Guided Pathway

The preparation for the visit to the Capuan mithraeum had begun in February when Saxl forwarded down to Rome the only available publication, an article by Antonio Minto in the Notizie degli scavi (1924) which Saxl thought pitiful (hundsmiserabel) but which made available photographs of remarkable images. While the cult image with the tauroctony was nothing special, Saxl said, the liturgical scenes depicted on the upright faces of the benches were exceptional. He marveled at the desire in all the mystery religions of the era (Christian, Pythagorean, Mithraic) to “image” (versinn_bildl_ichen) cult practices—a non-Greek, fully oriental phenomenon.

In time Warburg incorporated several pages from Minto’s article directly into Panel 8. Three of these show enigmatic episodes from the initiation ceremony (#11, 12, 13)—part of a larger cycle, painted at floor-level along the walls of the benches, surviving in highly fragmentary condition. In these three scenes the initiate, always nude, is seen first kneeling with arms crossed in front of the mystagogus, then kneeling with arms outstretched, possibly enduring the test of fire, and finally lying prostrate while presumably undergoing the ceremony of voluntary death (a coiled snake or, perhaps, a scorpion on his back). During the visit Warburg had fixed his attention on the image of Luna, the moon goddess, painted in a lunette on the east wall (#14) across from the cult image of Mithras on the west. He briefly entertained the idea that this “departing” figure was not in fact Luna but rather the deity “Darkness” (Ahriman), expelled by the light (“spaccio delle tenebre”); he tested the idea on Cumont before retracting it, once Saxl had forwarded a comparative photograph showing Luna from the mithraeum at Neuenheim. Nonetheless he included the striking image of the lunar deity in Panel 8, juxtaposing it with the tauroctony (#14, 17) and thereby emphasizing through contrast the solar character of Mithras.