The Sixteen Perfect Lands

Ahura Mazda tells Zarathustra how the world was made: sixteen good lands, each created perfect — and each answered by Angra Mainyu with a counter-creation. Against the first and best land he sent winter, a work of the demons; against the others the locust, plunder, unbelief, the burying of the dead. The Vendidad's opening chapter is creation as a duel, the map of ancient Iran drawn as a battlefield between the Wise Lord and the spirit who is all death.