Mithréum de La Bâtie-Montsaléon

TNMM 499

The excavations brought to light structures and important materials, lapidary inscriptions, bronze and marble sculptures, coins, metal or glass artifacts, and ceramics. Most of these were found in a 94 m x 122 m residential area. A mithraeum, an altar dedicated to the worship of Mithras, was discovered in one of the rooms of that villa.

Most of the artifacts were sold by the diggers to collectors or antique dealers.

Prefect Ladoucette who was an art lover, made his own collection and tried to create an archeological museum in Gap (which was to be, only a hundred years later). Artifacts and particularly inscriptions were stored in the Prefecture gardens in order to constitute the museum collection-to be. Unfortunately, they disappeared through the years just like the mithraeum which vanished between 1820 and 1830.

At La Bâtie-Montsaléon, the ancient Mons Seleucus, in Narbonne Gaul, excavations carried out in 1804-1805 in a residential area of the vicus led to the discovery of mithriaca, including a tauroctonic relief dedicated by a certain Marcus Tulius Maternianus, perhaps the owner of the place (CIMRM 899), without revealing, however, the mithraeum.

Small but prosperous, the settlement was located on the Montgenèvre road between Italy and the Rhone valley.

The Mithraic community must have gathered within the living space. Among its members were several slaves, who left their names on a cope and terracotta vases (according to the vocabulary of the first editors) dedicated to the invincible god or the good god, i.e. Mithras, and probably intended for ritual meals.

The vases in question are undoubtedly bowls, such as this red clay one, of unknown provenance and formerly kept in a Provençal collection, bearing on the rim, incised before firing, the dedication of another slave:

Deo invicto Mytrae vassa decem Tertius Rustici, v(otum) s(olvit) l(aetus) l(ibens) m(erito).

To the invincible god Mytra, Tertius, son (?) of Rusticus, has gladly, willingly and justly fulfilled his vow (by offering) ten drinking vessels.