Shadrafa (or Shadrapa, ''šdrpʾ, šdrbʾ'', σατραπας, i.e. "
satrap
A satrap () was a governor of the provinces of the ancient Median kingdom, Median and Achaemenid Empire, Persian (Achaemenid) Empires and in several of their successors, such as in the Sasanian Empire and the Hellenistic period, Hellenistic empi ...
") is a poorly-attested Canaanite (
Punic
The Punic people, usually known as the Carthaginians (and sometimes as Western Phoenicians), were a Semitic people who migrated from Phoenicia to the Western Mediterranean during the Early Iron Age. In modern scholarship, the term ''Punic'' ...
) god of healing or medicine.
His cult is attested in the
Roman era
In modern historiography, ancient Rome is the Roman people, Roman civilisation from the founding of Rome, founding of the Italian city of Rome in the 8th century BC to the Fall of the Western Roman Empire, collapse of the Western Roman Em ...
(c. 1st to 3rd centuries) in
Amrit
Amrit (), the classical antiquity, classical Marathus (, ''Marathos''), was a Phoenicians, Phoenician port located near present-day Tartus in Syria. Founded in the third millenniumBC, Marat (, ) was the northernmost important city of ancient Ph ...
and
Palmyra
Palmyra ( ; Palmyrene dialect, Palmyrene: (), romanized: ''Tadmor''; ) is an ancient city in central Syria. It is located in the eastern part of the Levant, and archaeological finds date back to the Neolithic period, and documents first menti ...
in the Levant and in
Carthage
Carthage was an ancient city in Northern Africa, on the eastern side of the Lake of Tunis in what is now Tunisia. Carthage was one of the most important trading hubs of the Ancient Mediterranean and one of the most affluent cities of the classic ...
and
Leptis Magna
Leptis or Lepcis Magna, also known by #Names, other names in classical antiquity, antiquity, was a prominent city of the Carthaginian Empire and Roman Libya at the mouth of the Wadi Lebda in the Mediterranean.
Established as a Punic people, Puni ...
in Africa. He is sometimes depicted as a youth with a serpent or a scorpion.
In a Punic-Latin bilingual in Leptis Magna he is identified with
Liber
In Religion in ancient Rome, ancient Roman religion and Roman mythology, mythology, Liber ( , ; "the free one"), also known as Liber Pater ("the free Father"), was a god of viticulture and wine, male fertility and freedom. He was a patron de ...
-
Dionysus
In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, myth, Dionysus (; ) is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. He was also known as Bacchus ( or ; ...
.
Various scholarly suggestions have Palmyran ''šdrpʾ'' to
Heracles
Heracles ( ; ), born Alcaeus (, ''Alkaios'') or Alcides (, ''Alkeidēs''), was a Divinity, divine hero in Greek mythology, the son of ZeusApollodorus1.9.16/ref> and Alcmene, and the foster son of Amphitryon.By his adoptive descent through ...
,
Asclepios,
Eshmun,
Adonis
In Greek mythology, Adonis (; ) was the mortal lover of the goddesses Aphrodite and Persephone. He was considered to be the ideal of male beauty in classical antiquity.
The myth goes that Adonis was gored by a wild boar during a hunting trip ...
,
Nergol,
Melqart
Melqart () was the tutelary god of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre and a major deity in the Phoenician and Punic pantheons. He may have been central to the founding-myths of various Phoenician colonies throughout the Mediterranean, as well ...
and
Resheph. It seems probable that Shadrafa arises from Hellenistic-Canaanite
syncretism
Syncretism () is the practice of combining different beliefs and various school of thought, schools of thought. Syncretism involves the merging or religious assimilation, assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in the ...
, and may represent an ''interpretatio punica'' of a Hellenistic deity.
[Achim Lichtenberger, ''Severus Pius Augustus'' (2011)]
p. 34
Jonas Carl Greenfield, Al Kanfei Yonah'' (2001)
p. 426
/ref>
References
*''De Shadrafa, dieu de Palmyre, à Baal Shamīm, dieu de Hatra, aux IIe et IIIe siècles après J.-C'' (1962)
*Collart, Paul, "Nouveau monument palmyrénien de Shadrafa", ''Museum Helveticum'' 13 (1956), 209–215.
* Edward Lipiński, "Shadday, Shadrapha et le dieu Satrape", ''Zeitschrift für Althebraistik'' 8 (1995), 247–274.
*Paolo Xella, Edward Lipiński, "Shadrapha" in: Edward Lipiński (ed.), ''Dictionnaire de la Civilisation Phénicienne et Punique'' (1992), 407–408.
Further reading
*
*
*
External links
BM 125206 (limestone stela to Shadrafa from Palmyra, dated AD 55), britishmuseum.org
{{Authority control
West Semitic gods
Hellenistic Asian deities
Health gods
Palmyra
Phoenician mythology