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The London Mithraeum, also known as the Temple of Mithras, Walbrook, is a Roman mithraeum that was discovered in Walbrook, a street in the City of London, during a building's construction in 1954. The entire site was relocated to permit continued construction and this temple of the mystery god Mithras became perhaps the most famous 20th-century Roman discovery in London. == Excavation and artefacts == The site was excavated by W. F. Grimes, director of the Museum of London, in 1954.〔W. F. Grimes, in ''The Illustrated London News'', 2, 9, and 16 October 1954.〕 The temple, initially hoped to have been an early Christian church, was built in the mid-3rd century〔It was dated to the mid-second century in Maarten J. Vermaseren, "The New Mithraic Temple in London" ''Numen'' 2.1/2 (January 1955), pp. 139-145.〕 and dedicated to Mithras or perhaps jointly to several deities popular among Roman soldiers. Then it was rededicated, probably to Bacchus, in the early fourth century. Found within the temple, where they had been carefully buried at the time of its rededication, were finely detailed third-century white marble likenesses of Minerva, Mercury the guide of the souls of the dead, and the syncretic gods Mithras and Serapis, imported from Italy. There were several coarser locally-made clay figurines of Venus, combing her hair. The artefacts recovered were put on display in the Museum of London. Among the sculptures the archaeologists found was a head of Mithras himself, recognizable by his Phrygian cap. The base of the head is tapered to fit a torso, which was not preserved. Artefacts were found in Walbrook in 1889; they probably came from the Mithraeum, though it was not identified at the time (Merrifield 1965, p. 179). One of these was a marble relief, 0.53 m tall, of Mithras in the act of killing the astral bull, the Tauroctony that was as central to Mithraism as the Crucifixion is to Christianity. On it Mithras is accompanied by the two small figures of the torch-bearing celestial twins of Light and Darkness, Cautes and Cautopates, within the cosmic annual wheel of the zodiac. At the top left, outside the wheel, Sol–Helios ascends the heavens in his ''biga''; at top right Luna descends in her chariot. The heads of two wind-gods, Boreas and Zephyros, are in the bottom corners. It bears the inscription :VLPIVS SILVANVS EMERITVS LEG II AVG VOTVM SOLVIT FACTVS ARAVSIONE which may be translated "Ulpius Silvanus, veteran soldier of the Second Augustan Legion, in fulfilment of a vow, makes this altar (the result of ) a vision" () or "Ulpius Silvanus, veteran of the Second Legion Augusta, fulfilled his vow having become (a Mithraist) at Orange" (of Edinburgh, Classics Department, teaching collection ) (Collingwood and Wright 1965, No. 3). Nearby were buried heads of the Roman goddess Minerva and a finely detailed bearded head of Serapis, Jupiter-like in his features but securely recognizable by the grain-basket, the ''modius'', upon his head, a token of resurrection. An inscription dateable AD 307–310 at the site :PRO SALVTE D N CCCC ET NOB CAES DEO MITHRAE ET SOLI INVICTO AB ORIENTE AD OCCIDENTEM may be translated "For the Salvation of our lords the four emperors and the noble Caesar, and to the god Mithras, the Invincible Sun from the east to the west" (Collingwood and Wright 1965, no. 4). 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「London Mithraeum」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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