Aleksandra Kubiak-Schneider
ELECTRUM, Volume 30, 2023, pp. 293 - 306
https://doi.org/10.4467/20800909EL.23.010.17327The epigraphic record from Palmyra brings light on the organization of the temples: personnel, management of feasts, economy and on the ritual practices towards certain deities like Allat and Shai ‘al-Qaum. These texts were previously called in the research literature “sacred laws”and what the scholarly debate nowadays labels with the term “ritual norms.”The aim of this paper, divided on the temple economy and personnel, and ritual behavior, is to understand through the scraps of information the administration of the Palmyrene temples and processes which shaped the life in the places of worship.
Aleksandra Kubiak-Schneider
ELECTRUM, Volume 29, 2022, pp. 219 - 236
https://doi.org/10.4467/20800909EL.22.014.15784The finds from the ancient city of Gerasa brought in 1930’two inscriptions dated to the second half of the 1st century CE which mention the deity called Pakeidas. The aim of this paper is to discuss Pakeidas and his relation to another god labelled Theos Arabikos worshipped in the same city. The authors make a broad Semitic overview on the etymology of the name Pakeidas looking at the West and East (Akkadian) Semitic evidence. The authors discuss the possible location of the temple dedicated to this god beneath the Cathedral. They also reexamine in the light of epigraphic sources in comparison to the Aramaic material from the Near East the function of archibomistai, cultic agents who served to this local god.