Lebanon in a Picture

Aphrodite's Flow. The Ibrahim River, known in antiquity as the Adonis, was... (Afka, Mont-Liban, Lebanon)

Aphrodite's Flow. The Ibrahim River, known in antiquity as the Adonis, was... (Afka, Mont-Liban, Lebanon) Aphrodite's Flow. The Ibrahim River, known in antiquity as the Adonis, was in full flood when we passed by. We’d missed it but at the beginning of Spring, as the pent-up snowmelt finally floods out, the river briefly flows red, tinted by months of contact with iron-rich rock. In antiquity, this was taken as a sign that marked the death and rebirth of Adonis, who was not just the most beautiful man in the world, but was also associated with the fertility cult of Astarte/Aphrodite, whose blessing was sought by farmers hoping for a bumper crop and by women wishing to conceive. The goddess had a temple in Afqa, where sacred orgies would take place and which was destroyed on the orders of the newly converted Emperor Constantine. Echoes of one of the other rites performed there persisted into modern times. When wishing to conceive, the women of nearby villages continued to petition the 'Lady of Afqa' well into the 20th Century, by tying a piece of white fabric to a tree outside the ruins of the temple and still occasionally do so today. Whether any of the supplicants suspected that Afqa’s original lady was a pagan goddess, I couldn’t say, for once the mountains renounced the old religions, she developed a cover story more suited to monotheistic faith.
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