Lost Ancient Religions

Explanation: Zoroaster (or Zarathustra) supposedly lived in Persia, but his dating oscillates between the 2nd and 6th millennium BCE depending on the school. His religion opposes light to evil and deeply influenced Judaism, Christianity and Islam: the idea of the Last Judgment largely comes from there.

Explanation: The cult of Mithras (Mithraism) spread in the Empire between the 1st and 4th centuries. Its underground initiations in caves (mithraea) have long been compared with early Christianity: December 25th, sacred banquet, seven degrees of initiation. The resemblances are actually largely exaggerated by some 19th-century historians.

Explanation: Manichaeism is founded by Mani (216-274) in Sassanid Persia. Saint Augustine followed it for 9 years before converting to Christianity, which says a lot about its intellectual power at the time. Persecuted in Persia and then in the Roman Empire, it would survive until the 16th century in China under the name Ming Jiao.

Explanation: Gnosis (gnôsis) is a direct, saving knowledge of the divine, opposed to mere faith. Christian Gnostic currents (Valentinus, Basilides, Sethians) flourished in the 2nd and 3rd centuries before being crushed by the official Church. The 1945 discovery of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts revived their study.

Explanation: The cult of Isis spreads outside Egypt from the Hellenistic period, then explodes throughout the Roman Empire. Isiac temples have been found in Pompeii, Lyon, Trier, and even London. The iconography of Isis nursing Horus very likely inspired the Christian Madonna and Child.

Explanation: Seven degrees: raven, bridegroom, soldier, lion, Persian, sun-runner, father. Discovered thanks to mosaics from the Ostia mithraeum. Each degree had its ritual and astrological symbolism. The highest grade, "father" (pater), could lead a congregation.

Explanation: The Avesta is the sacred corpus of Zoroastrianism. Its oldest part, the Gathas, contains 17 hymns attributed directly to the prophet. Much of the Avesta was lost during the Arab conquest of Persia in the 7th century. What remains was compiled late from oral traditions.

Explanation: The Cathars, or "Perfects", reject the material world as a creation of evil and practice extreme asceticism. The Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229) devastates Languedoc under Innocent III. The siege of Montségur in 1244 marks their military end, but the last Cathars survive clandestinely until the early 14th century.

Explanation: About 500 mithraea have been identified to date, from Britain to the Black Sea. The best preserved is probably the one at San Clemente in Rome, nestled under a Christian church, a nice historical irony. Excavations continue to this day.

Explanation: The Nag Hammadi library (Upper Egypt) was discovered by a peasant in December 1945. It contains 13 codices in Coptic, including the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. Before this discovery, Gnostic texts were known only through the attacks of their enemies.