Gods on the move: Divine mobility in Hellenistic and Roman Macedonia

This research project examines the interplay between global and local in the Greco-Roman Eastern Mediterranean, using the Egyptian gods and the Syrian Goddess in Hellenistic and Roman Macedonia as case studies.* It is part of a broader project that explores the Greco-Roman Mediterranean as a globalized system, the interdependencies of localities, peoples, and ideas. The project also investigates the role of cults, especially those of migrant gods, in creating and establishing bonds of connectivity between the members of communities.

In the early Hellenistic period, during the 3rd century BCE, Isis, Sarapis, and their divine entourage began their journey from Alexandria to the cities of the Mediterranean. Detached from their Alexandrian cradle, the Egyptian gods demonstrated a strong tendency to migrate into new lands, leaving manifold testimonies of their presence in literary, archaeological, epigraphic, and numismatic sources.

The first evidence for the presence of the Egyptian gods in Macedonia dates to the early 3rd c. BCE. Their worship is attested in the large urban centers of the period, such as Thessaloniki, Dion, Beroia, Amphipolis, Pella, and later Philippi, as well as in smaller communities like Lete, Anthemous, and the area of Kozani.

Of these, the Thessaloniki cult of the gods was the most prominent in Macedonia. A temple devoted to their worship must have been one of the first sacred buildings erected in the newly-founded city of Cassander. Based on the dating of statues, the foundation of a place of worship in Thessaloniki has been dated to the early 3rd century BCE, only a few years after the foundation of the cult in Alexandria itself. The cult of the Egyptian gods in Thessaloniki evolved into one of the city’s primary cults, making Thessaloniki one of the foremost centers of Egyptian worship in the Eastern Mediterranean.

As inscriptional evidence suggests, the introduction of the cult could have been initiated by individuals due to their perceived privileged relationship with the divine. The initial establishment of Isiac cults in Macedonia also points to a practice of theoxenia, aligning with epidemia practices well-known from the classical period.

This research project has demonstrated that evidence such as the Isiac deities’ epidemia stories should also be read in a more global perspective of transcultural connectivity. Introduction narratives can be viewed as part of a mobility pattern endemic to the cults of the Egyptian deities: the introduction of the gods of Egypt is understood and projected as an individual’s initiative following a divine command. This narrative pattern, this micro-history, becomes standardized from an early period, acquiring a specific structure: epiphany-command-resistance-recurrent epiphanies and finally cultic actions honoring the god. This pattern is repeated in all fundamental narratives, literary and epigraphic, which deal with the introduction and foundation of Isiac cults in a global Mediterranean setting (cf. Delos, Alexandria, Demetrias, Priene, Samos, Laodicea).

The findings of this research revealed that one of the major adaptation strategies that evolved in the cults of the Egyptian gods was their conception as listening divinities. This is a quality that lies at the core of the Greek conception of the divine, as evidenced already in the classical period. Isiac gods assimilated and adapted these traits, creating a transcultural hybrid form, that combined in a unique form Greek and Egyptian cultural patterns, in ways that were recognizable and meaningful to people coming from varied cultural backgrounds.

Isiac deities were invoked as ἐπήκοοι (i.e. listening gods, epêkooi) and were also actively visualized as such. The inscriptions that address the Egyptian divinities as listening gods are often accompanied by reliefs depicting a single ear or a pair of ears. This practice, attested already by the late Hellensitic period and culminating in the imperial period, was especially popular in Macedonia. In Macedonia, Isis’s accentuated listening qualities were directly related to and interwoven with her divine personality. Initially, this representational mode may have been reserved only for the Egyptian deities, but it soon permeated the cults of other gods worshiped in Macedonia, particularly the cult of Artemis in her capacity as protectress of childbirth and wilderness.

Hellenistic Macedonia is one of the first places in Europe where the Syrian Goddess migrated. The evidence for divine movement from Syria to Macedonia is strikingly similar to that of the Egyptian gods. The extant sources for the worship of Atargatis in Macedonia are dated from the early Hellenistic period to the late 3rd CE and, as with the Egyptian gods, the extant evidence comes from urban centers. Moreover, the Syrian Goddess was introduced in Macedonia, roughly in the same period as the Egyptian gods—that is, in the 3rd c. BCE—and it points to an urban context.

The results of this research indicate that, in the case of the Syrian goddess, a strategy of “exotic familiarity” was employed. First, there was a process of assimilations and re-interpretations that considered the local Macedonian substratum of Mother Goddesses, who had a very long and popular history in Macedonia. Like other female divinities who migrated to Macedonia from the East, the Syrian Goddess was perceived as an austere and punishing divinity, connected to justice. She was a patroness of laws and thus of social and political order. The epigraphic and archaeological data analyzed suggest that in Macedonia, Dea Syria undertook a unique role which she had not previously acquired in her Syrian homeland: she became a goddess who presided over and guaranteed the emancipation of slaves and secured the transition from slavery to freedom.

The second adaptation strategy involved dressing the goddess in a local garment. This was achieved with the use of epithets which denoted and highlighted the local dimensions of the cult. For example, in a 3rd-century inscription from Gybrea, a small village near Pella, the goddess is addressed as a revered member of the local community in an act of emancipation of two slaves: she is referred to as the Syrian Goddess from Gybrea. This inscription demonstrates the complex assimilation strategies employed and it vividly expresses the silencing of inconsistencies and the compromising of paradoxes that intercultural connectivity might entail. This unique find also testifies to the strong emotional attachment to the goddess, which demands from her worshipers their transformation into devout followers. The research project has shown that such inscriptions are important from the point of view of cultural and religious studies, not only because they incorporate the paradoxes of global and local in a single succinct text, but also because the perception of the divinity itself has been transformed: the austere deity that emancipates slaves has a very emotional aspect indirectly related to the ecstatic nature of the cult.

Apart from the strategies of familiarity, the alterity of the cult was expressed through retained features of exoticism in its new Macedonian home. This was especially evident in the connection of the Syrian Goddess with fish. In Syrian sanctuaries the goddess had ponds with sacred fish. Although nothing like that has been excavated in Macedonian sanctuaries, the iconography of the goddess is reminiscent of her Syrian background. Figurines from Pella depict the goddess either on top of a sea creature or in a hybrid form (half woman, half fish). This constituted the Macedonian interpretation of the goddess’s peculiar connection with fish, which continued to surprise the Greeks (as it did already from the classical period) but at the same time constituted the goddess’s unique character.

This research highlights the contribution of migrant gods in transforming the Mediterranean into a sea of connectivity. Migrant divinities, such as Isis, Sarapis, and the Syrian Goddess, established cultural networks across the Mediterranean for their worshipers. Merchants, businessmen, or slaves could feel at home in Alexandria, Antioch, and Thessaloniki, as individuals on the move could find familiar cultural patterns in these cities, expressed in the landscape and in prevailing mentalities.

In conclusion, this research project has shown that cultural assimilation through common worship runs deeper: migrant divinities which had been established in communities for some time acted as a means of integration for newcomers. Moreover, this study has provided evidence that, through common worship, immigrants established themselves more easily in their communities and connected with locals—transforming worship into a connectivity hub, a constant reference of shared identity, and ultimately, a passage that facilitated their acceptance and integration by the local community.