The prohibition on disclosure held for the whole life of the cult and no initiate left an account in any surviving text. Ancient writers describe the effect of the rite rather than its content. The only reports that claim to give content are by Christian polemicists writing centuries later from outside the cult, with an interest in making it appear either trivial or obscene, and there is nothing independent against which to test them. Excavation gives the hall and the small closed structure at its centre and nothing of what was done there.
What would resolve this An ancient text by an initiate, or a document from the sanctuary's own administration describing the conduct of the rite, recovered by excavation at Eleusis or identified in a papyrus collection. Inscriptions from the sanctuary already record its finances and its officials, so a procedural record is not an impossible find.
OpenClassical archaeology, Greek epigraphy, papyrologyWalter Burkert, Greek Religion