A figure in a Syrian sanctuary looks towards a luminous headdress.

The stone that makes the night inside a temple visible

The Greek account On the Syrian Goddess belongs to the Roman imperial period and has come down under Lucian’s name. Its narrator takes readers into the temple at Hierapolis in Syria. He describes where the divine images stand, what they wear and how a visitor can distinguish one figure from another. On the goddess’s head sits a stone whose importance becomes fully apparent only when the account moves between daylight and night.

Light from a single point

From this stone flashes a great light in the night-time, so that the whole temple gleams brightly as by the light of myriads of candles, but in the day-time the brightness grows faint; the gem has the likeness of a bright fire.

– Attributed to Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess, 1913, p. 72.[1]

To convey its brightness, the narrator chooses a comparison drawn from the experience of entering a sanctuary. A multitude of burning lamps would illuminate the room. In this description a single point on the figure’s head produces an equivalent effect. A reader imagining the scene first looks towards the stone and then outwards towards the surfaces its light reaches. The ornament belongs to the divine image, yet it also determines how one experiences the surrounding space.

Two views of the same object

In daylight the same object invites a different description. Its colour and fiery appearance can now take their place in the account. These are two conditions a visitor could never experience at the same instant. The narrator allows a reader to hold them together. Whether any natural gem could illuminate a hall is a separate enquiry. What this passage preserves is a way of imagining a sanctuary in which light extends the goddess’s presence beyond the physical limits of her image.