Magi

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MAGI

MAGI . The Greek word magos (Latin magus ), borrowed from Old Persian magu-, has two distinct meanings. First, it refers to a Zoroastrian priest and usually has a neutral or positive meaning. Second, it describes someone who engages in private types of ritual with the intent to influence the world or the course of history, for which most languages only have words with negative overtones (magician, wizard, and sorcerer). Although this second meaning has had a lasting impact on the common vocabulary of modern Western languages (in the word magic and its derivatives), the fact that the magi originally were a priestly class among the Persians was rarely forgotten in Greco-Roman antiquity.

The Magi in Zoroastrianism

The Old Persian word magu- is of uncertain etymology and meaning. Its Avestan counterpart is only found once in the Avesta in a difficult passage (Yasna 65.7), where it supposedly means "member of a tribe." It has been suggested that this is in fact the original meaning of the word and that it came to be used in western Iran in the meaning "member of the (priestly) tribe" and hence "priest," but this is uncertain. It can be concluded that the word was not a term used for "priest" by the eastern Iranian Zoroastrians, who were responsible for the composition of the Avesta.

The word magu-, "priest," is well attested in western Iran from the Achaemenid period (550–330 bce) onward. It is found in the royal Old Persian inscriptions and in administrative documents (in Elamite) found in Persepolis. Magu- is also well attested in contemporary non-Iranian sources, chiefly in Greek. This wide range of sources notwithstanding, it is difficult to specify what these priests really were or did. In the Old Persian inscriptions, the word is only used in the context of Darius's accession to power, which revolved around his struggle against the usurper Gaumata, who is consistently described as a magus. The relevance of this is unclear. Herodotos follows Darius's version of the story, but both in the Iranian and in the Greek materials the fact that the usurper king was a magus is not given much more thought. One piece of evidence from Herodotos has often been adduced as a possible solution to this problem: he mentions magi as a name of one of the six tribes of the Medes (Histories 1.101). This passage has been invoked many times to suggest that the magi were "originally" a priestly clan among the Medes, and this suggestion has opened the floodgates for a large number of speculations, most of which attribute many of the aspects of Zoroastrianism that seemed difficult to understand to the pernicious influence of these Median magi. This simple trick allowed scholars to shape for themselves a pristine Zoroastrian theology, going back to the prophet Zarathushtra, which had been perverted by later generations and especially by the Median magi. However, Herodotos's testimony is much too weak to support this type of reconstruction.

Some of the characteristics Herodotos attributes to the magi moreover are typical of Zoroastrianism. He writes that most of the Persians bury their dead, but not the magi: they leave the body unburied, to be eaten by dogs and birds (Histories 1.140). In the same passage Herodotos records that the magi kill as many ants, snakes, and other flying and creeping animals as they can. These are both characteristic elements of evolved Zoroastrianism and strongly suggest that the information Herodotos had assembled on the magi concerned Zoroastrian priests, even though Herodotus never mentions Zoroaster and pays little attention to the religious beliefs of the Persians. In Herodotos's Histories, the magi perform a variety of functions, which are all compatible with functions performed by Zoroastrian priests known from other sources. The magi accompany the Persian armies, performing libations and sacrifices. Their presence is required for every sacrifice, because they have to sing a special hymn, they interpret signs, dreams, and portents, and they also have functions that seem to be entirely unconnected with the religion, functioning as court officials and in administrative and legal positions.

Many of these aspects return time and again in Greek literature on the magi. A few generations after Herodotos, two important extra functions came to be attached to the magi: their role in Persian education and their role as theologians who spread and interpreted the ideas of Zoroaster. The evidence from the large number of Greek sources available has been shown to be fully compatible with what can be reconstructed of priestly duties from Iranian sources.

For the Achaemenid period the most important evidence comes from the Elamite Persepolis tablets, chiefly administrative documents recording the transfer of amounts of wine, grain, and other foodstuffs, frequently for services rendered. The magi occur numerous times in these texts as specialists in ritual (for a large number of gods) and in other, not clearly religious, functions. This situation is similar to the evidence from the Greek sources and is in fact typical for the later history of the magi.

Most of the evidence for that later history comes from the Sassanian period (224–642 ce). In post-Sassanian Zoroastrian sources (the Pahlavi books), the word mogh, the Middle Persian descendant of Old Persian magu-, is hardly ever attested. Instead of this generic word, more specific titles are always given that reflect a hierarchy and a specialization of functions. Even though the high priestly title mowbed certainly contains the word (it is derived from an unattested *magupati-, "leader of the magi"), the generic title became unpopular among the Zoroastrians of Iran in the early centuries after the Arab conquests. Since many reconstructions of Sassanian history are based on sources from those later periods, the existence of the word in Sassanian Iran has sometimes been obscured. It is, however, not only frequently found in non-Iranian Sassanian sources (Syriac, Armenian, Greek) but also well attested on the most reliable Iranian sources from the period itself, namely personal seals. In fact the word mogh (written mgw ) is one of the most common words on Sassanian seals and bullae. The word also had a long and distinguished career in Islamic Persian poetry, which shows that it had not disappeared from the common speech of the Persians. The question therefore arises why the Zoroastrians who formulated their tradition in the ninth century, the authors of the Pahlavi books, wanted to get rid of it; so far no reasonable hypothesis has been suggested for this problem. The only suggestion that makes sense is that the Arabic word majūs (borrowed from Syriac) was used not just to refer to Persian priests but to Zoroastrians in general and that the term came to be felt to be misleading for those who wanted to distinguish themselves as members of the priestly class.

The duties of Zoroastrian priests in the Sassanian period were varied. Apart from ritual and theology, magi also occupied themselves with administrative work in general and legal affairs in particular. Sassanian society is often depicted as a static society, in which the social classes (priests, warriors, and others) could not and did not intermingle. While it is generally acknowledged nowadays that that image does not give an accurate picture of Sassanian society (it is based largely on descriptions of the "ideal" organization of a Zoroastrian society), it is true that the priesthood and the military apparatus had separate hierarchies with representatives spread all over the empire. The extant evidence is not sufficient to understand the whole system, but it seems that a priestly hierarchy (which was never stable in the Sassanian Empire but subject to continuing modifications) was in place already in the third century ce. Its backbone was and remained the network of fire-temples that covered the whole empire and was one of the most important economic factors of Sassanian Iran. Priests thus controlled vast sums of money (and also land, slaves, and goods) that had been donated to the temples as pious gifts or deposited temporarily. Associated with these fire-temples, in all likelihood, were priestly schools (hērbedestān ), where future priests were educated and where lay Zoroastrians received religious instruction.

Apart from their evident religious functions in theology and ritual, priests were found at court, as advisers to the king, and as interpreters of signs and dreams. They are also, as already mentioned, well represented in functions now defined as purely secular: the administration of the empire and the judiciary. Evidence for priests in these functions comes from seals and legal texts but also in significant quantities from Christian literature, chiefly in Syriac and Armenian, where the magi are always represented as the chief imperial force attempting to stem the tide of conversion to Christianity by trying and executing Zoroastrian apostates.

With the Arab invasions of the seventh century and the slow process of Islamization of Iran, the priesthood underwent dramatic changes. The first to disappear almost immediately were the court priests and the priests in secular offices. The evidence for priestly functions from the ninth century still shows a great variety in functions, but eventually a simple system replaced the earlier hierarchy. Among the Parsi Zoroastrians there are basically three priestly titles: the ervad (Middle Persian hērbed, "priestly teacher") is a priest in minor orders, the mobed is a fully ordained priest, and the dastur (Middle Persian dastwar, "someone in authority") is a priest of the highest rank associated with the most prestigious type of fire-temple. In modern Zoroastrianism, priesthood is hereditary. The question whether it has always been strictly hereditary is difficult to answer, but it is likely that it was. There is no evidence to suggest that priesthood became hereditary only in a later period of the religion.

Their administrative business aside, it is evident that the core of priestly duties consisted of ritual, theology, and the transmission of Zoroastrian literature. The latter function is critical for the first two mentioned. Almost all Zoroastrian literature from the premodern period that survived is priestly literature. This consists of several distinct collections. The Avesta, in its own language, chiefly consists of ritual texts. Most nonritual texts in Avestan have been lost, but there is some information on their contents from summaries in Middle Persian. The second important part of Zoroastrian priestly literature consists of exegetical translations of the Avestan texts. These are collectively known as Zand (a word presumably meaning "knowledge"). Far from being only a translation of Avestan texts, the Zand texts are interspersed with explanatory notes and exegetical discussions. The third part of Zoroastrian priestly literature consists of theological, historical, and other works that are based on the Zand. The fourth part, finally, are priestly compendia and answers to questions posed by members of the community. The latter two categories are clearly part of the priestly tradition from a period when writing had come to be accepted: they are written compositions. This is not the case with the first two collections. For a variety of reasons, there are signs that writing came to be used for the transmission of religious texts only late in the development of Zoroastrianism. The evidence is strongest for the Avesta itself, for a special alphabet was designed for it, covering all the nuances of priestly pronunciation of the holy texts in ritual, that cannot have originated before the fourth or even the fifth century ce. Even after the invention of this alphabet, it seems that the oral transmission of the holy texts and their commentaries continued as the normal procedure. Since priests had to use both hands in the rituals they performed, they could not hold a book and had no use for it in most rituals.

Before the fourth century ce the transmission of religious knowledge was an exclusively oral process. Since the Avesta was composed in an eastern Iranian language but has been preserved among western Iranian priests, it is likely that the texts of the Avesta were memorized word-by-word by the western Iranian priests from a very early period (i.e., the sixth century bce) and that the corpus of the Avesta thus became fixed. To facilitate comprehension of the texts, they were provided with a translation in the local language, which was transmitted alongside the Avestan texts. This translation grew in size considerably over time with the addition of glosses and learned comments. The amount of texts thus orally transmitted was large, and there are clear signs of specialization to make this oral transmission possible. First, the texts were divided over numerous specialists who memorized part of the sacred literature. A further development, evident from later sources, divided the priesthood into two different classes: those whose chief responsibility was the performance of rituals and those whose responsibility lay in education and theology. Ritual priests memorized the Avestan texts with their accompanying rituals, and teacher-priests memorized the Avestan texts with their commentaries. The latter class of priests was therefore unsuited for the performance of many rituals, but it is this class that was responsible for the development of Zoroastrian theology.

The main evidence for this theology in Iran itself comes from the Sassanian and Islamic periods, but the evidence from Greek literature shows much earlier traces of recognizably Zoroastrian theologies attributed to (Zoroaster and) the magi. Since the majority of Avestan texts have been lost, a firm chronology of the development of Zoroastrian ideas is not possible. There are many different versions of the crucial Zoroastrian story of the creation of the world and the mixture of good and evil in it and also of ideas about how history will come to an end in the perfection of creation and the separation of evil from good. This seems to support the idea that a systematic view of Zoroastrian theology was developed in priestly circles on the basis of a large number of selected passages from Avesta and Zand. The early attestation of systematic views on this subject in Greek literature moreover shows that a priestly synthesis was reached comparatively early in the development of the tradition. As one would expect, it was constantly refined and adapted to new social, political, and cultural settings. In addition to a variety that arose in the course of history, one would expect different views to have been propounded in different regions of the Iranian world, in different priestly schools, and in different social settings. Evidently the requirements of the Sassanian court and large urban centers, where all subjects of learning and philosophy from Iran and the rest of the world were pursued, were different from those in rural parts of the empire.

This may explain, for instance, the matter of Zurvanism. Some priests held that the good and the evil spirits had been born from a primal deity, Zurvan, the god of time. This idea was based on the exegesis of difficult passages from the Avesta and it is attested chiefly in Armenian, Syriac, and Greek sources. It is almost entirely absent from Zoroastrian texts. Scholars have often seen a willful excision of this theology from Zoroastrian literature and interpreted this as a sign of a fierce sectarian struggle, for which there is, however, no evidence. If one assumes that Zurvanite ideas, which show a much stronger influence of Greek philosophy than most Zoroastrian texts, were characteristic of the type of theology developed in court circles, then their absence from most Zoroastrian texts, which derive from a single priestly family in southwestern Iran, is no longer surprising.

The Image of the Magi in the Ancient World

As noted above, important evidence for the activities of the magi is in Greek and Latin literature. The word magos was borrowed in an early stage of contact between Iranians and Greeks, presumably in the sixth century bce. From the early sources onward the word has the double meaning of "Persian priest" and "magician." As Persian priests the magi appear chiefly as the followers of Zoroaster, heritors of an old tradition of wisdom. Their chief use in many discussions is to illustrate the philosophical position of positing two primal, eternal realities (good and evil), in other words, dualism.

In many more passages, however, magi appear as magicians. In an early development, Greeks started applying the term to non-Persians as well, and eventually Greek individuals began to apply it to themselves. The Persian magi were thought to have special powers in visiting the realm of the dead, in guiding souls to the otherworld, or evoking the spirits of the dead. They excelled in magic, using herbs, stones, and spells for their purposes, and they developed a reputation for astrological knowledge and interests. It should be noted that in this context the word is not always used in a negative sense. Even Christian literature shows a certain ambivalence in this respect. The despised figure of Simon Magus shows the negative use of the term, whereas the Magi who first recognized the newborn king of the Jews (Mt. 2:1–12) show the lasting impact of the positive reputation of these "Persian" wise men in the realms of astrology and divination. In general, however, the Western traditions on the magi are a Western invention fueled by stereotyped views of the East as a place from which one could expect both unfathomable wisdom and acute danger.

Bibliography

Benveniste, Émile. Les mages dans l'ancien Iran. Paris, 1938.

Bidez, Joseph, and Franz Cumont. Les mages hellénisés: Zoroastre, Ostanès et Hystaspe d'après la tradition grecque. Paris, 1938.

Boyce, Mary. A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. 2: Under the Achaemenians. Leiden, 1989.

Boyce, Mary, and Frantz Grenet. A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. 3: Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman Rule. Leiden, 1991.

De Jong, Albert. Traditions of the Magi: Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin Literature. Leiden, 1997.

Kingsley, Peter. "Meetings with Magi: Iranian Themes among the Greeks, from Xanthus of Lydia to Plato's Academy." Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1995): 173–209.

Kreyenbroek, Philip G. "The Zoroastrian Priesthood after the Fall of the Sassanian Empire." In Transition Periods in Iranian History, pp. 151–166. Paris, 1987.

Kreyenbroek, Philip G. "The Dādestān ī Dēnīg on Priests." Indo-Iranian Journal 30 (1987): 185–208.