Page 68 - Edessa, 'The Blessed City'-01, by J. B. Segal (Oxford, 1970). Chapters 1-3

RELIGION 55

Abraham, like the northern pool of Edessa, the Birket Ibrahim, whose fish
are 'Abraham's fish'.1 The Balikh has another source, not far away, and this
is called 'Ain Seloq, the fountain of Seleucus; and it may be conjectured that
the name of the southern pool at Urfa, Zulha, is a corrupt form of the same
name, Seloq.
Reverence for the dead was a feature of the cult-centres of this region. We
have, however, no more than one written allusion to funeral ceremonial in
Osrhoene, that is in the inscription of the tomb-tower of Serrin, dated A.D. 73.
It invokes a curse on the person who may disturb the dead man's remains
and, it continues, 'sons who shall cast dust upon his eyes shall not be found
for him'.2 As we have observed, the cave-tombs and funerary towers of
Palmyra had their counterpart at Edessa. The bodies of the deceased were
laid upon the platforms of the loculi. The relief at Deyr Yakup provides an
excellent illustration of the method employed. The figure there lies face
upward, his head resting upon a cushion and wearing a formal high head-
dress to signify his status as priest or noble.3 A common decoration of the
cave-tombs was the ritual banquet, for it appears in the reliefs of no fewer
than two tombs outside Urfa and two tombs at Kara Kopru near Urfa, and
also in one mosaic at Urfa itself—evidence that it may have been as important
an element in Edessan life as it was at Palmyra and elsewhere. One of the
reliefs near Edessa is accompanied by an inscription which informs us that the
tomb was made for a certain Seleucus in A.D. 201-2. Beside him stand his
wife, and son and daughter. A more striking picture of a funerary banquet is
shown in the mosaic, which is dated A.D. 278. The deceased man reclines, his
left elbow resting on a cushion (as in the reliefs of Palmyra) and in his hand
a stoup of wine. The couch is inlaid and has ornate carved legs. To the left
of the dead man, his wife in elegant robes and a high head-dress is seated in
an armchair, her feet on a footstool. Around him are his six children, one
holding a napkin, the other what may be a spice-box.4
We have observed that Bardaisan rejected the theory of corporeal re-
surrection but believed in the survival of the soul. Nevertheless some pagans
in Osrhoene must have maintained belief in the actual resurrection of the
body also. One tomb inscription at Edessa warns that 'he who shall move my
bones—may he have no latter end' ;5 and the Serrin inscription declares that
the devout will be blessed by all the gods and 'dwelling and life shall he have',
presumably in the world to come. The two points of view are well elaborated
by two mosaics at Edessa found in recent years. The Orpheus mosaic points
to the existence at Edessa of the cult whose followers observed forms
of ceremonial and moral self-abnegation; they avoided contact with birth
and death, and abstained from animal foods and other possible causes of

1 Cf. pp. 2, 49 above. 2 See p. 23 n. 4 above. 3 Cf. pp. 18, 52; PL 396.
4 PL 256, 2. s See p. 59 below.

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