CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF MITHRAIC ICONOGRAPHY: TAUROCTONY RELIEF WITH LOWER FRIEZE FROM MOESIA SUPERIOR
CONTRIBUTION TO THE STUDY OF MITHRAIC ICONOGRAPHY: TAUROCTONY RELIEF WITH LOWER FRIEZE FROM MOESIA SUPERIOR

Summary/Abstract: This paper presents a marble relief of god Mithras which is a part of the antique archeological collection of the National Museum Kruševac. It is an incidental find on the site of Mogile in the village of Nozrine near Aleksinac in Serbia, where, according to the archeological material and the data from the literature, a small Roman settlement (vicus) with a sanctuary could be located. The relief consists of a few fragments, but the scene of tauroctony is clearly recognisable in the central part, while below it there is a well-preserved frieze with four scenes, which illustrate the rite of the initiation into the cult and the mythological cycle of Mithras and Sol. Since its initial scene can be interpreted as Mithras riding, which is not so common in the iconography of such friezes, we paid special attention to it. We assumed that it could be a depiction of Mithras on a bull which is a well-known detail from the developed Mithraic iconography, but we did not rule out the possibility that the scene atypically represents the deity on horseback. Apart from the frescos from the Mithraeum in Dura-Europos, the visual imagery of a deity mounted on a horse is present only on German reliefs and the Roman coins from Trabzon (Trapezous). Therefore, we tried to penetrate into the origin and meaning of the riding Mithras image in this monument by considering the possible analogies.

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