Monuments to Mithras

Rich relief on display at the Virginia Museum of Fine Art showing Mithras sacrificing the bull accompanied by Cautes and Cautopates.

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In the tauroctonic relief on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum, Mithras slaughters the bull over a rocky background.

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This head was found at the east end of temple of Mithras in London.

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The Mithras's head of Walbrook probable belonged to a life-size scene of the god scarifying the bull.

TNMM122 – CIMRM 815

The Mithraeum of Inveresk, south of Musselburgh, East Lothian, is the first found in Scotland, and the earliest securely dated example from Britain.

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This scene from the frescoes of the Mitreo di Santa Maria Capua Vetere shows a kneeling, naked man surrounded by two other figures.

TNMM333 – CIMRM 191

This is the first of several fresco scenes depicting the initiation of a new member in a mithraic community, in Capua Vetere.

TNMM292 – CIMRM 187

The Mackwiller Mithraeum was built in the middle of the 2nd century, during the reign of Antoninus the Pious, on the site of a spring already worshipped by the natives.

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This fragment of the head of a young Mithras is one of the finds made during the excavations carried out by Jean-Jacques Hatt at Mackwiller, France, in 1955.

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The Mithraeum was found in one of the rooms of the Horrea built in the years 120 - 125 AD. The installation of the shrine may have taken place in the first half of the third century.

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The Mithraeum of Lucretius Menander was installed in the early 3rd century in an alley to the east of a Hadrianic building named after the solar god temple.

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The Cautes of Sidon who wields an axe also wears a piece of cloth on his left arm.

TNMM161 – CIMRM 82

In this case, a quiver has been attached to the tree-stump behind the torchbearer.

TNMM162 – CIMRM 83

Sculpture depicting Mithras carrying a young bull on his shoulders.

TNMM158 – CIMRM 77

There are two Venus from the Mithraeum of Sidon, one in bronze and the other in Parian marble.

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The Sidon sculpture includes a dog jumping between Cautes's legs.

TNMM159 – CIMRM 80

The brick altar of the Mithraeum Menander was covered with marble slabs bearing a crescent and an inscription.

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The lion-headed god is standing on a globe encicled by two crossed bands on which five pearls.

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The Mithraeum in the Chapel of the Three Naves was not linked to the cult of Mithras until recently because of a mosaic showing a pig, in the belief that it was an animal unfit for consumption in a temple of Eastern origin.

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A bronze plaque records the existence of a mithraeum at Virunum that collapsed and was rebuilt by members of the community.

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