Apheca - Mythology

Mythology

In classical Greek mythology, Afqa is associated with the cult of Aphrodite and Adonis. According to the myth, Cinyras, the King of Cyprus seduced his daughter Myrrha who was transformed into a tree that bears her name (see:Myrrh). After several months, the tree split open and the child Adonis emerged. He was reared by Aphrodite, who became enamored of him, causing her lover Ares to grow jealous. Ares sent a vicious boar to kill Adonis. At the pool at the foot of the falls of Afqa, Adonis bled to death from a deep wound in the groin. Aphrodite despaired at his death and out of pity for her the gods allowed Adonis to ascend from Hades for a short period each year.

Each spring at Afqa, the melting snows flood the river, bringing a reddish mud into the stream from the steep mountain slopes. The red stain can be seen feeding into the river and far out to the Mediterranean Sea. Legend held this to be the blood of Adonis, renewed each year, at the time of his death. Lucian of Samosata, a Syrian by birth, describes how a local man of Byblos debunked the legend:

"'This river, my friend and guest, passes through the Libanus: now this Libanus abounds in red earth. The violent winds which blow regularly on those days bring down into the river a quantity of earth resembling vermilion. It is this earth that turns the river to red. And thus the change in the river's colour is due, not to blood as they affirm, but to the nature of the soil.' This was the story of the man of Byblos. But even assuming that he spoke the truth, yet there certainly seems to me something supernatural in the regular coincidence of the wind and the colouring of the river."

Lucian also describes practices by the Byblians of worship which some told him centered not on Adonis, but Osiris. He writes that he mastered the secret rites of Adonis at the temple at Afqa and that the locals there asserted that the legend about Adonis was true and occurred in their country. Lucian describes the rites, annually performed, that involved the beating of breasts and wailing, and the "perform their secret ritual amid signs of mourning through the whole countryside. When they have finished their mourning and wailing, they sacrifice in the first place to Adonis, as to one who has departed this life: after this they allege that he is alive again, and exhibit his effigy to the sky."

Also in the fertile valley surrounding the river, millions of scarlet anemones bloom. Known as Adonis' flowers, according to legend, they spring from his blood, spilled as he lay dying beneath the trees at Afqa, and return each year in remembrance.

In his "Terminal Essay" in the 1885 translation of The Arabian Nights, Sir Richard Burton describes the temple at Afqa as a place of pilgrimage for the Metawali sect of Shia Islam, where vows are addressed to the Sayyidat al-Kabirah or "the Great Lady". In the early 20th century, strips of white cloth were still being attached to the ancient fig that shadows the source, and Metawalis and Christians alike were bringing the sick to be cured at "the abode of Sa’īdat Afkā, i.e. a feminine spirit of the same name as the place. Her husband built this temple. He was killed by a wild beast, and she searched among the mountains until she found his mangled body. This is evidently a modified view of the ancient myth of Astarte and Adonis," Lewis Bayles Paton reported in 1919, with a photograph of the cloth-hung fig tree. W. F. Albright noted this survival of this "female saint" as the most remarkable among "very few direct reflections of paganism in the names and legends of modern welis."