Atabyrius () was a cultic

epithet An epithet (, ), also a byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) commonly accompanying or occurring in place of the name of a real or fictitious person, place, or thing. It is usually literally descriptive, as in Alfred the Great, Suleima ...

of the god

Zeus Zeus (, ) is the chief deity of the List of Greek deities, Greek pantheon. He is a sky father, sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus. Zeus is the child ...

from

Greek mythology Greek mythology is the body of myths originally told by the Ancient Greece, ancient Greeks, and a genre of ancient Greek folklore, today absorbed alongside Roman mythology into the broader designation of classical mythology. These stories conc ...

, under which he was probably worshipped in the form of a bull. This was a

toponymic surname A toponymic surname or habitational surname or byname is a surname or byname derived from a place name,

derived from Mount Atabyris or Atabyrion (modern

Attavyros Attavyros () or Atavyros (Ατάβυρος) or Atabyron () is the highest mountain on the island of Rhodes in the Dodecanese in Greece. It rises to a height of 1,215 m. It lies to the south of the village of Embonas. Flora and Fauna The lowe ...

) on the island of

Rhodes Rhodes (; ) is the largest of the Dodecanese islands of Greece and is their historical capital; it is the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, ninth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Administratively, the island forms a separ ...

, near the city of Kameiros (modern

Camirus Camirus or Kamiros (; ) or Cameirus or Kameiros (Κάμειρος) was a city of ancient Rhodes, in the Dodecanese, Greece. Its site is on the northwest coast of the island, west of the modern village of Kalavarda. History The ancient city w ...

). In mythology, the

Cretan Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth la ...

Althaemenes In Greek mythology, Althaemenes or Althemenes (Ancient Greek: Ἀλθαιμένης) was a Cretan prince as the only son of King Catreus of Crete. He was the brother of Apemosyne, Aerope and Clymene. Althaemenes mistakenly killed his father thereby ...

was said to have built a temple to this aspect of the god. The cult was widespread, and may have had Cretan or

Phoenicia Phoenicians were an Ancient Semitic-speaking peoples, ancient Semitic group of people who lived in the Phoenician city-states along a coastal strip in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon and the Syria, Syrian ...

n or Theban origins (owing to the prevalence of bovine figures in Theban myth). It was written that upon this mountain there were brazen bulls which roared when anything extraordinary was going to happen.

Scholia Scholia (: scholium or scholion, from , "comment", "interpretation") are grammatical, critical, or explanatory comments – original or copied from prior commentaries – which are inserted in the margin of the manuscript of ancient a ...

Pindar Pindar (; ; ; ) was an Greek lyric, Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes, Greece, Thebes. Of the Western canon, canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar i ...

, ''Olympian'' 7.159 The poet

, in the late 6th and early 5th century BCE, was the first to mention this association of Zeus with this mountain, and the historian

Diodorus Siculus Diodorus Siculus or Diodorus of Sicily (; 1st century BC) was an ancient Greece, ancient Greek historian from Sicily. He is known for writing the monumental Universal history (genre), universal history ''Bibliotheca historica'', in forty ...

writes that in his own time, in the 1st century BCE, Zeus Atabyrius was being worshipped in the city of

Agrigentum Agrigento (; or ) is a city on the southern coast of Sicily, Italy and capital of the province of Agrigento. Founded around 582 BC by Greek colonists from Gela, Agrigento, then known as Akragas, was one of the leading cities during the golde ...

Sicily Sicily (Italian language, Italian and ), officially the Sicilian Region (), is an island in the central Mediterranean Sea, south of the Italian Peninsula in continental Europe and is one of the 20 regions of Italy, regions of Italy. With 4. ...

, more than a thousand miles away from Rhodes. Because of this, the historian

Polybius Polybius (; , ; ) was a Greek historian of the middle Hellenistic period. He is noted for his work , a universal history documenting the rise of Rome in the Mediterranean in the third and second centuries BC. It covered the period of 264–146 ...

assumed that Agrigentum must have originally been a Rhodian colony. We have evidence of an urban shrine to Atabyrius whose priest, Eulimenus, was a '' demosios'' (public slave), and that the cult of which was composed of the slaves of the city. The brazen bull torture device reputedly used by the 6th century tyrant of Agrigentum

Phalaris Phalaris () was the tyrant of Akragas (now Agrigento) in Sicily in Magna Graecia, from approximately 570 to 554 BC. History Phalaris was renowned for his excessive cruelty. Among his alleged atrocities is cannibalism: he was said to have eaten ...

may have been an idol of Zeus Atabyrius. The poet and novelist

Robert Graves Captain Robert von Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was an English poet, soldier, historical novelist and critic. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a celebrated Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival; they were b ...

in several of his nonfiction works speculatively identifies Atabyrius with the

golden calf According to the Torah, the Bible, and the Quran, the golden calf () was a cult image made by the Israelites when Moses went up to Mount Sinai (bible), Mount Sinai. In Hebrew, the incident is known as "the sin of the calf" (). It is first mentio ...

of the historical

Israelites Israelites were a Hebrew language, Hebrew-speaking ethnoreligious group, consisting of tribes that lived in Canaan during the Iron Age. Modern scholarship describes the Israelites as emerging from indigenous Canaanites, Canaanite populations ...

, by way of claiming that Atabyrius was a local re-skinning of the

Hurrian The Hurrians (; ; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri) were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age. They spoke the Hurro-Urartian language, Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria (region) ...

storm god

Teshub Teshub was the Hurrians, Hurrian weather god, as well as the head of the Hurrian pantheon. The etymology of his name is uncertain, though it is agreed it can be classified as linguistically Hurrian language, Hurrian. Both Phonetics, phonetic and L ...

. This claim does not enjoy broad scholarly support.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Atabyrius Epithets of Zeus