The reputation of "philoxenia" enjoyed by Athens since Antiquity raises the question of the real capacity of welcome and integration of the city towards foreigners, their culture and their religion. It leads to study the differente ways of introducing and receiving a set of worship, gathered under the generic and convenient word - although today much discussed - of "Oriental cuits" : in this study, the "Oriental cuits" are defined by their geographical meaning, as all the religions coming from the Eastern Mediterranean (Egypt, Anatolia, Syria and Phoenicia), including Christianity and Judaism. Leaning on an extensive and varied documentation - and especially a large epigraphie corpus - this paper aims to point out the means of spreading of these cuits and the circumstances in which they settle in the city of Albens. A chronological approach emphasizes the existence of local dynamics, which explains the unequal popularity experienced by the different Oriental cults with Athenians : while sorne of them are criticized and rejected, the cults of Cybele and Isis achieved a great success in Attica. Such a success requires necessarily changes and modifications to allow these new cults to adapt themselves to a different audience and to a new framework of reception : after their arrival, the new cults interact with the local religions background and are affected - to varying degrees - by a phenomenon of hellenization, facilitated by the process of interpretario. Thus, in the city, the Oriental deities have some universal features - that are found throughout the Mediterranean world in the imperial period - , but the contacts and the interactions with the local gods - especially with Demeter, the great Eleusinian goddess - have also led to the emergence of local characteristics, specifie to the Athenian context.
