tauroctony

plural tauroctonies

1. historicalartA depiction (typically in relief or sculpture) of Mithras killing a bull; associated with the practice of Mithraism (as a cult) in the Roman Empire.

   The central icon, ever present in Mithras temples throughout the Roman Empire, is the tauroctony, or bull-slaying.

   2005, Payam Nabarz, The Mysteries of Mithras, Inner Traditions, page 20

   2 more examples

   In any event, if, as I am arguing, the tauroctony represents the astronomical situation which obtained during the epoch in which the spring equinox was in Taurus, the fact that the summer solstice was in Leo during that epoch provides a convincing explanation for the occasional presence of the figure of a lion in the tauroctony.

   1991, David Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries, Oxford University Press, page 54

   Tauroctonies featuring Mithras' regular clothes but with a crown instead of a cap would belong to a further cluster. A tauroctony would then also be assigned to other clusters for its patterns of features relating to the torchbearers, to the animals, and so on.

   2022, Kevin Stoba, “6: A network analysis of the Mithraic tauroctony”, in Anna Collar, editor, Networks and the Spread of Ideas in the Past, Taylor & Francis (Routledge), unnumbered page