Zeus en Carie. Réflexions sur les paysages onomastiques, iconographiques et cultuels

How to define the Carian religion? This monography tackles the question by studying an emblematic deity, Zeus, whose local attribute, the labrys, became the symbol of Caria. Through the case of the Jovian figure, it is the functioning of the Carian religious system as a whole that is highlighted. If it is difficult to apprehend the evolution of the religious landscape of the region between the archaic and imperial periods, this work has made it possible to bring to the fore the interactions between cultic practices, epiclesis and representations of the divine and helps to understand the perception that the Ancients had. The contacts between different cultures in the region led to changes in the initial religious models of the various communities established in Caria. These transfers reorganized the local pantheon and reconfigured the Carian religious identity: new Greek cults were superimposed on ancestral epichoric cults, thus constituting a new identity cohesion shared around common cults. Zeus Labraundos, the tutelary god of the ancient capital of Caria, Mylasa, is a remarkable example. His cult and his image are used as a showcase for the politics of the Hecatomnids in the 4th century BC, in particular by the brothers Mausole and Idrieus. The political change operated at this period marks deeply the local religious landscape: Zeus Labraundos is not only the protector of the Hecatomnid dynasty and the city of Mylasa, he also becomes the emblematic divine figure of the cultural mix of Caria. Of Greek appearance, he carries an epiclesis, Labraundos, and an attribute, the double axe, perfectly local. It is this bipenne, probably inherited from the hittito-louvite god of thunder Tarhunt, which was chosen by the Carian satraps to incarnate the great god of Labraunda, the city of Mylasa, the hecatomnid power and the Carian territory as a whole.