Tauroctony relief from Dülük

TNMM 2591

The principal cult relief of Mithraeum I at Doliche was carved directly into the living rock at the rear wall of the sanctuary. Although deliberately mutilated in antiquity, its composition remains largely recognisable. Mithras kneels on the back of the rearing bull, grasping its head with his left hand while striking it with his right. The canonical elements of the tauroctony are preserved in outline, including the scorpion attacking the bull’s testicles, the serpent beside the krater, the dog leaping towards the bull, probably a lion and a cock, the two torchbearers Cautes and Cautopates, the raven, and the busts of Sol and Luna above the arch framing the scene.

The relief was intentionally mutilated by systematic chiselling from above. The head of Mithras was almost completely obliterated and replaced by an engraved Christian cross. The excavators regard this cross as clear evidence that the iconoclastic destruction was carried out by Christians, distinguishing this later intervention from the earlier destruction horizon associated with the Sasanian sack of Doliche in AD 253.

The rock-cut tauroctony formed the focal point of Mithraeum I, one of two Mithraea discovered beneath the ancient settlement of Doliche. Its archaeological importance derives not only from its well-preserved iconographic programme despite the damage, but also from the possibility that the Doliche Mithraea belong among the earliest known sanctuaries of the Roman Mithraic mysteries.