“The Hittite Empire was blown to dust during the violent and catastrophic event we know as the Bronze Age Collapse. Yet even though they were long gone come the time of the Romans, Tarhunda evidently lived on.”
By Gordon Doherty
I RECENTLY attended Vindolanda Roman fort in Northumberland. Restored to appear as it was in the 3rd Century AD, the fortification was originally part of the Stanegate system (a precursor to Hadrian’s Wall). I was visiting to take in a live exhibition by the 8th Augusta, a re-enactment legion. The group demonstrated marching and drill formations, archery and more. I even got to shoot a ballista!
If that had been the sum of my visit, I’d have gone home elated, but little did I know that I was about to stumble across something quite incredible… something that would strike me like a bolt of lightning.
Allow me to explain…
This is the Roman god Jupiter Dolichenus. Not Jupiter who was the foremost of all Roman Gods, but a shadowy offshoot, around whom a “mystery cult” sprung up and flourished in the empire of the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD.
The workings of this obscure cult remain poorly-understood. What we do know is that it was closed to outsiders, and that followers had to undergo rites of initiation before gaining entry. But from where did this shadowy variation of Jupiter arise? And what does Dolichenus mean? Well, let me show you another relief.
Spot the similarities? More like spot the difference! And here’s the thing: This second relief is nearly two thousand years older than the first. It would have been carved around 1600 BC, long, long before even the mythical date of Rome’s foundation in 753 BC.
So who is the figure in the older relief? Meet Tarhunda, aka Teshub, God of Thunder and chief deity of the Hittite Empire.
The Hittites were an absolute superpower of the Bronze Age, dominating Anatolia and northern Syria.
They went head-to-head with the mighty Pharaoh Ramesses II of Egypt at the Battle of Kadesh in 1274 BC. They were possibly the overlords and protectors of Homeric Troy, and may well have been involved in the Trojan War.
But, around 1200 BC, the Hittite Empire was blown into the dust of history during the violent and catastrophic event we know as the Bronze Age Collapse.
Yet even though the Hittites were long gone come the time of the Romans, Tarhunda evidently lived on in the shape of this Jupiter Dolichenus. Even the way the later god is standing on the back of a bull is strikingly Hittite – in that they typically depicted Tarhunda walking on the backs of the two sacred bulls, named Serris and Hurris.
So how did a representation of this Thunder God of a long-fallen eastern Bronze Age empire end up here, on a rain and windswept 1st century AD Roman fort?
At the time of Pax Romanus, Roman legions were commonly deployed all across the empire. Often they were dispatched to far-flung regions to fill gaps in the local defences. Sometimes, when their ranks were filled with conscripts from conquered regions, they were sent to provinces far from those homelands in order to ward off thoughts of rebellion or desertion. And of course, the great campaigns of the Roman army took the legionaries across the realms, beyond and back again.
In effect, Roman troops got to see the world. And there are several recorded instances of these itinerant soldiers being influenced by foreign climes, where local beliefs and customs rubbed off on them. For example, it is fairly-widely accepted that the Roman soldier cult of Mithras originated with legionaries stationed near Persia, who picked up on the tradition of the Persian god and brought the religion back to the empire with them. This, I believe, is what happened in the case of Jupiter Dolichenus too.
In the 1st century BC, the Roman Empire came into possession of the Anatolian landmass (roughly modern Turkey). Roman troops were stationed across the territory. And it is here that they most likely first encountered the echoes of Hittite civilization.
Thirty miles west of the River Euphrates stands a small hill. The summit is bare now, but in antiquity it played host to a shrine or altar that was venerated by the local semitic population. These locals likely told the Roman newcomers that an ancient god lived there – a god named Baal, or Teshub/Tarhunda.
The legionaries would have looked upon the ancient reliefs within the shrine. They would have seen the striking similarities between this local deity and the Roman god Jupiter. Both with lightning bolts, beards, horned hats, both considered ‘King’ Gods. Then they most likely began to notice the differences – the twin bulls, for example. This was probably the point where the cult of a variation on the Roman Jupiter arose. The nearest settlement to the hill was named Doliche, and it is likely from this that the epithet ‘Dolichenus’ “of Doliche” was adopted. Thus, Jupiter Dolichenus was born. And when the soldiers finished their years abroad, some of them would have brought all this back to the western lands with them.
Temples soon sprung up across the Roman west: in Britannia, Germania, Noricum, Pannonia and in Rome itself—on the Caelian and Aventine hills. All these shrines seemingly directed their worship towards the main and original temple on the hill near Doliche.
Come the 3rd century AD, the archaeological record reveals violent destruction of all known Dolichenus temples in the provinces on the Rhine and Danube during the reign of Emperor Maximinus Thrax (r. 235–238) possibly as a reaction to the perception that the Jupiter Dolichenus cult supported his predecessor, Severus. Thrax is known to have filled his coffers from the ransacked sanctuaries.
The cult limped on. However, in 253 or 256, the Sassanid emperor Shapur I captured and sacked the Doliche hill shrine itself. It appears that with this loss, the god was permanently discredited in terms of his perceived power, and the cult appears to have ceased at that point, never to be revived.
The last known Dolichenus monument is from the Esquiline Hill temple and dates to the reign of Gallienus (r. 253–268)
Fascinating, isn’t it? An explosion of thoughts, ideas and initiatives were conjured by a single image!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Gordon Doherty is the author of the Empires of Bronze series of novels, about warfare and intrigue in the Ancient Hittite Empire. His novels have been Amazon smash-hits and have gone on to be translated and published in Russia, Italy and Greece. Based in Scotland, Gordon’s love of history was first kindled by visits to the misty Roman ruins of Britain and the sun-baked antiquities of Turkey and Greece. His expeditions since have taken him all over the world and back and forth through time (metaphorically, at least), allowing him to write tales of the later Roman Empire, Byzantium, Classical Greece and even the distant Bronze Age. For exciting news, extracts and exclusive content from Gordon, visit www.gordondoherty.co.uk. You can also follow him on Twitter @GordonDoherty and check out his author page on www.facebook.com/gordon.doherty. Subscribe to his YouTube channel: www.youtube.com/c/GordonDohertyAuthor