WAR IN THE HELLENISTIC WORLD

THE EFFECTS OF HELLENISTIC WARS ON RELIGION
mention of the ethnic name “Cretan.” Although there must have been
exceptions, most of the Cretans known as visitors or pilgrims to Egyptian
sanctuaries must have been soldiers, since almost all the information we
have about Cretans in Egypt concerns military personnel (see chapter 5,
section 2).
Cretan mercenaries came into contact with the Egyptian religion in many
ways. While serving in forts in the interior, they paid visits to the nearby
sanctuaries. There, they heard about the power of the gods and their miracles.
While they crossed the deserts they were as terrified as the natives,
and they fulfilled their vows in return for safe passage in the same sanctuaries
in the oases. Sometimes the gods who appeared in their dreams were the
gods of the foreign country, not their native gods. For example, a Cretan
mercenary from Phaistos made a dedication to Osiris upon divine command
(kata prostagma) – i.e., after the god had appeared in his dream or via an
oracle (SEG XX 698, ca. 200 BC).
In Alexandria, mercenary soldiers attended the impressive processions of
the ruler cult and experienced the rapid diffusion of the cult of the new
god, Sarapis, who promised security and prosperity in this life and serenity
in the next.
How much they were impressed by these experiences can be easily seen in
the inscriptions they left as pilgrims in the Egypytian sanctuaries – usually
humble graffiti scratched on the walls, but sometimes elegant dedicatory
epigrams. We find their graffiti in the oracle of Ammon in Siwa, in Abydos,
on the royal graves of Thebes (the “Syringes”), in the temple of Isis at
Philai, but most frequently in the sanctuaries of Min, who was assimilated
with the Greek Pan, in the oases east of the Nile. In Koptos, a Ptolemaic
officer from Gortyn on Crete made a dedication to Pan Euodos (“the one
who gives a good way”) and to other gods for the well-being of Ptolemy
VIII and Kleopatra (130 BC; Bernand 1987: no. 86).
In the distant region of Trogodytike, on the coast of the Red Sea, where
Nubian nomads still lived in conditions that resembled those of the Stone
Age (Strabo 16.4.17 C 775–6), visitors were exposed to great dangers. It
is here, in the Paneion of El-Kanais, that we find many graffiti in which
the soldiers express their gratitude for a safe journey. Echephyllos, another
Ptolemaic officer from Cretan Polyrhenia, made a dedication on behalf
of Ptolemy VIII in the major city of this region, Berenike Troglodyike
(ca. 124–116 BC; Bernand 1987: no. 70). The Cretan Akestimos reveals
in his graffito in the Paneion of El-Kanais the precise background of many
of these inscriptions: the safe return from a dangerous military mission.
“Akestimos, a Cretan from Kourtolia made this dedication to Pan Euodos,
having been saved from the region of the Trogodytai” (Bernand 1972:
no. 13). The military context is also evident in the dedicatory epigram of
Kallimachos for a Cretan mercenary who had fought in a campaign of
Ptolemy III in Kyrenaika (ca. 246–221 BC; see section 8.1).
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