Zurvanism and Mesopotamia (1)

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The original Zoroastrian moral values in the dignity and freedom of man were deeply subversed under the influence of Babylonian astronomy and astrology and the astral religion of Mesopotamia. The Zoroastrian beliefs on the metaphysical and divine Time (Zurwān) present a strong dependence on the Mesopotamian conceptions. Zurvanism with its speculations on Time, its apparatus of numbers, and the idea of the world year, is the outcome of contact between Zoroastrianism and the Babylonian civilization, and probably originated in the second half of the Achaemenian period. The Zurvanite conception of the world year and exaltation of Time above the protagonists in the cosmic drama represented adaptation of the Zoroastrian tradition to the religious, philosophical, and scientific tendencies prevailing in the Near East during the Achaemenid and Hellenistic periods, when the notions of a universal law regulating the eternal movement of the orbs and of the celestial vault were widely accepted.

Bibliography

Andrea Piras

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