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Bel at Palmyra and Elsewhere in the Parthian Period

Bel at Palmyra and Elsewhere in the Parthian Period

ARAM, 7 (1995) 137-151 137

BEL AT AND ELSEWHERE IN THE PARTHIAN PERIOD

STEPHANIE DALLEY

Palmyra has been studied mainly by scholars whose background is either in Graeco-roman studies, or else in West Semitic languages. Its architecture includes such eminently Greek features as agora, a colonnaded street and a theatre. Yet its main is dedicated to the god , a Babylonian epi- thet from the sphere of East Semitic language.1 The temple – or an altar placed within it – was inaugurated in AD 32, some 76 years after an early inscription mentions priests of Bel in 44/43 BC. An inscription from Dura confirms that the cult of Bel preceded the inaugu- ration of the new temple or its altar, for it says that a Palmyrene paid to put up a sanctuary to Bel and at Dura in 34/33 BC. By that time it has generally been supposed that and its culture were a spent force, so that Palmyra in the Christian era has never been regarded as a Baby- lonian or an Assyrian city. Even when the great frieze from the temple in Palmyra was identified as Bel fighting rather than fighting , most Assyriologists remained ignorant that the only extant large- scale picture of a scene from the Babylonian epic of creation was dated to around the time of Christ or later. The phenomenon seemed to be just an anomaly, even if it branched out from Palmyra to Dura Europos on the and to on the Orontes. The presence of the apparently Mesopotamian gods Bel and at Palmyra was chiefly seen from a stand- point within Palmyra or from far West, in Rome.2 The assumption that Palmyra was to be separated from Chaldaean, Baby- lonian culture dominated discussion, and until now no cuneiformist has, as far as I know, looked at Palmyrene religion from a Babylonian viewpoint.

1 A version of this paper was delivered at the conference on Palmyra. I thank Dr. Abou- Zayd warmly for inviting to participate – as an Assyriologist and not as an expert on Palmyra. 2 Seyrig, H., “Bel de Palmyre”, , 48, (1971), 85-114 and Bounni, A., “Nabu palmy- rénien”, Orientalia, 45, (1976), 46-52. 138 BEL AT PALMYRA AND ELSEWHERE IN THE PARTHIAN PERIOD

THE NEED FOR RE-APPRAISAL Bel is clearly distinguished in both Greek and Palmyrene tran- scription from its local counterpart Bol and its West Semitic counterpart Ba¨al. Although they are cognate, the three forms of the word are not interchan- geable; but few scholars have observed this distinction, for the separation of East Semitic (Akkadian dialects, divided into Babylonian and Assyrian) and West Semitic (Phoenician and Aramaic etc.), seemed to be irrelevant at a time when Akkadian was neither written nor spoken. The very fact that Bel is shown beardless on , in contrast to the beard he is supposed to have had in Babylon, has been cited as evidence that we do not really have much to do with Babylon, despite the name Bel. In Babylon Bel is an epithet for , the god who takes the part of the hero at the New Year or festival, defeating the powers of chaos and tak- ing control of destinies. The story of Creation was re-enacted while the epic of creation, a Babylonian literary composition written in Akkadian, was recited. It is often supposed that Marduk was the only god who performed in this way after the fall of , and that the god became Bel only by usurping the place of Marduk for a short time in the seventh century BC. As we shall see, this is far from true. But at the time when Henri Seyrig was writing about Bel of Palmyra, it was thought that the cult of Bel-Marduk in Babylon, and therefore all re-enactments of the creation, came to an end in the time of Xerxes, following an over-interpretation of an incident reported by Herodotos. A completely new approach was therefore required when a newly published astronomical diary showed that Antiochos III took part in the New Year festival in Babylon in 187 BC, wearing a purple-red robe which had belonged to Nebuchadnezzar II four hundred years earlier.3 Is it possible, from this new standpoint, to find evidence for the cult of Bel in Babylon and other Mesopotamian gods in other cities continuing into the time when Palmyra's Bel temple was so magnificent? For these reasons it seems useful to take a cuneiformist's view of Palmyra, and to see what evidence exists elsewhere in the Near East for the cult of Bel continu- ing in the Roman period. This approach requires that we look at the different cities in which the akitu festival was celebrated in the early Iron Age (c.1000-539 BC), try to establish which deities might be referred to as Bel, and look for other indi- cations that ancient Mesopotamian forms of religious practices persisted.

3 Sherwin-White, S., “Seleucid ”, in: Hellenism in the East, Kuhrt, A., and Sherwin-White, S., (Duckworth, 1987), 8-9. STEPHANIE DALLEY 139

EARLY HISTORY OF PALMYRA The early history of Palmyra has been sketched out from archaeological soundings and from the mention of Tadmer in cuneiform texts. Old Assyrian merchants went there around 2000 BC; caravans with diplomatic status passed through it in the Old Babylonian period, their activities being recorded in texts written at Mari on the middle Euphrates; in the Late Bronze Age, a tablet from Emar records contact with Tadmer,4 and the city is named in the annals of Tiglath-Pileser I who defeated Aramaeans of Tadmar not long afterwards.5 The excavators have found some remains of a city of that period beneath the main temple mound, although later buildings have made the city of early times largely inaccessible.6 In addition Dr. Schmidt-Colinet has pointed out to us at this conference that the alignment of the points towards a pre-Roman settlement area in the direction of Efqa, the spring. But no cuneiform writing and no Mesopotamian cylinder seals or sealings have been found anywhere at Palmyra. The rebuilding of the Roman period may largely have been laid out on virgin ground, adjacent to an old city mound which was used as a ready-made platform for the temple of Bel in its renewed grandeur. Therefore very little indeed remains of earlier struc- tures and small finds on the temple mound. The same is true of Apamea, which is thought to cover or lie adjacent to the much earlier city of Niye. Only at Dura Europos did the lucky find of a reused tablet show that business was carried out in cuneiform in the mid second millennium BC, in the town whose early name Damara is recognisable in the later Dura.7 But Dura lies on the Euphrates near Mari, within easy reach of cuneiform culture. What is found there cannot be assumed to pertain also to Palmyra.

THE TEMPLE OF BEL At Palmyra, apart from the name Bel, the subject of the famous frieze, and written evidence of funding by merchants who came specifically from the

4 Arnaud, D., Recherches au pays d'Astata/Emar, VI/3, (Paris 1986), no. 21, two witnesses described as being men of the city of Tadmer. 5 The spelling Tadmer with penultimate e reflects a modified a which was used in Akka- dian to represent o in West Semitic languages; Akkadian does not have a vowel o. 6 du Mesnil du Buisson, R., “La decouverte de la plus ancienne Palmyre”, Bibliotheca Orientalis, 24, (1967), 20-21 7 Stephens, F. J., “A cuneiform tablet from Dura-Europas”, Revue d'Assyriologie, 34, (1937), 183ff., and a new photograph in Matheson, S. B., “The tenth Season at Dura Europos 1936- 1937”, Syria, 69, (1992), 133 fig. 12. 140 BEL AT PALMYRA AND ELSEWHERE IN THE PARTHIAN PERIOD city of Babylon,8 there is another piece of probable evidence to connect the cult to ancient . The temple of Bel at Palmyra had an inner sanctum called haikal, the Babylonian word for a which was also commonly used to mean a temple from the late Assyrian period onwards; and the outer sanctum was called ˆNDRWNˆ, which should probably be derived from the Sumerian loan word anduruna, “heavenly abode”. For this rare, ceremonial word is used of the home of the gods in the epic of Creation. However, by an unfortunate coincidence the Persian word for inner quarters, which has a respectable Persian etymology, is almost identical, and this alter- native was selected by du Mesnil du Buisson in his edition of the relevant Palmyrene inscription.9 This may still be valid; but the balance now swings towards a Babylonian interpretation. A Persian etymology in this case is par- ticularly inappropriate because the early are not supposed to have had temple buildings at all for worshipping their own gods.10 The astrological ceilings in the two shrines within the temple of Bel do not, however, show Babylonian forms of the signs of the zodiac. According to the Babylonian tradition, which Ptolemy the Astronomer described around the time in question, we might expect Taurus to be only the front half of the bull, and we might expect Virgo to be an ear of barley, not a girl. But these forms are not found in Palmyra, so that direct Babylonian influence in this respect can be discounted.

PROBLEMATIC GODS AND PEOPLE At an early stage of study the Palmyrene god Yarhi-bol was wrongly equated with the moon because the element yarhi- was thought to be West Semitic YRH, the (new) moon. In fact Neo-Assyrian documents often refer to properties with a “pool” yarhu, so this word has a long ancestry of use in cuneiform, and it has now been recognised that Yarhi-bol is the god of the Spring around which the oasis town grew up. However, the use of Bol rather than Bel makes it clear that the god is local, even if we can point to an Assyr- ian usage of the element yarhi. The group of people called ˆKLDY or KLDY,

8 Cantineau, J., Inventaire des inscriptions de Palmyre, Part IX, (Beirut 1933), statue of Lisams. 9 du Mesnil du Buisson, R., “Le service de garde dans le temple de Bel à Palmyre”, Revue des etudes semitiques, (1942-5), 76-84. 10 We may note that in Mandaic the word andiruna means a ritual but used for marriage rites and for the consecration of priests. See Drower, E. S., The Mandaeans of and , (Oxford 1937), 63-71, 149-53. STEPHANIE DALLEY 141 though at first identified as Chaldaeans, was soon “corrected” to Claudians, but the correction was not based on any particular evidence; it just seemed that Chaldaeans at Palmyra were inappropriate.11 Given that people from Babylon were involved in the rebuilding of Bel's temple at Palmyra accord- ing to Palmyrene inscriptions, we may reconsider the correction, and perhaps return to ˆKLDY as Chaldaeans, a group which may have tended the cult of Bel. With the temple of Nabu or Nebo at Palmyra, standing closest of all to the temple of Bel, we have a Babylonian and Assyrian god of , scribal art and destiny whose cult at was very closely linked with that of Bel in Babylon, as is described below.

RELIGION AND SCHOLARSHIP AT BABYLON IN THE PARTHIAN PERIOD The advent of Parthian rule, which finally took over Babylon around 128 BC, did not deliver the coup-de-grace to Babylonian culture. We know that peo- ple in Babylon and still kept some records in Akkadian cuneiform in the early years of the Christian era. The latest tablet known at present is an astronomical text of 75 AD. At Babylon the quarter of the city now repre- sented by the Amran mound was wealthy, with a pillared building among substantial private houses. The Greek theatre was still used at least for athletic competitions, an inscription of 109 BC in Greek (not Aramaic or Persian) recording the names of winners.12 So the Seleucid tradition of writ- ing in Greek was not abandoned or officially discouraged. It is known from a Classical source that a Stoic school of philosophy still flourished either there or in -on-, having been founded by Archidemos, who was a pupil of Diogenes of Babylon. The school was also famous for another pupil, Apollodoros, who wrote treatises on ethics and physics. Whether these men were ethnic Babylonians or Greeks we cannot know; but it is notable that the name Diogenes was particularly used by liberal Jews at on the Maeander in the third century AD.13 Links between philosophers and priests

11 Hajjar, Y., “Divinites oraculaires et rites divinatoires en Syria et en Phenicie à l'épo- que greco-romaine”, Aufstieg und Niedergang der romische Welt, II 18/4, (Berlin and New York 1990), 2253-57. Brykczynski, P., Studia palmyrenskie, (1973), questions the “corrected” interpretation. 12 Wetzel, F., Das Babylon der Spatzeit, Wissenschaftliche Veroffentlichungen der Deutsch- Orient Gesellschaft 62, (Berlin 1957). Alternatively, the presence of a gymnasium may be inferred. 13 Reynolds, J. M. and Tannenbaum, R., Jews and Godfearers at Aphrodisias, (Cambridge 1987). 142 BEL AT PALMYRA AND ELSEWHERE IN THE PARTHIAN PERIOD are unknown for Babylon, although the tradition that Berossos was a priest of Marduk as well as being an astronomer tends to suggest that it was so; at Apamea we now know that a priest of Bel was also head of a school of Epi- curean philosophers in the mid second century AD.14 The problem of knowing whether, for instance, Diogenes with his Greek name was really a Greek, is partly enlightened by evidence from Uruk in the Seleucid period, when it is known that two governors had both a Babylonian and a Greek name, the latter being honorific.15 This habit is much better attested on papyri from Egypt, where local officials often took a Greek name in addition to their local one. herself was known both as Bath-Zab- bay and as Septimia. At Dura the men of a family took Greek names whereas the females kept Semitic names; this reminds us of how, at Palmyra, as Professor Parlasca has mentioned, the men usually wore Greek garments and their women wore local, Semitic dress. Also problematic is to know whether famous men of Babylon actually came from Babylon or from Seleucia. Pliny maintained that the population of Babylon declined quickly when Seleucia was founded, but it is easy to exaggerate the importance of his statement, as we can see now that more evidence is available. He said in the mid first cen- tury AD: “The temple of in Babylon is still standing… but in all other respects the place has gone back to a desert.” But this is to some extent contradicted by the Palmyra inscription which says specifically that Palmyrene merchants “from the city of Babylon” helped to finance the new temple of Bel in 32 AD, and by the archaeological evidence from Babylon itself. One can imagine how that city would have looked to Greeks and Romans, coming from their smart, stone-built cities and arriving at the decayed mud-brick of Babylon. Pliny says nothing about whether or not the cult of Bel was still practiced, nor about the continuation of academic life, and he does not claim to have visited Babylon in person. Far into the period of Parthian control, Babylon could boast that its world- famous scholastic tradition continued. Two scholars have Greek names: Teukros the astronomer of Babylon in the first century AD, and Herodikos in the second century. Contemporary with Herodikos was Zachalias who was

14 Rey-Coquais, J-P., “Inscriptions grecques d'Apamee”, Annales Archeologiques de la Syrie, 23, (1973), 39-84. 15 Pedde, F., “Frehat en-Nufegi: two Seleucid tumuli near Uruk”, Arabia Antiqua, Hel- lenistic Centres around Arabia, Invernizzi, A., and Salles, J-F., (eds.), (Rome 1993). STEPHANIE DALLEY 143 known to Pliny for having written about the properties of minerals. His name appears to be Semitic. The Chaldaean History of Abydenos, which is no longer extant except in quotations, was written around the same time; his name is definitely Semitic. We simply do not know whether any of these men were based in Seleucia rather than in Babylon. But we do know that in Syria soon surpassed Seleucia as a royal city. Reliably informative, I think, is the statement of the Jewish rabbi Rav, founder of the great rabbinical school at Sura in central Mesopotamia some- time after 219 AD. Rav was born in southern Mesopotamia, the son of a satrap, a land-owner who is thought to have had direct access to the last Parthian king Artabanos V. Rav named the temple of Bel in Babylon and the temple of Nabu in Borsippa as the chief centres of in his time, where festivals were still performed all year round.16 This information is given in tbe Babylonian Talmud as follows: Rabbi Hanan b.Rabbi Hisda said in the name of Rav…“There are five per- manent of idolatry: the Bel temple in Babylon, the Nebo temple in Borsippa….” What does “permanent” mean? That they still stand, and people pray there all year round.17 There seems to me to be no good reason to discard this clear statement, which was made towards the end of four centuries of tolerant Parthian rule by a man who knew the local scene well.

CITIES WHERE ANCIENT CULTS PERSISTED IN MESOPOTAMIA New and clear evidence has come to light to show that ancient Mesopo- tamian religious practices continued in the first two centuries AD in the north of Mesopotamia as well as the south. Thanks to the publications of Basile Aggoula, we now have a corpus of Aramaic inscriptions from Assur18 and, more recently, from .19 Both groups contain invaluable information that the ancient cults positively flourished. We already knew from the German excavations at that the akitu house, the temple of the New Year festival

16 Neusner, J., Judaism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism in Talmudic Babylonia, (Atlanta, 1990), 64. 17 Goldschmidt, L., Der Babyloniche Talmud, Aboda zara, (Haag, Martinus Nijoff, 1933) vol. VII folio 11b. I am grateful to Judith Olszowy for helping me to find this reference. 18 Aggoula, B., Inscriptions et graffites arameens d'Assour, (Naples, 1985). 19 Aggoula, B., Inventaire des inscriptions hatreennes (Paris, 1991). 144 BEL AT PALMYRA AND ELSEWHERE IN THE PARTHIAN PERIOD which the Assyrian king had restored in great style around 700 BC, was rebuilt following the old ground plan during the Parthian period.20 It stood outside the city walls, and would certainly not have been restored unless the rituals performed there were still current. The inscriptions, especially dedications and personal names, show that the Assyrian gods Ashur, Sherua, Nabu, Nanay and were still worshipped in the city of Ashur. As at Palmyra, we cannot suppose that the old ritual for the New Year was performed without some kind of recitation of the epic of creation.21 We also know that in Assyria the national god Ashur was called Bel and played the part of the hero god in the epic of creation. In ancient Mesopotamian tra- dition the god also won the title after he had rescued the tablet of destinies from the wicked Anzu-bird, a tradition connected originally with the cities of Girsu and Nippur. At Hatra in the second century AD the chief temple, dedicated to the Sun- god Samas as Bel, was named Esagil after the great temple of Marduk in Babylon.22 Since Hatra was a new city it is clear that this is not just a case of old habits dying hard, but rather that the cult of Bel-Marduk in Babylon was still extremely important and prestigious, so that this new foundation was named after it. For the temple of Bel-Ashur in the city of Ashur near Hatra was never called Esagil, as far as we know, but is known to have had the name Esharra. This is not a case of the cult arriving in Hatra from Palmyra, as it did to Apamea and Dura, nor of the cult arriving from Ashur. The tem- ple name comes from Babylon, but the god to whom the epithet Bel is applied does not. The sungod Samas (SMS) was Bel at Hatra,23 and presum- ably the god Ashur was Bel in the city Ashur, and the goddess Issar was also known as Bel at Hatra; as we shall see, this is probably Ishtar of Arbela.24 This range of deities called Bel reminds us that Bel is only a title for whichever god defeats the forces of chaos at the New Year. Aggoula has compared the plan of a Parthian temple at Ashur with the plan of Esagila at Babylon and with the plan of the temple of Gadde at Palmyra.25 But we will

20 Andrae, W. and Hrouda, B., Das wiedererstandene Assur, (Munchen, 1977), 249. 21 It is not necessarily proof of survival that Damascius, De Principiis, knew the epic of creation in the sixth century, since his source by his own admission was Eudemos, a con- temporary of Aristotle. 22 Aggoula, Inventaire nos 107, 225, 244, 245 etc. 23 Aggoula, Inventaire no. 107. 24 Aggoula, Inventaire no. 35 25 Aggoula, forthcoming book on the religion of Hatra. STEPHANIE DALLEY 145 have to wait for his forthcoming book before we can share his assessment of the details. We should note, however, that a temple of a god Gadda is now known from Meskene-Emar from Late Bronze Age texts.26 At Hatra the goddess Issar-Bel may be equated with Ishtar of Arbela, whose oracle was very famous in the neo-Assyrian period, for the following reasons. In the 7th century BC the Assyrians celebrated the akitu festival of Ishtar of Arbela both in the city of Arbela and in the unidentified town Milkia. Phonetic writings mainly in Aramaic show that the Assyrians pro- nounced her name Issar.27 A Syriac text on the martyrdom of Aitalaha refers to a priest of Sharbel the goddess of Arbela, in which the male epithet Bel is expressly added to the name of the goddess, which is given in an abbreviated form as Sar for Issar.28 The evidence so far shows that the epithet Bel could be applied to various national gods or patron deities of major cities, but only to deities whose ancestry was Mesopotamian. In Late Babylonian texts from Mesopotamia, the god Marduk was sometimes called Sangilay, i.e. the god of Esagil. It now appears possible that other gods could have the same name.29 Since Ishtar was called Bel at Hatra in the second century, we can deduce that Ishtar of Arbela was still flourishing with her own, local akitu festival, and was worshipped at Hatra at that period. The altar from Killiz, north of Aleppo,30 shows Bel with the iconography of a pair of bulls, and shows that the weather god, Akkadian Adad, was still supreme god in that area; very likely his cities were Aleppo and Apamea, not far south; a sculpture from Dura also with flanking bulls confirms his popularity.31 He was still popular in Mesopotamia, as we can see from personal names: the ruler of Girsu in lower Mesopotamia was Adad-nadin-ahe, and Adad-iabos is named in Greek

26 Ritual texts from Emar of the 12th century BC mention a temple of the god Gadda. See Arnaud, Astata/Emar, vol. VI/3 e.g. nos. 369:37, 373:165'. 27 In Aramaic transcriptions of Assyrian names Assur is written ˆSR and in the same texts Istar is written ˆSR. The series State Archives of Assyria, (Helsinki 1987, onwards) transcribes the various cuneiform writings of the goddess's name as Issar. 28 Bedjan, P., Acta Martyrum et Sanctorum IV, (Paris and Leipzig, 1890-1907, reprinted Hildesheim: Olms, 1968), 133, discussed by Peeters, P., “Passionaire d'Adiabène”, Analecta Bollandiana 43 (1925), 261-304. I am grateful to Dr. Brock for help with these references. An initial vowel was often omitted in Assyrian, e.g. the Urartian royal name Issar-duri / Sarduri. 29 This may be applicable to the deity SNGLˆ who is named on the still undatable stelae from NW Arabia; see Zadok, R. in Bibliotheca Orientalis, 33, (1976), 228a. 30 Cumont, F., Fouilles de Doura-Europos, (Paris, 1926), 59. 31 A. Perkins, The Art of Dura-Europos, (Oxford, 1973), pl. 41. There is no good reason to prefer identifying him with West Semitic , as the new inscriptions from ¨Ana show. 146 BEL AT PALMYRA AND ELSEWHERE IN THE PARTHIAN PERIOD on the Killiz relief. the moon god was Bel at from at least as early as the Assyrian empire. These items show that Bel was a different god according to his locality, and they do not help us to find the identity of Bel at Palmyra.

NEW TEXTS ABOUT THE AKITU FESTIVAL It has sometimes been supposed that the New Year festival was celebrated only once a year in the month of Nisan and only in Babylon during the Hel- lenistic period; but recently a new text of indeterminate Late Babylonian date has been published which shows that this was not the case.32 The date is in the month Kislimu, traditionally the ninth month and so not even possible as a time for an Autumn new year. In this version the victorious god is presented not with a garment, as in the standard version, but with palms of victory. On the frieze from Palmyra palms of victory are likewise held by the winged victories, and it may well prove that this apparently Classical motif comes from Mesopotamia where the date-palm is at home, and would natu- rally have been at home in Palmyra. Moreover, during the ceremony, according to the new text, a palm tree is drawn on a gate of the shrine (?, the word for shrine is broken away, but occurs in the preceding line). The kinunu-brazier is mentioned too, probably in connection with Bel, but certainly also in connection with Ea and Mandanu, who is a god of justice,33 in a passage just before secret business is done with the Tablet of Destinies. The daughters of Esagil play an ill-defined part. The presence in that text of an Aramaic loan- word and an Aramaic verbal prefix indicate that the text was not fossilised, but absorbed some elements of current language. This evidence opens up the possibility that an Aramaic version of the epic was recited in second century Palmyra; it does not, however, help us to decide whether the title Bel at Palmyra stands for Marduk or for some other deity. It has been assumed that the Babylonian Bel, unlike the Palmyrene Bel, would have been represented with a beard, because a bearded god is shown on coins from Seleucia, and the statue of Assur-Bel from Hatra also has a full, Assyrian-style beard. So it still seems likely, as Seyrig maintained, that Bel at Hatra is neither Marduk nor Ashur. Despite the beardlessness favoured by Alexander and his successors, cult statues in Mesopotamia do not seem to have changed in this respect.

32 Çagirgan, G. and Lambert, W.G., “The Late Babylonian kislimu ritual for Esagil”, Journal of Cuneiform Studies, 43-45, (1991-93), 89-106. 33 Possibly to be equated with Misaru. STEPHANIE DALLEY 147

The Babylonian word kinunu “brazier” is kanunu in its Assyrian dialect form. At Hatra, as at Palmyra, the month name kanun was used, and since months and the cultic calender are closely associated, this is probably signif- icant. Kanunu is an old, Assyrian month name which refers to a religious festival. The kanunu was a metal brazier placed before a deity, to the accom- paniment of sacrifices and offerings. Some divination took place there; and in the great omen series known as Summa alu one tablet is devoted to omens observed during the celebration of the akitu festival, including omens about the king's kinunu in the presence of Marduk.34 To extinguish the brazier was to symbolise a lack of progeny. The month name was not used in Babylonia, but in Assyria it goes back to at least 2000 BC, and stood for the 6th month in Old Babylonian Eshnunna, the 7th in Old Babylonian Mari, and the 9th month in Late Bronze Age .35 At a time when so many other month names were available to choose from, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the people of Palmyra and of Hatra celebrated the Assyrian kanunu festival. Since kanunu is the Assyrian dialect version, the form of the word implies that the cult of Bel at Palmyra was a mixture of Babylonian and Assyrian elements. Another festival still performed in Mesopotamia, according to the Babylonian Talmud, is that of mahur, again an old Assyrian festival and month name, about which little is known from cuneiform sources. This new text shows that the akitu festival was not performed once a year only, but also on other occasions, with recitals of the epic of creation. The month of Kislimu, in which the ceremony described in the new text is set, reminds one of another ritual text which dates to the very beginning of the Parthian period, before lasting control had been established in Babylon, and which also involves the daughters of Esagil. In 137 BC, at the end of the Seleucid period, a tablet recorded how the daughters of Esagil go from Esagil to Ezida, and the daughters of Ezida go from Ezida to Esagil for the Summer solstice, and return for the Winter solstice.36 For they are goddesses respon- sible for lengthening and shortening the days. Ezida is the temple of Nabu in Borsippa. This implies not only that the cult of Nabu in Borsippa continued to flourish in the Parthian period, but suggests also that a similar ritual may have been performed in Palmyra between the great temple of Bel and the

34 Cuneiform Texts in the vol. 40, pl. 38-40. 35 Reallexikon der Assyriologie, Band 5, (Berlin 1976-1980), H. Hunger s.v. Kalender. 36 Livingstone, A., Mystical and Mythological Explanatory Works, (Oxford, 1986). Appen- dix 1, with dating according to Oelsner, J., Materialen zur babylonischen Gesellschaft und Kultur in hellenistischer Zeit, (Budapest, 1986), 227. 148 BEL AT PALMYRA AND ELSEWHERE IN THE PARTHIAN PERIOD large temple of Nabu which lies quite close to it. At Hatra too there is evi- dence for a cult of Nabu.37 Were there other places where a festival in an akitu house was celebrated with the recitation of a cosmic battle between the hero god and the forces of chaos? Some extraordinary evidence has come to light in cuneiform tablets of the 8th century BC, unearthed in recent excavations at ¨Anah, the island in the middle Euphrates which marks the point at which travellers cross the river when journeying between and Palmyra. The texts mention an akitu house of the gods Adad and Apladad in ¨Anah, and an akitu house of the gods Adad and Misar “Justice” in the neighbouring town of Udada.38 Precedents make it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the god Adad, together with a son or companion god, acted as hero in that region in the local version of the epic of creation.39 It has long been known that an akitu festival was celebrated at Harran in the 7th century BC in which Sin and his consort were the main deities.40 Presumably that practice continued into the Sassanian or even early Islamic period, with Sin's title Bel in “lord of the gods” translated directly into Syriac marilaha. Apladad is known, of course, from Dura Europos. He is a local Akkadian god, “son of Adad” (not West Semitic Hadad), who made the transition into Hellenistic and Roman times. “Son of Adad” is an epithet and covers the name of a major deity. In the standard Babylonian god list AN=Anum, the first son of Adad is the god Misaru “Justice”,41 and it is possible that Apladad is also a god of justice, since Adad and Apladad in ¨Anah would then be equated with Adad and Misar in Udada. A cylinder seal inscription from the neo-Assyrian period gives the name of his consort, concealed beneath difficult signs, but she is called hirat dApil-Adad, “bride of Apladad”42 and it seems possible that here we have the origin of the Palmyrene goddess Hirta. In Akkadian the feminine noun kittum is normally and frequently paired with

37 al-Salihi, W., “The shrine of Nebo at Hatra”, Iraq, 45, (1983), 140-145. 38 Cavigneaux, A. and Ismail, B. K., “Die Statthalter von Suhu und Mari im 8.Jh. v. Chr.”, Baghdader Mitteilungen, 21, (1990), also Frame, G., Royal Inscriptions of Mesopotamia, Babylonian Periods, vol. 2, Rulers of Babylonia 1157-612 BC, (Toronto, 1995), 290-323. 39 There was also a fort called Kar-Apladad in the vicinity, according to the same inscrip- tions. 40 For instance K 1234, translated as no. 188 in: Parpola, S., The Correspondence of Sar- gon II, part I, (Helsinki, 1987). 41 Litke, R. L., Unpublished dissertation, An=Anum III 246, (Yale, 1958). 42 Lipinski, E., “Apladad”, Orientalia, 45, (1976), 53-74. See also Menzel, B., Assyrische Tempel, (Rome, 1981), vol. 2, T 116, iii 37, restored in a broken context. STEPHANIE DALLEY 149 misaru, and means “truth, righteousness”. At ¨Anah the goddess , after whom the town was named (or vice versa), was the consort of Apil-Adad. Further evidence is needed to discover the nature of this god. There may be iconographical elements that are useful for identifying exactly which Mesopotamian god lies behind the epithet “son of Adad”.

ARTISTIC INFLUENCE There are several possibilities of artistic influence from Mesopotamia upon the art of Palmyra and of Dura. The merlons on the temple of Bel have often been attributed to Assyrian influence, whether direct or indirect. It seems possible that the wall painting in the temple of Zeus Megistos at Dura, show- ing a victorious god beside his chariot, takes its imagery from the ceremony of the Babylonian New Year festival, and perhaps also other akitu festivals, in which Bel's golden chariot played a key role. Certainly it is an important feature on the temple frieze at Palmyra. Ashur and Hatra were not alone in their continuation of ancient Meso- potamian traditions around the upper Tigris. At Nineveh a Parthian door lintel, finely carved, which was found on the original floor of the palace of Sennacherib, shows that at least some state rooms there were still in use.43 It is remarkable to find that one could still visit the palace of Sennacherib with its bas-relief , at this late date.

BABYLONIAN INFLUENCE THROUGH MANICHAEANS Finally I would like to refer to the presence of early Manichaeans at Palmyra. It has become apparent from the fragments of Manichaean scrip- tures, that the Book of the was in part a reworking of the epic of and was one of the fundamental writings of that religion,44 and that the epithet “Babylonian Man” given to Mani had a basis in reality. Recently it has emerged that “Queen Tadmor” is quite frequently mentioned in Manichaean texts,45 and it now appears that Palmyra was the focus of early

43 Dalley, S., “Nineveh after 612 BC”, Altorientalische Forschungen, 20, (1993), 13-147. 44 Lieu, S. N. C., Manichaeism in Mesopotamia and the Roman East, (Leiden, 1994) esp. ch.2; Manichaeism in the Later and Mediaeval China, (2nd ed. Tubingen 1992), 80-85. 45 She is also thus named in the Arabian Nights story of the City of Brass. For another Manichaean connection with the Arabian Nights see Dalley, S., “Gilgamesh in the Arabian Nights”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1, (1991), 1-17. 150 BEL AT PALMYRA AND ELSEWHERE IN THE PARTHIAN PERIOD

Manichaean activities. There Mani's right-hand man Adda, who composed many scriptural works, cured Zenobia's sister of an illness where others had failed, and found favour at her court. Tardieu has shown that this group of Manichaeans went to al-Hira from Palmyra to continue its work of conver- sion.46 A new fragment of the Gilgamesh episode, which was used in the chapter of the Book of Enoch at Qumran, known as the Book of the Watch- ers, has shown that Enoch played the part previously ascribed to in the Babylonian .47 So Enkidu – Enoch was the archetypal “heavenly twin”, the soul-mate sent by heaven to bring spiritual values to the errant hero.48 We may therefore suggest that Babylonian and Assyrian religious practices at Palmyra made the city particularly favourable to Manichaean overtures. Cumont pointed out that the type of hat worn by a priest of Bel on the Killiz relief is the same as that worn by Manichaeans.49 This sculpture probably dates to the Seleucid period, and shows that the cult of Bel was present in North Syria at that time. The bulls that flank the central scene suggest that Bel here is the storm god Adad, whose prestige in Aleppo, only 60 km. south of Killiz, is known from the Middle Bronze Age through into the Iron Age. Mani had been brought up in an Elchasaite sect. One of the few hard facts known about this sect is that Alcibiades of Apamea-on-Orontes preached the Book of Elchasai during the pontificate of Callistus (AD 217-222) when the work was perhaps a century old. And it was in Apamea that the cult of Bel became famous for its oracle, and had a philosopher-priest. According to Liba- nius of Antioch paganism at Apamea survived well into the 4th century AD.50 To conclude: Aramaic inscriptions as well as new cuneiform texts and other pieces of evidence from rabbinical, Classical and Syriac texts, show that cults of Bel continued to flourish during the Parthian period both within and outside areas controlled at times by Rome: at Palmyra, Dura, Apamea- on-Orontes and Hatra the cult or at least its buildings appear to be newly

46 Tardieu, M., “L'arrivee des manicheens a al-Hira”, in La Syrie de Byzance à l'Islam, Canivet, P., and Rey-coquais, J-P., (eds.), (Institut français de Damas, 1992), 15-24, and van Lindt, P., The names of Manichaean mythological figures, (Wiesbaden, 1992), 225-231. 47 Beyer, K., Aramaische Texten aus dem Toten Meer, Erganzungsband (Gottingen, 1994), 119-121. 48 See also Dalley, S., “The Gilgamesh epic and Manichaean Themes”, , 3, (1991), 23-33. 49 Cumont, F., Fouilles de Doura-Europos, (Paris, 1926), p. 58 n. 4 and p. 60. 50 Libanius, Autogiography and Selected Letters, vol. II, (Harvard 1977) no. 104 Norman, A.F., (ed.). STEPHANIE DALLEY 151 emerged, but at Ashur, Arbela, Harran and Babylon powerful traditions of great antiquity have survived into the Roman period. The language in which the epic of creation was recited began as Babylonian, but creeping Ara- maicisation may have resulted eventually in an all-Aramaic version. So there are very good reasons to see the great cult-place of Bel at Palmyra as part of a much larger whole in which both the Assyrian and the Babylonian regions of Mesopotamia play a part. Aurelian can only have enhanced the cult by taking it to Rome in 273 AD, and the successful oracles of Bel at Apamea in the time of Septimius Severus added to its prestige. In many of these cities the end of pagan cult practices can be roughly dated: to the mid third century at Hatra and Ashur; to the fourth century in Palmyra, Dura, Apamea and Arbela.

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