Iranians and Greeks in South Russia - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian ...

INTHEROMAN PERIOD 179
I have mentioned the cult of the Great Goddess, which in Greek
disguise continued to be the principal cult among the Greek and native
population. With this cult, as we have seen, was associated that of
the Great God. The only native names of these deities which are
preserved are Sanerges and Astara, names which remind us of Hittite
Asia Minor : they appear in a Hellenistic inscription.
In the Roman period, the part which the Great Goddess plays in
the coinage of Dynamis points to a resurrection or a fresh manifestation
of the ancient beHefs. I pointed out that the old sanctuaries of
the Goddess never ceased to exist, and that they were protected by
the sovereigns of the Bosphorus. At Panticapaeum, as everywhere
else, the Roman epoch was a period of religious syncretism. But
through all this syncretism the Great Goddess preserves her dominant
position. It is true that Demeter and Persephone were chthonic
divinities above everything else, and it is not surprising to find them
in tombs, as defenders of the dead in the world beyond the grave.
The presence of Orphic influence is also natural, considering the
importance of Orphism in the Roman period. Nevertheless, it
may well have been due to native influence, to the cult of the Great
Goddess, that the scenes depicted in the tombs are taken almost
exclusively from the Eleusino-Orphic cycle. At the period when
native influence in the Bosphorus becomes strongly marked, in the
second and third centuries a. d., there was a vigorous revival of the
cult of the Great Goddess in the official religion. We have seen that
the Great Goddess, the patroness of the kingdom, appears on the
reverse of nearly all Bosphoran bronze coins from the third century
onwards. At Chersonesus we find the same.
But side by side with the worship of the Great Goddess, the
worship of the Great God increases in importance, and is coupled
with a noticeable tendency towards monotheism. The chief divinity
revered by the official colleges was the supreme God, @eos "Ti/zto-ros.
He appears in the barbarous tomb paintings of the third century a. d.,
accompanied by orgiasts engaged in ritual acts. It has been proposed,
on the strength of analogies from Asia Minor, to attribute this cult
to the influence of the Jewish and Thracian religions, to see in it a
syncretism of Sabaziasts and Sabbathiasts. It is true that there was
a powerful Jewish colony in the Bosphorus by the first century A. D.
it probably came from Asia Minor. But here as everywhere, the
Jewish colony kept to itself. Hardly any Jewish names occur in the
college lists : and yet it was the members of the colleges who were
the principal votaries of the Great God. I believe, therefore, that in
South Russia the cult of the @eos "Txjjio-tos was related, first and
: