So far, the Cilician deities discussed have been males; we have as yet found no trace of the great Mother Goddess who plays so important a part in the religion of Cappadocia and Phrygia, beyond the great dividing range of the Taurus. Yet we may suspect that she was not unknown in Cilicia, though her worship certainly seems to have been far less prominent there than in the centre of Asia Minor. The difference may perhaps be interpreted as evidence that mother-kin and hence the predominance of Mother Goddesses survived, in the bleak highlands of the interior, long after a genial climate and teeming soil had fostered the growth of a higher civilization, and with it the advance from female to male kinship, in the rich lowlands of Cilicia. Be that as it may, Cilician goddesses with or without a male partner are known to have been revered in various parts of the country.
[pg 162]Thus at Tarsus itself the goddess 'Atheh was worshipped along with Baal; their effigies are engraved on the same coins of the city. She is represented wearing a veil and seated upon a lion, with her name in Aramaic letters engraved beside her.465 Hence it would seem that at Tarsus, as at Boghaz-Keui, the Father God mated with a lion-goddess like the Phrygian Cybele or the Syrian Atargatis. Now the name Atargatis is a Greek rendering of the Aramaic 'Athar-'atheh, a compound word which includes the name of the goddess of Tarsus.466 Thus in name as well as in attributes the female partner of the Baal of Tarsus appears to correspond to Atargatis, the Syrian Mother Goddess whose image, seated on a lion or lions, was worshipped with great pomp and splendour at Hierapolis-Bambyce near the Euphrates.467 [pg 163] May we go a step farther and find a correspondence between the Baal of Tarsus and the husband-god of Atargatis at Hierapolis-Bambyce? That husband-god, like the Baal of Tarsus, was identified by the Greeks with Zeus, and Lucian tells us that the resemblance of his image to the images of Zeus was in all respects unmistakable. But his image, unlike those of Zeus, was seated upon bulls.468 In point of fact he was probably Hadad, the chief male god of the Syrians, who appears to have been a god of thunder and fertility; for at Baalbec in the Lebanon, where the ruined temple of the Sun is the most imposing monument bequeathed to the modern world by Greek art in its decline, his image grasped in his left hand a thunderbolt and ears of corn,469 and a colossal statue of the deity, found near Zenjirli in Northern Syria, represents him with a bearded human head and horns, the emblem of strength and fertility.470 A similar god of thunder and lightning was worshipped from early times by the Babylonians and Assyrians; he bore the similar name of Adad and his emblems appear to have been a thunderbolt and a bull. On an Assyrian relief his image is represented as that of a bearded man clad in a short tunic, wearing a cap with two pairs of horns, and grasping an axe in his right hand and a thunderbolt in his left. His resemblance to the Hittite god of the thundering sky was therefore very close. An alternative name for this Babylonian and Assyrian deity was Ramman, an appropriate [pg 164] term, derived from a verb ramâmu to “scream” or “roar.”471 Now we have seen that the god of Ibreez, whose attributes tally with those of the Baal of Tarsus, wears a cap adorned with bull's horns;472 that the Father God at Boghaz-Keui, meeting the Mother Goddess on her lioness, is attended by an animal which according to the usual interpretation is a bull;473 and that the bull itself was worshipped, apparently as an emblem of fertility, at Euyuk near Boghaz-Keui.474 Thus at Tarsus and Boghaz-Keui, as at Hierapolis-Bambyce, the Father God and the Mother Goddess would seem to have had as their sacred animals or emblems the bull and the lion respectively. In later times, under Greek influence, the goddess was apparently exchanged for, or converted into, the Fortune of the City, who appears on coins of Tarsus as a seated woman with veiled and turreted head, grasping ears of corn and a poppy in her hand. Her lion is gone, but a trace of him perhaps remains on a coin which exhibits the throne of the goddess adorned with a lion's leg.475 In general it would seem that the goddess Fortune, who figures commonly as the guardian of cities in the Greek East, especially in Syria, was nothing but a disguised form of Gad, the Semitic god of fortune or luck, who, though the exigencies of grammar required him to be masculine, is supposed to have been often merely a special aspect of the great goddess Astarte or Atargatis conceived as the patroness and protector of towns.476 In Oriental religion such permutations or combinations need not surprise us. To the gods all things are [pg 165] possible. In Cyprus the goddess of love wore a beard,477 and Alexander the Great sometimes disported himself in the costume of Artemis, while at other times he ransacked the divine wardrobe to figure in the garb of Hercules, of Hermes, and of Ammon.478 The change of the goddess 'Atheh of Tarsus into Gad or Fortune would be easy if we suppose that she was known as Gad-'Atheh, “Luck of 'Atheh,” which occurs as a Semitic personal name.479 In like manner the goddess of Fortune at Olba, who had her small temple beside the great temple of Zeus,480 may have been originally the consort of the native god Tark or Tarku.
Another town in Cilicia where an Oriental god and goddess appear to have been worshipped together was Mallus. The city was built on a height in the great Cilician plain near the mouth of the river Pyramus.481 Its coins exhibit two winged deities, a male and a female, in a kneeling or running attitude. On some of the coins the male deity is represented, like Janus, with two heads facing opposite ways, and with two pairs of wings, while beneath him is the forepart of a bull with a human head. The obverse of the coins which bear the female deity displays a conical stone, sometimes flanked by two bunches of grapes.482 This conical stone, like those of other Asiatic cities,483 was probably the emblem of a Mother Goddess, and the bunches of grapes indicate her fertilizing powers. The god with the two heads [pg 166] and four wings can hardly be any other than the Phoenician El, whom the Greeks called Cronus; for El was characterized by four eyes, two in front and two behind, and by three pairs of wings.484 A discrepancy in the number of wings can scarcely be deemed fatal to the identification. The god may easily have moulted some superfluous feathers on the road from Phoenicia to Mallus. On later coins of Mallus these quaint Oriental deities disappear, and are replaced by corresponding Greek deities, particularly by a head of Cronus on one side and a figure of Demeter, grasping ears of corn, on the other.485 The change doubtless sprang from a wish to assimilate the ancient native divinities to the new and fashionable divinities of the Greek pantheon. If Cronus and Demeter, the harvest god and goddess, were chosen to supplant El and his female consort, the ground of the choice must certainly have been a supposed resemblance between the two pairs of deities. We may assume, therefore, that the discarded couple, El and his wife, had also been worshipped by the husbandman as sources of fertility, the givers of corn and wine. One of these later coins of Mallus exhibits Dionysus sitting on a vine laden with ripe clusters, while on the obverse is seen a male figure guiding a yoke of oxen as if in the act of ploughing.486 These types of the vine-god and the ploughman probably represent another attempt to adapt the native religion to changed conditions, to pour the old Asiatic wine into new Greek bottles. The barbarous monster with the multiplicity of heads and wings has been reduced to a perfectly human Dionysus. The sacred but deplorable old conical stone no longer flaunts proudly on the coins; it has retired to a decent obscurity in favour of a natural and graceful vine. It is thus that a truly progressive theology keeps pace with the march of intellect. But if these things were done by the apostles of culture at Mallus, we cannot suppose that the clergy of Tarsus, the capital, lagged behind their provincial [pg 167] brethren in their efforts to place the ancient faith upon a sound modern basis. The fruit of their labours seems to have been the more or less nominal substitution of Zeus, Fortune, and Hercules for Baal, 'Atheh, and Sandan.487
We may suspect that in like manner the Sarpedonian Artemis, who had a sanctuary in South-Eastern Cilicia, near the Syrian border, was really a native goddess parading in borrowed plumes. She gave oracular responses by the mouth of inspired men, or more probably of women, who in their moments of divine ecstasy may have been deemed incarnations of her divinity.488 Another even more transparently Asiatic goddess was Perasia, or Artemis Perasia, who was worshipped at Hieropolis-Castabala in Eastern Cilicia. The extensive ruins of the ancient city, now known as Bodroum, cover the slope of a hill about three-quarters of a mile to the north of the river Pyramus. Above them towers the acropolis, built on the summit of dark grey precipices, and divided from the neighbouring mountain by a deep cutting in the rock. A mediaeval castle, built of hewn blocks of reddish-yellow limestone, has replaced the ancient citadel. The city possessed a large theatre, and was traversed by two handsome colonnades, of which some columns are still standing among the ruins. A thick growth of brushwood and grass now covers most of the site, and the place is wild and solitary. Only the wandering herdsmen encamp near the deserted city in winter and spring. The neighbourhood is treeless; yet in May magnificent fields of wheat and barley gladden the eye, and in the valleys the [pg 168] clover grows as high as the horses' knees.489 The ambiguous nature of the goddess who presided over this City of the Sanctuary (Hieropolis)490 was confessed by a puzzled worshipper, a physician named Lucius Minius Claudianus, who confided his doubts to the deity herself in some very indifferent Greek verses. He wisely left it to the goddess to say whether she was Artemis, or the Moon, or Hecate, or Aphrodite, or Demeter.491 All that we know about her is that her true name was Perasia, and that she was in the enjoyment of certain revenues.492 Further, we may reasonably conjecture that at the Cilician Castabala she was worshipped with rites like those which were held in honour of her namesake Artemis Perasia at another city of the same name, Castabala in Cappadocia. There, as we saw, the priestesses of the goddess walked over fire with bare feet unscathed.493 Probably the [pg 169] same impressive ceremony was performed before a crowd of worshippers in the Cilician Castabala also. Whatever the exact meaning of the rite may have been, the goddess was in all probability one of those Asiatic Mother Goddesses to whom the Greeks often applied the name of Artemis.494 The immunity enjoyed by the priestess in the furnace was attributed to her inspiration by the deity. In discussing the nature of inspiration or possession by a deity, the Syrian philosopher Jamblichus notes as one of its symptoms a total insensibility to pain. Many inspired persons, he tells us, “are not burned by fire, the fire not taking hold of them by reason of the divine inspiration; and many, though they are burned, perceive it not, because at the time they do not live an animal life. They pierce themselves with skewers and feel nothing. They gash their backs with hatchets, they slash their arms with daggers, and know not what they do, because their acts are not those of mere men. For impassable places become passable to those who are filled with the spirit. They rush into fire, they pass through fire, they cross rivers, like the priestess at Castabala. These things prove that under the influence of inspiration men are beside themselves, that their senses, their will, their life are those neither of man nor of beast, but that they lead another and a diviner life instead, whereby they are inspired and wholly possessed.”495 Thus in traversing the fiery furnace the priestesses of Perasia were believed to be beside themselves, to be filled with the goddess, to be in a real sense incarnations of her divinity.496
A similar touchstone of inspiration is still applied by some villagers in the Himalayan districts of North-Western [pg 170] India. Once a year they worship Airi, a local deity, who is represented by a trident and has his temples on lonely hills and desolate tracts. At his festival the people seat themselves in a circle about a bonfire. A kettle-drum is beaten, and one by one his worshippers become possessed by the god and leap with shouts round the flames. Some brand themselves with heated iron spoons and sit down in the fire. Such as escape unhurt are believed to be truly inspired, while those who burn themselves are despised as mere pretenders to the divine frenzy. Persons thus possessed by the spirit are called Airi's horses or his slaves. During the revels, which commonly last about ten days, they wear red scarves round their heads and receive alms from the faithful. These men deem themselves so holy that they will let nobody touch them, and they alone may touch the sacred trident, the emblem of their god.497 In Western Asia itself modern fanatics still practise the same austerities which were practised by their brethren in the days of Jamblichus. “Asia Minor abounds in dervishes of different orders, who lap red-hot iron, calling it their ‘rose,’ chew coals of living fire, strike their heads against solid walls, stab themselves in the cheek, the scalp, the temple, with sharp spikes set in heavy weights, shouting ‘Allah, Allah,’ and always consistently avowing that during such frenzy they are entirely insensible to pain.”498
On the whole, then, we seem to be justified in concluding that under a thin veneer of Greek humanity the barbarous native gods of Cilicia continued long to survive, and that among them the great Asiatic goddess retained a place, though not the prominent place which she held in the highlands of the interior down at least to the beginning of our era. The principle that the inspired priest or priestess represents the deity in person appears, if I am right, to [pg 171] have been recognized at Castabala and at Olba, as well as at the sanctuary of Sarpedonian Artemis. There can be no intrinsic improbability, therefore, in the view that at Tarsus also the divine triad of Baal, 'Atheh, and Sandan may also have been personated by priests and priestesses, who, on the analogy of Olba and of the great sanctuaries in the interior of Asia Minor, would originally be at the same time kings and queens, princes and princesses. Further, the burning of Sandan in effigy at Tarsus would, on this hypothesis, answer to the walk of the priestess of Perasia through the furnace at Castabala. Both were perhaps mitigations of a custom of putting the priestly king or queen, or another member of the royal family, to death by fire.