Ahura-Mazda

The supreme god of the ancient Persian religion. Ahura-Mazda was often called “the Lord of Wisdom,” as the word ahura meant “lord” and mazda meant “wisdom.” It is possible that he was first conceived as an early Indo-European sky god, as was the Greek Zeus. However, thanks to the religious teachings of the fourteenth-century B. C. Iranian religious prophet Zoroaster (or Zarathustra), founder of the Zoroastrian faith, Ahura-Mazda emerged as the one true god, more or less equivalent to the deity worshipped by the monotheistic Jews of the same period. Just as the Jews, and later the Christians, saw their god as the ultimate creator of all things, the Persians believed that Ahura-Mazda had fashioned the universe. This idea is expressed in surviving inscriptions, including one commissioned by King Xerxes I: “a great god is Ahura-Mazda, who created this Earth, who created yonder sky, who created man, who created happiness for man, who made Xerxes king, one king of many, one lord of many.” The Persians also saw Ahura-Mazda as the chief source of truth, virtue, and light and thought that he would bring prosperity, peace, and happiness to those who faithfully worshipped him. Such ideas are repeated often in the Avesta, the collection of prayers and hymns constituting the Persian/Zoroastrian bible.

One of the texts known as the Yasnas (meaning “Reverence”), reads:

I announce (and) carry out (this Yasna) for the creator Ahura Mazda, the radiant and glorious, the greatest and the best, the most Beautiful. . . the most firm, the wisest, and the one of all whose body is the most perfect, who attains His ends the most infallibly. . . to him who disposes our minds aright, who sends His joy-creating grace afar; who made us, and has fashioned us, and who has nourished and protected us, who is the most bounteous Spirit! (Avesta, Older Yasnas 1.1)

Ancient Persian artists almost always portrayed Ahura-Mazda as a bearded man sitting inside a winged vehicle that moved through the sky. He held a ring that symbolized his authority over human rulers and wielded lightning bolts representing his ability to enforce that authority, similar to the way Zeus enforced his own will using lightning bolts. According to Persian beliefs, the god also used his formidable weapons against his archfoe, the evil spirit Ahriman, somewhat equivalent to the Christian devil.

See Also: Avesta; Zoroaster; Zoroastrianism