religion 193
4. Middle Syria
the following kingdoms and cities give insight into the religion of the area
east of lebanon: the kingdom of Ṣobah, with the city Baʿalbek; geshur,
with the city Betsaida; and aram, with the cities Damascus, Malaḥa, and
tell Deir ʿalla, and other smaller towns in the Damascus region.
4.1 The Pantheonin Baʿalbek, in the kingdom of Ṣobah,328 the graeco-roman divine name
Jupiter heliopolitanus cannot hide the fact that we are dealing with a
semitic weather-god. he can be determined to be the god hadad. the
aspect of hadad as weather-god is alluded to by the semitic elements in
his iconography, such as images of bulls and astral symbolism. the gift of
the life-giving water also falls under the jurisdiction of hadad.329
to elucidate this one needs to elaborate on the etymology and seman-
tics of the place name “Baʿalbek”. in recent years it has become clear that
the origin of that place name is not “Baʿal of the Beqaʿ” as often claimed.
s. Wild has shown that this etymology must be abandoned because of
semitic linguistic reasons. a change of the middle consonant qof to kaf
and the loss of ʿayin at the end of the element beqaʿ would be expected in
semitic linguistics. it is more likely that the original divine name is baʿal
nebek, which can be interpreted as “Baʿal of the spring”.330
however, the question remains whether the element “Baʿal” represents
a divine name or the divine epithet “lord”, which is more likely in an ara-
maean cultural context with a view on palmyra. in this case the original
form is “(hadad, who is) lord of the spring”.
at the side of the god hadad of Baʿalbek was the goddess atargatis, who
became known there as Venus.331
important evidence for the cult of the moon-god in the kingdom
geshur332 comes from the city Betsaida near the sea of galilee. During
excavations in the 1990s a stele with a relief was recovered from the area
328 on the kingdom of Ṣobah, cf. the references in Dion 1997: 172–176; lipiński 2000a:
319–345; niehr 2010a: 301–304.
329 on Jupiter heliopolitanus, cf. esp. Fleischer 1973: 326–369; hajjar 1977; id. 1985:
21–135, 205–229; id. 1990: 2468–2484.
330 cf. Wild 1973: 219–223.
331 on the goddess atargatis of Baʿalbek, cf. esp. Fleischer 1973: 273–275; id. 1986;
hajjar 1985: 135–157, 229–236; id. 1990: 2485–2488; Drijvers 1986: 357.
332 cf. niehr 2010a: 304–308.