Template:Did you know nominations/Al-Mushannaf

Al-Mushannaf

 * ... that the Syrian village of al-Mushannaf has a well-preserved Roman temple, dated to the first century BC, that was dedicated to the Roman gods of Zeus and Athena?
 * Reviewed: Annie Lowrie Alexander

Created/expanded by Zozo2kx (talk). Self nom at 13:09, 4 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Symbol question.svg This strikes me as a very odd hook. The Roman gods would almost certainly have been Jupiter and Minerva, who were the Roman versions of the Greek gods Zeus and Athena. (Neither Zeus nor Athena appear in the wikilinked List of Roman deities article in the hook.) The off-line sources used for the article sentence and the hook fact strike me as questionable, if they don't distinguish between the two. BlueMoonset (talk) 03:20, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Well, the addition of Roman gods is certainly an oversight on my part. Nevertheless there is little doubt that the inscription inside the temple is dedicated to Zeus Check Gbooks results here. Hellenic influence was still very strong in Syria at the time, despite Roman rule, which might explain that. How about this:
 * (I also removed Roman temple, even though several RS mention that, but to avoid any such confusion.)
 * ALT1 ... that the Syrian village of al-Mushannaf has a well-preserved temple, dated to the first century BC, that was dedicated to Zeus and Athena? Yazan (talk) 04:22, 17 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Symbol redirect vote4.png Original hook struck, ALT1 looks promising, nomination needs a complete review now that hook issue has been settled. BlueMoonset (talk) 04:33, 17 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Symbol question.svg New enough, long enough, QPQ fine. I'm concerned/confused about the Roman/Greek god issue. The article says it has a Roman temple dedicated to Greek gods, without saying they are Greek gods or pointing out the oddity. Do any of the references talk about this? Secretlondon (talk) 09:09, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * The sources all agree that the temple is dedicated to the gods of Zeus and Athena. Some sources do refer to it as a Roman temple, by virtue of its period and its architecture. It is not uncommon for a temple to be dedicated to Gods other than Roman, and still be called a Roman temple, especially where local traditions intersect with Roman ones. See for example the Temple of Bacchus in Lebanon (Bachus is the local god, and is the equivalent of Dionysus). At any rate, there is no such discussion of this "discrepancy" in the sources I have access to (including a detailed study, here, which both confirms the inscription of Zeus, and discusses the temple by its Roman elements. Yazan (talk) 09:40, 19 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Comment There's also this. The sources do indeed all say Roman temple and Zeus, one also says Athena, and one quotes inscriptions in Greek. So, Hellenised Roman :-) I have removed "the gods of" from ALT1; "of" because it was incorrect (Zeus and Athena are the deities) and "the gods" because if people do not know those are deities, they may as well find out by clicking; including that makes the hook no hookier. Yngvadottir (talk) 15:21, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the c/e and the valuable reference, I had almost given up googling things on Syria (all the results are dominated by youtube videos from the uprising) and completely resorted to GBooks instead, so I haven't come across that reference. It gets quite tricky trying to ret-trace the history in a place like Syria where there hasn't been one single dominant culture throughout its history (the Umayyad Mosque was at one point the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, and before that the Temple of Jupiter, Damascus, and a little before, the Temple of Hadad.) Yazan (talk) 15:39, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * You're welcome :-) I also see this which is useful in writing out and translating the inscriptions. Yngvadottir (talk) 20:48, 19 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Symbol confirmed.svg good to go. Secretlondon (talk) 05:55, 20 September 2012 (UTC)