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The Heritage of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East


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Assyrians first to worship Aphrodite (1)

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12 Assyrian Identity



03 Religious festivals, cults, rituals and practices

Keywords
Aphrodite
temples
Period
2nd century CE
Roman Empire
Channel
Helleno-Roman philosophers and scholars


Text
The Assyrians are credited by Pausanias with being the first to worship Aphrodite (Ištar) and from them this worship spread to other areas.

Pausanias 1.14.7:
Hard by is a sanctuary of the Heavenly Aphrodite; the first men to establish her cult were the Assyrians, after the Assyrians the Paphians of Cyprus and the Phoenicians who live at Ascalon in Palestine; the Phoenicians taught her worship to the people of Cythera. Among the Athenians the cult was established by Aegeus, who thought that he was childless (he had, in fact, no children at the time) and that his sisters had suffered their misfortune because of the wrath of Heavenly Aphrodite. The statue still extant is of Parian marble and is the work of Pheidias. One of the Athenian parishes is that of the Athmoneis, who say that Porphyrion, an earlier king than Actaeus, founded their sanctuary of the Heavenly One. But the traditions current among the Parishes often differ altogether from those of the city.


Source (list of abbreviations) (source links will open in a new browser window)
Pausanias 1.14.7

Robert Whiting


URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0000060.php


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