Divine cohabitations in sanctuaries of the graeco-roman world

Resumen

ABSTRACT This study sets out to gain a better understanding of the workings of ancient polytheism by exploring one of its fundamental modus operandi: the cohabitation of gods in sanctuaries. Cohabitation is broadly understood as the permanent or temporary sharing of sacred precincts, cultic buildings, and sacrificial structures by two or more deities, rendered present through their effigies, or merely presentified on the altar at the moment of sacrifice, or in the cult place for the time of a dedication. This phenomenon is tackled from the angle of its linguistic expression through the analysis of the specific Greek lexicon used in Antiquity to qualify a god or a group of gods as the co-inhabitant(s) of another or others. The study of this terminology, attested by literary, epigraphic and papyrological sources from Classical times to Late Antiquity, imposes a large chronological and geographical framework that allows us to gain a wide vision of the problem across the Late Classical, Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean. The Greek lexicon of divine cohabitations under examination may be divided in two main classes according to the grammatical categories and the semantics of the different terms. The first group is formed by verbs pertaining to the semantic area of the foundation or consecration rituals, that is, which refer to the installation of gods in the human space by means of the ceremonial setting up of a sanctuary, a temple, an altar or a statue. They are derivative words constructed through the addition of the prefix συν-, meaning “with”, “together” or “at the same time”, to the verb ἱδρύειν and its derivatives, and to the verb καθιεροῦν: συνιδρύειν, συγκαθιδρύειν, συναφιδρύοµαι, and συγκαθιέρουν. They all express the enshrinement of several deities together. 1 More numerous and much better attested is the second group of lexical terms expressing the sharing of a sacred place, which is constituted by adjectives constructed through the addition of the prefixes συν- (“with”), ὁµο- (“the same”), ἐν- (“in”, “within”), or παρά (“alongside of”) to nouns of cult sites and ritual structures, namely τέµενος (“precinct”), ναός (“temple”, “cella”, “niche”), ἕδρα (“abode”, “throne”), θρόνος (“throne”), ἑστία (“hearth”, “altar”, or “shrine”), and βωµός (“altar”): ἐντεµένιος, -ον, ὁµοτεµένιος, -ον, σύνναος, -ον, ὁµόναος, -ον, σύνθρονος, -ον, ὁµόθρονος, -ον, πάρεδρος, -ον, σύνεδρος, -ον, συνέστῐος, -ον, ὁµέστιος, ον, σύµβωµος, -ον, ὁµοβώµιος/ὁµόβωµος, -ον. Most of these adjectives are mainly applied to the generic term θεοί (“gods”), always in its plural form, thus forming the collective and anonymous designations of divine groupings θεοὶ σύµβωµοι/ ὁµόβωµοι, θεοὶ σύνναοι, συνεστίοι θεοί and θεοὶ ἐντεµενίοι. In spite of the relative richness of this terminology, its used in Antiquity was limited and does not account for the commonality of the phenomenon of cult-site-sharing. This leads as to wonder about the specific circumstances informing the use of these terms, and hence about the particularities of the sanctuaries and cults were they were employed. This research seeks to address specifically the following issues: How was cult-sitesharing linguistically expressed and in what circumstances? Were the divine configurations of sanctuaries logical ensembles? What possible different roles did civic communities and individuals play in the creation and continuous transformation of such divine networks? To what extent and how were the divine hierarchies inherent to polytheism reflected upon the spatial arrangement and the material supports for the worship of the divine co-habitants? Did the sharing of a sacred precinct, a temple or an altar imply common rituals? Alternatively, was each co-dwelling deity venerated individually through different religious ceremonies? Could both situations occur in the same cult place depending on the ceremonial occasion? And ultimately, why make the gods co-inhabit? The study is divided in three parts, comprising a total of twelve chapters. The first two parts are dedicated to the analysis of the specific historical, sociocultural and religious contexts in which each lexical term is used, the gods it refers or relates to and the spatial arrangement it conveys in each case, and its function in the particular rhetorical situations in which it occurs. Having established this, chapter 9, closing the second part of the study, offers 2 a comparative synthesis of all the lexical terms, with the aim to identify the possible existence of a common denominator informing the use of the whole terminological set, as well as to observe the particularities of the sanctuaries and cults where the terminology is documented, namely regarding their divine configurations, spatial settings, and ritual life. The third part of this dissertation presents a case study on divine cohabitations that aims at reflecting upon this phenomenon beyond the specialized terminology: the gens Isiaca, a divine family formed in its core by Sarapis, Isis, Anubis and Harpocrates, and in its extended version by up to twelve deities pertaining to the same mythological and ritual circle. The inquiry starts with an overview of the main divine configurations and spatial settings of the Isiac sanctuaries across the Graeco-Roman world, and follows with the analysis of the divine cohabitations in the Isiac sanctuaries at Delos, a place that has yielded one of the largest amounts of documents containing linguistic expressions of cult-site-sharing. Finally, the analysis focus on the frequent presence of the formula σύνναοι θεοί in dedications to a particular god of the Isiac family, namely Zeus Helios Megas Sarapis, the divine figure with whom the temple-sharing gods are most often invoked in the Isiac context. One of the principal conclusions of this research is that among all the Greek-speaking peoples of the Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean, only the inhabitants of Ptolemaic and Roman Egypt used to address the gods in their condition of temple-sharers with others, particularly through the use of the expression σύνναοι θεοί. The gods were so-called, usually after the name of the chief temple deity with whom they dwelled, in dedications, proskynemata, hymns and oracle questions, as well as in indirect mentions of them in the official names of temples and priestly titles. This widespread usage undoubtedly stemmed from the idiosyncrasy of the Egyptian religion, especially from the conception of the great civic temples as miniature reproductions of the heavenly divine realm on earth, hence inhabited by a significant multiplicity of coherently correlated gods, codified by the priestly wisdom and orderly installed in a more or less archetypical spatial layout. To show piety to all the gods of a cult place avoiding neglect, and to extol the chief divinities of a temple by mentioning their subsidiary deities were certainly the main functions of the appeals and references to the temple-sharers. 3 In the reaming Greek-speaking Mediterranean, the application of the words and expressions for cult-site-sharers was fairly exceptional, which indicates that the divine codwellers of a sanctuary were not usually called upon collectively, nor referenced in the official names of cult sites and priesthoods, not at least under designations alluding to their condition of cult-site-sharers. These exceptional mentions are moreover mainly concentrated in three translocal cultic contexts. The first one is the cult of Sarapis, Isis and the other members of their family, the sole Egyptian deities that came to be venerated across the Graeco-Roman world. The particular concentration of testimonies to cult-site-sharers in this context clearly stems from the appropriation of the Egyptian practice to call upon collectively the subsidiary deities of the temple divine constellations within the cult of the Isiac gods, transferred from Egypt abroad. Besides the θεοὶ σύνναοι formula, the Isiac cults gather a significant number of occurrences of the θεοὶ ἐντεµένιοι expression, of singular phrases broadly alluding to the sharing of the sanctuary, and of the σύµβωµοι, these always appearing in the conjoint phrase θεοὶ σύνναοι καὶ σύµβωµοι. The second cultic context is the great Asclepieia of Greece and Asia Minor where incubatory rituals were celebrated, The great Asclepieia of the Hellenistic and Roman Eastern Mediterranean were large sacred precincts featuring one or several temples and their respective monumental altars, incubation buildings, multiple small block altars for preliminary offerings and sacrifices, stoae, and other constructions and areas with different functions. They normally hosted a multiplicity of deities genealogically and/or functionally related with Asclepius, worshipped on common or separated altars, some being presentified by their statues, placed in joint or independent temples. Due to the plurality and diversity of the cultic monuments dedicated to them, expressions of divine cohabitations with a broad meaning were appropriate to mention the multiple co-honoured gods in a simple way. The third and last transregional religious phenomenon where the terminology under examination is especially attested is the worship of local benefactors and monarchs in the sanctuaries of the immortals. Although for more than a century modern scholars have tended to describe the temple-sharing between these human figures and the gods through the adjective σύνναος, the comprehensive analysis of all the testimonies to this term reveals that this modern use does not correspond to the meanings of the word in Antiquity. In. Fact 4 σύνναος usually refer to honorary statues of humans placed in the temples of gods, not to images meant to be the object of worship. Conversely, other three terms characterize (deified) humans as the cult partners of traditional divinities: συγκαθιδρύειν, συγκαθιεροῦν and σύνθρονος. This latter adjective carried a particular acclamatory sense, denoting both cohabitation and the elevation of the honorand to a superhuman status by being co-enthroned with the divinity. Furthermore, invocations to the divine associates played important roles in the particular rhetorical situations in which the were made: calling upon the subsidiary deities inhabiting a sanctuary through appellations like σύνναοι θεοί was a manner to express piety to all the divine co-dwellers avoiding neglect, as well as a manner to praise the chief god above their companions; including them in priestly titles served to enhance the office, and hence the dignity of its holder, or simply these collective appellations were a practical way to refer to all the gods of a sacred place in cult regulations or other documents. The case study on cohabitations within the Isiac cults has revealed that, in this particularly context, the invocations to the temple-temple-sharing and altar-sharing gods of Sarapis and Isis largely depended on the conception of the Isiac gods as a coherent group, as a family. This validates the modern notion of gens Isiaca used commonly in the academic literature. The members of the Isiac family lived together in their temples and “eat” on the same altar. Hence, the σύνναοι would be in origin other members of the gens, who could have their images in the temples or in different spaces within the precinct of the sanctuary, or perhaps divinities that were not even represented in the site at all – inasmuch as σύνναος could generically designate any divine associate independently of the spatial context of the cult, it could have been used to refer to fellow deities rendered present in a cult place only at the moment of a dedication or other ritual. But with the local development of the Isiac cults, such expression could come to encompass a wide range of non-Isiac gods co-revered with the Egyptian family. The analysis of the divine cohabitations in the three Sarapieia of Delos island in chapter 11 have allowed us to assess “polytheism in the making”. Indeed, these sanctuaries provide a prime example of how the divine configurations of ancient cult places were alive, insofar as they were lived and continuously transformed by the action of the ritual agents and 5 worshippers. The multiple divine configurations attested in particular in the Sarapieion C evidence the ceaseless construction of the cult through individual action, developed in interaction with religious traditions, ideas and institutions. Four main factors seem to have shaped the formation of the sixty-five divine sequences documented by the dedications of this cult site: 1) the different compositions of the gens Isiaca, varying on the identity and the number of gods invoked together; 2) the particular aspects under which the Isiac gods are called upon, expressed through their onomastic attributes; 3) the association of the Isiac divinities, in their diverse combinations, with other gods, namely with divine puissances having akin and complementary roles, or with neighboring or major deities within the Delian religious landscape; 4) cross-cultural translations of gods. The cultic actors of the Sarapieion were not innovative in their selection of the individual deities they addressed in their dedications, as they likely made their choices based on their personal “meaningful god sets” and on the roles socially attributed to these divinities. Where they displayed creativity and religious competency was in the combinations of deities, particularly in the selection of the gods co-revered, in the onomastic formulae applied to them, and in the various kinds of relationships established between the deities, i.e. association, identification or merging to create a new syncretistic divine figure, and cross-cultural translation. Through the interplay of habit, imagination, and judgment, the cultic actors reproduced and changed the cult in interactive response to the problems posed by religious communication in a multicultural context. Finally, the analysis of the inscriptions and sanctuaries of Zeus Helios Megas Sarapis presented in chapter 12 suggests that the special attachment of this solar Sarapis to the σύνναοι θεοί formulae is due to two main factors. First, a more or less direct transmission of his cult from Egypt to the territories of reception. Second, the maintenance of a formulaic and solemn cultic language in the principal social milieux of transmission and appropriation of the cult, the military and the imperial administration. There is in fact no distinction regarding the spatial layout of the temples where this god was worshipped along with his temple-mates and those where the fellow deities are absent, or even other temples of the gens Isiaca. Like the onomastic sequence Zeus Helios Megas Sarapis, praising the god, his invocations along with the σύνναοι θεοί seem to have had an acclamatory sense in origin, but turned over time into formulary appeals to the god, which diminishes its extolling effect. 6 All the different sanctuaries and cults analyzed in this dissertation allow us to draw the general conclusion that there is normally a logic in the divine combinations of the cult sites, as the co-dwelling gods are interrelated by mythical and genealogical bonds, and/or by similar or complementary qualities and fields of action. A logic that has to be sought locally, since even the sanctuary divine configurations of “international” cults had a local color added by divine entities of the city pantheon, but also attending to the global dynamics surrounding the cults and sanctuaries. To make different divine puissances cohabit in the human space and to address them together in the ritual communication were two strategies adopted by the ancients to cope with their multiple gods. They co-enshrined and co-honoured the divine puissances with similar or complementary powers that they expected to intervene together in response to their needs. Because in polytheism, the gods were never alone, but interacted with one another and worked as a team in response to the demands of their worshippers.