Head of a Dioscorus,

ca. 130 CE

Followers of Mithraism believed that the world came into being when the Sun god ordered Mithras to sacrifice a bull. This work follows a conventional format for depicting the subsequent acts of creation told in the myth. For example, Mithras’s cloak, here shown billowing out behind him, transformed into the heavenly vault. From the bull’s tail sprouted the first grain, represented here as an ear of corn on the strut supporting the tail. The bull’s blood was responsible for growing the first grape, while all the animals that live on the earth sprang from his genitals. The bull later turned into the moon, day and night separated, and time began. While this male cult originated in present-day Iran, by the second century CE it was popular in Rome and the frontier provinces. This object likely functioned as a cult statue and was set up in a subterranean shrine.