Fortuna/Genius, Tyche/Gad. Rappresentazioni identitarie nel Vicino Oriente della prima età imperiale

Tyche was a female, tutelar, individual divinity, whose value progressively shifted during the Hellenistic age towards a collective tutelary entity, on the contrary in Semitic languages the tutelar divinity of a community or place was always a male, Gad. This fact produced the coexistence during the Roman period of both genres, side by side, while in bilingual texts, such as those from Palmyra, the two names are perfectly interchangeable. It is necessary to distinguish when Tyche only represents a community, without any religious identification with other female divinities, and when Tyche acquires the attributes of female divinities such as Astarte in the Arabic world. In some reliefs from the Palmyrene context, the confusion between genres is evident: Tyche is represented both as a man and a woman. Specific attention is paid to the iconography from Eutychides (Tyche from Antiochia), and to the Tycheion from as-Sanamein, from the Hauran. The case study of Tyche/Gad might well represent a good example of “creolization”.