Le culte de Zeus Brontôn : l’espace et la morphologie du dieu de l’orage dans la Phrygie d’époque romaine

Abstract

Abstract This study aims at reconstructing the evolution of the character of the Anatolian storm-god in Phrygia from the Hittite period to the Roman imperial era, particularly taking into account the Greek votive dedications to Zeus Brontôn. According to the Hittite and Luwian texts, the power of the storm-god was not only limited to the sky, but encompassed fertility, the order of the seasons and, because of his role as the protector of kingship, the social order. Because they favourited a female deity generically called Matar, the coming of the Phrygians seems to be linked to the degradation of the cult, which remained practiced by the lower strata of the population and in the countryside. It was only after the arrival of the Greeks in Hellenistic times and the identification of the local ancient storm-gods with Zeus that their worship became tangible and visible again. The impressive number of dedications, mostly dated between the second and third centuries CE, constitutes an excellent documentary base for studying the character of these local deities. In these epigraphic texts, the theonym Zeus was used as a generic name (Gesamtsbezeichnung) for several divine beings, only partially comparable to the Greek Olympian Zeus.