Worship and Burial in the Parthian World

During Arsacid rule, when the dynasty of Arsacids governed the Parthian Empire from about 247 BCE to AD 224, sanctuaries brought worshippers to altars and cult images, while donors built rooms for service and additional rites. At Nisa, pottery records list deliveries from estates linked to royal foundations that may have supported sacred-fire worship. Burial ranged from infants placed in jars within Susa houses to bodies laid in ceramic coffins and chambers; reports also describe royal tombs at Nisa and exposure before the burial of bones. These practices formed part of daily life among communities with different sacred traditions across the Arsacid world.

Using and maintaining sanctuaries

At Dura-Europos, on the Euphrates in present-day Syria, a worshipper entered a walled precinct called a temenos and crossed its court toward the naos, the main cult building at the far end. The small temple stood on a platform of two or three steps, with one or more altars before it. Inside, the entrance room, or pronaos, led into the cella, the inner cult chamber. A cult image stood on a pedestal or was painted on the wall opposite the entrance; side chapels flanked the chamber. This sequence brought the worshipper from the open court to the altar and then toward the image at the sanctuary’s center.

Rooms built against the precinct wall served as work spaces or as shrines for secondary cults. Donors often built these rooms, extending the sanctuary around its central temple. Dura’s temples dedicated to Bel, Atargatis, Adonis and other deities shared this basic arrangement. In one specifically dated local example, a painting in the Temple of Bel shows Conon making a sacrifice; the scene is probably from the first century CE. It depicts an individual offering at the god’s temple within the sanctuary’s working architecture.

Fire worship also had royal settings. Isidore of Charax, describing routes through Parthian lands, reports an everlasting fire guarded at Asaak in Astauene, a region of the northeastern Parthian realm, where Arsaces had first been proclaimed king. The fire joined continuing ritual to the dynasty’s founding place. At Nisa, near modern Ashgabat in Turkmenistan, pottery records list deliveries from estates associated with royal foundations named for Priapatius (whose reign is dated c. 191–176 BCE), Mithradates I (171–138 BCE), Artabanus I (127–124/3 BCE) and Gotarzes I (90–78 BCE). These are the kings’ reign dates; the records document estate deliveries associated with their foundations. Some foundations may have maintained sacred fires for the souls of the kings. A Nisa record names Spōsak as an āduršpat, “master of a fire”: a priest responsible for tending the sacred flame. The deliveries and named priest link estate resources and ritual service to these royal foundations.

Burial in houses, coffins and chambers

At Susa in southwestern Iran, some infants were buried in jars within houses. Other Parthian-period interments used anthropoid sarcophagi, coffins shaped like the human body, or burial chambers. Slipper-shaped ceramic coffins were also common in Parthian lands. In Susa’s Craftsmen Town, excavators found burial chambers furnished with objects placed in the grave for the dead. A separate cemetery was also excavated at Susa. The household jar burials made the home part of the place where an infant was laid to rest, while the chambers and cemetery provided distinct burial spaces. See Parthian housing for the domestic setting.

Royal tombs and the treatment of the dead

Isidore places the Arsacid royal tombs at Nisa, the dynasty’s first capital. Mary Boyce’s account of Arsacid religion describes the kings as embalmed and placed in mausoleums, a practice inherited from Achaemenid royal burials. A royal tomb gave the dynasty a fixed burial place at its early capital, linking the dead kings to the place from which Arsacid rule had grown.

For other Parthians, Justin’s epitome of Pompeius Trogus describes exposure before burial: animals stripped the flesh from the body, after which the bones were buried. The sequence distinguishes treatment of the corpse from the final burial of its bones. Alongside jar burials at Susa, ceramic coffins, and chamber graves, this account records another way bodies and remains were handled during the Arsacid period.