good reason for such an exchange. The similarity between both calendars is
probably the independent result of similar historical circumstances. As argued
above in the context of the Sogdian calendar, the third month of the Persian
Zoroastrian calendar coincided with Babylonian Nisannu around the begin-
ning of the Hellenistic period, in the early third centuryBCE; this provides an
approximate date for the adoption of Babylonian month-names in the Man-
daean calendar.^58 At this time, moreover, thefirst month of the Persian
Zoroastrian year occurred in the middle of the winter, which may also explain
why it was designated in the Mandaean calendar as‘first winter’month
(alternatively, this designation could have been instituted in thefirst century
BCE—but no later than that—when the Persian Zoroastrian New Year fell early
in the winter). It appears therefore that the Mandaean calendar, a Persian
Zoroastrian calendar but with peculiar seasonal month-names and a peculiar
arrangement of Babylonian month-names, has origins that go back to the
third centuryBCE.
In this period, however, Mandaism—a Gnostic religion inspired by Juda-
ism and Christianity—did not yet exist. The calendar that the Mandaeans
eventually adopted as their own must therefore have been originally a non-
Mandaean, local calendar, presumably in use in southern Mesopotamia or
Elam,^59 which followed the Persian Zoroastrian calendar but had adopted
Babylonian month-names already in the early Hellenistic period. If so, the
Mandaean calendar would constitute evidence of the early diffusion of the
Persian Zoroastrian calendar in south-western Iran, as far at least as Elam—
the closest it may ever have come to Babylonia.
An official, imperial calendarThe institution of the Persian Zoroastrian calendar and its wide diffusion in
the northern and eastern sectors of the Achaemenid Empire need now to be
explained. Thefirst question to ask is for what purpose it might have been
instituted. Some have maintained that this calendar was essentially
Zoroastrian, thus liturgical and devotional, and that its institution and
(^58) They coincided again in the 12th c.CE, but this is unlikely to have been when the
Mandaeans adopted the Babylonian Aramaic names, which in this period would have been
from either Christians or Jews. This is because some of the Mandaean names are not attested in
the Christian Syriac calendar (Siwan,Mashrwan,T:abit), while others are attested in the Syriac
but not in the Jewish calendar (Kanun); moreover, there is no historical reason why such
borrowings should have been made by the Mandaeans at this late date. The late Achaemenid
(or early Hellenistic) dating, therefore, is far preferable.
(^59) The origins of the Mandaeans are notoriously unclear, but they seem to have been settled in
southern Iraq and Khuzistan by the late Parthian period (see Buckley 2002: 3–5).We cannot rule
out the possibility, however, that the Mandaean calendar was imported from elsewhere.
184 Calendars in Antiquity