Magi

The Magi (singular Magus, from Latin, via Greek μάγος ; Old English: Mage; from Old Persian maguš) were a tribe from ancient Media, who — prior to the conquest of the Medes by the Achaemenid Empire in 550 BC — were responsible for religious and funerary practices. Later they accepted the Zoroastrian religion, not without changing the original message of its founder, Zarathustra (Zoroaster), to what is today known as Zurvanism, which would become the predominant form of Zoroastrianism during the Sassanid era (AD 226–650). No traces of Zurvanism exist beyond the 10th century. The best known Magi are the "Wise Men from the East" in the Bible, whose graves Marco Polo claimed to have seen in what is today the district of Saveh, in Tehran, Iran. In English, the term may refer to a shaman, sorcerer, or wizard; it is the origin of the words magic and magician.