Finding Cumont’s “Textes et Monuments” online

I’ve been looking at another story about Mithras originating with Franz Cumont.  In the process, I find that the PDF’s I have of his master-work, Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, 2 vols, 1899- are not that good where the pictures are concerned.

A Google Books search reveals nothing.  But I suspect this is the well-known problem that results returned are different, depending on whether you are in the US or in the Outer Darkness.

On Archive.org, there is only volume 2, in a copy with rather poor images — the one I already have.  Where I got the similarly poor volume 1 I don’t know.  Both look as if they came from the Microsoft-digitised books donated to Archive.org when they decided not to go down that route after all.

In Europeana a search for “Cumont” brings up various letters to Cumont, but none of his works.

In the end, by a circuitous route, I get these links to volumes scanned at the University of Michigan in 2010:

Volume 1: http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Textes_et_monuments_figur%C3%A9s_relatifs_au.html?id=dYnXAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y

Volume 2: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=jUAKAQAAMAAJ&pg=PP5

Both are better than the images that I was trying to use on Saturday.

I’ve also been looking at his Les mystères de Mithra, whose English translation has been so fruitful in creating urban legends.  This book was a separate publication of the “conclusions” which appeared in volume 1 of Textes et Monuments.  This appeared in 1900.  But I wasn’t aware that Cumont revised this material several times.  A second edition appeared in 1902, which was translated into English by T. McCormack in 1903, and a third edition appeared in 1913.

2nd: http://books.google.com/books?id=O0LwEqKXgxsC

3rd: http://www.archive.org/details/lesmystresdemi00cumo

I suspect that consulting the various editions may prove profitable.

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