page_title: Odaenathus
section_title: Name, family and appearance
hierarchical_section_title: Odaenathus / Name, family and appearance
caption_attribution_description: English: Limestone portrait of a leading Palmyrene, c. 230-250 AD, Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen. An oak wreath with a small bust at its centre crows this powerful statue head. The unfinished back shows that the statue stood in a niche. The carved eyelashes are an unusual detail. The pupil and iris were inlaid. It represent Odenaethus according to Harald Ingholt.&#91;1&#93;
context_page_description: Septimius Odaenathus was the founder king of the Palmyrene Kingdom who ruled from Palmyra, Syria. He elevated the status of his kingdom from a regional center subordinate to Rome into a formidable state in the Near East. Odaenathus was born into an aristocratic Palmyrene family that had received Roman citizenship in the 190s under the Severan dynasty. He was the son of Hairan, the descendant of Nasor. The circumstances surrounding his rise are ambiguous; he became the lord of the city, a position created for him, as early as the 240s and by 258, he was styled a consularis, indicating a high status in the Roman Empire.
  The defeat and captivity of Emperor Valerian at the hands of the Sassanian emperor Shapur I in 260 left the eastern Roman provinces largely at the mercy of the Persians. Odaenathus remained on the side of Rome; assuming the title of king, he led the Palmyrene army, fell upon the Persians before they could cross the Euphrates to the eastern bank, and inflicted upon them a considerable defeat. He took the side of Emperor Gallienus, the son and successor of Valerian, who was facing the attempted usurpation of Fulvius Macrianus.
context_section_description: "Odaenathus" is the Latin transliteration of the king's name; he was born Septimius Odainat in c. 220. His name is written in transliterated Palmyrene as Sptmyws 'Dynt. "Sptmyws" (Septimius), which means "born in September", was Odaenathus' family gentilicium (Roman surname), adopted as an expression of loyalty to the Roman Severan dynasty and the emperor Septimius Severus who had granted the family Roman citizenship in the late second century. 'Dynt (Odainat) is the Palmyrene diminutive for ear, related to Uḏaina in Arabic and 'Ôden in Aramaic. Odaenathus' genealogy is known from a stone block in Palmyra with a sepulchral inscription that mentions the building of a tomb and records the genealogy of the builder: Odaenathus, son of Hairan, son of Wahb Allat, son of Nasor. In Rabbinic sources, Odaenathus is named "Papa ben Nasor" (Papa son of Nasor); the meaning of the name "Papa" and how Odaenathus earned it is unclear.
  The King appears to be of mixed Arab and Aramean descent: his name, the name of his father, Hairan, and that of his grandfather, Wahb-Allat, are Arabic; while Nasor, his great-grandfather, has an Aramaic name. Nasor might not have been the great-grandfather of Odaenathus, but a more distant ancestor; the archaeologist Frank Edward Brown considered Nasor to be Odaenathus' great-great or great-great-great grandfather. This has led some scholars, such as Lisbeth Soss Fried and Javier Teixidor, to consider the origin of the family to be Aramean. In practice, the citizenry of Palmyra were the result of Arab and Aramaean tribes merging into a unity with a corresponding consciousness; they thought and acted as Palmyrenes.
  The fifth-century historian Zosimus asserted that Odaenathus descended from "illustrious forebears", but the position of the family in Palmyra is debated; it was probably part of the wealthy mercantile class. Alternatively, the family may have belonged to the tribal leadership which amassed a fortune as landowners and patrons of the Palmyrene caravans. The historians Franz Altheim and Ruth Stiehl suggested that Odaenathus was part of a new elite of Bedouins driven from their home east of the Euphrates by the aggressive Sassanian dynasty after 220. However, it is certain that Odaenathus came from a family which had belonged to the upper class of the city for several generations; in Dura-Europos, a relief dated to 159/158 (470 of the Seleucid era, SE) was commissioned by Hairan son of Maliko son of Nasor. This Hairan might have been the head of the Palmyrene trade colony in Dura-Europos and probably belonged to the same family as Odaenathus. According to Brown, it is plausible, based on the occurrence of the name Nasor in both Dura-Europos and Palmyra (where it was a rare name), that Odaenathus and Hairan son of Maliko belonged to the same family.
  No definite images of Odaenathus have been discovered, hence, there is no information about his appearance; all sculptures identified as Odaenathus lack any inscriptions to confirm whom they represent. Two sculpted heads from Palmyra, one preserved in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum and the other in the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul, were identified by the archaeologist Harald Ingholt as representing Odaenathus based on their monumentality and regal style. The academic consensus does not support Ingholt's view, and the heads he ascribed to the king can be dated to the end of the second century. More likely, two marble heads, one depicting a man wearing a royal tiara, the crown of Palmyra, and the other depicting a man in a royal Hellenistic diadem, are depictions of the king. In addition, a Palmyrene clay tessera, depicting a bearded man wearing a diadem, could be a portrait of the king.
caption: Odaenathus' alleged portrait from the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek museum
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