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

Zeus (Adad) at Hierapolis 587

pseudo-Lucian. We can now for the first time realise how accurate
and trustworthy his description is. ' It has no shape of its own, but
bears the forms of the other deities1.' This sceptre or standard is
neither anthropomorphic nor theriomorphic, but the four medallions,
if such they are, that are hung upon it may well have borne the
effigies of the temple-deities. Again, 'on the top of it there is
perched a golden dove2.' The word used here for the 'top'
(koryphc) is the word applied in late Greek to the apex of a
triangle3. Hence the coin, which shows a bird sitting on the
pediment of the aedicula, aptly illustrates the text. On the whole
it seems probable that a royal sceptre or standard, enclosed in a
shrine of its own, was the central object of worship4. In which
connexion it must be observed that a series of silver coins, bearing
in Aramaic letters the name Abd-Hadad and representations of
Atargatis, has been ascribed to a sacerdotal dynasty at Hierapolis
c. 332 B.C.5. This attribution squares with my contention that
Atargatis at Hierapolis was associated with Adad, and that the
sceptre or standard of a divine king figured prominently in the
same cult. A further allusion to the cult may be detected in two
small bronze coins of the town, which exhibit respectively a humped
bull with a crescent above it6 and a lion in a laurel-wreath inscribed
'of the Syrian goddess7.'

In Roman times her temple was plundered by Crassus, who
spent many days making an inventory of its treasures 'with scales
and balances8.' But with regard to the decline and fall of the cult
no details are on record.

The old name of the town, Mabog or Mambog9, which had

1 Supra p. 583. The exact words are : to 5e jxopcprjv ixev Id'irjv ovk $xeLi <popeei 5e tQv
dWcov 6eG)v etdea. 2 Supra p. 583 : eirl rrj Kopvcprj avrov TrepiaTepr) %/)u(re?? eireGT7)Ke.

3 E.g. Polyb. 1. 42. 3, 2. 14. 8.

4 See now J. Garstang The Syrian Goddess London 1913 pp. 23 ff., 73 n. 45, who
cj. that this cult-object was originally a pillar-altar with a pigeon or dove upon it (like
those represented in the Hittite sculptures of Fraktin and Yarre : ib. fig. 4, id. The Land
of the Hittites London 1910 p. 150 pi. 47; J. W. Crowfoot in the Journ. Hell. Stud. 1899
xix. 40 ff. fig. 4), later conventionalised into a Roman standard in an aedicula (p-^fx-qCov -
sigmtm, as Prof. R. C. Bosanquet suggested).

5 Brit. Mus. Cat. Coins Galatia, etc. p. liii.

6 Ib. pp. liv, 138 pi. 17,8 (struck in the time of Antoninus Pius).

7 Ib. pp. liv, 142 pi. 17, ir, Htinter Cat. Coins iii. 138, cp. Brit. AIus. Cat. Coins
Galatia, etc. p. 138 pi. 17, 7 (a silver coin of Hierapolis c. 331 B.C. inscribed in Aramaic
letters with the name of Alexander: the reverse type is a lion walking towards a bird
perched on a flower). 8 Plout. v. Crass. i>j.

9 V. W. Yorke in the Journ. Hell. Stud. 1898 xviii. 316 no. 22 publishes an inscrip-
tion found by him at Perre {Perrin), which speaks of a certain Ma/*| Boyew. He suggests
that Mabug or Mambug became in Greek Ba/u8ijKr). D. G. Hogarth in the Ann. Brit.
Sch. Ath. 1907—1908 xiv. 196 likewise posits Mambog as the original form.