Deities

Anahita

Zoroastrian Deities

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Anahita." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://divinity.interactivelion.com/deities/anahita.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Anahita. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://divinity.interactivelion.com/deities/anahita

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-anahita,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Anahita},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://divinity.interactivelion.com/deities/anahita},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Anahita, fully Aredvi Sura Anahita, is the ancient Iranian goddess of the waters, fertility, healing and wisdom, a great yazata to whom the fifth hymn of the Avesta, the Aban Yasht, is dedicated. She is imagined as a mighty river descending from a mythic mountain, the source of all the waters of the world, from whom flows the fruitfulness of the womb and of the land. Her cult, encouraged under the Achaemenid king Artaxerxes II, spread widely and gave her temples and statues, unusually for the largely aniconic Iranian tradition, from Anatolia to Persia. She was later identified by the Greeks with Aphrodite and Artemis.

Facts

Function

Domain / Function

Rivers, lakes and springs 1

Domain / Function

Fertility and generation 1

Domain / Function

Healing and medicine 1

Belief

Theology

Dualist: two opposed cosmic principles 1

Cult

Principal Cult Centre

Achaemenid and later Sasanian era temples to Anahita are attested at Ecbatana, Susa and Persepolis among other sites, several described by classical Greek authors as housing rich cult statues, an unusual practice for the largely aniconic older Iranian religious tradition. 1

Attributes and Iconography

The Aban Yasht describes her wearing a golden crown set with eight points and a hundred stars, gold earrings and a necklace, and a cloak of thirty otter skins, an image of wealth and fertility rather than of war. 2

Worship and Practice

Ancient sources describe libations of consecrated wine and haoma offered to Anahita at her temples, and Achaemenid inscriptions pair her invocation with that of Ahura Mazda and Mithra as one of three deities named together in royal proclamations. 2

Attributions

Mythic Association

Imagined as a mighty river descending from a mythic mountain, the source of all the waters of the world, from whom flows the fruitfulness of both the womb and the land. 2

Attestation

Era of Attestation

400 BCE to 2026 CE 1

Veneration Today

Actively venerated in a living tradition 1

Historicity

Not a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 1

Disputed

Point in Dispute

Whether Anahita, absent from the Gathas and prominent only from the Achaemenid period onward, represents an older Iranian goddess absorbed into Zoroastrianism or a later development answering a devotional need the early teaching left unmet. 1

Anahita is entirely absent from the Gathas, the oldest core of the Avesta attributed to Zoroaster himself, and her cult rises to real prominence only later, especially under Artaxerxes II. Scholars are divided over whether she represents an older Iranian goddess absorbed into Zoroastrianism as the faith spread among peoples who already venerated her, or a later development within the tradition answering popular demand for a fertility and water cult the austere early teaching did not provide.

Identity

Gender

Female 1

History

Historical Note

Her cult, encouraged under the Achaemenid king Artaxerxes II, spread widely and gave her temples and statues, unusual for the largely aniconic Iranian tradition; the Greeks later identified her with Aphrodite and Artemis. 1

Historical Note

The Greeks later identified her with both Aphrodite and Artemis, a double identification that reflects her combined character as a goddess of both love and of the untamed waters. 1

Origins

Origin of the Name

Anahita's full Avestan name, Aredvi Sura Anahita, combines epithets meaning moist, mighty and immaculate, a compound title the Avesta uses when addressing her most formally in the hymn dedicated to her, the Aban Yasht. 2

Position Profile

Key Text

The Avesta's Aban Yasht, entirely devoted to her, describes Anahita descending from the heavenly source Vourukasha in a chariot drawn by four horses representing wind, rain, cloud and sleet, wearing a golden crown and beaver skin cloak, an image invoked by warriors and kings alike for victory and by women for fertility. 2

Learn More

The Goddess of the Heavenly Waters

Anahita, fully Aredvi Sura Anahita, the Moist, Mighty and Immaculate, is the ancient Iranian goddess of the waters, of fertility, healing and wisdom, and one of the great yazatas, the beings worthy of worship in Zoroastrian tradition. The fifth hymn of the Avesta, the Aban Yasht, is dedicated to her, and it imagines her as a mighty river descending from a mythic mountain, the source of all the waters of the world, from which the rains and streams and the fertility of living things flow. She is pictured as a beautiful and powerful woman, richly robed and crowned, driving a chariot drawn by four horses, the wind, the rain, the cloud and the sleet, and heroes and kings pray to her at her altar for victory and for the granting of their desires. Her worship took on particular prominence under the later Persian empires: the Achaemenid king Artaxerxes II is recorded as having promoted her cult and set up images of her, and temples in her honour spread across the Iranian world and beyond, where she was identified with other great goddesses of water and fertility. Anahita holds together the ideas of pure water, generative fertility and wisdom, and she remained one of the most beloved divine figures of pre-Islamic Iran, a giver of life and of victory whose waters cleanse and make fruitful.

A Temple Whose Owner Is Still Debated

Anahita's archaeology includes at least one celebrated case where the physical remains and the goddess's name have been joined more confidently in popular writing than the evidence itself supports. A large stone terraced platform at Kangavar in western Iran, built with tall columns in a style drawing on both Achaemenid and Greek architectural traditions, has been popularly identified since the twentieth century as a temple of Anahita, and is still commonly labelled that way in tourist literature and general accounts of Iranian religion. Specialists in Iranian archaeology are considerably more cautious: excavation has produced no inscription naming Anahita or confirming a religious function at all, stylistic analysis points to a Seleucid era date centuries after the goddess's Achaemenid heyday, and some archaeologists argue the structure may be a secular royal platform rather than a temple to any deity, so the popular name may say more about a wish to anchor a beloved goddess to an impressive ruin than about what the Seleucid builders intended.

Better secured is Anahita's appearance in Sasanian royal art centuries later, where she is shown participating directly in royal investiture: reliefs at Naqsh-e Rustam and Taq-e Bostan depict Sasanian monarchs receiving the ring of kingship from Ahura Mazda with Anahita present as a second divine figure, evidence that by then she was bound closely to the ideology of legitimate rule rather than remaining only a goddess of waters and fertility. Between an uncertain platform at Kangavar and a securer place in royal ceremony, Anahita's archaeological record illustrates a common problem in ancient Iranian religion, that impressive ruins and confidently attributed function do not always arrive together in the same evidence.

Correspondences & Relations