RT Article
T1 THE CULTS OF ISIS AND KORE AT SAMARIA-SEBASTE IN THE HELLENISTIC AND ROMAN PERIODS
JF Harvard theological review
VO 94
IS 2
SP 159
OP 179
A1 Magness, Jodi
LA English
PB Cambridge Univ. Press
YR 2001
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1784650285
AB The existence of a cult of Kore at Samaria-Sebaste in the Roman period is attested by inscriptions, a statue of the goddess, depictions of her on the city's coins, and the remains of a third century temple building. A Ptolemaic period dedicatory inscription to Sarapis and Isis found in the vicinity of the Kore temple's foundations suggests that a Hellenistic shrine or temple to these Egyptian deities once stood in this area. In this paper, I reexamine the archaeological, numismatic, and epigraphic evidence for these cults at Samaria-Sebaste in the Hellenistic and Roman periods. I conclude that the cult of Isis and Sarapis was established at Samaria in the Hellenistic period.I am grateful to Kenneth G. Holum, Peter Richardson, and Hanan Eshel for their advice and comments on portions of this paper. I assume sole responsibility for its contents. I would like to thank the Palestine Exploration Fund for their permission to reproduce the illustrations in Figures 1–3. It was centered around a shrine or temple located on a terrace north of the acropolis. This structure may have been rebuilt in the Gabinian period (mid-first century B.C.E.). After 30 B.C.E., Herod the Great erected a new temple on this spot, which he dedicated to the goddess Kore, the Greco-Roman equivalent of Isis. The architectural elements associated with the Hellenistic shrine of Isis and Herod's temple of Kore were incorporated in the foundations of a third century C.E. temple of Kore, which was the last in the series of cultic buildings constructed on this spot.
DO 10.1017/S0017816001029029