Images of Persian Mitra

An idle search in Google images for “Mithra Zoroastrianism” brought up precisely NO images of the Zoroastrian god.  It’s quite interesting, really, not least because I have no idea how he was depicted — if he was depicted — in reliefs.

It also brought up a number of unfamiliar tauroctonies of Mithras.  The need for a large collection of images of Mithraic sculptures etc was never more apparent to me than today.  We can clearly learn a great deal, simply by comparison, without undue theorising.  I was almost tempted to start locating images and getting my camera out!

Mind you, an online list of places to visit and photograph would itself be a useful thing.  We don’t even have that!  If we could put such a thing online, one might get enthusiasts to contribute by visiting museums.  It’s a wiki-project if ever there was one.  

How I curse the wretched troll, who cold-bloodly plotted to wreck the Wikipedia Mithras article, and drive off all the honest contributors, for destroying the best means of collaborative work in this area! 

I wonder how else it might be done.  How does one contact Mithras enthusiasts?  A few people doing day-trips to museums might contribute much!

Share

11 thoughts on “Images of Persian Mitra

  1. No, it’s not just Vandenberghe, dear Roger. The attributes (barsom and solar rays) seem to make the identification with the god of light reasonable. The identifaction is already assumed in F. Lajard, _Introduction a l’étude du culte public et des mystères de Mithra_ (Paris 1847) and may well be older.

  2. I don’t suppose for a moment that the identification is wrong. But, being sceptical and being suspicious of “what everyone knows”, I wonder how anyone knows or whether it is simply a guess. Thanks for the extra details!

Leave a Reply