Topic: religion (6)

• ConceptAhura Mazdā

  The supreme god of the Achaemenid kings, the "Wise Lord", named at the head of the royal inscriptions as creator of earth, heaven, and man, and as the god who bestows kingship and upholds order against the Lie.

• ConceptArta (Truth, right order)

  The Iranian principle of truth, righteousness, and cosmic and social order, opposed to the Lie (drauga); the moral axis of Achaemenid royal ideology and, later, a central concept of Zoroastrianism.

• Survey essayReligion & the Lie: the Achaemenid religious world

  A survey of Achaemenid religion: the worship of Ahura Mazdā and the ideology of Truth against the Lie; the Magi and their rites of fire, oath, and death; the toleration of subject gods; and the vexed question of the kings' relationship to Zoroaster.

• SourceThe Behistun Inscription (DB)

  Darius I's monumental cliff-relief and trilingual inscription recounting his seizure and defence of the throne against Gaumāta and a wave of rebels; the single most important primary source for the reign, and the key that deciphered cuneiform.

• ConceptThe Drauga (the Lie)

  The Iranian principle of falsehood and disorder, the cosmic and political adversary of arta (Truth); in Darius's Behistun inscription, the force embodied by every rebel and pretender against the rightful king.

• PeopleThe Magi

  The hereditary Iranian priestly class (originally, Herodotus says, a Median tribe) who conducted sacrifice, tended the sacred fire, interpreted dreams and omens, and presided over rites of birth, oath, and death in the Achaemenid world.