page_title: Anahita
section_title: Parsa, Elam, and Media
hierarchical_section_title: Anahita / Inscriptions and classical accounts / Parsa, Elam, and Media
caption_attribution_description: English: Cylinder seal with a harem scene, or a cult scene before goddess Anahita or the queen. Chalcedony, Achaemenid period (6th-4th centuries BC). Français&#160;: Sceau-cylindre représentant une scène de harem, ou une scène de culte devant la déesse Anahita ou devant la reine. Chalcédoine, période achéménide (VI-IVe siècles av. J.-C.).
context_page_description: Anahita is the Old Persian form of the name of an Iranian goddess and appears in complete and earlier form as Aredvi Sura Anahita, the Avestan name of an Indo-Iranian cosmological figure venerated as the divinity of "the Waters" and hence associated with fertility, healing and wisdom.There is also a temple named Anahita in Iran. Aredvi Sura Anahita is Ardwisur Anahid or Nahid in Middle and Modern Persian, and Anahit in Armenian. An iconic shrine cult of Aredvi Sura Anahita was – together with other shrine cults – "introduced apparently in the 4th century BCE and lasted until it was suppressed in the wake of an iconoclastic movement under the Sassanids."
  The Greek and Roman historians of classical antiquity refer to her either as Anaïtis or identified her with one of the divinities from their own pantheons. 270 Anahita, a silicaceous S-type asteroid, is named after her. Based on the development of her cult, she was described as a syncretistic goddess, which was composed of two independent elements.
context_section_description: Artaxerxes II's devotion to Anahita is most apparent in his inscriptions, where her name appears directly after that of Ahura Mazda and before that of Mithra. Artaxerxes' inscription at Susa reads: "By the will of Ahura Mazda, Anahita, and Mithra I built this palace. May Ahura Mazda, Anahita, and Mithra protect me from all evil" (A²Hc 15–10). This is a remarkable break with tradition; no Achaemenid king before him had invoked any but Ahura Mazda alone by name although the Behistun inscription of Darius invokes Ahuramazda and "The other gods who are".
  The temple(s) of Anahita at Ecbatana (Hamadan) in Media must have once been the most glorious sanctuaries in the known world. Although the palace had been stripped by Alexander and the following Seleucid kings, when Antiochus III raided Ecbatana in 209 BCE, the temple "had the columns round it still gilded and a number of silver tiles were piled up in it, while a few gold bricks and a considerable quantity of silver ones remained." 
  Polybius' reference to Alexander is supported by Arrian, who in 324 BCE wrote of a temple in Ecbatana dedicated to "Asclepius" (by inference presumed to be Anahita, likewise a divinity of healing), destroyed by Alexander because she had allowed his friend Hephaestion to die. The massive stone lion on the hill there (said to be part of a sepulcral monument to Hephaestion) is today a symbol that visitors touch in hope of fertility.
  Plutarch records that Artaxerxes II had his concubine Aspasia consecrated as priestess at the temple "to Diana of Ecbatana, whom they name Anaitis, that she might spend the remainder of her days in strict chastity." This does not however necessarily imply that chastity was a requirement of Anaitis priestesses. 
  Isidore of Charax, in addition to a reference to the temple at Ecbatana ("a temple, sacred to Anaitis, they sacrifice there always") also notes a "temple of Artemis" at Concobar (Lower Media, today Kangavar). Despite archaeological findings that refute a connection with Anahita, remains of a 2nd-century BCE Hellenic-style edifice at Kangavar continue to be a popular tourist attraction.
  Isidore also records another "royal place, a temple of Artemis, founded by Darius" at Basileia (Apadana), on the royal highway along the left bank of the Euphrates.
  During the Hellenistic Parthian period, Susa had its "Dianae templum augustissimum" far from Elymais where another temple, known to Strabo as the "Ta Azara", was dedicated to Athena/Artemis and where tame lions roamed the grounds. This may be a reference to the temple above the Tang-a Sarvak ravine in present-day Khuzestan Province. Other than this, no evidence of the cult in Western Iran from the Parthian period survives, but "it is reasonable to assume that the martial features of Anāhita (Ishtar) assured her popularity in the subsequent centuries among the warrior classes of Parthian feudalism."
  In the 2nd century CE, the center of the cult in Parsa (Persia proper) was at Staxr (Istakhr). There, Anahita continued to be venerated in her martial role and it was at Istakhr that Sassan, after whom the Sassanid dynasty is named, served as high priest. Sassan's son, Papak, likewise a priest of that temple, overthrew the King of Istakhr (a vassal of the Arsacids), and had himself crowned in his stead. "By this time (the beginning of the 3rd century), Anāhita's headgear (kolāh) was worn as a mark of nobility", which in turn "suggests that she was goddess of the feudal warrior estate." Ardashir (r. 226-241 CE) "would send the heads of the petty kings he defeated for display at her temple."
  During the reign of Bahram I (r. 272-273 CE), in the wake of an iconoclastic movement that had begun at about the same time as the shrine cult movement, the sanctuaries dedicated to a specific divinity were - by law - disassociated from that divinity by removal of the statuary and then either abandoned or converted into fire altars. So also the popular shrines to Mehr/Mithra which retained the name Darb-e Mehr - Mithra's Gate - that is today one of the Zoroastrian technical terms for a fire 
caption: The figure of a female on an Achaemenid cylinder seal
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