Polish Archaeology in the Mediterranean (19.2007(2010))

KHONE-YE DIV

IRAN

needs constant fuel and its servitors
likewise require sustenance, there could
never have been a question of establishing
eternal fires at remote and completely
inaccessible sites. And, while the access to
Khone-ye Div is difficult, the place is
reachable, especially walking along the
Revand River bed from the village of
Revand. Thus, if the function of the
building called Khone-ye Div as a temple of
fire is accepted, its use as a pilgrimage
center must also be considered.
Among the temples of Khorasan known
from written sources, Adur Burzen Mihr
established on Mount Revand certainly
must have attracted numerous pilgrims.
According to a Zoroastrian Pahlavi

scripture, the Greater Bundahishn, Adur
Burzen Mihr (one of the three most sacred
“Royal Fires”), was placed in that temple by
the legendary Vishstaspa, the first king
converted by Zoroaster (GBd XVIII. 14).
The epic story Vis u Ramin, regarded to
be of Parthian origin and probably dating
from the 1st century AD, says that Vis was
buried close to the Burzen fire and Ramin
retired there in his old age.
If the identification proposed here of
the ruins called Khone-ye Div as a temple
of fire and a pilgrimage center is correct, it
is also possible to see in it the temple of
Adur Burzen Mihr which is known from
the written sources. This hypothesis, however
attractive, still needs to be confirmed.

REFERENCES

Primary sources

GBd — Zand-Akasih: Iranian or Greater Bundahishn, Transliteration and translation in English by
B.T. Anklesaria, Bombay 1956
Vis u Ramin - Vis and Ramin, by Fakhr al-Din Gurgani, translated from Persian by G. Morrison, New
York 1972

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Polish Archaeology in che Mediterranean 19, Reports 2007