Translations:Benutzer:Arian/Klett-Mini-Test/237/en

The Ancient Persian Culture

The old Iranian high culture followed upon that of ancient India in time as well as geographically, in an east-to-west progression. As with the latter, a precise geographical delimitation is difficult; there are no contemporary finds that would allow us to infer the height and uniqueness of this culture — or rather, the actual testimonies are not recognized as such. If one surveys what is known together with indications from the spiritual research of Rudolf Steiner, one will not go wrong in placing it across the region stretching from the western Himalaya (the Pamir range) through the Hindu Kush, with its centre in Afghanistan, as far as Bactria in eastern Iran. Toward the north, the ancient Persian cultural region opened out across the small and larger river valleys of the foothill landscapes into the steppes and deserts lying before them. Two of the rivers, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya (in antiquity: the Oxus and the Jaxartes), subdue the steppe and empty into the Aral Sea. The polarity between desert-steppe and high mountain, between the nomadic Turanian aboriginal population and the settled, earth-capable ancient Persians, could not have been more pronounced. The aspiring, future-directed cultural people of the ancient Persians had to defend themselves in many warlike encounters against the surging Turanians, who preserved older levels of consciousness. And yet the myth speaks of a king of the Turanians, "Dschemschid," who led his peoples down from the north into Iran. He received from the sun-god Ahura Mazdao a golden dagger — the archetypal image of the