Altar of Inveresk with a griffin

TNMM 460

Local sandstone altar found in 2010 in what must have been a wooden Mithraeum built in the middle of a field, not far from the fort of Inveresk, near the Antonine Wall.

It was carefully laid face down next to another altar of the same construction dedicated to Sol. Both monuments, of very fine workmanship, were dedicated by a Roman citizen, a centurion who had belonged to the XX legion stationed there from the 140s until his departure in 165, a date that must have marked the end of the mithreum’s operation and its abandonment in accordance with the ritual rules of burial.

In addition to a very abbreviated dedication to Mithras on the main face, the altar presents on its crown the image of two crows and, on its sides, several unusual reliefs in a Mithraic context: on one side a patera, the handle of which is adorned with a ram’s head, underneath a griffin placed on what must have been a torch; on the other side a jug (urceus) and a plectrum placed side by side under a zither.

All these iconographic attributes refer to the cults of Apollo and, more specifically, to those of Apollo Grannus, widely attested in the Rhine provinces. Another altar, once found in Inveresk and now lost, bears the only dedication to Apolion Grannus so far found in Britain, the work of an imperial procurator on a probable inspection visit during the construction of Antonine’s wall (RIB I, 2132).

The presence of such monuments on the same site is certainly not accidental and it is likely that the centurion of Inveresk may have been familiar with Mithras, Apollo and Grannus during a previous posting in Germania, or may have come from that part of the empire.

The restitution of the nomen and cognomen of this man, otherwise unknown, remains hypothetical and does not allow us to say more about his origins.