Chapter 24. Where Did the Mysteries Come From? Cumont and His Critics (Hinnells, Gordon, Beck, Ulansey, Widengren)

No question in Mithraic studies has been argued over more than this one: was the Roman cult of Mithras a western survival of an Iranian religion, or a new creation of the Roman world that used a Persian name and costume? This chapter sets out the positions in the library’s sources in rough chronological order, with the evidence each side relies on. The literary sources are scarce. Fideler writes that they “only fill a small booklet”, so every theory is in the end a reading of the same images [Fideler, Jesus Christ, Sun of God, #69295, ch. 7 “New Light on the Mithraic Mysteries”]. Vermaseren states the basic difficulty: “The great gap which exists between the records of the Persian and Roman Mithras makes interpretation all the more difficult” [Vermaseren, Mithras the Secret God, #38300, ch. 8].

Before Cumont, and Cumont’s synthesis

Campos Méndez outlines the earlier history: Lafréri (1564) read the tauroctony as agricultural allegory, F. della Torre (1700) linked Mithras with Sol, and J. G. Eichhorn (1814) saw in the bull-slaying “a creative and saving act for all nature” [Campos Méndez, El Culto del Dios Mithra, #60243, Introducción]. The decisive work was Franz Cumont’s Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra (vol. I, Brussels 1896; vol. II, 1899). Campos Méndez calls it “the principal reference for anyone who wishes to approach the history of this god”. It was followed by Les mystères de Mithra (1913), in which Cumont presented Mithraism as “a form of romanized Mazdaism”, with firm links between Iran and Rome and a central role for the “hellenized” Magi [#60243, Introducción, nn. 4-5]. The library holds scans of the corpus [Cumont, Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra, #38268; Tome II also as #38304].

Cumont matched Mithraic figures with Iranian ones (Jupiter with Ahura Mazda, the lion-headed god with Zurvan, the bull-slaying with Ahriman’s killing of the primordial bull), and even his defenders find the matches stretched. Widengren writes that “Cumont is rather optimistic about the possibilities to identify the Mithraic deities with more or less corresponding Iranian deities. He constantly, however, refers to Zoroastrian deities in spite of his insight into the true nature of Mithraic religion” [Widengren, The Mithraic Mysteries in the Greco-Roman World, #38302, n. 69]. Vermaseren, Cumont’s pupil, regarded Cumont’s explanation of the tauroctony as “by far the most satisfactory… every subsequent attempt to depart from his theories has led only to fresh complications”. Yet he doubted that the Mithraists “always appreciated the connection” with Iranian gods [#38300, chs. 8, 11]. Campos Méndez notes that Vermaseren updated Cumont’s corpus in the Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae (CIMRM, The Hague 1956-60) and founded the EPRO series, in which most of the major later studies appeared [#60243, Introducción, n. 14].

The early challenges: Wikander and Gershevitch

According to Campos Méndez, the first attack was philological. Stig Wikander (1951) argued from spelling differences that the god worshipped in Iran and the god of the mysteries were “completely different” [#60243, Introducción, n. 6]. Gershevitch reports that Wikander proposed a Balkan origin. He calls Zaehner’s phrase “severe shock treatment” apt and says the Balkan idea “was disproved with conclusive archaeological arguments by A. Alföldi” [Gershevitch, The Avestan Hymn to Mithra, #60160, Introduction VIII]. Widengren grants that Wikander was right to separate the Iranian high god Mithra from the Hellenistic and Roman mystery god Mithras, but calls the claim that the two had nothing to do with each other “unacceptable” [#38302, n. 22].

Gershevitch (1959) takes a middle position: “aspects of the Roman Mithras… are clearly derived from the Iranian Mithra as attested in the Avesta”, such as the light-bringer preceding the sun, the epithet genitor luminis, and the presence of Oceanus (Apam Napat). He rejects Lommel’s theory that the Zoroastrians “camouflaged” an original bull-killing Mithra by blaming Ahriman, and argues instead that Ahriman’s deed was later transferred to Mithras among Iranian daeva-worshippers in Babylonia [#60160, VIII].

1971: the Manchester congress and the revisionists

The turning point came at the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies, held in Manchester in 1971. Its proceedings were published by J. Hinnells as Mithraic Studies; Tehran (1975, “under the patronage of the Shah of Persia”) and Rome (1978) followed [Campos Méndez, #60243, Introducción]. Fideler reports the outcome: Hinnells concluded “that the portrayal of Mithras given by Cumont is not merely unsupported by Iranian texts but is actually in serious conflict with known Iranian theology”. He adds that R. L. Gordon “showed that Cumont severely distorted the available evidence by forcing the material to conform to his predetermined model of Zoroastrian origins” and concluded that the western mysteries were “an entirely new creation” [Fideler, #69295, ch. 7]. Campos Méndez cites the two papers as Gordon, “Franz Cumont and the doctrines of Mithraism”, and Hinnells, “Reflections on the bull-slaying scene” (Mithraic Studies II, 1975). He characterises their criticism as an attack on Cumont’s “epistemological apriorism”. He also notes that Hinnells “is not opposed” to looking for Iranian influences [#60243, Introducción n. 7; ch. III n. 55]. Fideler adds a basic objection: “in the Persian worship of Mithra there are no grades of initiation, no cave temples, and no version of the bull-slaying myth” [#69295, ch. 7]. Otto Kurz (1983) puts the revisionist view briefly: “Mithraism is a western mystery cult which sprang into existence in the last century B.C. and flourished during the first centuries of the Roman empire”. He adds that if a Persian had ever been initiated, “it is doubtful if he would have recognized anything familiar to him apart from the name of the god” [Kurz, Cultural Relations between Parthia and Rome, #60250, “Religion”].

The astral turn: Stark, Beck, Insler, Speidel, Ulansey

After Cumont’s model was shaken, attention moved to the stars. Fideler reports that scholars returned to K. B. Stark (1869), who had read the tauroctony as a star map: the bull is Taurus, the dog Canis Minor, the snake Hydra, the raven Corvus and the scorpion Scorpius. Roger Beck revived this in 1973, noting that all these constellations lie between Aldebaran in Taurus and Antares in Scorpio, “along with the bright star ‘Spica, the wheat ear, whose counterpart in the tauroctony is the metamorphosed tail of the dying bull'”. Stanley Insler reached a similar view independently in 1977 [Fideler, #69295, ch. 7]. Campos Méndez lists Beck’s 1979 study of the Ostia “Sette Sfere” Mithraeum and the spring equinoxes of AD 172 and 173, and his survey “Mithraism since Franz Cumont” (ANRW II.17.4, 1984/85, pp. 2002-2117), which he calls the essential reference work. He describes M. Speidel’s Mithras-Orion, Greek hero and Roman army god (EPRO 81, 1980) as “much more radical”, since it sees the cult as adapting an existing cult of Orion [#60243, Introducción, nn. 8-10, 17].

David Ulansey’s The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries (1989) went further. As Fideler summarises it, the figure of Mithras is the constellation Perseus, which stands above Taurus in a Phrygian cap and faces backwards. The tauroctony shows the equinoctial band “as they stood during the astrological Age of Taurus” (c. 4000-2000 BC), with Cautes (bull, rising torch) and Cautopates (scorpion, lowered torch) marking the spring and autumn equinoxes of that age. The slaying encodes the precession of the equinoxes discovered by Hipparchus around 128 BC: a power “capable of moving the structure of the entire cosmos”. Ulansey places the synthesis among Stoic intellectuals at Tarsus, where Perseus was the founder-hero and Mithradates VI and the Cilician pirates were active. In Ulansey’s words, Mithraic iconography “was a cosmological code created by a circle of religious-minded philosophers and scientists to symbolize their possession of secret knowledge” [Fideler, #69295, ch. 7, quoting Ulansey]. Campos Méndez reports that Beck and Ulansey “break openly with the continuist theories” and treat the cult as entirely Roman in origin. In his account, by the 1990s works seeking Iranian connections were “clearly abandoned” [#60243, Introducción].

The Iranian defence: Widengren and Campos Méndez

Widengren (Lincei symposium, 1965; published 1966) argues the opposite case. He holds that Roman sacred architecture, art, myth, initiation and organisation “in all essentials demonstrate the original Iranian character” of the mysteries. His evidence includes: the cave as an Iranian birthplace of the saviour; the bull-slaying type modelled on the stag-killing “Persian” Artemis/Anahita of Asia Minor coins; Mithras’ birth on the Araxes, which has Ossetic and Hurrian parallels; Iranian cult words (nama, Nabarzes); the communal meal; and above all the organisation, with fratres, comes, adiutor and socius, Magi-dressed Fathers at Dura, and congregations of about 100. His conclusion: “It has been our chief task to demonstrate here both the Iranian origin of the Mithraic mysteries and their original setting-in-life as being the special cult of the Iranian warrior societies” [Widengren, #38302, summary, §§3-7 and conclusion]. He also warns that the mysteries’ importance in Roman society “has most probably been considerably exaggerated” [#38302, §7].

Campos Méndez builds his whole thesis on “the clear connection” between the Iranian and the Roman Mithra. He identifies four “elements of continuity”: Mithra and the Sun, Mithra and the warrior class, the bull sacrifice, and Iranian words and images (nama, Nabarzes, Cautes/Cautopates, the grade Perses). He is careful. He finds Cumont’s bull-slaying argument weak and Zaehner’s Mashyē parallel thin. He prefers the eschatological sacrifice of the bull Hadhayans by the Saoshyant in the Bundahishn and the Mithrakana feast as possible models, and he concedes that the tauroctony’s meaning “was not founded on a single religious tradition” [#60243, ch. III “Mithra y el sacrificio del toro”]. His conclusion is that the Romans’ awareness of the god’s Persian origin “was not limited only to the name of the god itself” [#60243, Introducción].

Comparison of positions

Afterlives of the star-map theory

The precession reading has moved well beyond academic debate. Fideler uses it to support a wider solar-Logos reading of Christianity. He reports that Mithras “was born on December 25 in a cave and his birth was witnessed by shepherds” and cites a description of Mithraism as “the Freemasonry of the Roman world” [Fideler, #69295, ch. 7]. Joscelyn Godwin reports how Wilhelm Landig’s post-war “Thulean” mythology presented a solar “Son of God” linked to the precession of the equinoxes: “thus he is shown slaying the Bull, to mark the end of the Age of Taurus, in the central icon of the Thuleans’ underground temple” [Godwin, Arktos: The Polar Myth, #71379, Part II]. In this way the astronomical decoding offered by Beck and Ulansey reappears in esoteric milieus, where the bull-slaying marks the turning of cosmic ages.

Key points

• Cumont (1896-1913) framed Mithraism as “Romanized Mazdaism”; Widengren calls his Iranian identifications “rather optimistic”, and Vermaseren extended his corpus as the CIMRM.
• Wikander (1951) denied continuity; Gershevitch (1959) traced specific Roman traits to the Avestan Mithra and rejected Lommel’s “camouflage” theory.
• At Manchester (1971) Hinnells judged Cumont’s picture “in serious conflict with known Iranian theology” and Gordon called the mysteries “an entirely new creation” (via Fideler).
• The astral school (Stark, Beck, Insler, Speidel, Ulansey) reads the tauroctony as a star map; Ulansey adds precession and Mithras = Perseus at Tarsus.
• Kurz: “a western mystery cult which sprang into existence in the last century B.C.”
• Widengren and Campos Méndez defend Iranian origin or partial continuity, citing organisation, vocabulary, warrior ethos and art types.
• The precession reading lives on in esoteric and Thulean milieus (Godwin on Landig) and solar-Christian comparison (Fideler).