The Pagan Sites of the Middle East Remembered: (4) The Temple of Anahita at Kangavar

On a flat-topped hill in the small Iranian town of Kangavar, you can see the remains of the vast temple of Anahita, an ancient Iranian goddess whose origins date back before Zoroastrianism, but who continued to be venerated long into the reign of the new religion, and whose memory has not been erased even by the advent of Islam.

Anahita is a cosmological goddess, associated with the "Star River" (the Milky Way) and thus venerated as the divinity of "the Waters." For this reason she was associated with fertility, healing, and thus wisdom. The Greeks sometimes identified her with Aphrodite. Herodotus calls her Aphrodite Urania and compares her with the Assyrian Mylitta and the Arabian Alilat. Through this she also came to be identified with the Babylonian Ishtar. But it seems that a more accurate equivalent is Artemis, the huntress Goddess. 

Zoroastrianism was essentially a form of Persian monotheism that was the state religion of the Iranians from around 600 BC to the Muslim conquest in the 7th century. But for much of that millennium, elements of polytheism remained strong, at least until the Sassanian restoration (224), whereupon Zoroastrianism became increasingly a monotheistic and iconclastic religion.  

A good idea of the less monotheistic form of Zoroastrianism can be gleamed from the reign of the Persian king Artaxerxes II Mnemon (404-359 BC). In his inscriptions the name of Anahita appears directly after that of Ahura Mazda, the Supreme and later the only god of the Persians, and before that of the Sun-God Mithra. 

Artaxerxes' inscription at Susa reads: 

"By the will of Ahura Mazda, Anahita, and Mithra I built this palace. May Ahura Mazda, Anahita, and Mithra protect me from all evil."

Anahita

Anahita is viewed as the virgin mother of Mithra and is often depicted as riding a lion with the Sun in the background.

In 405 BC, the year of his accession, Artaxerxes II Mnemon donned the cloak of Cyrus and received consecration in the kingship at a temple at Pasargadae in Persis dedicated to a warrior goddess. Plutarch mentions this in his life of Artaxerxes III, comparing the goddess with Athena; but it was more likely that this was a temple of Anahita in one of her most important aspects as a war goddess. 

This consecration also suggests that the Achaemenid monarchy had close links with Anahita. 

The cult of Anahita spread across the Persian Empire but the ruins at Kangavar are the most impressive. They lie roughly half-way on a line from Tehran to Baghdad. 

The present day visitor can see a large site full of enormous broken columns, suggesting an edifice built in a Hellenistic style and measuring around 200 meters long. There is controversy over the date of construction but it seems likely that a temple existed here for some time and that further construction may have continued even into the early Sassanian period.

Alexander the Great is said to have visited it in 335 BC, when he apparently plundered it. It also suffered from similar raids by the Successors of Alexander, including Antigonus and Seleucus Nicator, the founder of the Seleucid Empire. In 210 BC the Seleucid king Antiochus the Great again raided it, whereupon he found columns covered with gold and silver tiles, along with gold and silver bricks, from which he struck coins of an unknowable quantity.