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10 Belmonte Et Al THE MARRIAGE OF ASTRONOMY AND CULTURE: THEORY AND METHOD IN THE STUDY OF CULTURAL ASTRONOMY A special issue of Culture and Cosmos Vol. 21 no. 1 Spring/Summer 2017 Copyright © 2017 Culture and Cosmos All rights reserved Published by Culture and Cosmos & Sophia Centre Press England www.cultureandcosmos.org In association with the Sophia Centre for the Study of Cosmology in Culture, University of Wales Trinity Saint David, Faculty of Humanities and the Performing Arts Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales, SA48 7ED, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue card for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the Publishers. ISSN 1368-6534 Printed in Great Britain by Lightning Source Petra Revisited: An Astronomical Approach to the Nabataean Cultic Calendar Juan Antonio Belmonte and A. César González García Abstract: Petra, the ancient Nabataean capital, has been one of our main research objectives since the first field campaign on site in 1996.1 In December 2015 a new visit to the city was made to coincide with the winter solstice. Historical, ethnographic, epigraphic and archaeological records are compared in order to gain an insight on the Nabataean calendar. From this multi-source analysis two main points arise: the importance of both equinoxes and winter solstice within the lunisolar calendar and the relevance of some processions and pilgrimages. These combined with illumination effects observed and broadcasted at the principal monuments of Petra, and new important hierophanies, predicted in previous campaigns,2 indicate the relevance of these dates at the time of the Nabataeans. Winter solstice was an important event in the Nabataean cultic calendar when a festival of the main deities of the city, the God Dushara and his partner the goddess Al-Uzza, was commemorated. This probably took the form of a pilgrimage, and related cultic activities, such as ascending from the temples at the centre of the city (presumably from Qsar el Bint and the Temple of the Winged Lions), to the Monastery (Ad-Deir) through an elaborated stone-carved processional way. The relevance of the spring and autumn equinox within the cultic calendar will also be emphasized in relationship to other sacred sites in Petra, such as the Zibb Atuff obelisks, and additional Nabataean sites. In the two centuries before and after the birth of Christ, the ancient Nabataeans developed a singular culture in the harsh lands of Arabia Petraea at the frontier, then under the influence of the Hellenistic World. For generations, they carved out tombs and palaces for their kings and 1 Juan A. Belmonte, ‘Mediterranean archaeoastronomy & archaeotopography: Nabataean Petra’, in A. Lebeuf & M. Ziolkowsky, eds., Proc. V SEAC Meeting (Gdansk: Institute of Archaeology, 1999): pp. 77–90. 2 Juan A. Belmonte, A. César González García and Andrea Polcaro, ‘Light and Shadows over Petra: Astronomy and Landscape in Nabataean Lands’, Nexus 15 (2013): pp. 487–501. _________________________________________________________________ Juan Antonio Belmonte and A. César González García, ‘Petra Revisited: An Astronomical Approach to the Nabataean Cultic Calendar’, The Marriage of Astronomy and Culture, a special issue of Culture and Cosmos, Vol. 21, nos. 1 and 2, 2017, pp. 131–50. www.CultureAndCosmos.org 132 Petra Revisited: An Astronomical Approach to the Nabataean Cultic Calendar temples for their divinities in the sandstone slopes of the Shara Mountains and created one of the most fascinating places on Earth, the legendary city of Petra. There, they worshipped, above the rest of the gods, their powerful divinities Dushara and Al-Uzza. The Nabataeans had a religion inspired by the forces of nature. This was a strange mixture of elements from pre-Islamic Arabs and Hellenistic, Egyptian and Middle Eastern influences. Divinities were often represented by stone blocks (betyls or neshebet in Nabataean) although in the late period (S. I-II CE), human or quasi-human forms were developed (Fig. 1).3 The main male divinity was the god Dushara, or Dushares, very probably an astral god. His name means ‘He of Shara’, Shara being the mountain range bordering Petra to the east where the neighbourhood of Gaia, or Al- Ji (today Wadi Musa) was located. On certain occasions he seems to be a form of the god Al-Kutba (‘the one who writes’). Dushara was identified by classical writers either with Zeus, Ares or Dionysos. Triclinium no. 17 in Bab es-Siq at Petra has an inscription dated 96/95 BCE devoted to Dushara: this is the oldest dated Nabatean inscription and probably the oldest dated betyl of the god.4 According to Suidas [Theus Ares] ‘the god Dushara is worshipped by them for him they honour above all others. The image is a black stone square and unshapen, four feet high by two feet broad − one foot in thickness − (see Fig. 1d). It is set on a base of wrought gold’.5 There has been much discussion regarding the head female divinity of the Nabataeans. In Bosra, the northern Nabataean capital during the reign of Rabel II (71–106 CE), the main goddess was Allat (or Al Lat), meaning simply ‘The Goddess’. With a hypothetical solar character (As Sams, the Sun, was a female divinity in pre-Islamic Arabia), she has been identified with Athena and Atargatis (the Syrian Goddess). Her name has also been found in Palmyra (Syria), in Iriam (Wadi Rum, Jordan), and in Hatra (Iraq) and is indeed mentioned in the Quran. She is identified with the Alilat of Herodotus (Hist. III.8). 3 John F. Healey, The Religion of the Nabataeans: A Conspectus (Leiden: Brill, 2001). 4 Robert Wenning, ‘The Betyls of Petra’, Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 324 (2001): pp. 79–95. 5 Robert G. Hoyland, Arabia and the Arabs: from the Bronze Age to the coming of Islam (Oxon: Routledge, 2001): p. 183. Culture and Cosmos Juan Antonio Belmonte and A. César González García 133 Fig. 1 The principal Nabataean deities were a male god, Dushara, and a female goddess, Al-Uzza in Petra or Allat anywhere else. Other divinities were also worshipped, Manatu, goddess of fate among them. Panel (a) shows the carved betyls of these three deities at As-Siq. Panel (b) shows a relief of Manatu at Dejebel Madbah. Panel (c) a betyl of Al-Uzza discovered at the Winged Lion Temple. Panel (d) is the relief of Dushara at the Wadi Farasa trail. Panel (e) shows a Roman period female portrait of a deity found at the Qsar al-Bint temple, presumably the goddess Al-Uzza. Panel (f) shows a betyl of Isis-Al-Uzza found in excavations at Ez-Zantur Hill. Finally, panel (g) shows a Roman period young male sculpture, presumably Dushara, also found at the Qsar al-Bint temple. Diagram and images by the authors. Culture and Cosmos 134 Petra Revisited: An Astronomical Approach to the Nabataean Cultic Calendar However, in Petra, this name is never found. Instead, inscriptions refer to the goddess Al-Uzza. Her name means ‘The Most Powerful’ and she was the personification of the planet Venus − often specifically assigned to the Evening Star, identified with Aphrodite and the Cananaean Astarte, and also with the Egyptian goddess Isis.6 In inscriptions in Petra and Iriam, she is mentioned together with the ‘Master of the House’, Al-Kutba and, of course, Dushara of whom she could have been his partner or even his mother-cum-consort. It has been argued that Al-Uzza was possibly an alternative manifestation of Allat, e.g., the lion was the totem animal for both deities. Interestingly, she seldom had a double nature, being known as Al-Uzzatan, so that, according to many scholars, Allat and Uzza could go in tandem, being two faces of the same coin.7 What seems to be a completely different female personality is Manatu, a deity (or deities, since the word is a plural) who joins Dushara in several funereal inscriptions at Hegra (Median Saleh, Saudi Arabia).8 She was the goddess of fortune and the numen of the city and is usually believed to be Dushara’s daughter. Manatu, as Fate, was conceived as a trio of goddesses in antiquity.9 It is possible that the moon was one of her manifestations and she could have been represented as three adjacent betyls in several niches across Petra and Hegra (see Fig. 1). Finally, stars were also very important in pre-Islamic Arabia and bright stars and asterisms such as Sirius (Sira’) Canopus (Suhail) and the Pleiades (An-Nijm) were broadly used for guiding the caravans, establishing the dates of pilgrimages, regulating 6 Gerald R. Hawting, The Idea of Idolatry and the Emergence of Islam: From Polemic to History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): pp. 141–44. Helmut Merklein and Yvonne Gerger, ‘The Veneration Place of Isis at Wadi as- Siyyagh, Petra: New Research’, Studies in the History and Archaeology of Jordan 7 (2001): pp. 421–32. 7 See Hawting, Idea of Idolatry, p. 144. However, the Holy Quran reports in Sura 53: ‘Have thou seen Al Lat, Al-Uzza and the other, Manat, the third one. These are only names that thou and thour ancestors had given to them. Allah has not put any power in them’. According to this, these three goddesses would be different personalities who have been identified as the daughters of Allah. However, this does not necessarily would apply for Nabataean times five centuries earlier. The controversy still continues. See, e.g., Michal Gawlikowski, ‘Les dieux des Nabatéens’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II 18, no.
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