The Bundahishn, the Primal Creation, is a ninth-century Middle Persian work drawing on lost Avestan material, and it is where the cosmology commonly attributed to Zoroastrianism is actually set out. It describes twelve thousand years in four periods of three thousand: creation in a spiritual state; creation made material and perfect; the assault of the Evil Spirit and the beginning of gumezishn, the mixture, in which we live; and the final period ending in wizarishn, the separation, and the renovation. It gives the order of the six creations, the primal ox and the primal man Gayomard from whose seed humanity descends, and it also contains geography, medicine, astronomy and genealogies of Iranian kings. There are two recensions, the Indian and the longer Iranian or Greater Bundahishn. The point worth stressing is that the Gathas contain no creation account at all, so the elaborate cosmic drama everyone associates with Zoroastrianism comes from texts written a millennium and a half or more after the prophet.