Tauroctony
The central image of the Roman mystery cult of Mithras, showing the god killing a bull.
Also: Mithras slaying the bull, Mithraic bull-slaying
The tauroctony is the scene that stood at the end of every mithraeum, the cave-like meeting rooms of the Roman cult of Mithras, which spread through the army and trading towns of the empire from the first to the fourth centuries CE. Mithras, in a Phrygian cap, kneels on a bull, pulls back its head and strikes it with a knife, while a dog and a snake reach toward the wound, a scorpion clings to its underside and a raven watches; ears of wheat sometimes sprout from the bull's tail. The cult left no scriptures, so its meaning is debated, and some scholars read the scene as a map of the stars. Many such reliefs survive.