Near Eastern and Old Iranian myths (2024)

Cosmogony

The earliest cosmogonic myth in literature is the Sumerian “Huluppu Tree,” which begins by setting existence within the context of time—days, nights, and years—then refers to the coming into being of the vital elements of life, including bread, before the unity of heaven and earth is divided, and humans are brought to consciousness. The Sumerian understanding of the universe consisted of four main elements, each with a divinity (Sumerian, dingir) in charge: An of the sky, Ki of the earth, Enlil of the air, and Enki of the waters and wisdom. In the Huluppu Tree myth, Enki sets sail for the underworld and faces a stormy onslaught that carries a tree to the sacred garden of Inanna, the daughter of the sun god Utu. A serpent, a bird, and Lillith “the dark maid” build their homes in this huluppu tree and cannot be dislodged until Gilgamesh uproots the tree and makes it into a throne and bed for Inanna. In return, she fashions a pukku and mikku for Gilgamesh, “the hero of Uruk.”1 Inanna thus assumes her role as Queen of the land of Sumer, and of fertility.

Gilgamesh

The story of Gilgamesh (Sumerian Bilgames), an important religious text of the Sumerians, is one of the oldest known works of literature. The figure of Gilgamesh was probably based on an actual king of Uruk, a successor to Dumuzi, who was also probably a historical ruler. According to the Sumerian king-lists, Gilgamesh lived around 2600 bce. There are five separate extant Gilgamesh stories in Sumerian, dating to around 2100 bce. Elements of these were preserved by the Babylonians in a surviving Akkadian epic, inscribed on eleven tablets dating to about 1700 century bce, which were found in the ruins of Ashurbanipal’s palace at Nineveh in 1844. A standard version of the epic was produced by the poet Sin-leqe-unnini around five centuries later. Most modern translations use this later version as their basis, supplemented by reference to the Sumerian and older Akkadian texts to fill in the gaps, although much of the story remains missing. The Gilgamesh story contains many themes that recur in subsequent Near Eastern mythologies.

The Story of the Flood

Inanna/Ištar: Death and Rebirth

In Sumerian myth, Inanna, whose name translates as “lady of heaven,” not only was linked to the moon and the evening star but also was an earth goddess responsible for the fertility of plants, animals, and humans. After the conquest of Sumerian city-states by Sargon of Akkad (r. 2334–2279 bce), Inanna and An remained the chief divinities. In Ur, Sargon’s daughter, Enheduanna, who was a high priestess of the male moon god Nanna (son of Enlil and Ninlil, goddess of the air), composed a hymn to Inanna that survives. In this first poem in history by a named composer, Inanna is described as having given wings to the storm, before whom the other gods fled “like fluttering bats.”2

In a well-attested text, “The Descent of Inanna,” dating to the early 2nd millennium bce, the goddess descends to the underworld through the seven gates, where she is humiliated by having to remove her accouterments of divinity and her clothing. Then Inanna confronts her sister Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Underworld, and dethrones her, but is sentenced to death by the gods. Inanna dies and is revived with the aid of Enki, the god of wisdom and the waters. When she returns from the underworld, Inanna has to promise a substitute, and sends her husband Dumuzi in her stead, since he had failed to mourn her. She repents, however, and allows Dumuzi to return to the world of the living every spring New Year, to be replaced during that time by his sister, who is named in other Sumerian myths as Geshtinanna. This part of the myth is the oldest sacred love story.

Inanna’s relationship with the shepherd Dumuzi provides another instance of the tension between city and countryside. During the 3rd dynasty of Ur, in the late 3rd millennium bce, it seems that Dumuzi’s marriage to Inanna and his transformative cycle of death and rebirth were commemorated in successive months, before and after the spring equinox, respectively. Although it is assumed that these events involved an accompanying ritual enactment, scholars differ in their interpretation as to what form this ritual may have taken. Some suggest a royal hierogamy between the king, as Dumuzi, and his queen, or a temple priestess, as Inanna. The death of Dumuzi is reiterated in the biblical account of Hebrew women who mourned Tammuz in the time of Ezekiel (Ezekiel 8.14–15). Tammuz derives from the Akkadian name for Ištar’s consort. By the neo-Assyrian period, the month of mourning had relocated to the period after the summer solstice. In the Hebrew calendar, Tammuz remains the fourth month of the religious year.

The Akkadian Enuma Elish

From Babylon sometime in the mid-2nd millennium bce comes an original creation story Enuma Elish, meaning “when on high.” The oldest extant version of the story is on several clay tablets found in the library of Ashurbanipal (r. 668–c. 631 bce) in Nineveh (modern Kuyunjik, Iraq). Written in Akkadian cuneiform, they are contemporaneous with Ashurbanipal, dating to the 7th century bce. The Enuma Elish assumed a central role in Babylonian hieratic ritual, being recited on the fourth day of the Akitu festival, held early in the month of Nisannu each spring, at the time of the sowing of the barley. This cosmic drama of order and chaos is virtually unknown beyond Mesopotamia.

Enuma Elish begins at the beginning of time, when there were just two divinities, a male, Apsu, of the primordial fresh waters beneath the earth, and a primeval saltwater goddess, Tiamat. These two produce four generations of unruly offspring, whose noise so disrupts Apsu’s rest that he plans to stop their tiresome behavior. Ea, the river god who is the offspring of Anu, slays Apsu and assumes control of his domain of the sweet waters (apsu). Tiamat is enraged at the murder of her consort, and seeks revenge on Anu and the younger gods with an army of serpentine monsters, led by her second consort, Kingu, on whom she has bestowed the Tablets of Destinies. The gods gather in assembly, at first unable to face Tiamat and her army, until the young god Marduk, the son of Ea (born from the “sweet waters”) steps forward and offers to fight Tiamat in return for the throne of heaven. The gods agree, and Marduk gathers his “matchless weapons” and defeats Tiamat’s forces, binding Kingu and placing the Tablets of Destinies on his own chest. Marduk slays Tiamat in single combat, crushes her skull and severs her arteries, then pauses to view her dead body before splitting it “like a shellfish into two parts.”3 This butterflying of Tiamat generates the layered cosmos: half of her body covered the heavens, and the other half became the earth.

The Enuma Elish presents the city of Babylon at the heart of the universe generated by Marduk. At the center of Babylon was the Esagila temple holding the cult image of Marduk. The Esagila, meaning “the House/Temple whose top is high” is mentioned in the narrative of the Enuma Elish. A ziggurat near to the Esagila, which Babylonians called Etemenanki—the “House of the Foundation of Heaven and Earth”—is “the Tower of Babel” referred to in the Hebrew Bible (Gen. 11:1–9). Some scholars consider that aspects of Enuma Elish are close in theme and content to Hesiod’s theogony. Many of its motifs recur in the Hurrian myth of succession and the myth of Ullikummi, which have been found in Hittite recensions at Boğazköy, the ancient Hittite capital of Hattusa, dating to the 14th century bce. The Hittite versions, known as the Cycle of Kumarbi (or Kingship in Heaven) and the Myth of Illuyanka, respectively, also have parallels in later Greek mythology, including Hesiod. In the Hittite narrative as to how generations of gods came into being, Anu is deposed and castrated by his son Kumarbi, who is then overthrown by the storm god.

Nabu

According to sources from the early 1st millennium bce, during the Akitu festival all the gods were said to visit Marduk (whose epithet was Bel, “Lord”) in Babylon, where they gathered in the court of the Esagila. The first among the visiting gods was Nabu, Marduk’s son, from Borsippa. Nabu was the source of the art of writing and wisdom.

Nergal and Ereshkigal

The stele of Nabonidus, king of Babylon (r. 556–539 bce), mentions the Akitu festival tributes offered by the king to “Bel, Nabû, and Nergal, the great gods.” There are two variant myths about Nergal: the earliest and shortest is on a 14th-century clay tablet from Amarna, Egypt; a 7th-century bce account from the Neo-Assyrian city of Sultantepe in Turkey is close to another version from Uruk in the late Babylonian period. In both myths, Nergal the son of Enlil, travels from the upper world of Anu through the seven gates of the underworld of Ereshkigal (Inanna’s sister). Eventually, he becomes king of the underworld as Ereshkigal’s consort.

A cult of Nergal was centered in Cutha to the northeast of Babylon, as well as in Uruk. Nergal is translated as “Melqart”in Phoenician myth, the main god of Tyre, whom Herodotus equates with the Greek mythic hero Herakles (Histories 2.44).

Ashur

When the Assyrians rose to power in the 9th century bce, much of their culture and ideology derived from that of the preceding Akkadians and Babylonians: they spoke a dialect closely related to that of Babylonia, used the same cuneiform, and retained worship of the Babylonian divinities. Several stele of Assyrian kings show them making a gesture of reverence towards symbols of their main gods: a solar disc, an eight-pointed star, forked thunder, and a crescent moon, representing respectively, the sun god Shamash, Ištar, the storm god Adad (Sumerian, Ishkur), and the god of the moon Sin/Su’en (Sumerian, Nanna). In front of these emblems was a fifth symbol—a helmet with three pairs of horns, representing the indigenous divinity Ashur, who seems to have replaced Marduk as the head of the small Assyrian pantheon.

The land “Assyria” and its people were named after Ashur, who is also represented in Assyrian iconography as a winged solar disc, either alone, or enclosing a warrior with a bow and arrow. Each Assyrian king was the high priest of Ashur, and it was his duty to maintain and extend both the worship of Ashur, and the borders of his domain. Failure to do this was to invite chaos and cataclysm into the land.

The rock relief of Kurangun, cut high into the cliff overlooking the Faliyan river valley in the province of Fārs, in southwestern Iran, dates to the Old Elamite sukkalmah period (1900–1600 bce), and depicts motifs that provide insight into prevalent aspects of Elamite mythology. The central iconography is of a divinity wearing a horned headdress, seated on a throne made of a two-headed coiled serpent, which he holds by the neck in his left hand (figure 1). Behind him is a crowned goddess. In a similar, but later, Elamite relief at Naqsh-e Rostam in Fārs (carved over by the Sasanian Persians), both divinities are seated on snake thrones. Snakes were protective beings in Elamite ideology, representing a chthonic wisdom from the earth. Elamite pottery dating back to the 4th millennium displays serpentine forms, as do seals and tablets from the 2nd millennium onwards.

In the right hand of the male deity at Kurangun is a rod, and an object usually identified as a vessel, but possibly a ring of power.4 The divinity seems to be generating some kind of fluid energy emerging from this object in two streams: one flows back over the god and goddess, and the other towards the worshippers in front (figure 2). This flow emulates motifs seen in Mesopotamia around the mid-3rd millennium bce. Although the Elamites replicated some Sumerian and Akkadian structures (including modelling their early pictographs on those of Sumer), their language is neither Semitic nor Sumerian, and their mythology remains separate and distinctive. It is perhaps due to this individuality, and to the fact that there are so few sources about the Elamite conception of their gods, that Elam is not always included in anthologies of Near Eastern myth. Since the Elamites form a geographical, historical and cultural link between Mesopotamia and the Ancient Persians, however, some information concerning their mythology is relevant here.

Inšušinak and Napiriša

The divinities at Kurangun may represent the god Inšušinak of Susa, or Napiriša of Anshan, the large power base of the Elamites at the time, and the goddess Narunde or Pinikir (from northern Elam), whose cult by 1800 bce was paralleled with that of Kiririša the “Great Goddess” of southern Elam, particularly the capital Susa. The earliest Elamite linear text, a treaty dating to the late 3rd millennium bce, declaims Pinikir as the foremost divinity in a pantheon which formed the focus of Elamite cult until the time of the Persians.5

The predominance of a female deity declined in the later official religion of Elam, as the male god Humban gained prominence as Kiririša’s consort, and Inšušinak (whose Sumerian name means “lord of Susa”) rose to rival the pair in importance. Around the mid-13th century bce, a large Elamite cult center was built to the west of Susa in honour of Inšušinak and was also dedicated to Kiririša. It was known to ancient Elamites as Dur Untaš, the “town of Untaš,” named after the king Untaš-Napiriša (modern Choga Zanbil; figure 3). Napiriša, the Elamite “great god” associated with Anshan, the highland capital, was included in later inscriptions on bricks at Dur Untaš, along with around twenty-five other Elamite gods, who also appear to have been worshipped at the site, although not all in one period.6

Although not much is known about Elamite religious beliefs, the idea of a final judgment is prevalent in some texts, which reflect the concept of an afterlife tribunal including Inšušinak as the judge, Išnikarab, who weighed or tried the soul of the deceased, and Lagamar, goddess of the world of the dead. It has been suggested that some of these elements may have impacted Persian thought in the Neo-Elamite or Achaemenid period.7 Thousands of clay tablets in Elamite discovered in the ruins of the Achaemenid palace complex of Persepolis record rations given to priests for offerings to Elamite divinities, particularly Humban and Napiriša. This indicates a continuity of Elamite religion well into the Persian period.

Egyptian material culture relating to tomb murals, hieroglyphic funerary inscriptions and spells, figurative canopic jars, and also the form of mausolea—provides a primary source of information regarding the prevalent mythology of each dynastic period. As the Egyptian hierarchy of gods developed, they became increasingly anthropomorphized, and their relationships with each other mirrored the multifaceted social and familial groupings of humans. Eventually the pantheon included thousands of minor deities. Sometimes, the development of a divinity within the Egyptian pantheon may be traced through the significance of the name, although not every name has a meaning that is understood.

Ancient Egyptian mythology is also expressed in illustrated papyri containing funerary, ritual and magical texts. The most important of these are the funerary Books of the Dead, which were recited from around the mid-16th century bce until the time of Cleopatra, in order to direct the soul toward the judgment of the great god Osiris in the Hall of Truth, where the heart was weighed against Maat, the goddess of truth, sometimes represented by a feather. Evil action such as lying or stealing would literally weigh down the scale. The raven-headed divinity, Thoth, would write down the judgment. The notion that one’s good and evil acts would have consequences after life was novel. In contrast to the somewhat gloomy Sumerian view of the afterlife in the netherworld of Ereshkigal, the Egyptians retained the certainty that the spirit of the individual—even an animal—might continue on earth after death. If the gods permitted, a good afterlife was also possible in the underworld.

Pharaohs were thought to become gods after death, and so were treated as such in life, with names that reflected their divine association. Each pharaoh of Heliopolis from the mid-3rd millennium onwards was given the title “son of Ra.” The name Rameses, used for several pharaohs towards the end of the New Kingdom period, means “born of Ra.” When the Achaemenid kings Cambyses II, Darius I, and Xerxes ruled Egypt, they, too, received the title “Son of Ra” (figure 4).

Cosmogony

Several Egyptian cosmogonies evolved simultaneously, each associated with a specific center of religion. Myths concerning the origin and function of the universe seem to relate to the actual annual flooding of the Nile. From Heliopolis (Egyptian, Iwnw) comes the most familiar cosmogony, beginning with the primeval waters of Nun or Nu, which contained all existence until the emergence of a solar deity, Atum (meaning both “complete” and “non-existent”), who generated the components of life—including humans and gods—from himself. Two of the divinities of the original Heliopolitan Ennead to emerge from Atum were Isis and Osiris. Atum was then assimilated with another regional divinity worshipped in Heliopolis, the sun-god Ra, as Ra.Atum, who presides over the setting sun.

With the Middle Kingdom restoration of Pharaonic rule in the early 2nd millennium bce, a variant cosmogony arose in the region of Thebes with a new pantheon of divinities, the chief of whom was Amun (“hidden”), who merged with Ra as Amun.Ra, to become the chief deity of the great temples at Karnak and Luxor. During this period, another important cosmogony developed at Hermopolis (Egyptian, “Khmnw”), the city of Thoth, the god of the moon, wisdom, and writing. It begins with eight gods, some of whom are connected with the Ennead of Heliopolis.

At some point in about the 11th century bce, Ra syncretized with the god Horus (represented in the form of a falcon or wings) as Ra.Horakhty—“Ra [and] Horus of the horizon,” who ruled over creation and the other gods. In New Kingdom tombs in the Valley of the Kings, Ra is depicted sailing the sun boat with other gods on board, across the sky from one horizon to the other—East to West—during the twelve hours of daylight: for the twelve hours of the night, he is in another boat that carries the souls of the dead through the underworld, where he merges with Osiris, to be reborn with the sun in the East the following morning.

Isis, Osiris, and Horus and Seth

Stories about Isis and Osiris are known from the walls of Egyptian pyramid burial chambers and later funerary texts. The most complete extant account of the myth of Isis and Osiris is inscribed on a limestone stele from the late 2nd millennium bce. It describes how Isis protected Osiris, her brother-consort, as the living king, and how she roamed across the land after he had been killed by their brother Seth, looking for the dismembered parts of his body. Isis reassembles Osiris’ body and breathes life into him so that she may conceive a child to avenge his death. That child is Horus.

Horus, too, is a dying and rising god. In one episode in his childhood, he was stung by a scorpion and died. The distraught Isis, with the aid of her sister Nephthys and the god Thoth, restored him to life again. Horus fought physically with Seth, and eventually gained the approval of the whole Ennead to rule the two lands (upper and lower Egypt).

Isis’ role as guardian of the pharaohs endured: she was thought to bestow a good afterlife on all who performed the proper funerary rites in her honor.

Many of the oldest Iranian myths retained in the extant Avesta, particularly the Yašts (“Hymns”) to the yazatas (beings “worthy of worship”), display a general thematic and linguistic relation to other Indo-European mythology and some close parallels with the Old Indic myths of the Ṛg Veda. In comparison with Indic, Greek, or Roman stories concerning deities, much Avestan mythology relating to the yazatas (who include Mithra, Anāhitā, Haoma, and Xᵛarənah) lacks narrative. The main Avestan (Av.) leitmotif is the tension between good and evil, with little development of the cast of characters involved in the struggle. Although the Old Avestan (OAv.) Gāthās (“songs” or “poems”) refer to a few individuals by name (specifically, Zarathustra, Vištāspa, and Jāmāspa), and the Young Avestan yašts and parts of the Yasna (Y), the liturgy, include a few stories concerning both heroes and villains, the central dramatic focus of these Old Iranian texts is on the purpose and function of a world generated by Ahura Mazdā, the “Wise Lord,” supported by the yazatas.

The narrative material that is adumbrated in the Avesta and which must have been preserved in other ancient Iranian oral tradition was elucidated through the recitations of minstrels and professional storytellers at the Parthian court (c. 250 bce–224 ce). The protagonists of these narrations become more rounded in Middle Persian (MP) written texts that contain translations or summaries of, and commentaries on, the Avesta, much of which is now lost.13 Such Middle Persian Zoroastrian texts (some of which are themselves incomplete) include in particular the Dēnkard (“Acts of the Religion”), Ayādgār ī Zarērān (“Memorial of Zarēr”), Bundahišn (“Creation”), Wizīdagīhā ī Zādspram (“Selections of Zādspram”), and Zand ī Wahman Yasn (“Commentary on the Bahman Yašt”). Iranian heroic characters and their foes feature in the later national epic of Iran, the New Persian (NP) Šāhnāme, composed by Ferdowsi in the late 10th/early 11th century ce. Šāhnāme remains a powerful vehicle for an Iranian understanding of the ancient past.

Other Old Iranian material may be gleaned from the earliest iconography of the Ancient Persians at the palace complex of Cyrus II (r. 559–530 bce) at Pasargadae, which contains Near Eastern components and indicates that Iranian ideology of the period was impacted by both the model and function of certain Near Eastern divinities. Although the buildings at Pasargadae do not seem to elaborate either visually or structurally on themes of Old Iranian myth, some elements may be found in free-standing and rock-carved reliefs at Persepolis and in trilingual inscriptions by Achaemenid kings, beginning with Darius I (r. 522–486 bce). Some of these inscriptions suggest that the Ancient Persians appropriated some Babylonian myths about kingship (figure 5).14

Under the Sasanian Persians (224–651 ce), a reworking of national history seems to have taken place. Various myths, legends and historical details were apparently compiled at the Sasanian court into a chronicle known as the Xwadāy-nāmag, or “Book of Kings.”

It was during the Sasanian period that Middle Persian Zoroastrian cosmogonies were compiled, emphasizing the linear outworking of the struggle between good and evil in the two spheres of “thought” and of “living beings”. Remnants of ancient Iranian oral narrative are also found in Manichaean Middle Persian and Parthian texts, although the beneficent beings of the Zoroastrian tradition (such as the Ameša Spentas, Mithra, Yima, and even Zarathustra) are reconfigured in the Manichaean cosmic schema. The dēws, or “evil beings,” of Zoroastrian cosmogony (from Avestan daēuua-) remain evil: for example, the female dēw Āz is retained as the source of lust in Manichaeism.

Ferdowsi’s New Persian Šāhnāme derived largely from the Middle Persian Xwadāy-nāmag, supplemented with ancient oral traditions, including those of the Avesta, particularly in the early part of the text. Šāhnāme begins with the mythical Pišdādian (“first law givers”?) heroic rulers, followed by the legendary Kayanian (MP and NP, “sovereign”) dynasty, and then a few historical kings to the time of the Sasanians, some of whose royal names show traces of earlier mythical rulers. The Šāhnāme presentation of the kings and heroes of Iran, both mythical and historical, as being in constant strife with tyrants, echoes not only the struggle with the “Xiionians” in the Avesta, but also the tension between the elements of good and evil.

Old Iranian elements incorporated into Šāhnāme include those that endow both the story of the origins of the Iranian peoples and the country of “Iran” with an antiquity dating back to the beginning of the world, and a (divine) mandate to embody order and to promote the good. Those features continue to resonate for Iranians today.

Cosmogony

Although the notion of sustaining cosmic order is central to both Old Indic and Old Avestan texts, expressed in the terms Ṛta and aṣ̌-->a respectively, the cosmology of each tradition differs. The five Old Avestan Gāthās reflect a worldview in which the supreme, creative agency, Ahura Mazdā, the “Wise Lord,” engenders and protects both the conceptual and material spheres of existence. One passage in the second Gāthā (known as Uštavaiti Gāthā) poses a series of questions about how the various components of the material world originated: the presumed answer is that this occurred through the activity of Ahura Mazdā (Y 44.3–7). In this text, the stages of generation of the cosmos begin with aṣ̌-->a, “order,” then the course of the sun and stars, and the cycle of the moon; the “holding up” of the earth below and the sky above; the waters and plants; the movement of the winds and clouds; good thought (Av. vohu manah); light and darkness, sleep and wakefulness, and the passage of the day through dawn, noon, and night; the milk-producing cow; and a dutiful son for the father.

This cosmogony is partly reiterated in the Old Avestan Yasna Haptaŋhāiti (YH) the “worship in the seven sections,” which praises Ahura Mazdā as the one who “sets in place” the cow, aṣ̌-->a, the waters and plants, the lights and the earth, and “all that is good” (YH 37.1).

After the delineation of the generation of the universe, a subsequent passage in Uštavaiti Gāthā refers to a destruction of the world through a deceptive, evil impulse or spirit that does not accord at any level with the impulse of good thought, word, action or spiritual understanding (Y 45.1–2). Elsewhere, the good spirit is allied with life and the bad with “not life” (Av. ajiiāitī), that is, death (Y 30.4). Other poetic stanzas in the Gāthās contain the idea that the detrimental impulses that afflict the world can be healed by those who follow aṣ̌-->a, particularly those future benefactors “who will be strong” (Av. saošiiaṇ̣-->t). Such concepts contain the seeds of a collective and universal eschatology that is more fully developed in Young Avestan texts, such as the Hadokht Nask and the Zamyad Yašt. Middle Persian Zoroastrian literature then gradually defines a cosmogony with a binary division between the good attributes and co-agents of Ahura Mazdā and the harmful, evil forces associated with Angra Mainyu, the “destructive spirit.” The seven qualities or aspects of Ahura Mazdā that both protect and permeate the generated world, particularly its humans, are referred to collectively as the ‘life-giving immortals (Av. Aməṣ̌-->a Spəntas).

Cosmology

Passages in the Young Avestan Vidēvdād (Vd.) and Yašts (Yt.) delineate an early image of a mythical Iranian world, suggesting an original, coherent cosmology. A passage in the hymn to Mithra (Mihr Yašt) refers to “seven climes” of the world, the center of which is Xᵛaniraθ‎a, “the wheel of the sun,” where mortals and other living beings inhabit (Yt. 10.15). Vidēvdād names sixteen countries established for the Iranians by Ahura Mazdā, of which the first and central land is Airiiana Vaējah, the “Iranian expanse.” Elements of the material creation around this land include the Vourukaṣ̌-->a Sea, which is the gathering point of all waters, and where a tree of all species grows, called the Saēna Tree (Yt. 12.17). The sun, moon, and stars rise up over “Hara the high” (Av. Harā bərəzaitī) bringing light to the world. Elsewhere, “high Hara,” meaning something like “high protector,” is depicted as the first in the great mountain chain that encircles the earth. Just as the Saēna Tree contains the seeds of all good, healing plants, so a “first-created bull/animal” (Av. gao- aēuuō.dātā-) contains the seeds of all animals, and a “living mortal” (Av. gaiia- marətan-) is the first aṣ̌-->auuan (“follower of aṣ̌-->a”) from whom, according to Middle Persian texts, all human beings derive. The motifs of a world tree or plant and a world mountain have parallels in Indo-European and Near Eastern/Semitic myth, as do those of a primordial animal and human.

According to the Gāthās the “seventh [part] of the world,” is where the daēuuas or “false gods” operate (Y 32.3). Vidēvdād reports that the “good lands” of Ahura Mazdā were assaulted in various ways by Angra Mainyu, including the infliction of death with its attendant pollution of dead matter (Av. nasu), but concludes with the promise of healing the 99,999 afflictions wrought by evil, through the recitation of sacred manthras. These litanies remain part of Zoroastrian prayer today. The ending of the text with the healing of the good creation reflects the Avestan concept of frašo.kərəiti—the final “miraculous” revitalization of the cosmos that will take place at the end of historical time.

Achaemenid inscriptions preserve elements of these Avestan accounts of the creation of the world by “the great god” (OP baga vazạrka) A^huramazda, who is lauded by Darius I as establishing the cosmos, setting in place the earth, the sky and humankind, and making happiness for humanity. The phrasing of the formula “this earth and that sky” parallels that of the Young Avesta, as does the notion that happiness is created for humans by Ahura Mazdā.15 The word frašō.kərəti as “excellent” in Darius I’s Old Persian inscriptions appears in a range of contexts that reflect the creative activity of Ahura Mazdā, as well as the work of the king (figure 6), echoing the Avestan notion that the world is moving towards a return to an original “excellent” or “perfect” state (figure 7).

Eschatology

In the interim, Old Iranian mythology concerning the individual afterlife involved a “crossing place of reckoning” (OAv. cinuuat̰.pərətu-), a judgment of one’s thoughts, words and deeds at death, and progress of the soul of the ašauuan to the best existence, passing the sun, moon, stars, until reaching the “endless lights” (Av. anaγ‎ra- raocah-) and garo.dəmāna the “house of praise/welcome,” (Y 51.15; also 45.2, 50.4) or of the “follower of the lie” (OAv. drəguuaṇt) to the worst existence, entering darkness into “the house of deceit” (OAv. druj.dəmāna; Y 46.11, 51.14).

Middle Persian Zoroastrian texts, particularly the Greater Bundahišn, Dēnkard, Dādestān ī Dēnīg (“Religious Judgments”) and Dādestān ī Mēnōy ī Xrad (“Judgments of the Spirit of Wisdom”) provide a more developed and systematic cosmology, theology and eschatology. In several texts, this schema includes divisions of time into thousand-year periods, which may have been impacted by the Babylonian concept of time. In the Bundahišn, Ohrmazd (Ahura Mazdā) creates the world in two stages of three thousand years each; first in its “thought” or “conceptual” state (MP mēnōy), with all the spiritual beings needed to combat evil, then in its “physical” or “living” state (MP gētīy). In the Middle Persian books, echoing the Vidēvdād, this material world was subject to the incursion of Ahreman (Angra Mainyu) and polluted through the mingling of evil with the good creation: disease and death came to the plant, the primordial animal and man (MP gayomard), but the seed of each was preserved, purified, and returned to repopulate the earth. The time of “mixture” of good and evil lasts for another six thousand years, but the advent of Zarathustra at the end of the third millennium begins the preparation for the ultimate separation of good and evil.

That such a division of the world into four three-thousand-year increments already existed by the end of the Achaemenid period is suggested by Plutarch’s reference to the Iranian schema as presented by the Greek historian Theopompus, in his work Philippika, which was completed in 324 bce. According to Plutarch, Theopompus recorded a “Magian” myth that two “gods” (Plutarch distinguishes the creator of good things, Horomasdes, as a theos, and that of evil things, Areimanios, as a daimon) alternate in supremacy for three thousand years, and then fight with each other for three thousand years, until eventually “Hades shall perish, and men shall be happy; neither shall they need sustenance nor shall they cast a shadow.”16 The four-era division of cosmic time as expounded in the Bundahišn appears in another form in the Middle Persian apocalyptic text, the Zand ī Wahman Yasn, where Ohrmazd enables Zarathustra to see into the future. In this vision Zarathustra, sees a tree with four branches of gold, silver, steel, and “mixed iron” respectively, which each representing a future era following the millennium of Zarathustra, culminating in the defeat of evil and the renovation of the world through the agency of the final Saoshyant (Av. saošiiaṇt- “the revitalizer,” “the one who will make [existence] strong.”)

Axes Mundi

As the successive Iranian empires were established, the image of the world as portrayed in the Avesta seems to have been transposed onto the physical geography of the imperial domain. In this re-mapping of sacred locations from the Avestan cosmological schema, the land itself became known as “Iran.” In one Old Iranian myth, an archer named Arash is said to have put all his strength into shooting an arrow from one side of the country to the other, to demarcate the territorial boundaries of the country. The myth, reported in detail by Islamic-era historians, including Bīrūnī, Ṭabarī, Ṯaʿālebī, and Baḷʿamī, originates in the Avesta, which records that Ǝrəxša “of the swift arrow, having the swiftest arrow among the Iranians” shot an arrow from Mount Airiiō.xšuθ‎a to Mount Xᵛanuuaṇt (Yt. 8.6). Neither the identity nor location of these two mountains is known. The event is alluded to in a couple of Middle Persian Zoroastrian texts, one of which specifies that the king of Iran, Manušcihr, and the archer Ēraš re-took the land from Afrāsiāb the Turanian on the day Xordād of the month Frawardīn.17

The locating of several sacred places of the Avesta within the borders of Iran occurred during the three imperial periods. Harā bərəzaitī lent its name to Mt. Alburz, the mountain range to the south of the Caspian; the river Haraxᵛaitī (cognate with Indic Saravasti) became Harī-rūd—the River Hari; and the River Haētumaṇt became the River Helmand in Sistan. In Old Iranian mythology, both Haētumaṇt and the “Lake Kasaoya” (Av. Kąsaoiia-) into which it flows are associated with the birth of the final Saoshyant, who will defeat evil and render the world incorruptible (Yt. 19.66–69, 92; Vd. 19.5). Kasaoya has been identified with Lake Hāmūn in Sistan. The mountain that rises from the lake is known as Kuh-e Khwājeh—the “hill of the master”—and it has been suggested that the early patristic connection with “the East,” of the Magi who visit the Christ child in Matthew’s Gospel, may derive from Zoroastrian mythology relating to the site. Some of the material in the yašts may have developed in the region of Sistan. Curiously, from this part of eastern Iran emerged a somewhat negative portrayal of Vištāspa, Zarathustra’s patron in the Avesta, which is reflected in the Šāhnāme, and is at odds with the Dēnkard and New Persian Zartošt-Nāme.

Mithra

Particularly associated with “High Hara” is the yazata Mithra (Av. Miθ‎ra-), meaning “contract,” or “bond.” Mithra upholds the social institution that his name implies. The hymn to Mithra describes him watching the deeds of humans from his position above Mt. Hara, and speeding down in his four-wheeled chariot driven by horses “who fly,” his ox-headed mace in his hands ready to punish those who are false to their word. Many elements of this narrative relate to myths of solar deities in other Indo-European cultures. At Nemrud Dağı, a 1st-century BCE inscription identifies Mithra with the Greek divinities Apollo, Helios, and Hermes. Of all the Zoroastrian yazatas, Mithra seems to have been represented most consistently in anthropomorphized form. It has been suggested that this may be one reason that he is retained—as Mher—within Armenian Christian apocalyptic tradition.18

Mithra is mentioned by name after “A^huramazda” on several Old Persian royal inscriptions of Artaxerxes II (r. 404–359 bce), some of which also refer to Anāhitā, the female yazata of the waters. Mithra and Anāhitā are the only yazatas to be mentioned in any Old Persian texts: Artaxerxes calls upon them, with A^huramazda, to protect from all evil him, his country, and “that which he has built.”19

Anāhitā

The Young Avestan hymn dedicated to Anāhitā (Av. Anāhitā-), Ābān Yašt (“hymn to the waters”), characterizes her as the beautiful goddess of a mythical world river that flows into the Sea Vourukaša and is the source of all the waters. Her Avestan epithets “Arəduuī- Surā- Anāhitā-” translate as “moist, mighty, undefiled,” asserting her identity as a powerful, chaste water divinity. The hymn describes Anāhitā’s benevolent activity as bringing increase to water channels, herds, possessions and the land. She also bestows fertility on men and women, and is a warrior for justice on behalf of the Iranians. In this respect, she is similar to Inanna/Ištar, with whom she is often identified, alongside other Near Eastern goddesses. Middle Persian inscriptions apply the title Bānūg, “Lady,” to Anāhitā, as do Armenian texts, which may indicate a syncretism with Sumerian Inanna, the “Lady of Heaven.” Sogdian Zoroastrian texts from Panjikant refer to their chief divinity as “Nana the Lady,” indicating that Nana was also equated with Anāhitā. Greek authors of the Parthian period identify Anāhitā most frequently with Artemis, but also with Aphrodite and Athena.

Tištriia

Another yazata associated with the waters is the astral divinity Tištriia described as a “bright, radiant star” in the yašt dedicated to him.20 This hymn, the Tīr Yašt, contains a nature myth in which Tištriia overcomes the daēuua of drought, Apaoša (“not thriving”). Tištriia, in the form of a beautiful white horse with golden ears fought hoof to hoof for three days and nights against Apaoša, who took the shape of a black horse with black ears. In danger of being bested by his opponent, Tištriia cried to Ahura Mazdā that he was weak because he had not received the proper worship from humans. So, Ahura Mazdā made an offering to him, and Tištriia, with the renewed strength of ten horses, camels, and bulls, ten mountains and rivers, defeated Apaoša. The rains fell and revitalized the seven regions of the earth (Yt. 8.20–34). Tištriia then overcame the pairikā (female demonic being or “witch”) of famine Dužiiāiriiā “(the one bringing) bad year/harvest” (Yt. 8.50–55).

In the Bundahišn, Tištriia (MP Teštar) is identified as the star Sirius, integrating the myth of the former with astrology. Sirius/Teštar is said to disperse the waters of the atmosphere, spreading them as rain over the earth and seas. At the renovation, Tištriia will restore and nourish the material creation. The fourth month of the Zoroastrian year is dedicated to Tištriia, which falls at around the same time as that of Tammuz in the Hebrew calendar. At some point, Tištriia became identified with “Tīr,” a western Iranian name for the planet Mercury, but also connected by folk etymology with the Middle Persian word for “arrow.” This link may have arisen from the early representation of Tištriia flying across the sky towards the sea Vourukaša as swiftly as the arrow shot by the Iranian archer Ǝrəxša (Yt. 8.6–7, 37–38).

Verethragna

The association of the yazata Tištriia with the release of the waters is paralleled with a Vedic myth in which Indra slays the serpent/dragon Vṛtra (“coverer”), who is blocking the flow of the waters of the world. For this action, Indra is named Vr̥trahan—“overcomer of Vṛtra.” The Iranian form of this epithet is used in the name of the yazata Verethragna (Av. Vərəθ‎raγ‎na)—smasher of obstruction,” whose hymn (Warahrān Yašt) praises ten incarnations of the deity as he opposes foes in the form of a strong wind, a bull with golden horns, a white horse, a camel, a male boar, a fifteen-year-old youth (the ideal age in Old Iranian thought), a swift hawk, a wild ram, a fighting buck with sharp horns, and a Mazdā-made man with a golden dagger. In his boar form, Verethragna is said to speed in front of Mithra to bring a gory punishment to those who break their bond (Yt. 10.70–72).

A syncretistic onomastic, “Artagnes (Verethragna)-Herakles-Ares” at Nemrud Dağı, dating to the 1st century bce, denotes the identification of Verethragna with the Greek mythical hero Herakles. This connection is reiterated in the bilingual Greek and Parthian inscription of the Arsacid king Walγ‎aš (Greek, Vologeses), son of Mihrdāt (Greek, Mithradates), dating to 151 ce, inscribed on the bronze statue of the “god Verethragna” (Parthian, Warhraγ‎n baγ‎: Greek “Herakles”), which the king brought from Mesene, and placed in the temple of Tīr (Parthian, Tir: Greek Apollo).

Although there is no Avestan connection of Verethragna with dragon-slaying, the epithet does appear elsewhere in mythology that reflects an enduring ancient Iranian lore: reference to dragon-slaying divinities in Sogdian Manichaean and Armenian texts use the names “Wašaγ‎n,” and “Vahagn,” respectively, which derive from OIr. vərəθ‎raγ‎na-.

Sraoša

Sraoša, meaning “readiness to listen,” is the name of the yazata who was first to tie the barsom, to make an offering to Ahura Mazdā and to sing the Gāthās (Y. 57).21 According to Zoroastrian eschatology, while the soul of the dead person remains within the world of the living for three days, it is under the protection of Sraoša. On the fourth morning after death, Sraoša accompanies the soul over the crossing place to paradise. In the Vidēvdād, the assistant priest to Sraoša (Av. sraošāuuarəza-), is the rooster, who is the first to see the sun, and whose crowing announces the dawn and banishes the demon of sloth (Vd. 18.14–15).

These functions of Sraoša seem to have been figuratively represented on Sogdian funerary monuments discovered this century near the city of Xi’an, in northern central China. Reliefs on several mortuary couches and one sarcophagus depict pairs of Zoroastrian priests performing funerary rituals on behalf of the dead in a similar manner to those on ossuaries from Sogdiana: those found in a Chinese context depict the priests with bird legs, wings and tail, apparently epitomizing the redemptive activity of Sraoša (figure 8).

Sraoša is the only Zoroastrian yazata to re-appear in Islam as a divine being, in the figure Sorūš. Around the beginning of the 14th century, illustrated New Persian narratives of the Miʿrāj-nāme (“Book of Ascension”) contain images of the moment on the night journey of the prophet Muhammad, when He leaves the first stage of Heaven and observes a white co*ckerel. In the text, Gabriel informs Muhammad that this co*ckerel is an angel “who keeps track of the hours of day and night” and whose call praising God at the hour of prayer is heard and repeated by its earthly counterparts. This is Sorūš.

Vayu

A relief on the sarcophagus of a Sogdian Zoroastrian interred in Xi’an in the 6th century ce depicts not only a pair of bird-priests who exemplify the actions of Sraoša, but also an image of the good Vayu, the Avestan yazata of the wind. On the tomb, Vayu takes a prominent place overseeing the judgment of the individual and welcoming him to paradise. In one Young Avestan passage, Vayu (Av. Vaiiu-) as a “sweet-scented wind from the south” greets the soul of the aṣ̌-->auuan (“follower of aṣ̌-->a,” “righteous” person; HN 2.7–8). Bundahišn tells how good Vayu (MP Wāy ī weh) takes the soul of the “righteous” (MP ahlaw) by the hand and brings it to its rightful place in the upper atmosphere: “and the good Wāy would seize by the hand the souls of the righteous ones, upon crossing the Činwad bridge, and take them to his own abode” (ud ruwān ī ahlawān ka pad Čēh-widarg widerēd Wāy ī weh dast abar gīrēd ud ō ān ī xwēš gāh bared: G.Bd. 26.29; 30.23).

Avestan Vayu has a counterpart in Old Indic Vāyu, which is the “energy or movement of air,” the “breath that gives life.” The Avesta also portrays Vayu as an atmospheric yazata, bringing life in the rainclouds and death in the storm: in this duality of function he is somewhat ambiguous, with a “good” and “bad” side. The prominence accorded to Vayu in Sogdian Zoroastrian depiction indicates his enduring powerful role in the realm between that of Ahura Mazdā and Angra Mainyu. In one Avestan passage, Ahura Mazdā offers sacrifices to Vayu, in order to be able to defeat evil and preserve the good creation (Yt. 15.2–3)

Yima

Another Indo-Iranian parallel is found in the concept of the twin, who becomes the Yama of R̥g Veda, the first mortal who discovered the way to the “other world” (RV 10.14.1, 2), and Yima in the Avesta, the son of Vivanghvant (Av. Vivaŋᵛhan-), the first man to prepare the libation of the haoma plant (Y. 9.4). Although the Old Iranian narrative of Yima diverges from the Old Indic, a connection with an underground existence is retained. After declining Ahura Mazdā’s request to become the bearer of the religion in the material world, Yima is given rulership of the seven parts of the earth, over mortals and daēuuas, “wizards and witches” (Vd. 2.4–7; Yt. 19.30–33). Yima could free people and herds of animals from death, plants and rivers from drought (Y. 9.4,5) and had the power to provide humans with imperishable food (Yt. 15.16). Even the winds blew neither hot nor cold during his long-lasting reign, when humans, creatures, and fires multiplied, and the world doubled in size. According to the Vidēvdād, over the course of his nine hundred-year rule, Yima caused the earth to expand by a third three times, in order to accommodate the ever-growing population of animals and humans (Vd. 2.8–19).

Yima is known as yima xšaēta “Yima the shining, or radiant,” who was the most glorious among men. His name becomes J̌am(šēd) in Middle Persian and New Persian texts, and he remains one of the great heroes of Iranian tradition, epitomizing the ideal of kingly power. In the Dēnkard, J̌am(šēd) is said to have driven away four major vices from existence (Dk. 9.5.4).

But Yima’s rule did not last forever, since he was guilty of a “sin” or “fault” (Av. aēnah-: Y. 32.8), although it is not clear what this was. The Zamyād yašt relates how a lie entered Yima’s mind and the divine fortune (Av. xᵛarənah-) departed from him, to become the focus of a tense struggle between heroes and tyrannical forces (Yt. 19.34–38). The Vidēvdād does not attribute any misdeed to Yima, but Ahura Mazdā tells him that he must withdraw to an enclosure (Av. vara-)—which some Middle Persian texts, such as Mēnōy ī Xrad and the Bundahišn, deem to be underground—and which is lit by its own light and supplied with flowing water, in order that he and the best animals, plants, and humans might survive the bitter winter that will afflict the material existence following his rule (Vd. 2.27–28). This decision to protect select samples of each species in the vara and to let others perish is a radical departure from the previous expansion of the world to accommodate all living entities. Later eschatology explained that the people and animals from the vara would repopulate the world to bring a brief period of renewal before the upheavals at the end of historical time (G.Bd.33.30). Both Zamyād yašt and Bundahišn hint at a strange fate to Yima (MP J̌am)—a literal “twinning” when he is “sawn,” or “cut” (in half?) by evil beings, who are named as Dahāg (< Av. Aži- Dahāka-), the dragon-king who succeeded him, and Spitiiura, who bears the Avestan title “Yima-cutter” (yimō.kərəṇta-: Yt. 19.46; G.Bd. 35.5). A similar gory end is retained in Šāhnāme, where Jamšēd is toppled by his own hubris, and flees, but is found by Żaḥḥāk (< MP. Dahāg) by the Sea of China, hiding in a tree, and sawn in half.22

Aži Dahāka/(Az)dahāg/Żaḥḥāk

In one Avestan yašt, Aži Dahāka is presented in conflict with Ātar—the fire that is emblematic of Ahura Mazdā—for possession of the xᵛarənah, the glory that resides with the ruler chosen by Ahura Mazdā, after it has left Yima (Yt. 19.46–50). Avestan aži- means snake or dragon, cognate with Indic ahi. The yašt describes Aži Dahāka as having three heads, three mouths, six eyes, and a thousand powers: he is the “deceiving lie” (Av. daēuuī- druj-), and the “evil liar/deceitful one” (Av. aγ‎a- druuuaṇt-) who threatened the world of living beings (Av. gaēθ‎ā-) with chaos (Yt. 19.37). The serpentine ruler sought to obliterate humans from the seven climes of the earth—that is, the whole world—but his plea was rejected by both Anāhitā and Vayu, who granted the hero Thraetaona (Av. Θ‎raētaona) his request to overcome the powerful Druj (Yt. 5.29–35; 15.19–25). After grasping the xᵛarənah for a time, Aži Dahāka is overthrown by Thraetaona, who comes to rule in his stead. In the Middle Persian Zoroastrian texts, Azdahāg’s reign from Babylon is said to have lasted for a thousand years (G.Bd. 33.2; Dk. 7.4.72).

Thraetaona, son of Athiya (Av. Āθβ‎iia-), whose name is cognate with Vedic Traitana (but whose typology parallels that of the Old Indic hero Trita Āptya) becomes in Middle Persian Frēdōn, then New Persian, Farīdūn/Fereydūn, the Kayanian king who comes to rule after defeating the tyrant Żaḥḥāk with his mace.23 In the Dēnkard account, Frēdōn is warned by Ahura Mazdā not to slay Azdahāg because snakes, frogs, toads, scorpions, and lizards would emerge from him, bringing chaos to the world. So Frēdōn bound Azdahāg with fetters in Mt. Damāvand (Dk. 9.21.8–12). The Bundahišn describes how, in the final millennium of historical time, Azdahāg will break loose from his mountain captivity to devour a third of the living creatures created by Ahura Mazdā (G.Bd. 33.33). The great warrior Kerešaspa (Av. Kərəšaspa, MP Garšasp) will be roused to smite the dragon with his club, and he will be vanquished for all time at the renovation (DD 37.97, 121).

In the Šāhnāme, Żaḥḥāk, although a mortal tyrant, is also associated with snakes. Eblīs (the Šāhnāme form of Ahreman), in the guise of his cook, so pleased Żaḥḥāk with delicious food that the king granted him a boon: Eblīs asked only to kiss the king’s shoulders, but from the place where his lips touched, two black snakes grew. The snakes had to be fed the brains of humans, so as to not destroy those of their host Żaḥḥāk. In this way, the land begins to be emptied of humans, just as Aži Dahāka had desired in the Avestan hymns. The dragon-defeating and slaying myth relating to Aži Dahāka/Żaḥḥāk echoes others in Indo-European mythology, not least the story of Beowulf, but also Indra’s smiting of Ahi Vṛtra. Parallels are also found in the Enuma Elish account of Marduk’s defeat of Tiamat and her serpentine army.

Saēna Meregha/Simorḡ

Other fabulous creatures in Old Iranian myth include the benevolent Saēna bird (Av. saēna- mərəaa-), whose tree of healing stands in the middle of Lake Vourukaša, potent with medicinal properties and containing the seeds of all plants (Yt. 12.17). In Middle Persian texts, the bird known as the sēn murw rose from the tree, disturbed the branches, scattering their seeds and fertilizing the earth (MX 61.37–41). Myths about the Saēna bird must have continued among Iranians, since she features as the Simorḡ in the Šāhnāme, as well as in folktales and mystical texts. In Šāhnāme, Simorḡ appears in the story of the warrior Sām, who cursed his child (later named Zāl) for having white hair. Sām commanded that his son be left to die in a remote spot, but Zāl was rescued by Simorḡ, who raised him with her own offspring in her mountain eyrie. As he grew to manhood, Zāl’s stature and prowess reached the court and Sām came to reclaim his son. To protect Zāl against difficulty or dispute, Simorḡ gave him a single feather from her wing, which he was to cast into the fire to summon her. She is called twice to help: once to heal Zāl’s wife Rūdābe at the birth of their son Rostam, and again to heal the adult Rostam—now a great Iranian warrior—and his horse, Rakhsh, from wounds inflicted by arrows shot by Esfandiyār, another legendary Iranian warrior.

Simorḡ became a leitmotif in New Persian literature, often employed as a metaphor for the divine. The most well-known of such texts is Farīd-al-Dīn ʿAttār’s “Conference of the Birds” (Manṭeq al-ṭayr), written in the late 12th century. The trope of being nurtured by an animal or bird is found in many Indo-European myths, including the story of Romulus and Remus, who are suckled by a she-wolf. In an Iranian context, Achaemenes, the eponymous ancestor of the Achaemenid kings, was said, in an early 3rd century ce Greek account, to have been reared by an eagle in a manner similar to Gilgamesh (Aelian, De natura animalium 12.21).

Rostam

The heroic figure of Rostam is not part of the extant Avesta but does appear to belong to an ancient stratum of Iranian lore and is one of the foremost characters of later Iranian epic. Rostam features prominently in the Šāhnāme, where many of his characteristics are similar to those of Bhīṣma in the Indic Mahābhārata; the parallel denotes that this type of “warrior guardian of dynastic rule” derives from an earlier, Indo-Iranian model.24 A story of Rostam fighting the dēws was discovered in an 8th or 9th century Sogdian fragment from the Library cave at Dunhuang, and several frescoes featuring Rostam have been found in private homes at Panjikant in modern Tajikistan. The fact that the Sogdian story has stylistic features in common with the Avestan description of Zarathustra’s own struggle with the daēuuas (Vd. 19. 45–46) is evidence of the endurance of ancient oral traditions in eastern Iran.25 Both the Sogdian text and iconography reference Rostam’s great red horse Rakhsh, as does Šāhnāme. “Rostam Sagdjik” (Rostam the “Saka,” or “Scythian”) was known to the (ca.) 5th century Armenian historian Movses Xorenac‘i, who noted that the Persians claimed that Rostam possessed the strength of 120 elephants. One Persian epithet for Rostam in Šāhnāme is pīltan, “elephant-bodied”; another is tāj-bakhsh, “bestower of the crown,” which is in keeping with his role as heroic protector of the Iranian monarchy and Iran itself. That Ferdowsi focuses on Rostam’s dew-killing and does not mention the dragon-slaying hero Kərəsaspa at all, has led some scholars to identify the former as a double of the latter.26

Siyāvōš and Afrāsiāb

The ancient city of Bukhara, now in modern Uzbekistan, once Sogdiana, is said to have been founded by a mythical Iranian hero named Siyāvōš (Av. Siiāuuaršan, MP Siyāvaxš), who was buried under one of the gates inside the fortress. This eastern Iranian legend relates to Siiāuuaršan of the Avesta, who is said to have been killed by the Turanian Agraeratha (Av. Aγ‎raēraθ‎a), against whom his son Haosrauuah sought revenge (Yt. 5.49–50; Yt. 19.77). The name Siiāuuaršan means “one who possess black stallions.” Middle Persian Zoroastrian texts present Siyāvaxš as the ideal man: handsome, brave, and a skilled warrior, who built Kang dez—a mythical fortress. According to the Bundahišn narrative, Siyāvaxš went to “Turkestan” (equated with the eastern territory of Tūiriia in the Avesta) to fight its ruler Afrāsiāb (Av. Fraŋrasiian; MP Frāsiyā), but chose not to return to Iran because of Sudābe, the wife of Kay Us (Av. Kauui Usan, NP Kay Kāyus:), his father. Instead, he came under the protection of Afrāsiāb whose daughter he married, and by whom he had a son, Kay Husrōy (NP Ḵosrow), before being killed in Tūrān.

Ferdowsi elaborated this story in Šāhnāme, vividly describing the ordeal by fire that Siyāvōš endured in Iran to prove his innocence following the false accusation by his stepmother Sudābe of rape and abortion. Siyāvōš then removed himself from Iran to the court of Afrāsiāb in Tūrān, where his heroic exploits caused jealousy. Afrāsiāb was persuaded to attack and execute his son-in-law. From the places where the blood of Siyāvōš pools on the ground, a plant grows, later known as “the blood of Siyāvōš.” Local Sogdian folklore concerning Siyāvōš is preserved in Narshakhi’s 10th-century Persian “History of Bukhara” (Tārikh-e Bokhāra), including the account of an annual mourning ritual for him on the day of the springtime New Year (Now Ruz). Narshakhi records that minstrels recited the well-known story of the slaying of Siyāvōš in songs called “the weeping of the magi.”27