© Richard Randall

Caribbean

Sundries

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Remains

The calendar instituted by the Achaemenid dynasty (c. 648 BCE–330 BCE), the first Persian empire, was based on the Egyptian calendar, which had months of the year and days of the month dedicated to their divinities. The Achaemenids replaced these with divinities from the Zoroastrian faith, and the fifteenth day of each month was consecrated to Mithra ("Dae-pa-Meher"). The sixteenth day of each month and one month of the year were consecrated to Meher, whose identity blends with that of Mithra in later Persian culture. These calendarial dedications are still present in the religious calendar of the Zoroastrians. The month that was consecrated to Meher in pre-Islamic times was revived as the name of the seventh month of the year in the official national calendar of Iran of 1925.

The festivities in the week following the winter solstice (after which the days grow longer), today called Shab-e Yalda in Iran, are a remnant of the cult which celebrated the birth of the divinity of light on that day.

Prior to the fall of the Sassanid empire in 651 CE, after which Zoroastrianism and Mazdaism were supplanted by Islam, Mithraic temples could be found throughout the empire. The extant remains mentioned by David Fingrut, 1993 include:

• a temple at Khuzestan

• a few columns still standing at the temple of Khorheh in central Iran near present-day Mahallat

• at excavated Nisa in Turkmenistan (later renamed Mithradatkirt)

• at Hatra in upper Mesopotamia.

Mithras in the Greco/Roman world

In the Hellenistic culture, Mithras could be identified with Apollo - Helios. During the 2nd century BC, probably at Pergamon, Hellenistic sculptors transformed the figure of Mithra/Helios into an iconic Mithras, the central god of a new syncretic religion, Mithraism. Although this new cult never caught on in the Greek homeland, it was taken to Rome around the 1st century BC by, and was dispersed throughout the Roman Empire and embraced by emperors as an official religion.

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