CIMRM 772 - Mithraeum. Merida, Spain.

In 1902-3 a bull-ring was constructed in the Spanish town of Merida. In the process Roman statues and inscriptions were found. Unfortunately no archaeologist was consulted, and no excavations seem to have been undertaken. The discoveries were made in and around the little house where the director of works for the building project was living, but no record was made of how or where they were found.¹ It is unclear whether the statues come from a Mithraeum, or whether from some secondary cache.

A Roman house behind the bullring is known as the "Casa dei Mitreo" from its proximity to the site, but has nothing to do with the finds.

A small Mithraeum was found recently in an emergency excavation about 100m from the bull-ring, but this is clearly not the same location.

Gordon states:

For the small mithraeum, c.50m from the Plaza de toros, dated by the excavators to the Flavian period, and destroyed in c. A.D. 100 (if we can believe it), see T. Barrientos, "Nuevos datos para el estudio de las religiones orientales en Occidente: un espacio de culto mitriaco en la zona sur de Merida," Memoria 5: Excavaciones arquelogicas en Merida, 1999 (Merida 2001) 357-81.2 The famous group of Mithraic and other statuary, found in 1902 and 1913 on the Cerro de St. Albin (now the site of the Plaza de toros) just outside ancient Emerita, was not found in a mithraeum but in a room where it had been placed for safe-keeping: see A. Garcia y Bellido, Les religions orientales dans l'Espagne romaine (Leiden 1967) 26-33 nos. 1-13; M. J. Vermaseren, Corpus inscriptionum et monumentorum religionis Mithriacae (The Hague 1956-60) nos. 772-96 (hereafter V.); J. Alvar, "Los cultos mistericos en Lusitania" in Actas II Congreso Peninsular de Historia Antigua, Coimbra 1990 (Coimbra 1993) at 791 n.2. Nevertheless, there clearly was at least one other mithraeum in Emerita apart from Barrientos'.

CIMRM entry

AUGUSTA EMERITA 772. At Merida a Mithraeum existed about 155 A.D. About the character and the construction of this sanctuary, no data are known, but many monuments were discovered, all kept in the Museo arqueologico Nacional at Merida. I am very grateful to the Keeper of this Museum, Dr. Don Alvares G. de Bunagal for sending me informations and photographs.

From: Roger Beck, Mithraism since Franz Cumont, p.2033.

Spain was very much under-represented in TMMM. Finds since then have somewhat changed the picture, though it still remains true that the Spanish provinces were never a great centre of the cult. By far the most important and exciting discoveries were made at Merida in the first two decades of the century. Merida disclosed a veritable pantheon: a lion-headed god (CIMRM 776), another snake-encircled god with a lion-mask on his chest but a youthful human face (777) (Pl. XII), a reclining Oceanus (778), a fine Mercury (780) (Pl. XIII), a Serapis (783), and a Venus (785), among others. It reminds one how catholic the cult could be in its inclusion of traditional gods external to itself. The Merida Mithraeum is early: inscriptions on 780 and 793 give it a secure terminus ante of A.D. 155. The other important Iberian find is from Troja near Setubal: CIMRM 798, a fragment of a relief on which a banquet scene (served by the two torch- bearers) and a tauroctony are set side by side and apparently on the same scale.[48] Mithraism in Spain has been fully documented by A. Garcia y Bellido, 1948 and 1967: ch. 3, the latter being the EPRO volume on the oriental cults there. 48. The Merida banquet (782) appears not to be the meal of Sol and Mithras. It is badly mutilated but there are three, not two, figures at table. On the left of the relief is a rock-birth.

Bibliography

• Richard Gordon, "The Mithraeum at Lugo (Lucus Augusta) and its connection with Legio VII Gemina", Journal of Roman Archaeology 19 (), p.267. First page is online here.
• Pierre, Paris, Un sanctuaire de Mithra à Merida, CRAI 48, 1904, pp. 573-575. Online here.
• J.R. Melida, "Cultos emeritenses de Serapis y Mithras", Boletín de la Real Academia de Historia 64 (1914), 439-456. Online here, and the whole volume at Archive.org here.