The inspiration for this book came from images of the bull sacrifice carried out by Mithras. Remains of 700 images of the bull-slaying scene were discovered in lands once part of the Roman Empire. Mithraism was a major Roman cult which preceded and influenced Christianity. The twelve signs of the zodiac surrounding Mithras may explain the number twelve for the disciples of Jesus, many of whom are rarely mentioned in the gospels. Other connections to Christianity abound and are investigated in this book. Statues, mosaics and reliefs of deities, persons and objects associated with the Mithraic Mysteries and other ancient cults have often been damaged by the elements and by humans through the passing of time. Important details are often missing. I have therefore tried to carefully redraw these ancient images so that the outline is clear and missing elements are reinserted. The 114 images I have produced are an indispensable part of this book. In order to understand Mithraism better, other ancient legends associated with bulls had to be examined, particularly the killing of the Heavenly Bull by Gilgamesh. A boat sailed into the great waters by Gilgamesh in search of a plant which would enable humans to live forever, is of course related to the tree of life in the Garden of Eden. The scene in which the serpent entices Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit appears to have a near parallel in a Mithraic shrine near Frankfurt am Main, Germany which shows a serpent in a tree looking at Mithras who is in the act of slaying the bull. In ancient China, large maritime searches were organized for drugs which would prolong human life. Then, at a much later date the Eight Immortals (Ba Xian) appear in China and some of them eat the peaches of immortality and sail to a magic island where the drugs of immortality are said to be found. This similarity to the voyages of Utnapishtim and Gilgamesh seem hardly coincidental. Then there were the solar boats employed by the Egyptian sun god Ra in his quest for rebirth. There were crossings of the Nile from the land of the living on the eastern bank, to the land of the dead in the west where tombs and pyramids were located. The Babylonian story of Utnapishtim surviving a flood has parallels in the story of Noah and in related Greek, Indian and Chinese stories. Mithras too has a connection with water when he strikes a rock causing water to gush forth and he may have a relationship to the Persian goddess of the waters Anahita. The raven as a companion of Apollo and Mithras is obviously related to the constellation Corvus the Raven and in ancient China ravens were said to carry the sun across the sky. Then there is a dog attracted to the blood from the dying bull and we can imagine it to be Canis Major. In like manner the snake drawn to the blood of the bull may be Hydra the Water Snake, similar to the snake which seized the magic water plant from Gilgamesh. A scorpion (the zodiacal constellation Scorpio) bites the genitals of the bull and is located on the circle of the zodiac directly opposite Taurus. Scorpio is thus the antithesis of Taurus. This book is then an attempt to relate the Mithraic Mysteries to humanity's search for survival and immortality and to show how other mythologies approached this goal. Information is drawn not only from Greece, Rome and Europe but also from ancient China, Japan, India, Mesopotamia, Iran and Egypt. The sun, sunbirds, sacred trees and their fruit, sacrificial bulls and the crossing of the great waters were part of the mythologies surrounding survival. Many of these mythical beliefs were likely to have been known to Roman soldiers associated with Mithraism. Abundant heavenly connections are obvious when looking at the symbolism displayed in the sacrificial bull-slaying scene.