Tauroctony from Dardagan

TNMM 765

The relief is made of local limestone and was found broken into four pieces, with some further damages noticeable on its surface. The face of the torchbearer on the right-hand side is chipped off, as well as the torso of the torchbearer on the left-hand side. The bull’s muzzle and Mithras’ left hand are also missing, as is part of the god’s left lower leg and part of the dog’s body behind Mithras’ leg. The god’s right hand is preserved only to its elbow. Despite the damages, the relief became widely known due to its unusual compositional arrangement and unique iconographic motifs, and it remains widely cited as an example of variations in images of tauroctonous Mithras.

The bull-slaying scene is carved on a rectangular relief plate (50 cm high × 70 cm wide) with a slightly rounded upper edge, mimicking the arched ceiling of a cave. Figures are placed inside a shallow niche, i.e., a cave, with the roughly processed stone contributing to the rocky ambiance. Mithras is depicted in the act of subduing the bull. However, instead of the customary position in which the god presses the back of the already slumped bull with his kneeling left leg while constraining the bull’s rump with his outstretched right leg, he is depicted in front of the bull, leaning against the animal and with his feet touching the ground. The bull rears up on its hind legs as the god pulls its head by the muzzle (or nostrils), prancing with raised forelegs.

Although the lower part of Mithras’ right arm is missing, the remaining portion below the elbow suggests that the god stabs the bull in its neck with this hand. Mithras wears his typical attire, a long-sleeved tunic with a billowing cape fastened with a roundish clasp on his right shoulder and long trousers (anaxyrides). He is wearing a Phrygian cap on his head, depicted as a tall conical headgear with pronounced horizontal grooves. Between Mithras’ left leg and the bull’s right foreleg, carved outlines suggest a dorsuale, a decorative ritual ribbon denoting the sacrificial status of the animal.

The usual animal companions are also present in the scene. A scorpion is depicted between Mithras’ left leg and the bull’s right hind leg. The positions of the snake and the dog are reversed. The dog’s body is placed between Mithras’ feet, with its head inserted between Mithras’ right leg and the hoof of the bull’s right foreleg, reaching for the blood from the wound on the bull’s neck. The snake coils behind the right-hand torchbearer, elevating its upper body and head with wide-open jaws towards the bull’s leg. The snake is depicted crested and with horn-like semicircular protrusions. Contrary to the usual depictions where the raven is on the left-hand side, facing the god, perched either on Mithras’ cloak or on the cave’s vault, raven is here placed on the right-hand side, turning away from the god.

A further compositional inconsistency involves the pairing of Luna and Sol between Mithras’ and the head of the left-hand torchbearer. Unlike their typical arrangement, with Sol occupying the upper left-hand corner of the composition and Luna the equivalent position on the opposite side, their positions are swapped here. Luna’s head (instead of the usual bust), surrounded by a crescent, appears to the left of the Sol’s head (depicted with a neck and parts of the shoulders) surrounded by a solar disc. While the reversal of Sol and Luna is not unprecedented in Mithraic art, their pairing on the relief from Dardagan lacks parallels.

Lastly, the scene is flanked by the two torchbearers, each holding a pedum with both hands. They stand with their legs parallel to each other, dressed similarly to Mithras. Besides the torch, pedum is the most frequently depicted attribute associated with the torchbearers and occurs only in Germania, Pannonia, Moesia, Dacia, and, including the relief from Dardagan, in Dalmatia. It is an attribute associated with both Cautes and Cautopates. In most cases, the identity of the torchbearers is revealed by the upward (Cautes) or downward (Cautopates) direction of their torches. Generally, in the tauroctonies from the Danubian provinces, Cautopates appears on the left and Cautes on the right-hand side of the tauroctony scene. Consequently, it can be inferred that the lowered pedum on the relief from Dardagan belongs to Cautopates, with Cautes depicted on the opposite side holding a pedum parallel to the ground.