Unlike Atenism, however, Zoroastrianism was unexpectedly revived centuries later, when it became the imperial religion of the Achaemenid Empire—the world-conquering dynasty founded by Cyrus the Great in the sixth century B.C.E. Yet the Magi of Cyrus’s royal court who revived Zarathustra’s theology completely reimagined it, first by transforming Ahura Mazda’s six divine evocations into six divine beings who, along with Mazda, became known as the Amesha Spentas, or “Holy Immortals,” and second, and most dramatically, by transforming Zarathustra’s two primordial spirits—Spenta Mainyu and Angra
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