PHRYGIA, TURKEY, Sept. 10 (World Daily Times) — A study of nine inscriptions from the ancient city of Akmoneia is adding new evidence about religious practice in Phrygia, a historical region in what is now western Turkey.
The inscriptions date from the first through third centuries A.D. They document religious figures, civic honors and public works during a period when Christianity was beginning to spread across parts of the Roman world.
The findings do not directly mention Christianity. Instead, they show some of the religious traditions and public institutions that existed in the region before, and alongside, the growth of Christian communities.
What do the inscriptions show?
One inscription refers to Demeter Karpophoros, a form of Demeter associated with fertility and harvests. Demeter was a Greek goddess whose worship was closely linked to agriculture, an important part of life in Phrygia.
The study presents the inscription as the first epigraphic evidence identified in its results for the presence of a cult of Demeter Karpophoros in Phrygia. “Epigraphic evidence” means information preserved in an inscription, usually carved into stone or another durable material.
Hüseyin Uzunoğlu, an associate professor at Akdeniz University and one of the study’s researchers, said the evidence fills a gap in the map of ancient religious practice. “But until this inscription — and a closely related one we published a couple of years ago — there was no epigraphic proof that the cult existed in Phrygia at all, even though Phrygia was a major agricultural region,” Uzunoğlu told Fox News.
“So this fills in a real gap on the map of ancient religious practice,” he said.
The inscriptions also provide glimpses of how religion was connected to civic life in Akmoneia.
One records that a benefactor named Demades commissioned a statue bearing a torch. The inscription suggests the statue may have been associated with lighting the city’s colonnaded main street at night, although the precise meaning depends on the reading and interpretation of the ancient text.
Another inscription honors Mandana as the city’s high priestess. The monument was erected by Priscus, identified in the study’s reported findings as her husband. The record offers evidence of a woman holding a prominent religious office in the city.
Why does the discovery matter?
Ancient inscriptions can preserve details that are absent from literary texts. They may identify local officials, religious titles, donors, monuments and public responsibilities. In this case, the records help show how worship was organized and how religious roles were recognized in an urban community.
The study was led by Uzunoğlu and Münteha Dinç, an associate professor at Uşak University. It was published in the academic journal Gephyra.
The inscriptions are especially useful because evidence of local religious practice is uneven across the ancient world. A deity may be known from mythology or from worship in another region, while direct evidence of a local cult may be missing. The Akmoneia inscriptions help connect broader religious traditions to a specific city and region.
What is the connection to Apostle Paul?
Phrygia is discussed in accounts of the early spread of Christianity and is associated with the world in which Apostle Paul traveled and preached. But the available findings do not establish that Paul personally visited Akmoneia.
The inscriptions also do not show a direct relationship between the city’s religious practices and Christian communities. Their importance is more limited and more precise: They document aspects of the religious environment in which Christianity was beginning to take root.
That environment included established local cults, civic religious offices and public monuments. Christianity did not emerge in a religious vacuum. In places such as Akmoneia, new Christian communities developed within societies that already had long-standing traditions involving gods, temples, officials and public rituals.
The nine inscriptions therefore add local detail to the broader history of religion in the Roman-era eastern Mediterranean. They show how much can be learned from records that name a deity, a donor or a city official—and how such evidence can clarify the religious setting surrounding the early history of Christianity.
