title: Helios

text: Traditionally the Oceanid nymph Perse was seen as the sun god's wife by whom he had various children (depending on the version), most notably the witch Circe from the "Odyssey", the king of Colchis Aeëtes, Minos' wife Pasiphaë, Perses who usurped his brother Aeëtes's kingdom, and in some versions the Corinthian king Aloeus. It is unclear what caused Perse and Helios, who is the source of all light in the world, to be the parents of such dark and mysterious children. Helios distributed the land between Aloeus and Aeëtes; the former received Sicyon, the latter Corinth, but Aeëtes not desiring the land, decided to make his kingdom in Colchis. Ioannes Tzetzes adds Calypso, otherwise the daughter of Atlas, to the list of children Helios had by Perse, perhaps due to the similarities of the roles and personalities she and Circe display in the "Odyssey" as hosts of Odysseus.


title: Helios

text: Helios brought Aeëtes to Colchis, his eventual kingdom, on his chariot; in the same ride he transferred Circe to her own abode, Aeaea. At some point Helios warned his son of a prophecy that stated he would suffer treachery from one of his own offspring (which Aeëtes took to mean his daughter Chalciope and her children by Phrixus). Helios also bestowed several gifts on his son, such as a chariot with swift steeds, a golden helmet with four plates, a giant's war armor, and robes and a necklace as a pledge of fatherhood. When his daughter Medea betrays him and flees with Jason after stealing the golden fleece, Aeëtes called upon his father and Zeus to witness their unlawful actions against him and his people.


title: Helios

text: As father of Aeëtes, Helios was also the grandfather of Medea and would play a significant role in Euripides' rendition of her fate in Corinth. When Medea offers Princess Glauce the poisoned robes and diadem, she says they were gifts to her from Helios. Later, after Medea has caused the deaths of Glauce and Glauce's father King Creon, as well as her own children by Jason, Helios helps her escape Corinth and her impious husband Jason by offering her a chariot pulled by flying dragons. Pseudo-Apollodorus seems to follow this version as well. In Seneca's rendition of the story, a frustrated Medea criticizes the inaction of her grandfather, wondering why he has not darkened the sky at sight of such wickedness, and asks from him his fiery chariot so she can burn Corinth to the ground. As the charioteer of the day, he is the all-seeing eye of Zeus; but as a nocturnal sojourner, he becomes associated with the occult, which is what connects him to characters like Medea as her grandfather.


title: Helios

text: However he is also stated to have married other women instead like Rhodos in the Rhodian tradition by whom he had seven sons, the Heliadae (Ochimus, Cercaphus, Macar, Actis, Tenages, Triopas, Candalus, and the girl Electryone), the first inhabitants of Rhodes, or even Clymene, the mother of Phaethon and the Heliades, though their relationship is usually a liaison in other sources. In Nonnus' account from his epic poem the "Dionysiaca", Helios and the nymph Clymene met and fell in love with each other in the mythical island of Kerne and got married, with Clymene's father Oceanus' blessing. Their wedding as attended by the Horae, Naiad nymphs who danced around, the lights of the sky such as Helios' sister Selene and Eosphorus (the planet Venus), the Hesperides, Clymene's parents Oceanus and Tethys, and others. Soon Clymene fell pregnant, and their son Phaethon was born within wedlock. Her and Helios raised their child together, until the ill-fated day the boy asked his father for his chariot; Clymene too persuaded Helios to give in to Phaethon's demands. A passage from Greek anthology mentions Helios visiting Clymene in her room.


title: Helios

text: The mortal king of Elis Augeas was said to be Helios' son, but Pausanias states that his actual father was the mortal king Eleios; the people of Elis claimed he was the son of the Sun because of the similarity of their names, and because they wanted to glorify the king.


title: Helios

text: In some rare versions, Helios is the father, rather than the brother, of his sisters Selene and Eos. A scholiast on Euripides explained that Selene was said to be his daughter since she partakes of the solar light, and changes her shape based on the position of the sun.


title: Helios

text: Scholarly focus on the ancient Greek cults of Helios (as well as those of his two sisters) has generally been rather slim, partially due to how scarce both literary and archaeological sources are, and of the scattered throughout the ancient Greek world and handful cults the three siblings received, Helios was undoubtedly awarded the lion's share. L.R. Farnell assumed "that sun-worship had once been prevalent and powerful among the people of the pre-Hellenic culture, but that very few of the communities of the later historic period retained it as a potent factor of the state religion". The largely Attic literary sources used by scholars present ancient Greek religion with an Athenian bias, and, according to J. Burnet, "no Athenian could be expected to worship Helios or Selene, but he might think them to be gods, since Helios was the great god of Rhodes and Selene was worshiped at Elis and elsewhere". James A. Notopoulos considered Burnet's distinction to be artificial: "To believe in the existence of the gods involves acknowledgment through worship, as "Laws" 87 D, E shows" (note, p. 264). Aristophanes' "Peace" (406–413) contrasts the worship of Helios and Selene with that of the more essentially Greek Twelve Olympians, as the representative gods of the Achaemenid Persians (See also: Hvare-khshaeta, Mah); all the evidence shows that Helios and Selene were minor gods to the Greeks.


title: Helios

text: One answer as to the reason why for that could be that the ancient Greeks envisioned their gods as very human-like, with the sun and the moon deemed too impersonal for the Greeks to relate and connect to, who would rather pray to gods like Hermes for help and protection, who could respond to concerns in a more human way; in contrast, Helios and Selene, the divine providers of heavenly light, were seen as unlikely to cease their daily routine of rising and setting in order to intervene in human affairs so they could help them. Cults of luminaries were somewhat anomalous, though not, as in Helios's case, rare. Helios, Eos and Selene, all Proto-Indo-European deities, were side-lined by non-PIE newcomers to the pantheon. Moreover, persisting on the sidelines seems to have been their primary function, namely to be the minor gods that the more important gods were not the same as; thus they helped keeping the Greek religion "Greek".


title: Helios

text: The tension between the mainstream traditional religious veneration of Helios, which had become enriched with ethical values and poetical symbolism in Pindar, Aeschylus and Sophocles, and the Ionian proto-scientific examination of the sun, a phenomenon of the study Greeks termed "meteora", clashed in the trial of Anaxagoras c. 450 BC, in which Anaxagoras asserted that the Sun was in fact a gigantic red-hot ball of metal. His trial was a forerunner of the culturally traumatic trial of Socrates for irreligion, in 399 BC.


title: Helios

text: Helios was not worshipped in Athens until the Hellenistic period, in post-classical times. His worship might be described as a product of the Hellenistic era, influenced perhaps by the general spread of cosmic and astral beliefs during the reign of Alexander III. A scholiast on Sophocles wrote that the Athenians did not offer wine as an offering to the Helios among other gods, making instead "nephalia", or "wineless", sober sacrifices; Athenaeus also reported that those who sacrificed to him did not offer wine, but brought honey instead, to the altars reasoning that the god who held the cosmos in order should not succumb to drunkenness. Lysimachides in the first century BC or first century AD reported of a festival Skira:


title: Helios

text: that the skiron is a large sunshade under which the priestess of Athena, the priest of Poseidon, and the priest of Helios walk as it is carried from the acropolis to a place called Skiron.


title: Helios

text: During the Thargelia, a festival in honour of Apollo, the Athenians had cereal offerings for Helios and the Horae. They were honoured with a procession, due to their clear connections and relevance to agriculture. A recently published decree mentions offerings to "Sun, Seasons and Apollo", showing how the three of them were associated during a festival that took place during the intense heats of the summer. The procession did not neglect cereal harvest, but also introduced non-cereal as well as animal foods, all dependent for ripening on Helios and the Seasons. Helios and the Horae were also apparently worshipped during another Athenian festival held in honor of Apollo, the Pyanopsia with a feast; an attested procession, independent from the one recorded at the Thargelia, might have been in their honour.


title: Helios

text: Side B of LSCG 21.B19 from the Piraeus Asclepium prescribe cake offerings to several gods, among them Helios and Mnemosyne, two gods linked to incubation through dreams, who are offered a type of honey cake called "arester" and a honeycomb. The cake was put on fire during the offering. A type of cake called "orthostates" made of wheaten and barley flour was offered to him and the Hours. Phthois, another flat cake made with cheese, honey and wheat was also offered to him among many other gods.


title: Helios

text: In many places people kept herds of red and white cattle in his honour, and white animals of several kinds, but especially white horses, were considered to be sacred to him. Ovid writes that horses were sacrificed to him because no slow animal should be offered to the swift god.


title: Helios

text: The ancient Greeks called Sunday "day of the Sun" ("") after him. According to Philochorus, Athenian historian and Atthidographer of the 3rd century BC, the first day of each month was sacred to Helios.


title: Helios

text: It was during the Roman period that Helios actually rose into an actual significant religious figure and was elevated in public cult.


title: Helios

text: The island of Rhodes was an important cult center for Helios, one of the only places where he was worshipped as a major deity in ancient Greece. The cult of the sun might had been brought to Rhodes by the Dorians from mainland Greece, although Farnell suggested that sun worship was pre-Greek in origin. Another theory is that his worship could had been imported to Rhodes from the Orient. One of Pindar's most notable greatest odes is an abiding memorial of the devotion of the island of Rhodes to the cult and personality of Helios, and all evidence points that he was for the Rhodians what Olympian Zeus was for Elis or Athena for the Athenians; their local myths, especially those concerning the Heliadae, suggest that Helios in Rhodes was revered as the founder of their race and their civilization, as a great personal god, anthropomorphically imagined.


title: Helios

text: The worship of Helios at Rhodes included a ritual in which a quadriga, or chariot drawn by four horses, was driven over a precipice into the sea, in reenactment to the myth of Phaethon. Athenaeus also mentions that the Rhodians celebrated a festival, the Halieia, in his honour. Annual gymnastic tournaments were held in Helios' honor, and his festival that took place in summer included chariot-racing and contests of music and gymnastics; according to Festus (s. v. October Equus) during the Halia each year the Rhodians would also throw quadrigas dedicated to him into the sea. A team of four horses was also sacrificed to him by throwing it into the sea; horse sacrifice was offered to him in many places, but only in Rhodes in teams of four; a team of four horses was also sacrificed to Poseidon in Illyricum, and the sea god was also worshipped in Lindos under the epithet Hippios denoting perhaps a blending of the cults. It was believed that if one sacrificed to the rising Sun with their day's work ahead of them, it would be proper to offer a fresh, bright white horse. This festival was celebrated yearly, in the month of September, and great athletes from abroad considered it worthwhile to compete; during the glorious days of the island, neighbouring independent states and the kings of Pergamos would send envoys to the festival, which was still flourishing many centuries later. The Colossus of Rhodes was dedicated to him. In Xenophon of Ephesus' work of fiction, "Ephesian Tale of Anthia and Habrocomes", the protagonist Anthia cuts and dedicates some of her hair to Helios during his festival at Rhodes. The Rhodians called shrine of Helios, Haleion (). A colossal statue of the god, known as the Colossus of Rhodes and named as one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, was erected in his honour and adorned the port of the city of Rhodes, like the modern Statue of Liberty that stands in the harbour of New York City, to which it was comparable in both size and stature.


title: Helios

text: The best of these are, first, the Colossus of Helius, of which the author of the iambic verse says, "seven times ten cubits in height, the work of Chares the Lindian"; but it now lies on the ground, having been thrown down by an earthquake and broken at the knees. In accordance with a certain oracle, the people did not raise it again.


title: Helios

text: According to most contemporary descriptions, the Colossus stood approximately 70 cubits, or high – approximately the height of the modern Statue of Liberty from feet to crown – making it the tallest statue in the ancient world. It collapsed after an earthquake that hit Rhodes in 226 BC, and the Rhodians did not build it again, in accordance with an oracle.


title: Helios

text: In Rhodes, Helios seems to have absorbed the worship and cult of the island's local hero and mythical founder Tlepolemus. In ancient Greek city foundation, the use of the "archegetes" in its double sense of both founder and progenitor of a political order, or a polis, can be seen with Rhodes; real prominence was transferred from the local hero Tlepolemus, onto the god, Helios, with an appropriate myth explaining his relative insignificance; thus games originally celebrated for Tlepolemus were now given to Helios, who was seen as both ancestor and founder of the polis. For the Rhodian people, Tlepolemus was an "archegetes" and not a god, but he was offered sacrifices as if he were one; the rituals performed in his honour were of the kind commonly performed for a god. A sanctuary of Helios and the nymphs stood in Loryma near Lindos.


title: Helios

text: The priesthood of Helios was, at some point, appointed by lot, though in the great city a man and his two sons held the office of priesthood for the sun god in succession.


title: Helios

text: The Dorians also seem to have revered Helios, and to have hosted His primary cult on the mainland. The scattering of cults of the sun god in Sicyon, Argos, Hermione, Epidaurus and Laconia, and his holy livestock flocks at Taenarum, seem to suggest that the deity was considerably important in Dorian religion, compared to other parts of ancient Greece. Additionally, it may have been the Dorians who brought his worship to Rhodes, as stated above.


title: Helios

text: Helios was an important god in Corinth and the greater Corinthia region. A reconstruction of Corinth's calendar from those used by its colonies reveals a summer month called "Of the [festival of the ?] Solstice", or Haliotropios in Greek ("tropai" = "solstice"); Each city in Ancient Greece had its own lunar-solar calendar organized around the annual solar cycle of solstices and equinoxes. Pausanias in his "Description of Greece" describes how Helios and Poseidon vied over the city, with Poseidon getting the isthmus of Corinth and Helios being awarded with the Acrocorinth. Helios' prominence in Corinth might go as back as Mycenaean times, and predate Poseidon's arrival or it might be due to Oriental immigration; it is hard to determine. At Sicyon, Helios had an altar behind Hera's sanctuary. It would seem that for the Corinthians, Helios was notable enough to even have control over thunder, which is otherwise the domain of the sky god Zeus.


title: Helios

text: Helios had a cult in Laconia as well. Taletos, a peak of Mt. Taygetus rising over Bryseae, was sacred to Helios and often horses were sacrificed in his name, similar to Persian cult traditions. This sort of ritual was otherwise rare in Greece, but present in Rhodes as well. At Thalamae, nor far from Bryseae, Helios together with his daughter Pasiphaë were revered in an oracle, where the goddess revealed to the people consulting her what they needed to know in their dreams. While the predominance of Helios in Sparta is currently unclear, it seems Helen was the local solar deity. Helios (and Selene's) worship in Gytheum, near Sparta, is attested by an inscription ("C.I.G. 1392").


title: Helios

text: In Argolis, an altar was dedicated to Helios near Mycenae, and another in Troezen, where he was worshipped as the God of Freedom, seeing how the Troezenians had escaped slavery at the hands of Xerxes I. Over at Hermione stood a temple of his. He appears to have also been venerated in Epidaurus.


title: Helios

text: Traces of Helios's worship can also be found in Crete, dimly recalling the solar name of his daughter Pasiphaë, possibly Minoan in origin, though but a shadow of a great elemental god survives. In the earliest period Rhodes stood in close relations with Crete, and it is relatively safe to suggest that the name "Taletos", another worship center of Helios, is associated with the Eteocretan word for the sun "Talos", surviving in Zeus' epithet Tallaios, a solar aspect of the thunder god in Crete. Helios was also invoked in an oath of alliance between Knossos and Dreros.


title: Helios

text: In his little-attested cults in Asia Minor it seems his identification with Apollo was the strongest, based on evidence drawn from inscriptions or coins from Smyrna, Thyatira, Patara, Tralles and Phrygia (mostly dating from late Roman period and none from the Hellenistic). For example, at Didyma, the patron god Apollo Didymaeus also bore the epithets "Helios" and "Phaesimbrotos", and their identification is also present in the founding myth of Apollo's oracle at Didyma where the mother of Apollo's lover and founder of Apollo's cult Branchus dreamt that the sun entered her throat and exited through her genitalia while pregnant to Branchus. It is possible that the solar elements of Apollo's Anatolian cults were influenced by Helios' cult in Rhodes, as Rhodes lies right off the southwest coast of Asia Minor.


title: Helios

text: Archaeological evidence has proven the existence of a shrine to Helios and Hemera, the goddess of the day and daylight, at the island of Kos and excavations have revealed traces of his cult at Sinope, Pozzuoli, Ostia and elsewhere. After a plague hit the city of Cleonae, in Phocis, Central Greece, the people there sacrificed a he-goat to Helios as he was rising under the guidance of the Oracle of Delphi, and true enough afterwards they were relieved from the plague.


title: Helios

text: Helios also had a cult in the region of Thessaly, attested in antiquity several times, such as in a dedication from Krannon, and a fragmentary inscription from Pherae. Plato in his "Laws" mentions the state of the Magnetes making a joint offering to Helios and Apollo, indicating a close relationship between the cults of those two gods, but it is clear that they were nevertheless distinct deities in Thessaly. Further north, he was one of the several gods worshipped at Philippi, in Macedonia.


title: Helios

text: Helios is also depicted on first century BC coins found at Halicarnassus, Syracuse in Sicily and at Zacynthus. From Pergamon originates a hymn to Helios in the style of Euripides and it is known that he had a small altar there at the sanctuary of Demeter, along with several other gods, possibly in connection with the Orphic mysteries.


title: Helios

text: In Apollonia of Illyria (in modern day Albania) he was also venerated, as evidenced from Herodotus' account where a man named Evenius was harshly punished by his fellow citizens for allowing wolves to devour the flock of sheep sacred to the god out of negligence.


title: Helios

text: The inference suggested by his cult is that sun worship was once been prevalent and powerful among early Greek peoples and pre-Greeks, but very few communities kept those cults as a potent factor of their state-religion as time passed. The fact that he was not seen as a 'high god' in most poleis may reflect an aversion to worship of palpable objects, like with the cults of Gaia the earth, as worship of non-visible, non-material deities such as Zeus, Apollo and Athena was more in line with the Hellenic idea of godhood. However, during later period of Greco-Roman paganism one can discern a shift in this religious bias; a wave of Oriental influence brought certain back to the sun-god, leading to the rising of Sol Invictus in Rome. It is often impossible to determine how many of Helios' cults are the result of this later force/boost, as seen with his cult in Mantineia.


title: Helios

text: A passage from the Orphic "Lithica" mentions a ritual performed to Helios and Gaia by three young men who sacrifice a snake and then feast on it.


title: Helios

text: Helios is a god who both sees and hears everything, who can spy among gods and mortal men alike. Gods were often called upon by the Greeks when an oath was sworn; Helios is among the three deities (the other two being Zeus and Gaia) to be invoked in the "Iliad" to witness the truce between Greeks and Trojans. Due to his job as sun in the sky, he was in the position of witnessing everything on earth with his infallible eye, and it is thus fitting that he was widely invoked, along with Zeus, in oath-taking, making sure there was no escape if the oath was violated. For example, both are invoked in an oath at Eresos and in one by Eumenes I of Pergamon; a chthonic aspect of the god is apparent in the cases where he is invoked in oaths alongside subterranean gods and goddesses such as Hades, Gaia, Hecate and the Furies. Helios together with Zeus represent the sky, as Gaia and Demeter the earth.


title: Helios

text: The invocation of gods such as Earth and Sun is a very standard feature of such gods, and goes back to loyalty oaths originating from the Near East. He is also often appealed to in ancient drama to witness the unfolding events or take action, such as in Sophocles's "Oedipus Rex" and Euripides's "Medea" (the later also appeals to their kinship, being his granddaughter through his son Aeëtes). The notion of Helios as witness to oaths and vows also led to a view of Helios as a witness of wrong-doings, as when Prometheus calls upon him to see what he is suffering at the hands of other gods, or like in Aeschylus's play "Agamemnon", where Agamemnon's son Orestes demands that the death robe be spread out so that Helios can see Orestes' mother Clytemnestra's impious actions, and even specialized to unadmitted love, as evidenced in a scholium on a black-figure vase from Aegina. He was thus seen as an emblem and guarantor of cosmic order, who can witness and avenge injustice happening under the sunlight.


title: Helios

text: Helios was invoked as a witness, among several other gods besides Zeus such as Ares, Athena and Poseidon, to several alliances such as the one between Athens and Cetriporis of Thrace, Lyppeus of Paeonia and Grabus of Illyria, in 357 BC, the one between Philip II of Macedon and Chalcidice in 357/6 BC, and the oaths of the League of Corinth. In a treaty between the cities of Smyrna and Magnesia, the Magnesians swore their oath by Helios among others. The combination of Zeus, Gaia and Helios in oath-swearing is also found among the non-Greek 'Royal Gods' in an agreement between Maussollus and Phaselis (360s BC) and in the Hellenistic period with the degree of Chremonides' announcing the alliance of Athens and Sparta invoking, along with these three, Athena, Ares, Demeter, and Poseidon.


title: Helios

text: He also had a role in necromancy magic. The Greek Magical Papyri contain several recipes for such, for example one which involves invoking the Sun over the skull-cup of a man who suffered a violent death; after the described ritual, Helios will then send the man's ghost to the practitioner to tell them everything they wish to know. Helios is also associated with Hecate in cursing magic. In some parts of Asia Minor Helios along with several other gods, and most commonly his counterpart Selene, were adjured not to permit any violation of the grave in tomb inscriptions and to warn potential violators not to desecrate the tomb, like one example from Elaeussa-Sebaste in Cilicia:


title: Helios

text: We adjure you by the heavenly god [Zeus] and Helios and Selene and the gods of the underworld, who receive us, that no one [. . .] will throw another corpse upon our bones.


title: Helios

text: Helios was also often invoked in funeral imprecations, ranking third in terms of frequency, after chthonic and lunar gods, and usually in the company of another lunar deity. Helios might have been chosen for this sort of magic because as an all-seeing god he could see everything on earth, even hidden crimes, and thus he was a very popular god to invoke in prayers for vengeance. Additionally, in ancient magic evil-averting aid and apotropaic defense were credited to Helios. Some magic rituals were associated with the engraving of images and stones, as with one such spell which asks Helios to consecrate the stone and fill with luck, honour, success and strength, thus giving the user incredible power.


title: Helios

text: Helios was also associated with love magic, much like Aphrodite, as there seems to have been another but rather poorly documented tradition of people asking him for help in such love matters, including homoerotic love and magical recipes invoking him for affection spells. Accordingly, a scholium on Theocritus claims that Pindar wrote that lovesick young men would pray to Helios for help as lovesick young women would pray to his sister Selene. Plutarch writes that Selene was called upon for love affairs because she is ever yearning for and pursuing her brother.


title: Helios

text: It has been suggested that in Ancient Greece people would reveal their dreams to Helios and the sky or the air in order to avert any evil foretold or presaged in them as Clytemnestra does in Sophocles's "Electra" and the titular Iphigenia in Euripides' "Iphigenia Among the Taurians", however Harrison notes that not all examples from ancient texts supporting the claim are entirely convincing.


title: Helios

text: According to Artemidorus' "Oneirocritica", the rich dreaming of transforming into a god was an auspicious sign, as long as the transformation had no deficiencies, citing the example of a man who dreamt he was Helios but wore a sun crown of just eleven rays. He wrote that the sun god was also an auspicious sign for the poor. In dreams, Helios could either appear in 'sensible' form (the orb of the sun) or his 'intelligible' form (the humanoid god).


title: Helios

text: By Late Antiquity, Helios had accumulated a number of religious, mythological, and literary elements from other deities, particularly Apollo and the Roman sun god Sol. In 274 AD, on December 25, the Roman Emperor Aurelian instituted an official state cult to Sol Invictus (or "Helios Megistos", "Great Helios"). This new cult drew together imagery not only associated with Helios and Sol, but also a number of syncretic elements from other deities formerly recognized as distinct. Other syncretic materials from this period include an Orphic "Hymn to Helios"; the so-called Mithras Liturgy, where Helios is said to rule the elements; spells and incantations invoking Helios among the Greek Magical Papyri; a "Hymn to Helios" by Proclus; Julian's "Oration to Helios", the last stand of official paganism; and an episode in Nonnus' "Dionysiaca". Helios in these works is frequently equated not only with deities such as Mithras and Harpocrates, but even with the monotheistic Judaeo-Christian god.


title: Helios

text: The last pagan emperor of Rome, Julian, made Helios the primary deity of his revived pagan religion, which combined elements of Mithraism with Neoplatonism. For Julian, Helios was a triunity: The One, which governs the highest realm containing Plato's Forms, or intelligible gods; Helios-Mithras, the supreme god of the Intellectual realm; and the Sun, the physical manifestation of Helios in the Encosmic, or visible realm. Because the primary location of Helios in this scheme was the "middle" realm, Julian considered him to be a mediator and unifier not just of the three realms of being, but of all things (which was a concept likely imported from Mithraism, and also may have been influenced by the Christian idea of the Logos). Julian's theological conception of Helios has been described as "practically monotheistic", in contrast to earlier Neoplatonists like Iamblichus, though he also included the other traditional gods worshiped around the ancient Mediterranean as both distinct entities and also certain principles or manifestations that emanate from Helios.


title: Helios

text: A mosaic found in the Vatican Necropolis (mausoleum M) depicts a figure very similar in style to Sol / Helios, crowned with solar rays and driving a solar chariot. Some scholars have interpreted this as a depiction of Christ, noting that Clement of Alexandria wrote of Christ driving his chariot across the sky. Some scholars doubt the Christian associations, or suggest that the figure is merely a non-religious representation of the sun.


title: Helios

text: Helios figured prominently in the Greek Magical Papyri, a collection of hymns, rituals, and magic spells used from the 2nd century BC to the 5th century AD all around the Greco-Roman world. In these mostly fragmentary texts, Helios is credited with a broad domain, being regarded as the creator of life, the lord of the heavens and the cosmos, and the god of the sea. He is said to take the form of 12 animals representing each hour of the day, a motif also connected with the 12 signs of the zodiac.


title: Helios

text: The Papyri often syncretize Helios with a variety of related deities. He is described as "seated on a lotus, decorated with rays", in the manner of Harpocrates, who was often depicted seated on a lotus flower, representing the rising sun. According to the Neoplatonist philosopher Iamblichus, "sitting on a lotus implies pre-eminence over the mud, without ever touching the mud, and also displays intellectual and empyrean leadership."


title: Helios

text: Helios is also assimilated with Mithras in some of the Papyri, as he was by Emperor Julian. The Mithras Liturgy combines them as Helios-Mithras, who is said to have revealed the secrets of immortality to the magician who wrote the text. Some of the texts describe Helios Mithras navigating the Sun's path not in a chariot but in a boat, an apparent identification with the Egyptian sun god Ra. Helios is also described as "restraining the serpent", likely a reference to Apophis, the serpent god who, in Egyptian myth, is said to attack Ra's ship during his nightly journey through the underworld.


title: Helios

text: In many of the Papyri, Helios is also strongly identified with Iao, a name derived from that of the Hebrew god Yahweh, and shares several of his titles including Sabaoth and Adonai. He is also assimilated as the Agathos Daemon (called "the Agathodaimon, the god of the gods"), who is also identified elsewhere in the texts as "the greatest god, lord Horus Harpokrates".


title: Helios

text: The Neoplatonist philosophers Proclus and Iamblichus attempted to interpret many of the syntheses found in the Greek Magical Papyri and other writings that regarded Helios as all-encompassing, with the attributes of many other divine entities. Proclus described Helios as a cosmic god consisting of many forms and traits. These are "coiled up" within his being, and are variously distributed to all that "participate in his nature", including angels, daemons, souls, animals, herbs, and stones. All of these things were important to the Neoplatonic practice of theurgy, magical rituals intended to invoke the gods in order to ultimately achieve union with them. Iamblichus noted that theurgy often involved the use of "stones, plants, animals, aromatic substances, and other such things holy and perfect and godlike." For theurgists, the elemental power of these items sacred to particular gods utilizes a kind of sympathetic magic.


title: Helios

text: The Greek sun god had various bynames or epithets, which over time in some cases came to be considered separate deities associated with the Sun. Among these are:


title: Helios

text: Acamas (; ; , "Akàmas"), meaning "tireless, unwearying", as he repeats his never-ending routine day after day without cease.


title: Helios

text: Elector (; ; , "Ēléktōr") of uncertain derivation (compare "Electra"), often translated as "beaming" or "radiant", especially in the combination "Ēlektōr Hyperiōn".


title: Helios

text: Eleutherius (; ; , "Eleuthérios) "the liberator", epithet under which he was worshipped in Troezen in Argolis, also shared with Dionysus and Eros.


title: Helios

text: Hecatus (; ; , "Hékatos"), "from afar," also Hecatebolus (; ; , "Hekatḗbolos") "the far-shooter", i.e. the sun's rays considered as arrows.


title: Helios

text: Horotrophus (; ; , "Hо̄rotróphos"), "nurturer of the Seasons/Hours", in combination with "kouros", "youth".


title: Helios

text: Hyperion (; ; , "Hyperíōn") and Hyperionides (; ; , "Hyperionídēs"), "superus, high up" and "son of Hyperion" respectively, the sun as the one who is above, and also the name of his father.


title: Helios

text: Isodaetes (; ; , "Isodaítēs"), literally "he that distributes equal portions", cult epithet also shared with Dionysus.


title: Helios

text: Panoptes (; ; , "Panóptēs") "all-seeing" and Pantepoptes (; ; , "Pantepóptēs") "all-supervising", as the one who witnessed everything that happened on earth.


title: Helios

text: Patrius (; ; , "Pátrios") "of the fathers, ancestral", related to his role as primogenitor of royal lines in several places.


title: Helios

text: Philonamatus (; ; , "Philonámatos") "water-loving", a reference to him rising from and setting in the ocean.


title: Helios

text: Phoebus ( ; , "Phoîbos"), literally "bright", several Roman authors applied Apollo's byname to their sun god Sol.


title: Helios

text: Whether Apollo's epithets "Aegletes" and "Asgelatas" in the island of Anaphe, both connected to light, were borrowed from epithets of Helios either directly or indirectly is hard to say.


title: Helios

text: Helios is sometimes identified with Apollo: "Different names may refer to the same being," Walter Burkert argues, "or else they may be consciously equated, as in the case of Apollo and Helios." Apollo was associated with the Sun as early as the fifth century BC, though widespread conflation between him and the Sun god was a later phaenomenon.


title: Helios

text: In Homeric literature, Apollo was clearly identified as a different god, a plague-dealer with a silver bow, rather than a golden one and no solar features. The earliest certain reference to Apollo being identified with Helios appears in the surviving fragments of Euripides' play "Phaethon" in a speech near the end – Clymene, Phaethon's mother, laments that Helios has destroyed her child, that Helios whom men rightly call Apollo (the name "Apollo" is here understood to mean "Apollon" "Destroyer").


title: Helios

text: By Hellenistic times Apollo had become closely connected with the Sun in cult and Phoebus (Greek Φοῖβος, "bright"), the epithet most commonly given to Apollo, was later applied by Latin poets to the Sun-god Sol.


title: Helios

text: The identification became a commonplace in philosophic texts and appears in the writing of Parmenides, Empedocles, Plutarch and Crates of Thebes among others, as well as appearing in some Orphic texts. Pseudo-Eratosthenes writes about Orpheus in "Placings Among the Stars", section 24:


title: Helios

text: Strabo wrote that Artemis and Apollo were associated with Selene and Helios respectively due to the changes those two celestial bodies caused in the temperature of the air, as the twins were gods of pestilential diseases and sudden deaths. Pausanias also linked Apollo's association with Helios as a result of his profession as a healing god, and father to Asclepius. The two gods' close association with each other might have originated from the fact that both were supposed to know everything, one from his position in the sky above the earth, the other as god of prophecy. The light that comes from the Sun is physical and at the same time metaphorical, signifying mental enlightenment; in that respect, the mental and physical phenomena are made distinct from each other, a distinction which placed the two gods on opposing sides: thus Apollo is the metaphorical light, the oracular god who sheds light into the dark ways of the future, the god of music and song (which are heard where light and security reigns), while Helios on the other hand represents the physical light, the orb of the Sun that creates summer and winter, who brings dark secrets to the light, as demonstrated in the story of Aphrodite and Hephaestus, when he rises and sets in the sky. In the "Orphic Hymns", Helios is addressed as Paean ("healer") and holding a golden lyre, both common descriptions for Apollo; similarly Apollo in his own hymn is described as Titan and shedding light to the mortals, both common epithets of Helios.


title: Helios

text: According to Athenaeus, sixth century BC lyric poet Telesilla wrote that the song sung in honour of Apollo is called the "Sun-loving song" (, "philhēliás"), that is, a song meant to make the Sun come forth from the clouds, sung by children in bad weather; but Julius Pollux (who came much later than her) describing a "philhelias" in greater detail makes no mention of Apollo, only Helios. of Teos wrote that Apollo uses the bright light of the Sun (') as his harp-quill and in a fragment of Timotheus' lyric, Helios is invoked as an archer with the invocation ' (a common way of addressing the two medicine gods), though it most likely was part of esoteric doctrine, rather than a popular and widespread belief. Scholia on Homer's "Iliad" report that during the Theomachy in song 21, where Poseidon fights Apollo, Apollo here represents the partial fire, that is the Sun, against the full of water (the whole of fire versus the partial water is represented by Hephaestus fighting the Scamander river). Aeschylus in his "Seven Against Thebes" writes that Apollo never walks in the Underworld, and calls the place Sunless (, "análion" "sunless"). Similarly, Helios never steps foot on the Underworld either:


title: Helios

text: Sleep and Death, awful gods. The glowing Sun never looks upon them with his beams, neither as he goes up into heaven, nor as he comes down from heaven.


title: Helios

text: During the time of Callimachus, an ancient Greek poet who lived in the 4th century BC, some people would distinguish between Apollo and Helios, for which thing the poet censured them. Classical Latin poets also used Phoebus as a byname for the Sun-god, whence come common references in later European poetry to Phoebus and his chariot as a metaphor for the Sun but, in particular instances in myth, Apollo and Helios are distinct. The Sun-god, the son of Hyperion, with his Sun chariot, though often called Phoebus ("shining") is not called Apollo except in purposeful non-traditional identifications. Ancient Roman authors who used "Phoebus" for Sol as well as Apollo include Ovid, Virgil, Statius, and Seneca. Representations of Apollo with solar rays around his head in art also belong to the time of the Roman Empire, particularly under Emperor Elagabalus in 218-222 AD.


title: Helios

text: Ovid is largely responsible for the prevalence of the idea of Apollo being the Sun god in modern times, however he himself did not identify Apollo with Sol in his works. Apollo, has far as Ovid is concerned, does not seem to have any solar characteristics. Ovid gives Apollo attributes such as bow, arrows and lyre, but never Sun-chariot, and has the oracular god often seen busy during the daytime, such as in the story where he plays a game with Hyacinthus, where the Sun is mentioned as separate from him, which would have been impossible to do if he had to drive the chariot. In Ovid, Sol appears in significantly fewer stories than Apollo, but when he does he is distinct from him. He is called the son of Hyperion, the brother of Luna, the father of Circe and Pasiphaë, and the only epithet he shares with Apollo is "Phoebus", which Otfried Müller and Farnell argued it is not related to the Sun, but was applied to him because it made for a fitting epithet; and besides, Fontenrose argues, Ovid is unlikely to have thought Latona, Circe, Pyrrha and Diana as the same figure simply because he uses "Titania" for all four. The one time they seem to be thought of as the same is a passage in the story of Callisto:


title: Helios

text: The brother is no doubt the Sun, Ovid apparently at first glance naming Diana as the Sun's sister; but in the very same passage, the Moon/Luna is mentioned, which may be the reason Ovid would use the word "brother" seemingly in relation to Diana in what is a verse about Sol.


title: Helios

text: The Etruscan god of the Sun, equivalent to Helios, was Usil. His name appears on the bronze liver of Piacenza, next to "Tiur", the Moon. He appears, rising out of the sea, with a fireball in either outstretched hand, on an engraved Etruscan bronze mirror in late Archaic style, formerly on the Roman antiquities market. On Etruscan mirrors in Classical style, he appears with a halo. In ancient artwork, Usil is shown in close association with Thesan, the goddess of the dawn, something almost never seen with Helios and Eos, however in the area between Cetona and Chiusi a stone obelisk is found (kept since 1622 in the monastery of San Francesco at Città della Pieve), whose relief decorations seem to have been interpreted as referring to a solar sanctuary: what appears to be a Sun boat, the heads of Helios and Thesan, and a cock, likewise referring to the Sunrise.


title: Helios

text: Helios is also sometimes conflated in classical literature with the highest Olympian god, Zeus. An attested cult epithet of Zeus is "Aleios Zeus", or "Zeus the Sun," from the Doric form of Helios' name. The inscribed base of Mammia's dedication to Helios and Zeus Meilichios, dating from the fourth or third century BC, is a fairly and unusually early evidence of the conjoint worship of Helios and Zeus; Helios was identified with Zeus as the absolute master of the universe, who could even hold power over the Moirai, the goddesses of fate. According to Plutarch's "Quaestiones Romanae" section from his "Moralia", Helios is Zeus in his material form that one can interact with, and that's why Zeus owns the year (accordingly, his sister Selene is Queen Hera in her material form, and owns the months), while the chorus in Euripides' "Medea" also link him to Zeus when they refer to Helios as "light born from Zeus" and in his now lost tragedy "Mysians", Euripides described Zeus as "Sun-eyed", while Helios is said elsewhere to be "the brilliant eye of Zeus, giver of life". In his Orphic hymn, Helios is addressed as "immortal Zeus". In Crete, the cult of Zeus Tallaios had incorporated several solar elements into his worship; "Talos" was the local equivalent of Helios. Hesychius of Alexandria wrote that "Talos" was another word for the Sun. Helios is referred either directly as Zeus' eye, or clearly implied to be. For instance, Hesiod effectively describes Zeus's eye as the Sun. This perception is possibly derived from earlier Proto-Indo-European religion, in which the Sun is believed to have been envisioned as the eye of *"Dyḗus Pḥtḗr" (see Hvare-khshaeta). An Orphic saying, supposedly given by an oracle of Apollo, goes:


title: Helios

text: Although the connection of Helios to Zeus does not seem to have basis in early Greek cult and writings, nevertheless there are many examples of direct identification in later times. The Hellenistic period gave birth to Serapis, a Greco-Egyptian deity conceived by the Greeks as a chthonic aspect of Zeus, whose solar nature is indicated by the Sun crown and rays the Greeks depicted him with. Several Greek deities contributed to Serapis' "godhood" in addition to those two, like Asclepius, Dionysus and Hades; from Zeus and Helios Serapis draws his aspects of sovereignty and sun god. Frequent joint dedications to "Zeus-Serapis-Helios" have been found all over the Mediterranean, for example, the Anastasy papyrus (now housed in the British Museum) equates Helios to not just Zeus and Serapis but also Mithras, and a series of inscriptions from Trachonitis give evidence of the cult of "Zeus the Unconquered Sun". There is evidence of Zeus being worshipped as a solar god in the Aegean island of Amorgos, based on a lacunose inscription "" ("Zeus the Sun"), which, if correct, could mean that Sun elements in Zeus' worship could be as early as the fifth century BC.


title: Helios

text: An offering made to Zeus-Helios, who had an established cult in Anatolia, was found in a votive inscription east of ancient Sinope, and in Ostia, Serapis was depicted on a disc sporting a corona radiata, in the manner of Helios. A joint dedication to "Zeus Helios Megas Serapis" was found on a "gazophylakion" in a street market in Alexandria. The subject of the inscription, in side A of the block, is a dedication of a gazophylakion and several objects to those gods made by Publius Iulius Pius, a centurio cohortis of a Liburnian ship.


title: Helios

text: When quoting this in his "Hymn to King Helios", Emperor Julian replaced the compound name Helios-Dionysus with Serapis, whose native Egyptian counterpart Osiris was identified with Dionysus. On the basis of this oracle, Julian concluded that "among the intellectual gods, Helios and Zeus have a joint or rather a single sovereignty." The common identity of the two gods is apparent in several of the emperor's works, for example his "Against the Galileans" where Zeus and Helios are jointly the parents of Asclepius, the god of medicine; in "To The Mother of the Gods" Zeus and Helios are interchangeably named as the consort and co-ruler of the Anatolian mother goddess Cybele; and in "Against Heracleios", when Julian asks Zeus which is the way leading to him, Zeus simply appoints Helios. Julian also observed that in the "Odyssey", when Helios threatened Zeus to shine among the dead in the Underworld should his wishes not be heard after his sacred cows had been devoured, Zeus gave in straight away, and did not boast of his strength and superior power as he did when he confronted the other Olympian gods in the "Iliad", and instead tells Helios to continue shedding his light to the world.


title: Helios

text: In Orphic theology, Zeus is equated with Helios (among several other gods and concepts) in order to highlight Zeus' universality.


title: Helios

text: Helios seems to have been connected to some degree with Hades, the god of the Underworld. A dedicatory inscription from Smyrna (modern day İzmir in Turkey) describes a 1st–2nd century sanctuary to "God Himself" as the most exalted of a group of six deities, including clothed statues of "Plouton Helios" and "Koure Selene", or in other words "Pluto the Sun" and "Kore the Moon". As for the other gods and goddesses, those include "Helios Apollon", who is paired with his twin sister Artemis; Zeus, who is subordinated to "God Himself"; and Men, an Anatolian Moon deity (a god often identified with Selene); Men is also sometimes identified with another Anatolian import, Attis (the consort of the mother goddess Cybele), who had a table before him for ceremonial dining. "Plouton Helios" is mentioned in other literary sources as well; he is associated with "Koure Selene" and "Helios Apollon"; the Sun on its nighttime course, while coming back from the west, was sometimes envisioned as travelling through the Underworld on its return to the east for the next day. Roman poet Apuleius describes a rite in which the Sun appears at midnight to the initiate at the gates of Proserpina; the suggestion here is that this midnight Sun could be "Plouton Helios". Evidence comes from Smyrna, where the father of a great priest of Helios Apollo donated statues of this god, Artemis and Men, as many artefacts, altars and temples with images of Pluto-Helios and Koure-Selene, and a key carried in the procession; Pluto-Helios seems to reflect the Egyptian idea of the nocturnal Sun that penetrated the realm of the dead.


title: Helios

text: An old oracle from Claros said that the names of Zeus, Hades, Helios, Dionysus and "Jao" all represented the Sun at different seasons. Macrobius wrote that Iao/Jao is "Hades in winter, Zeus in spring, Helios in summer, and Iao in autumn."


title: Helios

text: Diodorus Siculus reported that the Chaldeans called Cronus (Saturnus) by the name Helios, or the Sun, and he explained that this was because Saturn was the "most conspicuous" of the planets.


title: Helios

text: Helios often appears in ancient pottery and coins. The earliest depictions of Helios in a humanoid form date from the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC in Attic black-figure vases, and typically show him frontally as a bearded man on his chariot with a sun disk. A red-figure on a polychrome bobbin by a follower of the Brygos painter already signifies a shift in the god's depiction, painting him as a youthful, beardless figure, while an Attic column krater now kept in the Detroit Institute of Arts is among the earliest examples of a shift in Helios' depiction from frontal to profile, though it did keep the bearded man imagery. Likewise a late sixth century or early fifth century BC lekythos attributed to the Sappho Painter shows him as a bearded male, his long hair bound up in a "krobylos", holding a goad and wearing a finely pleated long linen tunic of a charioteer. In later art, he is consistently drawn as beardless and young. In it, he is typically depicted with a radiant crown; a radiate god, with the right hand often raised, a gesture of power (which came to be a definitional feature of solar iconography), the left hand usually holding a whip or a globe. By the middle of the fifth century BC Helios has lost his beard, as his identification with the youthful, fair Apollo has begun, however Helios is still depicted with a face fuller than Apollo's. In Rhodian coins, he was shown as beardless god, with thick and flowing hair, surrounded by beams. He was also presented as a young man clad in tunic, with curling hair and wearing buskins. While early depictions of Helios would show him holding a whip and reins of the quadriga, later ones supplant the whip and reins for a globe on the left hand and a raised right hand. Just like Selene, who is sometimes depicted with a lunar disk rather than a crescent, Helios too has his own solar one instead of a sun crown in some depictions, which radiates, unlike Selene's own which does not. It is likely that Helios' later image as a warrior-charioteer might be traced back to the Mycenaean period; the symbol of the disc of the sun is displayed in scenes of rituals from both Mycenae and Tiryns, and large amounts of chariots used by the Mycenaeans are recorded in Linear B tablets.


title: Helios

text: In archaic art, Helios rising in his chariot was a type of motive. Helios in ancient pottery is usually depicted rising from the sea in his four-horse chariot, either as a single figure or connecting to some myth, indicating that it takes place at dawn; often he is accompanied by Selene (Moon), Eos (Dawn), Hemera (Day) and the Stars. He is often present at the abduction of Persephone, the Judgement of Paris, and Heracles shooting arrows at him. In an Attic black-figure vase, now kept at the National Archaeological Museum of Taranto in Italy, attributed to the Theseus Painter, shows Heracles sitting on the shores of the Ocean river, while next to him a pair of arrows protrude from Helios, crowned with a solar disk and driving his chariot.


title: Helios

text: Helios adorned the east pediment of the Parthenon; he along with Selene framed the scene of the birth of Athena, he, with only his head and arms shown, driving his quadriga on the left as he rises from the ocean, while she in her biga descending into the sea on the far right. Helios (again with Selene) also framed the birth of Aphrodite on the base of the Statue of Zeus at Olympia, the Judgement of Paris, and possibly the birth of Pandora on the base of the Athena Parthenos statue. They were also featured in the pedimental group of the temple at Delphi. In the Pergamon Altar, depicting the Gigantomachy, the charioteer with the fluttering robes guiding his four-horse chariot while swinging a flaming torch at his enemy is doubtlessly Helios. In dynamic Hellenistic art, Helios along with other luminary deities and Rhea-Cybele, representing reason, battle the Giants (who represent irrationality).


title: Helios

text: The ancient sculptor Lysippus, teacher of Chares of Lindos (who built the Colossus of Rhodes) was celebrated for many his statues, more particularly for his "Chariot with the Sun", another large statue of the god which stood in Rhodes. In Elis near the market place he was depicted with rays coming out of his head in an image made of wood with gilded clothing and marble head, hands and feet. Outside the market of the city of Corinth, along the road to Lechaeum, stood a gateway on which stood two gilded chariots; one carrying Helios' son Phaethon, the other Helios himself.


title: Helios

text: Helios appears infrequently in gold jewelry before Roman times; extant examples include a gold medallion with its bust from the Gulf of Elaia in Anatolia, where he's depicted frontally with a head of unruly hair, and a golden medallion of the Pelinna necklace. The most famous representations of Helios, namely his statue in the east pediment of the Parthenon, Lysippus' chariot statue for the Rhodians and the Colossus of Rhodes were sources of inspiration for various other artworks of Helios in antiquity; the Pelinna medallion may also be following that same tradition.


title: Helios

text: The association of Alexander's features with solar iconography are maybe set around the time of Lysippus' "Chariot with the Sun" and Chares' Colossus; Alexander-like facial features can be traced on the fourth century-onward Rhodian coins depicting Helios' sun-crowned head; many Hellenistic and Roman images of Helios and then Mithras derive their facial features from Alexander. His iconography, used by the Ptolemies after representations of Alexander the Great as Alexander-Helios, came to symbolize power and epiphany, and was borrowed by several Egyptian deities in the Roman period. Other rulers who had their portraits done with solar features include Ptolemy III Euergetes, one of the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt, of whom a bust with holes in the fillet for the sunrays and gold coins depicting him with a radiant halo on his head like Helios and holding the aegis exist.


title: Helios

text: Helios was also frequently depicted in mosaics, usually surrounded by the twelve zodiac signs and accompanied by Selene. From the third and fourth centuries CE onwards, the sun god was seen as an official imperial Roman god and thus appeared in various forms in monumental artworks, portrayed wearing a radiant crown signifying the sun's rays and driving a quadriga. The cult of Helios/Sol had a notable function in Eretz Israel; since the Emperor was regarded as the ruler of the world, he figure's right-handed greeting was recognized as a symbol of power; Helios was Constantine the Great's patron, and so that ruler came to be identified with Helios. In his new capital city, Constantinople, Constantine recycled a statue of Helios to represent himself in his portrait, as Nero had done with Sol, which was not an uncommon practice among pagans, and the position of the emperors in the Arch of Galerius is comparable to the position of Helios/Sol on the Dieberg plaque, and also in coinage. A considerable portion if not the majority of Jewish Helios material dates from the 3rd through the 6th centuries CE, including numerous mosaics of the god in Jewish synagogues and invocation in papyri.


title: Helios

text: The sun god was depicted in mosaics in three places of the Land of Israel; at the synagogues of Hammat Tiberias, Beth Alpha and Naaran. In the mosaic of the Hammat Tiberias, Helios is wrapped in a partially gilded tunic fastened with a fibula and sporting a seven-rayed halo with his right hand uplifted, while his left holds a globe and a whip; his chariot is drawn as a frontal box with two large wheels pulled by four horses. At the Beth Alpha synagogue, Helios is at the centre of the circle of the zodiac mosaic, together with the Torah shrine between "menorahs", other ritual objects, and a pair of lions, while the Seasons are in spandrels. The frontal head of Helios emerges from the chariot box, with two wheels in side view beneath, and the four heads of the horses, likewise frontal, surmounting an array of legs. In the synagogue of Naaran, the god is dressed in a white tunic embellished with gemstones on the upper body; over the tunic is a "paludamentum" pinned with a fibula or bulla and decorated with a star motif, as he holds in his hand a scarf, the distinctive symbol of a ruler from the fourth century onward, and much like all other mosaics he's seated in his four-horse chariot. Temporary writings record "the sun has three letters of [God's] name written at its heart and the angels lead it" and "[t]he sun is riding on a chariot and rises decorated like a bridegroom". Both at Naaran and Beth Alpha the image of the sun is presented in a bust in frontal position, and a crown with nimbus and rays on his head. Helios at both Hammath Tiberias and Beth Alpha is depicted with seven rays emanating from his head, it has been argued that those two are significantly different; the Helios of Hammath Tiberias possesses all the attributes of Sol Invictus and thus the Roman emperors, those being the rayed crown, the raised right hand and the globe, all common Helios-Sol iconography of the late third and early fourth centuries AD.


title: Helios

text: Helios and Selene were also personified in the mosaic of the Monastery of Lady Mary at Beit She'an, where he is crowned with a seven-rayed halo while she wears a crescent upon her head, both holding flaming torches, surrounded by the personifications of the twelve months. His, on the left representing the day, is the bust portraying a bearded male wearing a tunic and a chlamys. Here he is not shown as Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, but rather as a celestial body; he is the guardian of creation and changing of the seasons, his red hair symbolizing the sun.


title: Helios

text: Helios/Sol had little independent identity and presence during the Renaissance, where the main solar gods were Apollo, Bacchus and Hercules; the identification between Helios and Apollo had started since antiquity, and though the two were not necessarily identical, distinguishing between Apollo-Diana and their heavenly counterparts Sol and Luna became too confusing for most people during the Renaissance. In post-antiquity art, Apollo assimilates features and attributes of both classical Apollo and Helios, so that Apollo, along with his own iconography, is many times depicted as driving the four-horse chariot, representing both of them. In baroque painting, Apollo is often depicted with his prancing horses, surrounded by sunlight, driving Diana, representing the moon goddess and identified with Helios' sister Selene, away from the sky and into darkness; otherwise, Apollo might be seated on a cloud, with his lyre and Diana next to him. In medieval tradition, each of the four horses had its own distinctive colour; in the Renaissance however, all four are shown as white, similar to those used to pull the Roman triumphal four-horse chariots. In Versailles, in the great fountain of Apollo, a gilded statue of him depicts Apollo as the god of the sun, driving his quadriga as he sinks in the ocean; Apollo in this regard represents the king of France, "le roi-soleil", "the Sun King".


title: Helios

text: In the same vein, Apollo is sometimes depicted with Eos/Aurora, the goddess of the dawn and the other one of Helios' sisters other than Selene; in a drawing by Italian painter Lelio Orsi from circa 1544–1545, the god Apollo leads his quadriga, loosely holding onto the reins of the chariot with a bow and quiver slung over his left shoulder; Aurora, buoyed on a pillow of cloud, precedes the chariot, as she announced his arrival, strewing flowers in Apollo's path, as behind them emerges the semicircle of the rising sun, its rays illuminating the horses as well as the forms of Apollo and Aurora. The ceiling fresco "L'Aurora" by Italian painter Guido Reni, painted in 1614, is another example of a Baroque painting where Eos/Aurora is seen leading Apollo, who is surrounded by the Hours and a luminous halo.


title: Helios

text: Additionally to the chariot, Apollo is often drawn with a solar halo around his head and depicted in scenes of Helios' mythology, like informing Vulcan of Venus's affair with Mars, seducing Leucothoe or refusing to look at Clytie as she looks longingly upon him, or being accompanied by Aurora, the goddess of the dawn who opens the gates for him to pass through each morning. Accordingly, in depictions of Phaethon meeting his father and asking him the privilege of driving the sun chariot, artists gave to Phaethon's father the appearance and attributes of Apollo, despite his genealogy; thus Apollo the sun god is shown sitting on a throne of clouds, with a lyre ever by his side. Giambattista Tiepolo, an Italian artist, painted oil on canvas the psychological moment when Phaethon made his daring wish, where Apollo, as the father, bathed in an aureole of light, vainly attempts to dissuade his son while the boy gestures at his father's horses, as described by Ovid; his golden chariot and horses are there too, as he is attended by the winged Horae, the goddesses of the seasons, and Saturn, here the god of time.


title: Helios

text: A love affair between the Sun god and the Nereid Amphitrite is introduced by French playwright Monléon's "L'Amphytrite" (1630); in the denouement, the Sun, scorned by the nymph, sets the land and sea ablaze, before the king of gods Jupiter intervenes and restores peace. In Jean-Gilbert Durval's "Le Travaux d'Ulysse" (1631), whose primary sources were not the "Odyssey", but a series of well-known paintings of the titular Odysseus' adventures, after his men dine on the sacred sheep, the Sun appears in 'a chariot of light', accompanied by Jupiter on his throne of glory; like in the myth, Jupiter kills Odysseus' crewmen with his lightning bolts when they put to sea again.


title: Helios

text: French composer Jean-Baptiste Lully wrote in 1683 a "tragédie en musique" in five acts inspired by Ovid's handling of the tale of Helios' son, "Phaëton", in which Phaëton obtains from his father the sun chariot in order to prove his divine origins to his rival Epaphus, but loses control and is instead struck and killed by Jupiter. The role of the father, le Soleil (the Sun) was played by a tenor (haute-contre). In the fourth act, the Sun, surrounded by the Horae, warmly receives his son, and after the festivities, he rashly accepts to give Phaeton a sign of fatherhood, only to quickly foresee the consequences once the boy expresses his wish, but is unable to go back on his word. The luxury of the Sun and his palace was no doubt meant to connect to the Sun King, Louis XIV, who used the sun for his emblem; the play was an indirect reference to the fate of Nicolas Fouquet, whose ambition to imitate Louis XIV brought about his downfall. This Apollo-Sun was frequently used to represent Louis XIV's reign; in Pierre Corneille's "Andromède" (1650), the Muse Melpomene stops the Sun to make him shine in the theatre, embellished with the finest art of France and Italy, and he predicts that King Louis XIV will achieve greater glory than Pompey, Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar.


title: Helios

text: Gerhart Hauptmann wrote a long poem "Helios und Phaethon", which, unlike other retellings of the myth, omits entirely the cosmic disaster Phaethon caused in order to focus on the relationship between the divine father and his mortal son, as Phaethon tries to convince his father he is well-suited for his five steeds, while Helios tries to dissuade his ambitious child, but eventually consents and gives him his reins and steeds to drive for a single day. In James Joyce's book "Ulysses", episode 14 is titled "Oxen of the Sun", after the story of Odysseus' men and the cattle of Helios in book twelve of the "Odyssey". The episode takes place in late morning at the Holles Street Maternity Hospital, and its symbolism is perhaps the most challenging in the book; the young men that gathered in the maternity hospital, due to their indecent behavior, feel like they committed a sacrilege against the women in labour that were giving birth to new life in the hospital; those mothers were held as sacred, akin to symbols of fertility, not unlike the sacred cattle of Helios whom the mortal crew so impiously slew and ate.


title: Helios

text: Helios is the Greek proper name for the Sun for both Ancient and Modern Greek, and additionally Helios, one of the craters of Hyperion, a moon of Saturn which bears Helios' father's name, is named after this Greek god. Several words relating to the Sun derive from "helios", including the rare adjective heliac (meaning "solar"), heliosphere, perihelion and aphelion among others.


title: Helios

text: The chemical element Helium, a colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, inert, monatomic gas, first in the noble gas group in the periodic table, was named after Helios by Norman Lockyer and Edward Frankland, as it was first observed in the spectrum of the chromosphere of the Sun. Helium makes up for about 25% of the Sun's mass.


title: Helios

text: A pair of probes that were launched into heliocentric orbit by NASA to study solar processes were called Helios A and Helios B after this god. They were launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida, on December 10, 1974, and January 15, 1976, respectively. Those probes are no longer functional yet remain in their elliptical orbits around the Sun.


title: Helios

text: Orinos Helios ("mountainous sun") is the name of a brand of wine in Greece, produced in Domaine Helios in Nemea.


title: Wayne Williams

text: Wayne Bertram Williams (born May 27, 1958) is an American convicted murderer and suspected serial killer who is serving life imprisonment for the 1981 killing of two men in Atlanta, Georgia, Although never tried, he is nonetheless believed to be responsible for at least 24 of the 30 Atlanta murders of 1979–1981, also known as the Atlanta Child Murders.


title: Wayne Williams

text: Wayne Williams, son of Homer and Faye Williams, was born on May 27, 1958, and raised in the Dixie Hills neighborhood of southwest Atlanta, Georgia. Both of his parents were teachers. Williams graduated from Douglass High School and developed a keen interest in radio and journalism. He constructed his own carrier current radio station and began frequenting stations WIGO and WAOK, where he befriended a number of the announcing crew and began dabbling in becoming a pop music producer and manager.


title: Wayne Williams

text: Williams first became a suspect in the Atlanta murders on the morning of May 22, 1981, when a police surveillance team, watching the James Jackson Parkway bridge spanning the Chattahoochee River (a site where several victims' bodies had been discovered), heard a "big loud splash", suggesting that something had been thrown from the bridge into the river below. The first automobile to exit the bridge after the splash, at roughly 2:50 a.m., belonged to Williams. When stopped and questioned, he told police that he was on his way to check on an address in a neighboring town ahead of an audition the following morning with a young singer named Cheryl Johnson. However, both the phone number he gave police and Cheryl Johnson turned out to be fictitious.


title: Wayne Williams

text: Two days later, on May 24, the nude body of 27-year-old Nathaniel Cater, who had been missing for four days and was last seen with Williams, was discovered in the river. The medical examiner ruled he had died of probable asphyxia but never specifically said he had been strangled. Police thought that Williams had killed Cater and that his body was the source of the sound they heard as his car crossed the bridge.


title: Wayne Williams

text: Williams failed three polygraph tests. Hairs and fibers retrieved from the body of another victim, Jimmy Ray Payne, were found to be consistent with those from his home, car, and dog. Co-workers told police they had seen Williams with scratches on his face and arms around the time of the murders which, investigators surmised, could have been inflicted by victims during struggles. Williams held a press conference outside his home to proclaim his innocence, volunteering that he had failed the polygraph tests, which would have been inadmissible in court.


title: Wayne Williams

text: Williams was questioned again by police for 12 hours on June 3 and 4 at FBI headquarters and released without arrest or charge, but remained under surveillance.


title: Wayne Williams

text: Williams was arrested on June 21, 1981, for the murders of Cater and Payne. His trial began on January 6, 1982, in Fulton County. During the two-month trial, prosecutors matched to a number of victims 19 sources of fibers from Williams's home and car: his bedspread, bathroom, gloves, clothes, carpets, dog, and an unusual trilobal carpet fiber. Other evidence included witness testimony that placed Williams with several victims while they were alive, and inconsistencies in his accounts of his whereabouts. Williams took the stand in his own defense but alienated the jury by becoming angry and combative. After 12 hours of deliberation, the jury found him guilty on February 27 of the murders of Cater and Payne. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. After Williams became a suspect, the killings stopped.


title: Wayne Williams

text: In the late 1990s, Williams filed a "habeas corpus" petition and requested a retrial. Butts County Superior Court judge Hal Craig denied his appeal. Georgia Attorney General Thurbert Baker said that "although this does not end the appeal process, I am pleased with the results in the habeas case" and that his office will "continue to do everything possible to uphold the conviction." In early 2004, Williams sought a retrial again, with his attorneys arguing that law enforcement officials covered up evidence of involvement by the Ku Klux Klan, and that carpet fibers purportedly linking him to the crimes would not stand up to scientific scrutiny. A federal judge rejected the request for retrial on October 17, 2006.


title: Wayne Williams

text: Williams was never tried for any of the Atlanta Child Murders. However, police attributed 22 other deaths, including those of 18 minors, to Williams.


title: Wayne Williams

text: Williams is serving his sentence at Telfair State Prison. On November 20, 2019, Williams was again denied parole. He will next be eligible for parole in November 2027.


title: Wayne Williams

text: Williams has maintained his innocence from the beginning and claimed that Atlanta officials covered up evidence of KKK involvement in the killings to avoid a race war in the city. His lawyers have said the conviction was a "profound miscarriage of justice" that has kept an innocent man incarcerated for the majority of his adult life and allowed the real killers to go free. In contrast, Joseph Drolet, who prosecuted Williams at trial, has stood by Williams's convictions. He has emphasized that, after Williams was arrested, "the murders stopped and there has been nothing since."


title: Wayne Williams

text: Other observers have criticized the thoroughness of the investigation and the validity of its conclusions. The author James Baldwin, in his essay "The Evidence of Things Not Seen" (1985), raised questions about Williams's guilt. Members of his community and several of the victims' parents did not believe that Williams, the son of two professional teachers, could have killed so many.


title: Wayne Williams

text: On May 6, 2005, DeKalb County Police Chief Louis Graham ordered the reopening of the murder cases of four boys killed in that county between February and May 1981, whose deaths had been attributed to Williams. The announcement was welcomed by relatives of some victims, who said they believe the wrong man was blamed for many of the murders.


title: Wayne Williams

text: Graham, who was serving as an assistant police chief in neighboring Fulton County at the time of the murders, said his decision to reopen the cases was driven solely by his belief in Williams's innocence. Former DeKalb County Sheriff, and convicted murderer, Sidney Dorsey, who was an Atlanta homicide detective at the time, also said he believed Williams was wrongly blamed for the murders. "If they arrested a white guy," he said, "there would have been riots across the U.S.." Dorsey is serving a life sentence after being convicted of ordering the murder of his election opponent Derwin Brown.


title: Wayne Williams

text: According to an August 2005 report, Charles T. Sanders, a white supremacist affiliated with the KKK and an early suspect in the murders, once praised the crimes in secretly recorded conversations. Although Sanders did not publicly claim responsibility for any of the deaths, he told an informant for the Georgia Bureau of Investigation in a 1981 recording that the killer had "wiped out a thousand future generations of niggers". An anonymous alleged former friend of Sanders told documentarian Payne Lindsey ("Atlanta Monster") that Sanders had taken credit for the murders mentioned in a 1986 "Spin" article, claiming that his brothers were also involved.


title: Wayne Williams

text: Sanders did not directly implicate the KKK or lead his friend to believe that anyone else from the organization was involved. Sanders allegedly mused over how lucky he was that he and Williams had the same carpet and that they both owned a white German shepherd. The anonymous former friend went on to say that, "Once it was pinned on Wayne Williams, they were through. That was their way out." Police dropped the probe into possible Klan involvement when Sanders and two of his brothers passed lie detector tests. The case was once again closed on July 21, 2006.


title: Wayne Williams

text: Former FBI profiler John E. Douglas wrote in his book "Mindhunter" that, in his opinion, "forensic and behavioral evidence points conclusively to Wayne Williams as the killer of eleven young men in Atlanta." He added, however, that he believed there was "no strong evidence linking him to all or even most of the deaths and disappearances of children in that city between 1979 and 1981".


title: Wayne Williams

text: In 2007, the FBI performed DNA tests on two human hairs found on one of the victims. The mitochondrial DNA sequence in the hairs would eliminate 99.5% of persons, and 98% of African-American persons, by not matching their DNA; the sequence found matched Williams's DNA.


title: Wayne Williams

text: DNA testing was performed in 2010 on scalp hairs found on the body of 11-year-old victim Patrick Baltazar. While the results were not firmly conclusive, the DNA sequence found appears in only 29 of 1,148 African-American hair samples in the FBI's database, including that of Williams. The Baltazar case was included among 10 additional victims presented to the jury at Williams' trial, although he was never charged in any of those cases.


title: Wayne Williams

text: Dog hairs found on Baltazar's body were tested in 2007 by the genetics laboratory at the University of California, Davis School of Veterinary Medicine, which found a DNA sequence also present in the Williams family's German Shepherd. However, the director of the laboratory, Elizabeth Wictum, said that, while the results were "fairly significant", they were not conclusive. Only mitochondrial DNA was tested; unlike nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA cannot be shown to be unique to an individual dog. The report said the hairs on the bodies contained the same DNA sequence as Williams's dog, a DNA sequence that occurs in about 1 in 100 dogs. The FBI report stated that "Wayne Williams cannot be excluded" as a suspect in the case.


title: Wayne Williams

text: A Department of Justice study, released in April 2015, concluded that numerous hair analyses conducted by FBI examiners during the 1980s and 1990s "may have failed to meet professional standards." Defense attorney Lynn Whatley immediately announced that the report would form the basis for a new appeal, but prosecutors responded that hair evidence played only a minor role in Williams's conviction.


title: Wayne Williams

text: On March 21, 2019, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms and Atlanta Police Chief Erika Shields announced that officials would re-test evidence from the murders, which will be gathered by the Atlanta Police Department, Fulton County District Attorney's Office, and Georgia Bureau of Investigation. In a news conference, Mayor Bottoms said, "It may be there is nothing left to be tested. But I do think history will judge us by our actions, and we will be able to say we tried."


title: Wayne Williams

text: On August 19, 2019, an Atlanta man, Derwin Davis, came out claiming that Williams had attempted to abduct him in 1979.


title: Wayne Williams

text: Williams appears as the main antagonist in several media portrayals of the case. He was first depicted in the 1985 television miniseries "The Atlanta Child Murders" and was played by Calvin Levels. In 2000, Showtime released a drama film titled "Who Killed Atlanta's Children?" with Clé Bennett playing Williams. In 2019, Williams was featured in season 2 of the Netflix series "Mindhunter" alongside others such as Charles Manson and David Berkowitz; Williams's character was portrayed by Christopher Livingston.


title: Addis Ababa

text: Addis Ababa (; ; also known as , lit. "natural spring" in Oromo), is the capital and largest city of Ethiopia. It is also served as major administrative center of the Oromia Region. In the 2007 census, the city's population was estimated to be 2,739,551 inhabitants. Addis Ababa is a highly developed and important cultural, artistic, financial and administrative centre of Ethiopia.


title: Addis Ababa

text: Addis Ababa was portrayed in the 15th century as a fortified location called "Barara" that housed the emperors of Ethiopia at the time. Prior to Emperor Dawit II, Barara was completely destroyed during the Ethiopian–Adal War and Oromo expansions. The founding history of Addis Ababa dates back in late 19th-century by Menelik II, Negus of Shewa, in 1886 after finding Mount Entoto unpleasant two years prior. At the time, the city was a resort town; its large mineral spring abundance attracted nobilities of the empire, led them to establish permanent settlement. It also attracted many members of the working classes — including artisans and merchants — and foreign visitors. Menelik II then formed his imperial palace in 1887. Addis Ababa became the empire's capital in 1889, and subsequently international embassies were opened. Addis Ababa urban development began at the beginning of the 20th century, and without any preplanning.


title: Addis Ababa

text: Addis Ababa saw a wide-scale economic boom in 1926 and 1927, and an increase in the number of buildings owned by the middle class, including stone houses filled with imported European furniture. The middle class also imported newly manufactured automobiles and expanded banking institutions. During the Italian occupation, urbanization and modernization steadily increased by a master plan which they hoped Addis Ababa would be more colonial city and continued after their occupation. Consequent master plans were designed by French and British consultants from 1940s onwards focusing on monumental structures, satellite cities and inner-city. Similarly, the Italo-Ethiopian master plan also projected in 1986 concerning only urban structure and accommodating service, which was later adapted by the 2003 master plan.


title: Addis Ababa

text: Addis Ababa remains federal chartered city in accordance with the Addis Ababa City Government Charter Proclamation No. 87/1997 in the FDRE Constitution. Called "the political capital of Africa" due to its historical, diplomatic, and political significance for the continent, Addis Ababa serves as the headquarters of major international organizations such as the African Union and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa.


title: Addis Ababa

text: The city lies a few kilometres west of the East African Rift, which splits Ethiopia into two, between the Nubian Plate and the Somali Plate. The city is surrounded by the Special Zone of Oromia and is populated by people from the different regions of Ethiopia. It is home to Addis Ababa University. The city has a high human development index and is known for its vibrant culture, strong fashion scene, high involvement of young people, thriving arts scene, and for having the fastest economic growth of any country in the world.


title: Addis Ababa

text: A study based on DNA evidence from almost 1,000 people around the world suggests that all humans spread out from a place close to current Addis Ababa 100,000 years ago. The research indicated that genetic diversity decreases steadily the farther one's ancestors travelled from Addis Ababa.


title: Addis Ababa

text: Mount Entoto, a high tableland to the north of current Addis Ababa, is one of a handful of sites put forward as a possible location for a medieval imperial capital known as Barara. This permanent fortified city was established during the early-to-mid 15th century, and it served as the main residence of several successive emperors up to the early 16th-century reign of Libne Dengel. The city was depicted standing between Mount Zuqualla and Menegasha on a map drawn by the Italian cartographer Fra Mauro in around 1450, and it was razed and plundered by Ahmed Gragn while the imperial army was trapped on the south of the Awash River in 1529, an event witnessed and documented two years later by the Yemeni writer Arab-Faqih. The suggestion that Barara was located on Mount Entoto is supported by the very recent discovery of a large medieval town overlooking Addis Ababa located between rock-hewn Washa Mikael and the more modern church of Entoto Maryam, founded in the late 19th century. Dubbed the Pentagon, the 30-hectare site incorporates a castle with 12 towers, along with 520 meters of stone walls measuring up to 5-meter high.


title: Addis Ababa

text: The city's immediate predecessor as the capital of Ethiopia, Entoto, was established by Menelik II in 1884. In addition, he had used it for garrison base. Menelik, initially the King of the Shewa province, had found Mount Entoto a useful base for military operations in the south of his realm, and in 1879 he visited the reputed ruins of the medieval town and the unfinished rock church. His interest in the area grew when his wife Taytu began work on a church on Mount Entoto, and Menelik endowed a second church in the area. It was given that Menelik had strong interest to settle in the area due to partly influenced by establishing his old empire and serving as metropolis. After some time, Entoto was found to be unsatisfactory as capital because of its cold climate, lack of water, and an acute shortage of firewood.


title: Addis Ababa

text: In 1886, settlement began in the valley south of the mountain in a place called Finfinne in Oromo, a name which refers to the presence of hot springs. The area was previously inhabited by various Oromo clans. The site was chosen by Empress Taytu Betul. Initially, she built a house for herself near the "Filwuha" hot mineral springs, where she and members of the Shewan Royal Court liked to take mineral baths. Other nobility and their staff and households settled in the vicinity, and Menelik expanded his wife's house to become the Imperial Palace in 1887 which remains the seat of government in Addis Ababa today. In 1886, the city was renamed to Addis Ababa as the capital of Menelik's kingdom of Shewa. It become the capital of Ethiopia in 1889, when Menelik became Emperor. The town grew by leaps and bounds. Not only for noble, but also the site attracted to numerous working class in sort: the artisans, merchant, and foreign visitors.


title: Addis Ababa

text: Early residential dwelling typically made of circular huts; walls were constructed with mud (Amharic: ጭቃ, "cheka") and straw plastered on wooden frame, and thatched roofs. Addis Ababa growth rate began in early marked by rapid urbanization without preplanned intention. This was the time where nobilities embarked concentrated permanent settlement, and altered by social pattern; i.e. each neighborhoods ("sefer") was located in higher grounds, sorted by noncontiguous from adjacent settlements. The early social milieu contributed the contemporary admixture of classic neighborhood. One of Emperor Menelik's contributions that are still visible today is the planting of numerous eucalyptus trees along the city streets.


title: Addis Ababa

text: Moreover, the city held strong social organizations pattern prior Italian invasion. According to Richard Pankhurst (1968), the city accelerated population growth due to factors of provisional governors and their troops, the 1892 famine, eventually the Battle of Adwa. Another include the 1907 land act, municipal administration in 1909, and railway and modernized transportation system boom beginning in the 20th century, culminating in continual growth. Additional supplements, for example the laid of Ethio-Djibouti Railways and topographical factors more led the city's boundary to expand southward.


title: Addis Ababa

text: Gebrehiwot Baykedagn took major administrative division post, and Addis Ababa–Djibouti railways in 1916, which also connects Addis Ababa with French Somaliland port of Djibouti. Ras Tafari Mekonnen, later became Emperor Haile Selassie I was the most powerful figure in the city following his appointment in 1917. He transformed the city by recognizing an importance of modernization and urbanization, he distributed wealth to support emerging class. From this point, Ras Tafari gained a legitimate power as regency council in 1918.


title: Addis Ababa

text: By 1926 and 1927, a large-scale economic revolution occurred, a surplus of coffee production began growing as a result to capital accumulation. Profited from this wealth, the bourgeoisie benefited the city by constructing new, stone-fitted houses with imported European furniture and an importation of the latest automobiles, and expansion of banks across the locales. The total register of automobiles were 76 in 1926 and went to 578 in 1930. The first popular road transportation opened between Addis Ababa and Djibouti, about 97 miles northward in the direction of Dessie. Initially intended to connect Italian occupied Assab with Addis Ababa in the Italo-Ethiopian Treaty of 1928, the road was considered for motor vehicle route. The highway seemingly important to French railway of Djibouti with freight rate was very high wherein lack of competition, and increase of cargo between Ethiopia and Assab.


title: Addis Ababa

text: In 1930, the Emperor was crowned and proceeded with new technologies and building infrastructure. Among them, he installed power lines and telephones, and erected several monuments (such as Meyazia 27 Square).


title: Addis Ababa

text: Following all the major engagements of their invasion, the Italian troops from the colony of Eritrea entered Addis Ababa on 5 May 1936. Along with Dire Dawa, the city had been spared the aerial bombardment (including the use of chemical weapons such as mustard gas) practiced elsewhere in Ethiopia. This also allowed its railway to Djibouti to remain intact. After the occupation, the city served as the Duke of Aosta's capital for unified Italian East Africa until 1941, when it was abandoned in favor of Amba Alagi and other redoubts during the Second World War's East African Campaign. According to Soviet estimates, 15,000 Ethiopians casualties were victim of chemical weapons, especially by sulfur mustard.


title: Addis Ababa

text: The Italian ambition regarding Addis Ababa was to create a beautified colonial capital city along with a new master plan launched by seven architects such as Marcello Piacentini, Alessandro Bianchi, Enrico Del Debbio, Giuseppe Vaccaro, Le Corbusier, Ignazio Guidi and Cesare Valle. Despite contradictory and different ideas for each other, the plan was intended to focus the general architectural plan of the city. Two preparations were approved from the master plan: the Le Corbusier and Guidi and Valle. During an invitation to Mussolini, the French Swiss architect Le Corbusier illustrated the master plan in a guideline sketch involving traversing route monumental structure by grand boulevard across the city from north to south, as he extracted from his 1930–1933 Radiant City concept. His two counterparts, Guildi and Valle prepared the master plan in summer 1936 likely emphasizing fascist ideology with monumental structure and no native Ethiopian participation in designing sector. Two parallel axis were drawn in European character connecting Arada/Giyorgis with railway station to he south end five kilometers long and varied width spanning from 40 to 90 meters.


title: Addis Ababa

text: On 5 May 1941, the city was liberated by Major Orde Wingate and Emperor Haile Selassie for Ethiopian Gideon Force and Ethiopian resistance in time to permit Emperor Haile Selassie's return on 5 May 1941, five years to the day after he had left.


title: Addis Ababa

text: In aftermath, Addis Ababa suffered from economic stagnation and rapid population growth, the inner-city affected by urban morphology initiated by Italian occupation and the peripheral area were in urban sprawl. In 1946, Haile Selassie invited famous British master planner Sir Patrick Abercrombie with goals of modelling beautifying the city to become the capital for Africa. By organizing module, Abercrombie launched the master plan with neighborhood units surrounded by green parkways, and he was encouraged to draw ring roads characterized by radial shapes to channel traffic pathway from central area.


title: Addis Ababa

text: His careful master plan of major traffic route was completed by segregating neighborhood units, as he extracted from his 1943 London traffic problem. In 1959, the British consultant team named Bolton Hennessy and Partners commissioned an improvement of Abercrombie's 1954–1956 satellite towns. From the place, they did not incorporated outer area like Mekenissa and West of the old Air Port in the proposal, while Rapi, Gefersa, Kaliti and Kotebe proposed as outlet of Jimma, Ambo and Dessie respectively (the four regional highways). The Hennessy and Partners illustration would be physically larger to current size of Addis Ababa with surrounded satellite towns. In 1965, the French Mission for Urban Studies and Habitat led by Luis De Marien launched another master plan responsible to create monumental axis through Addis Ababa City Hall with an extension across Gofa Mazoria in the southern part of the city. Marien's difference to the previous Italian master plan was the use of single monumental axis while they used the double one.


title: Addis Ababa

text: Haile Selassie also helped to form the Organisation of African Unity in 1963 later dissolved in 2002 and replaced by the African Union (AU), which is also headquartered in the city, airports and industrial parks. The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa founded in 1958, also has its headquarters in Addis Ababa. Addis Ababa was also the site of the Council of the Oriental Orthodox Churches in 1965. Pankhurst (1962) noted in a survey of total land of 212 square kilometers, 58% owned by 1,768, owing to 10,000 square meters, and 12% were given to church whereas other small areas were still acquired in the name of posthumous nobilities such as "Dejazemach" Wube Haile Mariam, "Fitawrari" Aba Koran, and a bridge named "Fitawrari Habtegiorgis" after Habte Giyorgis Dinagde. According to 1965 master plan, the city covered the area of 21,000 hectares and would increased to 51,000 hectares by 1984 master plan.


title: Addis Ababa

text: In 1965, the first student march took place in response to the feudal imperial government of Haile Selassie, in which they chanted "Land for the Tiller", culminating in Marxist–Leninist movement in Ethiopia. In addition, the 1973 oil crisis heavily impacted the city. 1,500 peasants in Addis Ababa marched to plead for food to returned by police, and intellectual from Addis Ababa University forced the government to take a measure against the spreading famine, a report which Haile Selassie government denounced as "fabrication". Haile Selassie responded later "rich and poor have always existed and will, Why? Because there are those that work...and those that prefer to do nothing...Each individual is responsible for his misfortunes, his fate." Students around the city gathered to protest in February 1974, eventually Haile Selassie successfully deposed from office in 1974 by group of police officers. Later, the group named themselves Derg, officially "Provisional Military Administrative Council" (PMAC). The city had only 10 woredas.


title: Addis Ababa

text: After the Derg came to power, roughly two-third of housing stock transferred to rental housing. The population was declined from 6.5% to 3.7% In 1975, the Derg nationalized "extra" rental structures built by private stockholders. As a result, the "Proclamationon No. 47/1975" issued weakened buildings with small amount of living was administered by "kebele" units, while rental houses with large quality fell under Agency for Rental Housing Administration (ARHA). If those rental properties value less than 100 birr (US$48.31), they would be put under kebele administration. The administrative divisions showed an increase of woredas to 25 and 284 kebeles.


title: Addis Ababa

text: Hungarian architect C.K. Polonyi was the first person to embark master plan during the Derg period with assistance of the Ministry of Urban Development and Housing. He used two formula concentrating an integration Addis Ababa with suburbs of rural areas and developing inner-city. Polonyi also worked to redesign Meskel Square, which was renamed Abiyot Square by the time, implemented immediately after the name change.


title: Addis Ababa

text: In 1986, the Italo-Ethiopian master plan was set up by 45 Ethiopian professional along with 75 Italian experts with 207 sectorial reports documented as references. The plan dealt with a balanced urban system and services in urban area such as water supply. Akaki incorporated to Addis Ababa to supply industrial and freight terminal services. The bureaucratic rule of the Derg postponed the master plane for eight years until 1994, which caused failure of basic issues in public service and unplanned development.


title: Addis Ababa

text: On 28 May 1991, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition party in course of overthrowing the Derg, seized Addis Ababa. They entered Menelik II Avenue and ordering a curfew for 24 hours. According to witness, residents of Addis Ababa were totally ignorant and not terrible by the event. One of the militants told them "We think it's safe now". The military went to central place of the city such as Hilton Hotel. They displayed a slogan banner "Peace, Solidarity, Friendship". At 5:30 am, they took control of presidential place and large-scale tanks were seen overrun the area.


title: Addis Ababa

text: A new constitution was adapted in 1994 and enacted year later; while all cities in Ethiopia accountable rule by regional authority, Addis Ababa (Proclamation No 87/1997) and Dire Dawa (Proclamation No 416/2004) remain chartered city, mandates for self-governing and developmental center. The "Proclamation No. 112/1995" legitimized privatization of government houses except few, and the kebele houses was remained in tenture. The kebele dwelling and their largely unplanned settings continued to incorporated core areas of Addis Ababa.


title: Addis Ababa

text: From the end of 1998, new project was launched by Addis Ababa City Administration naming Office for Revision of Addis Ababa Master Plan (ORAAMP), covering from 1999 to 2003. The plan goal was to meet the standard of market economy with favorable political system resembles the revised 1986 master plan in terms of urban area.


title: Addis Ababa

text: A controversial plan to expand the boundaries Addis Ababa, by 1.1 million hectares into the Oromia special zone in April 2014, sparked Oromo protests on 25 April 2014 against expansion of boundaries Addis Ababa. The government responded by shooting at and beating peaceful protesters and embarked in full blown strike and streets protests on 12 November 2015 by university student in Ginchi town, located 80 km southwest of Addis Ababa city, encircled by Oromia Region. After the deadly Oromo protests started on 25 April 2014, the controversial master plan was cancelled on 12 January 2016. By that time, 140 protesters were killed.


title: Addis Ababa

text: United Nations Population Projections estimated metro area of Addis Ababa 5,228,000 in 2022, a 4.43% increase from 2021. During Abiy Ahmed's premiership, Addis Ababa and its vicinities underwent Beautifying Sheger. This project is aimed to enhance the green coverage and beauty of the city. In 2018, Abiy initiated a project called "Riverside" planned to expand riverbanks for , from the Entoto Mountains to the Akaki river.