Franz Cumont Article Index for
Franz
Website Links For
Franz
 

Information About

Franz Cumont




He contributed to many standard encyclopedias, published voluminously and in 1922, under stressful political conditions, conducted digs on the shore of the Euphrates at the previously unknown site of Dura-Europos ; he published his research there in 1926. He was a member of most of the European academies.

His works include
  • ''Texts and Illustrated Monuments Relating to the Mysteries of Mithra'' (1894-1900, with an English translation in 1903) is the study that made his international reputation, by its originality and massive documentation.

  • ''Les religions orientales dans le paganisme romain'' (1906, widely translated)

  • ''After-Life in Roman Paganism,'' lectures delivered at Yale University , published in 1922, was cautiously expressed, but it corrected many false impressions of pagan rite that Christian apologists had made.

  • ''Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans'' (available in a Dover reprint)


After his death, critics of his interpretation of Mithras as the descendant of the Iranian deity Mithra began to be heard, and surfaced at the First International Congress of Mithraic Studies in Manchester England, 1971. Modern interpretation of Mithras as the astronomical bull-slayer have continued to move away from Cumont's interpretations, though his documentation remains valuable.

In 1997 the Royal Library, Brussels, observed the fiftieth anniversary of Cumont's death appropriately, with a colloquium on Syncretism in the Mediterranean world of Antiquity.


EXTERNAL LINKS




Works by Cumont online




Critiques