Origin from 330 BCE
In 330 BCE, Alexander the Great's army reached Persepolis, the ceremonial capital the Achaemenid kings had built as the center of a state that had made Zoroastrianism its de facto religion more than a century earlier, already recorded here. After looting the treasury, Alexander set the palace complex ablaze, an act later Zoroastrian writers remembered as deliberate rather than accidental. Zoroastrian tradition held that the fire consumed the royal archive's own copy of the Avesta, written on prepared ox hides in gold ink, along with the Zend commentary explaining it; the Sasanian era Denkard remembered Alexander as gizistag, the accursed destroyer of the Good Religion, and later priests spoke of an attempt under the Parthian king Vologases I, reigning from about 51 to 80 CE, to gather back together what oral memory and scattered fragments could still supply. Persia's priesthood and its scriptural tradition survived the conquest and the Seleucid and Parthian centuries that followed, but without a securely reassembled, state sponsored canon, until the Sasanian dynasty made Zoroastrianism Persia's state religion again in 224 CE, already recorded here.
Facts
Dates
StatusSuppressed marks the loss and dispersal of the Avesta after Alexander's conquest, per Zoroastrian tradition's own account, a specific dated setback between Zoroastrianism becoming the Achaemenid state's de facto religion already recorded here and its restoration as Persia's state religion under the Sasanian dynasty in 224 CE also already recorded here. Cross-Tradition Connections
Occurred In
Spread Event Of
Adds a specific, dated setback between Zoroastrianism becoming the Achaemenid state's de facto religion and its restoration as Persia's state religion under the Sasanian dynasty in 224 CE, both already recorded here: Alexander's burning of Persepolis and the loss of the royal archive's copy of the Avesta, an episode Zoroastrian tradition remembered as a deliberate attack on the Good Religion.
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