Mithra Name Meaning, Origin & Religion

Mithra (Avestan: Miθra, Old Persian: 𐎷𐎰𐎼 Miça) commonly known as Mehr, is the Iranian deity of covenant, light, oath, justice and the sun. In addition to being the divinity of contracts, Mithra is also a judicial figure, an all-seeing protector of Truth, and the guardian of cattle, the harvest, and of the Waters.

The Romans attributed their Mithraic mysteries to Zoroastrian Persian sources relating to Mithra. Since the early 1970s, the dominant scholarship has noted dissimilarities between the Persian and Roman traditions, making it, at most, the result of Roman perceptions of Zoroastrian ideas.


Late 4th-century Sasanian relief of Mithra

Together with the Vedic common noun mitra, the Avestan common noun miθra derives from Proto-Indo-Iranian *mitrám (Mitra), from the root *mi- "to bind", with the "tool suffix" -tra- "causing to". Thus, etymologically mitra/miθra means "that which causes binding", preserved in the Avestan word for "Covenant, Contract, Oath".[citation needed]

In Middle Iranian languages (Middle Persian, Parthian etc.), miθra became mihr, from which New Persian مهر mehr and Armenian mihr/mehr ultimately derive.