DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4679#0126
ioo III. HIERAPOLIS : THE HOLY CITY.
stone. These inscriptions show how important an idea in the tomb
the door was reckoned.
These classes of monuments constitute 90 per cent, of the existing
gravestones in Phrygia; and, of the remaining 10 per cent., five can be
explained as developments of the idea of a temple. The dead man is
therefore conceived as living on as a god, and as receiving worship;
and the door is intended as the passage for communication between the
world of life and the world of death, giving him freedom to issue forth
to help his worshippers. On the altar the living placed the offerings
due to the dead. Further, many inscriptions, which will be given in
due course, show that the dead person was conceived to be identified
with the divine nature. The life of man has come from God, and
returns to Him. One single monument in Phrygia shows the door of the
grave opened, and we are admitted to contemplate ra lepa /ivo-Tr/pLa •
inside we find no place or room for a dead body, only the statue of the
Mother-Goddess accompanied by her lions. So in Lydia before the
time of Homer, the Maeonian chiefs, sons of the Gygaean lake (II. II
865), or of the Naiad Nymph who bore them by the lake (II. XX 384),
are buried in the mounds, which we still see in numbers on its
shores. For these heroes death is simply the return to live with the
Goddess-Mother that bore them. Hence a very common form of
epitaph represents the making of the grave as a vow or a dedication
to the local deity. Addend. 24.
The tomb, then, is the temple, i. e. the home \ of the god, and he
who gains admission, even by fraud or violence, to the tomb gets all
the advantages which the rightful owner intended for himself. ■
The deification of the dead, whether generically under the name of
Di Manes, Qeol KarayQovioi (at Nakoleia), &c, or specifically as iden-
tified with some particular deity, is one of the most widespread facts
of ancient religion. In the Koman world the conception of the dead
as Di Manes gave rise to a standing formula of epitaphs : the formula
appears on many thousands of tombstones, and had indeed become
such a pure formula that its meaning was no longer present to the
minds of the persons that composed the epitaph, and thus it is used
occasionally even on Christian tombstones 2. The identification of the
dead with a particular deity is not so common; but examples occur
in all ages. We shall find many epitaphs which show that the erec-
tion of a gravestone was conceived and expressed as a vow to some
1 Compare the use of ohns in the 2 Le Blant Inscr. Chre't. de la Gaale
sense of tomb at Cibyra BCH 1878 I p. 264, II p. 406; Wadd. nos. 2145,
p. 610 f, Magnesia BCH 1894 p. 11. 2419.
stone. These inscriptions show how important an idea in the tomb
the door was reckoned.
These classes of monuments constitute 90 per cent, of the existing
gravestones in Phrygia; and, of the remaining 10 per cent., five can be
explained as developments of the idea of a temple. The dead man is
therefore conceived as living on as a god, and as receiving worship;
and the door is intended as the passage for communication between the
world of life and the world of death, giving him freedom to issue forth
to help his worshippers. On the altar the living placed the offerings
due to the dead. Further, many inscriptions, which will be given in
due course, show that the dead person was conceived to be identified
with the divine nature. The life of man has come from God, and
returns to Him. One single monument in Phrygia shows the door of the
grave opened, and we are admitted to contemplate ra lepa /ivo-Tr/pLa •
inside we find no place or room for a dead body, only the statue of the
Mother-Goddess accompanied by her lions. So in Lydia before the
time of Homer, the Maeonian chiefs, sons of the Gygaean lake (II. II
865), or of the Naiad Nymph who bore them by the lake (II. XX 384),
are buried in the mounds, which we still see in numbers on its
shores. For these heroes death is simply the return to live with the
Goddess-Mother that bore them. Hence a very common form of
epitaph represents the making of the grave as a vow or a dedication
to the local deity. Addend. 24.
The tomb, then, is the temple, i. e. the home \ of the god, and he
who gains admission, even by fraud or violence, to the tomb gets all
the advantages which the rightful owner intended for himself. ■
The deification of the dead, whether generically under the name of
Di Manes, Qeol KarayQovioi (at Nakoleia), &c, or specifically as iden-
tified with some particular deity, is one of the most widespread facts
of ancient religion. In the Koman world the conception of the dead
as Di Manes gave rise to a standing formula of epitaphs : the formula
appears on many thousands of tombstones, and had indeed become
such a pure formula that its meaning was no longer present to the
minds of the persons that composed the epitaph, and thus it is used
occasionally even on Christian tombstones 2. The identification of the
dead with a particular deity is not so common; but examples occur
in all ages. We shall find many epitaphs which show that the erec-
tion of a gravestone was conceived and expressed as a vow to some
1 Compare the use of ohns in the 2 Le Blant Inscr. Chre't. de la Gaale
sense of tomb at Cibyra BCH 1878 I p. 264, II p. 406; Wadd. nos. 2145,
p. 610 f, Magnesia BCH 1894 p. 11. 2419.