110 CHAPTER 1
princess Smyrna, who was impregnated by her father. The gods turned her into
a tree that split and gave birth to Adonis. Aphrodite (the Assyro-Babylonian
Ishtar) gave the child to the goddess of the Underworld Persephone. The two
goddesses quarreled over Adonis and Zeus decided that he should spend the
summers with Aphrodite, and the winters with Persephone.427 The Phoenician
kings of Paphos in Cyprus were considered priests—and lovers of Aphrodite.
This way they personified Adonis, who they believed they stemmed from. As
the divine lover of Adonis Aphrodite is identified with Venus428 (the Morning
Star). A similar belief is reflected in the Bulgarian song from the Ruse region,
in which Dan and Danitsa lead the souls of the dead along the Danube River.
According to Herodotus, the Persians adopted the cult of the Celestial
Aphrodite from the Assyrians and the Arabs.429 He refers to the supreme god-
dess of the Persians (Iranians), Anahita. Like the Scythian Great Goddess (in
the form of Api), she embodies the earth and water principles. Anahita lived on
an island on the Ardvi River (Amu Darya). People also prayed to her for victory,
which brings her closer to the Maiden.430 The ancestors of the Sassanids were
probably temple priests of Anahita; moreover, stone bas-reliefs from Sassanid
Iran have been found, depicting the royal diadem being handed to the ruler by
Mithra and Anahita.431
Also of interest are the Iranian beliefs, according to which Ahura Mazda
and Ahriman were created from the primordial female element. In Iranian
Manichaeism, the king of light (the Father of Greatness), who is identified
427 Venedikov 1995a, 74–75; Frazer 2006, 306 and 312; on the Sumerian origins of this motif,
see Campbell 2005, 58–60.
428 Frazer 2006, 312 and 326.
429 Venedikov 1997, 161. See Herodotus. Histories 1.131, in Dimitrov 1986, 76–77. Of course, the
cult of the female celestial deity existed among the Iranian peoples independently from
the influence of the Mediterranean cultures. The Iranian cult of Anahita is depicted as
a mix (an amalgam) of Iranian (also associated with the Indian Saraswati) and Middle
Eastern traditions (Eliade 1987, 249; on Middle Asia, see for instance D’iakonova and
Smirnova 1967). It is possible that these cults have arisen independently of one another,
but their relation to the spread of the cult of the Neolithic Great Goddess is also apparent
(see here, note 260).
430 Kliashtornyi 1964, 169; Kliashtornyi and Sultanov 2000, 23–25 and 46–47; Raevskii 1977,
46–47; Tolstov 1948b, 123.
431 Chobanov 2006, 30, 42, 44, and 55; Chobanov 2008, 61–62 and 82. Initially, Mithra and
Anahita were mentioned as guardians of the Persian kings (except for Ahura Mazda) in
the inscriptions of Artaxerxes II (404–357) (Shkoda 2001, 450; see also Eliade 1987, 249).