Kafr Nabu
Coordinates: 36 ° 22 ′ 0 ″ N , 36 ° 54 ′ 0 ″ E
Kafr Nabu , also Kafr Nabo, Kefr Nabo, Kafr Nabw, in ancient times Kaper Nabou; was a settlement in the area of the Dead Cities in northwestern Syria in Roman and early Byzantine times . The ruins of a church and numerous residential buildings from the 2nd to 7th centuries have been preserved. A special feature is an oil press that was dedicated to three oriental deities.
location
Kafr Nabu is located in Aleppo Governorate , about 28 kilometers as the crow flies northwest of Aleppo and 537 meters high on the Jebel Siman. The karst hilly area is part of the northern Syrian limestone massif. The place is on the on the main line from Aleppo to Afrin preferred Deir Seman achievable. From there an asphalt side road leads five kilometers east into the mountains to Basufan and three kilometers further to Burj Haidar . Here a track branches off in a northerly direction, which reaches Kafr Nabu after 2.5 kilometers. Kalota is about 3.5 kilometers to the east at the same height . Another road from the north leaves the Afrin valley at Basuta and first arrives at Brad , the region's ancient administrative center on the central plateau, which is three kilometers away from Kafr Nabu and separated from it by a limestone bar.
History and appearance
The ruins of the buildings are scattered at the highest point of the flat undulating mountainous country, between whose exposed rock slabs and stone piles only a small layer of soil allows for barren grass. Only a few olive trees thrive on the otherwise treeless hilltop. The heyday of Kafr Nabu and the regional capital Brad, which was called Kaprobarada in antiquity, began as early as the 2nd century, a century earlier than the neighboring towns on the Jebel Siman.
In ancient times, the production of olive oil was probably the most profitable economic factor and was accordingly integrated into the religious cult. An inscription from 224 AD on an olive press mentions that it was consecrated to the local ancestral gods Seimios, Symbetylos and Leōn when it was completed. The inscription shows that economic growth did not begin with the introduction of Christianity in the 4th century. The last door inscription on a house without a Christian cross bears the year 455/456. At least until then there were still followers of the polytheistic religion. The complete Christianization of the place was connected with the spread of Monophysitism and probably did not take place until the end of the 5th century.
The fact that cattle troughs were found in most of the houses suggests that cattle breeding was also of economic importance, at least for self-sufficiency. A farmland of 600 hectares, marked by boundary stones, belonged to the 75 houses in the village. The village houses built in Roman times had two small rooms next to each other made of irregular, roughly hewn limestone masonry. Most of the early houses were single-story and had a flat roof made of a layer of wooden beams. They were much simpler than the lavishly designed, two-story residences with pitched roofs that only became typical between the 4th and 6th centuries. From this period, some buildings one to two storeys high with porticoes attached to the long sides have been preserved. The long rectangular houses were mostly oriented in an east-west direction, the entrance was on the south side.
Little remains of a Greek-style temple dated 224 AD . It was dedicated to the oriental god Nabu , who gave his name not only to the temple and the place, but also to the entire mountain area at that time. In the 13th century, the Arab geographer Yaqut described a temple ruin and referred to the Jebel Siman by its previous name as Jebel Nabu.
The three deities mentioned in connection with the olive press are likely to have been local forms of one of the triads of Semitic gods customary in Syria , some of which went back to Babylonian roots and which corresponded to the Roman gods . Seimios is equated with the sky god Baal , Symbetylos was a fertility goddess and probably corresponded to Atargatis , the less frequently revered Leon is said to have corresponded to Zeus Gennaios.
Later the temple was replaced by a basilica . Howard Crosby Butler estimated them around 1900 after a style study in the 4th century. A pilgrims' hostel (Pandocheion) , completed according to an inscription 504/505, was attached to the church. The hostel served as a stopover for pilgrims on the way to the Simeon monastery ; the 40 × 15 meter building was divided into an area for men and women by a partition wall.
A chapel was consecrated in 525 according to a Syrian inscription above the portal on the south side.
literature
- Frank Rainer Scheck, Johannes Odenthal: Syria. High cultures between the Mediterranean and the Arabian desert. DuMont, Cologne 1998, p. 296, ISBN 3770113373
Web links
- Kafar Nabo. Syria Looks ( Memento from May 6, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Photos
- Kafr Nabo. Strabo
Individual evidence
- ↑ Kafr Nabw, Syria page. fallingrain.com
- ^ Fergus Millar: The Roman Near East: 31 BC - Ad 337. Carl Newell Jackson Lectures. Harvard University Press, 1995, p. 254
- ^ Frank R. Trombley: Hellenic Religion & Christianization, c. 370-529. Religions in the Graeco-Roman world, EJ Brill, Leiden 1993, Vol. II, pp. 259 f
- ↑ Christine Strube : The "Dead Cities". Town and country in northern Syria during late antiquity. Verlag Philipp von Zabern, Mainz 1996, p. 15, ISBN 3805318405
- ↑ Javier Teixidor: The Pantheon of Palmyra. Études préliminaires aux religions orientales dans l'Émpire romain 79. Leiden 1979, p. 110
- ^ Trombley, p. 258
- ^ Hermann Wolfgang Beyer : The Syrian church building. Studies of late antique art history. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin 1925, p. 37