74 located sites
Where were they actually worshipped?
The corpus has always been able to say when a name is first written down. This is the other half of the question. Astarte at Sidon, Tyre, Byblos and Paphos is a coastal trading network; Mithra from the Walbrook to the Euphrates is an army’s supply line; Perun on the hill above Kyiv and Veles down in the Podil by the river is an argument about who ranks whom. None of that is visible in a list of dates.
48 of these come from the Pleiades gazetteer of the ancient world and the remaining 26 from Wikidata, which reaches the places Pleiades does not. Every one was matched by hand: searching either for “Babylon” returns Old Cairo, and for “Oyo” an Indian hotel chain.
Every located site
All 74 cult sites, plotted on a plain latitude and longitude grid. Colour matches the sections below; a ringed dot holds more than one figure.
No coastlines — drawing them would be decoration standing in front of the data. Read position against the grid, and hover any dot for its name.
Equirectangular projection. Every site here lies between the equator and sixty north, where it distorts very little.
The Levant and the Nile, closer in
The same plot over the ten degrees that hold most of the corpus. Two clusters that all but touch, which is the geography behind so much of this material being one culture inheriting another's gods.
Same colours and the same grid, at roughly eight times the scale of the plot above.
18 shared
Sites that hold more than one figure
The most useful thing on this page. Karnak holds the Theban triad, which is expected; Avaris holds Set and Anat, which is Egypt taking in Levantine gods; Templo Mayor holds the god of the night sky and the god of the dead in one precinct. Two figures on one pin is a relationship no other view here shows.
The sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan, where the god of the night sky and the god of the dead both had houses.
19.435, -99.131 · Wikidata Q774021
Balor's fortress in the telling. Not the Tory Island in North Carolina.
55.264, -8.222 · Wikidata Q1147050
The seat of kingship in the Irish literature rather than a temple: the hall Lugh talks his way into by being master of every art at once, and the kingship Nuada loses with his hand and gets back with a silver one.
53.578, -6.612 · Wikidata Q543155
Where the Yoruba place the making of the world, and the centre from which the orisha are counted.
7.467, 4.567 · Wikidata Q180084
The temple of Saturn, which held the treasury, and the Ianus Geminus, whose doors marked war and peace.
41.892, 12.487 · Pleiades 502866838
Where Adam of Bremen puts Thor in the middle of the temple, with Odin and Freyr on either side.
59.894, 17.639 · Wikidata Q433032
Athena's city and her Acropolis. Not the Athenae in Yemen, which the gazetteer offers first.
37.972, 23.724 · Pleiades 579885
Vladimir's idols stood here from 980 until he had them pulled down in 988 — Perun on the hill above the town, Veles down in the Podil by the river.
50.450, 30.524 · Wikidata Q1899
Ptah's Hut-ka-Ptah, whose Greek form gave Egypt its name.
29.849, 31.255 · Pleiades 736963
Iunu, the solar city. Not the Heliopolis at Baalbek, which is a different god entirely.
30.129, 31.307 · Pleiades 727117
The Hyksos capital, where Set was identified with the Levantine storm god.
30.786, 31.823 · Pleiades 727080
The Theban complex: Amun's precinct, Mut's walled enclosure to the south, and Khonsu's temple within.
25.718, 32.658 · Pleiades 786050
33.269, 35.202 · Pleiades 678437
33.562, 35.373 · Pleiades 678393
The Eanna, Inanna's house, and one of the oldest monumental precincts anywhere.
31.323, 45.639 · Pleiades 912986
Temples on the Yangtze staging the courts of the underworld as an administrative process to be walked through.
29.890, 107.722 · Wikidata Q5443419
Possibly the oldest shrine in Japan, in the province Susanoo is banished to and then rules.
35.402, 132.685 · Wikidata Q696362
Rebuilt on the adjacent plot every twenty years for something like thirteen centuries.
34.455, 136.726 · Wikidata Q687168
6 sites
The western edge
The far end of things rather than the origin of anything. A temple of Isis in Roman London and a mithraeum on the Walbrook are what it looks like when a Mediterranean cult reaches the end of a supply line.
Balor's fortress in the telling. Not the Tory Island in North Carolina.
55.264, -8.222 · Wikidata Q1147050
Where the goddess and the saint share a name, a feast at the start of February and a perpetual fire that Gerald of Wales reports still burning in the twelfth century. Whether the two are one figure is not a question the evidence settles.
53.157, -6.909 · Wikidata Q917865
The seat of kingship in the Irish literature rather than a temple: the hall Lugh talks his way into by being master of every art at once, and the kingship Nuada loses with his hand and gets back with a silver one.
53.578, -6.612 · Wikidata Q543155
Brú na Bóinne, which was already two thousand years old when the stories that put the Dagda there were written.
53.695, -6.476 · Wikidata Q339503
On the Walbrook, and the far northwest end of a cult that reached from here to the Euphrates.
51.513, -0.092 · Wikidata Q1408799
A jug found in the Thames is inscribed LONDINI AD FANVM ISIDIS — at London, at the temple of Isis. Fifteen hundred miles from Philae, and the reason her reach is the point rather than her origin.
51.513, -0.089 · Pleiades 79574
14 sites
Italy, Greece and the islands
The densest part of the map, and the part where the gazetteer carries individual buildings rather than towns — so these are temples rather than cities.
Jupiter Optimus Maximus, where consuls sacrificed on taking office and triumphs ended.
41.893, 12.482 · Pleiades 347036492
The temple of Saturn, which held the treasury, and the Ianus Geminus, whose doors marked war and peace.
41.892, 12.487 · Pleiades 502866838
In Augustus' forum, where the senate met to declare war.
41.894, 12.487 · Pleiades 823121346
A Persephone sanctuary in southern Italy that treated her as a goddess of marriage rather than of death — the same figure read the other way up.
38.226, 16.244 · Pleiades 452369
Where Adam of Bremen puts Thor in the middle of the temple, with Odin and Freyr on either side.
59.894, 17.639 · Wikidata Q433032
The oracle of the dead on the Acheron in Epirus. Hades has few temples anywhere; he is propitiated rather than celebrated, and this is where the living went to ask the dead.
39.236, 20.534 · Pleiades 531011
The older oracle of Zeus, read from the rustling of an oak rather than spoken by a priestess.
39.546, 20.788 · Pleiades 530843
Pheidias' chryselephantine statue sat here, and the games were held at the altar outside.
37.638, 21.630 · Pleiades 316294900
Where the Pythia answered from the adyton, and which the Greeks called the navel of the world.
38.482, 22.501 · Pleiades 540726
The sanctuary on the Isthmus where the games were his.
37.916, 22.993 · Pleiades 107524051
Where the Mysteries were performed and Persephone's return was enacted. Not the Eleusis on Thera.
38.041, 23.538 · Pleiades 579910
Athena's city and her Acropolis. Not the Athenae in Yemen, which the gazetteer offers first.
37.972, 23.724 · Pleiades 579885
Apollo's birthplace, kept ritually pure: nobody was permitted to be born or to die on the island, and the existing graves were dug up and moved.
37.392, 25.270 · Pleiades 599588
Hecate's one great temple, in Caria, where a procession carried the key.
37.378, 28.039 · Pleiades 599747
27 sites
The Levant and the Nile
Two clusters that all but touch, and the reason so much of this corpus is about one culture inheriting another's gods. The Philistine cities, the Phoenician ports and the Egyptian nome capitals are within a few days of each other.
Vladimir's idols stood here from 980 until he had them pulled down in 988 — Perun on the hill above the town, Veles down in the Podil by the river.
50.450, 30.524 · Wikidata Q1899
Neith's Delta city, and the state cult of the Twenty-Sixth Dynasty.
30.967, 30.774 · Pleiades 727217
The dog city of the seventeenth nome, Anubis's own. Not the Delta Kynopolis.
28.479, 30.783 · Pleiades 736949
Thoth's city, whose catacombs hold hundreds of thousands of mummified ibises.
27.781, 30.804 · Pleiades 756574
Sobek's Faiyum capital, where the sacred crocodile was kept and fed by hand.
29.315, 30.840 · Pleiades 736948
Wepwawet's city; the Greeks read his jackal standard as a wolf.
27.181, 31.183 · Pleiades 756593
Ptah's Hut-ka-Ptah, whose Greek form gave Egypt its name.
29.849, 31.255 · Pleiades 736963
A circular sanctuary outside Novgorod, excavated in the 1950s and read as Perun's.
58.473, 31.274 · Wikidata Q4359569
Iunu, the solar city. Not the Heliopolis at Baalbek, which is a different god entirely.
30.129, 31.307 · Pleiades 727117
The Hyksos capital, where Set was identified with the Levantine storm god.
30.786, 31.823 · Pleiades 727080
Where Osiris was held to be buried, and where pilgrims left stelae to be near him. Not the Abydos in the Troad.
26.185, 31.918 · Pleiades 756512
Where the Levantine goddess was received as Aphrodite.
34.757, 32.407 · Pleiades 707586
The temple of Khnum, who shapes each child on his potter's wheel.
25.294, 32.553 · Pleiades 786059
The Theban complex: Amun's precinct, Mut's walled enclosure to the south, and Khonsu's temple within.
25.718, 32.658 · Pleiades 786050
Hathor's temple, standing almost complete with its zodiac ceiling.
26.143, 32.670 · Pleiades 786127
Ombos, Set's own town, where he was the local god rather than the adversary.
25.941, 32.709 · Pleiades 948303834
The island temple of Isis, still in operation into the sixth century, long after the rest of Egypt was Christian.
24.025, 32.884 · Pleiades 786089
Where a Phoenician and Greek bilingual equates Resheph with Apollo, which is how the identification is known at all.
35.016, 33.424 · Pleiades 707519
The other Philistine temple of Dagon, and the one Judges has Samson pull down on himself.
31.520, 34.452 · Pleiades 687902
Where 1 Samuel puts the ark in Dagon's temple and finds the statue face-down in the morning.
31.756, 34.658 · Pleiades 687838
One of the five Philistine cities, and the town whose god Ahaziah sent to consult.
31.780, 34.851 · Pleiades 687888
A high place of Baal, and where 1 Kings has Elijah confront his prophets.
32.730, 35.050 · Pleiades 678084
Where Jezebel maintained the prophets of Baal and Asherah.
32.276, 35.190 · Pleiades 678370
33.269, 35.202 · Pleiades 678437
33.562, 35.373 · Pleiades 678393
34.119, 35.646 · Pleiades 668216
The Moabite capital, and where the Mesha Stele was found — the one inscription that lets Chemosh speak for himself.
31.499, 35.781 · Pleiades 697654
13 sites
Mesopotamia and Iran
Where a god has a city and a temple in it as a matter of course. Eridu, Nippur, Uruk and the Esagila are the oldest continuously named cult sites anywhere on this page.
Dagan's temple on the middle Euphrates, ancient long before the Philistines had a god of that name to lose.
34.922, 40.568 · Pleiades 894158
The other end of the same cult, on the Euphrates — a mithraeum, a synagogue and a house church within a few streets.
34.747, 40.730 · Wikidata Q464266
Ishtar of Arbela, the Assyrian kings' own oracular patron. Not the Arbela in Jordan.
36.191, 44.009 · Pleiades 874341
Marduk's temple at Babylon, with the ziggurat Etemenanki beside it.
32.534, 44.421 · Pleiades 251337021
Marduk's ziggurat beside the Esagila, and the likeliest referent of the tower of Babel.
32.536, 44.421 · Pleiades 142907963
Marduk's city, and the first of the four Genesis assigns to Nimrod. The corpus reaches it from both directions: Esagila is here, and so is the tower the Bible does not actually attribute to him.
32.537, 44.425 · Pleiades 893951
Enlil's Ekur, where kingship was conferred rather than held.
32.127, 45.231 · Pleiades 912910
The Eanna, Inanna's house, and one of the oldest monumental precincts anywhere.
31.323, 45.639 · Pleiades 912986
An Ebabbar of the sun god, matching the one at Sippar in the north.
31.283, 45.852 · Pleiades 912897
Held by the Sumerians to be the first city, and the seat of the E-abzu.
30.820, 45.996 · Pleiades 912845
Where Zahhak is chained until the end of the world — a prison rather than a shrine.
35.955, 52.109 · Wikidata Q40758
The Achaemenid necropolis, whose reliefs show Ahura Mazda handing the ring of kingship to the king.
29.989, 52.875 · Wikidata Q648705
The fire is what is tended rather than the god; this one has burned for something over a millennium.
31.881, 54.373 · Wikidata Q5953466
9 sites
South and East Asia
Almost the only sites here that are crowded on an ordinary weekday. Kalighat, Ise and the Nüwa Palace are living cult; most of the rest of this map is archaeology.
Where Indra Jātrā is held for eight days each autumn — close to the last living cult of a god the Rigveda hymns more than any other.
27.704, 85.307 · Wikidata Q6122177
One of the few sites on this map that is crowded on an ordinary weekday.
22.520, 88.342 · Wikidata Q535970
22.655, 88.358 · Wikidata Q1157765
Temples on the Yangtze staging the courts of the underworld as an administrative process to be walked through.
29.890, 107.722 · Wikidata Q5443419
Built into a cliff face, and still petitioned for children.
36.643, 113.617 · Wikidata Q10943928
Possibly the oldest shrine in Japan, in the province Susanoo is banished to and then rules.
35.402, 132.685 · Wikidata Q696362
On the island the Kojiki makes the first thing formed when the pair stir the sea with the jewelled spear — so the shrine stands on what its own myth calls the beginning of the country.
34.460, 134.852 · Wikidata Q10884977
Where the Gion Matsuri goes out from. Not the Yasaka Shrine in Kitakyushu.
35.004, 135.779 · Wikidata Q692714
Rebuilt on the adjacent plot every twenty years for something like thirteen centuries.
34.455, 136.726 · Wikidata Q687168
5 sites
West Africa and the Americas
Outside the west-to-east sweep the rest of the page follows, and outside the reach of every gazetteer built for the classical world. These are located from Wikidata, and the traditions they belong to are the ones this corpus carries most thinly — which is a fact about the corpus rather than about them.
The sacred precinct of Tenochtitlan, where the god of the night sky and the god of the dead both had houses.
19.435, -99.131 · Wikidata Q774021
The Temple of the Feathered Serpent is faced with his heads, alternating with the storm-god mask.
19.692, -98.844 · Wikidata Q172613
The largest pyramid by volume anywhere, with a church on top of it.
19.058, -98.302 · Wikidata Q1417475
Where the Yoruba place the making of the world, and the centre from which the orisha are counted.
7.467, 4.567 · Wikidata Q180084
The town that claims Ogun as its own.
7.745, 5.394 · Wikidata Q30593795
11 unplaced
Named, and not on the map
These sites are named in the corpus and have no pin, and the reason is worth stating rather than leaving as a hole. Some sit outside every gazetteer’s horizon — Ugarit is Bronze Age Syria, and it is where nearly the whole Canaanite pantheon comes from, so El has no location here despite being the high god of the entire assembly. Others resolve only to something adjacent: Colossae is three kilometres from the Michael shrine at Chonae, which is near enough to tempt and is not the same place.
A figure with no site at all is a different case again, and usually a deliberate one. Loki has no temple, no place-name and no personal name formed on his, which is the strongest argument that he was a story rather than a god anyone served. Apep was never given a temple by anyone — the daily rite is his destruction. Not one of the seventy-two Goetic spirits has a shrine anywhere, because a conjuring manual is not a liturgy. Every profile says which case it is.