The Magi

I have spent much of my life travelling, whether exploring on my own, or taking other people on adventurous journeys, many of them in the Middle East and I have long been interested in the story of the Magi and their journey to find Jesus.

After many recent trips to Iran and encountering the Zoroastrians and their fire temples, still alight today in Yazd, (having never been extinguished since the time of Cyrus the Great) and as many to Eastern Turkey as well as to Jerusalem, I was curious to know why, two thousand years ago, some astronomer priests, three, four, twelve or forty, might have followed a star on a portion of the Silk Route on an uncomfortable twenty-eight day journey of some eight hundred or so miles, allegedly from Kashan or elsewhere to Bethlehem.

Opinions vary as to where the Magi came from: some say they were Zoroastrian priests from Iran, or Babylon, or Nineveh, or from Commegene, Urfa or Harran in Turkey; later legends pointed to the Arabian peninsular, Ethiopia and India, so I decided to try and find out more. With a minefield of conflicting evidence from the early Church Fathers to recent DNA testing, it is still not possible to be certain if the Magi existed, where they were from, or where they are buried.

St Helena was convinced that she had found their bodies, brought them back to Constantinople, wrapped them in Imperial purple brocade and taffeta, and when danger loomed, had their sarcophagus taken by Bishop Eustogius to Milan, an important Byzantine city, where it remained until the German Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, seized Milan from the Pope in 1167 and carried off their greatest treasure to Cologne. Here he had a cathedral built specially to house these priceless relics; they remain there today above the High Altar.

Alternatively, Marco Polo reports that he found three ancient tombs, allegedly of the three Magi, in a near perfect state of preservation in three sarcophagi marked with crosses, in Savah, just east of Tehran, and that they had met and started out from Kashan, which was an important Zoroastrian site where King Solomon, no less, was said to have had a garden built round a pool of healing water. One legend has it that St Thomas met up with the Magi on his was through Iran en route to India and baptised them. And that they lived to a ripe old age and died as martyrs. 

I have tried to include all these legends and theories and to leave it to the reader to decide – because we will never know all the answers for certain. 

Serena Fass,

London, Easter 2015