Zarathustra - the founder of Zoroastrianism

The early Greeks considered him a very ancient prophet and place him around 6000 BC.

Based on literary evidence Zarathustra lived 258 years before Alexander. This means he was active in 588 BC. Some scholars propose the dates 628-551 BC for Zarathustra’s life.

According to Pahlavi tradition, Zarathustra’s family name was Spitama. He was the son of Pouroushsapa, who owned many horses. His mother was Dughdova, a milkmaid from the clan of the Hvogavs.

Their house was by the banks of the river Dareja in Airyanem-Vaejah, where also flowed the river Daitya.

For 10 years Zarathustra meditated on life’s problems. He attained enlightenment on Mount Ushi-daren and returned to the world of men to teach the new faith.

Zarathustra believed in a supreme deity, Ahura Mazda, the Lord of Truth. Ahura Mazda gave birth to twin entities, the good spirit and the evil spirit.

Zarathustra is said to have married Havovi, the daughter of Frashaoshtra, a minster at the Bactrian court; the couple has six children. For the next 30 years Zarathustra continued his missionary activities.

His prophetic mission lasted the rest of his life, receiving and delivering the divine message to those who would listen.

When he was 77 years old, while praying at the fire temple at Balkh (in modern Kabul), he was stabbed by an assassin from Iraq.
Zarathustra - the founder of Zoroastrianism

The religion of Sassanid

The Sassanid Dynasty that ruled Iran from AD 224 to 651 replaced the Parthian Empire.  The Sassanid saw themselves as successors of the Achaemenid after the Hellenistic and Parthian interlude and believed that it was their destiny to restore the greatness of Persian.

The religion of Sassanid, as it had been with Achaemenid and Parthians, was Zoroastrianism. By the time of Sassanids, this dualist religion, developed by Zarathustra or Zoroaster from Iranian sky and war gods, had found a balance in the worship of moral truth of the supreme deity, Ahura Mazda. The first Sassanid king Ardashir I, accomplished a revival of Zoroastrianism by publishing holy texts in 226 called the Zend Avesta, which outlined the tenets of the religion.

Sassanid religious policies contributed to the flourishing of numerous religious reform movements, the most important were Manichean and Mazdakian religious doctrines.

Under the Sassanids, the Zoroastrian, priesthood became more structured and organized across the empire.

By the sixth century, each province or region had a chief priest tasked with maintaining spiritual and ecclesiastical harmony while a Priest of Priests oversaw the whole of the Zoroastrian hierarchy, much like the Patriarchs and Popes of Christianity.

The Sasanians presented themselves as pious Zoroastrians, putting religious images on their coins and buildings.

The Sassanid emperors’ religious zeal fueled upheavals and ethno-religious disputes in the empire and caused genocide and deportation of many tribes and ethnic groups.

Alongside Zoroastrianism, other religious, primarily Judaism, Christianity and Buddhism, also existed in Sassanid society.

In the fourth century AD, Constantine adopted Christianity as the official religion of the Byzantine Empire. The Sassanids battled fiercely in Byzantine, claiming Armenia in the process.
The religion of Sassanid

Karnak Temple Complex

The origins of Karnak lay at beginning of the Middle Kingdom around 2000 BC with the creation of a modest shrine to Amen-Re. Karnak was a magnificent complex, containing about five temples.

The development of the temple of Amen-Re at Karnak can only be understood as a function of its extraordinary religious significance for the ancient Egyptians.

During the 18th Dynasty (1550-1075 BC)), the period of Egyptian imperial expansion, warrior kings came to Karnak to beg victory from the hands do Amen-Re. Later in thanks for their success, they poured booty plundered from foreign lands into the coffers at the Karnak temple.

Successive kings added to the temple building complex for more than 500 years, until eventually Karnak became so rich and reached gigantic size.

Ramses II (19th Dynasty) also contributed sections, and other pharaohs added chapels to the complex as late as the 26th Dynasty. Enclosing the 247 acre complex and shutting it off from the outside world was a perimeter wall 39 feet high and 26 feet thick.

Having vanished from memory, its true scientific rediscovery would not come until Napoleon’s expedition in 1799.
Karnak Temple Complex

History of Zoroastrianism

Zoroastrianism is the oldest of the revealed creedal religions and it has probably had more influence on mankind, directly and indirectly, than any other single faith.

Zoroaster was the founder of Zoroastrianism. He lived in what for his people were prehistoric times. There is evidence to suggest that he flourished when the Stone Age was giving away for Iranians to the Bronze Age that is possibly about 1400 and 1200 BC.

He is credited with the authorship of the Yasna Haptanghaiti as well as the Gathas, hymns of Zoroaster which are at the liturgical core of Zoroastrian thinking. Most of his life is known through the Zoroastrian texts.

The linguistic evidence shows that his home must have been among the Iranian of the north-east, and it is probable that his own people settled eventually in Khwarezmia, the land along the lower course of the Oxus.

Zoroastrianism, in its own right it was the state religion of three great Iranian empires (Achaemenid, Parthian, and Sasanian empires) which flourished almost continually from the sixth century BC to the seventh century AC and dominated much of the Near and Middle East.

Toward the end of 2nd millennium BC, the Iranian tribes moved south off the steppes and gradually conquered and settled the land which later called Iran, Eastern Iranians evidently carried Zoroastrianism with them and eventually western Iranians i.e. Medes and Persian also adopted the faith.

It became the religion of the Achaemenians, whose empire was the greatest in the ancient world.
History of Zoroastrianism