   the temple of mithras, walbrook, is a roman temple whose ruins were discovered in walbrook, a street in the city of london, during rebuilding work in 1954. it is perhaps the most famous of all twentieth-century roman discoveries in the city of 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 centuryit 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. thumb|upright|head of serapis found in the 1954 excavations. 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.&nbsp;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 christ
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