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MITHRAISM
The Cosmic Mysteries of
Mithras
by David Ulansey
Author of
THE ORIGINS OF THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES
(Oxford University Press, 1991)
The following essay is adapted from my article,
"Solving the Mithraic Mysteries"
Biblical Archaeology Review
(vol. 20, #5 [September/October 1994] pp. 40-53)
This article is a summary of my book on Mithraism,
THE ORIGINS OF THE MITHRAIC MYSTERIES
(Oxford University Press, revised paperback, 1991)
[To order this book (for $13.95), click
here.]
The
Encyclopedia Britannica
has given this page
its
"Web's Best Sites"
award.
The Cosmic Mysteries of
Mithras
(Note: complete documentation for the following essay can be found
in my book on Mithraism,
The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries,
and in my articles listed at the bottom of this page.)
The ancient Roman religion known as the Mithraic mysteries has
captivated the imaginations of scholars for generations. There are
two reasons for this fascination. First, like the other ancient
"mystery religions," such as the Eleusinian mysteries and the
mysteries of Isis, Mithraism maintained strict secrecy about its
teachings and practices, revealing them only to initiates. As a result,
reconstructing the beliefs of the Mithraic devotees has posed an
enormously intriguing challenge to scholarly ingenuity. Second,
Mithraism arose in the Mediterranean world at exactly the same
time as did Christianity, and thus the study of the cult holds the
promise of shedding vital light on the cultural dynamics that led to
the rise of Christianity.
Owing to the cult's secrecy, we possess almost no literary evidence
about the beliefs of Mithraism. The few texts that do refer to the cult
come not from Mithraic devotees themselves, but rather from
outsiders such as early Church fathers, who mentioned Mithraism in
order to attack it, and Platonic philosophers, who attempted to find
support in Mithraic symbolism for their own philosophical ideas.
However, although our literary sources for Mithraism are extremely
sparse, an abundance of material evidence for the cult exists in the
many Mithraic temples and artifacts that archaeologists have found
scattered throughout the Roman empire, from England in the north
and west to Palestine in the south and east. The temples, called
mithraea by scholars, were usually built underground in imitation of
caves. These subterranean temples were filled with an extremely
elaborate iconography: carved reliefs, statues, and paintings,
depicting a variety of enigmatic figures and scenes. This
iconography is our primary source of knowledge about Mithraic
beliefs, but because we do not have any written accounts of its
meaning the ideas that it expresses have proven extraordinarily
difficult to decipher.
Underground Mithraic temple in Rome
The typical mithraeum was a small rectangular subterranean
chamber, on the order of 75 feet by 30 feet with a vaulted ceiling.
An aisle usually ran lengthwise down the center of the temple, with
a stone bench on either side two or three feet high on which the
cult's members would recline during their meetings. On average a
mithraeum could hold perhaps twenty to thirty people at a time. At
the back of the mithraeum at the end of the aisle was always found
a representation-- usually a carved relief but sometimes a statue or
painting-- of the central icon of Mithraism: the so-called tauroctony
or "bull-slaying scene" in which the god of the cult, Mithras,
accompanied by a dog, a snake, a raven, and a scorpion, is shown in
the act of killing a bull. Other parts of the temple were decorated
with various scenes and figures. There were many hundreds--
perhaps thousands-- of Mithraic temples in the Roman empire. The
greatest concentrations have been found in the city of Rome itself,
and in those places in the empire (often in the most distant
frontiers) where Roman soldiers-- who made up a major segment of
the cult's membership-- were stationed.
Mithraeum in Capua, Italy
Our earliest evidence for the Mithraic mysteries places their
appearance in the middle of the first century B.C.: the historian
Plutarch says that in 67 B.C. a large band of pirates based in Cilicia
(a province on the southeastern coast of Asia Minor) were practicing
"secret rites" of Mithras. The earliest physical remains of the cult
date from around the end of the first century A.D., and Mithraism
reached its height of popularity in the third century. In addition to
soldiers, the cult's membership included significant numbers of
bureaucrats and merchants. Women were excluded. Mithraism
declined with the rise to power of Christianity, until the beginning of
the fifth century, when Christianity became strong enough to
exterminate by force rival religions such as Mithraism.
For most of the twentieth century it has been assumed that
Mithraism was imported from Iran, and that Mithraic iconography
must therefore represent ideas drawn from ancient Iranian
mythology. The reason for this is that the name of the god
worshipped in the cult, Mithras, is a Greek and Latin form of the
name of an ancient Iranian god, Mithra; in addition, Roman authors
themselves expressed a belief that the cult was Iranian in origin. At
the end of the nineteenth century Franz Cumont, the great Belgian
historian of ancient religion, published a magisterial two- volume
work on the Mithraic mysteries based on the assumption of the
Iranian origins of the cult. Cumont's work immediately became
accepted as the definitive study of the cult, and remained virtually
unchallenged for over seventy years.

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