Banias or Banyas (; ; Judeo-Aramaic, Medieval Hebrew: פמייס, etc.; ) is a site in the Golan Heights near a natural spring, once associated with the Greek god Pan. It had been inhabited for 2,000 years, until it was abandoned and destroyed following the Six Day War. It is located at the foot of Mount Hermon, north of the Golan Heights, in the part of Syria occupied and annexed by Israel. The spring is the source of the Banias River, one of the main tributaries of the Jordan River. Archaeologists uncovered a shrine dedicated to Pan and related deities, and the remains of an ancient city founded sometime after the conquest by Alexander the Great and inhabited until 1967. The ancient city was mentioned in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, under the name of Caesarea Philippi, as the place where Jesus confirmed Peter's confession that Jesus was the Messiah; the site is today a place of pilgrimage for Christians. The first mention of the ancient city during the Hellenistic period was in the context of the Battle of Panium, fought around 200–198 BCE, when the name of the region was given as the Panion. Later, Pliny called the city Paneas (). Both names were derived from that of Pan, the god of the wild and companion of the nymphs. The spring at Banias initially originated in a large cave carved out of a sheer cliff face which was gradually lined with a series of shrines. The temenos (sacred precinct) included in its final phase a temple placed at the mouth of the cave, courtyards for rituals, and niches for statues. It was constructed on an elevated, 80m long natural terrace along the cliff which towered over the north of the city. A four-line inscription at the base of one of the niches relates to Pan and Echo, the mountain nymph, and was dated to 87 BCE. The once very large spring gushed from the limestone cave, but an earthquake moved it to the foot of the natural terrace where it now seeps quietly from the bedrock, with a greatly reduced flow. From here the stream, called Nahal Hermon in Hebrew, flows towards what once were the malaria-infested Hula marshes. History Semitic deity of the spring The pre-Hellenistic deity associated with the spring of Banias was variously called Ba'al-gad or Ba'al-hermon. Hellenism; association with Pan Banias was certainly an ancient