The religious life of the Kingdom of Pontus did not flow from a single source. In the Greek cities of the coast Apollo, Zeus and Dionysos were honoured, in the interior the ancient mother goddesses of Anatolia and the moon god Men enjoyed wide devotion, and the dynasty's Iranian ancestry carried the memory of Mithra and of light into the palace. One of the gods closest to the crown in this mixed world was a moon god who took his name directly from the ruler: Men Pharnakou, "Men of Pharnakes". The king's tie to this cult was so close that the official oath of the Pontic kings was sworn in the god's name.

The god's centre lay on the Phanaroia plain east of Amasya, in a temple settlement called Ameria near Kabeira. Together with Komana Pontika and Zela, Ameria counts as one of the three great "temple states" described by Strabo. Strabo was himself a native of Amaseia, and the most direct account of Men Pharnakou that we possess comes from his pen.

Men: The Male Moon God of Anatolia

Men is a moon god worshipped in the western interior of Anatolia, above all around Phrygia, Pisidia and Lydia. His name coincides with the Greek word mēn, "moon" or "lunar month", and some scholars think it may have been influenced by the Avestan mâŋha of the Iranian world. Strabo calls him a local god of the Phrygians. Another view holds that the name is a Hellenized form of Manes, the name of a native Anatolian god, and the debate has never been fully closed. He is also said to descend from a local line of Arma, the moon god of the Hittite-Luwian world, and to have entered into association with the Iranian moon deity Mah and, in time, with Anahita.

The most striking feature that sets Men apart from the moon deities around him is his sex. In the ancient world the moon was usually imagined as a goddess, whereas Men is male. On reliefs and statues he generally appears as a beardless youth with wavy hair, wearing a Phrygian cap, with the two tips of a crescent rising behind his shoulders. A bull or a lion often stands beside him, and sometimes he is shown on horseback. In the Roman imperial period this image, with its Phrygian cap and belted tunic, travelled west as that of a "Phrygian god" and came close to the iconography of Mithras. The wide diffusion of the crescent and the youthful face led, over time, to his identification with other gods such as Attis and Sabazios.

The cult of Men was never gathered in a single centre. It lived on in separate sanctuaries under various local names. The temple of Men Askaenos at Antioch in Pisidia is the best known of these. Governed by a hereditary "priest of priests", this temple survived as a kind of temple state until Rome made the city a colony in 25 BC. Men Pharnakou in Pontus is the branch of the same large family that lay closer to the Black Sea and bore a royal name.

The Temple of Ameria near Kabeira

Strabo (XII, 3, 31) mentions the temple of Men while describing Kabeira. Kabeira lies close to the foothills of the Paryadres mountains. According to Strabo, the palace of Mithradates stood there, together with water-mills, a zoological garden, hunting grounds and mines. The same passage tells us that Pompey built the place into a city called Diospolis, and that Pythodoris later adorned it, renamed it Sebaste and used it as a royal residence. Kabeira is generally taken to correspond to modern Niksar, although that identification too rests on a "probably".

According to Strabo, there is here the temple of "Men of Pharnakes", as it is called. It stands at Ameria, a village-city with many temple-servants, and it possesses a sacred territory whose fruit is always reaped by the appointed priest. He adds that this is also the temple of Selene, and he cites comparable moon sanctuaries among the Albanians of the Caucasus and in Phrygia, that is, Men Askaenos and another Men temple in the territory of Antioch. It follows that Ameria was more than a single shrine: with its priest, its servants and its income-producing land it was a small sacred administrative unit. It did not reach the scale of the mother-goddess temple at Komana, where six thousand temple-servants are recorded and the high priest ranked next after the king, but it belonged to the same kind of order.

The exact site of Ameria is still not certain. Strabo does not give its position in detail, and for a long time scholars could offer only two proposals, neither with solid evidence. In recent years a link has been drawn, on the basis of phonetic similarity, between Ameria and Emeri, the former name of Bağpınar village in the Erbaa district of Tokat, but for a long time the proposal lacked adequate archaeological and epigraphic support. A new study published in Belleten sets out to place the question on a scholarly footing by evaluating the finds and inscriptions from that village. It is therefore safe to say that the temple lay near Kabeira, within the borders of today's Tokat province; to present the village as a settled identification would still be premature.

Foundation: Pharnakes I and the Dynasty's Moon God

The founder of the cult is held to be Pharnakes I, and the temple is thought to have been established in the early second century BC. Pharnakes was one of the more daring rulers in the history of Pontus. He took Sinope, which gave the kingdom a harbour capital, founded the city of Pharnakeia that bore his name, and suffered defeat in 179 BC at the hands of a coalition of neighbouring kingdoms. His reign enlarged the realm, but the country was a patchwork of Greek coastal cities, Iranian landed nobles and Anatolian villages. It is plausible that a shared symbol of belief was needed to bind this whole together.

Men was a convenient choice. As an old Anatolian god he would not seem foreign to the Cappadocian and Paphlagonian population; as a moon god he could easily be merged with Mah for the Iranian nobility and with Selene for the Greeks. The joint mention of Men Pharnakou and Selene at Ameria may be a result of this merging. On this view Pharnakes took a god the people already knew and turned him into a royal god bearing his own name, with his own priesthood and his own revenues.

Another interpretation links the enterprise to the political balance with Komana Pontika. The high priest of Komana was subordinate only to the king, yet he commanded a large body of temple-servants, wide lands and a considerable income. The temple of the goddess Ma was an ancient centre reaching back to the Hittite age, one that Iranian nobles identified with Mah. For a king trying to bring the coastal cities under his authority, such a centre was both a spiritual support and a possible focus of rival power. Founding a moon cult under his own name meant creating, in the sphere of the moon god, a centre with no rival, answerable directly to the sovereign. The basis of this reading is not an intention stated openly in the ancient sources but a judgment drawn from the cult's later function. Whether reducing the shadow of Komana was a conscious plan or an effect noticed afterwards cannot be said with certainty. What does seem clear is that the cult never came to surpass Komana.

The Meaning of the Name: Pharnakes, Tyche and the Oath

The god's epithet comes from the name of the king who founded his cult. The name Pharnakes stands for Old Iranian Farnakah and is linked to farnah, the divine radiance, the sacred glow that marks out kings. Another explanation connects the name with farrukh, "happiness", and translates Men Pharnakou as "Men who possesses happiness". The two explanations meet in one field of meaning: divine favour, fortune and the king's success.

This meaning fits the oath that Strabo reports. The Pontic kings revered the temple so exceedingly that the "royal" oath was sworn in the following form: "By the Fortune of the king and by Men of Pharnakes." A note in the Loeb edition of Strabo, attributed to David Robinson, holds that Men Pharnakou is equivalent to Tyche basileos, "the king's fortune", since on the coins of Antioch too Men stands in the place of Tyche. The oath thus becomes a formula that says the same thing twice, and the moon god emerges as the visible face of the sovereign's sacred fortune.

This oath is one of the rare details showing how the official word was bound before the gods in Pontus. The dynasty's habit of giving most of its sons the name Mithradates, "given by Mithra", was a sign of devotion to the Iranian guardian of oaths and contracts. Yet, as Saprykin points out, almost no trace of a cult of Mithra is found in Pontus; the weight of royal religion lay with the Hellenic gods. That the kings bound their official oath not to Mithra but to Men Pharnakou suggests that the claim to Iranian descent was kept alive through an Anatolian god in Greek dress.

Men Pharnakou on the Coins

The most tangible traces of the cult are on coins. On the royal coins of Pharnakes I a figure interpreted as Hermes-Mithras or, more probably, Men Pharnakou appears as the king's patron. Holding a cornucopia in his left hand, this god is presented as protector not only of the moon's cycle but also of vegetation, harvest and abundance. The cornucopia unites him with fertility gods such as Attis, Dionysos and Zeus.

The variety of symbols shows that the god was read in many ways. According to the depictions assembled by Saprykin, Men Pharnakou is sometimes shown on horseback, sometimes with the thunderbolt of Zeus, sometimes with the double axe of Perseus. The bull links him to Zeus and Dionysos, the pine cone to Attis, son of Kybele, and the cock to the sacred bird sacrificed in the Persian cults of Mithra and Ahura Mazda. Taken together, these features yield a portrait of a god in whom Anatolian, Iranian and Greek elements are interwoven. The star and crescent that merge on Pontic coins are regarded as the main proof that the cult of Men had entered the symbolic language of the dynasty. The star, representing the sun, is thought to be the older element, associated with Mithra, and the crescent to have been added under Pharnakes. The same sign is said to have remained a royal emblem in Pontus for a long time, to have spread with the dynasty to the other shores of the Black Sea, and to have become the emblem of Byzantion. Popular writing often asserts a direct continuity between this ancient symbol and the star and crescent of the Ottoman and Republican flags; scholarship treats the link with caution, and it is only mentioned here.

It has been suggested that a depiction of Men Pharnakou from Amisos may be a portrait of a Mithradatid king. That points to a period when god and ruler drew close to each other visually, and anticipates the later development.

King and God under Mithradates VI

The cult did not remain confined to Pharnakes. The custom of the oath, which Strabo describes with the word "kings", shows that it continued under Mithradates VI Eupator. More importantly, in this period Men Pharnakou becomes part of the king's own divine image. According to Saprykin, after Mithradates' triumph at Pergamon in 88-87 BC his statues and portraits, like those of the deified Alexander, began to present an idealized divine image combining features of Dionysos, Men, Helios, Ares, Perseus and Herakles. On coins minted in the Bosporan cities of Pantikapaion, Phanagoreia and Gorgippia, Mithradates appears as Men Pharnakou, together with a standing statue of Dionysos holding grapes and a thyrsos.

The basis of this propaganda is that Men and Dionysos share a similar function: both are seen as gods of renewal, birth and recovery. The image of a moon god who defeats darkness and evil suited the presentation of the king as a ruler who protects the state and rescues the country. The cult that Pharnakes founded was thus opened, about a hundred years later, to a new political use.

The spread of the cult at the everyday level is also documented. Among the terracotta figurines found on the northern shore of the Black Sea are depictions of Men on a cock and of Men-Attis on a galloping horse. Most are dated to the Mithradatic period and later, and they mark cults thought to have been carried to the Bosporos from Pontus and Lesser Armenia. It has been proposed that these figurines were popular among the soldiers and mercenaries serving in the Pontic army.

That Mithradates VI had a palace at Kabeira also strengthens the relation between cult and settlement. Strabo lists the palace, the water-mills, the zoological garden, the hunting grounds and the mines in the same breath; Kabeira was clearly a royal centre, and the temple of Men was its religious counterpart. The depiction of Zeus Stratios inside the temple on Kabeira coins of the imperial period indicates that the sacred character of the district kept its importance after the kings.

Place within Pontic Religion

What distinguishes Men Pharnakou from the other great cults of Pontus is that it was a product of royal policy more than of popular belief. The Ma of Komana Pontika and the Anaitis of Zela belonged to sacred centres that had lasted for centuries and existed before the dynasty. Men Pharnakou appears to have been founded under the name of a particular king and for a particular political aim. There is therefore no reason to think that the cult acquired a popular base as wide as Komana's; even the name of Ameria is today not as well known as those of Komana and Zela.

On the other hand, the cult is a privileged example for understanding the layered identity of Pontus. The same god could speak to the local population as an Anatolian moon god of Phrygian origin, to the Iranian nobility through his link with Mah, and to the Greeks through his union with Selene. That Strabo also calls Ameria the temple of Selene indicates that this joint name was really used in public language. The synthesis is the religious counterpart of the Pontic kings' effort to claim Iranian, Greek and Anatolian heritage at once.

With Roman rule the sacred order changed. After 63 BC Pompey reorganized the region, made Kabeira a city under the name Diospolis, and appointed a new person to the high priesthood of Komana. In Strabo's day Kabeira is a city that Pythodoris uses as a royal residence under the name Sebaste, and the temple of Men is still mentioned. Later coins of Kabeira, however, show mainly the temple of Zeus Stratios. There is no direct document showing to what extent Men Pharnakou lived on in the Roman period.

Chronology

First half of the 2nd century BC: Pharnakes I founds the cult of Men Pharnakou at Ameria (the exact date is not known).

179 BC: Pharnakes is defeated by a coalition of neighbouring kingdoms.

88-87 BC: After his victory at Pergamon, Mithradates VI Eupator appears under a divine image that carries features of Dionysos, Men, Helios and other gods.

63 BC: Death of Mithradates and the conversion of Pontus into a Roman province; Pompey turns Kabeira into a city under the name Diospolis.

Strabo's age: Pythodoris gives Kabeira the name Sebaste; the temple of Men and the royal oath are recorded by Strabo (XII, 3, 31).

Bibliography

Primary sources

  • Strabo, Geography XII, 3, 29-34 (Loeb Classical Library, translation and notes by H. L. Jones).

Academic studies

  • "Arkeolojik ve Epigrafik Veriler Işığında Pontos Tapınak Devleti Ameria'nın Konumu Üzerine Yeni Bir Öneri", Belleten, Turkish Historical Society (DergiPark).

Books

  • Saprykin, Sergej Ju., "The Religion and Cults of the Pontic Kingdom: Political Aspects", Mithridates VI and the Pontic Kingdom, Aarhus University Press, 2009.
  • McGing, Brian, "Pontus", Encyclopaedia Iranica, 2004.

Other sources

  • Anderson, Rosie, "Men Pharnakou, moon god fit for a king", rosieanderson.net. rosieanderson.net
  • "Men (deity)", Wikipedia (auxiliary source). en.wikipedia.org
  • Højte, Jacob Munk, "Tempelstater i Pontos: Komana Pontike, Zela og Ameria", Aarhus 2004.

Online sources