Many Indo-European religions include a sky father, such as the Greek Zeus and the Slavic Perun. For the Phrygians and the Thracians, this was Sabazios. While archaeology reveals that he was an extremely important god, very little information about his mythology or worship survives.
The Phrygians and Thracians
The Phrygians were probably a people from the Balkan region who moved into Anatolia, modern-day Turkey in around 1200 BCE, during the Bronze Age. Midas of the golden touch was reportedly a Phrygian king, and they were considered a war-like people who founded the kingdom of Lycia around the 7th century BCE before falling under Persian dominance in the 5th century BCE.
The Thracians lived in modern-day Bulgaria, Romania, North Macedonia, and northern Greece, and also emerged as a civilization in the Bronze Age starting around 3500 BCE. In the 6th century BCE, they were described by the Greeks as blue-eyed and red-haired. They established the Odrysian Kingdom around the 5th century BCE and flourished until they were incorporated into the empire of Alexander the Great. They were later incorporated into the Roman province of Thrace.
The Rider God
There is evidence that Sabazios was worshipped in modern-day Bulgaria in the 1st millennium BCE from the ancient sanctuary of Perperikon. In these early depictions, he is usually represented as the rider god on steles. This image appeared on several coins of the Roman Emperor Gordian III, whose grandfather may have come from the region. The god on horseback is usually depicted battling a chthonic serpent, which he tramples with his horse.
Sabazios seems to have been considered the principal god, alongside a mother goddess considered the equivalent of Cybele. He was also worshipped well into the Roman period. In the surviving Roman inscriptions, he is usually equated with Jupiter, the Roman sky god, and in Rome, there was a temple dedicated to Jupiter Sabazios. In the Orphic tradition, he was associated with the second Dionysus.
In the same way as Dionysus and other chthonic gods, Sabazios’ cult seems to have been a mystery cult involving secret initiations and ecstatic rites. The Athenian author Demosthenes suggests that his cult involved women carrying snakes as part of their rituals, and that intoxication was a regular part of his rites.
From the 1st century CE, Sebazios seems to have been associated with the symbol of the hand in the benediction Latina gesture, known as the Hand of Sebazios, later adopted by the church. These seem to have been affixed to a ritual sceptre.
A variety of different versions survive, but most feature a pinecone on the thumb and with a serpent or a pair of serpents encircling the wrist and surmounting the bent ring and pinky fingers. There is also sometimes a lightning bolt over the index and middle finger, a turtle and lizard on the back of the hand, an eagle, a ram, and a leafless branch.
Leave a Reply