Ancient Iranian Temples
It is clear from figure 2 that there are a small number of temples in Central Asia; I have labeled these as religiously 'BMAC' after the archaeological designation of the ancient region: Bactria-Margiana Archaeological Complex. Published reports from excavators including Viktor Sarianidi initially identified the temples present at these sites as 'fire temples'.1 Archaeologist Michael Shenkar explains:
...the 'temple' of Togolok-1, Togolok-21, and the 'fire temple' of Gonur...were excavated in Margiana in Turkmenistan and dated around 1000 BCE. The excavator, V. Sarianidi, quite decisively declared that he had uncovered 'a proto-Zoroastrian temple of the Indo-Iranian, Aryan tribes'. This conjecture was based on traces of fire worship and a libation cult (interpreted by Sarianidi as haoma), which led him to believe that ancient Margiana was actually the long-sought homeland of the prophet Zoroaster.2
Shenkar points out that these hasty assumptions “evoked a wave of criticism...use of the term 'proto-Zoroastrian' came under especial fire, since we do not know exactly when and where the great prophet of the ancient Iranian religion lived.”3 This controversial mislabelling does not diminish the archaeological reality of religiously significant buildings in the region, however, it does place them in a settled context and beyond conclusive determination as specifically ‘Zoroastrian’ or even ‘ancient Iranian’.4 These sites are the only potential evidence for the establishment of ancient Iranian temples prior to the development of the Zoroastrian fire temple, the earliest evidence of which dates to the Parthian period.5
Whether informed by the lack of extant archaeological evidence or textual data such as can be derived from the likes of Herodotus, it appears there is scholarly agreement on the absence of ancient Iranian (‘Zoroastrian’) temples for at least the early Achaemenid period.6 Historian of religions Jenny Rose notes the lack of temple language within the scriptural tradition of the religion: “There is no Avestan term for a fire temple, although Videvdad refers to a 'lawful place' where fire may be set”7 Rose's note is significant to our understanding of an agreement of three major sources of information (archaeology, internal scripture, and external texts) on the nature of early Zoroastrian religion.8 While it seems safe to conclude that the religion of the ancient Iranian did not develop a native temple-building culture, there are yet excavations to be undertaken and any number of ruins to unearth which may offer more conclusive temple sites. Michael Shenkar summarizes the situation of potential temples clearly: “Whereas the majority of Iranians worshipped under the open sky, closed temples, though they probably existed, were exceptional.”9 The possibility of temples does not change the reality that if religion among the ancient Iranians, of Central Asia and the Iranian plateau, was characterized by a propensity to worship within temples, there would be no argument over the identification of a meager few sites and no question of the significance of temple-building culture to the religion.
There is no disagreement over the prominent temple-building activities of any number of settled peoples in the greater Near East, including those we have discussed: Egypt and Mesopotamia. The specific correlation between areas of settlement and temple sites serves as the very explanation offered by scholar of Zoroastrianism Mary Boyce to address the lack of temple-building activities which is evidenced in early Zoroastrian religious culture: “The Indo-Iranians, as wanderers, had had no temples with images, such as reduced the divinities of settled peoples to local powers with fixed habitations and merely regional authority.”10 Boyce connects the mobility of the Indo-Iranians to this lack of temples and postulates the resulting cosmological implications. To Boyce the lack of temples within this mobile religion is not merely an indication of outdoor worship, but explains the nature of Indo-Iranian deities: “The vastness of the steppes encouraged the Indo-Iranians to conceive their gods as cosmic, not local, divinities”11 We have discussed the logic of developing temple-building culture as a product of religions that permeate societies which are themselves characterized by the construction of urban settlements. Boyce's comments suggest that just as differences between mobile and settled societies can be identified in economic or social systems so too differences in temple-building must be accompanied by identifiable differences in religious development. In order to identify some of these differences, we must compare the case of the ancient Iranians to the only other 'major' ancient religious society which is barely represented in the dataset here presented – that of the Israelites.
1 Shenkar, “Temple Architecture in the Iranian World before the Macedonian Conquest,” 170–171.
4 This is not to say that connections are impossible, as with David Stronach's analysis of the Median site of Tepe Nush-i-jan, it is difficult to conclude that there is no connection between sites bearing evidence of fire used in a ritual setting and a religion which would come to be known for such ritual activity. While likely, the arguments and evidence for such connections are far from conclusive.
5 Rose, Zoroastrianism: An Introduction, 48.
6 Ibid., 46–47; A.F. de Jong, Traditions of the Magi. Zoroastrianism in Greek and Latin Literature (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 133) (Brill, Leiden, 1997), 93–94; W. B. Fisher et al., The Cambridge History of Iran., vol. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968), 695.
7 Rose, Zoroastrianism: An Introduction, 48.
10 Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. 1 (Leiden: Brill, 1975), 22.
11 Mary Boyce, Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism, Textual Sources for the Study of Religion (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 9.