Man and God at Palmyra: Sacrifice, Lectisternia and Banquets*

man and god at palmyra 179 MAN AND GOD AT PALMYRA: SACRIFICE, LECTISTERNIA AND BANQUETS* TED KAIZER The evidence for the religious life of Palmyra is very limited. Litur- gical texts, prayers or written myths are not handed down, and what the Palmyrenes actually ‘believed’ remains a mystery. But ‘Palmyrene religion’ was also, like other religions, comprised of a large number of ritual practices, and there is sufficient evidence, both textual and visual, to sketch out the ‘rhythm of religious life’ of the city.1 Nei- ther the particular iconographic material (revealing both a high degree of individuality and certain connections with the so-called ‘Parthian’ art of the wider region of East Syria and North Mesopo- tamia) nor the unique language situation (providing information, always in a highly formulaic manner, on deities and dedications both in Greek and in the local ‘Palmyrenean’ dialect of Aramaic) seem to have resulted in any interest in Palmyra on the part of the Classical authors. Nonetheless, it are precisely the local Palmyrene forms of art and script, both very recognizable, that have served to evoke impressions of a homogeneous and typically ‘Palmyrene’ identity. Of course, underneath the surface the problem is much more compli- cated. The different elements of the religious life of Palmyra come from various cultural backgrounds, with the indigenous substratum (mostly no longer traceable) being transformed, or ‘renegotiated’, * This paper was originally written for an International Conference on Palmyra & Zenobia, held at Homs and Palmyra from 19 to 21 October 2002. At the time, I held a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and I should like to acknowledge the financial support I received from the Acad- emy and from Corpus. I also owe thanks to the Conference Academic Committee for inviting me to participate in the conference and for the hospitality provided in Syria. As intended, the paper was eventually published in the proceedings of the conference, edited by M. al-Hayek, M. Maqdissi and M. Abdulkarim (Homs: al- Baath University, 2005), p.83-96. Unfortunately, however, I never saw proofs of that version, and it appeared without footnotes, rendering any value void. I have therefore decided, with the kind permission of the series editors, to publish it here in proper fashion. 1 Kaizer (2002a), p.163-211. 180 ted kaizer over time. Together, these elements constituted a religious society which necessarily remained heterogeneous throughout its history, and the various ritual practices of the city combined aspects deriving from a more or less remote and often legendary past with aspects reflect- ing the more recent conditions that had served to make those ritu- als have the shape in which they were eventually transmitted. Indeed, studies of the religious world of Palmyra have always pointed to this interaction of various layers, which is visibly mainly in the divine world and in the city’s religious topography.2 On the one hand, this process resulted in a unique religious culture, with a divine world inhabited by a large variety of indigenous and other ‘Oriental’ deities, whose identification with Greek ones in bilingual inscriptions is usually seen as of secondary importance.3 On the other hand, it is clear that in the Roman period Palmyra conformed to general pat- terns of religious culture, which were representative for many cities in the Graeco-Roman East. These Classical frameworks, such as the apparent connection between territorial division and public cults, and the symbolic language of the phenomenon known as ‘euergetism’, will have had a certain significance for the functioning in society of religious aspects from outside the Classical world, and also for the manifestation and articulation of the attitude on the part of the Pal- myrene worshippers towards their deities.4 The relationship between the human and the divine spheres could find ritual expression in many different ways at Palmyra. This paper will concentrate on various sorts of sacrifice, lectisternia and banquets, and it will make suggestions as to why these divergent means of exchange of material and immaterial matters between man and god were applied in particular circumstances. Palmyrene deities were the focal point of multifarious sacred acts and the recipients of many sorts of sacrifice. As far as the visual evidence is concerned, the most common ritual acts were the burning of incense and (less frequent) the libation. Many reliefs show a worshipper standing in front of a deity, while either taking incense granules out of a specially designed box and burning them in a θυμιατήριον, or pouring out liquid from 2 From Février (1931), via Hoftijzer (1968) and Teixidor (1979), to Gawlikowski (1990) and Dirven (1999). 3 Gawlikowski (1991). 4 For this idea, with further references, see Kaizer (2004a)..

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