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Ahura Mazda, a MythSource painting
Persian

Ahura Mazda

01Identity

Ahura Mazda in Persian tradition

Ahura Mazda once warned the faithful king Yima that a flood was coming to cleanse a world grown overcrowded with immortal beings, and told him to shelter himself and two of every kind of creature in a mountain-top castle until the waters receded. The Bundahishn holds that in the beginning only two powers existed: Ahura Mazda good, Angra Mainyu evil, set against each other from the start. Ahura Mazda made a spiritual world first, then, three thousand years on, a physical one, to foil his adversary's intent. He filled that new earth with a perfect beast and the perfect first man, Gayomart, whom he set at its centre. He had also promised to spare Angra Mainyu if he kept to light and goodness. Later, after Gayomart died from the assault that followed, Ahura Mazda descended and infused the man's remains with golden light, which warmed and purified them until a rhubarb plant grew from the spot and became Mashya and Mashyanag, the first man and woman.

  • The good half of the original duality named in the Bundahishn, opposed to the evil Angra Mainyu from the start. (The Oxford Companion to World Mythology)
  • Descended to purify and warm Gayomart's remains with light after the first man's death. (Persian Mythology)
Top questions

The quick answers

02Family

Ahura Mazda’s family, at a glance

Ahura MazdaAngra Mainyu
MitraTishtrya
03The myths

The myths of Ahura Mazda

1 myth, with sources recorded for each.

Ahura Mazda's Creation in Stages and Angra Mainyu's Assault

Ahura Mazda made a world of spirit before he made a world of matter, so his enemy would have nothing solid to strike. Only he and Angra Mainyu existed then, one good and one evil, set against each other from the first. Ahura Mazda had already offered Angra Mainyu a bargain: hold to light and goodness, and escape destruction. Vain, conceited and short-sighted, Angra Mainyu refused, withdrew to his dark home and moulded an army of demons to stand against him instead. Three thousand years passed within that spiritual creation alone. Only then did Ahura Mazda make the tangible world, the getig: a flawless place holding a perfect beast and the perfect first man, Gayomart, whom he set at its very centre. The new earth lay flat, with no mountain or valley on it anywhere. Its lakes and seas stood pure, clear and still, and above them the sky curved into a hard, protective dome, studded with a fixed sun, moon and stars that never moved. For an age the whole of it stayed tranquil and unbroken.

Angra Mainyu could not leave that perfection standing. He crashed in through the sky and broke through the great shell that enclosed the world and its cosmic sea, striking it with such force that the once-still sun began to turn, and its turning brought the first day and the first night. The same crash threw up the mountains and opened the valleys where the flat earth had been. What had stood tranquil and whole was shattered by his entry, and after it came death, work and pain for every human from then on.

Ahura Mazda's Creation in Stages and Angra Mainyu's Assault, a MythSource painting of the scene

5 sources· checked 2026-09-02

  1. 1The Oxford Companion to World MythologyT1
  2. 2Creation Myths of the World: Parts I-IIT1
  3. 3Persian MythologyT1
  4. 4Persian MythologyT1
  5. 5Persian MythologyT1

The wider mythology

Works that draw on more of the mythology than any single story: full retellings of the saga, and worlds built out of the material.

Prince of Persia (2008)

Game

The game keeps the core Zoroastrian dualism, Ormazd's ordered creation opposed by Angra Mainyu's corrupting assault, and Ahriman's past imprisonment, as its cosmological backstory, but tells an original video-game plot rather than restaging the creation myth itself.

Also mentioned in

Stories elsewhere on MythSource that mention Ahura Mazda, each on that figure’s page.

04Different accounts

Different accounts

›Gayomart's name appears as Gayo-maretan in one account.

    The accounts that differ: The Oxford Companion to World Mythology; Persian Mythology, Persia’S Mythical Kings And Heroes 53

    From “Ahura Mazda's Creation in Stages and Angra Mainyu's Assault”