The Department of Classical & Archaeological Studies is delighted to announce that David Walsh has been awarded a PhD, under the supervision of Dr Luke Lavan and Professor Ray Laurence, with a thesis entitled ‘Development, Decline and Demise: The Cult of Mithras ca. A.D. 270-430’.
His thesis looked at how the cult of Mithras, one of the most widespread cults in the Roman Empire, became increasingly regionally diverse in the late 3rd to 4th centuries AD. It also sought to establish why the cult subsequently disappeared at the turn of the fifth century. Traditionally, most studies have seen the cult of Mithras as being largely static, with its rituals, iconography and architecture remaining relatively consistent across the Roman world until the cult’s demise, a demise which is often thought to have been the result of persecution by Christian iconoclasts. By studying the archaeological evidence for the cult during this period and placing it into its wider context, my thesis found that by the fourth century there does appear to have been considerable variation among Mithraic communities. Furthermore, the available evidence does not support the view that the cult’s disappearance was driven solely by conflict with Christianity, but rather that it was a more gradual decline which came about due to a combination of different motors.
Findings from the study will hopefully be published as a volume with Brill in the next year. David has also recently published an article on the decline of temples in the Roman provinces of Noricum and Pannonia in the American Journal of Archaeology.
Our congratulations to Dr Walsh.
For more details of the PhD in Classical & Archaeological Studies, please see: www.kent.ac.uk/secl/classics/postgraduate/research-classical-archaeological-studies.html