Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
In 1999 two journalists named Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy published a book called The Jesus Mysteries: Was the “original Jesus” a pagan god? The book appealed to a “new atheist” demographic, and material from it could be found online throughout the 2000’s. On p.49 they made the following claim, in the middle of a series […]
A twitter post drew my attention to an interesting item held in the British Museum since 1899. Their catalogue page is here. It is described as a “silver votive plaque with a figure of the god Mithras”. Here are the pictures: And a zoomed in version: Viewed up close, this is not Mithras. Nothing about […]
An article online by Michael Petropoulos, “Roman interventions in the city-plan of Patras”,[refP.65, online here.[/ref], contains a paragraph about Mithras. This I found by googling for “Μίθρα”. The article is in Greek, but thanks to the miracle of Google Translate, we can get an idea of its contents: Μία ακόμη ανατολική λατρεία, αυτή του Μίθρα, […]
Review: E. Yamauchi, Persia and the Bible, Baker publishing (1990). Paperback ISBN: 9780801021084. Available from: Amazon.com. Dr Yamauchi attended the second conference on Mithras studies in Tehran, back in the 1970s. Coming across my pages on Mithras, which referenced a couple of his papers, he kindly sent me a copy of this 1990 volume which includes a […]
Csaba Szabo writes to say that a new Mithraic inscription was recovered by the police in Romania in 2015. His blog post about it is here. He has published the inscription at Academia.edu here, which is very useful as otherwise it might be very difficult to get hold of. The inscription is on a half-column, which […]
A previously unknown temple of Mithras has been discovered in Corsica, in Lucciana, on the site of the Roman colony of Mariana. French website l’Express carries the story with more care than most, from which I learn of the following details. Mariana, a Roman colony founded around 100 BC, reached its peak in the 3rd […]
A news report in Turkish newspapers suggests that a Mithraeum may have been discovered. Dec. 27, 2016: Excavations at Zerzevan Kalesi in the Cinar district of Diyarbekir suggest that there is an underground temple of Mithras, a mysterious cult of the Roman period. Excavations were started in 2014 at Zerzevan castle, located on a hill near the […]
I learn via Twitter that there is an exhibition doing the rounds in France, called “Mythes fondateurs” (=foundation myths). It seems to be largely aimed at children, which of course is one of the genuine functions of public museums. Among the items in the exhibition is this: Now this is plainly two figures from the […]
I must have missed the announcement, but Csaba Szabo kindly drew my attention to his report on an international conference on Mithraic studies in Italy. About 50 people attended. Sadly the long-exploded Cumont theory was in evidence in some papers. But it sounds as if it was an interesting event. The main impression that I gained […]
Archaeologist Michael Fuller, who has worked at Dura Europos, has been collecting photographs of Mithraic monuments. He modestly writes to say: Here are a few of my webpages with images of Mithraic reliefs, altars, etc… Most of these duplicate images you already have, but a few maybe new to you. http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/Housesteads.html http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/canterbury/LondonRoman.html http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/yorkshireroman.html http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/DuraMithras.html http://users.stlcc.edu/mfuller/naples.html […]