Words Painted Where Only Initiates Would See Them

The Santa Prisca mithraeum, an underground ritual space discovered beneath the Church of Santa Prisca in Rome, preserves painted wall inscriptions bearing short acclamatory phrases praising Mithras and figures associated with his cult, physical evidence that, unlike the more elaborate but disputed Mithras Liturgy discussed elsewhere in this atlas, comes directly from within an actual, archaeologically confirmed Mithraic ritual space rather than from a magical papyrus of uncertain relationship to mainstream Mithraic practice, giving these acclamations a different and arguably more secure kind of evidentiary standing for reconstructing genuine Mithraic devotional language.

Because Mithraism restricted its central teachings to initiates and left almost no surviving scripture describing its theology in its own words, these brief painted inscriptions, however fragmentary and limited in scope compared to a full liturgical text, represent some of the most direct primary evidence available anywhere for the actual language used within Mithraic ritual space itself. The mithraeum takes its modern name from the church built above it, itself named for Saint Prisca, illustrating how frequently early and medieval Christian churches in Rome were constructed directly over earlier pagan ritual spaces, whether intentionally to supersede them or simply because the same locations remained practically convenient across changing religious eras.