Altars of Sol and Luna from Mundelsheim

TNMM 386

In 1989, a Mithraeum with three rooms came to light in Mundelsheim in Baden-Württemberg, to the south-west of the property of a Roman villa rustica discovered in 1925. The building, the outer dimensions of which are 17.6 x 7.2 m, was in use from the first half of the 2nd century C.E. to the beginning of the 3rd. Two rooms, very likely having served as the antechamber and kitchen, precede a spelaeum, the central aisle of which leads up to a socle that was intended to receive a tauroctonic relief. Some of the roughly two hundred sculptural fragments scattered about theground presumably came from this relief. In addition to the reliefs representing Mercury, Cautes and Cautopates, the excavations have revealed two altars with openwork images of Sol and Luna. Executed in red sandstone and attributed to a local workshop, they were originally placed to each side of the tauroctony relief.

The upper part of the altar of Sol is not preserved. Wearing a crown with seven openwork rays and wrapped in a chlamys, the god has the appearance of a young man with curly hair. Luna, for her part, is represented as a woman with long hair, dressed in a long robe that falls from her left shoulder. The goddess wears an openwork crescent moon upon her head. Similar altars have been found at Bingen (Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany), Bonn (North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany), [Carrawburgh (UK)], and Inveresk (East Lothian, Scotland). Lighted from behind, such objects would have reenforced the theatrical setting that accompanied the ceremonies taking place inside Mithraea.