MARTIN WEST

DARIUS’ ASCENT TO PARADISE

The rock tombs of Darius I and his successors at Naqš-e Rustam and Persepolis are each surmounted by a relief of a unique and unchanging design (Figure 1). The Great King appears on a platform supported by the representatives of thirty nations. But he is not portrayed triumphing over his enemies or receiving tribute from his subjects. He stands alone before a fire altar, holding a bow in his left hand and raising his right in salutation, while above hovers the winged figure of Ahuramazda. In the upper right area of the field hangs the moon, depicted as an upturned crescent inscribed in a complete disc.1 The most enigmatic feature is the presence of the moon at the side. It is clearly more than a mere decorative motif or space-filler; indeed it conspicuously upsets the symmetry of the composition. I quote E. F. Schmidt’s comment (omitting a couple of his bibliographical footnotes): The symbol on Darius’ tomb has been described as the crescent on the full moon. We believe with others that it may indicate the crescent, before it reached the first quarter, and the faintly visible rest of the lunar orb. The significance of the moon in our tomb scene is problematical.2

It must have had some religious significance in the context. What is the meaning of the scene as a whole? At one level it seems to convey an obvious message: it portrays the late king as a pious Mazdaworshipper. Thus Mary Boyce: “by this carving Darius was making a strong visual affirmation of his faith”. She argues that the fire is the king’s own hearth fire, and that the winged figure is not Ahuramazda but Darius’ own khwarenah, at the same time “retaining something of its primary significance of a solar symbol”. As to the presence of the moon, she notes that: ¯ Three of the major Zoroastrian prayers, the Khorš¯ed, M¯ah and Adur Niy¯ayeš, are devoted to sun, moon and fire; and in a Pahlavi text, in answer to the question how prayer and praise of the yazatas is to be performed, it is enjoined that prayers should be said facing the sun, moon or fire; and that, moreover, if a sin is committed, it should be repented of and renounced before the sun, moon or fire.3 At one level of meaning, therefore, the tomb-relief simply shows the king at prayer according to orthodox Zoroastrian prescription.

Indo-Iranian Journal 45: 51–57, 2002. © 2002 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

52

MARTIN WEST

Figure 1. The upper part of the relief over Darius’ tomb.

She then cites from other Achaemenian art examples of personalized lunar figures modelled on the same pattern as the solar winged disc figure, and combines this with texts that speak of the moon as a source of khwarenah: The underlying thought was perhaps that the radiant sun and moon divided between them the task of sending down the divine glory to earth by day and night; and the use of the elaborated sun- and moon-symbols together in Achaemenian art was perhaps to suggest that the king’s glory too shone throughout the twenty-four hours. Further, it is conceivable that the moon-symbol was used alone in honour of a dead king, whose ‘glory’ would have been accessible to his descendants, through prayer and veneration, by the action of his fravaši, necessarily most powerful in the night.4

This is an ingenious but frail construction, tacked together from disparate pieces of data and achieving no strong effect of organic coherence. It is certainly relevant to note that sun, moon, and fire were conceived as being of kindred nature; hence prayers might be said facing any one of them. But the texts refer to sun, moon, or fire, and there was no need to show all three to illustrate Darius’ piety. Nor is it easy to understand how at the same time the scene could be a representation of the king’s khwarenah. If that had been the artist’s idea, he could surely have found clearer ways of expressing it. What is most important in Boyce’s discussion is the recognition that the fire, the moon, and the sun somehow belong together. In endeavouring to interpret the scene we should consider them as some kind of trinity. The question is, what is the role of this trinity in a funerary context? And granted that the king’s immediate relationship is to one of the three, the holy fire, why is this relationship, rather than his achievements as ruler and warrior, singled out as the most appropriate subject for his tomb relief?

DARIUS’ ASCENT TO PARADISE

53

Figure 2. The Qizqapan relief (from Iraq 1 [1934], Figure 2).

Before going further, let us note that although the scene is not exactly paralleled elsewhere, the same elements, more or less, are found in the relief over the doorway of the Median rock tomb ‘Qizqapan’ near S¯urd¯ash in north-eastern Iraq (Figure 2). In its central panel we see two men standing on either side of a fire altar, gazing into the fire, each with his right hand raised and his left hand holding a bow. In a smaller panel above there appears the lunar crescent-in-disc; sitting enthroned in the crescent is a male figure who holds what looks like a flask, as if for oil or perfume. A side-panel on the left shows something like the usual Ahuramazda, but consisting of little more than a head, two hands, and four wings, while on the other side, level with the lunar symbol, is a round medallion with a central boss from which radiate eleven wedge-shaped spokes, each with a small (lunar?) crescent impaled on it. This might be seen as a symbol of the months of the year, despite the shortfall in the number of the moons (if that is what they are).5 I suggest that the explanation of these tomb reliefs may be found in an eschatological theory that can be traced in the Upanishads, the Avesta, and later in the Pahlavi books. Let us begin with the Iranian texts. In a lost portion of the Avesta, the D¯amd¯at Nask, it was written that when they sever the consciousness of men it goes out to the nearest fire, then out to the stars, then out to the moon, and then out to the sun.6

54

MARTIN WEST

In the Pahlavi books it is a recurrent doctrine that the righteous soul after death journeys to the stars (the nearest of the celestial luminaries to the earth), from there on to the moon, from there to the sun, and finally beyond the sun to the Beginningless Light, which is the abode of Ohrmazd. (The good man’s soul ascends to Paradise) in three stages, that of Good Thought, that of Good Speech, and that of Good Action. The first stage reaches to the stars, the second to the moon, the third to the sun, where the bright Paradise lies.7 The righteous souls pass over the Cinvad bridge . . . they step forth up to the star, or the moon, or to the sun station, or to the endless light.8 One step reaches to the star station, the second step reaches to the moon station, the third step reaches to the sun station, and with the fourth step it reaches to the Cinvad bridge.9 Heaven is, first, from the star station unto the moon station; second, from the moon station unto the sun; and third, from the sun station unto Gar¯odm¯an, whereon Aurarmazd is seated.10

I submit that the Qizqapan and Achaemenid tomb reliefs reflect an early form of this doctrine in which the stars had not yet been definitely incorporated. It will be seen below that there is evidence for the existence of such a variant before Darius’ time. On this interpretation the fire altar is at once the focus of the king’s piety and the fire to which his soul goes directly on his death. Form there it will travel to the moon and the sun. The moon is a prominent and otherwise inexplicable feature of the compositions. (In the Qizqapan relief it actually occupies the central position above the altar fire.) The sun is surely to be regarded as contained in the figure of Ahuramazda, whose symbol is derived from the Egyptian-Assyrian-Urartian winged solar disc, and whose visible form is identified as the sun and the daylight in the G¯ath¯a of the Seven Chapters (Yasna 36.6). If the soul’s final destination is the realm of Ahuramazda, this may be considered either as associated with the sun itself, as in the passage quoted above from the Bundahišn, or as beyond the sun, as in the other passages. In either case it may be symbolized by the figure of the god that hovers on high in the reliefs. The texts I have quoted are Zoroastrian, but it does not necessarily follow that Darius’ Mazdaism was ‘Zoroastrian’. The eschatology need not be Zoroastrian in origin. In fact we find something akin to it in some of the Upanishads, works composed earlier than Darius and currently taught, we may suppose, in one corner of his empire. Here the heavenly ascent is bound up with a theory of metempsychosis, according to which most souls fail to rise beyond the moon, return to the earth as rain, pass into food, and so re-enter the cycle of animal life. We need not go further into this side of the theory, as it was not taken up in Iran. But it is relevant to note what becomes of the favoured ones who by knowledge escape from this world. First they merge with the flames of the funeral pyre. Then:

DARIUS’ ASCENT TO PARADISE

55

From the flame (they pass) into the day, from the day into the half-month of the full moon, from the half-month of the full moon into the six months during which the sun moves northwards, from (those) months to the world of the gods, from the world of the gods to the sun, from the sun to the realm of lightning. A Person who is mind draws near to these realms of lightning and leads them on to the Brahman-worlds. In those Brahman-worlds they live for long ages. For them there is no return.11 Everyone who departs from this world, comes to the moon. In the first fortnight (the moon) waxes on their breath-souls, while in the latter half it prepares them to be born (again). . . . (He who succeeds in passing the moon) reaching that path (called) the ‘way of the gods’ comes to the worlds of Agni, of V¯ayu, of Varun.a, of the sun, of Indra, of Praj¯apati and of Brahman.12

It will be observed that in these texts the stars do not yet appear as an intervening stage on the soul’s journey between the earthly fire and the moon. Their absence from the Achaemenid reliefs, then, is not a strong argument against the eschatological interpretation that I am advocating. The reliefs may reflect a form of the doctrine that is in this respect closer to the earlier Indian texts than to the later Zoroastrian ones. There is another point that suggests derivation of the later Zoroastrian theory from the Indian. In the Upanishads the earthly fire into which the deceased’s soul passes, and which sends it on to the heavenly fires, is the funeral pyre. This is more natural and original than the idea of the soul making its way to the nearest altar fire. The Zoroastrians, as they abhorred cremation, were driven to modify the doctrine in this way. The role of the moon in the Indian theory may be relevant to the way in which it is depicted in the tomb reliefs. According to the passage quoted from the Kaus.¯ıtaki Upanis.ad, the moon waxes in the first half of the month because it is receiving the breath-souls (pr¯an.a) of those who depart this earth. According to a number of texts it is filling up with soma, the divine juice that gives the gods their immortality. In the second half of the month they are drinking it from the bowl of the moon, and so we see it waning.13 It is those souls which reach the moon during its waxing, and during the six months between the winter and summer solstices, that are able to pass beyond it to immortality. Both the phase of the moon and the season of the year are therefore of potential significance in an artistic representation relating to a soul’s ascent to heaven. If the ‘old moon in the new moon’s arms’ as shown on the reliefs is assumed to be an evening rather than a pre-dawn apparition, it is necessarily a waxing moon; and the orientation of the crescent, with the horns pointing straight up, indicates springtime, when the part of the zodiac in which the new moon is situated rises at the steepest angle from the horizon.14 To anyone familiar with the Indian theory, its appearance might well suggest the bowl with the soma in it.15 The theory also enables

56

MARTIN WEST

us to guess the significance of the figure with the flask who sits in the moon on the Qizqapan relief. It is a flask of the divine juice of which the gods partake. To sum up, I do not dispute the obvious conclusion that Darius is shown in private performance of a holy ritual. That is the initial impression that anyone beholding the relief must have received. But I submit that the scene has a further meaning in relation to the king’s death and his translation to a higher realm. His devotional link with the altar fire is, as it were, extended into a projection of the route his soul will take in its ascent to Paradise: from the altar fire to the moon – the waxing moon of spring, the bowl filling up with the elixir of immortality16 – and from there on to the sun and to the abode of Ahuramazda his god. NOTES 1 For detailed descriptions cf. F. Sarre-E. Herzfeld, Iranische Felsreliefs (Berlin, 1910),

pp. 14 ff.; E. F. Schmidt, Persepolis III. The Royal Tombs and other Monuments (Chicago, 1970), pp. 84 f.; M. Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism II (Handbuch der Orientalistik I. 8(1). 2. 2A, Leiden-Köln, 1982), pp. 112–114. For illustrations cf. Sarre-Herzfeld, op. cit., p. 15 (Abb. 5) and plates II–III; Schmidt, op. cit., frontispiece and plates 1, 18–19, 22, 40–42, 48–50, 56–58, 63–64, 70, 78; G. Walser, Persepolis, die Königspfalz des Darius (Tübingen, 1980), plates 81, 118–119. 2 Schmidt, op. cit., p. 85. He is certainly correct in understanding the representation as being not a combination of two lunar phases, crescent and full, but as the phenomenon known as ‘the old moon in the new moon’s arms’, often seen when the dark portion of the new moon is made visible by light reflected from the earth. For this manner of depicting the moon in ancient oriental art see P. R. S. Moorey, Iran 16 (1978), pp. 146 f. with references; for a curious example on an Attic hydria from Nola (Paris, Cabinet des Médailles 449; c. 425 BC) see the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae VII, Pegasos no. 37. It is on the later of the Achaemenid tomb reliefs that the moon is best preserved (Schmidt’s plates 49, 57, 63, and 70). 3 M¯en¯ok-i-Xrat 53. 4 Boyce, op. cit., pp. 113–116. 5 C. J. Edmonds, Iraq 1 (1934), pp. 184–189 with figures 1–4 and plates XXIII–XXVI; E. E. Herzfeld, Iran in the Ancient East (London-New York, 1941), pp. 204 f.; Schmidt, Persepolis III, p. 79. 6 Š¯ayast n¯a-Š¯ayast 12.5, trans. E. W. West, Sacred Books of the East, V, pp. 341 f. 7 Bundahišn 30. 11, p. 199 Anklesaria; translation after G. Widengren, Iranische Geisteswelt (Baden-Baden, 1961), pp. 179 f. This and the following texts are quoted, together with others illustrating the same ordering of the heavenly bodies, by W. Burkert, ‘Iranisches bei Anaximandros’, Rheinisches Museum 106 (1963), pp. 107 ff. 8 D¯atast¯an-i-D¯en¯ık 34. 3, trans. E. W. West, Sacred Books of the East XVIII, p. 76. 9 Sad dar 87. 11, trans. E. W. West, Sacred Books of the East XXIV, p. 352. 10 M¯en¯ok-i-Xrat 7. 1 ff., trans E. W. West, Sacred Books of the East XXIV, pp. 29 f. 11 Brhad¯aranyaka Upanisad 6. 2. 14, trans. R. C. Zaehner, Hindu Scriptures (London, . . . 1966), p. 81.

DARIUS’ ASCENT TO PARADISE

57

12 Kaus¯ıtaki Upanisad 1. 2–3, trans. Zaehner, op. cit., pp. 149 f. . . 13 Brhad¯aranyaka Upanisad 6. 2. 15, trans. Zaehner, op. cit., pp. 81 f., and other texts; A. . . .

Hillebrandt, Vedische Mythologie I (Breslau, 1891), pp. 290–319; A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology (Strassburg, 1898), pp. 112 f. 14 By chance I saw the old moon in the new moon’s arms very clearly for two or three evenings in succession in early April 2000 at Shiraz and Kerman, just after visiting Persepolis. It looked just as on the reliefs. 15 In Iranian terms it would be haoma. 16 Darius in fact died in the autumn of 486; but the relief had no doubt already been designed and carved.

All Souls College Oxford