Page 19 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

6 THE BEGINNINGS

foothills of the Anatolian massif. On two sides the hills form a natural rampart,
and they were easily reinforced by a double row of walls. To the south-east
the city is exposed to easy access from the plain of Harran; but this side is
commanded by a high mount of limestone rock, crowned with a citadel which
towers over both city and countryside. Water is supplied by a river flowing
from the north-west along a deep wadi to enter the city in the south-west;
emerging in the east it joins the Gullab, itself a tributary of the Balikh. It was
called in Syriac Daisan, in Greek Scirtos—both names mean the 'leaping
[river]'. The title was appropriate.1 It was a troublesome little stream whose
waters, swollen by the onrush of the winter rains and the melting snows of
the mountains to the north, brought sudden disaster upon the city and its
inhabitants at least once in every century. Dependence on the river whose
twenty-five sources lie at some distance in the high lands would, however,
have put the city at the mercy of a determined besieger. Fortunately there are
copious springs of water within the circuit of the city walls, feeding the
famous fish-pools.
Like other cities established by the Seleucids, Orhay received new names.
On coins of Antiochus Epiphanes (died 163 B.C.) it is called 'Antioch by the
Callirhoe', or 'Antioch by the beautiful flowing [water],2—a reference, no
doubt, to the fish-pools as well as the river of Orhay. The same charming
epithet is found also of Hierapolis (Mabbog, Bambyce), where also was a
celebrated pool of fish, sacred to Atargatis, the 'Syrian goddess', whose cult
is described by Lucian; and the two cities were confused by Strabo.3 The
conferment on Orhay of the name Antioch may have implied that a military
colony there had been raised to the status of a city; it then had partial auto-
nomy in issuing coinage, with the effigy, but not the royal superscription, of
Antiochus Epiphanes. We may note that Nisibis, with which Edessa had
direct links, was refounded at the same time under the name of Antioch
Mygdonia.
More enduring was another name given to Orhay, probably at a somewhat
earlier date. The city received—under, according to tradition, Seleucus
Nicator—the name of Edessa. Why its Seleucid conquerors bestowed upon
it the name of their own capital in Macedonia we do not know. Perhaps the
luxuriance of its waters—the name of the Macedonian Edessa, now Vodena,
is derived from voda, water—or its situation among the hills recalled to some
nostalgic general the characteristics of his native town.4 This was the name
1 The name may have been used elsewhere called Antioch, named Callirrhoe from its
in the neighbourhood of Edessa and with fountain . . .').
somewhat different application; see p. 54 3 See p. 46 below.
below. * We should not regard seriously the state-
2 So also in Pliny, but there this may be the ment of a Syriac chronicler that Edessa was
result of confusion; Pliny incorrectly maintains named after the 'oldest and first' daughter of
that the city bore the name Antioch before it its founder Seleucus, and was allotted to her as
was called Edessa ('Edessa, that was formerly her dowry. Nor should we accept the suggestion

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