Page 59 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

46 EDESSA UNDER THE KINGS

dominant member of a triad, to which belonged the sun, and Ishtar or Venus ;J
and the other planetary deities, Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury, were
worshipped at Harran by the so-called Sabians until the eleventh century A.D.
Mabbog, Greek Bambyce,2 better known as Hierapolis, the holy City, was
linked to Edessa by an important highroad. Both cities were regular staging
points along the route which crossed the Euphrates at Zeugma (but from the
second century A.D. at Caeciliana near Mabbog) and led to Nisibis in
the east and Singara in the south-east. Ptolemy and Chinese sources of the
third century show the route to have been used by caravans travelling
between Antioch and the Far East. Already in the first century A.D. the neo-
Pythagorean philosopher, Apollonius of Tyana, passed through Hierapolis
on his celebrated journey to India, and the same way was probably taken by
the Indian embassy which visited the Roman Emperor in about A.D. 218 in
the time of Bardaisan. The close link between Hierapolis and Edessa in both
trade and war continued long after the fall of the Aryu dynasty. But the fame
of the temple of Hierapolis was widespread. It derived its wealth, according
to Lucian of Samosata, from worshippers in Babylonia and Assyria, as well
as from Cilicia, Phoenicia, and Arabia, and even from Egypt and Ethiopia.
With Edessa it had specially close connection; Strabo even confuses the two
cities, 'Bambyce lies four parasangs3 distant from the river [Euphrates], and
they call it both Edessa and Hierapolis, and in it they worship the Syrian
goddess Atargatis.' Bardaisan, the philosopher of Edessa, is said by a late
but persistent tradition to have passed his early years at Hierapolis and to
have been instructed there by a pagan priest. The link between the cities
survived in Christian times; the envoy of Abgar to Jerusalem is held to have
passed through Hierapolis, and this city remained on the route of pilgrims,
as well as of armies, from Antioch to the East.4
The chief deity at Hierapolis was the Mother Goddess, Atargatis, or
'Athar'atha, Syriac Tar'atha, known to the people of Western Asia under
many names, but identified in Greek as Hera. Her Hierapolitan cult was car-
ried to Europe; it was widely observed in the cities of Syria and Mesopo-
tamia. Her consort was Hadad or Zeus, and a triad was completed by a
young god, called in Greek Apollo. Side by side with this triad, other planet-
ary deities were worshipped at Hierapolis, for example the sun, Atlas
(perhaps Kronos, Saturn), Hermes (Nabu, Mercury), Eileithyia, Aphrodite
1 Arabic 'Uzza, cf. 'Aziz, p. 106 n. I below, nina and her two daughters, were conducted to
2 Bombyx is the silkworm of the Near East, Hierapolis by their military escort, after fleeing
while Chinese silk is termed sericum. to Edessa in 305 or 306; they drowned them-
3 About twenty-three kilometres. selves in the river nearby. (This martyrology
4 Constantius took the road through Hiera- may, however, be legend rather than history.)
polis on his return to the west from Edessa in In, probably, the middle of the fifth century
361, and the same route was followed in the Egeria travelled through Hierapolis on her
other direction by Julian when he invaded pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Thomas at
Parthian Mesopotamia. The martyrs, Dom- Edessa. See further pp. 78, 216 n. 3.

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