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

Zeus (Adad) at Hierapolis 589

have been where there are now some ruins of a large building, which seems to
have been a church with a tower ; to the west of which there are some ruinous
arches, which might be part of a portico.'

In 1850 Lieut.-Col. Chesney1 included 'Munbedj or Bambuche'
in the report of his great expedition : within the city he noticed—

'four large cisterns, a fine sarcophagus, and, among other ancient remains,
the scattered ruins of an acropolis, and those of two temples. Of the smaller,
the enclosure and portions of seven columns remain ; but it seems to possess
little interest, compared with the larger, which may have been that of...the
Syrian Atargatis....Amongst the remains of the latter are some fragments of
massive architecture, not unlike the Egyptian, and 11 arches form one side of a
square paved court, over which are scattered the shafts of columns and capitals
displaying the lotus.'

Nowadays even these scanty relics of the great temple have
disappeared. Dr D. G. Hogarth and Mr R. Norton in 1908 were
unable to locate it. Dr Hogarth says2:

'As a result of the Circassian occupation almost all the standing remains of
antiquity, noticed by travellers from Maundrell to Chesney, have disappeared.
I failed to find any traces of the Theatre, the Stadium, or the two Temples.
Indeed the only obvious pre-Islamic structures in situ are firstly, the walls of the
outer enceinte, evidently of late construction, to judge by tombstones used
therein and lately extracted by the Circassians... : these walls are banked up
with silt and overgrown with grass. Secondly, scanty remains of a stepped
quay-wall or revetment, with water-stairs at intervals, which surrounds a large

pool, some three acres in area, in the centre of the western half of the site3____

These remains extend all along the western bank and are visible also on the
southern, but are obliterated elsewhere. The pool is said to be perennial and
of some depth in the centre, and it can hardly be other than the [sacred lake
mentioned by the pseudo-Lucian]. I cannot say if its depth be really above
200 cubits, as the treatise alleges ; but the altar in the middle, to which the
votaries used to swim, has disappeared....Just before the [modern town] is
reached, the ground rises abruptly to a plateau, and probably here was an
inner wall, making' a smaller and earlier enceinte round the great Temple and
its immediate precinct. The position of the Temple may have been more or
less where the large mosque, built about thirty years ago, now stands ; but no
confirmatory indications are visible. The whole eastern half of the site right up
to the eastern wall, which has been greatly quarried of late, is occupied by the
houses, courtyards, and gardens of modern Mumbij. In the east centre the
ground rises to a low hill on which some of the better Circassian houses are
built. If this were not the site of the Temple, it was probably an Acropolis. It
is not quite so near the Sacred Lake as the mosque site4.'

1 Lieut.-Colonel Chesney The Expedition for the Survey of the Rivers Euphrates and
Tigris London 1850 i. 420 f.

2 D. G. Hogarth loc. cit. pp. 187, 189. 3 Id. ib. p. 188 fig. 1.

4 Dr Hogarth notes further a much defaced limestone lion near the south-east angle
of the wall (ib. p. 188 fig. 2); four terra-cotta heads of a goddess who, to judge from the
most complete specimen, was represented as clasping her breasts (ib. p. 190 fig. 3) ;
sixteen inscriptions; etc.