Persianism in Mithraic iconography; the cultic scenes of the Hawarte Mithraeum

At first glance, the wall-paintings of Roman Mithraea represent a simple imagery of the god Mithras, alone or accompanied by his attendants Cautes, Cautopates or the Roman sun god Sol, while the god is hunting the bull or drawing the bow. Scholars advancing the metanarratives of continuity and discontinuity both agree that such imagery are the pictorial medium of the cultic beliefs and refer to Mithras’ miracle in creating the world and water flowing. However, recent scholarship suggests a form of Persianism behind Mithraic art and iconography, whereby the Roman Mithraists embraced Greek topoi of Persians and transformed it into the cultic iconography of the god in order to validate and to stress Mithras’ Persian provenance.
Building on this recent scholarship, this paper proposes a new perspective on the idea of Persianism behind the cultic art and ritual language. By examining the wall-paintings of the Mithraeum at Hawarte, I will demonstrate how, in very rare cases, the Roman Mithraists incorporated specific and different Persian themes and motifs to validate and to stress the foreign origin of their god. Such an analysis enables us to argue the local and cultural circumstances that affected the process of producing cultic imagery of the god and resulted in the consistencies and variations among them. In addition, this paper suggests that emphasizing the Persian provenance of their god Mithras was a mode of rhetoric that the Roman Mithraists used to provide their ex novo religiosity and cultic community with a past. Indeed, this tendency is comprehensible in the light of Rome’s enthusiasm for Persia and her openness to others.