Ancient Near Eastern Gods

[prometheus]

Been doing some reading, and I ran into something. The greeks would often write about different religions of their neighbors such as Cybele of Anatolia. I was reading something the other day that was written by the hellenes on Ancient Near Eastern religions. It was the Hellenistic version of the Enuma Elish which was by Berossus, forgot what the text itself was called. There are other hellenistic writers who wrote about the ancient near east such as Lucian, Herodotus (not as much on religion as the others), Berossus, Damascius, and some others. I was just curious, seeing that the greeks equated Tiamat (Talath) with their Thalassa and Apsu/Abzu (Apason) with their Pontus, would it be okay for a hellenic to worship these gods? Or would it not be such a great idea?

*Recon or just hellenic pagan, not necessarily recon and not really an eclectic view is what I am looking for

[Βλ. Ρασσιάς (Κρεσφόντης)]

The Greeks (and the Romans) equated the foreign Gods to their ethnic ones with the aim to understand the other people. They did not practice λατρεία (latreia, worship) to them. Λατρεία was practiced only in cases that beforehand a θεοκρασία (theokrasia) had been occured, e.g Amon Zeus, Apollo Bellenus etc

[prometheus]

The Greeks (and the Romans) equated the foreign Gods to their ethnic ones with the aim to understand the other people. They did not practice λατρεία (latreia, worship) to them. Λατρεία was practiced only in cases that beforehand a θεοκρασία (theokrasia) had been occured, e.g Amon Zeus, Apollo Bellenus etc

That is not true though. the ancient greeks worshipped Artemis, who came from Anatolia, as well as Apollo who came from there. There are others.

[Elektra]

The Greeks (and the Romans) equated the foreign Gods to their ethnic ones with the aim to understand the other people. They did not practice λατρεία (latreia, worship) to them. Λατρεία was practiced only in cases that beforehand a θεοκρασία (theokrasia) had been occured, e.g Amon Zeus, Apollo Bellenus etc

That is not true though. the ancient greeks worshipped Artemis, who came from Anatolia, as well as Apollo who came from there. There are others.

Actually the ancient Greeks who lived in Asia Minor, such as the Ionians and the Aeolians, worshipped Apollo and Artemis who came from Greece.

For example, Strabo speaks about the Aeolians who worshipped Apollo there as "Smintheus", and there is evidence that this epithet mentioned by Strabo was also applied to Apollo in Lesvos.

Smintheus ofcourse is a Greek word... and this says it all. So it is wrong that many people believe it is an asian word (it's something that I have been told many times...).

Moreover, archeologists find the word "Smintheus" for the first time written on pieces of clay that were found in the palace of Knossos in Crete (πινακίδα Γραμμικής Β γραφής ΚΝ V 52). To be more specific, in ancient Greek it means "mouse" (μυς - σμίνθος = ποντίκι). This is the reason why Apollo Smintheus was worshipped as a god of agriculture and originally was the protector against field mice.

Just a small example to get an idea that the cults of Apollo and his twin sister Artemis did not come from Anatolia..

[Mano Madytinos]

It is a common practice today to view the Ancient world through the norms of modern standards of distinction. We therefore often make the mistake of looking at the archaeological findings and classifying them geopolitically in accordance with the modern worlds set borders and imposed nationalities on otherwise diverse people. A prime example of what I'm talking about is the former Yugoslavia which was a country made up of many different cultural and religiously different groups of people; the minute the Eastern Block collapsed and the control which was imposed on them was no more, these different groups actually went to war with each other. So much was the difference felt!

Europe, Anatolia and the Middle East is pretty much the same as the example which I cited above. The Ancient world had no borders and no imposed national regions as we know them today. There were Ionians, Aeolians and Dorians living in what today is known as Turkey. There were Thracians and Macedonians living amongst Medes, Lycians and Persians. All in the same geographical region!

It would stand to reason therefore that religious sites were diverse in any particular area. It would stand to reason also that a temple of Apollo would be close to a temple of Bel and a temple of Aphrodite close to a temple of Astarte. This however only tells us of which peoples lived in the area and what Gods were worshipped. For us to further make presumptions about the "nationality" of the people or even to presume that because the temples were close these must have been the same Gods, I think it is wrong and just a flight of fancy. It would be imposing today's standards on the Ancient world and therefore not acceptable.

The Ionian settlements on Sicily were very definite Hellenic. We can not now presume that they were Roman just because this region now belongs to a country called Italy! Thus the only way to view the Ancient World is demographically and not geopolitically if one is to get a better picture of what was really going on. So to conclude I must say that it is completely unrealistic to argue about which Gods come from where based on the area in which relics were found or the mention of the existence of their worship in a specific area with in texts. We may only make those assumptions if we know which people worshipped there!