The RomanColoniaeof the Near East the Ptolemies in the third century..But there is only one inscription, and
no certain archaeological evidence, to show that there was a cult or construc-
tion there in the Hellenistic period.^60 The temples there are of the imperial
period, from the first century..to the third.
But what of the cult itself? Can we confidently identify, behind the Ro-
manised facade, a local ‘‘Semitic’’ cult, or even, as is now claimed, the cult
of a typical ‘‘Semitic’’ triad? That is the claim made in, and already incor-
porated in the title of, the invaluable and extraordinarily learned work on
this subject by Y. Hajjar:^61 ‘‘Les dieux d’Héliopolis prennent dans les textes
épigraphiques et littéraires les noms de Jupiter, Vénus et Mercure ou leurs
équivalents grecs selon le cas. Mais il ne fait aucun doute que ces dénomina-
tions recouvrent des entités sémitiques avec Hadad, Atargatis et un parédre
mineur dont on ignore le nom indigène.’’
It will need a little time to demonstrate how frail is the logical basis of
this assertion, all too typical of what passes for the history of religion when-
ever the ‘‘Orient,’’ or the Near East, or anything supposedly ‘‘Semitic’’ comes
to be considered. If the assertion were merely that there was a cult on this
site in the Hellenistic period, that cannot be denied. For there is precisely
one fragmentary inscription of that period, including the wordsΔιὸςἱερῷ
and [εὐσ]έβειαν.^62 We could then suppose that, as in the case of Der el-Kala,
where a cult ofTheos Balmarcodwas converted into one ofIuppiter Optimus
Maximus Balmarcodby Latin-speaking Roman veterans, so the cult of ‘‘Zeus’’
(nowhere given any Semitic appellation) at Heliopolis came in the same way
to be expressed as that ofIuppiter Optimus Maximus Heliopolitanus. But those
are the terms in which such a change must be described. For in speaking of
the identities of ancient deities, we are confronted by logical problems more
profound than simply the normal fact that what we can perceive is not these
divine entities themselves, but what our sources happen to say about them.
For the extra problem with the ancient pagan deities is that they were not
‘‘entities’’: they did not exist. What existed, and may be accessible to us, were
human beliefs and appellations, cult practices and temples. There is a per-
fectly valid sense in which ancient deities ‘‘were,’’ and can only have been,
what people at the time said they were.
If we follow strict logic, the ‘‘Semitic’’ triad of Heliopolis is the purest of
. F. Millar, ‘‘The Problem of Hellenistic Syria,’’ in A. Kuhrt and S. Sherwin-White,
eds.,Hellenism and the East(), ( chapter of the present volume).
. Y. Hajjar,La triade d’Héliopolis-BaalbekI–II (); III (). The quotation is from
vol. II, –.
. Hajjar (n. ), I, no. IGLSVI, .