Ulysse Barthel is a French PhD student in Archaeology at the French School of Asian Studies in Paris. He works on the religions of the Kushan Empire (first–third centuries CE).
For me as a French PhD student working on the religions of the Kushan Empire, spending a week in Rome was an opportunity to step away from the library and approach some of the questions at the heart of my research from a different perspective. From 24 to 28 August 2026, I took part in the Summer School on Zoroastrian Texts and Mithraic Monuments in Rome, organised by the University of Bergen, around the study of Zoroastrian sources, Mithraic traditions, and the monuments in which these traditions can be explored.
The Summer School brought together students and researchers from different academic backgrounds, with expertise ranging from archaeology and religious studies to philology, ancient history, and heritage studies. The interdisciplinary character of the group was one of the most rewarding aspects of the week. We all approached the material from a different perspective, creating opportunities to compare methods, questions and ways of understanding the ancient world.
From the Avesta to Current Research
Under the guidance of Michael Stausberg (University of Bergen), Céline Redard (University of Strasbourg), and Gianfilippo Terribili (La Sapienza), the programme offered an introduction to Zoroastrian texts and to the history and archaeology of Mithraic traditions. The sessions moved between the Avesta and its interpretation, the figure of Mithra in Vedic and Avestan traditions, Zoroastrian rituals and festivals, Mithra in Middle Persian literature, and the archaeology and interpretation of Roman mithraea.
What made the programme particularly valuable was its strong connection to current scholarship. Rather than presenting established interpretations as fixed conclusions, the Summer School encouraged us to consider how knowledge about Zoroastrianism and Mithraism has been constructed over time. Discussions of the history of scholarship, including the influential interpretations of the Belgian historian Franz Cumont (1867–1947), provided an opportunity to examine the assumptions behind earlier approaches and the ways in which they have subsequently been questioned and revised.
This historiographical perspective was especially important approaching the Avesta, the sacred Zoroastrian corpus of texts composed in the ancient Iranian language Avestan. The course introduced both the contents of the Zoroastrian texts and the difficulties involved in interpreting them, alongside the developments in scholarship that have transformed our understanding of the textual tradition. For me as a researcher working on the religious world of the Kushan Empire, this offered useful methodological tools for thinking about how ancient religious traditions can be reconstructed from sources produced in very different historical contexts.
The combination of lectures, discussion, student presentations, and exercises also encouraged us to actively engage with the material. We presented on figures and themes such as Sraōša, Yima/Jamshed, Haōma and Vǝrǝϑraɣna, as well as on the history of interpretations of Mithraism. For example, I presented a section of my own research on the representations of Mithra in Kushan Bactria, where he is called ‘Miiro’. The ensuing discussions provided an opportunity to present ongoing research, to test ideas and theories through conversation with specialists working on related questions.
What is Zoroastrianism? Why Rome?
Zoroastrianism is an ancient Iranian religion built on the teachings of Zoroaster (Zarathustra), centred on the opposition between truth and the lie. Among the divinities it honours is Mithra, an old Iranian god of oath and covenant.
This is where Rome comes in: the city had its own mystery cult of Mithras, still visible today in the so-called mithraea, the cave-like sanctuaries where initiates met.
What exactly the Romans borrowed has long been debated. Scholars now tend to read the cult as a Roman creation that took little beyond the name and a Persian veneer – one that may tell us more about Roman ideas of Persia than about Zoroastrianism itself.
Rome as a Classroom
The most immediate way to experience the connection between texts, interpretations, and material culture was, quite simply, to leave the classroom. The Summer School included visits to several mithraea in Rome and Ostia, including the Mithraeum of San Clemente, the Mithraeum of the Baths of Caracalla, the Mithraeum of the Seven Spheres, the Mithraeum of the Seven Gates, the Mithraeum of Felicissimus, and the Mithraeum of the Baths of Mithras, each presented by one of us.
For a researcher accustomed to spending long days in libraries and museums, these visits offered a very different way of thinking. Standing inside a mithraeum makes it possible to appreciate things that are difficult to grasp through photographs, plans, or publications alone: the scale of the spaces, the relationship between architecture and ritual, the atmosphere created by enclosed rooms, the position of benches and cult installations, and the way sanctuaries were inserted into the wider urban landscape.
The visits also highlighted the diversity of these spaces. Mithraea could be incorporated into larger architectural complexes or established within buildings serving other functions, and their relationship with the surrounding city was an essential part of understanding how they operated. Seeing these monuments in their actual environment therefore provided a concrete complement to the theoretical and textual discussions of the week.
For me, this was one of the main strengths of the Summer School: the possibility of moving continuously between different kinds of evidence. A passage from a religious text, a scholarly interpretation, an archaeological structure and the experience of standing inside a sanctuary could all become different pieces of the same investigation.
A Week of Exchange
Beyond the academic programme, the Summer School was also an opportunity to meet researchers and students from different disciplines and countries (Norway, Italy, Iran, and France). Conversations about ongoing research made it possible to discuss questions that are sometimes difficult to explore within the confines of one’s own specialisation, while discovering approaches developed in other fields. The week therefore offered a space in which research could be discussed, challenged, and enriched through encounters with other perspectives.
The Norwegian Institute in Rome played an important role in creating this environment. Welcomed by its director, Han Lamers, we were able to experience Rome as a place for intellectual exchange. The Institute’s rooftop reception offered a particularly pleasant opportunity to continue conversations informally while looking out over the city.
In Rome, texts could be discussed, interpretations questioned, and monuments entered. Together, they offered different ways of approaching the same fundamental question: how can we understand the religious worlds of the ancient past?
