Zoroaster Zoroaster Zoroaster (, ; "Zōroastrēs"), (Persian: زرتشت pronounced as Zartusht) also known as Zarathustra (, ; "Zaraθuštra"), Zarathushtra Spitama, or Ashu Zarathushtra, was an ancient Persian prophet, spiritual leader and ethical philosopher who taught a spiritual philosophy of self-realization and realization of the Divine. His teachings challenged the existing traditions of the Indo-Iranian religion and later developed into the religion of Mazdayasna or Zoroastrianism. He inaugurated a movement that eventually became the dominant religion in Ancient Persia. He was a native speaker of Old Avestan and lived in the eastern part of the Iranian Plateau, but his exact birthplace is
Zoroaster he himself had invoked, and even, that the stars killed him in revenge for having been restrained by him. The alternate Greek name for Zoroaster was Zaratras or Zaratas/Zaradas/Zaratos. Pythagoreans considered the mathematicians to have studied with Zoroaster in Babylonia.Lydus, in "On the Months", attributes the creation of the seven-day week to "the Babylonians in the circle of Zoroaster and Hystaspes," and who did so because there were seven planets. The Suda's chapter on "astronomia" notes that the Babylonians learned their astrology from Zoroaster. Lucian of Samosata, in "Mennipus" 6, reports deciding to journey to Babylon "to ask one of