Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

Ritual Horns

5r9

W. Robertson Smith1 long since pointed out that in the Semitic
area ' the sacred stone is altar and idol in one/ citing inter alia
Porphyrios' strange account of the worship at Dumat:

'The Dumatenes in Arabia used every year to sacrifice a boy and to bury
him beneath an altar, which they treat as an image2.'

Even more explicit is the divinity of the altar in the cult of certain
Syrian gods. A long day's march west of Aleppo rises a bare and
almost conical mountain known to the Greeks as Koryphe3 and to
the modern inhabitants as Djebel Shekh Berekdt. On the summit
is a levelled precinct c. 68 metres square, enclosing the tomb of the
Mohammedan saint who has dispossessed the former occupants of
the site. The walls of the precinct bear on their outer surface
dedicatory inscriptions, nine of which, ranging in date from c. 70
to c. 120 A.D., were copied by an American archaeological expedition
in 1899—19004. The votive formula is :

'To Zeus Mddbachos and to Selamanes, gods of the country5.'

Already in 1897 Prof. C. Clermont-Ganneau6, though hampered by
inexact transcripts, had with the utmost acumen divined the true
meaning of both names. He compared Selamanes with the
Assyrian god Salmanu and the Phoenician Slmn, the 1 Peaceful
or Peace-bringing One7.' And he suggested that Mddbachos, if
that were the right spelling, might be connected with the Aramaic
madbah, ' altar8.' He even ventured to add that, if so, Zeus
Mddbachos would be the Syrian equivalent of a Greek Zeus Bomos,
a god identified with his own altar. Three years later this hypo-
thetical deity was actually found. A day's journey south of

1 W. Robertson Smith Lectures on the Religion of the Semites'1 London 1907 p. 205.

2 Porph. de abst. 2. 56 /cat AovfxaTTjvoi 5e rfjs 'Apa/3tas /car' eros eKaarov gdvov iralSa,
6v virb fico/mov edairrov, cp xpuWcu ws ^odvqj. Perhaps we may cp. Paus. 2. 32. 7
(between Troizen and Hermione) irerpa Qrjaews ovofxa'^ofxevT], fxeTaj3a\od(xa /cat aur-rj to
ovojxa aveXofxevov Qyaews vtt' avrfj Kprjiridas ras ALyecos /cat £t'0os' irporepov de /3wyU.6s e/caAetro
^deviov Atos.

3 Theodoret. relig. hist. 4 (lxxxii. 1340 Migne).

4 H. C. Butler in the Am. Journ. Arch. 1900 iv. 434 b, W. K. Prentice ib. 1902 vi.
27 b and more fully in Herines 1902 xxxvii. 91—120 with ground-plan, figs., etc.

5 Att Ma5/3d%to /cat HeXa/xdvei, Trarpwois deols (so inscrr. nos. 1,2: nos. 5, 7, 8 have
deois irarpuiOLS : nos. 3, 4 ? omit deols : no. 9 omits both deois and irarpdooLs).

6 C. Clermont-Ganneau Etudes d'archeo/ogie orientate Paris 1897 ii. 35—54 especially
p. 49 n. 2, id. Recueil d^archeologie orientate Paris 1901 iv. 164 f.

7 So too G. Hoffmann in the Zeitschrift fiir Assyriologie xi. 246, E. Littmann ap.
W. K. Prentice in Hermes, 1902 xxxvii. 117 b, O. Hofer in Roscher Lex. Myth. iv. 641.

8 So too E. Littmann ap. W. K. Prentice toe. cit. p. 118, M. Lidzbarski in the
Ephemeris fiir semitische Epigraphik 1908 ii. 81, Gruppe Myth. Lit. 1908 p. 639,
L. R. Farnell in The Year's Work in Class. Stud. 1909 p. 61, R. Eisler Weltenmantcl
und Himmclszelt Miinchen 1910 ii. 723 n. 7.