Tauroctony from Mithras and Tellus

TNMM 623 ↔ CIMRM 598

White marble relief (H. 0.70). Bought by Gerhard in Rome for the Altes Museum in Berlin (1834). During my visit at Berlin, I was not able to study the Berlin monuments personally.

In a cave, Mithras as a bullkiller in the usual attitude and attire. The god is looking at the raven, which is perched on the rocky border. The jumping dog with collar; the creeping serpent; the scorpion.

On the foreground a dressed; reclining woman (Tellus), leaning on her l. arm and resting on her knee a basket with fruits.

In the upper corners the dressed busts of Sol (l) in radiate crown and of Luna in crescent.

In a white marble relief from Rome, acquired by the Neues Museum in Berlin in 1834, Mithras sacrifices the bull in a grotto suggested by a stylised vault and stone protrusions. The god turns his head to the left towards the raven perched on the rock above his cloak, which floats in the wind. The dog and the snake rush towards the wound. The scorpion pinches the testicles. In the upper corners are busts of Sol radiata and Luna in a crescent.

This is a common representation of tauroctony, completed in the foreground by a female figure lying on the ground, her head resting on her left hand, her gaze pointing in the same direction as that of Mithras. The basket of fruit in her right hand refers to her as the Earth, which also benefits from the regenerating blood.

The figure of Tellus also appears alongside Mithras on one of the panels of the historiated relief in the Osterburken Mithreum, completed in 1861. This panel is on the vertical column to the left of the central scene. With his hand resting on a calathos, Tellus lies before Mithras, who rises from the earth wearing a Phrygian cap and carrying the world.

Tellus also appears in the mural fresco depicting the Tauroctony in the Capua Vetere Mithreum, discovered in Campania in 1922. It occupies the lower right corner, facing the Ocean on the left. On a fragmentary relief from Siscia (CIMRM 1475), she appears on the right in a spandrel, matching the lion. Finally, on the double-sided relief from Dieburg, Tellus also appears in the scene depicting the myth of Phaeton.