Modern Mithraism Lib : Does the Mithraic Tauroctony go back to the Mitanni?

Does the Mithraic Tauroctony go back to the Mitanni?

4020.05

DOES MITHRAIC TAUROCTONY GO BACK TO THE MITANNI?

"While the mystery cult of Mithraism seems to have been a late post Hellenic and Roman religion, the Tauroctony depiction seems to me rather more likely to have its origins among the Indo-Iranians, as does the name and many characteristics of the Roman god Mithras.

The evidence which indicates this is found among a people called the Mitanni in Anatolia. The Mitanni were a Vedic people who migrated to Anatolia from India. The Mitannian king Shaushatar (1450 BC, around 1500 years earlier than the Roman cult of Mithras) had a royal seal which depics five primary figures. A clear drawing of the seal can be seen at:

http://www.arthistory.upenn.edu/spr03/422/April1/37.JPG

A photo of the original seal can be seen at:

http://www.arthistory.upenn.edu/spr03/422/April1/38.JPG

The figure in the upper right hand corner is a "young beardless bull slayer" whose knee rests on the back of the bull, and he holds its head back with his left hand, with a weapon in his right hand. The posture and pose of this figure is identical to that of Mithras in the later Tauroctony depictions, except that his head (which wears a round-topped hat or helmet of some sort) is not turned back but faces forward. However, this is also the case in some later Tauroctony deptictions. The figure on the seal does look directly towards a front-facing large head with a shaggy beard just as Mithras looks at the sun. Directly beside this head is a spoked wheel with eagle's wings, which undeniably represents the sun.

There are a set of twins on this seal in the exact same position as Cautes and Cautopates are in the Tauroctony: in the bottom right and left hand corners. The central figure of the seal is a man with the wings of an eagle and the legs of a lion. This figure is very reminiscent of the Demiurge Ariomanus depicted by the Roman cult of Mithras: Ariomanus is depicted with wings and either a lion's head or a man's head and lion's legs. The half man half lion on the seal holds an upside-down lion in each outstreached hand, and the twins are each subduing a lion. Lions have an ancient connection with fire and the sun. Two more lions hold the winged sun wheel on a stand, and a raven sits on each of their backs, remeniscent of the raven on the sun ray in the Tauroctony.

The five figures on Shaushatar's seal are arranged similarly to the five main figures of the Tauroctony, accept the bull slayer on the seal occupies the position of the sun in the Tauroctony (the sun is depersonified as a wheel to the right). The central figure of the seal is not a bull slayer but a being resembling the demiurge, who only occasionally appears in the Tauroctony but is often depicted separately in a Roman Mithraic context. The Tauroctonies depict a personified moon face in the upper right hand corner, where the seal has a robed figure with a long pony tail and a curved figure, apparently a female. Out of her hands comes a wavy line that appears to be either a river or a snake which continues down beyond her towards the half man half lion. The seal depics lions, ravens, a bull, (maybe a snake), and a rabbit, some of which are found in the Tauroctony. She is placed exactly opposite to the bull slayer.

In 1375 BC, less than a hundred years later, a Mitannian descendent of Shaushatar signed a treaty with the Hittites and called as witnesses the gods Mitra, Varuna, Indra and the Nasatya twins. Notice that five deities are mentioned, just as five male deities are present on the seal, and both include a set of twins. The Bull Slayer is likely Mitra (there is a Vedic story of a bull slayer but it is Manu, not Mitra) the half man half lion is possibly Varuna (who along with Mitra is closely associated with Aryaman, hence the later Mithraic demiurge named Ariomanus). The half man half lion could also be the red-bearded Indra, who had a lion form, and who in Zoroastrian religion was demoted to an evil being, as was Aryaman with Zoroastrian Ahriman, as the dark Varuna-Ahura was promoted to the primary god and Mithra left as secondary, as is the bull slayer in the seal of Shaushatar. The twins figures on the seal would then be the Nasatya twins.

The Mitannian-Hittite treaty is the earliest written form of the names of these ancient Indo-Iranian and Vedic gods. Note also that the earliest Vedic text, the Rig Veda, is thought to have first been composed between 1200-1700 BC, so in fact both the seal of Shaushatar and the later god names in the treaty are contemporary with the origin of the Rig Veda which often mentions these gods, including Mitra.

The Vedic peoples themselves only migrated into India several hundred years earlier around 2000 BC. Before that, they were nomadic Indo-Europeans at the end of the Proto-Indo-European period (roughly 4000-2500 BC). The Proto-Indo-Europeans were also the ancestors of the Greeks, Romans, Germans and Celts. There are a great many correspondences between the gods, mythologies and religious rituals of all of these peoples of common origin, so it is not at all surprising to find myths and depictions of a bull slaying within Celtic and Germanic cultures. A form of the Tauroctony exists in the myths of most Indo-European cultures. They could have obtained these myths/depictions from cultural borrowing, or they could have come from a common root.

Comparative mythology studies have shown that the gods Mitra, Varuna, Indra, the Nasatya and Aryoman (and many others) have (often exact) counterparts in most Indo-European cultures, though not under cognate names. Only the Iranian counterparts have names cognate to the Vedic and Mitannian. The Roman cult of Mithras obtained the name, myth, and Tauroctony depiction from Iranian (Persian) prototypes, which must themselves be connected to protoypes from at least 1500 years earlier, or perhaps going as far back as the Proto-Indo European period.

At the 1971 Congess of Mithraic Studies, R. D. Barnett suggested the seal of Saushatar could be an early Mithra Tauroctonos. The notion was further supported by Michael York in the article "The Mithraic Tauroctony as a Derivative of an IE [Indo-European] Soma/Haoma Sacramental Cult" from the Journal of Indo-European Studies Vol. 21, 1993. The Indo-Iranian bull is likely Soma, who is called a bull, and the slaying of the bull represents the Indo-Iranian Soma pressing, which on the macrocosmic scale creates water/fluid and edible plants, and on the microcosmic scale, serves as an offering to the gods which brings prosperity in this world and an ascent of the soul to heaven at the time of death (interestingly the same goals as the Roman Mithras cult members). I think my own observations explained above support the connection as well. The similarites between the Taurauctony and the Seal of Shaushatar, while not exact correspondences, are too numerous to ignore, and they may shed light on the origin of the Mithraic Tauroctony."