Page 63 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

So EDESSA UNDER THE KINGS
impious who might disturb the dead. They were decorated with sculpture or
paintings. Here are depicted the conventional eagle and winged Victory; in
some tombs the deceased is portrayed standing or reclining as at a banquet,
often with members of his family, the mistress of the house holding a
distaff or spindle. The figures are dressed in formal, ornate costume. Some-
times the dead person has a crown, or a palm, or a tablet or a roll of parch-
ment. A man, but not a woman or child, may hold a cup of wine, evidence
that only men participated in the banquets which were so frequent a feature
of daily life. These banquets probably had religious significance, since wine
was sacred to the god Bel. At Harran there was a complex scheme of mys-
teries, of which we have garbled accounts from a late Arabic source, and
mysteries may well have figured in the Atargatis cult at Hierapolis.
When, now, we turn to Edessa under the monarchy, we find that its
inhabitants worshipped the planets like their neighbours of Palmyra, Harran,
and Hierapolis. Observation of the stars was the link, indeed, between
popular religion and the complex cosmological schemes of the philosophers.
Bardaisan, as we have mentioned, was a skilled astrologer and wrote a treatise
on the conjunction of the planets, and the Book of the Laws of Countries which
was the work of his school shows familiarity with astrological concepts. One of
the gates of Edessa was called Beth Shemesh, after the temple of the sun that
must have stood there.1 The crescent moon is depicted on coins of Edessa at
this period; on the tiara of King Abgar it is accompanied by one, two, or three
stars.2 The planets appear in the personal names of Edessans, in Syriac texts,
both at Urfa itself and in its immediate neighbourhood, on the walls of tombs,
on mosaic floors, and in literature. Among them, to cite only a few, are
'maidservant of Sin (the moon)', 'servant of Bel (Jupiter)', 'greeting of 'Atha
(Venus)', 'Shemesh (the sun) has determined', 'servant of Nabu (Mercury)'.
Mention of other astral deities is found at Edessa. ZYDallat and other
theophorous names combined with Allat show that some Edessans wor-
shipped that goddess, in common with the pagans of Arabia. The name Bar
Kalba at Edessa and at Sumatar Harabesi3 suggests the worship of the Dog
star. The sixth-century poet Jacob of Serug, who lived most of his life at
Edessa and Batnae, maintains that at Harran was a deity with the strange
title of 'Mar(i) (lord) of his dogs'; perhaps this means the hunter Orion, at
whose heels are the constellations Canis major and Canis minor. A striking
passage in the Doctrine of Addai describes the scene at Edessa at the time of
the introduction of Christianity:
I saw this city that it abounded greatly in paganism which is against God. Who is this
Nabu, a fashioned idol to which ye bow down, and Bel which ye honour ? Behold, there

1 Cf. pp. 184 f.
2 Other coins of Edessa have one or two or four stars without a crescent.
3 On this site, see p. 56 below.

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