Mithra: The Ancient Iranic God of the Sun and the Covenant
- Dala Sarkis
- 13 hours ago
- 10 min read
Introduction
Mithra is one of the oldest and greatest gods of the Iranic world: the divinity of the covenant, the lord of light and the sun, the all-seeing guardian of truth and justice. Worshipped for thousands of years across the lands of the Iranian peoples, and known in Persian as Mehr, he stands among the most ancient deities humankind has named, older even than the prophet Zoroaster.
At his heart Mithra is the god who binds. His very name means the binding power of the covenant, the sacred force of the oath and the contract, the trust that holds friend to friend and people to people. From this he grew into a lord of light and the sun, an unsleeping judge who watches over every promise, and a figure so beloved that his worship spread, in altered form, as far as the legions of Rome.
For the Kurds, Mithra is of special interest, for the ancient religion of light and the sun once at home in the Zagros mountains is woven deep into Kurdish heritage. His autumn festival of Mehrgan still answers the spring of Newroz, and the reverence for the sun, the Roj of the Kurdish flag, that runs through Kurdish and Yazidi tradition carries the distant memory of this most ancient of gods.
Contents
Who Is Mithra?
Mithra (known in Persian as Mehr or Mihr) is an ancient Iranic divinity, a yazata or being worthy of worship, whose domains are covenant and oath, light and the sun, justice and truth. One of the oldest gods of the Indo-Iranian world, he is the guardian of contracts and friendship, the all-seeing judge who punishes the breaker of vows, and the protector of cattle, the harvest and the waters. Honoured across the Iranian world from the most ancient times, and the deep root of Iranic sun-reverence, he is also the figure behind the autumn festival of Mehrgan.
Key Takeaways
Mithra, or Mehr, is one of the most ancient gods of the Iranic world.
His name means binding: he is the divinity of covenant, oath and contract.
He is also a lord of light and the sun and an all-seeing judge of truth.
In Zoroastrianism he is a yazata expressing the friendly aspect of Ahura Mazda.
His festivals are Mehrgan in autumn and Yalda, the eve of his birth, in winter.
His worship is a deep root of Kurdish and Iranic reverence for the sun.
Quick Facts
Name: Mithra (Avestan); Mehr or Mihr (Persian); Mitra (Vedic); Mithras (Roman)
Type: Ancient Iranic divinity (yazata); one of the oldest Indo-Iranian gods
Domains: Covenant, oaths, contracts, friendship, justice, truth, light and the sun
Meaning of name: From a root meaning to bind; the binding of covenant and contract
Also guardian of: Cattle, the harvest and the waters; an all-seeing judge
Chief hymn: The Mihr Yasht, the longest of the Avestan hymns
In Zoroastrianism: A yazata expressing the friendly aspect of Ahura Mazda
Festivals: Mehrgan in autumn and Yalda, the eve of Mithra's birth, in winter
Roman form: Mithras, centre of the mystery cult of Mithraism
Attestation: Worshipped from Achaemenid times; deep root of Iranic sun-reverence
The God of the Covenant
Before all else, Mithra is the god of the covenant. His name comes from an ancient Indo-Iranian root meaning to bind, and it carries the sense of the bond itself: the oath, the contract, the sworn agreement that ties one party to another. To the ancient Iranians, such bonds were sacred things, and Mithra was the divine power that stood behind them, the guarantor of every promise made and of the friendship that promises create. A vow sworn in the name of Mithra was the most solemn oath a person could take, and to break it was to invite his anger.
From this role as keeper of the covenant flows Mithra's character as a judge. He is the all-seeing one, who beholds every deed and hears every word, and who cannot be deceived. To those who keep faith he is a friend and protector; but upon the oath-breaker and the liar he descends in wrath, for the breaking of a covenant is, in the Iranic vision, an offence against the very order of the world. In this he is bound up with Asha, the great Zoroastrian principle of truth, order and justice, of which he is a tireless guardian.
Lord of Light and the Sun
Mithra is also a lord of light. In the oldest tradition he rides each day across the sky in a chariot, going before the sun and emanating a radiance of his own, the first to rise above the mountains and look down upon the world. Because his light reveals all things, his role as the all-seeing judge and his nature as a being of brightness are one and the same: nothing can be hidden from the god who is himself the light of heaven.
Over the long centuries Mithra came to be identified ever more closely with the sun itself, until in much of later tradition Mehr means both the god and the sun alike. He is also a giver of life and plenty in the world below, the guardian of cattle, of the harvest and of the waters, the divine power who makes the pastures green and the herds increase. The longest and best-preserved of the Avestan hymns, the Mihr Yasht, is devoted to him, picturing him as the watchful lord who ranges over the whole earth from his home upon the holy mountain.
Mithra in the Zoroastrian World
When the prophet Zoroaster taught the worship of Ahura Mazda, the one supreme Lord, the ancient god Mithra was not cast aside but woven into the new faith. In Zoroastrianism he became a yazata, one of the divine beings worthy of worship who serve Ahura Mazda and express his qualities, and Mithra in particular came to embody the friendly, protective aspect of the supreme God. He keeps the company of other great yazatas, among them Verethragna the victorious, Rashnu the judge, and Sraosha the obedient.
The worship of Mithra is attested across the whole sweep of ancient Iranian history. The Achaemenid kings invoked him: from Artaxerxes the Second onward, royal inscriptions name Mithra alongside Ahura Mazda and the goddess Anahita. The Kushan kings of Central Asia struck coins bearing his image as a radiant solar god. And in the Sasanian age, at Taq-e Bostan in western Iran, a great rock-relief shows a rayed, haloed figure, Mihr, standing in witness at the investiture of a king. Through every era, under the names Mithra and Mihr and Mehr, the god of the covenant endured.
From Mehr to the Roman Mithras
One of the most remarkable journeys in the history of religion is the spread of Mithra's name into the Roman world. There, from the first centuries of the common era, a mystery cult arose around a god called Mithras, worshipped in underground temples, the Mithraea, and especially beloved of soldiers across the empire. Its central image was the tauroctony, the god slaying a great bull, and for a time in the second and third centuries the cult of Mithras was among the most widespread in Rome, a rival to early Christianity, honoured even by emperors, until it faded after the empire turned to the Christian faith.
Yet the Roman Mithras and the Iranian Mithra must not be too quickly merged. The Romans themselves believed their mysteries came from Persia, but modern scholarship has stressed how greatly the two differ. The bull-slaying that stands at the centre of the Roman cult has no place in the Iranian tradition, where Mithra is on the contrary the guardian of cattle, and much of the Roman mythology appears to be a new creation, shaped by Roman ideas of what Persian wisdom might be. The Roman Mithras is best understood as a distant and much-changed offshoot, not a faithful copy, of the ancient Iranic god.
Mehrgan and Yalda: The Festivals of Mithra
Of all the ways Mithra lives on, the dearest is in festival. The great feast of Mehrgan, named directly for Mehr, falls in the autumn, on the day Mehr of the month Mehr, around the autumn equinox. It is the twin and counterpart of Newroz: where Newroz marks the spring, Mehrgan marks the autumn, the two great balance-points of the year, the rising and the mellowing of the sun. Celebrated with gatherings, music and a festive spread, often with garments of violet and purple, Mehrgan is a thanksgiving for the harvest and a festival of love, friendship and the triumph of good over evil.
In legend, Mehrgan is also the day of a great victory, for it is said to mark the triumph of the hero-king Faridun over the tyrant Zahhak, a story that, in the Kurdish tradition, is more often joined to Newroz. The two festivals thus mirror each other across the year, both telling of the victory of light over darkness.
A second festival of Mithra falls at the opposite turn of the year. Yalda, the night of the winter solstice and the longest night, is remembered as the eve of the birth of Mithra, the unconquered sun, who is reborn as the days begin once more to lengthen. In Kurdish tradition this night, called Sevcile, celebrates the birth of the sun and light, said to have come forth in the Zagros mountains; the great Kurdish poet Nali sang of the long Yelda night, and families still gather through its darkness to await the returning light.
Mithra, the Kurds and the Sun
The reverence for the sun runs deep in Kurdish culture, and many trace it to this most ancient layer of Iranic religion. The land of the Zagros, the Kurdish heartland, was one of the homes of the old worship of light, in which the sun, called Roj or Xor in Kurdish, was honoured as a manifestation of divine order and the giver of life. The blazing golden sun at the centre of the Kurdish flag, the Roj, and the very name of Newroz, the new day, keep this ancient light at the heart of Kurdish identity.
The bond is felt most strongly in the indigenous Kurdish faiths. Some scholars group the old religions of the Kurds, the Yazidi faith of Tawuse Melek, the Yarsani way and others, under the name Yazdanism, an ancient tradition held to reach back long before Islam. In the Yazidi reverence for the sun, before which the faithful turn in prayer, and in the solar imagery of these traditions, many see the living echo of the old faith of light of which Mithra was the great lord. Whether as direct inheritance or as deep cultural memory, the sun of Mithra still rises over the Kurdish world.
Symbolism
Mithra unites two ideas that, at first sight, seem far apart: the binding force of the covenant, and the light of the sun. But in the Iranic vision they are one. The sun is the great eye that sees all and hides nothing, and so is the natural lord of truth and the natural witness of every oath. To swear by Mithra is to swear by the light itself, before which no lie can stand. In him, justice and radiance, the moral order and the cosmic order, are gathered into a single figure.
He is also, above all, a god of trust. In a world of tribes and treaties, of friendships and alliances, Mithra is the divine guarantee that a person's word means something, that bonds will be honoured and faith kept. It is no accident that his name became, in Persian, the ordinary word for love and kindness, mehr. The most ancient of gods is, in the end, the god of the bonds that hold human life together, and of the light by which those bonds are seen and kept.
Debates and Misconceptions
Is Mithra the sun, or a separate god? The tradition gives both answers. In the oldest texts the sun is its own being, and Mithra rides before it as a distinct power of light; yet over time the two drew together until Mehr could mean both god and sun alike. It is best to say that Mithra is a god of light intimately bound to the sun, who came to be seen as a solar deity without ever quite losing his older and wider character as lord of the covenant.
Was the Roman Mithras the same as the Iranian Mithra? Not really. Though the Romans traced their mystery cult to Persia and borrowed the god's name, scholars today stress the deep differences between them. The bull-slaying central to the Roman cult is absent from the Iranian tradition, where Mithra protects cattle, and much of the Roman myth seems newly invented. The two are related branches grown far apart, not one and the same.
How directly does Mithra survive in Kurdish tradition? Here honesty is needed. That the Kurds and other Iranic peoples revered the sun and light in ancient times is clear, and festivals like Newroz, Mehrgan and Yalda carry that heritage. But to trace an unbroken line from the worship of Mithra to the practices of the Yazidis, the Yarsanis or others is a matter of scholarly argument and cultural memory rather than proven descent. What can be said with confidence is that the ancient Iranic reverence for light, of which Mithra was the supreme lord, is part of the deep inheritance from which Kurdish culture grew.
Related Topics
Newroz: the spring festival, the great counterpart of Mithra's autumn Mehrgan
Faridun: the hero-king whose victory over Zahhak is joined to Mehrgan
Zahhak: the tyrant whose defeat the festivals of light celebrate
Tawuse Melek: the Peacock Angel of the Yazidis, whose faith reveres the sun
The Shahnameh: the great epic of the Iranic world Mithra's peoples shaped
Mehrgan: the autumn festival named for Mehr
Yalda: the winter-solstice eve of Mithra's birth
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Mithra?
Mithra, known in Persian as Mehr, is an ancient Iranic god of covenant, oath, light and the sun. One of the oldest gods of the Iranian world, he is the all-seeing guardian of truth and justice and the protector of contracts and friendship.
What does the name Mithra mean?
It comes from an ancient root meaning to bind, and refers to the covenant or contract itself. Mithra is the divine power behind every oath and agreement, which is why he is the guardian of truth and the punisher of those who break their word.
Is Mithra a sun god?
He is a god of light closely tied to the sun. In the oldest texts he rides before the sun as a distinct power, but over time he became identified with it, so that the Persian word Mehr means both the god and the sun.
What is the difference between Mithra and the Roman Mithras?
The Romans borrowed Mithra's name for a mystery cult, but the two differ greatly. The Roman Mithras centres on slaying a bull, which has no place in the Iranian tradition, where Mithra guards cattle. The Roman cult is a distant offshoot rather than the same religion.
What festivals honour Mithra?
Chiefly Mehrgan, the autumn festival named for Mehr and the counterpart of spring's Newroz, and Yalda, the winter-solstice night remembered as the eve of Mithra's birth, the rebirth of the sun.
How is Mithra connected to the Kurds?
The ancient worship of the sun and light, of which Mithra was the great lord, was at home in the Zagros and runs deep in Kurdish heritage, from the sun on the Kurdish flag to the festivals of Newroz and Yalda and the sun-reverence of the Yazidi and Yarsani traditions.
References and Further Reading
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