I. Name

The word arta, as theophoric element in the first part of the name Artaxerxes (e.g. Ezra 4.7), translates “the decisive confessional concept of Zoroastrianism (or Mazdaism)”, as Lommel wrote (1930:48). The written form arta in the name of the Achaemenid king represents both the specifically Old-Persian form of the word and the undifferentiated pan-Iranian form which was probably still in use at the time. In the Avesta, the sacred book of Mazdaism, the word became aṣ̌a as a result of phonetic changes due to oral transmission, ṣ̌ …