Iran: Empire of the Mind (4 page)

Paralleling Ahura Mazda and Ahriman were two principles, sometimes translated as good and evil but more precisely as Truth and the Lie:
asha
and
druj.
These terms recur insistently in the Avestan texts, along with the concept of Justice: but also in surviving inscriptions (in old Persian the words became
arta
and
drauga
) and in Western classical texts describing Iran or events in Iran. In the centuries after Zoroaster there were different currents and separate sects within the Mazdaean tradition, representing both innovations, survivals from the pre-Zoroastrian religions, and various compromises between them. The priestly class, the Magi (listed by Herodotus as a distinct tribe within the Medes) survived from before the time of Zoroaster and, as all priests do, interpreted and adapted doctrine and ritual to suit their own purposes, while remaining remarkably faithful to the central oral tradition.

The history of the relationship between Iranians and Jews is almost as old as the history of Iran itself, and some scholars believe that Judaism changed significantly under Mazdaean influence in the period of the Babylonian exile (the logical corollary, the possibility of Judaic influence on Mazdaism, seems to have received less attention). After the conquest of the northern Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians around 720
BCE
, large numbers of Jews were removed to Media, among other places, setting up long-lived Jewish communities, notably in Ecbatana/Hamadan. A second wave of deportations, this time to Babylonian territory, took place in the 590s and 580s
BCE
, under Nebuchadnezzar, who destroyed the temple of Solomon in 586. Babylon came under Persian control in the 530s, and many of the Jews returned thereafter (though most of them not until some decades later). The trauma of the Babylonian exile was never forgotten, and it marked a watershed in Jewish history in several ways. One of the leaders of the return from Babylon, the scribe Ezra, is believed to have been the first to write down the books of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible, the books of Moses). He did so in a new script, the Hebrew script used ever since (that used by the Jews before the exile was different). Post-exile Judaism laid greater emphasis on adherence to the Torah, and on monotheism.

For hundreds of years thereafter, first under the Persian empire and later under Hellenistic rulers, diaspora Jewish and Mazdaean religious communities
lived adjacent to each other in cities all over the Middle East.
⁸
It seems plain that many religious ideas became common currency (the Qumran scrolls indicate some crossover of religious concepts from Mazdaism).
⁹
Another important and creative period for Judaism came later, after the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucids, and later still, when a definitive version of the Talmud was compiled and edited in Mesopotamia in the fourth and fifth centuries AD—again in an Iranian context (under the Sassanid empire). It is a controversial subject, and the relative obscurity of Mazdaism and Zoroastrianism in western scholarship until recent times has helped to conceal the influence of Mazdaism on Judaism, but as further work is done, the more significant it is likely to be found. Perhaps the strongest indicator is the positive attitude of the Jewish texts toward the Persians.

There are a number of contradictions between the later practice of Zoroastrianism, as it has come down to us in the written scriptures, and the apparent norms of the Mazdaean religion at this earliest stage, and many of the problems are difficult to resolve. It is a complex picture. But the concepts of heaven and hell, of free human choice between good and evil, of divine judgement, of angels, of a single creator-god, all appear to have been genuine early features of the religion, and were all hugely influential for religions that originated later. Mazdaism was the first religion, in this part of the world at least, to move beyond cult and totemism to address moral and philosophical problems with its theology, from an individualistic standpoint that laid emphasis on personal choice and responsibility. In that limited sense, if in few others in this context, Nietzsche was right—Zoroaster was the first creator of the moral world we live in.
Also sprach Zarathustra.

Cyrus and the Achaemenids

Around 559
BCE
a Persian prince called Cyrus (modern Persian
Kurosh
), claiming descent from the royal house of Persia and from its progenitor Achaemenes, became king of Anshan on the death of his father. Persia and Anshan at that time were still subject to the Median Empire, but Cyrus led a revolt against the Median king Astyages, and in 549 captured the Median capital, Ecbatana (modern Hamadan). Cyrus reversed the relationship between Media and Persia, making himself king of Persia,
making Media the junior partner, and Persia the centre of the Empire. But he did not stop there. He went on to conquer Lydia, in Asia Minor, taking possession of the treasury of King Croesus, legendary for his wealth throughout antiquity. He also conquered the remaining territories of Asia Minor, and also Phoenicia, Judaea and Babylonia, creating an enormous empire that stretched from the Greek cities on the eastern coast of the Aegean to the banks of the river Indus—in extent perhaps the greatest empire the world had seen up to that time.

But without romanticising him unduly, and although it took on much of the culture of previous Elamite, Assyrian and Babylonian empires (notably in its written script and monumental iconography), it seems that Cyrus aspired to rule an empire different from others that had preceded it in the region. Portentous inscriptions recording the military glory of Kings and the supposed favour of their terrible war-gods were a commonplace in the Middle East in the centuries preceding Cyrus’s accession. In the nineteenth century an eight-sided clay object (known since as the Taylor Prism after the man who found it) measuring about 15 inches long by 5.5 inches in diameter, covered in cuneiform script, was found near Mosul. When the characters were eventually deciphered, it was found to record eight campaigns of the Assyrian king Sennacherib (705
BCE
–681
BCE
). An excerpt reads:

Sennacherib, the great king… king of the world, king of Assyria, king of the four quarters… guardian of right, lover of justice, who lends support, who comes to the aid of the needy, who performs pious acts, perfect hero, mighty man, first among all princes, the flame who consumes those who do not submit, who strikes the wicked with the thunderbolt; the god Assur, the great mountain, has entrusted an unrivaled kinship to me… has made powerful my weapons… he has brought the black-headed people in submission at my feet; and mighty kings feared my warfare…

In the course of my campaign, Beth-Dagon, Joppa, Banaibarka, Asuru, cities of Sidka, who had not speedily bowed in submission at my feet, I besieged, I conquered, I carried off their spoils… I approached Ekron and slew the governors and nobles who had rebelled, and hung their bodies on stakes around the city…

As for Hezekiah the Jew, who did not submit to my yoke: 46 of his strong, walled cities… by means of ramps and by bringing up siege-engines… I besieged and took them. 200,150 people, great and small, male and female, horses, mules, asses, camels, cattle and sheep without number, I brought away from them and counted as spoil…
¹⁰

The way that the pharaohs of Egypt celebrated their rule and their victories was similar, and although Hezekiah, the king of Jerusalem, appears on the Taylor Prism as a victim, some parts of the Bible describing the Israelites and their God smiting their enemies do not read very differently.

By contrast, another not dissimilar clay object, about nine inches by four inches, also discovered in the nineteenth century and covered in cuneiform script, tells a rather different story. The Cyrus cylinder, now in the British Museum, was found where it had been deliberately placed under the foundations of the city wall of Babylon, and has been described as a charter of human rights for the ancient world. This is an exaggeration and a misrepresentation, but the message of the cylinder, particularly when combined with what is known of Cyrus’s religious policy from the books of Ezra and Isaiah, is nonetheless remarkable. The kingly preamble from the cylinder is fairly conventional:

I am Cyrus, king of the world, great king, rightful king, king of Babylon, king of Sumer and Akkad, king of the four quarters (of the earth), son of Cambyses, great king, king of Anshan, grandson of Cyrus, great king, king of Anshan, descendant of Teispes, great king, king of Anshan, of a family that always exercised kingship…

but it continues, describing the favour shown to Cyrus by the Babylonian god Marduk:

When I entered Babylon as a friend and when I established the seat of the government in the palace of the ruler under jubilation and rejoicing, Marduk, the great lord, induced the magnanimous inhabitants of Babylon to love me, and I was daily endeavouring to worship him. My numerous troops walked around in Babylon in peace, I did not allow anybody to terrorize any place of the country of Sumer and Akkad. I strove for peace in Babylon and in all his other sacred cities…

and concludes:

As to the region… as far as Assur and Susa, Agade, Eshnunna, the towns of Zamban, Me-Turnu, Der as well as the region of the Gutians, I returned to these sanctuaries on the other side of the Tigris, the sanctuaries of which had been ruins for a long time, the images which used to live therein and established for them permanent sanctuaries. I also gathered all their former inhabitants and returned to them their habitations. Furthermore, I resettled upon the command of Marduk, the great lord, all the gods of Sumer and Akkad whom Nabonidus had brought into Babylon to the anger of the lord of the gods, unharmed, in their former chapels, the places that make them happy.
¹¹

Like the proud declarations of Sennacherib, this is propaganda, but it is propaganda of a different kind, presenting Cyrus in a different light, and according to a different scale of values. Cyrus chose to present himself showing respect to the Babylonian deity, Marduk, and declared that he had returned to other towns and territories the holy images that previous Babylonian kings had confiscated. Perhaps it would have been different if Cyrus had conquered Babylon by force, rather than marching into it unopposed (in 539
BCE
) after its inhabitants revolted against the last Babylonian king, Nabonidus. Cyrus was a ruthless, ambitious man; no-one ever conquered an empire without those characteristics in full measure. But we know that Cyrus permitted freedom of worship to the Jews too. He and his successors permitted them to return home from exile and to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem (being accorded in the Jewish scriptures a unique status among gentile monarchs in return).

The logic of statecraft alone might have suggested that it would be more sustainable in the long run to let subjects conduct their own affairs and worship as they pleased, but that policy had to be acceptable to the Iranian elite also, including the priests, the Magi, and (leaving aside the question of Cyrus’s own personal beliefs, which remain unclear) it is reasonable to see in the policy some of the spirit of moral earnestness and justice that pervaded the religion of Zoroaster. The presence of those values in the background helps to explain why the Cyrus cylinder is couched in such different terms from the militaristic thunder and arrogance of Sennacherib. The old answer was terror and a big stick, but the Persian Empire would be run in a more devolved, permissive spirit. Once again, an encounter with complexity, acceptance of that complexity, and a response. This was something new.

Unfortunately, according to Herodotus, Cyrus did not end his life as gloriously as he had lived it. Having conquered in the west, he turned to
campaign east of the Caspian, and according to one version was defeated and killed in battle by Queen Tomyris of the Massagetae, another Iranian tribe who fought mainly on horseback, like the Scythians.

The Massagetae are interesting because they appear to have maintained some ancient Iranian customs that may shed some light on the status of women in Persian society under the Achaemenids. There are signs in Herodotus (Book 1:216) that the Massagetae showed some features of a matrilineal, polyandrous society, in which women might have a number of husbands or sexual partners (but men only one). Patricia Crone has suggested that this feature may resurface in the apparent holding of women in common practised later by the Mazdakites in the fifth century
AD
and the Khorramites after the Islamic conquest
¹²
, which might indicate an underlying folk tradition. Mazdaism certainly permitted a practice whereby an impotent man could give his wife temporarily to another in order to obtain a child (it also sanctioned the marriage of close relatives). But in general the custom of Persian society seems to have limited the status of women, following practices elsewhere in the Middle East. Royal and noble women may have been able to own property in their own right and even, on occasion, to exert some political influence; but this seems to have been an exception associated with high status rather than indicative of practices prevalent in society more widely
¹³
.

Cyrus’s body was brought back to Persia, to Pasargadae, his capital, to rest in a tomb there that can still be seen (though its contents have long since disappeared). The tomb is massively simple rather than grandiose; a sepulchre the size of a small house on a raised, stepped plinth. This tomb burial has raised some questions about the religion of Cyrus and the other Achaemenid kings (many of his successors were placed in tombs of a different type—rock tombs half-way up a cliff-face). Tomb burial was anathema to later Zoroastrians, who held it to be sacrilege to pollute the earth with dead bodies. Instead they exposed the dead on so-called Towers of Silence to be consumed by birds and animals. Could the Achaemenid kings really have been Zoroastrians if they permitted tomb burial?