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Monumentum

Sabazios with Mithras from Bolsena

This unusual bronze bust of Sabazios features multiple symbolic elements, with Mithras depicted in his characteristic pose of slaying the bull, positioned just below Sabazios’ chest.
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The New Mithraeum
27 Nov 2024
Updated on Nov 2024

TNMM 802 ↔ CIMRM 659

1) Cast bronze low-relief (H. 0.25 Br. 0.20) with four holes in it, probably for fastening it into a wall. Head and arms in. high-relief.

2) Embossed bronze relief (H. 0.17 Br. 0.26) also with four drill-holes.

The exact find-spot is unkown. Uncertain is the information, that they should come from Bolsena, from where they "ex hypogaeo Herenniorum" together with other bronze objects came into the collection of Marchese Ravizza. Now in the Etruscan Museum, Room XII of the Vatican Collections.

1) A bust of a bearded god (Jupiter-Sabazios). The l. shoulder is covered with a cloak; on the other shoulder a perched eagle is represented. In the l.h. he holds a pine-cone; in the r.h. a broken branch with a snake winding itself around it. On the naked breast a sacrificial cake is represented in relief and a scene of Mithras tauroctone; to the right of it a ram’s head and under it a krater.

2) Bust of a bearded god in Phrygian cap and tunica manicata. In the l.h. he holds a pine-cone: in the upraised r.h. a staff, decorated at the upper part and entwined by a serpent.

References

Cumont in RA (S. 1) XIX 1892 189ff with Pl. X; MMM II 259f No. 104 with figs. 97/98; Helbig Fuhrer 13 405 Nos. 750/751; Blinkenberg Arch. Studien 97f; Taylor Cults Etruria 158f; Cumont Mithra en Etrurie 96 n. 3; Alinari 35501 see figs. 185 and 186.

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