Art: Temple on the Thames

In a grey, blitz-battered part of London, between the Thames and St. Paul’s Cathedral, is a rubble-littered hole where a 14-story office building will soon rise. Since that part of London stands on many layers of history, Archaeologist William Grimes of the London Museum got permission to dig a trench to see what lay deeper down.

First he uncovered a wall of Roman age; then the foundations of an ancient building came slowly to light. About 60 ft. long and 22 ft. wide, it looked a good deal like an early Christian church, with a central nave, two side aisles and a rounded apse at one end. In the apse the diggers found the marble head, delicately carved, of a god in a Phrygian cap. Then they knew that the ruin was a temple of Mithras, built about A.D. 150, where armored Roman legionnaires worshiped, particularly during the dying years of the Roman empire, when the Mithras cult was most popular.

If the Mithras worshipers of ancient Londinium could come to life and attend a service of St. Paul’s Cathedral not far from their temple, they would find many things, besides the arrangement of the interior, to remind them of their own faith. Of Aryan origin, Mithraism was one of the Oriental sects that contended for control of the declining Roman Empire. It came out second in the contest, but it had some things in common with Christianity, the winner.

Mithras, whose name leads back to Aryan prehistory, was a kind of redeemer, a mediator between man and a supreme god. Born miraculously (out of a rock), he was first adored by gift-bearing shepherds. He suffered various adversities but at last ascended to heaven. Mithraism used bells and candles in its ritual, as well as communion and holy water. It taught immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the flesh and the last judgment.

Londoners by tens of thousands crowded to glimpse the low, muddy wall of the temple. Hearing that it would soon make room for an office building—or a “Temple of Mammon,” as some oldfashioned, ritualistic Socialists insisted on calling it—Britons went home in their time-honored way to write protesting letters to the newspapers. The press responded thunderously, and the owners of the site agreed to preserve the temple for at least a fortnight, until someone could figure out how to preserve Mithras’ old home.