Revival or Reinvention? Local Cults and their Iconographies in Roman Syria

Lived Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World

“…Changes over time in political control of areas and networks of routes (Guillon 2013, up to the 1st century CE) influenced the political, administrative, and logistical conditions of the sacralized places and their users. 6 At the same time, gods from the Western Asian provinces who were originally very local -Dea Syria, Zeus Heliopolitanus, Zeus Dolichenustraveled with groups and individuals from their places of origin and spread as part of processes of appropriation, due to a combination of factors such as an interest across the Roman Empire in "exotic" deities, in religious Otherness, or in Antiquarianism Blömer 2017;Versluys 2015). However, many other deities maintained their staunchly local guises, transmitting their vernacular character in names, epithets, and the places with which they were associated.…”