Īn unrelated term, but previously assumed to be related, appears in the older Gathic Avestan language texts. In this instance, which is in the Younger Avestan portion, the term appears in the hapax moghu.tbiš, meaning "hostile to the moghu", where moghu does not (as was previously thought) mean "magus", but rather "a member of the tribe" or referred to a particular social class in the proto-Iranian language and then continued to do so in Avestan. The other instance appears in the texts of the Avesta, the sacred literature of Zoroastrianism. The meaning of the term in this context is uncertain. In this trilingual text, certain rebels have magian as an attribute in the Old Persian portion as maγu- (generally assumed to be a loan word from Median). This one instance occurs in the trilingual Behistun inscription of Darius the Great, and which can be dated to about 520 BCE. The term only appears twice in Iranian texts from before the 5th century BCE, and only one of these can be dated with precision. Zoroastrian Magi carrying barsom from the Oxus Treasure of the Achaemenid Empire, 4th-century BC chief of the Maga), and Dastur depending on the rank. They are termed Herbad, Mobad (Magupat, i.e. Hereditary Zoroastrian priesthood has survived in India and Iran. The singular "magus" appears considerably later, when it was borrowed from Old French in the late 14th century with the meaning magician. In the Gospel of Matthew, "μάγοι" ( magoi) from the east do homage to the newborn Jesus, and the transliterated plural "magi" entered English from Latin in this context around 1200 (this particular use is also commonly rendered in English as "kings" and more often in recent times as "wise men"). This association was in turn the product of the Hellenistic fascination for Pseudo-Zoroaster, who was perceived by the Greeks to be the Chaldean founder of the Magi and inventor of both astrology and magic, a meaning that still survives in the modern-day words "magic" and " magician". Pervasive throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Western Asia until late antiquity and beyond, mágos (μάγος) was influenced by (and eventually displaced) Greek goēs (γόης), the older word for a practitioner of magic, to include astronomy/ astrology, alchemy, and other forms of esoteric knowledge. Old Persian texts, predating the Hellenistic period, refer to a magus as a Zurvanic, and presumably Zoroastrian, priest. The earliest known use of the word magi is in the trilingual inscription written by Darius the Great, known as the Behistun Inscription. Persian: مغ pronounced ) were priests in Zoroastrianism and the earlier religions of the western Iranians. Magi ( / ˈ m eɪ dʒ aɪ/ singular magus / ˈ m eɪ ɡ ə s/ from Latin magus, cf. Statuettes from the Oxus Treasure of the Achaemenid Empire, 4th-century BC Zoroastrian priests (Magi) carrying barsoms.
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