دانلود کتاب Mithraic Iconography and Ideology

The interpretation of religious iconography is a problem of the greatest complexity, not least in the case of Mithraism where there are no texts to aid in scholarly reconstruction of the underlying ideology . It is, therefore, surprising that theories propounded at the turn of the century by Cumont have met with almost universal acceptance and little, if any, fundamental revision. Cumont argued that the Mithraic reliefs depicted a life of the god; beginning with the birth scenes the divine life was traced through miraculous deeds (i .e . producing water from a rock), and a series of adventures (involving Mithras hiding in a tree and struggling with the bull to capture it), before reaching his life-giving sacrifice of the bull, over whose body a ritual meal was celebrated prior to Mithras' ascension to heaven in a chariot. On the grounds of an alleged parallel with the Zoroastrian myth of Ahriman's slaughter of the bull the whole life was placed in the primeval period . Although Cumont argued that the ideology was subject to Babylonian and Hellenistic iconographic influence, he maintained that the basis of the ideology was Iranian religion, this despite the fact that there is no evidence whatsoever for an Iranian belief in the life on earth of Mithra or any god. The illogicality of this position is felt more and more by scholars and two paths are seen out of the apparent impasse; one is to suppress, if not deny, the Iranian character of Roman Mithraism; the other, adopted by Campbell, is to reinterpret the iconography. Campbell has amassed a wealth of material, not only Iranian and Roman but also Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek, Hittite, Phoenician, the Luristan bronzes and Mitanni seals for example. In twelve chapters he considers the symbolism of the iconography of the cave, the tauroctone figures, the zodiac and Mithraic orientation, the stars, planets, winds and seasons as depicted on the reliefs, Mithras riding a horse (Mithras ephippos), Mithras and the bull (Mithras tauroctonos) and pays particular attention to the different registers on the south-east European reliefs. He makes no claim to have produced the final and authoritative work on Mithraism but sees his book more as a pioneering venture. He writes: `I have attempted to blaze a path through difficult ways for Diligence and Desire to follow'.