Shadrafa

Shadrafa (šdrpʾ, šdrbʾ,^[1] σατραπας, i.e. "satrap") is a poorly-attested Canaanite (Punic) god of healing or medicine.

His cult is attested in the Roman era (c. 1st to 3rd centuries) in Amrit and Palmyra in the Levant and in Carthage and Leptis Magna in Africa. He is sometimes depicted as a youth with a serpent or a scorpion. In a Punic-Latin bilingual in Leptis Magna he is identified with Liber-Dionysus. Various scholarly suggestions have Palmyran šdrpʾ to Heracles, Asclepios, Eshmun, Adonis, Nergol, Melqart and Resheph. It seems probable that Shadrafa arises from Hellenistic-Canaanite syncretism, and may represent an interpretatio punica of a Hellenistic deity.^[2]

References

1. Stefan Weninger, The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook (2012), p. 476.
2. Achim Lichtenberger, Severus Pius Augustus (2011), p. 34. Jonas Carl Greenfield, 'Al Kanfei Yonah (2001), p. 426

• De Shadrafa, dieu de Palmyre, à Baal Shamīm, dieu de Hatra, aux IIe et IIIe siècles après J.-C (1962)
• Collart, Paul, "Nouveau monument palmyrénien de Shadrafa", Museum Helveticum 13 (1956), 209–215.
• Edward Lipiński, "Shadday, Shadrapha et le dieu Satrape", Zeitschrift für Althebraistik 8 (1995), 247–274.
• Paolo Xella, Edward Lipiński, "Shadrapha" in: Edward Lipiński (ed.), Dictionnaire de la Civilisation Phénicienne et Punique (1992), 407–408.

External links

• BM 125206 (limestone stela to Shadrafa from Palmyra, dated AD 55), britishmuseum.org