On some new results in the study of the helios cult on bosporus in the context of ancestor worsh

Author(s):  E.V. Shushunova, Tula State Lev Tolstoy Pedagogical University, Tula, Russia, schuschunova.elena@yandex.ru

Issue:  Volume 44, №22

Rubric:  Topical issues of world history

Annotation:  Based on the burial equipment found in one of the necropolis crypts of the "Belinskoye" ancient settlement in the Eastern Crimea, the researcher restores the details of the animal sacrifice and the blood libations using a portable altar with a draining. In the author's opinion, committed acts were a peculiar address-oath to Helios, the god brutally retributive for the early death. The excavated crypt has indeed revealed numerous graves, mostly of women and children perished in the trials of the dramatic events of the Bosporus barbarians' the last naval expedition of 276 to the Asia Minor. This indirectly testifies to the fact that by the 3d century AD, on Bosporus as well as in the Asia Minor, the god-avenger Helios was perceived as a complex syncretic deity inextricably merged with the Greek-eastern cult of Serapis. It is most likely that it was the layer of beliefs of the cult associated with Isis that required the confirmation of the oath formula by an immediate blood libation. The rite also shows that the burial of the dead was carried out by their closest relatives, part of which eventually managed to return to the territory of the Bosporus from the Asia Minor. Thus, due to religious beliefs relating to the honoring ancestors, the rite was held in extraordinary circumstances in order to ensure divine revenge by the ubiquitous and supernatural force of the syncretic deity of the Zeus-Helios-Serapis, cruelly penalizing bloody atrocities against innocent people and their premature death

Keywords:  ancestor worship, divine vengeance, ritual of the bloody libation, funeral cult, the God Helios, the Goddess Isis.

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