Manbij or Hierapolis
Bambyce ( , ) is an ancient city in the Aleppo
Governorate
, Syria
.
History
In 1879,
after the Russo-Turkish
War, a colony of Circassian from
Vidin
(Widdin
) was planted
in the ruins, and the result has been the constant discovery of
antiquities, which find their way into the bazaars of Aleppo
( in modern
Syria) and Aintab
(now
Gaziantep
, in modern Turkey
).
The place first appears in
Greek as
Bambyce, but
Pliny
(v. 23) tells us its Syrian name was
Mabog (also
Mabbog,
Mabbogh).
It was doubtless an
ancient Commagenian sanctuary; but history
records it first under the Seleucids, who
made it the chief station on their main road between Antioch
and Seleucia on
the Tigris
; and as a centre of the worship of the Syrian
Nature Goddess, Atargatis, it became known to the Greeks as the
city of the sanctuary Ιεροπολις (Ieropolis), and finally as the
Holy City Ιεραπολις (Ierapolis).
The temple was sacked by
Crassus on his way
to meet the
Parthians (53 BC).
De Dea Syria
This worship was immortalized in the tract
De Dea Syria which has traditionally been
attributed to
Lucian of Samosata,
a native of Commagene, who gave a full description of the
religious cult of the shrine and the tank of
sacred fish of
Atargatis, of which
Aelian also relates marvels. According to the
De Dea Syria, the worship was of a
phallic character,
votaries
offering little male figures of wood and
bronze. There were also huge phalli set up like
obelisks before the temple, which were
ceremoniously climbed once a year and decorated.
The temple contained a holy chamber into which only priests were
allowed to enter. A great bronze
altar stood
in front, set about with statues, and in the forecourt lived
numerous sacred animals and birds (but not swine) used for
sacrifice.
Some three hundred priests served the shrine and there were
numerous minor ministrants. The lake was the centre of sacred
festivities and it was customary for votaries to swim out and
decorate an altar standing in the middle of the water.
Self-mutilation and other
orgies went on in the temple
precinct, and there was an elaborate ritual on
entering the city and first visiting the shrine. The Shawaya now
domintaes the area.
Later history
In the third century of the Common Era the city was the capital of
the Euphratensian province and one of the great cities of Syria.
Procopius called it the greatest in that
part of the world. It was, however, ruinous when
Julian collected his troops there ere
marching to his defeat and death in
Mesopotamia, and
Khosrau I held it to ransom after the
Byzantine Emperor Justinian I had failed to put it in a state of
defence.
Harun restored it at the
end of the 8th century and it became a bone of contention between
Byzantines,
Arabs and
Turks. The
crusaders captured it from the Seljuks in the 12th century, but
Saladin retook it (1175), and later it
became the headquarters of
Hulagu and his
Mongols, who completed its ruin.
The remains are extensive, but almost wholly of late date, as is to
be expected in the case of a city which survived into Moslem times.
The walls are Arab, and no ruins of the great temple survive. The
most noteworthy relic of antiquity is the sacred lake, on two sides
of which can still be seen stepped
quays and
water-stairs. The first modern account of the site is in a short
narrative appended by
H Maundrell to his
Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem Hewasat Mumbij in
1699.
The
coinage of the city begins in the 4th
century BC with an
Aramaic series, showing
the goddess, either as a bust with
mural
crown or as riding on a
lion. She continues
to supply the chief type even during imperial times, being
generally shown seated with the
tympanum in
her hand. Other coins substitute the legend
O~.s ~vpias
‘I€poiro?urii’v, within a
wreath. It is
interesting to note that from Bambyce (near which much silk was
produced) were derived the
bombycina vestis of the Romans and,
through the crusaders, the
bombazine of
modern commerce.
References
Wikis
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