THE SEVERANS AND THE CULT OF SOL INVICTUS
The Priest-King of the temple city of Emesa presided over the Syrian cult of the Sun God, El-Gabal. As seen on the reverses of these 3rd-century bronze coins, the god was worshipped in a large, lavishly-decorated temple, in the form of a large black meteorite belived to have fallen to earth from the sun.
Septimius Severus traveled to Emesa to seek the hand of the priest-king Julius Bassanius' younger daughter, the princess Julia Domna, in AD 187. The elder daughter, Julia Maesa, accompanied her sister to Rome in AD 193 following Severus' accession to the imperial throne.
At the age of 14,:Elagabalus, the son Julia Maesa's daughter, Julia Soaemias, assumed the throne in AD 218, restoring the Severan dynasty after the assassination of Caracalla and the short reign of Macrinus. His name, Elagabalus, identified him with the Emesan sun god, who had already been accepted into the porous Roman pantheon as Sol Invictus in the Republican period.
Elagabalus' attempted to supplant Jupiter as the chief deity of Rome in favor of going so far as to having the black meteorite transported from Emesa and installed in the a dedicated temple on the Palatine Hill. Attempts to displace the three dieties Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, worshipped in the Capitolium with the Syrian Istarte, Urania, and Elgabal profoundly alienated the Roman senate and people. The drastic religious changes proposed by Elagabalus (and not the lurid sexual slanders later included in the Historia Augusta) probably caused the Praetorian Guard to support the plot, organized by Julia Maesa, to dethrone and assassinate the emperor in AD 221. He was replaced by Alexander Severus, the son of Julia Emaea, sister of Julia Soaemias, who ruled as the last Severan emperor until AD 235.
After the fall of Elagabalus, the meteorite was returned to its temple in Emesa.








