Western Asia: The Medo-Persian Empire 93 By 600 B.C. the Medes had established a powerful Iranian Empire in the mountains east of the Tigris. It extended from the Persian Gulf, where it included the Persians, northwestward in the general line of the mountains to the Black Sea region. The front of the Indo-European eastern wing is thus roughly parallel with the Tigris at this point, but its advance is not to stop here. Nebuchadnezzar (p. 80) and the Chaldean masters of Babylon look with anxious eyes at this dangerous Median power. The Chaldeans on the Euphrates represent the leadership of men of Semitic blood from the southern pastures. Their leadership is now to be followed by that of the men of Indo-European blood from the northern pastures. As we see the Chaldeans giving way before the Medes and Persians (p. 97), let us bear in mind that we are watching a great racial change, and remem- ber that these new Persian masters of the Far East are our kindred ; for both we and they have descended from the same wandering shepherd ancestors, the Indo-European parent people, who once dwelt in the far-off pastures of inner Asia, probably five thousand years ago. All of these Iranians possessed a beautiful religion inherited from old Aryan days (see p. 91). Somewhere in the east- ern mountains, as far back as 1000 B.C., an Iranian named Zoroaster ^ began to look out upon the life of men in an effort to find a religion which would meet its needs. He watched the ceaseless struggle between good and evil which seemed to meet him wherever he turned. To him it seemed to be a struggle between a group of good beings on the one hand and of evil beings on the other. The Good became to him a divine person, The Median (Indo- European) Empire threatens Chaldean (Semitic) Babylonia The religion of the Iranians Zoroaster 1 The Greek form of the name ; it is taken from the Persian form Zara- thushtra. Some scholars support a date for Zoroaster several centuries later than 1000 B.C., among them Professor A. V. W. Jackson, in his very valuable book on Zoroaster ; but two proper names of certain royal Medes, occurring in the records of the Assyrian Sargon (722-705 B.C.), have the form " Mazdaka," containing the name of Zoroaster's god. His teaching had therefore been taken up by the Median royal house long before 700 B.C., and Zoroaster himself must therefore have lived far earlier than this. The date 1000 b.c. is a rough estimate by Eduard Meyer.
