‘Persian Zoroastrian’was primarily religious and Zoroastrian—a question
which will be addressed below.
There is also more specific evidence that the Persian Zoroastrian calendar
had already reached Sogdiana under the Achaemenids. The third month of the
Sogdian year is callednysnyc, which is derived from the Aramaic Babylonian
month-namenisan(Akkadian Nisannu,first month of the Babylonian year).^47
The designation of the third Sogdian month by the name of thefirst Babylo-
nian month is odd, and can only be explained by assuming that the name
nisanwas adopted in a period when the Sogdian, i.e. Persian Zoroastrian, third
month coincided with the Babylonian Nisan.^48 This occurred in the late
fourth—early third centuriesBCE, i.e. around the end of the Achaemenid and
beginning of the Hellenistic periods.^49 By then, both Persian Zoroastrian and
Babylonian calendars would have been in use in the Sogdian satrapy.
The Cappadocian calendarThe Persian Zoroastrian calendar also spread to Cappadocia, immediately to
the west of Armenia. The evidence is limited to late Antiquity, by which time
the Cappadocian calendar had been adapted to the Julian calendar with the
addition of one day in Julian leap years.^50 But from its structure and month-
names it is evident that before the arrival of the Romans, the Cappadocian
calendar had been identical with none other than the Persian Zoroastrian
Cappadocia (ii. 274–5, iii. 264–5) and Armenia (ii. 185–6). Bactria is assumed to have been a
stronghold of Zoroastrianism from the earliest period (ibid. i. 275–6, ii. 7–8, 217–8, 276–8, iii.
6 – 8 and mainly 152– 93 —but this is largely the reiteration of a traditional belief ); whilst in
Armenia, according to Russell (1987), Zoroastrianism became the main religion already in the
Achaemenid period, until the Christianization of the country at the beginning of the 4th c.CE.On
the whole, there is no evidence that Zoroastrianism, or for that matter the Persian Zoroastrian
calendar, suddenly spread to any these regions in the Seleucid or Parthian periods (I am grateful
to Nicholas Sims-Williams for his assistance).
(^47) Babylonian month-names are also attested in late antique Bactria (northern Afghanistan),
withneisano,sioano, andþabato, clearly derived from the Aramaic Babyloniannisan,siwan, and
shebat(Sims-Williams and de Blois 2005). It is not known how the Bactrian calendar was
structured, but given the affinity of Bactria to Sogdiana (both using East Iranian languages,
similar month-names, and having formed a single satrapy in the early Seleucid period), it is likely
to have been identical with the Sogdian calendar (ibid.; this supersedes their less likely argument
that the Bactrian calendar was lunar throughout Antiquity, eid. 1996: 153–4, 160–1).
(^48) A similar phenomenon occurs in the Mandaean calendar, and will be discussed below.
(^49) This calculation is based on the Babylonian Nisan’s beginningon averagetwo weeks after
the vernal equinox (see Ch. 2, near n. 122). In reality, however, the relationship between
Babylonian lunar months and the Persian Zoroastrian yearfluctuated from year to year. If we
assume (as I think is less likely) the earliest Nisan in the 19-year cycle, then its coincidence with
the Persian Zoroastrian third month would not have occurred until the mid-3rd c.BCE; or if the
latest Nisan in the cycle, it would have been the early–mid-4th c.BCE.
(^50) The evidence derives mainly from the late antiquehemorologia(Kubitschek 1915): see
Samuel (1972) 177, Grumel (1958) 171, Panaino (1990) 663–4, and further Ch. 5.
TheRise of the Fixed Calendars 181