| Maiuma, Maiouma | |
|---|---|
| Celebrations | Aquatic performances: games, mime shows, nude swimming |
| Date | During May |
Maiuma or Maiouma, also written with a final s, was a Graeco-Syrian nocturnal water festival celebrating Dionysus and Aphrodite and held during the month of May-Artemisios.[1][2] According to Malalas (Chronicle 284–285), it was celebrated in Antioch every three years as a nocturnal festival, also known as Orgies, or the Mysteries of Dionysus and Aphrodite.[1] Its most famous venue was Daphne-by-Antioch (Daphne, a suburb of the Hellenistic metropolis on the Orontes).[3] Aquatic displays, mime and dance shows made the festival very popular in several cities of the East Roman Empire,[2] mainly along the eastern coast of the Mediteranean. The celebrations were so licentious that some Roman rulers attempted to ban them.[4]
Origin and etymology
There is no information about the original purpose of Maiuma.[2]
Malalus of Antioch in Syria, a Byzantine author writing in the 6th century, saw the name Mayumas as a Syriac word derived from the name of the month of May, when the festival was held.[1]
Robert M. Good's 1986 thesis is that the Punic word mayumas (my'ms), which occurs in a small number of inscriptions from Carthage, is a calque after Greek hydrophoria and therefore means "rites of water movement",[5] based on his etymological interpretation - mai = water, yumas = carry, thus suggesting that mayumas was a water carrying ceremony.[4] Good notes that "[f]estivals of water movement were common in the ancient Syro-Palestinian world" and sees a Canaanite-Phoenician-Carthaginian tradition as very likely.[5] While elaborating on the possible character of a range of Syro-Palestinian water movement rites, which could be associated with the Carthaginian mayumas festival, he warns that these cannot be more than speculations due to the limited findings.[5] However, the name itself, an awkward composition in Punic, is still perfectly plausible as a calque after a Greek term, which places the time of its adoption sometime between the conquest of Phoenicia by Alexander the Great in 332 BCE and the fall of Carthage in 146 BCE, given that the inscriptions were found there.[5]
R.M. Good also mentions an Athenian hydrophoria rite and the fact that such rites, connected to libations, were widely known in the Mediterranean world.[5] Good dismisses Malalus' explanation for the word Mayumas as derived from the month of May as folk etymology, which he sees as a result of the fact that by Malalus' time, the connection to the Phoenician/Punic parent word for water, may-, and the composite word based on it, had been thoroughly forgotten.[5] American Phoenician language scholar, Philip Schmitz, similarly suggests that the Punic word my'ms is derived by word combination from the Semitic word for water and the Greek name of the spring festival, Μαιουμα(ς).[6]
History
Emperor Commodus (r. 177–192), when he renewed by edict the Olympic Games, earmarked revenue originating in certain ceremonies for financing the Maiumas rituals.[7]
Emperor Julian the Apostate (r. 355–363) apparently made an unsuccessful attempt to prohibit the Mayumas festival.[7]
Malalas, writing in the 6th century, relates that the festival was held in his city of Antioch every three years and lasted for 30 days.[7] An inscription from al-Birketein at Gerasa from the end of that century however mentions the festival being held there annually several years consecutively.
Cities holding the festival
Apart from Antioch with its suburb, Daphne, several other locations in the East Roman Empire are known as venues for the festival, such as Shuni-Maiumas (now in Binyamina, Israel), where a semicircular pool built behind the stagehouse of a theatre offered the main venue for the water festival;[2][8] Gerasa (today's Jerash in Jordan), where it was centered on a site little outside the city walls known today as al-Birketein, an Arabic name aptly describing it as "the double pool";[9] and Aphrodisias in Caria, Asia Minor, where a 5th-century inscription near the open pool of the southern agora mentions the governor who acted as Maioumarch, presiding over the festivities.[2]
Maiumas or related festivals were also allegedly held at 'Ain Baki, Tyre, Gaza, Ashkelon, Jerusalem, Hierapolis and perhaps at Homs, Baalbek, Botnah near Hebron and Dura Europus.[5]
As toponym
Michael Avi-Yonah and Shimon Gibson are mentioning four places named after the festival, starting with Maiumas, the port of Gaza.[7]
The Anonymous pilgrim of Piacenza mentions in the 570s a place called Maiumas on the coast near Ashkelon, perhaps today's Khirbat al-Ashraf at the entrance to the Shikma Valley/Wadi Sikrayr.[7]
The archaeological site known in Arabic as Khirbat Miyāmās has preserved in its name the memory of the ancient festival and has been identified with the 3rd-century Kfar Shumi or Shami mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud.[7] Today located near Binyamina east of Caesarea Maritima, it was still hosting the pagan water games during the early Byzantine period.[7]
The 6th-century Madaba Map shows the town of "Betomarsea also called Maiumas" in the vicinity of Charachmoba (today's al-Karak), a place ancient sources connect to Baal-Peor of Numbers 25:3–9, with "Betomarseas alias Maioumas" understood as "the house of Marzeah (Semitic name: Bēṯ Marzēaḥ) or Mayumas", where marzea(h) is seen as a Semitic idolatrous form of worship.[7][5][4]
Moral reactions
The aquatic shows and pagan religious activities raised the ire of both Jewish rabbis and Christian holy men, who co sidered the popular feast to be licentious.[2][7] From an outraged John Chrysostom we learn about mimes swimming naked in the theatre and Joshua the Stylite, a Syriac chronicler, writes about nocturnal festivities held at the end of the 5th century in Edessa in mid-May, both probably relating to Maiumas celebrations.[2]
See also
- Floralia, ancient Roman religious festival held in April
- May Day, today's May festival
- May Queen, British personification of the May Day holiday
- Roman festivals
- Rosalia, a festival of roses celebrated throughout the Roman Empire
References
- ^ a b c Pearse, Roger. The festival of the Maiuma at Antioch, at roger-pearse.com, 2 July 2012. Retrieved 15 May 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f g Weiss, Zeev (2014). Public Spectacles in Roman and Late Antique Palestine. Harvard University Press. pp. 31, 139–140. ISBN 9780674048317. Retrieved 15 May 2024.
- ^ Maiuma at The Oxford Dictionary of Late Antiquity, Oxford University Press (2018), ISBN 9780191744457, via oxfordreference.com. Retrieved 15 May 2024.
- ^ a b c Cross, Andrew (2014). Baal Peor and the Marzeah Feast at arcalog.com. Accessed 16 May 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Good, Robert M. (1986). "The Carthaginian Mayumas" (PDF). Studi epigrafici e linguistici sul Vicino Oriente antico (SEL) (3). Retrieved 15 May 2024.
- ^ Schmitz, Philip (2023). "Punic my'ms and Greek Μαιουμα(ς): a re-examination". Journal of Ancient History. doi:10.1515/jah-2023-0019. Retrieved 15 May 2024.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i Avi-Yonah, Michael; Gibson, Shimon (2008). "Maiumas". Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd ed.). The Gale Group. Retrieved 15 May 2024 – via Jewish Virtual Library.
- ^ Di Segni, Leah (2023). Two Greek Inscriptions on Mosaics from the Theater at Shuni (PDF), in Atiqot 110, pp. 159-172. Accessed 15 May 2024.
- ^ Jordan, Gerasa: Al-Birketein Roman pools of Jerash (Gerasa). At Hydria Virtual Museum. The Mediterranean Information Office for Environment, Culture and Sustainable Development (MIO-ECSDE / MEdIES), Athens, Greece. Retrieved 15 May 2024.