LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Zoroastrian: Central Iran
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The Zoroastrian faith is relatively unknown worldwide In Iran its origin country few know about. Zoroastrian philosophy was the main religious belief system of ancient Iranians and for about several hundred years was the basis of the Iranian culture and their life style, now is almost forgotten In western countries few are familiar with Zoroastrian philosophy and are reminded of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” written by Nietzsche a celebrated German philosopher. Still this faith still lives and has had heavy influence on Christianity, Islam and Judaism.
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Besides their contribution to the transformation of the original Zoroastrian dualism in the Achaemenid era the Magi encouraged religious syncretism which prepared the ground for the assimilation of new religious concepts in Zoroastrianism. The cults of ancient Mesopotamian deities persisted in what were now the Near Eastern domains of the Achaemenid empire in the fertile climate of the encounter between the Iranian and Mesopotamian civilizations. In parallel with Iranian dualism, neo-Babylonian thought seems to have already begun to develop a dualist antagonism between the patron god of Babylon, Bel Marduk, and the Mesopotamian archetypal deity of war, death and the underworld, Nergal, the consort of the queen of underworld and darkness, Ereshkigal. As a personification of the destructive power of the sun and fire and with solar attributes, like the gryphon and the lion, Nergal is sometimes associated with the Mesopotamian sun-god Shamash. With his
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The earliest Zoroastrian manuscripts that survive today date from the late 13th and early 14th centuries. They are written in the Avestan and (Book) Pahlavi scripts. The Pahlavi script is derived from Aramaic, the chief administrative language of the Achaemenid Empire (550-330 BC). It contains only consonants and is read from right to left. It evolved in southern Iran and became the official script of the Sasanian Empire (c. 224-651 AD).
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In recent years... Zoroastrian communities in Iran, Europe and the Americas have been more tolerant towards conversion. While this move has not been supported officially by the priesthood in Mumbai, India, it has been endorsed by the Council of Mobeds in Tehran.
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The extant Zoroastrian texts and documents will not be appreciated till all this is kept in mind. What we now possess is the residue of centuries of trials and tribulations through which Iranian culture came to birth, culminated, declined and from all appearances is becoming extinct -- this last is one phase of the communal karma which the modern Parsis, only some 95,000 strong, are facing today.
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By that time what Zoroastrian priests had to tell will have been very much what some Jews wanted to hear. The overthrow of the Achaemenian empire was a truly traumatic experience for Iranians. It was not simply that a dispensation that had been perceived as divinely ordained and everlasting was abruptly and totally obliterated - it was replaced first by the miseries of defeat, then by generations of warfare between the successor states. Iranians and Jews were no longer rulers and ruled but fellow-sufferers in an uncertain and tormented world.
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