The first states on the territory of Uzbekistan and Zoroastrianism

In the 1st millennium BCE Zoroastrianism spread widely in Central Asia; it is named after Zoroaster (Zarathustra, Zoroastres to the Greeks). Zoroaster was the prophet of a new religious teaching; scholars differ about when he lived, and the textbook says the first half of the 1st millennium BCE. Zoroastrians held fire, water, earth and stars to be sacred. They honoured the supreme god, the wise Ahura Mazda, Mithra the god of sun and light, and Anahita the goddess of water and fertility; Ahura Mazda’s enemy Ahriman was the force of evil and death. The teaching centres on the struggle of Good and Evil, and the meaning of life is good thought, good word and good deed. Followers were to avoid lying and cheating and to keep promises. The holy book, the Avesta, was kept orally for a long time and then written down; its oldest part is dated to about the 9th–8th centuries BCE, and the commentary on it is called the “Zand”. The French scholar Anquetil-Duperron translated part of the Avesta into a European language in 1771. Burying, burning or throwing the dead into water was forbidden: the body was left in an open place, and the cleaned bones were placed in a clay bone box, an ossuary.