Images of Mithra

With a history of use extending back to Vedic texts of the second millennium BC, derivations of the name Mithra appear in the Roman Empire, across Sasanian Persia, and in the Kushan Empire of southern Afghanistan and northern India during the first millennium AD. Even today, this name has a place in Yazidi and Zoroastrian religion. But what connection have Mihr in Persia, Miiro in Kushan Bactria, and Mithras in the Roman Empire to one another? Over the course of the volume, specialists in the material culture of these diverse regions explore appearances of the name Mithra from six distinct locations in antiquity. In a subversion of the usual historical process, the authors begin not from an assessment of texts, but by placing images of Mithra at the heart of their analysis. Careful consideration of each example's own context, situating it in the broader scheme of religious traditions and on-going cultural interactions, is key to this discussion. Such an approach opens up a host of potential comparisons and interpretations that are often side-lined in historical accounts. What Images of Mithra offers is a fresh approach to the ways in which gods were labelled and depicted in the ancient world. Through an emphasis on material culture, a more nuanced understanding of the processes of religious formation is proposed in what is but the first part of the Visual Conversations series.

Review: the best account for those who want to understand the complex relationship of the Vedic Mitra, the Hellenistic Mithra and the Roman Mithras ... represents the aurea mediocritas between the dry positivism and abundance of sources and the abstractions of contemporary social theories. * Csaba Szabo, Antiguedad: Religiones y Sociedades *

a successful, highly innovative collaborative contribution to a much-studied field which will surely influence similar volumes in the future. It shows the riches of Mithraic visual culture in a new light with some fresh observations, which are largely concordant with recent scholarship, and its focus on (iconographic) diversity places it well within emergent trends in both Mithraic research and ancient religions more generally. Images of Mithra is a valuable read for scholars interested in religious and art history, the movement of ideas, and the multifarious types of relationships between iconography and religion. * Kevin Stoba, Bryn Mawr Classical Review *

the focus on the few selected images and the context of each gives the authors a new perspective on this tantalising feature of Roman and Eastern religious life. * Alan Beale, Classics for All *