Strength of the religious sentiment among the Phoenicians--
Proofs--First stage of the religion, monotheistic--Second
stage, a polytheism within narrow limits--Worship of Baal--
of Ashtoreth--of El or Kronos--of Melkarth--of Dagon--of
Hadad--of Adonis--of Sydyk--of Esmun--of the Cabeiri--of
Onca--of Tanith--of Beltis--Third stage marked by
introduction of foreign deities--Character of the Phoenician
worship--Altars and sacrifice--Hymns of praise, temples, and
votive offerings--Wide prevalence of human sacrifice and of
licentious orgies--Institution of the Galli--Extreme
corruption of the later religion--Views held on the subject
of a future life--Piety of the great mass of the people
earnest, though mistaken.
There can be no doubt that the Phoenicians were a people in whose
minds religion and religious ideas occupied a very prominent place.
Religiousness has been said to be one of the leading characteristics
of the Semitic race;[0111] and it is certainly remarkable that with that
race originated the three principal religions, two of which are the only
progressive religions, of the modern world. Judaism, Christianity, and
Mohammedanism all arose in Western Asia within a restricted area, and
from nations whose Semitic origin is unmistakable. The subject of
ethnic affinities and differences, of the transmission of qualities and
characteristics, is exceedingly obscure; but, if the theory of heredity
be allowed any weight at all, there should be no difficulty in accepting
the view that particular races of mankind have special leanings and
aptitudes.
Still, the religiousness of the Phoenicians does not rest on any _à
priori_ arguments, or considerations of what is likely to have been.
Here was a nation among whom, in every city, the temple was the centre
of attraction, and where the piety of the citizens adorned every temple
with abundant and costly offerings. The monarchs who were at the head of
the various states showed the greatest zeal in continually maintaining
the honour of the gods, repaired and beautified the sacred buildings,
and occasionally added to their kingly dignity the highly esteemed
office of High Priest.[0112] The coinage of the country bore religious
emblems,[0113] and proclaimed the fact that the cities regarded
themselves as under the protection of this or that deity. Both the kings
and their subjects bore commonly religious names--names which designated
them as the worshippers or placed them under the tutelage of some god or
goddess. Abd-alonim, Abdastartus, Abd-osiris, Abdemon (which is properly
Abd-Esmun), Abdi-milkut, were names of the former kind, Abi-baal (=
“Baal is my father”), Itho-bal (= “with him is Baal”), Baleazar or
Baal-azur (= “Baal protects”), names of the latter. The Phoenician ships
carried images of the gods[0114] in the place of figure-heads. Wherever
the Phoenicians went, they bore with them their religion and their
worship; in each colony they planted a temple or temples, and everywhere
throughout their wide dominion the same gods were worshipped with the
same rites and with the same observances.
In considering the nature of the Phoenician religion, we must
distinguish between its different stages. There is sufficient reason
to believe that originally, either when they first occupied their
settlements upon the Mediterranean or before they moved from their
primitive seats upon the shores of the Persian Gulf, the Phoenicians
were Monotheists. We must not look for information on this subject
to the pretentious work which Philo of Byblus, in the first or second
century of our era, put forth with respect to the “Origines” of his
countrymen, and attributed to Sanchoniatho;[0115] we must rather look to
the evidence of language and fact, records which may indeed be misread,
but which cannot well be forged or falsified. These will show us that
in the earliest times the religious sentiment of the Phoenicians
acknowledged only a single deity--a single mighty power, which was
supreme over the whole universe. The names by which they designated him
were El, “great;” Ram or Rimmon, “high;” Baal, “Lord;” Melek or Molech,
“King;” Eliun, “Supreme;” Adonai, “My Lord;” Bel-samin, “Lord of
Heaven,” and the like.[0116] Distinct deities could no more be intended
by such names as these than by those under which God is spoken of in
the Hebrew Scriptures, several of them identical with the Phoenician
names--El or Elohim, “great;” Jehovah, “existing;” Adonai, “my Lord;”
Shaddai, “strong;” El Eliun,[0117] “the supreme Great One.” How far
the Phoenicians actually realised all that their names properly imply,
whether they went so far as to divest God wholly of a material nature,
whether they viewed Him as the Creator, as well as the Lord, of the
world, are problems which it is impossible, with the means at present
at our disposal, to solve. But they certainly viewed Him as “the Lord
of Heaven,”[0118] and, if so, no doubt also as the Lord of earth; they
believed Him to be “supreme” or “the Most High;” and they realised his
personal relation to each one of his worshippers, who were privileged
severally to address Him as Adonai--“_my_ Lord.” It may be presumed that
at this early stage of the religion there was no idolatry; when One
God alone is acknowledged and recognised, the feeling is naturally that
expressed in the Egyptian hymn of praise--“He is not graven in marble;
He is not beheld; His abode is unknown; there is no building that can
contain Him; unknown is his name in heaven; He doth not manifest his
forms; vain are all representations.”[0119]
But this happy state of things did not--perhaps we may say, could
not--in the early condition of the human intelligence, last long. Fallen
man, left to himself, very soon corrupts his way upon the earth; his
hands deal with wickedness; and, in a little while, “every imagination
of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually.”[1110] When he
becomes conscious to himself of sin, he ceases to be able to endure the
thought of One Perfect Infinite Being, omnipotent, ever-present, who
reads his heart, who is “about his path, and about his bed, and spies
out all his ways.”[1111] He instinctively catches at anything whereby he
may be relieved from the intolerable burden of such a thought; and
here the imperfection of language comes to his aid. As he has found it
impossible to express in any one word all that is contained in his idea
of the Divine Being, he has been forced to give Him many names, each of
them originally expressive of some one of that Being’s attributes. But
in course of time these words have lost their force--their meaning has
been forgotten--and they have come to be mere proper names, designative
but not significative. Here is material for the perverted imagination to
work upon. A separate being is imagined answering to each of the names;
and so the _nomina_ become _numina_.[1112] Many gods are substituted for
one; and the idea of God is instantly lowered. The gods have different
spheres. No god is infinite; none is omnipotent, none omnipresent;
therefore none omniscient. The aweful, terrible nature of God is got rid
of, and a company of angelic beings takes its place, none of them very
alarming to the conscience.
In its second stage the religion of Phoenicia was a polytheism, less
multitudinous than most others, and one in which the several divinities
were not distinguished from one another by very marked or striking
features. At the head of the Pantheon stood a god and a goddess--Baal
and Ashtoreth. Baal, “the Lord,” or Baal-samin,[1113] “the Lord of
Heaven,” was compared by the Greeks to their Zeus, and by the Romans
to their Jupiter. Mythologically, he was only one among many gods,
but practically he stood alone; he was the chief of the gods, the main
object of worship, and the great ruler and protector of the Phoenician
people. Sometimes, but not always, he had a solar character, and was
represented with his head encircled by rays.[1114] Baalbek, which was
dedicated to him, was properly “the city of the Sun,” and was called by
the Greeks Heliopolis. The solar character of Baal is, however, far
from predominant, and as early as the time of Josiah we find the Sun
worshipped separately from him,[1115] no doubt under a different name.
Baal is, to a considerable extent, a city god. Tyre especially was
dedicated to him; and we hear of the “Baal of Tyre”[1116] and again of
the “Baal of Tarsus.”[1117] Essentially, he was the embodiment of the
generative principle in nature--“the god of the creative power, bringing
all things to life everywhere.”[1118] Hence, “his statue rode upon
bulls, for the bull was the symbol of generative power; and he was also
represented with bunches of grapes and pomegranates in his hand,”[1119]
emblems of productivity. The sacred conical stones and pillars dedicated
in his temples[1120] may have had their origin in a similar symbolism.
As polytheistic systems had always a tendency to enlarge themselves,
Baal had no sooner become a separate god, distinct from El, and Rimmon,
and Molech, and Adonai, than he proceeded to multiply himself, and from
Baal became Baalim,[1121] either because the local Baals--Baal-Tzur,
Baal-Sidon, Baal-Tars, Baal-Libnan, Baal-Hermon--were conceived of as
separate deities, or because the aspects of Baal--Baal as Sun-God, Baal
as Lord of Heaven, Baal as lord of flies,[1122], &c.--were so viewed,
and grew to be distinct objects of worship. In later times he was
identified with the Egyptian Ammon, and worshipped as Baal-Hammon.
Baal is known to have had temples at Baalbek, at Tyre, at Tarsus, at
Agadir[1123] (Gades), in Sardinia,[1124] at Carthage, and at Ekron.
Though not at first worshipped under a visible form, he came to have
statues dedicated to him,[1125] which received the usual honours.
Sometimes, as already observed, his head was encircled with a
representation of the solar rays; sometimes his form was assimilated to
that under which the Egyptians of later times worshipped their Ammon.
Seated upon a throne and wrapped in a long robe, he presented the
appearance of a man in the flower of his age, bearded, and of solemn
aspect, with the carved horn of a ram on either side of his forehead.
Figures of rams also supported the arms of his throne on either side,
and on the heads of these two supports his hands rested.[1126]
The female deity whose place corresponded to that of Baal in the
Phoenician Pantheon, and who was in a certain sense his companion and
counterpart, was Ashtoreth or Astarte. As Baal was the embodiment of the
generative principle in nature, so was Ashtoreth of the receptive and
productive principle. She was the great nature-goddess, the Magna Mater,
regent of the stars, queen of heaven, giver of life, and source of
woman’s fecundity.[1127] Just as Baal had a solar, so she had a lunar
aspect, being pictured with horns upon her head representative of the
lunar crescent.[1128] Hence, as early as the time of Moses, there
was a city on the eastern side of Jordan, named after her,
Ashtoreth-Karnaim,[1129] or “Astarte of the two horns.” Her images are
of many forms. Most commonly she appears as a naked female, with long
hair, sometimes gathered into tresses, and with her two hands supporting
her two breasts.[1130] Occasionally she is a mother, seated in a
comfortable chair, and nursing her babe.[1131] Now and then she is
draped, and holds a dove to her breast, or else she takes an attitude
of command, with the right hand raised, as if to bespeak attention.
Sometimes, on the contrary, her figure has that modest and retiring
attitude which has caused it to be described by a distinguished
archæologist[1132] as “the Phoenician prototype of the Venus de Medici.”
The Greeks and Romans, who identified Baal determinately with their
Zeus or Jupiter, found it very much more difficult to fix on any single
goddess in their Pantheon as the correspondent of Astarte. Now they made
her Hera or Juno, now Aphrodite or Venus, now Athene, now Artemis, now
Selene, now Rhea or Cybele. But her aphrodisiac character was certainly
the one in which she most frequently appeared. She was the goddess of
the sexual passion, rarely, however, represented with the chaste and
modest attributes of the Grecian Aphrodite-Urania, far more commonly
with those coarser and more repulsive ones which characterise Aphrodite
Pandemos.[1133] Her temples were numerous, though perhaps not quite so
numerous as those of Baal. The most famous were those at Sidon, Aphaca,
Ashtoreth-Karnaim, Paphos, Pessinus, and Carthage. At Sidon the kings
were sometimes her high-priests;[1134] and her name is found as
a frequent element in Phoenician personal names, royal and other:
e.g.--Astartus, Abdastartus, Delæastartus, Am-ashtoreth, Bodoster,
Bostor, &c.
The other principal Phoenician deities were El, Melkarth, Dagon, Hadad,
Adonis, Sydyk, Eshmun, the Cabeiri, Onca, Tanith, Tanata, or Anaitis,
and Baalith, Baaltis, or Beltis. El, or Il, originally a name of the
Supreme God, became in the later Phoenician mythology a separate and
subordinate divinity, whom the Greeks compared to their Kronos[1135]
and the Romans to their Saturn. El was the special god of Gebal
or Byblus,[1136] and was worshipped also with peculiar rites at
Carthage.[1137] He was reckoned the son of Uranus and the father of
Beltis, to whom he delivered over as her especial charge the city of
Byblus.[1138] Numerous tales were told of him. While reigning on earth
as king of Byblus, or king of Phoenicia, he had fallen in love with a
nymph of the country, called Anobret, by whom he had a son named Ieoud.
This son, much as he loved him, when great dangers from war threatened
the land, he first invested with the emblems of royalty, and then
sacrificed.[1139] Uranus (Heaven) married his sister Ge (Earth), and Il
or Kronos was the issue of this marriage, as also were Dagon, Bætylus,
and Atlas. Ge, being dissatisfied with the conduct of her husband,
induced her son Kronos to make war upon him, and Kronos, with the
assistance of Hermes, overcame Uranus, and having driven him from his
kingdom succeeded to the imperial power. Besides sacrificing Ieoud,
Kronos murdered another of his sons called Sadid, and also a daughter
whose name is not given. Among his wives were Astarte, Rhea, Dioné,
Eimarmené, and Hora, of whom the first three were his sisters.[1140]
There is no need to pursue this mythological tangle. If it meant
anything to the initiated, the meaning is wholly lost; and the stories,
gravely as they are related by the ancient historian, to the modern, who
has no key to them, are almost wholly valueless.
Originally, Melkarth would seem to have been a mere epithet,
representing one aspect of Baal. The word is formed from the two roots
_melek_ and _kartha_[1141] (= Heb. _kiriath_, “city”), and means “King
of the City,” or “City King,” which Baal was considered to be. But the
two names in course of time drifted apart, and Melicertes, in Philo
Byblius, has no connection at all with Baal-samin.[1142] The Greeks,
who identified Baal with their Zeus, viewed Melkarth as corresponding to
their Heracles, or Hercules; and the later Phoenicians, catching at this
identification, represented Melkarth under the form of a huge muscular
man, with a lion’s skin and sometimes with a club.[1143] Melkarth was
especially worshipped at Tyre, of which city he was the tutelary deity,
at Thasos, and at Gades. Herodotus describes the temple of Hercules at
Tyre, and attributes to it an antiquity of 2,300 years before his
own time.[1144] He also visited a temple dedicated to the same god
at Thasos.[1145] With Gades were connected the myths of Hercules’
expedition to the west, of his erection of the pillars, his defeat of
Chrysaor of the golden sword, and his successful foray upon the flocks
and herds of the triple Geryon.[1146] Whether these legends were Greek
or Phoenician in origin is uncertain; but the Phoenicians, at any
rate, adopted them, and here have been lately found on Phoenician sites
representations both of Geryon himself,[1147] and the carrying off
by Hercules of his cattle.[1148] The temple of Heracles at Gades is
mentioned by Strabo[1149] and others. It was on the eastern side of
the island, where the strait between the island and the continent was
narrowest. Founded about B.C. 1100, it continued to stand to the time
of Silius Italicus, and, according to the tradition, had never needed
repair.[1150] An unextinguished fire had burnt upon its altar for
thirteen hundred years; and the worship had remained unchanged--no
image profaned the Holy of Holies, where the god dwelt, waited on by
bare-footed priests with heads shaved, clothed in white linen robes, and
vowed to celibacy.[1151] The name of the god occurs as an element in
a certain small number of Phoenician names of men--e.g. Bomilcar,
Himilcar, Abd-Melkarth, and the like.
Dagon appears in scripture only as a Philistine god,[1152] which would
not prove him to have been acknowledged by the Phoenicians; but as Philo
of Byblus admits him among the primary Phoenician deities, making him a
son of Uranus, and a brother of Il or Kronis,[1153] it is perhaps right
that he should be allowed a place in the Phoenician list. According to
Philo, he was the god of agriculture, the discoverer of wheat, and the
inventor of the plough.[1154] Whether he was really represented, as is
commonly supposed,[1155] in the form of a fish, or as half man and
half fish, is extremely doubtful. In the Hebrew account of the fall
of Dagon’s image before the Ark of the Covenant at Ashdod there is no
mention made of any “fishy part;” nor is there anything in the Assyrian
remains to connect the name Dagon, which occurs in them, with the
remarkable figure of a fish-god so frequent in the bas-reliefs. That
figure would seem rather to represent, or symbolise, either Hea or
Nin. The notion of Dagon’s fishy form seems to rest entirely on an
etymological basis--on the fact, i.e. that _dag_ means “fish,” in
Hebrew. In Assyrian, however, _kha_ is “fish,” and not _dag_; while in
Hebrew, though _dag_ is “fish,” _dagan_ is “corn.” It may be noted also
that the Phoenician remains contain no representation of a fish deity.
On the whole, it is perhaps best to be content with the account of
Philo, and to regard the Phoenician Dagon as a “Zeus Arotrios”--a god
presiding over agriculture and especially worshipped by husbandmen. The
name, however, does not occur in the Phoenician remains which have come
down to us.
Hadad, like Dagon, obtains his right to be included in the list of
Phoenician deities solely from the place assigned to him by Philo.
Otherwise he would naturally be viewed as an Aramean god, worshipped
especially in Aram-Zobah, and in Syria of Damascus.[1156] In Syria,
he was identified with the sun;[1157] and it is possible that in the
Phoenician religion he was the Sun-God, worshipped (as we have seen)
sometimes independently of Baal. His image was represented with the
solar rays streaming down from it towards the earth, so as to indicate
that the earth received from him all that made it fruitful and
abundant.[1158] Macrobius connects his name with the Hebrew _chad_,
“one;” but this derivation is improbable.[1159] Philo gives him the
title of “King of Gods,” and says that he reigned conjointly with
Astarte and Demaroüs,[1160] but this does not throw much light on the
real Phoenician conception of him. The local name, Hadad-rimmon,[1161]
may seem to connect him with the god Rimmon, likewise a Syrian
deity,[1162] and it is quite conceivable that the two words may have
been alternative names of the same god, just as Phoebus and Apollo were
with the Greeks. We may conjecture that the Sun was worshipped under
both names in Syria, while in Phoenicia Hadad was alone made use of. The
worship of Baal as the Sun, which tended to prevail ever more and more,
ousted Hadad from his place, and caused him to pass into oblivion.
Adonis was probably, like Hadad, originally a sun-god; but the myths
connected with him gave him, at any rate in the late Phoenician times, a
very distinct and definite personality. He was made the son of Cinryas,
a mythic king of Byblus,[1163] and the husband of Astarte or Ashtoreth.
One day, as he chased the wild boar in Lebanon, near the sources of the
river of Byblus, the animal which he was hunting turned upon him, and
so gored his thigh that he died of the wound. Henceforth he was mourned
annually. At the turn of the summer solstice, the anniversary of his
death, all the women of Byblus went in a wild procession to Aphaca, in
the Lebanon, where his temple stood, and wept and wailed on account of
his death. The river, which his blood had once actually stained, turned
red to show its sympathy with the mourners, and was thought to flow with
his blood afresh. After the “weeping for Tammuz”[1164] had continued for
a definite time, the mourning terminated with the burial of an image of
the god in the sacred precinct. Next day Adonis was supposed to return
to life; his image was disinterred and carried back to the temple with
music and dances, and every circumstance of rejoicing.[1165] Wild orgies
followed, and Aphaca became notorious for scenes to which it will be
necessary to recur hereafter. The Adonis myth is generally explained
as representing either the perpetually recurrent decay and recovery of
nature, or the declension of the Sun as he moves from the summer to the
winter constellations, and his subsequent return and reappearance in
all his strength. But myths obtained a powerful hold on ancient
imaginations, and the worshippers of Adonis probably in most cases
forgot the symbolical character of his cult, and looked on him as
a divine or heroic personage, who had actually gone through all the
adventures ascribed to him in the legend. Hence the peculiarly local
character of his worship, of which we find traces only at Byblus and at
Jerusalem.
Sydyk, “Justice,” or, the “Just One,”[1166] whose name corresponds
to the Hebrew Zadok or Zedek, appears in the Phoenician mythology
especially as the father of Esmun and the Cabeiri. Otherwise he is only
known as the son of Magus (!) and the discoverer of salt.[1167] It
is perhaps his name which forms the final element in Melchizedek,
Adoni-zedek,[1168] and the like. We have no evidence that he was really
worshipped by the Phoenicians.
Esmun, on the other hand, the son of Sydyk, would seem to have been an
object of worship almost as much as any other deity. He was the special
god of Berytus,[1169] but was honoured also in Cyprus, at Sidon, at
Carthage, in Sardinia, and elsewhere.[1170] His name forms a frequent
element in Phoenician names, royal and other:--e.g. Esmun-azar,
Esmun-nathan, Han-Esmun, Netsib-Esmun, Abd-Esmun, &c. According to
Damascius,[1171] he was the eighth son of Sydyk, whence his name, and
the chief of the Cabeiri. Whereas they were dwarfish and misshapen, he
was a youth of most beautiful appearance, truly worthy of admiration.
Like Adonis, he was fond of hunting in the woods that clothe the flanks
of Lebanon, and there he was seen by Astronoë, the Phoenician goddess,
the mother of the gods (in whom we cannot fail to recognise Astarte),
who persecuted him with her attentions to such an extent that to escape
her he was driven to the desperate resource of self-emasculation. Upon
this the goddess, greatly grieved, called him Pæan, and by means of
quickening warmth brought him back to life, and changed him from a man
into a god, which he thenceforth remained. The Phoenicians called him
Esmun, “the eighth,” but the Greeks worshipped him as Asclepius, the
god of healing, who gave life and health to mankind. Some of the later
Phoenicians regarded him as identical with the atmosphere, which,
they said, was the chief source of health to man.[1172] But it is
not altogether clear that the earlier Phoenicians attached to him any
healing character.[1173]
The seven other Cabeiri, or “Great Ones,” equally with Esmun the sons of
Sydyk, were dwarfish gods who presided over navigation,[1174] and were
the patrons of sailors and ships. The special seat of their worship in
Phoenicia Proper was Berytus, but they were recognised also in several
of the Phoenician settlements, as especially in Lemnos, Imbrus, and
Samothrace.[1175] Ships were regarded as their invention,[1176] and a
sculptured image of some one or other of them was always placed on every
Phoenician war-galley, either at the stern or stem of the vessel.[1177]
They were also viewed as presiding over metals and metallurgy,[1178]
having thus some points of resemblance to the Greek Hephæstus and the
Latin Vulcan. Pigmy and misshapen gods belong to that fetishism which
has always had charms for the Hamitic nations; and it may be suspected
that the Phoenicians adopted the Cabeiri from their Canaanite
predecessors, who were of the race of Ham.[1179] The connection between
these pigmy deities and the Egyptian Phthah, or rather Phthah-Sokari, is
unmistakable, and was perceived by Herodotus.[1180] Clay pigmy figurines
found on Phoenician sites[1181] very closely resemble the Egyptian
images of that god; and the coins attributed to Cossura exhibit
a similar dwarfish form, generally carrying a hammer in the right
hand.[1182] An astral character has been attached by some writers to the
Cabeiri,[1183] but chiefly on account of their number, which is scarcely
a sufficient proof.
Several Greek writers speak of a Phoenician goddess corresponding to the
Grecian Athene,[1184] and some of them say that she was named Onga or
Onca.[1185] The Phoenician remains give us no such name; but as Philo
Byblius has an “Athene” among his Phoenician deities, whom he makes the
daughter of Il, or Kronos, and the queen of Attica,[1186] it is perhaps
best to allow Onca to retain her place in the Phoenician Pantheon. Philo
says that Kronos _by her advice_ shaped for himself out of iron a sword
and a spear; we may therefore presume that she was a war-goddess (as was
Pallas-Athene among the Greeks), whence she naturally presided over
the gates of towns,[1187] which were built and fortified for warlike
purposes.
The worship of a goddess, called Tanath or Tanith, by the later
Phoenicians, is certain, since, besides the evidence furnished by the
name Abd-Tanith, i.e. “Servant of Tanith,”[1188] the name Tanith itself
is distinctly read on a number of votive tablets brought from Carthage,
in a connection which clearly implies her recognition, not only as a
goddess, but as a great goddess, the principal object of Carthaginian
worship. The form of inscription on the tablets is, ordinarily, as
follows:--[1189]
“To the great [goddess], Tanith, and
To our lord and master Baal-Hammon.
The offerer is ....,
Son of ...., son of ....”
Tanith is invariable placed before Baal, as though superior to him, and
can be no other than the celestial goddess (Dea coelestis), whose temple
in the Roman Carthage was so celebrated.[1190] The Greeks regarded her
as equivalent to their Artemis;[1191] the Romans made her Diana, or
Juno, or Venus.[1192] Practically she must at Carthage have taken the
place of Ashtoreth. Apuleius describes her as having a lunar character,
like Ashtoreth, and calls her “the parent of all things, the mistress
of the elements, the initial offspring of the ages, the highest of the
deities, the queen of the Manes, the first of the celestials, the single
representative of all the gods and goddesses, the one divinity whom
all the world worships in many shapes, with varied rites, and under a
multitude of names.”[1193] He says that she was represented as riding
upon a lion, and it is probably her form which appears upon some of the
later coins of Carthage, as well as upon a certain number of gems.[1194]
The origin of the name is uncertain. Gesenius would connect it at
once with the Egyptian Neith (Nit), and with the Syrian Anaïtis or
Tanaïtis;[1195] but the double identification is scarcely tenable, since
Anaïtis was, in Egypt, not Neith, but Anta.[1196] The subject is very
obscure, and requires further investigation.
Baaltis, or Beltis, was, according to Philo Byblius, the daughter of
Uranus and the sister of Asthoreth or Astarte.[1197] Il made her one of
his many wives, and put the city of Byblus, which he had founded, under
her special protection.[1198] It is doubtful, however, whether she was
really viewed by the Phoenicians as a separate goddess, and not rather
as Ashtoreth under another name. The word is the equivalent of {...},
“my lady,” a very suitable title for the supreme goddess. Beltis,
indeed, in Babylonia, was distinct from Ishtar;[1199] but this fact must
not be regarded as any sufficient proof that the case was the same in
Phoenicia. The Phoenician polytheism was decidedly more restricted than
the Babylonian, and did not greatly affect the needless multiplication
of divinities. Baaltis in Phoenicia may be the Beltis of Babylon
imported at a comparatively late date into the country, but is more
probably an alternative name, or rather, perhaps, a mere honorary title
of Ashtoreth.[11100]
The chief characteristic of the third period of the Phoenician religion
was the syncretistic tendency,[11101] whereby foreign gods were called
in, and either identified with the old national divinities, or joined
with them, and set by their side. Ammon, Osiris, Phthah, Pasht, and
Athor, were introduced from Egypt, Tanith from either Egypt or Syria,
Nergal from Assyria, Beltis (Baaltis) perhaps from Babylon. The worship
of Osiris in the later times appears from such names as Abd-Osir,
Osir-shamar, Melek-Osir, and the like,[11102] and is represented on
coins with Phoenician legends, which are attributed either to Malta or
Gaulos.[11103] Osiris was, it would seem, identified with Adonis,[11104]
and was said to have been buried at Byblus;[11105] which was near the
mouth of the Adonis river. His worship was not perhaps very widely
spread; but there are traces of it at Byblus, in Cyprus, and
in Malta.[11106] Ammon was identified with Baal in his solar
character,[11107] and was generally worshipped in conjunction with
Tanith, more especially at Carthage.[11108] He was represented with
his head encircled by rays, and with a perfectly round face.[11109] His
common title was “Lord” {...}, but in Numidia he was worshipped as “the
Eternal King” {...}.[11110] As the giver of all good things, he held
trees or fruits in his hands.[11111]
The Phoenicians worshipped their gods, like most other ancient nations,
with prayer, with hymns of praise, with sacrifices, with processions,
and with votive offerings. We do not know whether they had any regularly
recurrent day, like the Jewish Sabbath, or Christian Sunday, on which
worship took place in the temples generally; but at any rate each temple
had its festival times, when multitudes flocked to it, and its gods were
honoured with prolonged services and sacrifices on a larger scale than
ordinary. Most festivals were annual, but some recurred at shorter
intervals; and, besides the festivals, there was an every day cult,
which was a duty incumbent upon the priests, but at which the private
worshipper also might assist to offer prayer or sacrifice. The ordinary
sacrificial animals were oxen, cows, goats, sheep, and lambs; swine
were not offered, being regarded as unclean;[11112] but the stag was
an acceptable victim, at any rate on certain occasions.[11113] At
all functions the priests attended in large numbers, habited in white
garments of linen or cotton, and wearing a stiff cap or mitre upon their
heads:[11114] on one occasion of a sacrifice Lucian counted above three
hundred engaged in the ceremony.[11115] It was the duty of some to slay
the victims; of others to pour libations; of a third class to bear about
pans of coal on which incense could be offered; of a fourth to attend
upon the altars.[11116] The priests of each temple had at their head a
Chief or High Priest, who was robed in purple and wore a golden tiara.
His office, however, continued only for a year, when another was chosen
to succeed him.[11117]
Ordinarily, sacrifices were offered, in Phoenicia as elsewhere,
singly, and upon altars; but sometimes it was customary to have a great
holocaust. Large trees were dug up by the roots, and planted in the
court of the temple; the victims, whether goats, or sheep, or cattle of
any other kind, were suspended by ropes from the branches; birds were
similarly attached, and garments, and vessels in gold and silver. Then
the images of the gods belonging to the temple were brought out, and
carried in a solemn procession round the trees; after which the
trees were set on fire, and the whole was consumed in a mighty
conflagration.[11118] The season for this great holocaust was the
commencement of the spring-time, when the goodness of Heaven in once
more causing life to spring up on every side seemed to require man’s
special acknowledgment.
Hymns of praise are spoken of especially in connection with this same
Spring-Festival.[11119] Votive offerings were continually being offered
in every temple by such as believed that they had received any benefit
from any god, either in consequence of their vows, or prayers, or even
by the god’s spontaneous action. The sites of temples yield numerous
traces of such offerings. Sometimes they are in the shape of stone
_stelæ_ or pillars, inscribed and more or less ornamented,[11120]
sometimes of tablets placed within an ornamental border, and generally
accompanied by some rude sculptures;[11121] more often of figures,
either in bronze or clay, which are mostly of a somewhat rude character.
M. Renan observes with respect to these figures, which are extremely
numerous:--“Ought we to see in these images, as has been supposed, long
series of portraits of priests and priestesses continued through several
centuries? We do not think so. The person represented in these statues
appears to us to be the author of a vow or of a sacrifice made to the
divinity of the temple . . . Vows and sacrifices were very fleeting
things; it might be feared that the divinity would soon forget them. An
inscription was already recognised as a means of rendering the memory
of a vow more lasting; but a statue was a momento still more--nay, much
more efficacious. By having himself represented under the eyes of the
divinity in the very act of accomplishing his vow, a man called to mind,
as one may say, incessantly the offering which he had made to the
god, and the homage which he had rendered him. An idea of this sort
is altogether in conformity with the materialistic and self-interested
character of the Phoenician worship, where the vow is a kind of
business affair, a matter of debtor and creditor account, in which a man
stipulates very clearly what he is to give, and holds firmly that he
is to be paid in return . . . We have then, in these statues,
representations of pious men, who came one after another to acquit
themselves of their debt in the presence of the divinity; in order that
the latter should not forget that the debt was discharged, they set up
their images in front of the god. The image was larger or smaller,
more or less carefully elaborated, in a more or less valuable material,
according to the means of the individual who consecrated it.”[11122]
Thus far there was no very remarkable difference between the Phoenician
religious system and other ancient Oriental worships, which have a
general family likeness, and differ chiefly in the names and number
of the deities, the simplicity or complication of the rites, and the
greater or less power and dignity attached to the priestly office.
In these several respects the Phoenician religion seems to have leant
towards the side of simplicity, the divinities recognised being,
comparatively speaking, few, priestly influence not great, and the
ceremonial not very elaborate. But there were two respects in which
the religion was, if not singular, at any rate markedly different from
ordinary polytheisms, though less in the principles involved than in
the extent to which they were carried out in practice. These were the
prevalence of licentious orgies and of human sacrifice. The worship of
Astarte was characterised by the one, the worship of Baal by the other.
Phoenician mythology taught that the great god, Il or El, when reigning
upon earth as king of Byblus, had, under circumstances of extreme
danger to his native land, sacrificed his dearly loved son, Ieoud, as
an expiatory offering. Divine sanction had thus been given to the horrid
rite; and thenceforth, whenever in Phoenicia either public or private
calamity threatened, it became customary that human victims should be
selected, the nobler and more honourable the better, and that the wrath
of the gods should be appeased by taking their lives. The mode of death
was horrible. The sacrifices were to be consumed by fire; the life
given by the Fire God he should also take back again by the flames which
destroy being. The rabbis describe the image of Moloch as a human figure
with a bull’s head and outstretched arms;[11123] and the account which
they give is confirmed by what Diodorus relates of the Carthaginian
Kronos. His image, Diodorus says,[11124] was of metal, and was made hot
by a fire kindled within it; the victims were placed in its arms and
thence rolled into the fiery lap below. The most usual form of the
rite was the sacrifice of their children--especially of their eldest
sons[11125]--by parents. “This custom was grounded in part on the notion
that children were the dearest possession of their parents, and, in
part, that as pure and innocent beings they were the offerings of
atonement most certain to pacify the anger of the deity; and further,
that the god of whose essence the generative power of nature was had a
just title of that which was begotten of man, and to the surrender
of their children’s lives . . . Voluntary offering on the part of
the parents was essential to the success of the sacrifice; even the
first-born, nay, the only child of the family, was given up. The parents
stopped the cries of their children by fondling and kissing them, for
the victim ought not to weep; and the sound of complaint was drowned
in the din of flutes and kettledrums. Mothers, according to
Plutarch,[11126] stood by without tears or sobs; if they wept or sobbed
they lost the honour of the act, and their children were sacrificed
notwithstanding. Such sacrifices took place either annually or on an
appointed day, or before great enterprises, or on the occasion of public
calamities, to appease the wrath of the god.”[11127]
In the worship of Astarte the prostitution of women, and of effeminate
men, played the same part that child murder did in the worship of Baal.
“This practice,” says Dr. Döllinger,[11128] “so widely spread in the
world of old, the delusion that no service more acceptable could be
rendered a deity than that of unchastity, was deeply rooted in the
Asiatic mind. Where the deity was in idea sexual, or where two deities
in chief, one a male and the other a female, stood in juxtaposition,
there the sexual relation appeared as founded upon the essence of the
deity itself, and the instinct and its satisfaction as that in men which
most corresponded with the deity. Thus lust itself became a service
of the gods; and, as the fundamental idea of sacrifice is that of the
immediate or substitutive surrender of a man’s self to the deity, so the
woman could do the goddess no better service than by prostitution. Hence
it was the custom [in some places] that a maiden before her marriage
should prostitute herself once in the temple of the goddess;[11129]
and this was regarded as the same in kind with the offering of the
first-fruits of the field.” Lucian, a heathen and an eye-witness, tells
us[11130]--“I saw at Byblus the grand temple of the Byblian Venus, in
which are accomplished the orgies relating to Adonis; and I learnt the
nature of the orgies. For the Byblians say that the wounding of Adonis
by the boar took place in their country; and, in memory of the accident,
they year by year beat their breasts, and utter lamentations, and go
through the orgies, and hold a great mourning throughout the land. When
the weeping is ended, first of all, they make to Adonis the offerings
usually made to a corpse; after which, on the next day, they feign that
he has come to life again, and hold a procession [of his image] in the
open air. But previously they shave their heads, like the Egyptians when
an Apis dies; and if any woman refuse to do so, she must sell her beauty
during one day to all who like. Only strangers, however, are permitted
to make the purchase, and the money paid is expended on a sacrifice
which is offered to the goddess.” “In this way,” as Dr. Döllinger goes
on to say, “they went so far at last as to contemplate the abominations
of unnatural lust as a homage rendered to the deity, and to exalt it
into a regular cultus. The worship of the goddess [Ashtoreth] at
Aphaca in the Lebanon was specially notorious in this respect.”[11131]
Here, according to Eusebius, was, so late as the time of Constantine the
Great, a temple in which the old Phoenician rites were still retained.
“This,” he says, “was a grove and a sacred enclosure, not situated, as
most temples are, in the midst of a city, and of market-places, and
of broad streets, but far away from either road or path, on the rocky
slopes of Libanus. It was dedicated to a shameful goddess, the goddess
Aphrodite. A school of wickedness was this place for all such profligate
persons as had ruined their bodies by excessive luxury. The men there
were soft and womanish--men no longer; the dignity of their sex they
rejected; with impure lust they thought to honour the deity. Criminal
intercourse with women, secret pollutions, disgraceful and nameless
deeds, were practised in the temple, where there was no restraining law,
and no guardian to preserve decency.”[11132]
One fruit of this system was the extraordinary institution of the Galli.
The Galli were men, who made themselves as much like women as they
could, and offered themselves for purposes of unnatural lust to either
sex. Their existence may be traced in Israel and Judah,[11133] as
well as in Syria and Phoenicia.[11134] At great festivals, under the
influence of a strong excitement, amid the din of flutes and drums and
wild songs, a number of the male devotees would snatch up swords or
knives, which lay ready for the purpose, throw off their garments, and
coming forward with a loud shout, proceed to castrate themselves openly.
They would then run through the streets of the city, with the mutilated
parts in their hands, and throw them into the houses of the inhabitants,
who were bound in such case to provide the thrower with all the apparel
and other gear needful for a woman.[11135] This apparel they thenceforth
wore, and were recognised as attached to the worship of Astarte,
entitled to reside in her temples, and authorised to take part in
her ceremonies. They joined with the priests and the sacred women at
festival times in frenzied dances and other wild orgies, shouting, and
cutting themselves on the arms, and submitting to be flogged one by
another.[11136] At other seasons they “wandered from place to place,
taking with them a veiled image or symbol of their goddess, and clad in
women’s apparel of many colours, and with their faces and eyes painted
in female fashion, armed with swords and scourges, they threw themselves
by a wild dance into bacchanalian ecstasy, in which their long hair
was draggled through the mud. They bit their own arms, and then hacked
themselves with their swords, or scourged themselves in penance for
a sin supposed to have been committed against the goddess. In these
scenes, got up to aid the collection of money, by long practice they
contrived to cut themselves so adroitly as not to inflict on themselves
any very serious wounds.”[11137]
It is difficult to estimate the corrupting effect upon practice and
morals of a religious system which embraced within it so many sensual
and degrading elements. Where impurity is made an essential part of
religion, there the very fountain of life is poisoned, and that
which should have been “a savour of life unto life”--a cleansing and
regenerating influence--becomes “a savour of death unto death”--an
influence leading on to the worst forms of moral degradation. Phoenician
religion worked itself out, and showed its true character, in the first
three centuries after our era, at Aphaca, at Hierapolis, and at Antioch,
where, in the time of Julian, even a Libanius confessed that the great
festival of the year consisted only in the perpetration of all that was
impure and shameless, and the renunciation of every lingering spark of
decency.[11138]
A vivid conception of another world, and of the reality of a life after
death, especially if connected with a belief in future rewards and
punishments, might have done much, or at any rate something, to
counteract the effect upon morals and conduct of the degrading tenets
and practices connected with the Astarte worship; but, so far as
appears, the Phoenicians had a very faint and dim conception of the life
to come, and neither hoped for happiness, nor feared misery in it. Their
care for the preservation of their bodies after death, and the provision
which in some cases they are seen to have made for them,[11139] imply
a belief that death was not the end of everything, and a few
vague expressions in inscriptions upon tombs point to a similar
conviction;[11140] but the life of the other world seems to have been
regarded as something imperfect and precarious[11141]--a sort of shadowy
existence in a gloomy _Sheôl_, where was neither pleasure nor pain,
neither suffering nor enjoyment, but only quietness and rest. The
thought of it did not occupy men’s minds, or exercise any perceptible
influence over their conduct. It was a last home, whereto all must
go, acquiesced in, but neither hoped for nor dreaded. A Phoenician’s
feelings on the subject were probably very much those expressed by Job
in his lament:--[11142]
“Why died I not from the womb? Why gave I not up the ghost at my
birth?
Why did the knees prevent me? or why the breasts that I should
suck?
For now should I have lain still and been quiet;
I should have slept, and then should I have been at rest;
I should have been with the kings and councillors of the earth,
Who rebuilt for themselves the cities that were desolate.
I should have been with the princes that had much gold,
And that filled their houses with silver . . .
There they that are wicked cease from troubling,
There they that are weary sink to rest;
There the prisoners are in quiet together,
And hear no longer the voice of the oppressor:
There are both the great and small, and the servant is freed from
his master.”
Still their religion, such as it was, had a great hold upon the
Phoenicians. Parents gave to their children, almost always, religious
names, recognising each son and daughter as a gift from heaven, or
placing them under the special protection of the gods generally, or of
some single divinity. It was piety, an earnest but mistaken piety, which
so often caused the parent to sacrifice his child--the very apple of his
eye and delight of his heart--that so he might make satisfaction for
the sins which he felt in his inmost soul that he had committed. It
was piety that filled the temples with such throngs, that brought for
sacrifice so many victims, that made the worshipper in every difficulty
put up a vow to heaven, and caused the payment of the vows in such
extraordinary profusion. At Carthage alone there have been found
many hundreds of stones, each one of which records the payment of a
vow;[11143] while other sites have furnished hundreds or even thousands
of _ex votos_--statues, busts, statuettes, figures of animals,
cylinders, seals, rings, bracelets, anklets, ear-rings, necklaces,
ornaments for the hair, vases, amphoræ, oenochoæ, pateræ, jugs, cups,
goblets, bowls, dishes, models of boats and chariots--indicative of an
almost unexampled devotion. A single chamber in the treasury of
Curium produced more than three hundred articles in silver
and silver-gilt;[11144] the temple of Golgi yielded 228 votive
statues;[11145] sites in Sardinia scarcely mentioned in antiquity have
sufficed to fill whole museums with statuettes, rings, and scarabs. If
the Phoenicians did not give evidence of the depth of their religious
feeling by erecting, like most nations, temples of vast size and
magnificence, still they left in numerous places unmistakable proof of
the reality of their devotion to the unseen powers by the multiplicity,
and in many cases the splendour,[11146] of their votive offerings.