Edward Lipinski's "El's Abode: Mythological Traditions Related to ...

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explain the mention of the festivals, but its defensors rightly observe
that the apotheosis is connected with the death of the person concerned.
This is especially true in the case of a child ns. But the second opinion,
is probably right in seeing in the passage an allusion to a ritual act.
And, since we are in the Semitic pagan world, a human sacrifice can
be ment119. Ch. Clermont-Ganneau thought already that the AejS^s
might be a spring where the young Neteiros had been thrown down
as a victim, being so apotheosized 12°. In the light of the text of Eusebius
this explanation becomes more likely. The place where such
festivals were celebrated should then be the spring of Banias, that
Josephus Flavius describes as follows :
«When, later on, through Caesar's bounty, he received additional territory,
Herod there too dedicated to him a temple of white marble near the sources of
the Jordan, at a place called Paneion. At this spot a mountain rears its summit
to an immense height aloft; at the base of the cliff is an opening into an overgrown
cavern; within this, plunging down to an immeasurable depth, is a yawning chasm,
enclosing a volume of still water, the bottom of which no soundingline has been
found long enough to reach. Outside and from beneath the cavern well up the
springs from which, as some think, the Jordan takes its rise; but we will tell the
true story of this in the sequel» m.
Josephus gives a somewhat shorter description of Paneion in his
other work, the Jewish Antiquities :
« In the mountains here there is a beautiful cave, and below it the earth slopes
steeply to a precipitous and inaccessible (afta-rov) depth, which is filled with still
Fr. CtTMONT, Catalogue des sculptures ef inscriptions antiques (monuments lapidaires}
des Musees royaux du Cinquantenaire, 2nd ed., Braxelles, 1913, p. 168, No. 141.
118 Cf. Fr. CUMONT, Lux Perpetua, Paris, 1949, p. 323-328.
119 Sacrifices of children are still attested in Syria and Phoenicia in Greek-Roman
times. Cf. Historia Augusta. Elagabalus, 8; LTTGIAN, De dea syria, 58; POKPHYRITTS,
De Abstinentia, II, 56. The latter mentions too such sacrifices in Carthage (ibid., II, 27).
Cf. also DIODORUS, Bibliotheca Historic^,, XX, 14 and 65; PUJTARCHUS, De Superstitione,
13.
120 Ch. CLSKMONT-GANNBAU, Notes d'archeologie orientale, 27. L'apotkeose de Neteiros,
in Revne Archeologique, 3rd set., 30, 1897, p. 282-299 (see p. 294-299); ID., Recueil
d'archeologie orientale, II, p. 73-78, and IV, Paris, 1901, p. 250. According to H. STOCKS,
art. cit., in Serytus, 4, 1937, p. 24, the children sacrificed in Hierapolis (LuciAJS, De dea
syria, 58) would have been precipitated in the rift under the temple, where the deluge
was commemorated {ef. LUCIAJJ , De dea syria, 13). Cf. G. GOOSSBNS, Hierapolis de Syrie,
p. 74.
121 JOSEPHUS FLAVIUS, The Jewish War, I, 21,3, § 404-406. Translation of H.St.J.
THACKERAY, Josephus, II, The Jewish War, Books I-III (The Loeb Classical Library),
London, 1927, p. 191.