Page 60 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

RELIGION 47
(Venus). Within this pattern Atargatis was regarded as the moon, Hadad as
Jupiter, Apollo, in warlike costume, as Mars.
The great temple of Bel at Palmyra stood in the middle of an esplanade of
Corinthian columns nearly fourteen metres high; around it was a wall, and
the entrance was from the west. At Harran the arrangement and order of
temples built to the planets, and the heights of the idols seem to have con-
formed to the distance from the earth of each planet as calculated by
astronomers. Each temple had its peculiar shape and colour, the idol was of
a particular substance and to each deity was allotted his day of the week.1 At
Hierapolis the temple to Atargatis was surrounded by a wall; it was orientated
to the east, the entrance was from the north. It was ablaze with gold and sweet
with incense. In an inner shrine, open to the air, which only certain priests
might enter, stood three golden statues: Atargatis, borne on lions, carried in
one hand a sceptre, in the other a distaff, on her head were rays and a tower,
and she had the attributes of several goddesses including Athene, Aphrodite,
and Selene; Hadad, borne on bulls, had the attributes of Zeus; and between
the two was an emblem, called 'Semeion' by the people of the country2,
resembling the standard of the Roman legions, and surmounted by a dove.
Elsewhere in the temple were idols of the other deities, and only the sun was
represented by a throne without a statue. Apollo, according to one source, was
shown in armour, with a spear in his right hand, a flower in his left. Outside
the temple stood statues of demigods with animal attributes, and of kings and
queens, heroes and priests, and a bronze altar.
The temple personnel at Palmyra were dressed in long-sleeved white
robes falling to the calves, on their heads they wore a high conical bonnet, and
their feet were bare.3 The same costume was worn by the numerous priests
at Hierapolis. But there the High Priest, who was elected to his office for one
year, alone wore purple robes and a golden tiara. Also at Hierapolis there
were a lower order of temple attendants who were musicians with pipes and
flutes, a number of women possessed by frenzy, and men who, under the
emotional sway of the music of flutes and tambourines, of singing, gesticu-
lation, and dancing, castrated themselves outside the temple of the Mother
Goddess. Special dress was worn by crowds of pilgrims who performed
ritual sacrifice; the pilgrims for each city were instructed by a host, 'whom
the Assyrians called "teacher" '.
Temple ceremonial at Palmyra, as elsewhere, included sacrifice, the offer-
ing of libations and incense, and the recital of prayers. Worshippers held
up their right hand in a gesture of adoration, in their left hand they grasped
a flower or a bunch of twigs as an aspergillum; sometimes they held cups,

1 Details are given in the present writer's 'Assyrians'.
'The Sabian Mysteries', in E. Bacon, ed., 3 This is admirably illustrated in tableaux
Vanished Civilizations, 1963, 201. of the latter half of the first century A.D. at
* Lucian, de Dea syra, refers to them as Dura Europos.

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