Terracotta krater from the Friedberg Mithraeum
TNMM 1378 ↔ CIMRM 1061
Krater in yellowish brown terracotta (H. 0.32 diam. 0.36), found in the Southern part of the [Friedberg] Mithraeum in 1849. Darmstadt, Museum.
Serpents are twining round each handle and round the body. Besides the body is decorated with a scorpion and a ladder in relief. Part of the foot, of one handle and of the body are lost.
Pottery vessel, known as the Friedberg Crater, decorated with a scorpion, snake, a ladder-like symbol and two handles with a snake coiled around each one, Wetterau Museum, Friedberg (Germany).
The Friedberg crater was used in the Mithraic ritual as a honey container. It was presented by a miles (soldier) to a leo (lion) in the course of the initiation ritual of fire. The decorative patterns consisting of the 3 kinds of symbols (ladder, scorpion and snake) represented the way of salvation on the miles in the battlefield. The scorpion and the snake were representatives of the earth and functioned as the givers of a glorious death, after which the miles was deified and joined the company of the other adepts. The three-rung ladder was intimately connected with the symbolism of seven grades and seven heavenly gates.
The ladder was not specifically Mithraic, but the Mithraists willingly accepted it as a symbol of their salvation.
—Hommages à Maarten J. Vermaseren. 2 edited by Maarten Jozef Vermaseren, Margreet B. De Boer, T. A. Edridge.
References
Ch. Dieffenbach in AHGA 258ff and fig. 2; Goldmann, 292 and Pl. IT, 17; MMM II 359 No. 2a8j and fig. 240. See fig.269. We are very grateful to Dr W. Jorns, Director of the Museum at Darmstadt for his help and his per- mission to study the monuments in his badly damaged Museum.
- Vermaseren, Maarten Jozef (1956) Corpus Inscriptionum et Monumentorum Religionis Mithriacae
