Topic: ethics (6)

• ConceptAhura Mazdā

  Ahura Mazdā, the "Wise Lord", is the supreme god of the Achaemenid kings: named at the head of nearly every royal inscription as creator of earth, sky, man and human happiness, giver of kingship, and upholder of order against the Lie. He is also the God whom Zarathustra proclaimed in the Gāthās,…

• ConceptArta (Truth, right order)

  Arta (Old Persian arta-, Avestan aša) is the Iranian principle of truth and right order: the correct joining of the world, cosmic, social and moral at once, set against its standing opposite, the Lie (drauga). It is the exact cognate of Vedic ṛta, so the opposition of Truth and Lie is older than…

• ConceptMithra

  Mithra (Avestan Miθra, later Mihr) is one of the oldest gods of the Indo-Iranian world, and the one whose nature is least in doubt, because his name is also the ordinary word for 'contract'. He is the deified covenant, the all-seeing guardian of the sworn word and the alliance, he of the wide…

• Survey essayReligion & the Lie: the Achaemenid religious world

  Achaemenid religion, as the kings proclaimed it, turned on a single polarity: the worship of Ahura Mazdā, the Wise Lord who set the world in order, against the drauga, the Lie that forever works to corrupt it. The kings of Persia proclaimed themselves the god's chosen instruments in that struggle;…

• ConceptThe Drauga (the Lie)

  The drauga (Old Persian drauga-, Avestan druj) is the Lie: the principle of falsehood, deceit and disorder that stands against arta, the right order of the world, in the religion and the royal ideology of ancient Iran. More than a word for the spoken untruth, it names the power that unmakes…

• PersonZarathustra

  Zarathustra (Zoroaster to the Greeks) is the Iranian prophet and poet-priest whose seventeen hymns, the Gāthās, exalt Ahura Mazdā as the one God and lay upon every person a choice: aša, the Truth, or druj, the Lie. His date, his homeland, even (to a few sceptics) his existence are among the most…