Arm with stars and a swastika

TNMM 1234 ↔ CIMRM 765

When the Oldfield-Collection was transferred to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, it contained apart from the torchbearer from Antium (see No. 205) also a small bronze arm, which certainly comes from Italy. In AA 1900, 114 this arm is called the arm of a Mithras-statuette. At my visit to the Museum I have examined it and I owe fig. 206 to Dr. D. B. Harden, Keeper of the Museum. It is most certainly part of a bronze statuette, which however, does not belong to a Mithras. The arm is clothed with a tunica manicata, on which two stars and a swastica as ornaments. The position of the hand is not known to me from any of the other Mithras-representations and it cannot have held a torch. The stars do occur indeed on our monuments, but the swastika, though it is a solar emblem, is only known of one single Mithras-monument (see Ghighen, Vol. II) and index.