Fragmented tauroctony of Dormagen

TNMM 633 ↔ CIMRM 1014 & 1015

A bull-slaying by Mithras. It is of white limestone, and is 65 cm high and 52 cm wide. The body of the bull is not complete with its head and much of its body and rear quarter missing. The bull's tail ends in three heads of wheat. Mithras' head, arms and legs are missing. The scorpion is in its usual place. There is also a crater and the snake. Cautopates is depicted cross-legged and holding his torch down. Cautes is also depicted with his legs crossed and his torch pointing up.

There is an inscription: Deo Soli i(nvicto) M(ithrae) p(ro) s(alute) i(mperatoris) Suran l(ibertus) dupl(icarius) ale Noricorum ci(vis) Trax v(otum) s(olvit) l(ibens) m(erito).

—John Brant

Dormagen is famous for the discovery of a mithraeum, found in a garden by the local sexton and chronicler Johann Peter Delhoven in the winter of 1820/21. Knowledge of the exact location of the find has since been lost, but a recent article suggests, with good reason, that it was located 'in a garden between Hauptstraße, today's Krefelder Straße, a little north of Florastraße'.

Two limestone Mithras dedications were found in this underground cult room, which, according to a new dating, date from before 161.

One of the stones shows Mithras killing a bull; the inscription reads C(aius) Amandinius Verus Buc(inator). The Roman citizen Caius Amandinius Verus was therefore a horn player or trumpeter from a region not mentioned in the inscription, but undoubtedly, given the circumstances of the find, in Noricorum.

The second monument, which has only survived in fragmentary form, also depicts the slaughter of a bull by Mithras and was consecrated by a Dup[l(icarius)] Al(a)e Noricorum, a wanderer of Thracian origin. The spelling of his name is disputed. The duplicarius received twice the pay of a common horseman.