will focus instead on some political aspects of Sassanian religious activity.* You can learn something more about the religion from the Wikipedia pages (quite good in this case) or, if you'd like lots of nitty-gritty, download the really excellent Introduction by the Aga Khan Professor of Iranian Studies at Harvard.]

Potted Zoroastrianism

The ancient Persians imagined a world in which Order and Chaos constantly vied for supremacy. The heavenly powers are on the side of Order, with Hormizd, the All-knowing Ruler, at their head. The forces of Chaos, down in the darkest depths (where they belong!), are led by the evil spirit, Ahrimen. As in many other creation myths, the Evil Spirit longs for the good up above and attacks it in order to mix with it and destroy its purity. This battle between Good and Evil is renewed every night and every winter.

Zoroastrian myth seems to explain better than any Jewish or Christian story why God's perfect world seems so awfully imperfect. God is not omnipotent. He must fight against the Evil principle that also existed from time immemorial. The battle is ongoing: the lights of heaven are constantly threatened by the endless darkness of the depths. It has always been that way ... but would not always remain so.

Mankind has a role to play in this cosmic battle. Order and Chaos each have their followers among human beings. Everyone (well, every man anyway) has to make a choice of which side they support: the good declare for Hormizd, imitating and following the example of the prophet Zarathustra (whom the Greeks called Zoroaster, hence the name of the religion). Hormizd confided the sacred ritual texts and the rules of the sacrifice to Zarathustra for him to take down into the world of living beings. With the help of his human followers, especially the priests who perform sacrifices, Zarathustra combats evil in the world.

The duty of humans is to support Order which they do by “thinking good thoughts, speaking good speech, and doing good deeds.” Those who “think bad thoughts, speak bad speech, and do bad deeds” support the Evil Spirit. After death, everything a person has thought, spoken, and done is added up. The dead soul then has to pass over the "Ford of the Accounting," imagined as a passage across a river, or a bridge over a chasm. Here, the soul is weighed on a scales by a heavenly judge, and according as the balance tips, the ford or bridge becomes wide or narrow, and the soul will pass safely on to heaven or fall into hell.

But there is light at the end of the cosmic tunnel. After 9000 years, Hormizd's victory in the last battle will bring the cosmos back to the way it was when he first ordered it -- a world with no evil elements: no darkness, disease, death, or deception, but instead full of light, life, and fertility.

The Fire burning in Paradise

The fire which burns in this world is the same as the fire in the sky, the sun, which is Hormizd's most beautiful form. Even the sun, however, is a pale reflection of the great Fire burning in Paradise in the presence of Hormizd-- the source, I would imagine, of all the endless lights.

At its simplest, fire burns and gives out light. It glitters and gives energy to all creation. The fire is not worshipped in itself (any more than the saints are worshipped in the Catholic faith) but venerated because it purifies spiritual uncleanliness and is never itself polluted: it is thus the symbol of divine truth.

Fire represents the enduring energy of the creator, and is the focus (but not the object) of prayer. Sometimes, as with saints, the line is fuzzy:

May the fire, Hormizd's greatest creation [as the sun], who gives us good things, come back to us to receive his share of the sacrifice in return. When we make you happy, O fire, who make us happy, when we bend in homage to you, who bend the most of all, may you in return come to assist us....

When he ascends the throne, each Sassanian king lights his personal 'king's fire' and this is the reference point for dating his reign -- as in, "the year 24 of the Shapur fire, the king of fires." This very fire is pictured on the reverse of Shapur's coins (above, left), which is inscribed: 'The fire of Shapur'. The attendants on either side of the fire altar probably represent the king and his 'divine radiance' (the xvarrah in this case to be imagined as something like the Greek Tyche or Roman Fortuna). The regnal fire is always extinguished at the end of that king's reign.

The altar and flames symbolized the main icon of the Zoroastrian fire cult. The presence of the ruler's bust on one side of the coin and the fire altar on the other is a clear representation of the ideological link between king and religion, state and church. Church and state were born of one womb, joined together never to be sundered. Coins minted by Shapur II (right) about 50 years later, picture the bust of Hormizd/Ahura Mazda in the sacred flames. This shows that the flames represent the energy and fire of the creator god.

Salvation is his fruit

Since the king was expected to serve as the protector and propagator of Zoroastrianism, he was required to have received training as a magus (OP: magu-, MP: mowbed,) during his youth. By upholding the law and doctrines , the king combats evil in the world, and furthers the vanquishing of the Evil Spirit and the eventual renewal of the universe. The ideal earthly ruler thus possesses both absolute secular and religious authority, and uses this authority and power to vanquish evil:

The thing against which the Evil Spirit struggles most vigorously is the uniting, in full force, of the glories of kingship and the Good Religion in a single person, because such a combination would vanquish him .... Whenever, in this world, religion is united with sovereignty in a good [Zoroastrian] ruler, then vice becomes weak and virtue increases, hostility diminishes and cooperation increases, righteousness increases and unrighteousness decreases among mankind, the good prosper and prevail and the evil are restrained and deprived of kingship, the world is prosperous, all creation is joyful, and the people flourish ....

In keeping with the belief that the monarch wielded sacral kingship over the entire world, the Zoroastrian religion was deliberately spread into newly conquered territories: There were fires and priests in the non-Iranian lands which were reached by the armies of the King of Kings. A non-Zoroastrian ruler was anyway, by definition, an evil monarch who lacked the royal glory, the xvarrah. Fires and priests (backed up no doubt by real soldiers) were regarded as warriors fighting for the creation, not only on the physical plane, against darkness and cold, but also on the spiritual one, against the forces of evil and ignorance.

Obviously, ancient societies always policed to some extent the religious devotion and morals of their inhabitants. Infractions of often unspoken rules -- too much Dionysiac frenzy, for example, or spilling the beans on the Eleusinian Mysteries, or the Christians refusing to sacrifice to the gods -- called down official punishment on the malefactor's head. But Greek and Roman authorities normally intervened only when the matter was getting out of hand or becoming a public scandal. Even then, prosecutions were not usually initiated by the priests!

The Sassanian experience is different because men's 'thinking good thoughts' became a major obsession of the kings and priesthood. Since the king ruled by virtue of his divinely granted xvarrah, if he failed in duties prescribed by the religion, he lost both the sacral kingship and his personal sanctity. He would then be regarded as unfit for the royal office by the priests. This was not an idle threat: it was considered a religious duty to depose such monarchs and replace them with one chosen in accordance with Zoroastrian doctrine.

Whoever may know there is someone who may be more righteous than King Shapur and more officious in the service of the gods, or better, and who hereafter may be able to keep this Iran better guarded and to govern it better than King Shapur, let him say so!

An offer that a wise man might well refuse. But the priests nevertheless had the doctrinal and ideological justification for deposing Sassanian monarchs whenever these rulers threatened their power. After all, the fate of the universe depended on it.

So Sassanian rulers did not just fulminate against immorality, they took an active part in squashing it. It's not too much to speak of an orthodox Zoroastrian church, with its tenets backed up and enforced by the king and his priests.

How can I bring the Lie [Ahrimen] as a vanquished enemy
before Order, the king, so that he may pronounce its sentence:
“destruction!” and so get them what they deserve?

In this, Persia looks a little like a precursor of the soon-to-be-established Christian Byzantine Empire. Christians still had a lot to learn from the Sassanians about intolerance, the persecution of heresy, and the power of priests.

It was a good idea to keep them sweet.

At the order of Shapur, king of kings, and with the help of the gods and the king of kings, the number of services for the gods was increased, many Victorious fires were established, many priests were rendered prosperous, many fires and priests received official letters of recognition, and, altogether, there was great profit for Hormizd and the other gods....

This was written by Kirdir, Chief Mobad for most of the late 3rd C AD, whose astonishing 'autobiography' was inscribed in stone. Kirdir will be the subject of Zoroastrian Stuff III . But first things first: his predecessor, the chief priest Tansar, hand in glove with Ardashir I, coming up next on Zoroastrian Stuff II).



*Much more information here on Sacral kingship in Sasanian Iran