Page:Archaeologia volume 38 part 1.djvu/244

 214 Recent Excavations at Carthage. new divinity a different local form of one already worshipped in that place ; while on the other hand some casual resemhlance may have caused divinities of very different origins to be regarded as one. The name of Tanith occurs on a bilingual inscription found at Athens shortly before the year 1797, and preserved in the United Service Museum.* It is on the tombstone of a Sidonian named in the Greek inscription Artemidorus (the gift of Artemis). In the Phoenician inscription his name is Abdtanith (the servant of Tanith). This shows that when the tombstone was executed, which was probably about three centuries before Christ, Tanith was looked upon as the Greek Artemis ; not, however, the goddess of the chase, the Diana of the Romans, but the oriental Artemis, the Great Goddess of eastern nations. She was, no doubt, the "A/rre/*t? 'Ai/otm? whom, according to Pausanias," the Lydians worshipped ; and she was, possibly, the "Apre/xt? Uepatici} before whose temple the same people erected a statue of Adrastus. Plutarch, in the life of Artaxerxes II.,' 1 tells us of that monarch having made Aspasia priestess of Artemis Anc'itis at Ecbatana (T^? *A/>Te/&>? T^<? / 'E/3aTa>o4<? t)v 'Avelnv KoXavtrw). This agrees with the account given by Clement of Alexandria, 8 on the authority of Berosus, that Artaxerxes II. introduced into his dominions the adoration of images instead of fire-worship ; and, after setting up the image of Aphrodite Tanais at Babylon, Susa, and Ecbatana, caused her to be worshipped by the Persians and Bactrians, as well as by the people of Damascus and Sardes. This passage serves to identify Tanith with Aphrodite as well as with Artemis. Strabo tells us that the Modes and Armenians practised the sacred rites of the Persians, especially the Armenians, who worshipped Tanais.' We learn from the same author, how extensively the cultus of the goddess prevailed in the East, from there being a temple of Anca,* near Arbela ; and he tells us that the Persians, to commemorate their victory over the Sacae at Zela in Cappadocia, raised a mound by heaping up earth round a natural rock, so as to give it the appearance of a hill, and erected upon it a temple to Anaitis and' the gods worshipped with her 6eS>v), Omanes and Anadatus, Persian divinities." If this Anaitis be b Pausanias, iii. c. xvi. 6. ' Puusanias, vii. c. vi 4. d cap. xxvii. ' Clem. Alex. Protrcpt. v. Strabo, xi. 14, 16. Most editions of Strabo read here Arairtiof, but, as the greater part of the MSS. read Tava. Strabo, xri. 1,4.
 * Slrabo, xi. 8, 4.