Chapter 21. The God of Kings: Mithra in Achaemenid, Parthian, Armenian, Pontic and Commagene Royal Cult

In the god Mithra the library’s sources most clearly show religion merging with state power. From the fourth century BC to the first century AD he appears in royal inscriptions and in the throne-names of Pontus, Parthia, Armenia and Commagene, and on a mountain-top in Commagene he is carved investing a king. The classical authors place his entry into the Roman world in two political episodes: the defeat of the Cilician pirates by Pompey and the crowning of the Armenian king Tiridates by Nero. This chapter sets out what each source says and where the sources disagree.

Artaxerxes II: the gods return to the inscriptions

Darius I and Xerxes name only Ahuramazda in their inscriptions. The change came with Artaxerxes II. Duchesne-Guillemin writes: “From the reign of Artaxerxes II onwards, not only is Ahuramazda mentioned in the inscriptions, but Anāhitā and Mithra as well.” The triad may, he allows, reflect the Mesopotamian pantheon. Through Berossus, he notes, Artaxerxes II “was the first to set up an image of Aphrodite Anaitis… in Babylon and Susa and Ecbatana” and other cities [Duchesne-Guillemin, The Religion of Ancient Iran, #38271, “The later Achaemenids”]. Moulton cites the same tradition from Clement of Alexandria: the Persians sacrificed in the open air until “after many courses of years… Artaxerxes II. taught them to worship the image of Anahita”. He calls this king “emphatically the patron of the Magian movement… the first Achaemenian of whom we can say that the Later Avesta fairly represents his religion” [Moulton, Early Zoroastrianism, #55011, Lecture II and “The Prophet and the Reform”]. Darmesteter records that “the first record of the worship of Ardvi Sura is in a cuneiform inscription by Artaxerxes Mnemon (404-361), in which her name is corrupted into Anahata” [Darmesteter (tr.), The Zend-Avesta Part II, SBE 23, #60421, introduction to the Aban Yast].

Gershevitch gives the theological reading. Artaxerxes II (dated by him 405-359) “had fallen in with the Magian outlook to such an extent as to mention in his inscriptions Mithra and Anahita on a par with Ahura Mazdah”. About the cult that the Avesta calls daeva-worship he adds: “What is true of Anahita has a good chance of applying also to Mithra” [Gershevitch, The Avestan Hymn to Mithra, #60160, Introduction III, VIII]. Petrosyan sums it up: “The cult of Mithra and other gods was legalized by Artaxerxes II (reigned 404-359 BC)” [Petrosyan, Haldi and Mithra/Mher, #38285, “Haldi and Mitra/Mithra”]. The sources give slightly different reign dates (405-359, 404-359, 404-361).

The Mithridatids: a god in the throne-name

Theophoric royal names spread Mithra’s name across Anatolia and Iran. Cumont’s collection of oriental sources lists the theophoric names and notes: “Six princes Arsacides ont porté le nom de Mithridate ou Méherdate”, beginning with “Mithridate I, qui régna de 171 à 138 av. J.-C.” [Cumont, Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux Mystères de Mithra, vol. II, #38304; catalogue wrongly lists Vaknin as author]. Duchesne-Guillemin calls this Mithradates I “the real founder (171-138) of the Arsacid empire”. He judges that Ahuramazda “seems to have been second, in popularity and importance, to Mithra” in this period, and notes that Mithra is “the god most frequently named on Kusana coins” [Duchesne-Guillemin, #38271, “Under the Seleucids and Arsacids”]. Gershevitch credits Parthia, Iran’s “political and cultural leader” from the second century BC, with spreading the solar Mithra [Gershevitch, #60160, Introduction V]. In Pontus the name belonged to Mithridates VI Eupator, Rome’s enemy. Ries states that the Cilician pirates served his army until his final defeat in 66 BC [Ries, Il Culto di Mithra, #38276, Introduction], and Vermaseren reports Appian’s claim that the pirates learned the mysteries “from the troops who were left behind by the defeated army of Mithridates Eupator” [Vermaseren, Mithras the Secret God, #38300, ch. 3].

Commagene: the king’s handshake with the god

The richest monument is in Commagene, which Ries calls a link between the Iranian and Anatolian worlds. Ries reports that in 162 BC the governor Ptolemy made the province independent. The royal cult of Mithra was “instituted and organised by King Mithridates I Callinicus and by his son Antiochus I (69-38 BC)”. At Nemrud Dagh and Arsameia on the Nymphaios the king appears “closely associated with the god”, above all in the dexiosis scene, “in which the king and the god clasp right hands in sign of alliance, fidelity and equality”. For Ries, Commagene lets us “observe in more detail the passage from the royal cult to the mystery cult of the imperial age”, a “new phase of Hellenisation” [Ries, #38276, Introduction, “Il culto di Mithra nel mondo ellenistico”].

Vermaseren dates Antiochus I to 69-34 BC. He reports that both the king and his father Mithridates (at Arsameia on the Orontes, in his account) “were represented in reliefs clasping hands with Mithras”. In the Nemrud inscription Mithras is named “together with Zeus-Ahura-Mazda, Hermes, Apollo-Helios and Herakles-Verethragna. Thus Persian gods were invoked as protectors of the royal house.” He stresses that “the inscriptions do not say anything about a secret cult of Mithras; the god simply takes his place beside the acknowledged state gods” [Vermaseren, #38300, ch. 3]. Rigon’s plates show the “monumental head of Apollo-Mithra on the eastern terrace of Nemrud Dag” (fig. 34) and “Mithra conferring royal investiture on King Antiochus I Epiphanes of Commagene” (fig. 47) [Rigon, Il Culto di Mithra tra mito e storia, #38275].

Moulton quotes the inscription itself. Antiochus hoped his soul would go “to the heavenly thrones of Zeus Oromasdes” and set up “god-befitting images of Zeus Oromasdes and Apollo Mithras (who is) the Sun (and) Hermes, and Artagnes (who is) Herakles (and) Ares, and of my all-nurturing country Commagene”. The king claimed descent from both Darius and Alexander. Moulton’s conclusion: “The Fravashis, then, Mithra, Verethraghna, probably Zervan Akarana, and the ‘heroes’ (who for Antiochus would be the ‘gods of the royal house’)… There is no real Zoroastrianism here, but a religion not far from Mithraism as we know it a little later” [Moulton, #55011, “The Prophet and the Reform”]. Duchesne-Guillemin dates the monument “about the middle of the first century B.C.” He sees in its list “a reflection of Dumézil’s ‘tripartite ideology'”, strikingly like the Mitanni treaty, since Ahuramazda and Mithra continue the old Mitra-Varuna pair and Verethragna replaced Indra. He also notes that it modifies an older list set up at Arsameia by Mithradates, in which “the only goddess is Hera” [Duchesne-Guillemin, #38271, “Under the Seleucids and Arsacids”]. For Gershevitch, Nemrud Dagh proves Mithra “a maker, as well as undoer, of kings” [Gershevitch, #60160, Introduction VII].

Armenia: Mihr, Mher and the Door of Haldi

Petrosyan traces the Armenian line. The epic hero Mher of the David of Sasun cycle takes his name from “the pre-Christian Armenian theonym Mihr borrowed from Iranian”, yet “deep pre-Iranian roots can be traced in his character”. Mher the Younger enters the rock of Van through the “Door of Mher”, and will come out “when justice and fertility reign in the world”. That door is an Urartian portal inscribed for “the god Haldi, the Lord”. Petrosyan quotes Diakonoff: under Achaemenid rule or later “Haldi was identified with Mithra”. Diakonoff also held that the Roman Mithras “had nothing to do with the concept of Mithra existing in Zoroastrian Iran except for the name”. Petrosyan lists parallels between Mher and the Western Mithras: the rock, a treaty with an equal rival, the killing of a Black Bull, the raven, the lion-epithet. From the bull episode he argues that “it is impossible to imagine a reverse process, namely that the Armenians borrowed it from the western Mithraism”. In Armenia, he notes, Mihr “was identified with Hephaestus… and certainly was not the sun god”. The form “Mithras” appears in the Greek inscriptions of Armawir (2nd century BC). Petrosyan regards it as theoretically possible that the syncretism with “the Mitannian Aryan Mitra” began as early as the second millennium BC [Petrosyan, #38285]. Cumont’s collection adds the Armenian literary sources. Moses of Khoren (II, 14) reports that Tigranes II, “contemporain de Pompée”, erected statues of Hellenic divinities in Armenian cities. An Armenian text on the Sasanian demand for sun-worship explains that the Sun “fut nommé Dieu Mihr, parce qu’il n’y a en lui ni astuce, ni ignorance” [Cumont, Textes et monuments, vol. II, #38304, “Moïse de Khorène”, “Élisée Vartabed”].

Into Roman hands: the pirates and Tiridates

Plutarch’s Life of Pompey (24) is the classical starting point. In Vermaseren’s rendering, the pirates “brought to Olympus in Lycia strange offerings and performed some secret mysteries, which exist still in the cult of Mithras, first made known by them”. Pompey’s defeat of the pirates and their resettlement in Italy give “a terminus post quem” for the mysteries. Vermaseren notes, however, that “no Mithraic monument can be dated earlier than the end of the first century A.D.” [Vermaseren, #38300, ch. 3]. Collins quotes the same passage (“secret mysteries” to Mithra on Mount Olympus, “originally instituted by them”) [Collins, From the Ashes of Angels, #71550, ch. 25]. Ries adds that Plutarch drew on Posidonius of Apamea. He reads the pirates’ cult as “a pact of brotherhood with a defensive function” under Mithra’s protection, placing the birth of the mysteries in eastern Cilicia near Commagene. He sets this against Wikander and Beskow’s Danubian hypothesis [Ries, #38276, Introduction].

The second episode is political theatre. Vermaseren writes that in AD 66 Tiridates I of Armenia, travelling overland because “as Magus he would not pollute the sacred element of water”, came to Rome with three thousand Parthian horsemen and Magi. He told Nero: “I came to you, my Lord, to worship you, as it were Mithras.” “Cumont associated this investiture with the Mithras cult into which Tiridates wanted to initiate Nero”, citing Pliny’s magicisque cenis initiaverat. On this reading, Vermaseren says, “Nero was the first Roman Emperor to come into contact with the cult of Mithras” [Vermaseren, #38300, ch. 2].

Otto Kurz frames the exchange differently. For him “Mithraism is a western mystery cult which sprang into existence in the last century B.C.”, and the Parthian influence on Rome was military and material, from mounted Parthian archers under Gaius Crassus to units of Parthusagittarii [Kurz, Cultural Relations between Parthia and Rome, #60250].

Alternative readings: Chulev and Keshe

Two authors outside academic Iranian studies give their own accounts. Basil Chulev subtitles his essay “Zoroastrian-macedonic-Phrygian Mithraism”. He calls Mitra originally a “Hittite/Phrygian deity” and claims the Phrygians came from “Ohrid-Pelagonia region in Upper Macedonia”. He treats the Phrygian cap as proof of Mithras’s “undeniable homeland and Macedonic origin”, and identifies Mithras with the sun god “Ilios”. He also asserts that Freemasons, the Priory of Sion, Opus Dei and the “Illuminati” still keep statuettes of Mitra [Chulev, The Continuity Paradigm within the Mysteries of Mitra, #38297]. In Knowledge Seekers Workshop 374 (1 April 2021), Mehran Keshe shows a video of a temple near “Hamadan” dedicated to “Goddess of Anahita, of fertility, water and abundance”, described as “about 2,500 years” old. Its ritual is summarised as “Ahura Mazda, Mitra, Protect against disasters”. The video derives the halo and the wedding ring from Mithraism. Keshe himself states that “all the religions come from Mithraism, the essence of Ahura Mazda, it has changed name as it changed time in place”. He wonders “how much we know of Mitra comes from the travelers of the U[niverse], as they came here and taught man” [Keshe, Knowledge Seekers Workshop 374, #378086, 0:46, 1:44-2:24].

Key points

• Duchesne-Guillemin, Gershevitch, Moulton and Darmesteter agree that Artaxerxes II was the first Achaemenid to name Mithra and Anahita beside Ahuramazda. Berossus (via Duchesne-Guillemin) and Clement (via Moulton) credit him with the first cult images of Anahita.
• The theophoric name Mithridates marks Arsacid (from Mithradates I, 171-138 BC), Pontic and Commagenian kings. Duchesne-Guillemin judges Mithra more popular than Ahuramazda in the Parthian era.
• Commagene is the clearest royal Mithra cult. Antiochus I (69-34 BC in Vermaseren, 69-38 in Ries) and his father clasp hands with Mithras, and Rigon’s figures show Mithra investing the king.
• Moulton finds “no real Zoroastrianism” at Nemrud Dagh. Duchesne-Guillemin sees a tripartite list echoing Mitanni. Ries treats Commagene as the bridge from royal cult to the Roman mysteries.
• Petrosyan, after Diakonoff, links Armenian Mihr/Mher to the Urartian god Haldi and finds Western Mithraic motifs, the rock-birth and the bull-slaying, in Armenian epic.
• Plutarch places the first known mysteries among the Cilician pirates defeated by Pompey (Vermaseren, Collins, Ries). Tiridates’s homage to Nero “as it were Mithras” in AD 66 is, after Cumont, the first imperial contact with the cult.
• Kurz sees Mithraism as a western creation of the last century BC. Chulev claims Macedonian-Phrygian roots, and Keshe declares Mithraism the source of all religions.