Mystery Religions

Mystery Religions

Demeter

Great Goddess (?)-- life-creating renewal of plant and animal life

Eleusinian Mysteries ( 1500 BCE- 4th Century CE)

Eleusinian Mysteries

• Three times blessed are those mortals who behold those rites [at Eleusis]

before going down

to the house of Hades.

They alone have true life there; to the rest, everything is misery. (Sophocles)

• mystai

Temple of Isis ( 1764-65)

Isis, Nile River

• Seth

• Osiris

• Horus

Isis, Osiris, Nile River

• Isis (sistrum, situla, ankh)

• sistrum

• Numerius Popidius Ampliatus son of Numerius paid for the temple of Isis to be rebuilt…..To repay his generosity the town council accepted him into their order free of charge, although he was only six years old.

`

• F=Purgatorium

• G=Assembly room

• H=Teaching room

• I= Living quarters

• A= Tuscan Portico

Tuscan Order

`

s

Harpocrates

Anubis

`

s

Isis and Io

Isis cult statue?

Norbanus ( one of two)

CIL X 814=ILS 5198

• ( Portrait of Giaus Norbanus Sorex, actor of second parts; the presidents of the Fortunate Augustan Suburban County district ( set this up).Space given by decree of the decurions.

Herculaneum

• Sunrise/

mid-afternoon

Dionysus/Bacchus

• Kantharos

• thyrsus

Story of Dionysos

• Dionysus/Bacchus

• Semele

• Ariadne (Theseus)

****Bacchantes****

• Dionysus leads his thiasos-- Satyrs, Sileni and Bacchae

Satyr/Silenus

Maenads (Bacchae)

Villa of the Mysteries

Megalographia

Pedimental sculpture ( Dionysos and Ariadne?)

Foreign Cults –Sabazius, Lakshmi

• II.1.12 I,8.17.5

CIL IV 8417

Whoever is in love, let him come; I wish to break the ribs of Venus

With sticks and maim the goddess’s loins;

If she can perforate my tender heart,

Why can I not break her head with a stick?

Judaism

• CIL IV 8010= CIJ 562

Hebrew inscription –Sold by Kar […], Jesus, Shadani (ham/) son (?) of Lenananth , to Vergaz… what is beneath the baths.

CIL IV 6990

Felix slave of Judaicus.

Old Testament Reference

• IX.i.26, Street of Abundance

• SODOM[A] GOMORA

Judaism

• Vespasian and Titus ( destruction of the Temple and Jerusalem in 70 CE)

Solomon (?)

Other evidence

• Kosher garum

• Also names :Martha, Maria

Christianity ( House of the Bicentenary)

• Inscription with word Christian (House of

the Christian inscription

(VII.11.11)

New Testament ref. to Puteoli Christians

CIL IV 8623 ( Pater Noster?)