Bel at Palmyra and Elsewhere in the Parthian Period
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ARAM, 7 (1995) 137-151 137 BEL AT PALMYRA 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 an agora, a colonnaded street and a theatre. Yet its main temple is dedicated to the god Bel, 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 Yarhibol at Dura in 34/33 BC. By that time it has generally been supposed that Babylon and its cuneiform 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 Tiamat rather than Zeus fighting Typhon, 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 Euphrates and to Apamea on the Orontes. The presence of the apparently Mesopotamian gods Bel and Nabu 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 me to participate – as an Assyriologist and not as an expert on Palmyra. 2 Seyrig, H., “Bel de Palmyre”, Syria, 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 Aramaic 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 relief sculpture, 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 Marduk, the god who takes the part of the hero at the New Year or akitu 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 Assyria, and that the god Ashur 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 Babylonia”, 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 temple of Bel 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 Mesopotamia. The temple of Bel at Palmyra had an inner sanctum called haikal, the Babylonian word for a palace 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 Persians 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.