Part II
Prehistory
Consciousness of self is a fundamental characteristic of human existence. It involves a sense of personal continuity through a succession of different states of awareness. This sense of personal identity depends essentially on memory, but a sense of the past could only have arisen when man consciously reflected on his memories. Similarly, purposeful action involves at least implicit recognition of some future achievement, but a general sense of the future could not have resulted until man applied his mind systematically to the problem of future events. Man must have been conscious of memories and purposes long before he made any explicit distinction between past, present, and future.
The famous palaeolithic paintings found in caves such as that at Lascaux in the Dordogne have been interpreted as evidence that, at least implicitly, people were operating 20,000 or more years ago with teleological intent in terms of past, present, and future. From what we know of primitive races it is highly probable that the incentive for producing these paintings was magical, the object being to fix in paint on the wall or ceiling of a cave an event--usually the slaying of an animal--which it was hoped would be effected in the future elsewhere. It may be that those responsible for the well-known picture of the so-called 'Dancing Sorcerer' (on the wall of one of the innermost recesses of the Trois Frères cave in the department of Arriège in France), which represents a man in the skin of an animal and wearing the antlers of a stag, may have felt that the actual performance of the dance was insufficient, since they were concerned about the conservation of the magical efficacy of the dance after it had ended. If correct, this hypothesis might explain why these people so many thousands of years ago went to the trouble and danger of penetrating so deeply into the cave for this purpose.
In making these pictorial representations people must have relied on their memories of past events, and so all three modes of time were involved. But this no more implies a conscious awareness of the distinctions between past, present, and future than the use of language necessitates an explicit knowledge of grammar. Indeed, it must have required an enormous effort for man to overcome his natural tendency to live like the animals in a continual present. Moreover, the development of rational thought actually seems to have impeded man's appreciation of the significance of time.
In his classic work Primitive Man as Philosopher, Paul Radin argues that among primitive men there exist two different types of temperament: the man of action who is oriented towards external objects, interested primarily in practical results and comparatively indifferent to the stirrings of his inner self, and the thinker--a much rarer type--who is impelled to analyse and 'explain' his subjective states. The former, in so far as he considers explanations at all, inclines to those that stress the purely mechanical relations between events. His mental rhythm is characterized by a demand for endless repetiton of the same event or events, and change for him means essentially some abrupt transformation. The thinker, on the other hand, finds purely mechanical explanations inadequate. But, although he seeks a description in terms of a gradual development from one to many, simple to complex, cause to effect, he is perplexed by the continually shifting forms of external objects. Before he can deal with them systematically he must give them some permanence of form. In other words, the world must be made static.1
Belief that ultimate reality is timeless is deeply rooted in human thinking, and the origin of rational investigation of the world was the search for the permanent factors that lie behind the ever-changing pattern of events. As Radin stressed in his discussion of the thought of primitive man, 'as soon as an object is regarded as a dynamic entity, then analysis and definition become both difficult and unsatisfactory. Thinking is under such circumstances well-nigh impossible for most people.'2 Indeed, language itself inevitably introduced an element of permanence into a vanishing world. For, although speech itself is transitory, the conventionalized sound symbols of language transcended time. At the level of oral language, however, permanence depended solely on memory. To obtain a greater degree of permanence the time symbols of oral speech had to be converted into the space symbols of written speech. The earliest written records were simply pictorial representations of natural objects, such as birds and animals. The next step was the ideograph by means of which thoughts were represented symbolically by pictures of visual objects. The crucial stage in the evolution of writing occurred when ideographs became phonograms, that is representations of things that are heard. This conversion of sound symbols in time to visual symbols in space was the greatest single step in the quest for permanence.
The distinctions we make between past, present, and future refer to the transitional nature of time. Although dependent on memory, our sense of personal identity is closely associated with the durational aspect of time. Man's discovery that he himself, like other living creatures, is born and dies must have led him intuitively to try to circumvent the relentless flux of time by seeking to perpetuate his own existence indefinitely. Evidence of ritual burial goes back at least to Neanderthal man and possibly even earlier.3 A Neanderthal burial of about 60,000 years ago, at a cave in northern Iraq, even appears to have included flowers.4 As for our own species, the oldest evidence, going back to possibly about 35,000 BC, reveals that the dead were not only equipped with weapons, tools, and ornaments but also with food, which must often have been in short supply among the living. In some cases bodies were covered with red ochre, which may have been intended to simulate blood, in the hope of averting physical extinction. The care taken over the disposal of the dead indicates a deeply held conviction that, provided the appropriate steps were taken, death could be regarded as a transitional state.
The idea of death as a transition from one phase of life to another that could only be satisfactorily effected by performing the appropriate rituals became the pattern for dealing with other natural changes. The principal transitions from one phase of people's life to another were thought of as crises and as a result the community to which they belonged assisted with the appropriate rituals.
Similarly, the principal transitions in nature were also regarded as occurring suddenly and dramatically. In the palaeolithic period men were already aware that at certain times of the year animals and plants are less prolific than at others, and seasonal ritual observances to maintain an adequate supply of them were therefore deemed necessary. With the change from a nomadic and food-gathering to an agricultural and more highly organized form of society, man's anxiety about himself and the animals that he hunted merged into a wider anxiety about nature. At the critical seasons a ritual response was required to overcome the unpredictable factors that might otherwise interfere with the regular growth of crops. The succession of natural phenomena and phases became evidence for a dramatic interpretation of the universe. Nature was seen as a process of strife between divine cosmic powers and demoniacal chaotic powers in which humans were not just spectators but were obliged to play an active part in helping to bring about the required phenomena by acting in full unison with nature. This meant performing a given set of rituals at the appropriate times.
In recent years the study of megalithic remains such as Stonehenge in terms of hypothetical astronomical alignments has led to various interesting speculations concerning prehistoric man's knowledge of the calendar. A careful assessment of these views has been made by D.C. Heggie.5 It has even been suggested that many of the markings found on upper palaeolithic artefacts and in caves are probably calendrical or astronomical in nature.
Ancient Egypt
In the oldest civilizations we find definite correlations between social and natural events. In Egypt, where everything depended on the Nile, the coronation of a new pharaoh was often postponed until a new beginning in the cycle of nature provided a propitious starting-point for his reign. It was made to coincide either with the rising of the river in early summer or with the recession of the waters in autumn when the fertilized fields were ready to be sown. The royal ritual was closely associated with the history of Osiris, the divine prototype on whom the pharaohs modelled themselves by re-enacting his traditional deeds. Osiris represented the life-giving waters and the soil fertilized by the Nile. After the Nile had receded the land eventually appeared to die, but on the reappearance of the waters it revived again. The Osiris myth embodied this cycle of birth, death, and rebirth and gave the promise of immortality. At death a series of rites enabled the pharaoh himself to become Osiris and thereby safe from the depredations of time. At first this way to immortality was essentially a royal prerogative, but eventually similar rites were thought to confer immortality on anyone who could afford to imitate them. As S. G. F. Brandon has pointed out, the great popularity of the cult of Osiris meant, in effect, the adoption by the Egyptians of a definite concept of time, although this may not have been consciously recognized. For, since the Egyptians believed that Osiris had actually lived in their land long ago, his cult signified that a particular historical event, in this case the death and resurrection of Osiris, could be perpetually repeated by magical simulation so that its supposed good effects could benefit those persons on whose behalf the rites were performed.6
Although the Osiris cult was a striking instance of what Brandon called the 'ritual perpetuation of the past', it was concerned only with personal immortality and generated no interest in the past as such. On the contrary, by trying to re-create on specific occasions particular events associated with Osiris thought was concentrated on the present rather than on the past. The Egyptians regarded time as a succession of recurring phases. They had very little sense of history or even of past and future. For, although there was an absolute past, it was normative and was not regarded as receding.7They thought of the world as essentially static and unchanging. In the beginning the gods created the world with everything in it organized on a permanent pattern. The cosmic balance, which involved the regular recurrence of the seasonal phenomena, could, however, only be maintained by an unceasing control. On earth this was the function of the pharaoh. Historical incidents were no more than superficial disturbances of the established order or recurring events of unchanging significance. This idea of a perpetually repetitive pattern of events inspired a sense of security from the menace of change and decay. If some crisis occurred to disturb the customary order of things, it could not be something really new but was foreseen at the creation of the world. The priests would therefore examine ancient writings to find out if the event had already occurred in the past and what solution had then been applied to it.
This evaluation of the Egyptians' attitude to time is borne out by their attitude to chronology. The years were not numbered in a linear succession but according to a particular pharaoh's reign, each mounting the throne in the year 1, and also according to the levy of taxes. The treasury officials numbered the royal possessions every two years, so that the years of a given reign were designated as the Year of, say, the Third Numbering, or the Year after the Third Numbering, and so on. This absence of a continuous sense of time made an exact computation of past centuries extremely difficult, particularly because of co-regencies, parallel reigns and fictitious reigns. When they said, for example, 'in the reign of the King Cheops' they thought of a distant event situated in time in a rather vague way. Furthermore, the idea the Egyptians had of an eternal and immutable world meant that they never imagined any evolution of social conditions. There were periods of considerable social disturbance, particularly at the end of the Old Kingdom, but only the literary texts mention them. The historical texts were confined to enumerating the kings who lived in those troubled years and do not give any indication that something important was occurring at that time. For nearly 3,000 years the recording of historical events by the Egyptians was characterized by a preoccupation with royal lists and a lack of precise dates. Only one Egyptian historian is known to us, the priestly scribe Manetho who compiled the list of 211 the pharaohs and conveniently divided them into the particular groups or dynasties which Egyptologists still employ today. But Manetho, who lived in the third century BC, wrote in Greek and his work must be regarded as Hellenistic in character rather than Egyptian.
Nevertheless, in one respect the Egyptians made an outstanding contribution to the science of time. For they devised what Otto Neugebauer has described as 'the only intelligent calendar which ever existed in human history'.8 Their civil year consisted of twelve months, each of thirty days, with five additional days at the end of each year, making 365 in all. In Neugebauer's view, it originated on purely practical grounds by continual observation and averaging of the time intervals between successive arrivals of the Nile flood at Heliopolis, the rising of the Nile being the main event in Egyptian life. At first the Egyptians did not realize that the astronomical year does not consist of exactly 365 days but contains an extra fraction (about one-quarter) of a day. The discrepancy was soon recognized and another calendar was then introduced which kept more closely in phase with astronomical phenomena. It was noted that the rising of the Nile occurred when the last star to appear on the horizon, before dawn obscures all stars, was the dog star Sothis, or Sirius as it is known to us. This 'heliacal rising, to use the term employed in Greek astronomy, thus came to be regarded as the natural fixed point of the 'Sothic' calendar. Astronomical computations show that the first day of the two calendars agreed in the year 2773 BC, and it has been concluded that this was when the Sothic calendar was introduced.9 There is reason to associate this with the Minister of King Zoser of the Third Dynasty known as Imhotep, later deified as the Father of Egyptian science. The Sothic calendar kept pace with the seasons, but the civil calendar did not. The two coincided at intervals of 1460 (= 365 × 4) years. The civil year was divided into three conventional seasons" --called time of inundation, sowing time, and harvest time--and each of them was divided into four months, these being of course conventional too and not connected with the moon. Despite the linguistic anomaly that the season called 'the time of inundation' would in due course fall in one of the other seasons, the Egyptians retained the 365-day calendar right down to the Roman period because of its convenience as an automatic record of the passage of time in an era, each year containing the same number of days, unlike our years. This calendar was just what was needed for astronomical calculations. It was taken up by the Hellenistic astronomers, became the standard astronomical system of reference in the Middle Ages, and was even used by Copernicus in his lunar and planetary tables. The Egyptians also had a lunar calendar to regulate festivals by phases of the moon. They found that 309 lunar months were almost equal to twenty-five civil years.
In a nearly cloudless country such as Egypt observation of the sun was a useful way of telling the time and it is therefore not surprising that the earliest known solar clock has been found there. A fragment of an Egyptian sun-clock dating from about 1500 BC is now in a museum in Berlin. Shaped like a T-square, it was placed horizontally with the crosshead laid towards the east in the forenoon, thereby casting a shadow along the stem which was graduated with marks for six hours. As the sun rose higher in the sky the shadow shortened until noon, when it disappeared at the sixth hour mark. Then the instrument was relaid with the crosshead towards the west so that the lengthening shadow gradually moved back along the hour marks to the twelfth. The earliest clocks of this type were correct only at the equinoxes, and not until much later was it possible to take due account of the seasonal changes in the position of the sun. Eventually a series of hour scales, seven in number, was devised to accommodate these changes, but even then this timepiece was seldom accurate. The warrior pharaoh Tuthmosis III referred to the hour indicated by the sun's shadow at a critical juncture of one of his campaigns in Asia, and it would therefore seem that he carried with him a portable sun-clock.10 Another form of sun-clock employing the direction rather than the length of the sun's shadow was the sundial, but the Egyptians who invented it were far from understanding the subtleties involved in making an accurate instrument of this type, which must be calibrated for the latitudes of the different places where it is to be used.
To provide a means of measuring time at night the Egyptians also invented the water-clock, or 'clepsydra' as the Greeks later called it. Two main types were developed, depending on whether water flowed out of or into a graduated vessel. Whereas inflow clocks were usually cylindrical, outflow clocks were in the form of inverted cones with a small hole at or near the bottom, the time being indicated by the level of water. Clepsydrae were also used by the Greeks and Romans. Vitruvius, writing about 30 BC, described a number of types. To make them indicate seasonal hours, either the rate of flow or the scale of hours had to be varied according to the time of year, and considerable ingenuity appears to have been applied to achieve this.
The Egyptians also used a plumb-line, which they called the 'Merkhet', to determine the time at night. They observed the transits of selected stars across the meridian as they came into line with two Merkhets. A Merkhet is on permanent exhibition in the Science Museum, London. It is thought to date from about 600 BC. According to the inscription that it bears, it belonged to the Son of 2 priest of the Temple of Horus at Edfu, in Upper Egypt.
As mentioned in chapter 2, we are indebted to the Egyptians for our present division of the day into twenty-four hours, although the Egyptian hours were not of equal length, since at all times of the year the periods of daylight and darkness were each divided into twelve hours. The end of the night was marked by the heliacal rising of a particular star. However, because the sun not only participates in the daily rotation of the heavens from east to west but also has its own slow annual motion relative to the stars in the opposite direction, different heliacal risings occur throughout the year. Instead of choosing a different star daily, the Egyptian priests, who were primarily concerned with the timing of the nightly service in their temples, made a fresh choice every ten days, a period of time (and stellar constellation) known as a 'decan'. The oldest astronomical texts now known are found on the lids of wooden coffins dating from the Ninth Dynasty (c. 2150 BC). They are called 'diagonal star-clocks', or 'diagonal calendars', and they give the names of the stars associated with the respective decans. These star charts were provided to enable the deceased to tell the time of night or the date in the calendar.11 Incidentally, the twelve signs of the zodiac did not appear in Egypt until the Hellenistic period, nor is there any trace of astrological ideas there before then.
Since the Egyptian civil year contained 365 days, there were thirty-six decans in the year (plus the five extra days at the end of the year), and the sky was divided accordingly. During the summer, when Sirius rises heliacally, only twelve of these divisions of the sky can be seen rising during the hours of darkness, and it was this that led to the twelve-hour division of the night. As for the period of daylight, a simple sundial on an obelisk of Seti I, about 1300 BC, indicates ten hours between sunrise and sunset, to which two more were added for morning and evening twilight. As previously mentioned, these divisions of the day and night led to the twenty-four 'seasonal' hours of the complete day in Hellenistic and Roman times. In antiquity only the Hellenistic astronomers used hours of equal length, these being the same as the seasonal hours at the date of the spring equinox. Since, following Babylonian practice, all astronomical computations involving fractions were conducted in the sexagesimal system, instead of our current decimal system, these 'equinoctial' hours were divided by the astronomers into sixty firsts, or minutes, and each of these was subdivided into sixty seconds. Thus, as Neugebauer has succinctly remarked, our present way of dividing up the day into hours, minutes, and seconds 'is the result of a Hellenistic modification of an Egyptian practice combined with Babylonian numerical procedures'.12
Sumeria and Babylonia
Although there was always the possibility of drought or flooding, the Nile seldom brought disaster to Egypt. Mesopotamian civilization developed in a very different environment. The Tigris and Euphrates are far less uniform in their behaviour than the Nile. The inhabitants of ancient Mesopotamia had to contend with variations of climate, scorching winds, torrential rains, and devastating floods over which they had little control. The mood of Mesopotamian civilization reflected this element of force and violence in nature which gave no grounds for believing that the ravages of time could be surmounted by a ritual cult like that of Osiris in Egypt. Although there was evidence of cosmic order in the motions of sun, moon, and stars and in the cycle of the seasons, this order was not regarded as securely established but had continually to be achieved by the integration of conflicting divine wills or powers.13 The basic framework of society in Mesopotamia remained the same for 2,000 years or more, but at different times Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians were dominant and the order of society was far less static than in Egypt. Whereas in Egypt the pharaoh symbolized the triumph of an invincible divine order over the forces of chaos, in Mesopotamia kingship represented the struggle of a human order with all its anxieties and hazards to integrate itself with the universe.14
The sense of insecurity which affected the city-states of Mesopotamia led to a rudimentary interest in the history of social order. This is revealed in texts going back to about 2000 BC, notably in the 'Sumerian King List' which begins with a sequence of eight kings, presumably fabulous, whose reigns add up to a total of 241,200 years!15 The sequence was then interrupted by a flood that was so devastating that a new start had to be made and again kingship had to be 'lowered from heaven'.
Archaeological evidence has revealed that a cataclysmic flood overwhelmed the Sumerian plains about 4200 BC.
Despite their interest in this past event and the compilation of chronological lists of kings with grandiloquent accounts of their achievements, the Sumerians and their successors were not really historically minded. They were mainly interested in themselves and were content to leave historical matters relatively indefinite.16 Their reason for perpetuating the memory of the Flood was most probably magical. A destructive flood was an annual possibility, and the god of Heaven Anu and the storm-god Enlil, who were believed to have been responsible for the decision to destroy mankind, were invoked in the incantation passages of the legend of the Flood. Similarly, although libraries were established in temples and palaces in order to conserve records of the past, there is no evidence of any interest in history, except in so far as it was a guide to action in the present. Indeed, the general conception of the cosmic process envisaged by the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia precluded the possibility of history having any ultimate significance or purpose. The apparent lack of any meaning in its repetitive pattern is expressed in the following passage from the Epic of Gilgamesh: 'There is no permanence. Do we build a house to stand for ever, do we seal a contract to hold for all time? Do brothers divide an inheritance to keep for ever, does the flood-time of rivers endure? . . . From the days of old there is no permanence.'17
Although in Mesopotamia kingship was never so important as in Egypt, its function was the maintenance of harmony between earth and heaven. There were at one time a number of city-states, each with its own god. Unified rule was ultimately achieved by Hammurabi towards the beginning of the second millenium BC, with its centre in Babylon. In cosmic terms this implied the ascendancy of Marduk, the god of Babylon, over the other gods. As a result, the most important ritual in Mesopotamia was the spring New Year Festival at which the epic of the creation of the world by Marduk was recited. The significance of this epic was not as a record of the past, but rather as a means of ensuring the theologico- political supremacy of Marduk in the present. For Marduk was not the most ancient of the gods, and his lordship over the other gods was meant to justify the political supremacy that Babylon had acquired.
Although the New Year Festival symbolized the inauguration of a new solar cycle, the renewal of fertility, and victory over chaos, its celebration provided no guarantee that the social order would continue undisturbed. The king and his counsellors therefore watched for portents that could be interpreted, so that disasters might be foreseen and, if possible, averted. There was assumed to be a counterpart in human events to every celestial phenomenon. This belief led the priests to make careful and systematic observations of the heavenly bodies. Celestial omens began to be used as portents on a considerable scale in the first Babylonian dynasty ( eighteenth to fifteenth centuries BC), although lunar eclipses may have been regarded as ominous previously.18 The prediction of this so-called 'judicial' astrology referred to the royal court and the state and not to ordinary individuals. Horoscopic astrology, according to which the positions of the planets at the time of birth determines the fate of the individual, did not develop until much later. The oldest known horoscope goes back to 410 BC when Babylonia was part of the Persian empire.19 In Hellenistic and Roman times the Chaldeans, as the Babylonians were called, came to be regarded as the great experts in astrology. Both the older judicial astrology and the later horoscopic astrology were based on a fundamentally deterministic, or fatalistic, view of existence. People who believe that history and the destinies of men are controlled by the stars are not likely to entertain the idea of historical progress. Instead, they are more inclined to adopt a cyclical view of time, in accordance with the periodicity of the motions of the sun, moon, and planets. To what degree, however, such a view of time was developed in Mesopotamian thought is not revealed by the cuneiform records, although according to Seneca the late Babylonian astronomer-priest Berossus (c. 300 BC) believed in the periodic destruction and re-creation of the universe.20
The heavens were studied not only for omens but also for the sake of the calendar. The basis of the Babylonian calendar seems always to have been lunar. The month began when the new lunar crescent was for the first time visible again after sunset. Consequently, the Babylonian day began in the evening. A lunar month defined in this way must contain a whole number of days, but sometimes this was twenty-nine and sometimes thirty. To solve this problem the motion of the sun had to be investigated. The late Babylonian astronomers of the fourth and later centuries BC studied the motions of the sun and planets with great care and mathematical ingenuity, but their most detailed investigations were of the moon because the calendar was moon-based. They invented harmonic analysis, in the sense that they introduced the idea of breaking down a complicated periodical effect into a sum of simpler periodical effects in order to make the mathematics tractable. They did not use trigonometrical methods but linear 'zigzag functions'.21
The lunar 'year' normally comprised twelve months, but this is less than the solar year. In order to prevent the seasons getting out of phase, a thirteenth month was inserted from time to time, but there was no regular system for the intercalation of this additional month until the fifth century BC, when seven of these months began to be inserted at fixed intervals in a cycle of nineteen years. Previously it is probable that the state of the harvest decided the need for the additional month. The nineteen-year cycle depends on the discovery that nineteen solar years are very nearly equal to 235 lunar months. It is usually known as the Metonic cycle, after the Athenian astronomer Meton who introduced it in 432 BC (see Appendix 2). Whether the cycle was discovered first by the Babylonian astronomer-priests or independently by them and Meton is uncertain.22 The use of such a cycle by the late Babylonians shows that a fairly precise astronomical definition of a year was adopted by them. This was probably based on careful observation of the summer solstice. The invention of the zodiac, the belt round the sky in which the sun, moon, and planets lie, also occurred about this time.23 The twelve zodiacal signs, of equal lengths of thirty parts each, are known to have been in use from soon after 500 BC. This division of the sky was eventually carried over to the division of the circle and so led to our present habit of dividing the complete (two-dimensional) angle around a point into 360 degrees.
The nineteen-year luni-solar cycle became the foundation of the Jewish and Christian calendars, since it solved the problem of establishing the dates of new moons for religious purposes. In particular, the origin of the problem of the dating of Easter can be traced back to the Babylonians. The rituals performed by the king-priest, particularly at the New Year Festival, were regarded as the repetitions of divine actions and were meant to correspond exactly in time as well as in character with the rituals on high. From this primitive idea sprang the belief that it was important to celebrate Easter at the correct date, since this was the crucial time of combat between God (or Christ) and the Devil, and God required the support of his worshippers to defeat the Devil.
The Babylonians paid particular attention to the seven-day periods associated with successive phases of the moon, each of these periods ending with an 'evil day' on which specific taboos were enforced so that the gods could be propitiated and conciliated. These prohibitive regulations were similar to those that many other peoples in different parts of the world have observed at changes in the appearance of the moon, but the Babylonians influenced the Jews, who in their turn influenced the early Christians and eventually ourselves. The ultimate origin of our seven-day week and the restrictions for long imposed on Sunday activities can thus be traced back to the Babylonians.
Ancient Iran
From 539 to 331 BC Babylonia was a part of the Persian empire. It was during this period that horoscopic astrology was invented, probably in the fifth century BC. For the casting of horoscopes one needs to know the positions of the planets for a given date. Often a horoscope is required for a date for which no observations are available, and horoscopic astrology therefore needs methods for computing the positions of the planets. The oldest known system of Babylonian planetary theory is thought to have been invented not earlier than 500 BC. It is possible that the motive was astrological and that the invention of horoscopic astrology at about this time was due to the influence of Iranian doctrines of the immortality and celestial origin of the soul.
The Iranians who conquered Babylonia were a branch of the Aryan race. Their native land consisted of a central plain surrounded by mountains. This plain was largely desert and was subject to extremes of climate. It was in this harsh and inhospitable land that one of the great religions of mankind originated. This religion, known as Zoroastrianism, involved a teleological interpretation of time. The date of its founder, Zarathustra (Zoroaster is the Greek form of his name), is uncertain but it is thought that he flourished in the first half of the sixth century BC. The Iranians already had a considerable religious heritage and it is difficult to decide how much of Zoroastrianism is due to the reforms introduced by Zarathustra.
Zarathustra belonged to a pastoral tribe in northern Persia. As a young man he had a prophetic revelation that led him to preach a new faith in place of the prevailing polytheism. He denounced the old religion as the Lie and called on men to worship the deity whom he called Ahura Mazdah, the wise Lord, who stood for the Truth. Zarathustra's monotheistic religion can be regarded as a response to the social conditions of his time, an age of transition when a settled agricultural and pastoral community was being threatened by predatory tribes who still followed the nomadic way of life. Zarathustra interpreted the struggle between good and evil forces in ethical terms, and he believed that it pervaded the whole universe. Although evil could not be attributed to Ahura Mazdah, its existence had to be accounted for, and Zarathustra explained it in terms of free will. At the beginning of time two spirits were created by Ahura Mazdah, the good spirit Spenista Mainyu (later called Ohrmazd) and the evil and destructive spirit Angra Mainyu (later called Ahriman). The latter, although his existence was due to God, became evil by his own free choice.
Zarathustra believed that man was involved in this cosmic struggle of good and evil and that he was compelled to choose one side or the other through his own conduct. This meant that man has an inescapable moral responsibility for his own actions. Zarathustra declared that at death God passes judgement on man and that this decides his fate when the world is finally transformed into the same state of perfection as when it left the hands of the Creator. At the last, immortal glory will be the reward of those who adhere to the Truth, whereas the followers of the Lie will be condemned to 'a long age of darkness, foul food and cries of woe'.24 This doctrine of 'last things' was the first systematized eschatology in the history of religion and it profoundly influenced Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
After Zarathustra's death his religion was taken up by the old priestly class known as the Magi and eventually became the faith of the Achaemenid dynasty. The first Persian king who seems to have accepted its basic doctrines was Darius (522-485 BC), but Achaemenid Zoroastrianism departed in certain respects from the original teachings of Zarathustra. There was some reversion to polytheism and the religion became more magical and ritualistic than ethical. Following the overthrow of the Achaemenid dynasty by Alexander of Macedon in 331 BC there was a confused period in the history of Zoroastrianism until its revival as the state religion under the Sassanian dynasty ( AD 226-651). Most of the extant documents relate to this last period, which ended with the conquest of Persia by the forces of Islam.
Long before this happened there was a tendency to identify Ahura Mazdah with the good spirit Ohrmazd. This development gave rise to a perplexing problem. For Zarathustra had spoken of the good and evil spirits as twins and thereby implied that they had a common origin. A solution of this problem led to an important heresy associated with the idea of time, personified by the ancient god Zurvan. The significance of time was, of course, implicit in the eschatological character of Zoroastrianism. In the Zurvanite heresy it became the supreme deity. The reasoning that led to this development was clearly expressed in a remarkable passage in a late writing known as the Persian Rivayat:
Except Time all other things are created. Time is the creator; and Time has no limit, neither top nor bottom. It has always been and shall be for evermore. No sensible person will say whence Time has come. In spite of all the grandeur that surrounded it, there was no one to call it creator; for it had not brought forth creation. Then it created fire and water; and when it had brought them together, Ohrmazd came into existence, and simultaneously Time became Creator and Lord with regard to the creation it had brought forth.25
Throughout Iranian thought there was a tendency to dualism, and it is therefore not surprising that two distinct forms or aspects of time were recognized: indivisible time, that is the eternal 'now', and time that is divisible into successive parts. The former represented the creative aspect of time and was fundamental. It was called Zurvan akarana, or infinite time, and was the progenitor of the universe and of the spirits of good and evil. Associated with the universe was the other form of time called Zurvan daregho-chvadhata, that is time of the long dominion, or finite time. This was the time that brought decay and death. It dominated the world of man and was represented by the celestial firmament. Presumably under Babylonian influence, the life-span of time of the long dominion was set at 12,000 years, the number twelve corresponding to the twelve signs of the zodiac. This cosmic 'year' was divided into four periods, each of 3,000 years, Zarathustra's life occurring at the beginning of the final period.
The whole reason for the existence of finite time appears to have been to bring about that conflict of good and evil which eventually leads to the triumph of the former. A question that puzzled some followers of Zarathustra in later times was that, if Ohrmazd was all-powerful and so destined to overthrow Ahriman, why did this not happen immediately, so that the world would have been spared all the suffering caused by the conflict between them? An attempt to answer this question, and one which in the opinion of S. G. F. Brandon shows some consciousness of the significance of the factor of time, was made by a late Zoroastrian priest renowned for his orthodoxy. He argued that Ohrmazd, because his nature was good and just, could not destroy Ahriman until the latter had, by his evil deeds, provided just cause for his destruction.26
Finite time begins and ends with the rule of Ohrmazd. At a given moment finite time came into existence out of infinite time. It goes through a cycle of changes until it finally returns to its original state and then merges into infinite time. There is no evidence for any repetition of the cycle.
In later Zoroastrianism the emphasis laid by Zarathustra on the role of individuals and the character of their life was replaced by concern for the general fate of mankind. The unfolding of the divine purpose was not, however, identified with the course of human history as known to the inhabitants of Iran. Indeed Zoroastrians never attempted to relate the history of their nation to the cosmic struggle of Ohrmazd and Ahriman.
A problem concerning time and the calendar that has attracted much attention in recent years is the precise date when the Iranians adopted the Egyptian 'vague', or civil, calendar of 365 days. The Achaemenid monarch Cambyses conquered Egypt in the year 525 BC (his predecessor Cyrus had conquered Babylon in 539 BC) and so the replacement of the 'Old-Avestan calendar', as the one formerly used by the Iranians is now called, presumably occurred after that. The new calendar, now known as the 'Young-Avestan calendar' appears to have been adopted in the reign of Cambyses' great successor Darius I. The most thorough and plausible investigation of the date of its introduction is that made a few years ago by the distinguished historian of ancient astronomy the late Willy Hartner of Frankfurt University.27 He came to the conclusion that the Young-Avestan calendar was introduced on 21 March 503 BC. (21 March is the 'Gregorian' date; the corresponding 'Julian' date would be 27 March.) In this calendar the year consisted of twelve months, each of thirty days except the eighth month, which comprised thirty-five days. The most important point, however, that emerged from Hartner's investigation was that by 503 BC the Babylonian astronomer-priests had discovered that the tropical year (the year of the seasons) is not of exactly the same length as the sidereal year (the 'true' astronomical year). This was an essential step towards the determination by the Hellenistic astronomer Hipparchus (c. 150 BC) of the precession of the equinoxes, with its eventual important implications for the reform of the calendar in AD 1582 (see ch. 8).
According to the Iranian scholar S. H. Taqizadah, a correction was made to the Young-Avestan calendar in 441 BC to link it more closely with the seasons. It took the form of an intercalation of a full month of thirty days once every 120 years.28 The Zoroastrians still reckon dates by the years of the last Zoroastrian king of Iran, Yazdgard III of the Sassanian dynasty (who was assassinated in AD 651 after the Arabs had overrun his kingdom), thus prolonging his imaginary reign through the centuries. In this way we know that the Persian New Year in AD 632, the year in which he ascended the throne, fell on 16 June.29 The era and the Zoroastrian calendar are followed to this day by the Parsees of Bombay.