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

582 The Bull and the Sun in Syria

that we have here to do with a Grecised form of Adad, god of the
Amorites. It may even be that the mysterious Amara was their
mountain-goddess1.

(B) Zeus (Adad) and Hera (Atargatis) at Hierapolis.

From Heliopolis in Koile Syria we pass northwards to Hierapolis
in Kyrrhestike. This was an ancient Syrian town, originally called
Mabog2, but better known as Bambyke. Its name was changed to
Hierapolis by Seleukos Nikator, the founder of the Syrian dynasty3.
The town was celebrated for its cult of the Syrian goddess
Atargatis4 or Derketo5, whom the Greeks identified with Rhea6 or
Aphrodite7 or the Assyrian Hera8.

A valuable account of her temple and cult is given by the
pseudo-Lucian in an Ionic treatise On the Syrian goddess. The
temple stood on a hill in the middle of the town, surrounded by
two walls, one old, one recent. The Propylaia, or gateways of the
precinct, faced the north and were some two hundred yards in
length9. The temple itself was an Ionic building raised twelve feet
above the ground and so turned as to look towards the sunrise.
The golden doors of its pronaos gave access to a naos gilded
throughout and fragrant with the perfumes of Arabia. Within
this nave a short flight of steps led up to a thdlamos or inner
chamber, which was not closed by doors but visible to all, though
only certain priests might enter it10. Our author describes its
contents in detail11:

1 Here are seated the cult-statues, to wit Hera and Zeus, whom they call by
a different name. Both are of gold, and both are seated ; but Hera is carried

1 Mr S. A. Cook, Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge, and Lecturer in
Hebrew and Syriac, in a letter to me dated Nov. 21, 1911, hit upon the same solution,
but only to reject it: 'Then the idea of the mountain-god suggested the Amurru, lord of
the mountain, who is a storm- and thunder-god of the Ramman type. But his wife
would be Ashirta, an Astarte figure, and it is a wild guess that a feminine of Amurru has
been artificially formed here!'

2 Plin. nat. hist. 5. 81. 3 Ail. de nat. an. 12. 2. 4 Strab. 748.

5 Loukian. de dea Syr. 14, Plin. nat. hist. 5. 81. Derketo is the Syrian Tar'ata, an
abbreviation of Atargatis, the Syrian 'Atar'ata (F. Cumont in Pauly—Wissowa Real-Enc.
v. 240).

6 Loukian. op. cit. 15, cp. 32, Cornut. theol. 6 p. 6, 11 ff. Lang.

7 Plout. v. Crass. 17, supra p. 550.

8 Loukian. op. cit. 1. The author of the de dea Syria throughout speaks of the goddess
as Hera. Cp. Plout. v. Crass. 17.

9 Loukian. ib. 28 /neyados oaov re eKarbv opyvieiov. Presumably fx^yados here means
/xrjKos, though the editors of Lucian take it to mean v\pos, and certainly ib. 30 it bears the
latter sense.

10 Cp. the internal arrangement of the temple of Dionysos at Ba'albek (supra p. 564).

11 Loukian. ib. 31 ff.