The absence of written crowned texts was undoubtedly a handicap for the mazdeism, since the texts which reached us, written in IXe - Xe centuries, are only bits of a rich mythology or a very complex ritual, and miss historical data. If one considers the splendid remainders of monuments, the low-reliefs and the treasures of goldsmithery which were preserved, one can think that the culture sassanide was before a a whole age of the object, manual skill, and not of the writing.  

The ritual of Yasna
It is necessary to distinguish between the West and Is Iranian: indeed, the religious, prohibited iconography and in fact non-existent in the West, subjected to the orthodoxe mazdeism, is rather well attested in the East, in particular in a funerary context.  

The monuments, temples of fire, are the places where the worship is exerted, but one knows very little of it. Fire burned there, constantly maintained by an employee, in entirely closed parts. Especially present in Fârs, the type of temple more running (attested by the ruins of about fifty between them) understands a cupola on horns of angles resting on four pillars, surrounded by an ambulatory. However, like the model of the temple of fire was then imitated in the Islamic mausoleums, it is sometimes difficult to distinguish among the ruins what is sassanide of what is Islamic. It is estimated that the architectural control, attested in the first temples of Ardachêr I er with Firuzâbâd and Châhpuhr I er with Bichâpur, will not be reached any more thereafter. The two great complexes (in Kuh-i Khwâje and Takht-e Soleymân) are of late time.  

The ceremony of Yasna understands the animal sacrifice and various drinkings: the inscription of Châhpuhr Ier provides us an outline of it, indicating that the king made reserves of sheep, bread and wine for the ritual of the pious foundations established by his care for the safety of the heart of deaths and of alive of the royal family. One thus sees the importance of the individual eschatology in the mazdeism. The animal victim was choked or strangled, and was not cut the throat of and bled as in the Semites, because so for the Semites blood contains the life, for the Iranians in fact the bones contain it. The various parts of the victim were then offered to various divinities. The water, which is the other principal element to which one returns a worship, was useful, with the juice of a plant generally recognized as will éphédra it, with the preparation of a crowned drink, the hôm (into avestic haoma, equivalent of summoned vedic), with the power poisonous and ready to get ecstasies and visions.  

Practices, of the birth to death
According to Avesta, the ritual of initiation would be done at the fifteen years age, but does it of it is at seven years (for the Parsees of India) or between twelve and fifteen years in Iran that the child revêt the crowned shirt (sedre) and girdles it (kustîg), and must know the essential prayers by heart. They is always orally indeed that is made teaching and, even for celebrating, the written text does not have great utility.  

The ceremony of marriage is hardly known for us; on the other hand, various types of matrimonial union are largely described in the legal literature. The consanguineous unions were to be frequent at the Court and at the noble ones, in order to maintain the heritage in the family and because exogamy “led to the enmity”.  
 The funeral ritual is however well attested: after death, the corpse, become object of the most serious stain, must be inspected by a special dog, which drives out the demon of corruption, then transported by a corporation of undertaker's men to the “turn of silence” (daxma), where it will be devoured by the vultures. Hérodote teaches us already that Persians must make emaciate the corpse by the dogs and the birds. For resurrection at the end of times, during the Restoration of the world, one collected then the bones, which were placed in an isolated place, inaccessible to the wild beasts. Places of emaciation, before one builds, at the time Islamic, of the “turns of silence”, were platforms cut in the rock, which hardly left traces. The astôdân were niches dug in height, intended to receive the bones. These rupestral rooms, very many in Fârs, are sometimes equipped with an inscription mentioning the name with late, a date, and a formula of wish “That the paradise is its share!”. But this practice is late.  

There were certainly various modes of burial in Iran, as certain tombs attest it, cairns, etc, and the regulations of Vendidad (emaciation and collection of the bones) were undoubtedly not followed everywhere, in particular not in the East, in Bactriane, Sogdiane, Margiane and Chorasmie, because of the distance of these areas. Thus the frescos of Pendjikent offer scenes of mutilation. Note, especially, immense ostothèques (collections of bone) which comprise scenes religious of which representation of six Amesha Spentas (abstract entities deified which surrounds the supreme god Ahura-Mazdâ), equipped with their attributes and appeared in an anthropomorphic way, according to the two sexes, three masculines and three female. One also knows the representation of the judgment of the heart according to the doctrines mazdéenne, and that of the sag-dîd (inspection by the dog). This very recent, unknown documentation in the West, is the fruit of the many excavations carried out in the areas of Central Asia of the ex-USSR. The Eastern areas, where the hellenisation had been pushed, undoubtedly profited from the meeting between Iranian mythology and Greek art, as the figuration testifies some to divinities zoroastriennes on the currencies kouchanes, starting from Greek models.  

The ritual of purification
Like the followers of the Judaism, the mazdéens were extremely concerned physical purity: all that comes from the human body is impure, blood, hair, clippings of nails, excrements etc, even saliva and the breath (sperm, however, is a pure substance). This is why several treaties - of which Vendidad - enact very strict rules, concerning the precautions to be taken, and ritual purification in the event of pollution: for the woman during her time of menstruation or after a birth, for whoever a corpse touched (object of maximum pollution), but also for that which reaches priesthood, just as is codified any annual or periodic purification. The texts determine also the fines to pay in the event of infringement with these rules.  

Among ritual, the most complex (called barshnum) lasted nine days and nine nights, in an isolated place: three chapters of Vendidad are devoted to him. If the obsession of the ritual purity is explained by the need for making move back the Evil and for resisting the attacks of the demons, it seems obvious that it was to lead the mazdéens to a certain social insulation, which pushed them little by little to simplify or give up some practical too constraining.  
 

The cruciform plan of the temple of fire with cupola was imitated in the Armenian churches, then borrowed by Byzance and finally by the Occident (see, for example, the Carolingian church of Germigny-of-Meadows, close to Orleans), like in the mosques, the mausoleums, the palates, the madrasas of the Islamized East. The palates combine the room with cupola and the iwan (big room arched open on a court), but this form was then abandoned with the profit of large terraces which one reached by monumental staircases.  

Our knowledge of the cities is especially book, because the archeologists devoted themselves to prospections of surface. But the number of cities founded or renamed according to the name of the king testifies to the importance that the monarchs attached to the existence of flourishing cities. The first have a circular plan (already known at the time Parthian), then one preferred a rectilinear checkerboard plan to him, in particular in the towns of Châhpuhr Ist Much of place names have the Êrân element in their composition, to mark the Iranian national identity. They are the areas of the South-west and the North-West which seem to have experienced the greatest urban development. The cities were strengthened by ramparts with bastions, the strong castles (out of stone) protecting the borders. The walls of Darband (close to Bakou, in Azerbaïdjan) constitute the most beautiful known defensive wall.

Agriculture and trade

The construction of stoppings and bridges stoppings, as well as large channels, made it possible to develop the irrigated culture, especially in Khûzistan. The surface of the cultivated grounds was larger than at any other time. The exportable products apart from the agricultural areas (basin of Diyâlâ, Khûzistan and Fasâ-Dârâb) were the cereals, rice and the cane with sugar. The kings had great fields (dastgerd), just as the noble ones, but the reform of Khosrô Ier, by taxing the grounds with the latter, gave birth to a class small holders, the dehqân, i.e. knights rewarded by a gift for stronghold.

The kings encouraged also textile industry: the culture of the silkworm was introduced only to the VI E century, right before Byzance, and under Kavâd and Khosrô I er. Previously, the country delivered only to the trade rough silk. The silk route was then controlled by the merchants sogdiens and Indians. The contacts with China developed thanks to the missionaries nestoriens.  

Little silk trade ascribable to Sassanides were found, except those which, used to wrap the relics of Christian saints, arrived to Occident and were preserved in the treasures churches. The authentic sources of fabrics sassanides are the textiles of Antinoe (Egypt) and the reliefs of Taq-e Bostân (clothes of the king and its courtiers). The prevalence of the bottom dark blue expresses an astral symbolic system, just as the circle, symbol of the sky. The signs of the zodiac are also attested, because the mazdéens were very interested by the astrology, closely mixed with philosophy and medicine, like with the magic, as testify some to many registered bowls.