Bibliography
Every citation in the compendium, grouped by tier. No reference here is fabricated; a consensus (flagged) item is an honestly-flagged scholarly position awaiting a verified secondary citation.
primary (23)
- DNa §1; DPd; DE; DSe (the creation preamble, Old Persian royal inscriptions) → Ahura Mazdā
- Behistun (DB) §5 and passim — Ahuramazda grants the kingship → Ahura Mazdā
- The Gāthās (Yasna 28–34, 43–51, 53) — Ahura Mazdā as the Wise Lord → Ahura Mazdā
- Herodotus 1.131 — the Persians sacrifice to 'Zeus' (the sky/high god) on the mountaintops → Ahura Mazdā
- Behistun (DB) §§10, 52–54, 63–64 — the rebels as 'lie-followers', Ahuramazda's aid to the truthful king → Arta (Truth, right order)
- DNb §§2, 8 (Darius's tomb creed: friend to the right; the doer of the Lie punished) → Arta (Truth, right order)
- Herodotus 1.138 — lying and debt as the Persians' greatest disgraces → Arta (Truth, right order)
- Avesta, the Gāthās, on aša as cosmic + moral order → Arta (Truth, right order)
- DB (the Behistun inscription), Old Persian text; ed. Kent, Old Persian (1953); Schmitt, Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum → The Behistun Inscription (DB)
- The Aramaic version of DB among the Elephantine papyri (Cowley 1923) → The Behistun Inscription (DB)
- Herodotus 3.61–79 — the Greek tradition of Gaumāta and the accession, to compare → The Behistun Inscription (DB)
- Old Persian royal inscriptions: DB (Behistun); DNa, DNb (Darius's tomb); XPh (Xerxes' daiva inscription) → Religion & the Lie: the Achaemenid religious world
- Herodotus 1.131–140 — the fullest classical account of Persian religion → Religion & the Lie: the Achaemenid religious world
- Strabo 15.3.13–15; Xenophon, Cyropaedia 8.1, 8.3 — the Magi and royal rites → Religion & the Lie: the Achaemenid religious world
- The Persepolis Fortification tablets — rations for Ahura Mazdā and other gods together → Religion & the Lie: the Achaemenid religious world
- Ezra 1, 6; Isaiah 45; the Cyrus Cylinder — the tolerationist self-presentation → Religion & the Lie: the Achaemenid religious world
- Behistun (DB) §§10–11, 52, 54, 63–67 — the pretenders 'lied'; the warning against the Lie → The Drauga (the Lie)
- DNb §8 — the doer of the Lie is not befriended; is punished → The Drauga (the Lie)
- Herodotus 1.138 — lying the greatest Persian disgrace → The Drauga (the Lie)
- Herodotus 1.101 (a Median tribe), 1.132 (no sacrifice without a magus; the chant), 1.140 (the killing of creatures; exposure of the dead) → The Magi
- Herodotus 3.61–79 — Gaumāta the Magus and the magophonia → The Magi
- Strabo 15.3.13–15 — the Magi, the fire, the barsom, the rites in Cappadocia and Persis → The Magi
- Behistun (DB) §§11–13 — Gaumāta the magus and his overthrow (Darius's account) → The Magi
consensus (flagged) (4)
- On the Mazdaean-not-necessarily-Zoroastrian consensus and the winged-disc debate — the standard surveys treat the state cult as Mazdaean and the disc-figure as contested; upgrade with specific references when the works are fetched + checked → Ahura Mazdā
- On Rawlinson's decipherment and on the 'Darius as usurper' minority reading — upgrade with specific references when the works are fetched + checked → The Behistun Inscription (DB)
- The scholarly consensus on Mazdaism vs Zoroastrianism, and on the daiva inscription — upgrade to specific secondary citations (Briant, Kuhrt, de Jong, etc.) as fetched + verified → Religion & the Lie: the Achaemenid religious world
- On the modern suspicion that Darius, not Gaumāta, was the usurper — a live scholarly minority position; upgrade with specific references when checked → The Drauga (the Lie)