place of great sanctity, and when Hellenised religious influences began to overlay the region, the cult of its local numen gave place to the worship of Pan, to whom the cave was therefore dedicated. Paneas () was first settled in the Hellenistic period following Alexander the Great's conquest of the east. The Ptolemaic kings built a cult centre there in the 3rd century BCE. In the Hellenistic Period the spring was named Panias, for the Arcadian goat-footed god Pan. Pan was revered by the ancient Greeks as the god of isolated rural areas, music, goat herds, hunting, herding, of sexual and spiritual possession, and of victory in battle, since he was said to instill panic among the enemy. The Latin equivalent for Paneas is Fanium. The spring lies close to the 'way of the sea' mentioned by the Book of Isaiah, along which many armies of Antiquity marched. In extant sections of the Greek historian Polybius's history of 'The Rise of the Roman Empire', a Battle of Panium is mentioned. This battle was fought in ca. 200–198 BCE between the armies of Ptolemaic Egypt and the Seleucids of Coele-Syria, led by Antiochus III. Antiochus's victory cemented Seleucid control over Phoenicia, Galilee, Samaria, and Judea until the Maccabean revolt. It was these Seleucids who built a pagan temple dedicated to Pan at Paneas. In 2020, an altar was found with a Greek inscription, in the walls of a church of the 7th century A.D. The inscription writes that the altar was dedicated by Atheneon, son of Sosipatros, from the city of Antioch to the god Pan Heliopolitanos. In 2022, the Israeli Antiquities Authority discovered a trove of 44 pure gold coins from the early 7th Century CE. While some of the coins were minted by the Byzantine-Roman Emperor Phocas (602-610 CE), most date to the reign of his successor, Emperor Heraclius (610-641). The latest of the coins date to the period of the Arab conquest of the Levant. Roman and Christian Byzantine periods Upon Zenodorus's death in 20 BC, the Panion (), including Paneas, was annexed to the Herodian Kingdom of Judea, a client of the Roman Republic and Roman Empire. Josephus mentions that Herod the Great erected a temple of 'white marble' nearby in honor of his patron; it was found in the nearby site of Omrit. In 3 BCE, Herod's son, Philip II (also known as Philip the Tetrarch)