Mithraeum of Tell Atchana

Sir Leonard Woolley, A Forgotten Kingdom, London 1953, 98f and Pl. 10a, believes to have found a Mithraeum at Atchana (Alalakh) in the Turkish Hatay, which dates from the sixteenth or early fifteenth century B.C. (cf. AJA 51, 1947, 427). In this period the people of Alalakh made common cause with Mitanni in a rebellion against the Egyptian domination. Woolley describes the temple as follows: ’Throughout the whole history of Alalakh the record of the city temples is that each was built above the ruins of its predecessor, those ruins often being utilized deliberately to make a raised platform…