Anahita

Anahita /ɑːnɑːhiːtɑː/ is the Old Persian form of the name of an Iranian goddess and appears in complete and earlier form as Aredvi Sura Anahita (Arədvī Sūrā Anāhitā), the Avestan name of an Indo-Iranian cosmological figure venerated as the divinity of 'the Waters' (Aban) and hence associated with fertility, healing and wisdom. 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.'An inheritance from Ishtar is also supported by Cumont and Lommel. For a rejection of some of the numerous other identifications (Atargatis, Anat, etc.) as historically distinct, see Meyer.In antiquity, 'to invoke a deity correctly, it was essential to know his proper name' and when people 'worshipped gods other than their own, they invoked them by their original names.'Widengren has a similar hypothesis, but places it in the Proto-Avestan period. In this opinion, Anahita is Nahaithya, the Avestan daeva(s) that Widengren also suggests might be cognate with the Nasatyas.The shrine, which legend attributes to the eldest daughter of Yazdegerd III, continues to be a pilgrimage site (by women only, through a concession by male descendants of Mohammed) even in Islamic times. Boyce suggests that the shrine may be even older than the Sassanid period, dating perhaps to the Hellenistic Parthian era. Anahita /ɑːnɑːhiːtɑː/ is the Old Persian form of the name of an Iranian goddess and appears in complete and earlier form as Aredvi Sura Anahita (Arədvī Sūrā Anāhitā), the Avestan name of an Indo-Iranian cosmological figure venerated as the divinity of 'the Waters' (Aban) and hence associated with fertility, healing and wisdom. 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. The first is a manifestation of the Indo-Iranian idea of the Heavenly River who provides the waters to the rivers and streams flowing in the earth while the second is that of a goddess with an uncertain origin, though maintaining her own unique characteristics, became associated with the cult of the ancient Mesopotamian goddess Inanna-Ishtar. According to a theory, this is attributed partly to a desire to make Anahita part of Zoroastrianism after diffusing from the extreme northwest to the rest of Persia. According to H. Lommel, the proper name of the divinity in Indo-Iranian times was Sarasvatī, which also means 'she who possesses waters'. In Sanskrit, the name आर्द्रावी शूरा अनाहिता means 'of the waters, mighty, and immaculate'. Like the Indian Sarasvatī, Anāhitā nurtures crops and herds; and she is hailed both as a divinity and as the mythical river which she personifies, 'as great in bigness as all these waters which flow forth upon the earth' (Yasht 5.3). Only Arədvī (a word otherwise unknown, perhaps with an original meaning 'moist') is specific to the divinity.The words sūra and anāhīta are generic Avestan language adjectives, and respectively mean 'mighty' and 'pure'. Both adjectives also appear as epithets of other divinities or divine concepts such as Haoma and the Fravashis. Both adjectives are also attested in Vedic Sanskrit. As a divinity of the waters (Abān), the yazata is of Indo-Iranian origin, according to Lommel related to Sanskrit Sarasvatī that, like its Proto-Iranian equivalent *Harahvatī, derives from Indo-Iranian *Saraswṇtī. In its old Iranian form *Harahvatī, 'her name was given to the region, rich in rivers, whose modern capital is Delhi (Avestan Haraxvaitī, Old Persian Hara(h)uvati-, Greek Arachosia).' 'Like the Devi Saraswati, nurtures crops and herds; and is hailed both as a divinity and the mythical river that she personifies, 'as great in bigness as all these waters which flow forth upon the earth'.' Some historians note that that despite Anahita's Aryan roots and the way she represented the commonly shared concept of the Heavenly River, which in the Vedas was represented by the goddess Sarasvatī (the later heavenly Ganga), she had no counterpart in the ancient text who bear the same name or one that remotely resembled hers. In the (Middle-)Persian texts of the Sassanid and later eras, Arədvī Sūra Anāhīta appears as Ardwisur Anāhīd. The evidence suggests a western Iranian origin of Anāhīta. (see borrowing from Babylonia, below). Anahita also shares characteristics with Mat Zemlya (Damp Mother Earth) in Slavic mythology. At some point prior to the 4th century BCE, this yazata was conflated with (an analogue of) Semitic Ištar, likewise a divinity of 'maiden' fertility and from whom Aredvi Sura Anahita then inherited additional features of a divinity of war and of the planet Venus or 'Zohreh' in Arabic. It was moreover the association with the planet Venus, 'it seems, which led Herodotus to record that the learnt 'to sacrifice to 'the heavenly goddess'' from the Assyrians and Arabians.' There are sources who based their theory on this aspect. For instance, it was proposed that the ancient Persians worshiped the planet Venus as *Anahiti, the 'pure one', and that, as these people settled in Eastern Iran, *Anahiti began to absorb elements of the cult of Ishtar. Indeed, according to Boyce, it is 'probable' that there was once a Perso–Elamite divinity by the name of *Anahiti (as reconstructed from the Greek Anaitis). It is then likely (so Boyce) that it was this divinity that was an analogue of Ishtar, and that it is this divinity with which Aredvi Sura Anahita was conflated. The link between Anahita and Ishtar is part of the wider theory that Iranian kingship had Mesopotamian roots and that the Persian gods were natural extensions of the Babylonian deities, where Ahuramazda is considered an aspect of Marduk, Mithra for Shamash, and, finally, Anahita was Ishtar. This is supported by how Ishtar 'apparently' gave Aredvi Sura Anahita the epithet Banu, 'the Lady', a typically Mesopotamian construct that is not attested as an epithet for a divinity in Iran before the common era. It is completely unknown in the texts of the Avesta, but evident in Sassanid-era middle Persian inscriptions (see the cult, below) and in a middle Persian Zend translation of Yasna 68.13. Also in Zoroastrian texts from the post-conquest epoch (651 CE onwards), the divinity is referred to as 'Anahid the Lady', 'Ardwisur the Lady' and 'Ardwisur the Lady of the waters'.