Relief of Mithras Slaying the Bull with the Zodiac
Unknown · Roman Imperial, AD 389-390
Inside a ring of the twelve zodiac signs, Mithras kneels on the back of a bull, pulls its head up by the nostrils and drives a sword into its neck. A dog and a snake leap towards the wound, a scorpion clutches the bull's genitals, and two ravens perch above. In the corners are the busts of the sun god Helios and the moon goddess Selene, and four small heads of children stand for the seasons. The whole relief, seventy-seven centimetres wide, is cut in fine translucent marble. Look for the wheat ears at the tip of the bull's tail.
The bull-slaying is the central image of every Mithraic sanctuary, an act of sacrifice from which life springs. Here it is framed by the cosmos itself, a reminder that the cult read the myth as a story about the stars. The relief comes from the Mithraeum of Sidon, whose sculptures are dated by inscription to three hundred and eighty-nine and three hundred and ninety of our era, making it one of the latest complete Mithraic groups known. Collected by Louis de Clercq, it was given to the Louvre by his heirs in nineteen sixty-seven.
Did You Know? The twelve signs of the zodiac circling the scene turn the slaughter of the bull into a map of the heavens, which is how initiates understood it.
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