Extract

Jupiter Dolichenus (Iupiter Optimus Maximus Dolichenus), high god of Doliche in *Commagene, now Dülük, near Gaziantep, eastern Turkey. The original temple on top of Dülük Baba Tepe has not been excavated, but the god's stance on a bull, holding lightning-bolt and double-axe, indicate clearly his ancestry in the *Hittite storm-god Teshub. All three connote the transcendent but ambivalent power of natural forces. At Rome, he is invoked as conservator totius poli, ‘he who maintains the whole firmament’. There are no literary texts. No monument from the *Persian occupation or the Hellenistic period (see hellenism) is known: the cult first spread in the 2nd cent. ce, well after Rome's absorption of Doliche into Syria (?31 bce or ce 17). Two votive triangles for processions found at Dülük confirm that such cult objects, like most other aspects of the cult in the west, derive directly from Doliche. But the modest western sanctuaries show no common pattern. The counterpart of Iupiter Optimus Maximus Dolichenus is usually named *Juno Sancta/Regina.