Mithraic in Name, Uncertain in Origin

Scholars of Roman religion remain genuinely divided over how directly this text relates to mainstream Mithraic mystery cult practice, known independently mainly through archaeological remains such as mithraeum inscriptions and temple layouts rather than through texts of this kind, with some treating the Mithras Liturgy as authentic evidence of actual Mithraic liturgical content and others regarding it as a separate syncretistic magical composition that borrowed Mithras's name and solar associations without representing standard practice within initiated Mithraic communities, a genuinely unresolved scholarly disagreement this entry does not attempt to settle.

Because Mithraism restricted its central teachings to initiates and left almost no independent textual record of its own theology in its own words, discussed in the broader Mithraism corpus entry elsewhere in this atlas, this document's uncertain relationship to mainstream Mithraic practice means the actual content of authentic Mithraic liturgy remains largely unknown regardless of how this specific magical papyrus text is ultimately classified. The broader Greek Magical Papyri collection from which this text comes preserves a very wide range of ritual, magical and religious material from Roman Egypt, of which the Mithras Liturgy is only one, if unusually elaborate, example.