Purity of Body and Soul in the Cult of Athena Lindia: On the Eastern Background of Greek Abstentions
p. 225-255
Note de l’auteur
We are very grateful to the organisers of the conference, Jan-Mathieu (Mat) Carbon and Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge, and the participants for their comments, encouragement and stimulating discussion. Furthermore, we are indebted to Mat Carbon, Angelos Chaniotis and Saskia Peels for their comments on written versions of this paper. We have profited greatly from comments by Gianfranco Agosti, Josine Blok, Pierre Bonnechere, Christopher Faraone, Valentina Garulli, Stella Georgoudi and Emmanuel Voutiras. We are very grateful to Mr. John Lund for providing us with a high-resolution photography of LSS 91 (Fig. 2), printed here courtesy of the National Museum of Denmark.
Texte intégral
1. On Ascent
1The spectacular Lindian Acropolis, sitting atop of a stately natural cliff peaking above the coastline at one hundred and sixteen meters, commands breath-taking views over the town’s two elegant harbours facing the East. The larger one to the north of the Acropolis is open to the sea, with its coastline resembling the top bit of a dog’s bone. The smaller one, nestled to the south and egg-shaped, is almost completely closed off by an outer rock wall surging from the sea: a sheltered and calm cove rather than a proper harbour, it is named after St. Paul whom it allegedly received after a shipwreck. The small Doric temple of Athena Lindia occupies the position towards the tip of the triangular plateau that is the Acropolis and leans against its eastern supporting wall, standing proud above the abyss. Sit on the stylobate of the southern colonnade of the temple on a clear day, and you can spot ferries headed from Port Said and Alexandria towards cities of western Asia Minor, Aegean islands and mainland Greece.1 As the crow flies, some 310 nautical miles separate Lindos town from Alexandria—four days of sailing in antiquity.2 In the blinding sun of a hot summer’s day, and most summer’s days are hot and dry on the eastern and southern coast of Rhodes, gushes of fiery sirocco can spread a fair amount of Saharan dust and sand, making a donkey-less climb up to the Acropolis somewhat challenging even for the fit. If you, as the authors of this essay did, happen to ascend the Lindian Acropolis on such a day, when harsh dust sits deep in your throat and nostrils, and the punishing sun stings from above and below, reflected by the shiny, well-trodden stairs and the rocky walls, every taxing step up the majestic (yet steep) stairs leading from the town to the sanctuary might invite you to question your resolve. Should you persist, however, and reach the rock’s summit, you will find your reward in one of the bluest, most enchanting Mediterranean vistas that provides an unforgettable backdrop to the white glowing complex of sacral buildings.
2The ways in which Greeks approached their sanctuaries, the conditions they were required to fulfill, and what was to be avoided: these subjects are intimated in a fair number of Greek literary and epigraphic sources from the Classical period onwards.3 The position of a sanctuary mattered greatly, averred Xenophon’s Socrates, since the journey itself offered an opportunity for the worshipper to acquire the correct religious disposition: temples and altars should have a conspicuous place off the beaten path, writes Xenophon, for “it is pleasant to make a prayer just on seeing them and to approach them being in a state of religious purity”.4 Arguably, very few sanctuaries occupy a position more conspicuous than that of Athena Lindia. How did the ancient visitors approach this popular and cosmopolitan sanctuary,5 visible from afar on the open sea and in the hilly inland, and what was expected of them in terms of religious purity? These are some of the questions we wish to raise.
3Our essay has two fundamental objectives. The first one is to investigate purity requirements in an intriguing inscription that was set up at the entry to the sanctuary of Athena Lindia on Rhodes (I.Lindos II 487 = LSS 91), to discuss the textual form of this document and its religious context, and to identify its place within Greek purity doctrine. A special emphasis is placed on the notion of ‘inner purity’ or purity of the soul that this regulation requires. Our second objective is to explore the cultural and religious contexts that may have influenced the content of this text. Accordingly, we have two central contentions. Our first contention is that, while the Lindian text mirrors to a large extent Greek tradition of entry-regulations, it resonates also with Near Eastern, in particular Egyptian practices and religious prescriptions.6 Our second contention is that, when we encounter requests for specific periods of abstentions in Greek ritual norms, we are predominantly dealing either with Eastern cults, or with Greek cults that have been exposed to significant influences from near Eastern religious traditions.
2. The place of LSS 91 in the tradition of Greek entry regulations
4The entry regulation from the temple of Athena Lindia represents one of the most detailed prescriptions concerning purity requirements under which the visitors gained access to the temenos and the temple of the goddess. Texts prescribing cathartic policies of a sanctuary were in antiquity often referred to as programmata, as a well-known passage from Lucian demonstrates. Commenting on preparations for blood sacrifice, Lucian states: “the programma states that no-one is to pass the lustral basin who is not clean of hands.”7 Hence, programma, along with its cognates (esp. prografē; prografō), was one of the emic terms Greeks employed for religious regulations, and also specifically for the regulations detailing purity conditions a worshipper was required to fulfil in order to obtain auspicious entry to a sanctuary. Naturally, as in Lucian’s passage, such entry regulations were particularly concerned with the issues of access and the conditions under which was one deemed katharos, hagnos or in a fit state to gain access to a divinity.8 Regulations of this kind were never vested with a formal civic authority,9 even if the term programma itself has developed associations with a range of issuing authorities and acquired a wider generic application.10 By late antiquity, the term was used also more broadly, for inscriptions on gates of sanctuaries and on temple facades such as the famous maxim from Delphi, gnōthi sauton, as a passage from Agathias Scholasticus indicates.11 In what follows, we use term programma as a shorthand referring specifically to Greek entry and/or cathartic regulations.
5The epigraphic record preserves around forty texts which can be classed as either entry regulations in general, inscriptions of other genres which also refer to purity conditions requested for an entry into a sanctuary, or entry cum cathartic regulations concerned with rights of access to the temenos or participation in cult. Such texts may include references to abstentions, or specify exact periods of abstentions necessary to obtain purity. We present now the first full dossier of these texts, according to the standard editions of the material.12 We exclude the texts concerning purity regulations and purification procedures clearly entirely unrelated to acquisition of entry to a sanctuary. We split the material in two tables: the first table lists regulations which contain no requests for specific periods of abstention (no periods of abstention = NPA); the second table lists those that do (with periods of abstention = WPA):
Table 1. Rules with no periods of abstention (NPA):

Table 2. Rules with periods of abstention (WPA):

6The earliest of these texts, coming from the fifth century BC, tend to be concise, often comprising one or two lines, and as a rule pertain to prohibitions or exclusions (ethnic, gender, objects, absolute), rather than abstentions from contact with sources of pollution.13 The two earliest texts that contain precisely formulated periods of abstentions (hagneiai) are attested in cults of originally non-Greek and explicitly foreign deities: WPA 13, a fourth century BC regulation from Metropolis in Ionia pertains to the cult of a mother-goddess, Mater Gallesia (LSAM 29) and prescribes a set of abstentions. The inscription combines cathartic concerns with an interest in just behaviour (dikaia).14 Specific periods of abstentions are then also attested in WPA 16, a third-century-BC regulation from Arcadia, in the Megalopolitan cult of Isis, Sarapis and Anoubis (NGSL 7). Inscriptions of this kind, cathartic norms specifying exact periods of abstentions, become widely spread in late Hellenistic and Imperial period.
7The entry regulation from Lindos, WPA 6, surpasses all other comparable texts in the level of detail it displays. This text stands out with regard to its elaborate structure, the areas of concern it documents, and the religious traditions it reflects. We print the text in its entirety, comprising 22 lines of prose and 4 of verse, and offer several epigraphic remarks (I.Lindos II 487 = LSS 91):15

Note16
8The text is carved on a corniced freestanding rectangular cippus of grey Lartian marble (Fig. 2),17 which was originally inscribed on three sides in the early first century AD. The original inscription recorded a psephisma concerning financial reforms in the cult of Athena Lindia and Zeus Polieus, conducted in AD 22.18 At some point in the late second or early third century AD, the stone was moved from its original location in vicinity of the temple of Athena Lindia,19 and reused: the cippus was turned upside down so that the original cornice became the stone’s base. Once turned around, the cornice to the front was hammered off on purpose, probably in order to fit its new location at the entrance to the propylaea of the temenos of Athena Lindia (see Fig. 1, where the star denotes the inscription’s putative location), and the text was inscribed on the stone’s fourth, smooth, face.20 Hence, an ancient visitor to the sanctuary of Athena Lindia, having reached the summit, would have to pass through the stoa, then climb another fifty or so stairs in order to reach the propylaea that control the access to the sanctuary proper, read this inscription and wonder: am I pure enough and enter, or should I, perhaps, return home instead?
9The top of the stone with the first line is damaged, as is, to a smaller extent, the right side, but the face is generally well preserved. An elegant hand provided somewhat dense but, in a Lindian context at least, comfortably large letters of about two centimeters on average, securing good readability.21 Palaeographic observations on indicative letters (especially phi, rho and omega), fickle guides as they are, suggest a date in the early third century AD.22 Care is evident throughout the document’s layout: space has been left in lines 11-15 and line 18 between the references to the sources of pollution and the alphanumeric indication of the periods required in order to acquire purity. The final word of the prose text, χρώμενοι (l. 22), is inscribed in somewhat larger letters and carefully placed at the centre of the line, signalling with its position and the empty spaces on its both sides a transition to the two elegiac distichs of lines 23-26. In the epigram itself, an empty space in the first line of the pentameter draws the readers’ attention to the key message of the text— “if you come pure (vac.) then, stranger, with confidence”.
10No other purity regulation displays a comparable layout. We know of seven further verse-inscriptions dealing with cathartic or entry requirements and four literary examples.23 Of these seven inscriptions, only one text combines a metrical programma with a regulation in prose (LSS 108, notably also from Rhodes, 1st c. AD). That text, two centuries younger than LSS 91, is inscribed in such a way that prose and meter are completely merged together, and there is no visual indication that an elegiac distich has been inserted between a list of hagneiai and the section detailing rules for sacrificial ritual.24 Since the rest—six metrical programmata surviving on stone—were inscribed in a self-standing fashion and separately from other ritual norms (including the oldest one, IC I.xxiii 3 from Phaistos, carved on a tabula ansata), we may be led to conclude that both Rhodian programmata (LSS 91 and 108) are re-publications of older texts. Angelos Chaniotis recently observed that LSS 91 combines “old and new elements” in a remarkable way.25 In our view, the text of LSS 91, as it survives, very likely represents the result of a particular textual tradition—the remarkable structure of the entry regulation seems to stem from editing work conducted by the priests of Athena Lindia in the third century AD. If this is correct, then the redaction, conducted perhaps in the course of cultic reforms,26 sought to conjoin and publish in one place two texts (a list of hagneiai and a metrical programma) that were inscribed separately on the Acropolis. The difference in the layout between LSS 91 and 108, then, might be explained by the two centuries separating the two texts: from the second century AD onwards, we note an increasing influence of the modes of textual transmission on the form of inscriptional publication of a literary text.27
3. Purity clauses in the preamble of LSS 91
11In its third-century-AD form, the text from the temple of Athena Lindia features a remarkable tripartite structure and a ring-composition: the preamble with the first five lines constitutes a summary of the regulation, the next seventeen lines represent a catalogue of the sources of pollution, including periods and means necessary for gaining ritual purity, and the epigram with its final four lines reinforces the topic of the universal purity of the visitor introduced at the beginning of the regulation.
12We turn to the translation and analysis of the regulation:
Visitors may proceed as pure according to the regulations within the lustral basins and the gates of the temple: let them enter piously, abstaining from looking at [breast-fed?] children, purified from causes of divine wrath, from causes of pollution and transgression, (5) not only in respect to their body, but also to their soul. They are not to carry iron weapons. They are to wear pure clothes, without head-gear. Without shoes, or in white sandals, but not made of goat skin. One should have nothing goat-y. (10) And no knots in (one’s) belts. After miscarriage by a woman, or a bitch, or an ass, 41 days. After deflowering, 41 days. After death of a member of the household, 41 days. After washing of the corpse, seven days. After a visit (of the house of a deceased person), three days. (15) After [contact with] a woman who has delivered a child, three days. A woman who has delivered a child, 21 days. After [menstruati] on, after the woman has cleansed herself. After sex, after one has washed or cleansed himself. After [sex with] a prostitute, one day. After things unlawful,28 one is never pure. (20) Priests, singers, musicians, performers of hymns, temple attendants, after involuntary [pollution], are always pure after sacred purifier’s29 application. You have trodden the virtue-bringing path toward Olympus, so enter—If you are coming pure—stranger, then enter with confidence, but if you are carrying blame with you, leave the blameless temple—go wherever you want, but stay away from Athena´s precinct.
13The preamble requests universal purity of the visitor which is introduced through a series of specific requests, and defined in terms of the space which it concerns: lines 1-2 [κα]θαρο[ὺ]ς̣ π̣[αρίναι κατὰ ὑποκείμενα]· [π]εριραντηρίων εἴσω καὶ τῶν τοῦ ναοῦ [πυλῶν]. The text specifies that the katharoi, “ritually pure” in this context, are allowed both within the perirrhanteria, the area with the lustral basins, and within the gates of temple. These are two distinct areas, and the Lindian archaeological record indicates that lustral basins were placed close to the entrance to the temenos, while the gates of the temple would be expected to belong to the temenos proper.30 In any case, the twofold designation of rights of access in the preamble is remarkable and unique. It is, in our view, a reflex of zonal thinking about sacred space, and possibly highlights original distinctions between rights of access to distinct areas within the sacred ground: instead of stating generally “you may enter the hieron under the following conditions”—as is the most common and customary practice31—the text specifies the conditions under which the visitor is allowed both within the perirrhanteria and the area of the temple proper. This distinction might very well indicate that there were other cases where the conditions of purity that allowed the visitor inside the perirrhanteria only were different and, perhaps, less stringent than the higher degrees of purity that were requested for access to the more sacred areas as the temple and its naos. In short, degrees of purity can correspond to levels and depth of penetration into the sacred space, as one can tell from well-known distinctions in terms of rights of entry to an adyton/abaton.32
14What follows in the preamble’s lines three to five represents a hierarchy of purity requirements defined by spatial, temporal and sensory distance from contagion. In this hierarchy, the exposure to a source of miasma is defined by seeing what ought not be seen, being in physical contact with a pollutant, performing polluting deeds, and, finally, having an incorrect inner disposition. Line three is epigraphically problematic, but what seems unequivocal is that the visitors are requested to abstain from looking at a source of pollution. If we follow Blinkenberg’s restitution [ἴ]ναι ὅσιον φειδομένους ὁράσεως τέκνων βδ̣[αλλόντων],33 then visitors were requested to abstain from looking at children being breast-fed. This is a rather strange request, cropping up unexpectedly in a general section of the document, and it appeared strange to Sokolowski as well, whose conjecture (βλ[άστης]) attempts to avoid the notion of breast-feeding. But we do know of two documents in which nursing women were excluded from participation in cult, or breast-feeding appears to be polluting.34 Why? If the reading is correct, and if we follow the logic intrinsic to Greek taboos, the potential source of pollution might be milk itself—being a bodily flow, it might be thought polluting. Perhaps it is relevant in this context to mention that ancient thinkers considered mothers’ milk to be a product of putrefied or fully concocted blood.35
15However, Blinkenberg has identified Athena Lindia’s particular function as a protector of females in liminal situations (marriage, childbirth), but went on to suggest that the prohibition of looking at breastfeeding women in the sanctuary was probably “une innovation tardive”, and that it was for this reason that we find it at the beginning of the text.36 We find this reasoning unconvincing. The kourotrophic aspect of Athena Lindia represents one of the most ancient aspects of her cult, with often observed prehistoric roots, and is attested by some 100 statuettes representing kourotrophoi unearthed in two deposits: one west of the propylaea ( “big deposit”), where our text stood, and one north of the big portico ( “small deposit”). The statues predominantly representing women with babies are dated from early sixth century BC to the end of the fifth century BC ( “big deposit”), and to the third century BC ( “small deposit”). In fact, “the strongest cult of a nursing Goddess in the islands seems to have been that of Athena Lindia in Rhodes”.37 Moreover, the aetiological narrative of the cult itself established Athena as a protector of women in liminal stages.38 The prominent textual position of the request not to look at breastfed children, then, is most likely to be explained by the importance of the kourotrophic aspect of the cult, and the corresponding presence of nursing mothers at the sanctuary.
16What is striking about this clause is that it is the act of viewing, ὅρασις, that appears to be the source of religious danger: in order to enter the sanctuary pure and hosion, “piously” or “in a religiously correct manner”, one must abstain from looking at breastfed children. Seeing as a sensory way of exposing oneself to religious danger is relatively well documented in mythological narratives, in tales of wretched destinies of humans who saw unsuspecting divinities, but this is not otherwise attested in cathartic norms.39 Egyptian priests, however, were concerned about pollution by viewing, and “abstained from looking” at beans as Herodotus reports—for they considered the beans impure (ou katharon, Hdt. 2.37.5). This, of course, does not eliminate from interpretation concomitant social concerns: perhaps the nursing mothers who gathered at the temple of Athena needed to be protected from prying eyes—elsewhere in this text, too, we note the tendency to combine issues of morality with religious concerns. Nevertheless, in terms of exposure to a source of miasma, line three requests a spatial and sensory distance from the pollutant—no matter how we restitute the text, it is ‘seeing’ a potential source of contagion that is forbidden.
17Line four is truly unique in the entire corpus of cathartic programmata, as it groups together three distinct forms of religious danger: enagēs, being under curse, or “in grip of an avenging power”, anagnos, or having been in contact with a taboo, and, finally, athesmos, presumably a transgression against divine and human law.40 While the first two terms belong firmly to the language of the Greek purity doctrine and derive their meanings from traditional concepts of agos, “perilous consecration” resulting from a religious transgression, and hagneia, ritual purity acquired by abstention, the noun athesmos, denoting violation of divine and human laws, is somewhat surprising in this context.41 We translate this line as “being unpolluted by any cursed (person/ thing), impure (person/thing) and unlawful (person/thing)”. One noteworthy feature of the line is that it introduces a complex set of abstract requests marked out by distances from the source of contagion: after the spatial and sensory distance implied in the request to abstain from viewing breast-fed children, there follows a demand to be pure [ἀ] πὸ παντὸς ἐναγοῦς, ~ “from any curse”, which could be taken as a request for temporal distance (with ‘curse’ being a reflex of a previous contagion). Thereafter follows ἀνάγνου, ~ which would be a bodily distance, ‘impurity’ in the sense of contagion of polluting matters, be it that it is inflicted through an act or a contact. If ἀθέσμου refers to violations of divine and human order, then we enter yet further levels of abstraction, which find their crescendo in the statement of line 5: μὴ τὸ [σῶ]μα μόνον ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν ψυχὴν κεκαθαρμένου[ς], “purified not only in respect to their body, but also to their soul”. Thus we encounter a request for purity of the soul, which marks the distance from the sources of pollution to the greatest possible extent—from “do not look”, to “do not do” and “do not touch”, to, finally, “do not even think about it”.
18Inner purity, often articulated as purity of noetic or psychic functions and organs (gnōmē, nous, phrenes, psychē), represents a concept which is attested in Greek religion from early poetry onwards. However, as Chaniotis pointed out, religious norms start referring to it only from the fourth century BC, when we find a request of a worshipper to enter the sanctuary of Asclepius being hagnos, and “hagneia is to think religiously correct thoughts (hosia)”.42 In Chaniotis’ view, it was the impact of legal distinctions in homicide law highlighting the role of intentionality, and a differentiated attitude towards the afterlife, that influenced ritual norms to include references to inner disposition alongside physical requirements.43 Alongside these two factors, Chaniotis observes a further force shaping articulations of inner purity in sacred norms: competition between cults and sanctuaries, which led to redefinitions of what purity entailed. Already at Epidaurus “the exegetical phrase hagneia d’ esti, ‛ (true) purity is’, is addressed to the ignorant; it presupposes the existence of those who did not know what hagneia means, or who had different views on the matter”, and the same polemical tone is identifiable also in the case of the Lindian programma.44
19Furthermore, alongside the influence of changing views about the role of intentionality in homicide law, there could have been yet another reason why the purity of mind appears as a requirement precisely in the cult of Asclepius. As a god of salvation through healing, Asclepius demanded a particularly strong internal investment from his worshippers, as evidenced in the Iamata, the inscriptional testimonies of instances of successful healing in his Epidaurian sanctuary. In some stories, visitors of the sanctuary demonstrate disbelief at or even ridicule the recorded instances of successful salvation. They are forced to first accept the miraculous healings as a fact, that is, to believe the attestations of miraculous healing of others, in order to be healed themselves.45 Such tales testify to the importance of an internal investment of Asclepius’ worshippers. In this sense, Chaniotis suspects that “the ancient perception of disease as a result of crime and the requirement of repentance for cure” represent the reason why cults of Asclepius adopted the notion of purity of the mind.46 Two further complementary reasons might be the notion of divine proximity, and the notion of salvation: the worshippers were supposed to physically dwell in the sanctuary for extended periods of time and to mentally experience a divine epiphany, usually in a dream. Hence, the proximity of the worshippers to the god during the incubation and the dream-encounter may also have influenced the type and degree of purity expected from the worshippers. Secondly, the expectance of personal salvation may have raised the stakes the worshipper was expected to provide: it could be argued that, in order to be (not just healed, but effectively) saved by the god, the worshippers of this god had to demonstrate a higher, more complex degree of purity, not just of the body, but also of the mind.
20It is in our opinion indicative that we can detect a similar, epiphanic and soteriological aspect in the cult of Athena Lindia. At various points in the history of the city, the goddess appeared in order to save the citizens. First during the Persian invasions in the fifth century BC, then when her cult-image in the temple was defiled and needed cleansing in the fourth century BC, and afterwards again in the 305 BC when Rhodes had been besieged by Demetrius I Poliorcetes for a full year.47 It may have been the soteriological and epiphanic aspect of the goddess that had influenced the regulations for entry to the sanctuary as recorded in LSS 91. The text demonstrates a significant interest in inner purity and notion of (divine) justice. In line 5, it explains what this inner purity involves, the phrasing of this part of the text is impersonal and resembles other entry regulations. The epigram at the end of the text also emphasizes the importance of inner purity, but in an elaborate and poetic fashion, addressing the visitor in the second person with a voice invested with divine authority.48 Such heavy emphasis on inner purity in the text of the programma is perhaps a result of the particular context of local branding and local competition among Rhodian cults of the Imperial period. Supplying four epigraphic testimonies in the period between the first and third c. AD, no other area provides a greater concentration of ritual norms that include requests for inner purity of the worshipper. Apart from the sanctuary of Athena Lindia, requests for inner purity on Rhodes are attested also in the cult of Lindian Sarapis (LSCG 139), concerning Athena’s closest divine neighbour on the Lindian Acropolis, Psithyros (who may or may not be an avatar of Hermes, I.Lindos II 484 = LSS 86), and finally, in a further Rhodian cult of Sarapis (LSS 108).49 In the cult of Lindian Sarapis, the second-century-AD programma states that, in order to get auspicious (αἰσίως) access to the sanctuary, the “first and the most important” requirement is that the visitors be clean of hands and thoughts (gnōmē),50 and unaware of any terrible issue, i.e. to have no knowledge of any wrong-doing: μηδὲν αὑτοῖς δεινὸν συνειδότας (lines 6-7). After this, the text turns to physical purity requirements of the kind documented also in LSS 91, but introducing them with the phrase “and concerning things external,” καὶ τὰ ἐκτός (line 8), and thus distinguishing between a primary and a secondary set of purity requirements. The poorly preserved shrine of Psithyros, placed towards the northern edge of the Lindian Acropolis, also provided in early third century AD a ritual norm in verse which underscored the role of conscience. As in case of Lindian Sarapis, we find good sun-eidesis ( “con-science”) as a prerequisite for ritual action—for successful performance of the sacrificial ritual, the worshipper has to have the best, sc. a clear conscience: χρῆσεν καὶ θύιν οἷς καὶ τὸ συνειδὸς ἄριστον.51 Finally, a cathartic cum entry regulation of the first century AD (LSS 108) from a Rhodian sanctuary of Sarapis, whose exact provenance remains unknown, is perhaps the clearest indication of the ways in which competition between cults affected ritual norms: ἁγνὸν χρὴ ναοῖο θ[υ] | ώδεος ἐντὸς ἰόντ[α] | ἔνμεναι· οὐ λουτροῖ | ἀλλὰ νόῳ καθαρόν. Chaniotis recently remarked that this entry regulation combines two texts in two lines: the hexameter and the first word of the pentameter are literal quotations of the Epidaurian programma we mentioned earlier,52 while the rest of pentameter displays significant similarities with a text presumably coming from yet another sanctuary of Sarapis.53
21At the local level, then, inner purity apparently represented a symbolic currency which was employed in the context of cultic rivalry on the Rhodian religious marketplace.54 However, as the text of LSS 108 intimates, the cultic competition was not restricted to the immediate environment. The phenomenon of the Rhodian cult of Sarapis raising stakes and vying for customers by branding itself through references to the Epidaurian Asclepieion is comparable, perhaps, to the relationship between cults of Athena Lindia on the one hand and Zeus Kynthios and Athena Kynthia on Delos on the other. The two historically closely related islands, competitors in trade,55 appear to have been also competitors in matters of religion. Occupying the position on top of Kynthos, Delos’ highest peak, the sanctuary of Zeus Kynthios and Athena Kynthia welcomed its Greek and non-Greek visitors by requesting of them to (LSS 59.13-14): ἰέναι εἰς τὸ ἱερ [ὸν τοῦ] Διὸς τοῦ Κυνθίου [καὶ τῆ]ς Ἀθηνᾶς τῆς Κυνθί[ας χερ]σὶν καὶ ψυχῇ καθα[ρᾷ,], “Enter the sanctuary of Zeus Kynthios and Athena Kynthia with hands and soul pure”. This Delian programma, coming from the second century BC,56 predates the Lindian stone by three centuries or more. However, like the Lindian text, the Delian inscription requests inner purity. This inner purity is of precisely the same type in both cults: purity of the soul, rather than of nous, gnōmē, or phrēn which we find attested in other cults.57 Notably, healing cults of Sarapis and Asclepius formulate requests for inner purity in almost identical ways, by redefining what hagneia represents in their particular view,58 while both cults of Athena request a “pure soul.” Furthermore, on Delos, like in Lindos, requests for inner purity are followed by a comparable catalogue of concerns for external purity.59 But the topographical position and purity regulations are not the only two features that these cults share: what Athena Lindia represents for mothers, this is what the cult of Zeus Kynthios and Athena Kynthia means for soldiers hoping to secure divine protection in their ventures.60 When there is a pronounced need for a boost of divine protection, in perilous situations of war, childbirth and tending to infants, the worshippers’ investment needs to be proportionately larger. It is remarkable how often requests for inner purity are found in cults of healing divinities such as Asclepius, or divinities with a pronounced soteriological aspect—the increased return for the worshippers seems to be often associated with requests for an increased investment on the worshippers’ part in the form of demands of inner purity.
22It is also remarkable just how often such cults are closely associated with an Egyptian, or more generally eastern, background. The Delian cult on Kynthos and the cult of Athena Lindia were both strongly influenced by Egyptian religious traditions— we will return to the issue of Egyptian influence on the Lindian cult later on, but the close connection of Egyptian cults and the cult of Athena Kynthia and Zeus Kynthios is made plain by robust evidence coming from the Hellenistic period onwards: in the Hellenistic period, the Delian sanctuary was renovated, and cultic activities were re-conceptualized under evident influence of Egyptian cults, and in particular under that of the Isis and Sarapis cult.61
23Cults of Sarapis and Isis, along with Egyptian-influenced cults of Athena, rituals of the Anatolian bi-gender god (dess) Agdistis, a local divinity called Lepsynos who was in Caria eventually conflated with Zeus,62 a Mother goddess at Phaistos (who shares Athena Lindia’s interest in inner purity and infants): all these cults require a particularly great investment of the worshippers in terms of their inner disposition in return for healing, rescue or safety. However, the moral dimension of purity doctrines belongs as much to the Egyptian religious tradition as it does to the Greek. In both traditions, we find an ideological entanglement of concepts of inner purity and notions of justice.63
24However, in literary evidence, requests for inner purity have a long tradition. Hesiod includes morality associated with justice in his understanding of purity; and Pythagoras, Empedocles, Xenophanes, and Theognis all highlighted the importance of worshipper’s inner disposition in ritual action either before or at the same time as the motifs of inner purity and pollution became prominently handled by tragedians.64 For the Hellenistic Egyptians, Greek entanglement of justice, morality and inner purity was a familiar element they recognized from their own tradition, just as a Hellenistic Greek did not need to learn a novel concept, when he encountered a request for inner purity and for a just mind in an Egyptian cult. Request for inner investment was a point of convergence between the religious traditions. Each tradition incorporated it in the religious practices in its own specific way.
4. LSS 91, Eastern abstentions, and Egyptian temple inscriptions
25The preamble lays bare the entire structure of the regulation: lines 6-10 deal with acts of sacrilege that could result in an individual becoming enagēs, while lines 11-18 outline a catalogue of potential sources of pollution that lead to a worshipper’s being unfit to encounter the gods, anagnos (11-18). Line 19 is reminiscent of the preamble’s athesmia, “after paranoma (‘things unlawful’),65 you are never pure”; the verses at the end reinforce the topic of inner purity with the reference to blame, pāma—a well attested motif in other metrical programmata.66
26The objects prohibited in the sanctuary are iron weapons (line 6), head-gear (7), shoes, or non-white footwear (7), goatskin footwear or objects made of parts of the goat—an animal banned several times in regulations for Eastern cults but notably also in cults of Athena (8-9);67 and finally, knotted belts (10). None of the items banned are intrinsically polluting, but in the context of this particular sanctuary it is this particular combination of objects that must be kept away from the sacred space: strictly speaking, a transgression against this set of entry requirements would lead to agos, not to miasma.68
27Contact with intrinsic pollutants, on the other hand, can lead to one’s becoming anagnos and to the request for a passage of a specific number of days in order to regain purity. Pollution by blood and death is covered extensively in lines 11-16. The text specifies miscarriage of humans or animals (41 days),69 defloration,70 childbirth, and, it seems, menstruation.71 Pollution by contact with death is dealt with in lines 13-14; the periods of abstention are proportionate to the proximity to the deceased.72 Pollution by sexual intercourse is interestingly further defined as synousia (presumably within bonds of marriage), the least polluting sort—a simple washing suffices to remove the miasma in this case (l. 17). Sex with a prostitute, however, is more polluting, and requires one day to achieve the state of purity.
28In terms of the level of detail, the areas of concern, and the catalogue of numbers of days on which one is banned from entering the sanctuary, the Lindian programma appears very similar in tone and content to the programmata for Eastern and in particular, Egyptian divinities. The existence of the list of abstentions alone points in this direction: not only are periods of abstentions in the Greek world epigraphically first attested in non-indigenously Greek and in Eastern cults as we observed earlier, but it is a regular occurrence that we find the references to abstentions either in foreign cults, or, on the other hand, in Greek cults exposed to significant Eastern influence.
29Geography matters here: with the possible, but by no means certain exception of the cult of Despoina at Lykosoura (WPA 17),73 there is not a single cult of a Greek divinity in mainland Greece which requires periods of abstentions from its worshippers. On the three occasions when we do find requests for abstentions on the Greek mainland, they stem from distinctly eastern cults, as can be easily seen from table 2: WPA 16, comes from a cult of Isis, Sarapis and Anoubis at Megalopolis (late 3rd c. BC), then there is a document of second century BC, from the cult of an anonymous eastern goddess of Marmarini (WPA 18) and, finally, a norm from the cult of Men Tyrannos in Attica (2nd c. AD) (WPA 1).74
30All other texts stem from Asia Minor, the islands in its proximity, or Egypt: Following the earliest attestation of abstentions in the Metropolitan cult of Gallesia in Ionia (WPA 13, fourth century BC, LSAM 29), we note similar formulations, chronologically, in a cult in Eresos on Lesbos (WPA 2, 2nd c. BC, LSCG 124), Isthmos on Kos (WPA 4, 2nd c. BC, LSCG 171), on Delos (WPA 5, 2nd c. BC, LSS 54), Pergamon (WPA 10, 2nd c. BC, LSAM 12 I, Maeonia (WPA 12, 2nd c. BC, LSAM 18, unspecified location), Ptolemais in Egypt (WPA 9, 1st c. BC, LSS 119), Miletos (WPA 14, 1st c. BC, LSAM 51), several locations on Rhodes (WPA 7, earlier than 1st c. AD, LSS 106; WPA 8, 1 c. AD, LSS 108; WPA 6, 2nd or 3rd c. AD, LSS 91 and WPA 3, 2nd c. AD, LSCG 139), Smyrna (WPA 15, 2nd c. AD, LSAM 84), and Pergamon (WPA 11, 3rd c. AD, LSAM 14).75
31In terms of the non-indigenous Greek and Eastern divinities concerned, apart from the already mentioned fourth-century-BC cult of Mater Gallesia, several cults of Sarapis (coupled in third century BC at Megalopolis with Isis and Anoubis),76 an anonymous, but clearly Eastern goddess from Marmarini, and Men Tyrannos, we also encounter Atargatis and Cybele.77
32In two cases we cannot establish the identity of the divinity from whose cult the regulation stems (WPA 7 = LSS 106 and WPA 2 = LSCG 124). When, however, cults of Greek divinities request abstentions, then it is as a rule in the cults that have undergone a process of ‘orientalisation, ’ such as the one we already pointed towards in the cult of Zeus and Athena of Mt. Kynthos on Delos (NPA 12 = LSS 59). This is the case with the cult of Pergamon’s Athena Nikephoros (WPA 10 = 2nd c. BC, LSAM 12 I): at Pergamon, Athena was venerated as a divinity with distinct oriental features, and was in particular associated with Cybele, who had a thriving cult in the city—in fact, this cult overshadowed that of Athena continually from the Attalid through to Roman period.78 The text from the cult of Zeus Hikesios, Artemis, and ancestral gods (WPA 4 = 2nd c. BC Kos, deme Isthmos, LSCG 171) which contains at its end references to abstentions is another case of a cult of Greek divinities under strong oriental influences: the text’s main concern relates to hierodoulia, ‘sacred slavery’, a traditional feature of oriental cults in Asia Minor.79 Similar claims could be made also for the late Hellenistic regulation from the cult of Artemis Kithone at Miletus (WPA 14 = LSAM 51).80 Periods of abstention are also specified in the hexametrical inscription containing the regulations of the cult of Dionysus Bromius from Smyrna, dated in the 2nd century AD (WPA 15 = LSAM 84). The text focuses on the importance of obtaining ritual purity and mentions abortion and death as defiling, but also offers a list of prohibited foodstuff such as eggs, beans and heart, which suggests an ‘Orphic’ influence on this cult.81
33One remaining case, the heavily restored text of a regulation concerning incubation in the cult of Pergamene Asclepius (WPA 3 = 3rd c. AD, LSAM 14), appears to have included a reference to abstentions82—whether this is an exception, or yet another case of Sarapis exercising influence on his Greek colleague in the city whose religious life was so clearly marked by veneration of oriental cults, we will leave open.83
34With these observations in mind we turn to the Egyptian background of LSS 91 (= WPA 6), and start by inspecting NGSL 7 (WPA 16), dated in the late 3rd century BC, which, with its detailed catalogue of abstentions, provides a close parallel to the Lindian text:
Stele of Isis and Serapis. God! Good luck. A sanctuary sacred to Isis, Serapis, Anoubis. (3) Whoever wishes to sacrifice shall enter the sanctuary, being pure: from [or: after] childbirth on the ninth day; from miscarriage / an abortion, for forty-four days; from menstruation, on the seventh day; from funeral,84 for seven days; (10) from (eating) goat meat and mutton, on the third day; from other foods, having washed oneself from the head down, on the same day; from sexual intercourse, on the same day, having washed oneself; (15) from [- - -] on the same day, having washed oneself [- - -] (17) no one shall enter (?) [- - -] enter [- - -].85
35In the cult of the Egyptian gods at Megalopolis we observe a level of detail comparable to the regulation from the cult of Lindian Athena. The Megalopolitan text demonstrates a concern for very similar topics, and provides stipulations for cases of pollution by blood, sex, death, taboos (note the goat), —and more—in a way closely resembling Lindian text, as well as texts coming from other Egyptian cults in which Greeks participated.86
36In fact, in a recent article on purity regulations in Egyptian religion,87 Joachim Quack adduced the example from Megalopolis and commented that the varying terms of abstinence and of purification from different pollutions typical for Egyptian sacred regulations have a remarkable parallel in the Megalopolis inscription. As already Herodotus frequently notes in the second book of his Histories, Egyptians were obsessed with keeping pure from various sources of miasma. This statement is verified by the Egyptian epigraphic evidence. There we find very detailed and extensive entry regulations specifying various sources of pollution, number of days one should keep away from sanctuary, different regulations for different parts of the sanctuary, and different sorts of people who enter it, such as religious experts, or societal classes—workers, citizens, field-workers, women, to name but a few.
37A comparison with one of Quack’s examples will be illuminating. Access to the temple in Egyptian Esna88 was regulated by a long hieroglyphic inscription, inscribed on the front row column in the hypostyle hall that represents the temple’s front entrance.89 It probably comes from either the late Hellenistic period, or, more likely, the 1st century AD. However, as Quack points out, the inscription reflects much older traditions which are well documented in the “Book of the Temple”:
“Everybody has to be pure from a woman in a purification period of one day, they shall purify themselves and moisten their clothes. Do not let anybody enter who suffers from god’s anger or leprosy. Their position is in the surroundings of the temple… To the left and the right of the dromos by everybody who is pure from a woman in a purification period of nine days… No person shall enter with a fur of a sheep around him. No craftsperson shall enter into it. The position of the city-dwellers is the wall of the temple. They should not enter on the quay. Performing the offering on the altar of this honorable god is done by the prophets the priest and all serving staff of the temple. Whoever wears the hairstyle of grief does not enter into this temple. Shaving, nail-clipping and combing is what justifies entering into it. All fine linen as a dress is what justifies entering into it. Natron water is what justifies settling down in it. As for all having allowance to enter it, they should be pure from a woman in a purification period of nine days and should not have eaten any taboo food in a purification period of four days. As for anybody wishing to enter the temple and who has to do some work there, he shall have shaved his limbs and clipped his nails and let him pray to the god at the dromos in the position of the city-dwellers, while the service staff of the temple stands beside him and says: “Be pure from a woman in a purification period of nine days and each taboo in a purification period of four days.” If he acts this way, he can enter the temple at the door which is at the side of the pylon tower, after purifying himself as well as his clothes in the lake. Do not let any Asiatic / shepherd enter the temple, be he a small or a large one. Do not let any women get close to all his surrounding within an area of 200 arourae.… The king is in his good state, the whole country is free from calamity. Who is insistent concerning these matters will be worthy, woe betide the one who commits an outrage against this.90
38The text displays zonal thinking typical for Egyptian entry regulations—Egyptian temples represented systems of zones regulating increasingly limited access. In the areas of entry and passageways, typically a king was represented who solemnly states: “Everything that enters the temple should be pure, pure.”91 As in the programma from Rhodes, not only the taboo objects, but also the possible sources of pollution and, crucially, the number of days required for obtaining the state of ritual purity, are precisely specified.
39The programma from Rhodes for Athena Lindia identifies no less than 19 possible sources of pollution and prescribes exact numbers of days for abstentions. The strongest sources of pollution are miscarriage, defloration and death of a member of the household (41 days), followed by childbirth (21 days), a funeral (seven days), eisodos, (three days) and sex. In the Esna regulation, sex, leprosy, death, taboo-foodstuff, and certain animals are perceived as sources of pollution. Furthermore, anger of the god is specified as the punishment for transgression in the Esna regulation, and this is reminiscent of the moral principles stated as entry requirements in the Rhodian text. In fact, stipulations regarding moral conduct as a prerequisite for entry to the temple are frequent in Egyptian sacred regulations, often attested in the regulations concerning priestly conduct and entry to those areas reserved for the priests. Like Greek programmata, such inscriptions are typically located in the setting of a passageway, and inscribed on the doorjambs.92 In addition to the interdiction of impurity, such texts highlight different kinds of moral misconduct. A typical example starts with an address to the priests:93
40“O prophets, god’s fathers, ritual leaders, god’s purifiers, high-ranking priests, all those having access who enter to the god… do not introduce in trespassing. Do not enter in a state of grime. Do not tell lies in this house! Do not snatch through calumny! Do not accept any list […] Do not be short-tempered in a moment! Do not give your mouth free run in a discussion.” The closing statements warn against god’s wrath: “There is none who complains against him who is free of being punished for something.”
41Furthermore, the Esna regulation categorizes people into distinct groups and prescribes different rules for different classes of visitors. Especially interesting in this sense is the distinction in the Lindian text between those who work in the temple and other visitors. For cult personnel, special purification rituals are prescribed (LSS 91, ll. 20-22): “Priests, singers, musicians, performers of hymns, temple attendants, after involuntary [pollution], are always pure after they have applied a sacred purifier.”
42In the Esna regulation, those working in the temple should obey the basic rules of depilation, and a special prayer suffices to free them from pollution. In the Rhodian text, it is a hieron katharsion, somewhat puzzling ‘sacred purifier’,94 that frees professional performers of hymns from pollution. It is very well known that the professional caste of priests in Egypt had to follow special purity regulations; most often attested is the requirement to drink natron water for 10 days.
43By now we hope to have established similarities between the stipulations in the Lindian text and the elements of Egyptian purity doctrine. Hence we turn to the issue of connection between the two traditions. We can identify traditional Egyptian elements in the cults of Egyptian divinities such as Sarapis, Anoubis, and Isis, in Megalopolis and Ptolemais. In those cases, the Egyptian influence is obvious and self-explanatory. But what does the cult of Lindian Athena have to do with Egypt?
44In both myth and history, the links between the Lindian sanctuary of Athena and Egypt are remarkably strong. According to the legend attested already in Herodotus (2.182.2), the first temple of Athena Lindia has been founded by the daughters of Danaos “on their landing when they were fleeing from the sons of Aigyptos”. According to later traditions, too, the cult foundation of the Lindian Athena is associated with Egypt: according to Hellenistic sources, it was Danaos who set up the cult of Athena in Lindos.95 Also Diodoros of Sicily claims that Danaos founded the temple of Athena (5.58.1).
45The Danaids play a prominent role in the mythology of the island. In a version of the story preserved by Strabo, the three original Doric cities on Rhodes were named after the three daughters of Danaos (14.2.8).
46The strong connections of the Lindian sanctuary of Athena with Egypt is also reflected in the tradition according to which the Egyptian king Amasis dedicated lavish gifts to the Lindian Athena. The record of these dedications is first mentioned in Herodotus (2.182):
To Athena of Lindos, two stone images and a marvelous linen breast-plate; and to Heraian Samos, two wooden statues of himself that were still standing in my time behind the doors in the great shrine. The offerings in Samos were dedicated because of the friendship between Amasis and Polycrates, son of Aeaces; what he gave to Lindus was not out of friendship for anyone, but because the temple of Athena in Lindus is said to have been founded by the daughters of Danaos, when they landed there in their flight from the sons of Egyptus. Such were Amasis’ offerings. Moreover, he was the first conqueror of Cyprus, which he made tributary to himself.96
47The linen breast-plate became famous in antiquity, and is mentioned in many accounts, becoming even proverbial.97 Gifts of Amasis are, of course, narrated at length in the Lindian anagraphe (B XXIX, 1-55). In the anagraphe, further gifts of the Egyptian pharaoh are listed: “two statues and ten phialai.” Amasis ruled during a period (570-526 BC in traditional chronology) when the links between Rhodes and Egypt thrived. A reflex of this is also encapsulated in the tradition according to which Kleoboulos, the famous Lindian tyrant, was well acquainted with Egyptian wisdom, and it was Kleoboulos who was credited with rebuilding the Lindian sanctuary in the archaic era.98 Archaeological evidence adds credibility to narratives about a close relationship between Rhodes and Egypt. A fragment of a stone head discovered near the temple of Athena Polias in Kamiros on Rhodes is the only piece of Egyptian sculpture dating from dynasties XXV-XXVI found in an excavation context in the Aegean. Furthermore, a fragment of a black basalt statuette with a 6th c. Greek inscription found nearby is also Egyptian, a connection which is further confirmed by the well-known Rhodian faience workshops.99
48We now have ample evidence of cultural exchange between Rhodes and Egypt from an early period.100 A second intense wave of intercultural exchange between the Greeks and the Egyptians started in the Hellenistic period with Ptolemies and the ruling class of Graeco-Macedonians in Egypt acting as intermediaries. The cult of Sarapis was promoted by the Ptolemies as a conscious merger of Egyptian and Greek religious traditions and became widespread in the Mediterranean. We have observed in our examples from Megalopolis and Ptolemais the extent of influence of Egyptian purity regulations on the regulations for the cult of Sarapis. But how exactly did the Egyptian religious knowledge travel to Greek cities? The agents of ritual transfer, which may have acted as channels for dissemination of Egyptian ritual practices, were the Egyptian religious experts who performed the rituals for Egyptian divinities in Greece. Epigraphic record preserves instances of such cases in Priene, where a sacred regulation of the end of the 3rd c. BC concerning the cult of Sarapis, Isis and Anoubis stipulates: “Let the priest summon an Egyptian in order to perform the sacrifice expertly. Let no-one else be allowed to inexpertly perform the sacrifice for the goddess, other than the sacrifice performed by the priest…” The text also prescribes fines for those who conduct inexpert sacrifices.101 On Delos, the cult of Sarapis was instituted and administered by “an Egyptian from the priestly class arrived from Egypt, bearing the god, and he continued serving him as was his hereditary custom.”102 Visiting religious experts from the nation renowned for its strict adherence to purity and elaborate purity rituals might have influenced the local Greek customs and purity regulations.
49On Rhodes, we posit, this was certainly the case: the temple of Lindia was believed to be an Egyptian foundation and Egyptians perceived it as a temple of an Egyptian divinity.103 Furthermore, we can observe an interplay in formulations of purity regulations between Rhodian cults of Sarapis and the Lindian Athena, and we can identify striking similarities between Lindian programma and programmata from the cults of Eastern, and in particular Egyptian, divinities. Given the intensity of continuous Egyptian presence on the island, this ought not surprise us: from the early Hellenistic period, the thriving cult of Sarapis decisively marked the religious life of the island.104 Apart from Delos, Rhodes was the most significant cult-centre of Sarapis in the Mediterranean outside of Egypt.105 Sarapis’ priests are attested for Lindos from 242 BC, for Kamiros from 249 BC and in Rhodes city from the mid-second century BC and the existence of cult associations of the Sarapiastai is recorded in epigraphic evidence in Rhodes city, Kamiros, and Lindos as well.106 In Lindos, the priest of Sarapis is frequently mentioned as the third in the priestly lists, which is a significant testimony of the importance of this cult in Lindos in the Hellenistic and Roman period.107
5. On Descent
50Discussing the notion of theatricality in his classical work on Hellenistic Art, J.J. Pollitt compared the geological features of the Lindian Acropolis to a great ship’s prow projecting into the sea.108 Indeed, modern visitors, just like the ancient, will easily find many reasons to ponder about ships, seafaring and seamanship while on the rock’s summit: the endless blue extending towards the East, the two harbours, the ships on the horizon with the temperamental winds filling their sails, find their counterparts in ship-monuments on and around the Acropolis. On the Acropolis itself, blocks of marble form a free-standing prow of a ship with an oarbox, placed on a pedestal and facing the sea: it used to carry a statue of a man whose name is now lost. As one descends towards the foot of the Acropolis, it is impossible to overlook the relief carved in living rock which represents the stern of a ship with an oarbox upon which a statue of an honorand used to be affixed: Hagesandros is his name.109
51Ships carry people, and with people travel ideas: the priest or priests who imported elements of the Egyptian tradition into the purity requirements in the cult of Athena Lindia will have to remain anonymous, for the time being. Yet, when Danaos and his daughters found temporary relief from their pursuers in Lindos, they brought with themselves a cult of a divinity the Greeks could recognise and worship under a different name: so believed the Lindians. When the Rhodian merchants of the Classical period travelled to Naukratis, they brought back knowledge of a different culture and religion. When the Ptolemaic might of Hellenistic Egypt averted threats to Rhodian shores, deliverance brought with itself a deepened sense of foreign cultural traditions. From this point onwards, at the very latest, no Greek doctrine of purity could ever be pure: transfer of knowledge, ease of access, or, to use a modish term, increased connectivity between cultures, has decisively marked Rhodian religious ordinances.
Annexe
List of Captions
Fig. 1. Plan of the Lindian Acropolis by C. Blinkenberg (Lindos II.1, p. 8: the star shows the findspot of LSS 91).
Fig. 2. Reused stele of Lindos (LSS 91). Photograph courtesy of the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen (inv. no. 7126).
Fig. 1. Plan of the Lindian Acropolis by C. Blinkenberg (Lindos II.1, p. 8: the star shows the findspot of LSS 91).

Fig. 2. Reused stele of Lindos (LSS 91). Photograph courtesy of the National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen (inv. no. 7126).

Notes de bas de page
1 See fig. 1, the plan of Lindian Acropolis.
2 Cf. Str. 2.5.24 on routes and distances between Rhodes and Egypt (4000 stadia), and for sailing days cf. 10.4.5 (a journey of around 5000 stadia, from Egypt to Cape Samonium in Crete, takes 4 days), with Morton (2001), p. 219-221.
3 Fundamental studies: Parker (1996) [1983], p. 352-356; Chaniotis (1997); Lupu, NGSL, p. 9-21; Chaniotis (2012); Robertson (2013), p. 195-244; Günther (2013), p. 245-260.
4 Mem. 3.8.10: ναοῖς γε μὴν καὶ βωμοῖς χώραν ἔφη εἶναι πρεπωδεστάτην ἥτις ἐμφανεστάτη οὖσα ἀστιβεστάτη εἴη· ἡδὺ μὲν γὰρ ἰδόντας προσεύξασθαι, ἡδὺ δὲ ἁγνῶς ἔχοντας προσιέναι. On this passage, see Mikalson (2010), p. 133.
5 Fundamental on the sanctuary and its history: Blinkenberg, I.Lindos II; Dyggve – Poulsen (1960); Kähler (1971); Lippolis (1988-1989); Wriedt Sørensen – Pentz (1992); Higbie (2003) provides a discussion of the sanctuary’s local history as documented by the first century BC Lindian anagraphe. On Rhodian cults in general, Morelli (1959) remains of great value.
6 We subsume Egypt under the label of Near East for practical purposes.
7 On programmata, cf. Sokolowski’s commentary on LSS 59, p. 114, LSS 91, p. 160-161, and cf. LSAM 20, l. 31-32 with reference to ta progegrammena, and LSAM 68, with commentary on l. 1, p. 68 (Zingerle’s conjecture must be correct; Sokolowski evidently recognized his error by the time he published LSS, seven years after LSAM), and Lupu, NGSL, p. 14-18. Luc. On Sacrifices 13: καὶ τὸ μὲν πρόγραμμά φησι μὴ παριέναι εἰς τὸ εἴσω τῶν περιρραντηρίων ὅστις μὴ καθαρός ἐστιν τὰς χεῖρας. Cf. Hp. Morb. Sacr. 6.364 (Littré) (tr. Lupu, NGSL, p. 207, slightly modified), end of fourth century BC.: “… we ourselves both affix boundary-stones (horoi) to the precincts and the sanctuaries of the gods, in order that no one can cross them unless he is pure and, upon entering, sprinkle ourselves with water, not as defiling ourselves but as ridding ourselves from any pre-existing pollution that we might have.”
8 Parker (1996) [1983], passim and esp. p. 148-149, now partly updated by Robertson (2013), p. 197- 202, remains indispensable for terminology pertaining to ritual purity. We use Parker’s translation of hagnos: “fit to approach a divinity.”
9 LSCG 154 (3rd c. BC). Kos, an exception to this rule in appearance only, is associated with exegetai and vested by authority of patrioi nomoi.
10 For a taxonomy of civic authorities issuing religious regulations concerning other matters, see Harris (2015a), with online appendices by Harris – Carbon (2016-). In lexicographers, the term programma is equalled to ekthema, i.e. an edict or proclamation; to prostaxis, an order issued by a king and set up in public space, or, more generally, to the term nomos, law. Cf. Hsch. s.v. προγράμματα· ἐκθέματα; Ps.-Zon. s.v. πρόθεμα. τὸ πρόγραμμα· τουτέστιν ἡ ἐκ βασιλέως πρόσταξις ἐγγράφως δημοσίᾳ ἀνατιθεμένη; schol. in Ar. Av. 450b: ἐν τοῖς πινακίοις προγράμμασιν· ἐν τοῖς νόμοις.
11 Agathias Scholasticus, Historiae 10: ἀλλ’ ἕπεσθαι τῷ Δελφικῷ ἐκείνῳ προγράμματι καὶ τὰ οἰκεῖα γιγνώσκειν.
12 We have generated the list on the basis of LSAM, LSCG, LSS, Parker (1996) [1983], Appendix 3, Chaniotis (1997); EBGR; Lupu, NGSL, with Appendix B, SEG, and Kernos. Where available, we have included relevant numbers for the online Collection of Greek Religious Norms (CGRN; http://cgrn.ulg.ac.be), developed at the University of Liège by Jan-Mathieu Carbon, Saskia Peels and Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge. Thanks are due to the project investigators for making a beta version of the database available to us. We exclude very fragmentary texts, no matter how enthusiastically or ingeniously restored, such as LSCG 99 and LSCG 154 (Kos, 3rd c. BC). The latter we exclude because of both fragmentary state and, more significantly, interpretative difficulties. See also the verdict of Lupu, NGSL, p. 42 and 77. Programmata are attested in urban and extra-urban sanctuaries, but also in natural places of worship, such as grottos: two are known from caves associated with Nymphs and Pan and the Nymphs respectively (LSAM 82, vicinity of Amaseia, Pontus, inscribed on the doorjambs of the gates to the grotto of the nymphs, Imperial period, cf. l. 5-7 and NGSL 4, Marathon, Cave of Pan, 1st c. BC); cf. LSS 34. Cf. the use of praescriptio in legal contexts, OLD, s.v.
13 Cf. NPA 5: Entry regulation inscribed on a horos, banning women and uninitiated from the precinct; NPA 6: Fragmentary entry regulation, or regulation concerning participation in cult of Demeter and Kore, determining that Dorians are not allowed into the precinct or to participate in a festival of Damoia; NPA 7: Entry regulation to an unidentifiable precinct, banning visitors from entering altogether: “Sanctuary. No entry.” Cf. NPA 16, below, and IG II2 4694 (Athenian Acropolis, cult of Zeus Kataibates, 400-350 BC: “A sacred space of Zeus Kataibates, not to be entered”) with Lupu, NGSL, p. 20-21 and Graf (2010), p. 62-63. Sokolowski suggests that such sanctuaries were open for visitors only on certain festival days; cf. also SEG 56, 998 with a similar regulation coming from Chios (late 5th/early 4th c. BC) stating [Ἐ]πίσχε· | [μ]ὴ πλέον; “Hold back. No farther!”; NPA 11: Entry regulation inscribed on a door lintel which stood on the doors either to the escharon or the abaton according to Sokolowski (ad loc.): “It is not pious for the foreigners to enter” and Butz (1994), p. 69-98, who published a copy of the same inscription (4th c. BC?) coming possibly from the wall of Triarius and argued that the regulation aimed at excluding non-Delians; NPA 13: Entry regulation forbidding entry with iron objects to the sanctuary of Apollo Delios. NPA 16: entry regulation, forbidding entry altogether. Our translation: “Do not enter the sanctuary. Should someone trespass, a fine of four staters.”
14 The prohibition against doing “anything unjust” is followed by a threat that Mater Gallesia will not be merciful to anyone who commits unjust deeds (LSAM 29, l. 1-15). On Anatolian background (esp. Hittite and Phrygian) of mountain cults of Mother, see Roller (1999), p. 199-202.
15 We follow Blinkenberg’s text (I.Lindos II 487), with some modifications based on our inspection of a high resolution image supplied to us courtesy of the National Museum of Denmark, and note several important proposed conjectures by previous editors: 1. Sokolowski [Κα]θαρο[ὺ]ς [καὶ ἁγνοὺς] | | 3. Blinkenberg βδ̣[αλλόντων] vel βδ̣[άλσεως] (abbreviated): S. βλ[άστης], with the explanation that looking at children being breastfed would seem strange, LSS, p. 160: but see below, p. 237. | | 11. με in ἡμε in ligature. | | 16. B. ἀ]πὸ [κ]ατ[αμηνία]ς : S. καταφορᾶς. | | 18. B. ἡμε (ρῶν), against HMA of the stone B. αʹ: S. λʹ. Sokolowski’s reading of a lambda (= 30 days) against Blinkenberg’s alpha (= 1 day) is evidently incorrect (cf. Fig. 2, broken hastas of the alpha are clearly visible). Traces of a vertical line above alpha (Ā) are recognisable, in line with the practice of inscribing Ζ and Γ in l. 14-15. Furthermore, the common period of abstention after intercourse with a courtesan is one day, as virtually all other cases attest, see Parker (1996) [1983], p. 74-75 with n. 4. | | 24. An empty space of 2-3 letters, not indicated by previous editors, separates the two halves of the pentameter.
16 Mat Carbon points out to us privately that there is insufficient space on the stone for the entire word βδ̣[αλλόντων]; we agree. Sokolowski, ad loc., following Blinkenberg, pondered whether we might be dealing with an abbreviation—see above, n. 15.
17 Dimensions: h. 0.935 × w. 0.44-0.56 × l. 0.31-0.4 m. For discussions of this inscription, see Robert, BE (1942), p. 347 no. 113; Robert, BE (1958), p. 267 no. 303; Chaniotis (1997), p. 146- 147; Petrovic – Petrovic (2006), p. 163 no. 24; Chaniotis (2012), p. 125-126.
18 I.Lindos II 419, cf. col. 773-775 and LSS 90, p. 90.
19 Cf. I.Lindos II 419.134-137.
20 On this position cf. I.Lindos II 487, col. 871-872.
21 Letters: 1.7-2.1 cm, with several smaller letters (cf. omicrons in l. 5 κεκαθαρμένου [ς] and in l. 11 κυνός). There is probably something to be learned about Lindian epigraphic habits from the fact that LSS 90 (I.Lindos II 419), inscribed on the same block, requires that the text should be written (l. 135) in conspicuous letters (γράμμασι εὐσάμοις). LSS 90 is, in fact, inscribed sloppily and in letters of average height of less than 1 cm. Cf. I.Lindos II 419, col. 773-775.
22 Cf. I.Lindos II 487, col. 872.
23 This is, as far as we can see, a complete overview of the metrical programmata; first of all, the epigraphic record of the cathartic or entry regulations in meter, apart from LSS 91, in chronological order according to the epigraphic record (although some of these inscriptions are republications of older texts) are: 1) IC I.xxiii 3 [cf. EBGR 1993/1994, no. 47; 1997, no. 375; 2000, no. 198; 2007, no. 23], Phaistos, 2nd c. BC (republication?); 2) LSS 82 [IG XII. Suppl. 23], Mytilene, late Hellenistic?; 3) LSS 6 [I.Kios 19; cf. EA 27 (1996) 28 no. 13], Kios, 1st c. AD; 4) LSS 108 [= MemFERT 3, 71] Rhodes (exact provenance unclear), 1st c. AD (but almost certainly a republication, see below); 5) SGO I 01/17/01, Euromos in Karia, 2nd c. AD; 6) LSAM 84 [I.Smyrna 728; SGO 05/01/04], Smyrna, 2nd/3rd c. AD; and 7) I.Lindos II 484, Lindos, 3rd c. AD. Remarkably, six of eight attestations come from islands, three from Rhodes alone, and the remaining two from the coastal region of western Asia Minor. The literary record of entry or cathartic regulations in meter comprises: 1) Porph. Abst. 2.19 [= Clem.Al. Strom. 5.13.3, p. 334, 24 St.], Epidaurian programma of the 4th c. BC (for a differing view on the date, Bremmer [2002], followed by Mikalson [2010], p. 65-66; see also the essays by Parker and Chaniotis in the present volume); 2) Totti (1985), no. 61, “Codex Vindob. 130 and Codex Laur. 37, Plut. 32”, of which the provenance proved difficult to trace; the text is customarily referred to as the “Sarapis Oracle for Timainetos” (although it is clearly a programma rather than an oracle: what they both have in common is a divine authority behind them: cf. Petrovic – Petrovic [2006] and Chaniotis [2012], p. 128-129); 3) AP 14.71.
24 For an illustration, see Accame (1938), fig. 46, and note his comments, p. 72 and p. 83-84 on the beauty and size of the letters, as well as on the position of the distich which “in essa la posizione medesima del distico subito dopo i divieti di carattere rituale, e però riguardanti cose materiali, col risalto che dà alla purezza di mente diminuisce l’importanza di quei divieti…”
25 Chaniotis (2012), p. 126.
26 The choice of a stone inscribed with a text concerning financial issues in the cult of Athena Lindia and Zeus Polieus (I.Lindos II 419 / LSS 90) for the inscription of an entry regulation suggests that the old document was no longer valid, or at least that there was no need to consult it, given that the stone was turned upside down.
27 See Garulli (2012), p. 212 and 286 on the textual transmission and on the layout of inscribed epigram in the Imperial period, and Agosti (2010) for the late antique material, both with further literature.
28 We maintain here a literal translation of ta paranoma; for interpretations of this stipulation, see below, p. 245, n. 65.
29 A substance seems to be implied; see below, p. 252.
30 For lustral basins in the sanctuary of Athena Lindia, and their find spots, cf. I.Lindos II 3-9 and col. 201-202. Concerning the reference to the gates of the temple, Blinkenberg (I.Lindos col. 873) remarks “Ναός est employé ici, comme souvent, un peu incorrectement, au lieu de τέμενος ou ἰερόν”. This may or may not be correct, and “comme souvent” in the particular context of the reference to [the gates], is perhaps somewhat misleading: we could not find any parallels for the “gates of the naos” used in the sense of “gates to the temenos”. In any case, the text names two distinct areas. If Blinkenberg is correct, perhaps the reference to the gates relates to the actual place at which purification takes place, as in the case of Pergamon’s cult of Athena Nikephoros, cf. ἀπὸ δὲ τάφου καὶ ἐκφορᾶ̣[ς] περιρα<ν>άμενοι καὶ διελθόντες τὴν πύλην, καθ’ ἣν τὰ ἁγιστήρια τίθεται, καθαροὶ ἔστωσαν αὐθήμερον (LSAM 12.7-10). We wonder, however, if τῶν τοῦ ναοῦ [πυλῶν] refers to the temple; see LSAM 51, a cathartic regulation concerning access to a naos, which was inscribed on a block from one of the temple’s antae.
31 To hieron is the most common designation, when there is one: cf. LSCG 130; 139; 171.15-17; LSS 59.10; 75; 119; 128; LSAM 35, to list just some of the attestations.
32 For a remarkable set of differentiations in terms of purity requirements, and regulations concerning who may enter the temenos and under which conditions, and who may enter the temples and under which conditions, see LSCG 124 (WPA 2), Eresos, 2nd c. BC. This text prohibits women to conduct certain rites in the temenos, but still appears to allow them access there (cf. l. 11-12: μηδὲ [γυ] ναῖκες γαλλάζην ἐν τῶ τεμένει). However, this is not the case with the temple, from where women are banned altogether, save for the priestess and the prophetess (l. 18-20: μὴ εἰστείχην δὲ μηδὲ γυ[ναῖκ]α εἰς τὸν ναῦον v. πλὰν τᾶς ἰρέας καὶ τᾶς προφήτιδος). On adyta/abata, Parker (1996) [1983], p. 166-168. A very clear case of zonal thinking associated purity concerns, is provided by the new spectacular text of a sacred norm from Marmarini, coming from a cult of an Eastern, perhaps originally Mesopotamian deity. We can not discuss the parallels here fully; for a commentary, see Parker – Scullion (2016), and Carbon (2016).
33 [ἴ]ναι (= ἰέναι) is to be taken as infinitivus pro imperativo, and ὅσιον as an adverb.
34 LSS, p. 160. Cf. LSS 119, l. 6, where contact with nursing women is defined as a source of pollution, Ptolemais, 1st c. BC. For an explicit exclusion of lactating (and pregnant) women from ritual, see LSCG 68 (IG V.2 514), l. 11-13, cult of Despoina, Lykosoura, 3rd c. BC: μηδὲ | μύεσθαι [[μύεσθαι]] κύενσαν μηδὲ θη | λαζομέναν.
35 Putrified: Empedocles fr. 59 [68] Wright; fully concocted: Arist. GA 777a 7. On Greek views of human milk, see Laskaris (2008), p. 459-464, who points out (p. 461) that: “Kourotrophic goddesses are not… imagined as lactating… [They] cared for their kouroi in more abstract ways.”
36 I.Lindos II col. 875. Blinkenberg points out that the reliefs found at the sanctuary depicting women with infants indicate a practice of mothers placing themselves and their children under the protection of the goddess.
37 Hadzisteliou Price (1978), p. 154 (quote), and p. 154-156 for the evidence.
38 Below, p. 252-253.
39 The closest parallel is an inscription from Lycia (TAM II 174) which states that a mountain was shaken with earthquakes in Pinara when a woman saw the bathing Artemis and outlines the aition of the ritual practice for entering a cave at Lopta, where a woman who tried to spy on Apollo while he was in a cave was turned to stone. In Greek myths, divinities who are seen against their will by mortals dispense harsh punishments, for example, Artemis punished Aktaion with a gruesome death, and Athena blinded Teiresias (this version of the Aktaion story is first attested in Callimachus’ Hymn on the bath of Pallas (107-118), but Apollodorus 3.4.4 asserts that this is the version of the myth offered by most authors. The blinding of Teiresias as a consequence of seeing Athena naked is first attested by Pherekydes (3 F 92). Callimachus’ Athena even qualifies the prohibition of seeing a divinity against her will as an ancient divine law (Lav. Pall. 101-102 with Bulloch 1985 ad loc.)
40 On enagēs and hagnos, Parker (1996) [1983], p. 5-11 (quotation above from p. 9), 191, 200; Mikalson (2010), p. 11-12, p. 140-154; Robertson (2013), p. 197-202.
41 While being relatively rare (cf. LSJ s.v.), the adjective is used by Plutarch to describe Clodius’ sacrilege at the Bona Dea festival (Plu. Caes. 10).
42 Porph. Abst. 2.19 = Clem. Al. Strom. 5.13.3 p. 334, 24 St.): ἁγνὸν χρὴ ναοῖο θυώδεος ἐντὸς ἰόντα | ἔμμεναι· ἁγνεία δ’ ἐστὶ φρονεῖν ὅσια. Discussion and date: Chaniotis (1997), p. 154-155 and (2012), p. 130-131. Place of publication: Mylonopoulos (forthc.). The late date is in our view unlikely, pace Bremmer (2002) and, following him, Mikalson (2010), p. 65-66. An early, 4th c. BC date is supported recently also by Chaniotis (2012) and Robertson (2013). See also the essays by Chaniotis, Parker, and Peels in this volume. Cf. the late 3rd c. BC Delian Aretalogy of Sarapis, IG XI.4 1299, l. 33-34 and EBGR (2002) no. 15 (Kernos 18 [2005] 436-437), where Mylonopoulos notes that ἁγνός and ὅσιος are found together in an epigram from Phaistos (ΙC I.xxiii 3, 2nd c. BC) and that the expression ναὸς θυώδης is attested in Attica, at Rhamnous, as early as the 4th c. BC.
43 Chaniotis (2012), p. 128-129.
44 Chaniotis (2012), p. 129 (quote above); and cf. p. 126: “The emphasis is placed on the phrase me to soma monon ( “not only in the body”). The new requirement is presented as an implicit criticism of those who might have the wrong impression that a clean body alone would guarantee a harmonious relationship with the gods.”
45 Cf. Chaniotis (2012), p. 129: “The healing presupposes the deep and unlimited belief in the omnipotence of god.” The individual stories are quoted after Herzog (1931). Herzog no. 3 tells the tale of a man who was paralyzed in all his fingers save one and came to be healed, but he had laughed at the testimonies and did not believe in the cures. At night, he saw the god who straightened his fingers and asked if he still disbelieved the cures. When the man asserted that he now believed, the god changed his name into Apistos (Disbeliever). In the morning, the man was healthy. Similar stories about initial disbelief or mocking of the god and the consequent assertion of Asclepius’ powers are Herzog nos. 4, 9, 10, 36.
46 Chaniotis repeatedly highlighted the nexus between disease, sin, cure and repentance in cultic formulations of requests for inner purity: see (1997), p. 152-154 and esp. (2012), p. 128-131.
47 These instances of the miraculous soteriological epiphanies of Athena at Lindos are recorded in a long inscription dated to 99 BC and known as the Lindian chronicle (Syll.3 725 / FGrH 532). There may have been more than three instances, but the whole text is not preserved. On the inscription, se Higbie (2003), and on the salvation epiphanies of the goddess in particular, see Petrovic (2015).
48 On constructions of divine authority in metrical sacred regulations, Petrovic – Petrovic (2006).
49 See above, p. 234, on the layout of this text. The inscription has been associated with both the cult of Asclepius and that of Sarapis ever since one of the first editors of the text, Accame (1938), p. 75, stated that “la nostra legge sacra può provenire tanto da un tempio di Asclepio quanto da uno di Serapide”. The issue is in our view settled by Robertson (2013), p. 231, who explicitly associates the text with a cult of Sarapis, and also points out that the food interdictions mentioned in the text are typically attested in non-Greek cults. To this we would add that the evidence for the cult of Asclepius in Rhodes, especially from the Hellenistic period onwards, is meager and easily contested (cf. IG XII.1 8, l. 2)—unlike the evidence for the cult of Sarapis.
50 LSCG 139, l. 4-5: πρῶτον μὲν καὶ τὸ μέγιστον· χεῖρας καὶ <γ>νώμην καθαροὺς…
51 LSS 86, 3.
52 See above, p. 239.
53 Chaniotis (2012), p. 132-133. The texts are: 1) Porph. Abst. 2.19 [= Clem. Al. Strom. 5.13.3 p. 334, 24 St.]. and 2) Totti (1985), no. 61, “Codex Vindob. 130 and Codex Laur. 37, Plut. 32.” Cf. Accame (1938), p. 74-78.
54 Noteworthy is the extent of the overlap in purity requirements between LSS 91 and LSCG 139, indicative of the cultic competition: not only do both texts insist on internal purity, but both are also concerned with a) goats; b) miscarriage; c) death in the family (identical formulation in Greek); d) lawful intercourse; e) defloration—concerning the last issue, LSS 91 and 139 are the only two texts dealing with it in the extant evidence. As Esther Eidinow pointed out to us, the diversity of articulations of requests for inner purity (nous, psuchē, to syneidos) at Rhodes (as well as elsewhere), might also point towards attempts at cultic branding and, relatedly, competitive separation of brands.
55 On trade, Berthold (2009) [1994], p. 206-212; on close connections between Rhodes and Delos, Gabrielsen (1997), p. 60-63.
56 There is a degree of randomness in recent publications concerning the date of this inscription, but cumulative evidence suggest the 2nd c. BC or earlier. The first editor of the text, Koumanoudis (1875), p. 457 suggests the early Roman period on the basis of letter forms: the early Roman period on Delos starts in the first half of the 2nd c. BC. A date of 116/5 BC was argued by Bruneau (1970), p. 229 and was accepted by Lupu, NGSL, and Robertson (2013). Sokolowski (ad loc.) states “époque romaine” with no explanation or specification; this dating may have been influenced by his views concerning philosophical influences on the concept of moral purity, a concept he associates regularly with “époque tardive”. In either case, the inscription is a republication of an older text, as documented by l. 7-10. It is therefore difficult to accept that the text of the prographe postdates the 1st c. BC. Bremmer’s dating (2002), p. 107, to the “beginning of the 3rd century AD” is an outlier, but he admits that “the inscription itself will be somewhat earlier as it has been re-inscribed”, with reference to Bruneau (1970), p. 229 in n. 11. Bruneau suggests a date more than 300 years earlier, and supports the 116/5 BC dating. This date was proposed by Plassart (1928), p. 140-143, and is based on the supplement of one Sarapion as archon at the beginning of the text (line 5). Bruneau (1970), p. 229: “il vaut mieux retenir le complément proposé par A. Plassart [Sarapi] onos, donc 116/5.” Bruneau rejects P. Roussel’s alternative suggestion of 54/3 BC (in his commentary on ID 2529), based on reading Zenon’s name as an archon (refuted on the basis of the lacuna being too long for Zenon’s name). The first part of the inscription (l. 1-10) contains instructions for republication of an old damaged inscription (l. 7-10: “in accordance with the ordinances, [a magistrate] had the prographe inscribed to replace the broken stele”). We cannot tell, therefore, when the original text was inscribed, but if we accept the reading proposed by Bruneau and Plassart, 116/5 provides a terminus ante quem.
57 Cf. SGO I, 01/17/01 (Zeus Lepsynos); IC I.xxiii 3 (Mater Pantōn), and esp. LSAM 20 which contains regulations concerning participation in a private cult of multiple divinities, and outlines conditions of entry. On this inscription, cf. the discussion by Chaniotis (1997), p. 159-162; and especially Chaniotis (2012), p. 131-132, who comments on haple psyche: “Although the author of this text does not use such notions as soul and mind, it is clear that the entire set of provisions is founded upon the idea of an internal purity.”
58 To the two examples (Epidauros and Rhodes, LSS 108) add the programma in hexameter from Mytilene (LSS 82, late Hellenistic?), cult of Asclepius or Sarapis: ἁγνὸν πρὸς τέμενος στείχειν | ὅσια φρονέοντα, and note that also in the Delian Aretalogy of Sarapis, IG XI.4 1299, l. 33-4, divine sōteria by Isis and Sarapis is guaranteed to those who “always and in every respect think pious thoughts, ἐσθλοῖσιν δὲ σαώτορες αἰὲν ἕπεσθε | ἀνδράσιν οἳ κατὰ πάντα νόωι ὅσια φρονέουσιν. Robertson (2013), p. 230-231 associates these requests with Asclepius primarily, and thinks of Sarapis as plagiarizing Asclepius.
59 LSS 59, l. 15-24: “wearing white clothes, without shoes, and having abstained from woman and meat, and bring along nothing… neither a small key, nor a silver ring, no belts, or small bags, no weapons of war, and do nothing that is forbidden.”
60 The record of dedications shows that the visitors and dedicants were extraordinary in two respects: the dedications bear witness to a very cosmopolitan staff and clientele of the sanctuary (list of dedicants with their provenances in Bruneau (1970), p. 230: attested provenances: Athens; Italy; Alexandria; Ascalonia; Laodicea; Seleucia upon Tigris; Gaza; Gerrha), and secondly, they were all male. Evidence for ritual activities points strongly towards a sanctuary frequented by soldiers: these include ritual banquets, hoplophoria, and lampadodromia of ephebes towards the altar on top of Mt. Kynthos.
61 P. Roussel, quoted by Bruneau (1970), p. 231, states “l’antique culte du Cynthe fut en quelque sorte rénové au contact de la dévotion orientale”. Evidence: 1) nationalities of worshippers; 2) oriental representations among the statuary of the sanctuary; 3) Dedications include formulas kata prostagma and kath’ horama, typically associated with Isis and Sarapis and foreign cults. Notably, we find the formula kata prostagma in the Delian aretalogy of Sarapis (l. 1-2, the prose section), where the priest Apollonius states that he had the history of the temple (l. 2-28) and the hymn inscribed kata prostagma theou. 4) Kynthion is the only sanctuary whose structure of cult personnel recalls the structure of Egyptian and Syrian sanctuaries. 5) Finally, in dedications, Zeus and Athena are associated with Isis and Sarapis [evidence collected in Bruneau (1970), p. 231, with references to ID 1416; ID 2074 (dedication by an Athenian to Zeus Kynthios, Athena Kynthia, Sa [rapis]) and Isis; ID 2104 (dedication to Zeus Kynthios, Sarapis and Isis; 1st c. BC)].
62 On Lepsynos, see Ashton (2003), p. 32-33, with further literature.
63 On the Egyptian material, see Meyer (1999), who identifies the earliest concepts of moral purity in the Egyptian texts of the 19th dynasty (13th/12th c. BC), p. 61-63. Moral purity and the implementation of justice (or observance of laws) as elements of piety become particularly widely spread motifs in the temple inscriptions of the Ptolemaic period (Late period in Egyptian periodization), particularly in Upper Egypt, but it is unknown in the very earliest Egyptian texts concerning cultic purity or in wisdom literature (p. 51).
64 On Greek material concerning inner purity in Greek religion, see Petrovic – Petrovic (2016).
65 Given that it follows after l. 17-18, which detail abstentions after intercourse, this singular line may be referring to certain sexual practices such as incest, as A. Chaniotis suggested to the authors. Permanent exclusion of worshippers for such transgressions, however, is attested once more, in cases of illicit, specifically out-of-wedlock, intercourse: cf. LSAM 20, 25. Cf. Parker (1996) [1983], p. 74-75. Alternatively, line 19 could be a general statement that chimes with the general statement of lines 20-21.
66 See Petrovic – Petrovic (2006).
67 Cf. LSS 55 ( “oriental divinities”) and LSCG 139, l. 10 (Sarapis). However, no goats were permitted also on the Acropolis in Athens, nor accepted as sacrificial animals, see Ath. 13.587a. Asclepius also rejects goats as sacrificial animals; cf. Wächter (1910), p. 87-88. We are grateful to Josine Blok, who pointed out to us that the concern for goats may have something to do with Athena’s aegis which is made of goatskin.
68 See Parker (1996) [1983], p. 146-148 and 177-180.
69 See Parker (1996) [1983], p. 355 on ἀπὸ φθορᾶς, and for criticism of Nock’s extravagant interpretation of the line. The specific pairing of dogs and donkeys in line 11 is unparalleled in the Greek evidence, but it finds a parallel in an Egyptian entry regulation from Philae, inscribed at a door of the Hellenistic temple court (notably, a sanctuary of Isis): Quack (2013), p. 121: “… not allowed to come near to the inner part of the temple: … donkeys, dogs, small cattle” and Junker (1959), p. 151-160. Dogs banned from Greek temples: Parker (1996) [1983], p. 356-357 with Wächter (1910), p. 92-93; the temple of Alektrona in Ialysos banned donkeys: Wächter (1910), p. 91.
70 Cf. LSCG 139, l. 18 (the period of abstention is not preserved); Sokolowski’s suggestion of ‘rape’ appears misguided; Parker (1996) [1983], p. 355, ponders whether this stipulation was valid for both parties; the length of the period, if it relates to women only, might have to do with the same concerns that kept pregnant women away from the sanctuary for forty days, until the foetus is formed (Parker (1996) [1983], p. 48-52).
71 On blood, Parker (1996) [1983], p. 105-143; on birth p. 48-52.
72 Parker (1996) [1983], p. 32-74 passim.
73 The top and the right side of the stele are lost (for the text, see NGSL 8). The identity of the divinity is not explicitly attested. The beginning of line 2 reads: οιναι. Lupu, NGSL, p. 216-217 regards the identity of the divinity as almost inevitably [Δεσπ] | οίναι. This is, in our opinion, far from certain. Although the text mentions ten days in line four, the context is unclear and the inscription may well be a sacrificial regulation. In addition, the text has been associated with LSCG 68, an entry regulation for the sanctuary of Despoina, which contains a detailed and extensive list of prohibited items, but does not specify periods of abstention.
74 NGSL 7, Decourt – Tziaphalias (2015) and LSCG 55 respectively.
75 Whether or not LSCG 154, concerning the cult of Demeter on Kos ought to be added these, we leave open. See above, n. 9 and 12.
76 Apart from NGSL 7, Sarapis also in LSCG 139, and LSS 108 and LSS 119 (although scholarly views shift between attributions to Asclepius and Sarapis).
77 Atargatis: LSS 54; Cybele: LSAM 18.
78 On the representations of Pergamon’s Athena Nikephoros and its similarities to Cybele, see Faita (2001), p. 163-180, esp. p. 177-178, and cf. Houghton (1983), p. 99-108 (esp. p. 108): “The Pergamene Athena Nikephoros, a statue of mixed Greek and oriental elements closely related to Anatolian and north Syrian cult figures, represents a totally different and until now virtually unexplored area of Pergamene religious and formal tradition.” On the Nikephorion and oriental elements, see Kohl (2002); on cult of Cybele at Pergamon, Lawall (2003), p. 101-102, with further literature.
79 On temple slavery as a feature of Egyptian, Babylonian and Egyptian traditions, and its attestations in cults of Asia Minor, Hülsen (2008), p. 5-21, with further literature. It is possible that Pythion, the founder of the sanctuary, comes from a non-Greek family. On Stasilas (rather than Sirasilas, as printed by Sokolowski in LSCG 171, l. 4), the name of Pythion’s father, see Sherwin-White (1978), p. 522, and p. 320-322 on difficulties concerning the identity of the “theoi patrioi;” most scholars assume that the gods in question are protectors of the family.
80 On Kithone, see Herda (1998), p. 33-35 who argues for the indigenous, Karian origin of the cult. On LSAM 51, see Graf (2007), p. 105 and Graf (2011), p. 104-105. The inscription comes from a temple of the goddess that was transferred from the east terrace of the Kalabaktepe, or built anew on the South Agora (but the exact location remains speculative). See Milet VI.3 1239, esp. p. 152.
81 On the Orphic / Pythagorean elements in LSAM 84, see Sokolowski’s commentary and Graf – Johnston (2013), p. 155.
82 Ll. 1-2 (as restored in IvP II 264): [εἰσπορευέσ]θ̣ω εἰς [τὸ ἱερὸν τοῦ Ἀσκληπιοῦ ἁγνεύων ἀπὸ γυ | ναικὸς ἡμέ]ρας δέκα, ἀπὸ δὲ <τ>ετοκ̣[υίας καὶ τρεφούσης ἡμ | έρας δύο, ἀπὸ δ’ ἀφροδ]εισίων λουσάμενος.
83 During the Hellenistic period, Asclepius and Sarapis are not explicitly identified, even though the two gods are remarkably similar: Sarapis was also a deity of miraculous healing, who appeared to his worshippers in a dream, and both deities received manumitted slaves. The Alexandrian statue of Sarapis was remarkably similar to Asclepius’ cult statue from Epidaurus from the first half of the 4th c. BC. Scholars have also noted significant similarities in the cults of both divinities: daily morning and evening services and specific priestly vestments. In Tacitus we find a remark (Hist. 4.84.5) that many believe that Sarapis and Asclepius were the same god, which indicates that they were later identified. On Asclepius and Sarapis, see Stambaugh (1972), p. 75-78 who argued that the cult of Sarapis was initially influenced by the cult of Asclepius in the early Hellenistic period, and that the direction of influence was later reversed: “later in antiquity we find the Asclepius cult imitating such Egyptian religious customs as daily prayers and special vestiments” (p. 77).
84 Standard editions regularly print mystifying ἀπὸ φό[ν]ου. Reading ‘from funeral’ is owed to the commentary in the CGRN 155, where the authors suggest the following: “Since only the fourth letter of the word, the omicron, is certain, and there are about 6 letter spaces (cf. Lupu’s epigraphical commentary: we should assume a vacat after the υ of φόνου), [κήδ]ο[υς] “a funeral” might be a better solution”. We include this reading in the Greek text below.
85 στάλα Ἴσιος Σαράπιος | Θεός, τύχα ἀγαθά. ἱερὸν ἅγιον Ἴσιος | Σαράπιος Ἀνούβιος. v εἰσπορεύεσ | θαι εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν τὸν βουλόμενον (5) θύειν καθαρίζουτα ἀπὸ μὲν | λέχ[ο]υς ἐναταίαν, ἀπὸ δὲ δι | αφθέρματος v τεσσαράκουτα | καὶ τέσσαρας ἁμέρας, ἀπὸ δὲ τῶ[ν] | φυ̣σικῶν ἑβδομαίαν, ἀπὸ κήδ] ο [υς] | (10) ἑπτὰ ἁμέρας, ἀπὸ δὲ αἰγέου καὶ | προβατέου τριταῖον, ἀπὸ δὲ τῶν | λοιπῶν βρωμάτων ἐκ κεφαλᾶς | λουσάμενον αὐθημερί, ἀπὸ δὲ | ἀφροδισίων αὐθημερί v λουσά | μενον (15), ἀπὸ ΠΑΘΙΝ[ ]Ι̣ΑΜΕΙΙΓΑΝ | MỌẠṆ αὐθημερὶ λουσάμε[ν]ον Υ | [- - -]υεσθαι ΜΗΔΕΜ̣[- - - -] | [- - - -] ε̣ἰσπορεύεσθα[ι- - -] | [- - - -]Μ̣ΕΩΝΠΟ[- - - - - -] | (20) [- - - - -]ΣΘΕ[- - - - - -]. Tr. Lupu, NGSL, p. 206-207, slightly modified.
86 Cf. WPA 9 = LSS 119 from Ptolemais in Upper Egypt: “Those entering the sanctuary abstain as stated below: after illness in the household [or outside], for seven days; after passing [sc. death]… After miscarriage… After contact with a woman who has given birth or nursing… after exposure of a child, 14 days. As for men, after sex with a woman 2 days, and the women corresponding to men. [Women] after miscarriage, 40 days… A woman who has given birth or is nursing… if she exposes the infant… after menstruation, seven days. [After] sex with a man, two days, and [Bingen: she will carry] myrtle…” On this text, see Bingen (1993) and SEG 43, 1131.
87 Quack (2013).
88 Temple of Khnum/Khnum Ra/ Neith – H.wt-Mwt, “Temple of the Mother” (i.e., the goddess Neith, ~ Athena, cf. Hdt. 2.28.1; Pl. Ti. 21e), Esna ~ Latopolis. See Hallof (2011), with further literature.
89 For an overview of the temple’s history, cf. Hallof (2011). Position of the inscription: Sauneron, Esna V on 197, 16-21.
90 Esna 197, 16-21 = Sauneron, Esna V, pp. 340-349, Tr. Quack (2013).
91 Quack (2013), p. 118-122.
92 Meyer (1999); Quack (2013).
93 Kom Ombo, text 878 with parallel in Edfu III 360, 12-362, 4.
94 The reference to a hieron katharsion is open to interpretation. Angelos Chaniotis suggested to us to take the adjective and noun as unrelated, and interpret the line either as “using a purifier in the temple” or “using the temple as a purifier”, τῷ ἰερῷ would on that interpretation be a locative or instrumental, not connected to καθαρσίῳ; “entering the sanctuary which purifies them”. Stella Georgoudi pointed out that τῷ ἰερῷ καθαρσίῳ might refer to a piglet for purification, while Christopher Faraone noted that group purification with a piglet is attested for Athenian assembly, which might corroborate Georgoudi’s suggestion of purification of a group of people by means of a piglet. Cf. Suid. s.v. Καθάρσιον: ἔθος ἦν Ἀθήνησι καθαίρειν τὴν ἐκκλησίαν καὶ τὰ θέατρα καὶ ὅλως τὰς τοῦ δήμου συνόδους μικροῖς πάνυ χοιριδίοις. In our view, one ought to bear in mind the fact that the purification of the cult personnel from involuntary pollution needed to be practical and time-effective, as it presumably took place on a daily basis. τῷ ἰερῷ καθαρσίῳ might in this sense refer simply to the use of water. It is attractive to compare the attestation of hieron katharsion in the Lindian text to what Plutarch claims was the cleansing agent used by the Egyptian priests: De Is. 381c-d: οἱ δὲ νομιμώτατοι τῶν ἱερέων καθάρσιον ὕδωρ ἁγνιζόμενοι λαμβάνουσιν ὅθεν ἶβις πέπωκεν, “Those priests who adhere to the laws most strictly take as a purificant and purify themselves with the water from the place where ibis has drunk”.
95 Possibly referring to a wooden statue, see Call. Aet. Fr. 100 (καὶ γὰρ Ἀθήνης ἐν Λίνδῳ Δαναὸς λιτὸν ἔθηκεν ἕδος), quoted by Plutarch Fr. 158 Sandbach.
96 The statue that Amasis dedicated was, according to Francis – Vickers (1984a), p. 68-69, and Francis – Vickers (1984b), p. 119-120, made of green basalt or emerald, symbolically appropriate for Athena’s representation as Neith (Tanner [2003], p. 140-143), and was accompanied by an inscription in hieroglyphs.
97 Ael., NA 9.17, describes the remarkably water-tight nest made by the halcyon bird, and declares that it is no more easily cut apart than the corselet that Amasis is said to have dedicated to Athena Lindia. Francis and Vickers (1984b) discuss this offering at length, and suggest that Amasis had mercantile motives for making it.
98 D.L. 1.89.
99 Boardman (1980) [1964], p. 112-127; Francis – Vickers (1984a). See also Demetriou (2012), p. 108, who points out that faience workshops on Rhodes produced Egyptianizing statuettes and vessels that were practically indistinguishable from faience statues produced in Egypt. Inscriptional evidence corroborates the notion of close relationships between Rhodes and Egypt in the Classical period as well: IG XII.1 760 from 411-407 BC is a proxeny decree excavated on the Lindian Acropolis and concerns a person from Naukratis, thus bearing witness to thriving mercantile connections. The city Rhodes participated in the foundation of Hellenion in Naukratis (Demetriou [2012], p. 129).
100 See also Malkin (2011), p. 65-96.
101 LSAM 36, l. 20-23: παρε[χ]έ[τω δὲ ὁ ἱερεὺς καὶ] τ̣ὸν Αἰγύπτιον τὸν συντελέσοντα τὴ[ν θυσίαν ἐμπείρως·] μὴ ἐξέστω δὲ μηθενὶ ἄλλωι ἀπείρως τὴ[ν θυσίαν ποεῖν τῆι] θεᾶ̣ι ἢ̣ ὑπὸ τοῦ ἱερέως. Fines: l. 23-25.
102 Delian Sarapis Aretalogy, IG XI.4 1299, l. 3-5. For the text and commentary, Engelmann (1975); for a commentary and an overview of Egyptian priests working abroad, see Stambaugh (1972), p. 11- 12, and Moyer (2011), p. 142-205.
103 On Egyptian dedications to Athena Lindia from the Archaic until the Roman period, see Saint-Pierre Hoffman (2012), p. 379-388.
104 For evidence, see MAGie (1953), passim, and esp. 169-171. The presence of Egyptian cults on Rhodes was such, that it “carried on also in the dependencies of Rhodes”.
105 Vidman (1970), p. 38-43.
106 On the cults of Sarapis on Rhodes, Vidman (1970), p. 38-43. On the Sarapiastai, with an overview of epigraphic evidence, Benincampi (2007-2008), p. 347-351. Notably, Men also had a koinon in Rhodes: cf. LSS 55.
107 Vidman (1970), p. 41-42, esp. 42: “Sarapis wurde also unter die Schutzgötter der Stadt aufgenommen, seine Priester wechselten jährlich und wurden aus den vornehmsten Familien gewählt. Das sakrale Amt des Sarapispriesters hielt sich in Lindos lange Zeit, die letzte Nachricht darüber kennen wir aus dem Jahre 160 nach Chr.”
108 Pollitt (1986), p. 230.
109 On both, Ridgeway (1997), p. 152-155, and images in Gabrielsen (1997), pl. 4 and 5 respectively.
Auteurs
ip3k@virginia.edu
Hugh H. Obear Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia.
ap2bd@virginia.edu
Professor of Classics at the University of Virginia.
Together, Ivana and Andrej have recently published Inner Purity and Pollution in Greek Religion: Volume I: Early Greek Religion (Oxford University Press, 2016). A second volume, dealing with the later period, is now in preparation.
Le texte seul est utilisable sous licence Licence OpenEdition Books. Les autres éléments (illustrations, fichiers annexes importés) sont « Tous droits réservés », sauf mention contraire.
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