This is the History of the World Podcast with me Chris Hasler

And you're listening to volume three, the classical world

episode five

Iranian religions of Antiquity. The In the previous four episodes we looked at the previous four episodes we looked at the pre-Islamic empires of Persia

starting with the Aikiminids and following the story through the Macedonians, the Seleucids, the Parthians and the Sasanians.

If all of these versions of Persia were pre-Islamic, then what was the state religion of these empires?

Did they just continue the tradition of polytheistic deity worship or was there something else?

Well when you ask the question of pre-Islamic Persian religion to those who have

knowledge of this period, the most common answer that you will receive is Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrianism is one of the

top 20 religions of today's world and when I say top 20, I'm talking about the estimated amount of followers.

Ziroastrianism is a monotheistic faith.

So this is an interesting discussion point due to the fact that we have little in the way of monotheism

before the emergence of Zoroastrianism.

One of the first and only insights of Zoroastrianism.

One of the first and only instances of monotheism before the first millennium B.C.

was the instance of Artonism in Egypt, which was something that we discuss way to of This particular version of monotheism involved a Pharaoh with a very outlandish attitude towards the traditional religion of the Egyptian kingdom.

His name was Ahmonhotep the fourth, better known to us as Arkenaten. And he

encouraged the people of his country to worship just one of the pantheon of Egyptian deities.

But this did not last because the population did not want to let go of their traditional polytheistic beliefs.

The story of Zoroastrianism begins with an individual called Zarathustra Spitama, also known as Zorasta.

It is difficult to pin a specific time to Zarathustra's lifetime. Some will date it as far back as 1500 b.C.

while others suggest he was alive as recently as the seventh century B.C. E. Zarathustra's young life was spent

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