Page 66 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

RELIGION 53

seated in honour, both Nabu and Bel with their companions. All the priests were
offering sweet incense and libations, and the odour of the holocausts was diffused and
sheep and oxen were slaughtered, and the sound of music and the drum was heard in all
the town.
This altar was permitted, even according to the tendentious Doctrine of Added,
to survive into the Christian period. The chief priests of Edessa, fired by
zeal for the new religion, are said to have 'run and thrown down the altars on
which they sacrificed before Nabu and Bel—except the great altar in the
midst of the town.'
It is possible that at Edessa were observed also some less conventional
features of the cults of her neighbours. Elsewhere in Osrhoene, temples seem
to have faced eastwards like that of Hierapolis.1 But exactly as at Hierapolis
there were two great columns at the north entrance to the temple (according
to Lucian of Samosata), one bearing a dedication by Dionysos to Hera, so it
may be no coincidence that the great columns with Corinthian capitals on
the Citadel mount at Edessa stand also on the edge of the cliff to the north of
a complex of buildings. One of the Edessan columns, too, bears a dedication,
not to a goddess but to a queen.2 The statue of Queen Shalmath looked
towards the city below. Twice a year, it will be recalled, one of the columns
at Hierapolis was climbed by a representative of the cult to pray either that
no deluge should again afflict the earth or that the pious should prosper.3 By
some scholars the practice has been associated with the activities of stylites,4
for Edessa was also celebrated for its stylites.5 Nor should we ignore the fact
that the winter palace of Abgar was erected on the Citadel mount (beside a
temple?) to avoid a repetition of the disaster of 201, when his palace by the
fish-pools was destroyed by flood waters,6 since the phallobates of Hierapolis
may have implored the deities never again to send flood waters on the earth.
Much of this is surmise. In some practices, however, the analogy between
Edessa and the neighbouring cult centres is certain. The flower in the hand
of the statue of Apollo at Hierapolis finds a parallel in the Tripod mosaic.7
There a male personage proffers what may be a cap of state ;8 to his right a
female figure holds in her right hand a small golden or yellow object, perhaps
a jewel, but more probably a flower. More striking is the gesture with two

1 Cf. 56 f. below on Sumatar Harabesi. stylites, 1923.
2 For a possible explanation see p. 56 below 5 p. 109 below. The father of Simeon Sty-
on the role of Abgar in the development of lites the Younger, it should be added, was a
religion at Edessa. native of Edessa.
3 He ascended by means of wooden bosses. 6 Lucian's statement that the phallobates of
The stone bosses at Edessa have a different Hierapolis made himself a 'nest' on the top of
function, p. 26 above. Has Lucian misunder- the columns recalls the use of minarets and
stood the function of the bosses on the Hiera- other high buildings throughout this region by
politan columns? storks; no one disturbs their nests, PI. 336.
4 This interpretation has been rejected by 7 PI. 3.
other scholars, notably H. Delehaye, Les Saints 8 See p. 41 above.

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