The Mouse of the Mysteries

What is it about?

This article presents an imaginative exercise in which a fictional author from the year 4025 details results from excavations of archaeological sites dating to the 20th and 21st centuries. Based on analyses of small domestic finds, as well as the discovery of a monumental complex utilizing similar imagery, the author concludes that people must have worshipped an anthropomorphic mouse god—the Historical Mouse—in the Mechano-Digital Age, keeping devotional votives in their homes and traveling at least once a year to a primary space of worship centered around the experience of various ritual mysteries. This article calls upon students to perform a self-evaluation about their own assumptions and approaches to the ancient world as they witness a hypothetical historian make outrageous, yet plausible, errors in the course of trying to describe an “ancient” religion.

Featured Image