This post is for all the @assassinscreed_US fans! If you’ve played “Assassin’s Creed Valhalla” you’ll know that the main character Eivor, a fierce Viking warrior, goes inside a temple and sees a relief of a god slaying a bull. The god is Mithras, a Roman deity derived from the Iranian god Mithra. Ancient Iran’s Parthian Empire (ca. 247 BC–AD 224), and the Roman Empire in the west, were two great superpowers at the time. They were often at war with one another, but Parthia and Rome also exchanged art and ideas. New religious cults developed in the Roman Empire and one popular religion—often followed by Roman soldiers—centered on the worship of Mithras. The Romans understood little of the authentic Iranian tradition and instead created their own complex mythology. This mythology is mostly lost but can be seen in the sculptures and paintings that decorated the many Mithraeums (temples to Mithras) that existed all over the Roman empire, from Britain to Syria. In these scenes, Mithras i...