Tauroctony

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Tauroctony of Mithras at the British Museum London
Tauroctony of Mithras at the British Museum London
Detail of above showing dog and serpent drinking bull's blood
Detail of above showing dog and serpent drinking bull's blood
Detail of above showing scorpion attacking bull's testicles
Detail of above showing scorpion attacking bull's testicles
A Roman bas-relief of the tauroctony in the Louvre, 2nd or 3rd century conforming to the standard Mithraic depiction: in the upper corners are Helios with the raven, and Luna
A Roman bas-relief of the tauroctony in the Louvre, 2nd or 3rd century conforming to the standard Mithraic depiction: in the upper corners are Helios with the raven, and Luna
A statue, rather than the more common fresco, of the tauroctony in the Vatican Museum. Note that Mithras is looking toward the bull instead of away, which is unusual in a tauroctony. This is because the head is a reconstruction.
A statue, rather than the more common fresco, of the tauroctony in the Vatican Museum. Note that Mithras is looking toward the bull instead of away, which is unusual in a tauroctony. This is because the head is a reconstruction.

A tauroctony is an artistic depiction of the mythic hero and ancient religious savior Mithras engaged in the ritual slaying of a bull. The literal act of sacrifice is known as taurobolium. A tauroctony was found, its representation essentially unchanging, at the center of every mithraeum.

The highly formulaic scene was developed in the school of sculptors active in Pergamum circa 200BCE, possibly adapting the formulaic representation of Alexander (Untersteiner 1946, et al.) In the depiction, Mithras, wearing a Phrygian cap and pants, slays the bull, kneeling on its back with his left knee while looking away. His cape billows behind him showing its inner side. A serpent and dog seem to drink from the bull's open wound (which often spills blood but occasionally grain), and a scorpion attacks the bull's testicles. Typically, a raven or crow is also present, and sometimes also a goblet and small lion. Cautes and Cautopates, the celestial twins of light and darkness, are torch-bearers, standing on either side with their legs crossed, Cautes with his brand pointing up and Cautopates with his turned down. Above Mithras, the symbols for Sol and Luna are present in the starry night sky. See the very similar Enkidu tauroctony seal.

The modern consensus is that the scene seems to be astrological in nature.[1] It has been proposed by David Ulansey that the tauroctony, rather than an originally Iranian animal sacrifice scene with Iranian precedents, as Franz Cumont deciphered it,[2] embodies a symbolic representation of the constellations, and, more speculatively, that it depicts Mithra's control of the precession of the equinoxes, a phenomenon that was discovered by Hipparchus (Ulansey, 1991). The identification of some constellations is clear enough: the bull is Taurus, the serpent Hydra, the dog Canis Major or Minor, the crow or raven Corvus, the goblet Crater, the lion Leo, and, more speculatively, the wheat-blood the star Spica. The torch-bearers may represent the two equinoxes, the points where the zodiac crosses the celestial equator, although this is less clear. Mithras himself could also be associated with Perseus, whose constellation is above that of the bull.

The tauroctony and other well-known Hellenistic sculptures helped to inspire Neoclassicism. The image was adapted for a Prix de Rome sculpture of The Madness of Orestes by Raymond Bathélmy (1860); the prize-winning plaster model remains in the collection of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, where it was included in the 2004 travelling exhibition "Dieux et Mortels" [1].

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[edit] Notes

  1. ^ "...there has emerged a new consensus, that the tauroctony symbolizes Mithraic doctrine that is essentially astral," writes Alan C. Bowen, reviewing David Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World in Isis 82.2 (June 1991) p 359.
  2. ^ Cumont, Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de Mithra (1896-99).

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