C. The Syrian Goddess

At the time when Juno Caelestis was worshipped in Carthage and the cult of Isis was spread over the Mediterranean world, another goddess reigned supreme in Hierapolis. We learn of her from Lucian's essay, De Dea Syria (On the Syrian goddess).^[126] This essay, we must remember, is a parody; it is uncertain how much of it is true.

At the outset, he asserts that Hierapolis is called “Hire” (“holy”) in Greek because it is a city holy to the Assyrian deity Hera (Ch. I).^[127] Then he writes of the spread of religious ideas from Egypt to Assyria (Chs. 2, 3) and briefly notes that there is also a sanctuary of the Sidonians in honor of Astarte, which he iden­tifies with the moon goddess Selene (Ch. 4).Lucian refers to another sanctuary which he did not visit (Ch. 5) and then describes the great sanctuary of Aphrodite in Byblos, where the rites of Adonis were performed. Women who, in connection with these rites, refuse to shave their heads must offer themselves for sale for one day (Ch. 6). Osiris is believed to be buried in Byblos, and each year a head comes miraculously from Egypt to Byblos (Ch. 7). Another miracle in Byblos is that each year the river Adonis changes its color to red, which some people connected with the story of the killing of Adonis; others explained the change in color by saying simply that the winds blew red dust into the water (Ch. 8). In Ch. 9 Lucian reports that there was a sanctuary of Aphrodite in Lebanon. He then proceeds to describe the temple in Hierapolis.

That temple, larger than any mentioned so far, housed many gifts of gold and silver. Its statues of the gods were believed to move, perspire, and give oracles (Ch. 10). Many stories were told about the age of this temple (Ch. 11), but most people believed its founder was Deucalion, the Noah of Greek mythology.

That man never slept, for fear of falling down (Ch. 29).

At this point, Lucian gives a description of the temple, which could well have been similar to that of Caelestis since most temples of antiquity were built on the same basic plan. This temple faced the rising sun. It stood on a large platform, and a stone ramp led up to it. The doors and the roof were made of gold; inside a pleasant fragrance filled the air, lingering on the visitors' clothing long after they had left (Ch. 30). Inside the temple there was a small chamber which only selected priests might enter: in it were statues of Hera supported by lions, and of Zeus sitting on bulls (Ch.

festival was the “Fire” or “Lamp” festival. Worshippers chopped down live trees, stood them up in the courtyard, and on them hung live animals along with artifacts of gold and silver.

The Dea Syria, whom Lucian calls Hera, is Atargatis, a fertility goddess.^[134] Her cult was very popular and widespread. We are told by the imperial biographer Suetonius that Nero, who “utterly des­pised all cults,” was, for awhile at least, a devoted follower of the “Syrian Goddess.*’^[135] She was also called Derceto, but the two names sound so similar that the suggestion has been made that “Derceto” was a derivation of “Atargatis.”^[136] The etymology of the name Atargatis points to a connection with “Astarte” (Ishtar), “Ata” (Anath),^[137] and this in turn suggests that Atargatis was a syncretistic figure which incorporated elements of many Near Eastern fertility divinities. The picture given us by Lucian is characteristic of the worship not only of Astarte-Ishtar, but also of Aphrodite, Cybele, Ashera, Isis, and Caelestis. The representation of Atargatis as half woman/half fish, the emphasis on water (an essential element in the process of fertilization) and the sea, and their common titles “Urania” (“Heavenly”) and “Queen of Heaven,” points to a theology which was shared by many cults of fertility goddesses.

Lucian mentions the tradition that the cult originated with Deucalion, who built the temple when the flood had receded. In summary, the people of Hierapolis believed that the great flood ended when the water had receded and disappeared into a great χάσμα (chasm). The temple was built over this chasm, and twice every year this event was liturgically recalled by the worshippers in a ceremony of u8poopia (carrying of the water).

According to Greek mythology, the floodwaters drained off in Athens within the precincts of the temple of Zeus. Here were statues and shrines of deities involved with the establishment of an ordered universe, such as Zeus, Cronos, Rhea, and Ge (Earth). The floor of the temple opened to the width of a cubit and into this opening each year was cast wheat meal mixed with honey, in remembrance of the flood, the waters of which flowed into this opening.^[151] This event was celebrated on the Anthesteria, a three- day festival held on the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth days of the month Anthesterion (roughly, our February). The festival included a number of features which are difficult to interpret. The name itself (άνθος = flower) indicates that it was a spring festival. Indeed, children were given wreaths of flowers, but the main tone of the festival was the polarity between a dionysiac celebra­tion of life and a somber remembrance of the dead.

The first day, called Pithoigia (Opening of the Jars), was dedicated to the opening of large earthenware jars (pithoi) in which the juice of the grapes was stored after the harvest. The now fermented juice was taken to the temple of Dionysus “in the Marshes,” where libations and prayers were offered and the new wine, properly mixed with water, was first tasted. The rest of the day was spent in drinking. The second day was called Choes (wine jugs, cups). The main event of this day was a procession in which Dionysus himself, perhaps personified by a masked actor, was conveyed on a carriage that looked like a ship. The pro­cession was quite uninhibited, but a serious aspect of it was the Hieros Gamos (holy marriage) of the King Archon^[152] with his wife, whose official title was Basilinna. The third day was Chytroi (Pots). All kinds of vegetables were cooked together in one pot and offered to Hermes on behalf of the dead. The doorways of homes were smeared with pitch as a protection against ghosts because this was a day of the dead and ghosts were invited to return to their abode at the end of the day. The explanation of this one-pot meal was that those who survived the flood cooked everything together in one pot on the first day.^[153] The traditions

^11J Martin P. Nilsson, Geschichte der Griechischen Religion, München: Beck, 1955, vol. I, p. 595: “Das Aition knüpft an die deukalionische Flut an. Die Menschen, welche dieser entronnen waren, kochten am ersten Tag, an dem sie wieder Mut fassten, allerlei in einem Topf zusammen; daher er­hielt der Tag und das Fest den Namen %ürpot; der Inhalt der Topfe wird als Panspermie bezeichnet... Die Lexicographen erwähnen ein athenisches Trauerfest, die Hydrophone, die zur Erinnerung an die in der grossen Flut Umgekommenen gefeiert wurde.” See also H. J. Rose, Religion in Greece and Rome, New York: Haper Row, 1959, pp. 79-82; August Mommsen, Feste der Stadt Athen, Leipzig: Teubner, 1898, pp. 384-404; Martin P. Nilsson, “Die Anthesterion und die Aiora,” Eranos 15 (1915)181-200; Erwin Rohde, Psyche. Seelencult und Unsterblichbeitsglaube der Griechen, Tübingen:}. C. B. Mohr, 1925, vol. 1, pp. 237-245; Ludwig Deubner, Attische Feste, Berlin: Keller, 1932, pp. 93-123; Willy Borgeaud, “Le Deluge, Delphes, et les Anthesteries,” Museum Helveticum 4 (1947) 205-250; Carl Kerenyi, Dionysus. Archetypal Image of Indestructable Life (Bollingen Series, LXV. 2), Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1976, pp. 290-315. Nilsson also mentions an Athenian feast of i)8yo- (popia, which was a mournful occasion in remembrance of the great flood of Deukalion and of those who perished by it.

Other fertility rites of the Athenians included the Munichia, which were held on the sixteenth day of the month Munichion (ca. April). On this day a she-goat was sacrificed in place of a young girl, as was the case in pre- classical times when human sacrifice was practiced in connection with the cult of Artemis (cf. De Dea Syria 58). Other items offered to the goddess were round cakes with burning candles in the middle, which represented Artemis as a moon-goddess. Another observance worth citing is known to us from Pausanias, Guide to Greece 1.27.4, ET, Peter Levi, New York: Penguin, 1971, vol. 1, pp. 76-77: “There was a thing that amazed me which not everyone knows; I shall describe what happens. Two virgin girls live not far from the temple of Athene of the city; the Athenians call them the bearers Arrephoroi,[ “Carriers of Unspoken Thinqs”]. For a certain time they have their living from the goddess: and when the festival comes they have to perform certain ceremonies during the night. They carry on their heads what Athene’s priestess gives them to carry, and neither she who gives it nor they who carry it know what it is she gives them. In the city not far from Aphrodite-in-the-Gardens is an enclosed place with a natural entrance to an underground descent; this is where the virgin girls go down. They leave down there what they were carrying, and take another thing and bring it back covered up. They are then sent away, and other virgin girls are brought to the Acropolis instead of them.” These rites were called Arrephoria and they may have been held in the last month of the year called Skirophorion.

On the twelfth day of Skirophorion there was also an obscure rite dedicated either to Athene or Demeter. This observance was a women’s festival and included a procession, but we do not know what happened when the procession arrived at its destination near Eleusis, except that it was a kind of fertility rite. On this day women threw live piglets, cakes made in the form of male genitals, and models of snakes into caverns. On the Thesmophoria, the great festival of the grain-goddess Demeter, held on the eleventh, of Greece, Judaism, and Hierapolis meet in these points.

As we have seen, the element of water, as the origin and gene­sis of life, was central to a religious life focused on the mystery of fertility. The cult of the Dea Syria, like those of Caelestis and Isis, dealt with ultimate causes and sources. In this pursuit, the story of the flood served as a vehicle to explain the origins of civilization on earth, while the general emphasis on water pointed beyond the flood to the primodial separation of the elements and the beginning of life per se. But what is the significance of the Galli in the cult of the Dea Syria and of the ritual promiscuity in the Anthesteria? In one practice we see the violent removal of men’s distinguishing sexual characteristics and in the other, a compa­rably frenzied elimination of sexual diversity by indiscriminate and chaotic copulation. The same phenomena will reappear in the cult of Cybele, which will shed more light on this matter. We now turn our attention to the mysteries of Dionysus as an intro­duction to an investigation of the cult of the Great Mother, Cybele.