THE RELIGIOUS RITES OF THE CANAANITES.
Our knowledge of the religious conceptions of the Canaanites consists of
scattered and meagre statements. Yet these statements are enough to show
with certainty that the ideas of the Syrians about the powers of Heaven
rested on the same basis as the worship of the Babylonians. But the
sensual and lascivious side of this worship, no less than the cruel and
bloody side, is more strongly and broadly developed in Syria than in
Babylonia, while, on the other hand, the complete development of the
star-worship, as we found it on the lower Euphrates, is unknown in
Syria. The gods who were regarded as alien and hostile to natural life
were worshipped by the Canaanites with severe abstinence and harsh
asceticism, with self-mutilation and human sacrifices; while the deities
of procreation and birth, who were considered favourable to life, were
worshipped with the most shameless prostitution and the most unbridled
debauchery. Indeed these rites, distinguished by sensual excess and
bloody asceticism, were united by that mysterious link which in the
human breast brings debauchery and pain into close connection; and hence
this worship is a true copy of the Semitic mode of feeling, which wavers
between luxurious enjoyment and fanatical destruction, between cringing
servility and stiff-necked obstinacy, between effeminate retirement in
the harem, and bold achievements in the battle-field.
The Phenicians are said to have possessed sacred scriptures of very
great antiquity. In Babylonia we found a city to which the sacred
scriptures were specially allotted, Sepharvaim on the Euphrates; in
Canaan, Debir, in the neighbourhood of Hebron, was at one time called
Kiriath Sepher, _i.e._ "city of scriptures." The scriptures of the
Phenicians are said to be derived from Esmun one of their gods, or from
a series of hierophants, Thabion, Isiris, Sanchuniathon and Mochus.
According to the evidence of Poseidonius, Mochus lived before the Trojan
war.[497] Sanchuniathon also, a Sidonian according to some, according to
others a Syrian, and to others a Berytean, is said to have lived before
or during the time of the Trojan war. He is said to have collected his
writings from the archives of the Phenician cities, from the records in
the temples, and a document of Hierombal which had been placed by the
latter before Abelbaal, king of Berytus, and had met with approval, and
it is maintained from the catalogue of the Phenician kings that
Hierombal and Sanchuniathon lived before the Trojan war.[498] Of the
writings of Sanchuniathon, Philo of Byblus, who wrote in the first half
of the second century, B.C., is said to have given a Greek translation
in his _History of the Phenicians_. Of this supposed translation of a
supposed original, discovered after much research by Philo, besides
which he pretended to have made use of the sacred scriptures of the
Egyptians, the Books of Thoth, some excerpts and fragments have come
down to us. Scanty and unconnected as these are, they show us at once
that Philo, whatever his original may have been, was far removed from
any mere repetition of old religious views, that the syncretistic
culture of his time had exercised a strong influence on his own ideas,
and that his whole point of view belongs to that kind of enlightenment
which pretended to find in the gods a number of deified kings, who had
once ruled over the land in ancient days. Yet Philo also allowed that,
over and above these, the sun, moon, planets, and certain elements were
worshipped as gods.[499]
Following the cosmogonic systems, as they may have been drawn out with
greater definiteness after the Hellenistic period, Philo assumes as the
beginning of all things an obscure and moving atmosphere, and a dark and
melancholy chaos. When the wind of his Beginning felt the yearning of
love, a mixture took place, and this combination was named Desire.
Desire is the beginning of all things. From the union of the wind with
itself arose Mot, which some explain as mud, others as putrefaction of a
watery mixture. Out of this arose the seeds of all and the origin of all
things. Mot was fashioned after the form of an egg. "And then shone
forth the sun and moon, and the great constellations. As the air now
sent forth a fiery glow, winds and clouds arose from the kindling of the
sea and the earth, and vast tempests of rain streamed down; and when all
this dashed together, there followed thunderings and lightning, by which
the creatures were awaked, and on the earth and in the sea the male and
the female elements began to move.[500] And from the wind Kolpia and his
wife Baau, which means night, Aeon and Protogonus, mortal men, were
begotten. Aeon discovered the nourishment obtained from trees. And Aeon
and Protogonus begot Genos and Genea, who dwelt in Phoenicia; and when
the fierce heat came they stretched out their hands to the sky and the
sun. As they regarded the sun as the only lord of the sky, they called
him Belsamen, which among the Phenicians means lord of the sky, and
among the Greeks Zeus." But Aeon and Protogonus had also begotten
children, called by the names of Phos (light), Pyr (fire), and Phlox
(flame). These discovered fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together,
and taught the use of fire, and begot children who surpassed all others
in size and stature. The names of these giants were given to the
mountains of which they possessed themselves, to Casius, Libanus,
Anti-libanus, and Brathy (Tabor?). The giants begot Samemrumus, who is
also called Hypsuranius, and Usous. These made a traffic of their
mothers, for it was the custom in those days for the women to associate
with any one. Samemrumus lived at Tyre, and discovered the art of making
huts out of reeds and sedge, while Usous invented clothing made of the
skins of the beasts which he knew how to slay. Samemrumus rebelled
against Usous, but the latter took a tree and divested it of the
branches, and was the first who went on board a vessel. Then he
dedicated two pillars to the fire and the wind, and offered to these the
blood of the beasts which he had taken. When the brothers were dead,
prayers were offered to the pillars, and each year a festival was
celebrated in honour of them. And for a long time afterwards Agreus (the
hunter) was among the descendants of Usous, and Halieus (the fisher)
among those of Samemrumus. From these sprung two brothers, of whom the
one was Chusor, _i.e._ Hephaestus, who discovered the working of iron,
and the other, who invented the fish-hook and was the first navigator,
was named Zeus Meilichius;[501] and the two together discovered the
building of walls by bricks. From these came Agros (the field), and
Agrotes (the husbandman), who was worshipped in Phoenicia as a god,
and was called the greatest god in Byblus. From these sprung Misor and
Sydyk; from Sydyk came the Cabiri, who invented the ship.
About this time Eljon, named "the Highest," was born, and a woman of the
name of Beruth; and these two dwelt at Byblus. They begot Uranus and Ge,
and when "the Highest" fell in conflict with wild beasts, he was
worshipped by his children as a god with libation and sacrifices. But
Uranus succeeded his father in the kingdom, and took his sister Ge to
wife, and with her begot El, who is also called Cronus, Dagon, who,
after discovering corn and the plough, was called Zeus Arotrius, and
Atlas. But as Uranus begot children with other women, El, when he was
grown up, determined to revenge the slight put upon his mother. He
provided himself with a sickle and a lance of iron, attacked Uranus,
drove him from his throne, expelled him from the land, and took the
kingdom for himself. He surrounded his house with a wall, and built
Byblus, the first city of the Phenicians. His brother Atlas, whom he
suspected, he threw into the abyss, and covered him with earth; his son
he slew with the sword, and cut off his daughter's head. When in the
thirty-second year of his reign he had laid an ambush for his father
Uranus in the interior of the land, and in this way had got him into his
power, he cut off his genitals, close by some springs and rivers. The
blood flowed into these springs and streams, and this place became
sacred, and is shown even at the present day. At the wish of El,
"Astarte the Great," the daughter of Uranus, and Zeus Demarus, the son
of Uranus by a concubine, and Adodus "the king of the gods," ruled over
the land. As a symbol of her supremacy, Astarte placed the head of an ox
on her own head, and when she had wandered over the whole earth she
found a star fallen from heaven, took it, and dedicated it at Tyre on
the sacred island. But when a pestilence came, and a mortality, El burnt
his only son in royal robes as a sacrifice to Uranus on the altar which
he had erected, and circumcised himself and forced his comrades to do
the same. The city of Byblus he handed over to the goddess Baaltis,
Berytus to the sea-god, to the Cabiri, and to the descendants of Agrotes
(the husbandman) and of Halieus (the fisher), and when El came into the
land of the South, he gave all Egypt over to Taauthus to be a royal
habitation for him. To El, after his death, was consecrated the star
named after him.[502]
We should indeed be in an evil case if we were restricted for our
knowledge of Canaanitish rites to these fragments, which carry so
plainly on the front of them their late origin, their fictitious
genealogical combinations, into which the gods are brought, their
over-subtle Euhemerism, and their mixture with Greek and Egyptian ideas.
That threads of various systems of cosmogony intertwine and cross each
other in these fragments is proved by the derivation of the origin of
the world, first from the wind, and next from chaos, and then from
Kolpia and Baau, and by the repetition even to the third time of the
discovery of hunting, agriculture, and navigation. Happily there are
other sources of information which allow us to bring the statements of
Philo into some sort of order, and to supplement them in very essential
points. We saw that the highest god of the Babylonians was El. If Philo
tells us that the star known by his name, _i.e._ the planet Saturn, was
consecrated to king El after his death, and if this king allows Astarte,
Demarus, and even Adodus, the king of the gods, to rule after his
death,--if he apportions cities and provinces to Baaltis and the
Cabiri,--it becomes clear enough that for the Canaanites also El was the
ruling god, and that in Syria also the planet Saturn belonged to him.
But from the contest of El with Uranus, _i.e._ with the sky-god, in
Philo, we may also with certainty conclude, that among the Canaanites
also the highest place was allotted to Baal-Samim, _i.e._ to the lord of
the sky, as Philo rightly explains that name; Philo denotes him as the
god worshipped by the earliest generations of mankind. Among the Greeks
also there was a myth, borrowed no doubt from the East, that Zeus (Baal)
had once striven with El-Cronus.[503] As the god of Saturn, the El of
the Canaanites would have to be placed beside the Adar of the Eastern
Semitic nations. The inscriptions of Ramses II. have already mentioned
Baal as the god of the Cheta. We also saw that the nomads of the
peninsula of Sinai consecrated their highest mountain summit to the god
of this name. The Moabites invoked Baal on Mount Peor. In Canaan also
the mountain summits were sacred to this deity; in the south of the land
the lonely peak of Casius on the Serbonian lake, then Carmel, Tabor, and
Hermon. The Philistines worshipped him at Ekron; the names of numerous
places in Canaan,--Baal Hamon, Baal Hazor, Baal Meon, Baal Gad, Baal
Perazim, Baal Tamar, Baalath, Baalbec, &c.,--give us sufficient proof
of the widespread worship of Baal in Canaan. We shall not go wrong if we
regard him as the deity of the beneficent operation of the sun. If El
cuts off the genitals of Uranus, _i.e._ of Baal-Samim, and the blood
flows into the springs and streams, the meaning of the myth is without
doubt that the beneficent god has imparted his life-giving, creating
power to the fertilising water. Among the Phenicians springs and streams
were sacred. The Carthaginian Hannibal swore to his compact with Philip
king of Macedonia before "the rivers, meadows, and waters," and the Zeus
Demarus of Philo must be explained as Baal Tamar, _i.e._ Baal in the
procreative power. Northward of Sidon there falls into the sea a river
especially sacred to Baal Tamar, which the Greeks called Tamyras (now
Nahr Damur). It marks, no doubt, the spot where the act in the myth was
localised, which, as Philo observes, was still pointed out. Pliny tells
us that with the Belus, _i.e._ Baal (Sihor Libnath of the Hebrews), a
mountain stream falling into the sea southward of Sidon, after a brief,
and in the plain, a sluggish course from the parent lake, customs of a
very sacred nature were connected.[504]
The goddess whom the Syrians invoked, beside the sun-god, had various
names. According to the fragments of Philo, El had handed over the
government of the city of Byblus to Baaltis, _i.e._ to Bilit, the
"mistress." At Ascalon she was known as Derceto, at Hierapolis (Bambyke,
Membidsh) as Atargatis;[505] the Hebrews call her Ashera. Herodotus
calls the goddess of Ascalon Aphrodite Urania; he also denotes her as
the goddess of the sexual impulse and of procreation, and mentions the
temple at Ascalon, as the oldest temple of this goddess which he knew;
"from this comes the shrine of Urania in Cyprus, as the Cyprians
themselves said; and the Phenicians, who also belonged to Syria, founded
the temple of Urania on Cythera." Pausanias observes that the Assyrians
had been the first among men to worship Urania, and after the Assyrians
came the Paphians in Cyprus, and the Phenicians at Ascalon.[506] Hence
we may conclude that Baaltis, in nature or in name, was not far removed
from the Bilit or Mylitta of the Babylonians, and this conclusion is
sufficiently confirmed by all that we know of the worship of Baaltis.
Cinyras, the first king of Byblus, is said to have erected shrines to
Aphrodite at Byblus and in Cyprus, and his daughters are said to have
paid service to the goddess with their persons. The maidens of Byblus
waited for strangers in the market-places, just as the maidens of
Babylon waited in the temple (p. 269), and the price of compliance was
paid, as in Babylon, to Aphrodite.[507] Of the maidens of Cyprus we are
told that they went down to the sea shore in order to sell themselves to
the sailors on landing.[508] We also find that sacred servants, male and
female, who dedicated themselves to this form of worship, were always to
be found in the temples of the Syrian goddess, and even married women
entered their ranks at certain times.[509] The Hebrews tell us that the
women wove tents for Ashera, and that paramours, male and female, were
in her sanctuaries.[510] In shady groves, on green hills, and among the
mountain forests of Libanus, sacrifice was offered to this goddess. The
lofty trees, the terebinth, the evergreen pine and the cypress were
sacred to her; the pomegranate, the symbol of fruitfulness, was her
peculiar fruit. The ram, the he-goat, and the dove, especially the white
dove, animals of vigorous procreation and reproduction, were dedicated
to her, and formed the most welcome offerings. In the temples of the
goddess before the cell in which she was worshipped under the form of
conical stones or upright pillars of wood, were dove-cotes and pools of
water.[511] Fish also were dedicated to this goddess; and certain kinds
of fish were sacred among the Syrians. These were not to be injured, and
enjoyed divine honours.[512] Beside the rich and ancient temple of
Derceto at Ascalon was a lake abounding in fish. At Hierapolis the image
of Atargatis, which had a dove on the head, was carried down to the lake
near the temple. This image of "the Assyrian Urania" was also carried
down to the sea, amid a great crowd collected from Syria, Arabia, and
Mesopotamia.[513] The image of Derceto at Ascalon, on the shore of the
sea, in that temple which was the oldest of Urania, known to Herodotus,
was a woman as far as the waist, but from the thighs downwards she had
the body of a fish.[514] From the custom of carrying the image of the
goddess to pools of water, and the form of the goddess at Ascalon, has
arisen the legend of the Greeks, that at Ascalon or Hierapolis she threw
herself into the water, and was changed into a fish. The colonies of
the Phenicians worshipped a Venus Marina, and the goddess of Berytus is
said to have come from the sea; with the Greeks the goddess of Cyprus
and Cythera is said to have risen from the sea.[515] Appian remarks that
the goddess of Hierapolis was regarded by some as Aphrodite, by others
as Hera, and by others again as the source and spring of all that came
out of moisture.[516] Hence the Bilit (Baaltis) of Byblus, the Derceto
of Ascalon, the Atargatis of Hierapolis, the Ashera of the Hebrews, was
a deity favourable to birth and fertility, the power of nature which
creates from moisture and water.
A male deity also, who gave fruit and increase from water, was
worshipped by the Canaanites. At Gaza and Ashdod, the cities of the
Philistines, and near the coast, at Beth-Dagon, and Kaphar-Dagon, the
god Dagon was invoked, whom Philo mentioned as the Zeus Arotrius, the
Zeus of the field, the god of nourishment. His temple at Gaza was the
pre-eminent shrine of the Philistines, the centre of their federation.
The image of Dagon in his temple at Ashdod had the face and hands of a
man, the body of a fish, and again the feet of a man.[517] Philo's
account denotes Dagon as the discoverer of the plough and the god of
nourishment, as the giver of corn and protector of the field, and
therefore he must in any case have been a spirit of increase and
fertility. We found the name of this god in Babylonian inscriptions of
the time of Hammurabi, and before it, his image, and that of his
priests, among the monuments of Assyria. We saw that his name designated
him as a fish-god, and know that Babylonian legends connected him with
the sea, and represented him as arising from the sea (p. 272).
By the side of the deities of the beneficent powers of nature and of
birth, the Canaanites placed severe and gloomy deities, who were averse
and hostile to the bloom of nature, the life and generation of mankind.
These were Moloch and Astarte. The first is known to the Greeks under
the name of Cronus, and from Philo's account of El we must deduce the
relation of this god to Saturn. The Moloch of the Canaanites is the
cruel destroying god of war; fire in its consuming, though also in its
purifying properties, was his element. He is said to have been
represented in the form of a bull or with a bull's head or horns.[518]
Among the booty which Sethos I. (1439-1388 B.C.) brought back from his
campaigns against the Cheta and Retennu we may see, in the sculptures at
Karnak (p. 150), the image of a bull.[519] The Canaanites offered human
sacrifices to Moloch. If we remember that the Sepharvites of Babylonia
offered up men to Adrammelech, _i.e._ "to king Adar," the spirit of the
planet Saturn, we may venture to regard the Moloch of the Canaanites as
the god of Saturn, without excluding the possibility that the burning
glow of the midsummer sun may have lain at the root of the Canaanite
conception of this god.[520] Not only were captives, often to the number
of thousands, sacrificed to Moloch in gratitude for the victory
bestowed;[521] but also at the beginning of an important undertaking, or
the opening of a campaign, his favour was sought by human sacrifices.
These were indispensable in order to appease his wrath, and turn
destruction from all upon the head of a few.[522] If the crops withered,
or a pestilence devastated the cities, or great reverses fell upon the
land in war, human victims were burned as expiatory offerings.[523] Such
offerings could only be taken from among the native families. Pure
victims as yet undefiled by sexual intercourse, children and youths,
were, as it seems, the most welcome sacrifice. The dearest possession
was the most powerful expiation. The best beloved children, the
firstborn or only son, must be offered to the god "as a ransom."[524] We
have seen above (p. 356), how Philo represents El himself as performing
this sacrifice of a son. Only the surrender of what was dearest could
touch the cruel feeling of the relentless god, and turn his wrath upon
the enemy so that he laid his curse upon him. Thus it came to pass that
the eldest son of the king was clothed with purple and burned to Moloch
in the place of the ruler of the land. When Joram, king of Israel, had
shut up the king of Moab in Kir Harosheth, "the Moabite took his
firstborn son, who would have been king in his place, and sacrificed him
as a burnt offering upon the wall. Then there was great indignation
against Israel, and Israel turned back to his own land."[525] Hamilcar,
Hanno's son, burnt himself in the year 480 B.C., when the battle of
Himera went against the Carthaginians; and when Himilco, in the year 406
B.C., besieged Agrigentum, and a pestilence came upon the army, he
sacrificed a boy to Cronus, in order to stay the plague.[526] When
Agathocles of Syracuse, after landing in Africa had defeated the
Carthaginian army, and encamped under the walls of Carthage, the
Carthaginians believed that they had brought the anger of the god upon
them because of late, instead of sacrificing the children of the noblest
citizens, they had secretly purchased and substituted other children.
Inquiry showed that this had been done in some cases. In expiation, 200
boys of the first families were selected as victims, and the families,
who were suspected of previously withdrawing their children from the
god, now spontaneously brought forward 300 children. "In Carthage," so
Diodorus, who tells us this incident, continues, "there was an iron
image of Cronus, which held out the hands in a downward position, so
that the victim placed upon them rolled into a cavity filled with
fire."[527] The cries of the victims, Plutarch tells us, were drowned by
the noise of drums and flutes; the mothers were compelled to stand by
without lamentation or sighing. If a sigh or a tear escaped them, they
were regarded as dishonoured; but the child was burnt just the same. A
Roman poet gives an invocation to the "paternal gods" of Carthage, whose
temples are cleansed by murder, and who rejoice in being worshipped by
the agony of mothers.[528]
The inscriptions of Ramses II. mentioned Astarte as the goddess of the
Hittites; the name of their city Astaroth we have already found in the
form of Astartu in the inscriptions of Tuthmosis III. (p. 343). The
Philistines worshipped Astarte; for the Sidonians, the "great Astarte"
was the goddess of their city. "A virgin-goddess"[529] she ruled over
the fortune of battle; she is the goddess of war, bringing death and
destruction, the goddess of death. Coins of Sidon represent her with a
spear in her hand. As the goddess of war she carried a spear in her
temples in Cyprus and Cythera.[530] In her temple on the ancient
fortress of Carthage, she was represented riding on a lion, with a spear
in her hand. The Istar of the Babylonians and Assyrians carried the bow
(p. 270). When the Philistines carried off the armour of Saul, king of
Israel, they dedicated it in the house of Astarte. If Astarte, according
to Philo, consecrates a star on the island of Tyre, we have already seen
(p. 270) that Venus when rising was the star of Istar at Babylon. Yet
the Astarte of the Syrians stood in a closer relation to the moon. Philo
told us that she carried on her head the head of an ox. The monuments of
Sethos display, beside the bull's image of Baal, a cow's head with a
segment of the moon; and on Carthaginian stones we find the full moon
between the horns of an ox. With the horns of the moon the goddess is
known as Astaroth Karnaim, _i.e._ the horned Astarte. The priests of
Astarte were pledged to continence and celibacy, and on the priestesses
of the "heavenly maiden," the "maiden of the sky,"[531] virginity was
imposed. No married woman could enter her temples. In her temples, as in
those of Moloch, burned the eternal fire.[532] Like Moloch, Astarte also
received human sacrifices. To the virgin-goddess the youthful were
offered, and maidens and women were burned.[533] As in the worship of
Ashera the Syrians attempted to transfuse themselves into the nature of
the goddess, to sink and pass into her being, so also the worship of
Astarte required that they should become like the goddess, and that lust
should be killed in them. It was the highest and most acceptable
sacrifice, if priests and laymen made themselves eunuchs in honour of
the virgin-goddess. During the festival of Astarte it was the custom,
while the congregated people were thrown into excitement and frenzy by
the sound of cymbals, drums, and double pipes, for young men to spring
forward, seize the ancient sword which lay on the altar of the goddess,
and therewith to mutilate themselves.[534] At a later time there were
thousands of eunuch-attendants in the temples of Astarte, while others
went about through the land in female clothing, their faces painted
after the manner of women, begging and mortifying their flesh. To the
sound of drums and pipes they whirled round with wild movements and
contortions of the body, and bent their heads to the ground, so that
their hair trailed in the mire. At the same time they bit their arms and
cut themselves with swords. The most frenzied began to moan and
prophesy. At last he bewailed his sins, took up the knotted whip, and
beat himself on the back till the blood ran down. When the dancing and
the scourging was ended, the eunuchs collected subscriptions from the
bystanders. Some gave money; others, milk, wine, cheese, and meal. These
they hastily gathered together in order to compensate, by a hearty meal
at evening in their retreat, for the torments of the day.[535]
These friendly and hostile, creative and destructive, natural and
supernatural powers stood mutually opposed in the religious
consciousness of the Syrians. Just as the Egyptians went forward, and
saw in the myth of Osiris the beneficent deity as the conqueror of the
evil god in the process of vegetative life and in the revolution of the
year, so did the Semitic nations unite the beneficent and destructive
powers of heaven in the same deities, who in turn dispensed blessing and
destruction, and by themselves and in themselves overcame the
destructive element. This combination is obvious in the form of Baal of
Tyre, whom the Tyrians invoked as the king and protector of their city
under the name of Melkarth,_ i.e._ city-king.[536] The Greeks identified
this god with their own Heracles; but as the protector of navigation and
the god of the sea, they are acquainted with Melkarth, under his native
name of Melicertes. Herodotus was astonished at the splendour of the
ancient temple of this god at Tyre, at the richness and beauty of the
votive offerings, and the two rectangular pillars in the temple, the one
of pure gold, the other of emerald, and so large that it shone by
night.[537] Hiram, king of Tyre, had dedicated the first about the year
1,000 B.C. to Melkarth. To the Phenicians Baal Melkarth was a labouring
and conquering deity, who creates new life out of destruction,
vanquishes the baneful signs in the zodiac, brings back the sun from
perigee and apogee, from excessive heat and wintry cold, to beneficial
operation, whose life is seen in the sun's course.[538] When the sun
burned with the fiercest glow, and stood in the sign of the lion, then
the good sun-god must vanquish the lion or symbol of fiery heat; he
pressed the lion to his own breast, forced back into himself the fiery
beams, and consumed himself in his own heat. The good sun-god must
overcome the evil sun-god, or he must consume himself, so that with
renewed youth he may again secure gentler warmth for the earth. When the
sun appeared most remote from the earth, Baal of Tyre had gone on a
journey or was asleep. In the Phenician colonies in the West, in Crete,
Sicily, and at Gades, in the distant land of the setting sun, were
pointed out the resting-places of the deity, from which he arose with
the vernal sun to new activity and life. At the end of February or the
beginning of March the festival of the awakening of the god took
place;[539] and if the Greeks tell us that Iolaus awoke the god, Iolaus
is merely a Grecised form of Jubal, _i.e._ the beauty of Baal, and
therefore only a mythical expression for the god himself as re-awakening
with the beautiful vernal sun.[540] From these ideas of strife and
conquest Melkarth could become in the eyes of the Phenicians a
warrior-hero, who was thought to have wandered over the earth, as the
sun revolves round it, in order to set it free from hostile powers. With
this conception may be connected the story that the procreative power
was taken from Uranus and transferred to the springs and rivers, and
that El's brother Atlas, _i.e._ Atel, a name which perhaps may be
explained as meaning darkness, is overthrown and cast into the abyss. In
the legends of the Phenicians it was Melkarth who reduced the barbarous
tribes of the distant coasts, who founded the ancient colonies of the
Phenicians on the western coasts of the Mediterranean, and set up, as
the boundary stone of his wanderings, the two great pillars at the end
of the earth, the rocks of Calpe and Abyle on the Straits of Gibraltar.
As the restrainer of the burning heat, of the lion, and of giants,
Melkarth is the Heracles of the Greeks; as a wandering god who gives
order to the life of mankind, he bears, in Greece, the names Minos and
Cadmus (the name Kadmon means, "the man of the East"), by which forms
they expressed not the deity only, but the old supremacy of the
Phenicians, and their settlements on their islands and coasts. The
Hebrews tell us that once, when a great drought attacked the land, the
priests of Baal assembled at Carmel and invoked the god to consume with
his rays the bull which they placed as a sacrifice on the billets of the
altar. But the god heard them not. Then Elijah, the prophet of the Jews,
mocked them. "Call louder," he said: "perhaps he is meditating or hath a
pursuit; he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and will wake up
again." The priests called louder, and became frantic, and cut
themselves with knives and lancets, so that the blood gushed out.[541]
As Baal and Moloch, the beneficent and the baneful powers, were united
in Baal of Tyre, and in the form of Melkarth, so also was the goddess of
reproduction, of birth, and procreation amalgamated with the warrior
goddess, the maiden who brought death. It was this deity which in turn
gave blessing and destruction, sensual enjoyment and war, birth and
death. She inspired consuming sensual passion, and then caused death to
overtake her lover, even if she did not slay him herself. Thus a Roman
poet can put into the mouth of a Carthaginian the invocation, "Goddess
Astarte, power of gods and men, life and safety, and again destruction,
death, and dissolution."[542] We find that the Venus of Tyre was called
Astarte, that at Ashtaroth Karnaim, the ancient seat of the worship of
the horned Astarte, the maiden with the horns of the moon, there was a
sanctuary of Atargatis,[543] and that fire-festivals were celebrated at
Hierapolis in the sanctuary of Atargatis, which festivals belonged to
Astarte; that the Urania, _i.e._ the birth-goddess, of Ascalon, Cyprus,
and Cythera became an Aphrodite Areia, _i.e._ a warlike Aphrodite;[544]
that after Cinyras, the king of Byblus, whose daughters paid service to
the goddess of Byblus with their bodies, Pygmalion became king, and he
regarded with abhorrence the unchaste daughters of Cinyras, and
worshipped the pure goddess of heaven, and taught how to appease her
anger by human sacrifices.[545] At Carthage a good goddess of the sky
(_bona coelestis_) was worshipped beside an evil one (_inferna
coelestis_). If human sacrifices were here burnt to the goddess Dido,
just as the supposed foundress of Carthage is said to have burnt
herself,[546] her sister Anna, _i.e._ the charming one, was worshipped
with cheerful rites. Other accounts mention that the two sisters Dido
and Anna were one and the same goddess. Without doubt they are right. We
saw that with the Babylonians the planet Venus, when rising, was the
war-goddess Istar, and, when setting, she was Mylitta, the goddess of
love (p. 270).
The relation of the Tyrian goddess Astarte to the moon has already been
touched upon. As goddess of the moon, she was a changing, wandering
deity. With the waning light of the moon she retired into the gloom of
the west, the region of the setting sun; and on the disappearance of the
goddess on the "bad evening," the Tyrians performed rites of mourning.
As a "wandering goddess,"[547] Astarte was called among the Phenicians
Dido, _i.e._ the rover, and among the Westerns Europa, _i.e._ the dark
one.[548] With the retirement of the goddess was connected the legend
how her destructive power was overcome; it showed how Astarte could be
worshipped in Tyre as the wife of Melkarth, as Milkath (Melecheth,
_i.e._ queen).[549] The wandering sun-god went in search of the lost
goddess. At length he found her in the remote distance, and loosed her
girdle; the goddess surrendered herself to him, and sacred marriage
changed the warlike goddess into the friendly deity favourable to
procreation, Astarte into Ashera, Dido into Anna, Artemis or Athena into
Atargatis. The "maiden of the sky" is now the wife of the god of Tyre,
the Hera of the sky, the Ada (Athe) of the Syrians. From the embraces of
Melkarth and Astarte, the sun-god and the moon-goddess, and the conquest
of the cruel goddess of war, spring life, order, and law. The sacred
marriage is said to have taken place in the West, at Samothrace, and
further still, on the Cadmeia, the citadel of Cadmus,[550] _i.e._ of the
searching Melkarth, and finally beyond the pillars of the god, on the
happy islands of the Western Sea, where all fruits of every kind grew
spontaneously, especially the apples of life, the pomegranates of
Ashera, the apples of the Hesperides,--the pledge of love, the symbol of
life and light returning out of darkness. Here also Melkarth sank down
to rest in the streams of the Western Sea, which his beams had
warmed.[551]
The Syrians did not remain content with combining the beneficent and
destructive powers into one form only, into Baal-Melkarth and
Astarte-Ashera. While searching for the unity of the divine powers and
the divine nature, they also combined the male and female deities into
one figure, and the creative and receptive powers were amalgamated in
one and the same form. As the combination of mighty heroic power with
luxurious sensuality is the practical ideal of the East, so in theory
also the highest union of the powers of nature and divine being, the
amalgamation of male and female is attained by the same combination.
When Astarte had become Ashera, and had surrendered herself to the god,
the god in turn surrendered himself to the goddess. He plied female
tasks, she carried the weapons. But even their nature became one, their
forms were combined. Astarte and the Baal placed at her side became one
deity. The male deity of the Moabites was Camos. When Mesha, king of
Moab, took Nebo from the Israelites, he dedicated it to
Ashtor-Camos.[552] At Carthage Dido-Astarte was represented with the
beard of Melkarth.[553] At Paphos there was a standing image of the
bearded Aphrodite, which was worshipped as a great divinity. It is this
unification which lies at the root of the legends of Heracles (Melkarth)
and Omphale (perhaps, mother[554]), of Semiramis and Sardanapalus. At
certain festivals of Baal the priests and worshippers of the androgynous
deity appeared in red transparent female garments, and were otherwise
dressed as women, while the women were dressed as men, and carried
swords and lances.[555] The law of the Jews strictly forbids the
erection of Astartes and pillars, the bringing of the hire of the harlot
or the pay of the fornicator into the house of Jehovah, the tearing of
the skin, or the cutting of the hair (which was customary among the
Syrians in different ways as the symbol of the worship of certain
deities), and insists that no eunuch shall come into the people of
Jehovah, that no woman shall wear a man's clothes, and no man the
clothes of a woman.[556]
Philo told us above (p. 355) that Eljon of Byblus, who was called the
Highest, was slain in conflict with wild beasts, and was worshipped by
after generations with libations and sacrifice. In Byblus, under the
name Adonis (Adon, _i.e._ Lord), a god was worshipped, who was thought
to have disappeared, or to have been carried off in the bloom of youth.
Eljon and Adonis are one and the same form. When the maritime river
named after this deity, the Adonis (now Nahr Ibrahim), near Byblus,
began to run red in July (Thammuz), owing to the red earth washed down
from the mountains, then it was believed that the beautiful Adonis was
slain on Libanus by the savage boar of the war-god. With lamentations
and cries the women sat in the shrine at Byblus; or lingered by the
wayside lamenting the death of Adonis. They cut off their hair, tore
their breasts, and cried out--Ailanu, ailanu (woe to us). Adonis was
lost, and was now called Thammuz (the Departed).[557] A time of
lamentation was observed, during which his wooden image was washed and
anointed, and laid upon a bier, which the priests carried about with
their garments rent and beards shorn. But the god appeared again; he
came to life again, as it seems, with the new spring. And as the
lamentations for his death had been excessive, so also was the
sensuality with which his return to life was celebrated.[558] Hence we
must assume that in Adonis was personified the vernal sun, the bloom of
vegetation, which so soon begins to droop. If it was the boar of the
war-god, _i.e._ of Moloch, which slew Adonis, as one account maintains,
then in the minds of the Syrians the destructive sun-god, the glow of
the midsummer sun which makes vegetation wither, was the cause of the
death of Adonis.
Philo further told us of the two sons of the giants, the brothers
Samemrumus and Usous, at Tyre (p. 354). The name Samemrumus means the
High One of the Sky, a meaning which is clearly confirmed by the Greek
attribute Hypsuranius. Hence Samemrumus was the god, the Baal of Tyre,
Baal Melkarth. That Usous also was a god of Tyre is clear from the
observation of Eusebius, that Usous, a man of little account, had been
deified at Tyre beside Melicertes.[559] Usous, who knew how to catch
and destroy wild animals, and clad himself in their skins, the ancestor
of hunters, reminds us of the Esau of Hebrew tradition. Compared in
point of language the names of Usous and Esau coincide: "Usous" (Usov)
means, like "Esav," the hairy one. Completely reversing the natural
connection, Philo ascribes to Usous the erection of the pillars which
belong to his brother, and represents the hunter as embarking on the
earliest ship, whereas Samemrumus, the father of the fisherman, must
have embarked on the first ship. We saw that the name Sidon means
"fish-catchers" (p. 344). Hence the legends of the Phenicians carried
back the origin of the Sidonians, to whom not only the city of Sidon but
also Tyre belonged, to Baal Melkarth. From this god the tribe of the
Sidonians, as it seems, pretended to have sprung. At a later period the
mariners of the coast, _i.e._ the population of the harbour towns,
looked down with scorn on the shepherds and hunters of the mountains,
although they could not refuse to recognise the greater antiquity of
this mode of life. Usous, therefore, must be regarded as the elder
brother, the hunter of the mountains, like the Esau of the Hebrews,
while the younger Melkarth takes up his abode in Tyre. That Usous is the
firstborn is clear from Philo's remark, that Samemrumus rebelled against
his brother. The contrast between the two brothers is marked by the
statement of Eusebius, that Usous was of little account, more strongly
than in Philo. From this we may perhaps conclude that Usous, the older
god, was originally looked upon as a hostile power, as Baal Moloch;
while in Samemrumus the friendly, helpful, beneficent power of the deity
was personified as Baal Melkarth. An obscure trace of the contrast of
the two gods is to be found also in the name Surmubel, _i.e._ Opponent
of Baal, in Philo, which seems to belong to Baal Melkarth in opposition
to Baal Moloch.[560]
The gods, whom the various cities of the Phenicians worshipped as their
tutelary deities, were placed side by side as soon as the feeling of
community in the cities became more lively, and intercourse between them
more vigorous. Hence it came about that a common worship was also paid
to these tutelary deities. Beside their significance in the natural and
moral world, there resided from antiquity in certain deities peculiar
relations to hunting and agriculture, and it was natural that as naval
occupations, trade, and industry developed in the cities, the gods
should be brought into relation to these spheres of activity also. In
the same degree as it was felt that trade and commerce could only
prosper amid internal peace and security in the cities, and under the
protection of law and justice, the gods who maintained order in the
world must become the protectors of order and law in the cities. In this
feeling, and starting from conceptions of this kind, the priests of the
Phenicians brought the gods of their cities into a connected system
which, following the sacred number seven, included seven gods. The
deities brought into this circle were known by the collective name
Cabirim, i.e. the "Powerful," the "Great." Among the descendants of the
"field" and the "husbandman," Philo has already mentioned Misor, _i.e._
Sydyk (justice). As powers ruling in justice, law, and equity, and
maintaining order in the cities, the Cabiri are the children of Sydyk.
The Greeks call them children of the sun-god, _i.e._ of Baal Samim; and
if others connect the Cabiri with Ptah, the god of light among the
Egyptians, the conclusion to be drawn is, that it was Baal Samim who, in
his relation to the Cabiri, was denoted by the name of the Just, the
supreme champion of justice. From the hunter and the fisher Philo
derives Chusor, who discovered the working of iron; he calls him
Hephaestus (p. 354). Chusor, so far as we can tell, was the foremost
deity within the circle of the Cabiri. Phenician coins exhibit him with
a leather apron, hammer, and tongs; the name seems to denote "arranger."
He was the tutelary god of the life of the cities occupied in navigation
and handicraft. Next to Chusor came a female deity, Chusarthis, also
called Turo (Thorah, law), whom the Greeks call by the name Harmonia. As
the same deity is also called the goddess of the moon, we cannot doubt
that Chusarthis is Astarte, which is also sufficiently clear from other
evidence; only in the new system the severe goddess was connected in a
definite manner with the upholding of justice and preservation of law.
Next to Astarte in the series of the Cabiri comes Baal Melkarth of Tyre,
who is known to the Greeks under the name of Cadmus. He is regarded as
the discoverer of mining and masonry and the inventor of writing. He
searches for the lost Harmonia, and with her when found celebrates the
sacred marriage. Hence Cadmus could be worshipped in this system as a
life-awakening, phallic god, as well as the tutelar god of marriage. A
peculiar reverence was enjoyed among the Cabiri by the deity who was
added as an eighth to these seven; his name was Esmun, _i.e._ the
Eighth. In this form it seems that the peculiarities of the seven gods
were taken up and gathered together. At any rate in Carthage the temple
of Esmun stood in the Byrsa, and on the highest part of it. In this
temple the holiest relics of the city were preserved and the most
important deliberations held. The Greeks call Esmun by the name of
Asclepius, but also add that he was different from the Greek Asclepius.
He was, it appears, a healing, _i.e._ an appeasing deity, like Jasion in
the Cabiric mysteries of Samothrace. Esmun is also compared and
confounded with Hermes, as with the Thoth of the Egyptians. Just as
Thoth revealed the sacred books of the Egyptians, did Esmun reveal the
sacred books of the Phenicians. Esmun was represented with a serpent in
his hand as the serpent-holder (Ophiuchus), and his head as surrounded
by eight rays. The forms of the eight tutelar gods were carved by the
Phenicians on the prows of their ships; it was the Cabiri, as Philo told
us, who discovered the ship. Even now Phenician coins exhibit the Cabiri
in that dwarfed and distorted form in which the Phenicians loved to
represent the nature and superhuman power of the gods.[561]
From the circumstance that the Greeks, when settling in Lemnos, Imbros,
Samothrace, and Rhodes, found the worship of the Cabiri in existence,
and adopted it, though not without certain alterations, we may conclude
that the Cabiric system was established before the year 1000 B.C. In the
tutelary gods of the sea-loving nation of the Phenicians the Greeks
recognised and worshipped the deities favourable to mariners, and from
this side they combined them with their own Dioscuri. On the other side
the myth of Melkarth and Astarte, who were adopted into this circle of
divinities, the myth of Melkarth, who discovers the lost moon-goddess in
the land of gloom, and returns thence with her to new light and life,
and who wakes to new life after the slumber of the winter, gave the
Greeks an opportunity of connecting with the mysteries of the Cabiri
those conceptions of the life after death, which grew up among them
after the beginning of the sixth century.
When the great deities had been combined with the circle of the Cabiri,
the subordinate spirits followed in their course. By degrees a scheme of
thrice seven was reached, a scheme of twenty-one or rather twenty-two
deities, since an eighth was added to the seven Cabiri. These, beginning
with El, were arranged according to the twenty-two letters of the
Phenician alphabet, and stood in a certain relation to them. From this
number of deities, their various names, and the order of succession,
various schemes of the origin of the gods were developed, and with the
help of these genealogies certain systems of theogony and cosmogony were
formed, of which the dislocated and confused fragments were found in
Philo; and the chief of them I have given above. The wind Kolpia (p.
353) modern research would explain by Kol-pyah, _i.e._ "breath of the
month;" Baau, the wife of this wind, by Bohu, _i.e._ Chaos, the
Tohu-wa-Bohu of the Hebrews. The more abstract the potentialities with
which these systems begin, the later we may assume their origin to be.
Like the Arabs, the Syrians originally worshipped their gods upon the
mountains and in stones; then they erected pillars of wood and stone to
them, and images, figures of bulls, or shapes combined from the forms of
men and fish. They also erected statues male and female, or androgynous.
At the great festivals the sacred tents and chests in which ancient
symbols and tokens of the deities were preserved, or the images of the
gods, were carried round in solemn procession.[562] Of the festival in
the temple of Atargatis, at Hierapolis, we have already spoken (p. 360);
of the fire-festival which the Tyrians held in the spring, Lucian tells
us: "They trim great trees, set them up in the court of the temple, and
bring goats, sheep, birds, and other victims. These they fasten to the
trees, and in addition, clothes and gold and silver jewellery. After
these preliminaries they carry the images of the gods round the trees;
the pyre is then kindled, and all consumed."[563]
As we may conclude from Lucian's account and from ruins, the temples
were on a tolerably extensive scale. There were two or three courts, one
after the other, either rectangular as at Paphus and Marathus, or oval,
as at Malta and Gaulus, surrounded by strong walls, and furnished with
pillars, altars, and pools of water. With these was connected a narrow
and small shrine, containing the sacred stone or image. The tithes
belonged to the gods. Every year, at the festival of Melkarth, in Tyre,
an embassy appeared from Carthage which offered to the god of the mother
city the tenth of the revenue of their state, and after great victories
the Carthaginians probably sent a tenth of the spoil to the gods of
Tyre.[564] The number of priests was great; we often find hundreds
engaged in a single sacrifice,[565] and the ritual was complicated. The
human sacrifices, mutilation, and prostitution, by which the Syrians
sought to win the favour of their deities, we have already heard of. At
a later time at all the great sanctuaries there were thousands of male
and female servants beside the priests. The priests lived on the tithes,
the temple lands, and the part which fell to them in the sacrifices. The
ritual distinguished burnt offerings, offerings of purification,
expiatory offerings, and offerings of the first fruits; besides animals
and the firstlings of the field, sacrificial cakes were frequently
offered. The bull was the most acceptable victim; cows were not
sacrificed, nor the flesh eaten. Beside bulls, rams and he-goats, and of
birds, the dove, the partridge, the quail, and the goose were offered.
The animals were required to be pure, without blemish, of the male sex,
and capable of procreation. To guard against the offering of unclean
beasts, the priests of Hierapolis refused to sacrifice any but those
bought from themselves.[566] Two Phenician inscriptions of Massilia and
Carthage have come down to us from the fourth century B.C., containing
the edicts of the Carthaginian Suffetes about the part of the sacrifice
belonging to the priests, the fee to be paid for the sacrifice, and
finally the price of the victims purchased of the priests. The
Carthaginian inscription lays down the rule that of a bull, a ram, or a
goat, offered as a burnt-offering, the skin was to be the property of
the priests and the inwards the property of the person presenting the
victim. Moreover, of every victim offered, the cut and roasted flesh
went to the priests. On the other hand, the inscription of Massilia
gives the skin to those who present the victim (the law of the Hebrews
also gives the skin of a burnt-offering to the man who offers the
victim), but according to this decree the victims must be bought from
the priests. For a bull ten shekels were to be paid to them, and though
the tariff at Carthage lays upon the sacrificer a fee of only 2 _sus_
for each head of fowl sacrificed, the inscription of Massilia raises the
fee to 3/4 of a shekel and 2 sus.[567]
FOOTNOTES:
[497] In Strabo, p. 756.
[498] Philo. Frag. 1. ed. Mueller.
[499] Philon. frag. 1, 6, 7, ed. Mueller.
[500] _Loc. cit._ 2, 1-4, ed. Mueller; cf. Bunsen, "AEgypten," 5, 1, 257
ff.
[501] Such is obviously the meaning of this passage.--Baudissin, "Abh.
z. semit. Relig." s. 14.
[502] Fragm. 2, 4, 5, ed. Mueller.
[503] Pausan. 5, 7, 10.
[504] "Hist. Nat." 36, 65.
[505] Athar-ath, _i.e._ Astarte-Athe; Brandis, "Muenzwesen," s. 431.
Diod. 2, 4, 30. 2 Maccab. xi. 26.
[506] Herod. 1, 105. Pausan. 1, 14, 7.
[507] Lucian, "De Dea Syria," c. 16. The cutting off of the hair which
Lucian mentions is also a vicarious custom.
[508] Justin. 18, 3.
[509] Movers, "Phoeniz." Encycl. v. Ersch. s. 388, ff.
[510] 2 Kings xxiii. 7. Ezek. xxiii. 40, ff.
[511] Movers, "Phoeniz." 1, 197, 579; Munter, "Tempel der Goettin von
Paphos," and the Syrian coins in De Luynes, "Numismatique," pl. 1.
Lucian, "De Dea Syr." 13, 28. On the pillars of Marathus and Paphos,
Gerhard, "Kunst der Phoeniker," s. 23.
[512] Xenoph. "Anab." 1, 4; Diod. 2, 4; Lucian, _loc. cit._ 14.
[513] Lucian, _loc. cit._ 33, 39.
[514] Stark, "Forschungen," s. 248, ff.
[515] Avien. "Ora maritima," v. 305.
[516] De Bell. Parth. 28.
[517] Judges xiv. 23; 1 Samuel, v. ff.
[518] Gesenius, "Monum. Tab." 25. Silius Ital. Pun. 3, 104.
[519] Osborne, "Egypt," p. 144.
[520] Baudissin ("Jahve et Moloch," p. 47) regards the amalgamation of
Moloch and Adar as of later origin; to me the connection between Saturn
and the sun (Diod. 2, 30) appears of later origin.
[521] _e.g._ Diod. 20, 65.
[522] Justin. 18, 6. 19, 1; Plin. "H. N." 36, 4.
[523] Curtius, 4, 15, ed. Muetzell; "Porphyr. de Abstinentia," 2, 56.
[524] Euseb. "Praecept. Evang." 4, 26.
[525] 2 Kings iii. 27; see below.
[526] Diod. 13, 86.
[527] Diod. 20, 14.
[528] Plut. "De Superstitione," p. 171; Sil. Ital. 4, 767.
[529] Numen virginale; virgo caelestis.
[530] De Luynes, "Numism." pl. v.; Hockh. "Kreta," 1, 98.
[531] Lucian, "De Dea Syria," 4, 32; Augustin, "De Civitate Dei," 2, 26.
[532] Movers, "Religion der Phoen." s. 605, 611, 621 ff.
[533] Procop. "De bello Persico," 2, 28.
[534] Lucian, "De Dea Syr." 15, 27, 43, 50, 51.
[535] Movers, "Religion der Phoen.," s. 681.
[536] "Our Lord Melkarth, Baal of Tyre," as he is called in an
inscription found at Malta.
[537] Herod. 2, 44; Plin. H. N. 37, 75; Theophr. "De Lap." 25.
[538] Thus Virgil says of the minstrel of Dido: "Canit errantem lunam,
solisque labores," AEn. 1, 742.
[539] Joseph. Ant. 8, 53; Movers, "Religion der Phoenizier," s. 150.
[540] Athen. p. 392; Movers, _loc. cit._ s. 536.
[541] 1 Kings xviii. 28.
[542] Plaut. "Merc." 4, 6.
[543] Cic. "De Nat. Deorum," 3, 23; 1 Macc. v. 43; 2, xii. 26.
[544] Pausan. 3, 23, 1.
[545] Movers, "Phoeniz." 2, 230.
[546] Sil. Ital. 4, 81, 819; Justin. 18, 6.
[547] Virg. "AEn." 1, 742.
[548] Hesychius: "[Greek: Europon skoteinon platy. Europe he chora tes
dyseos e skoteine."] That Europe is Astarte follows from Hesychius:
[Greek: "Hellopia, heorte Europes en Krete]." The "Etymolog. Mag." pp.
232, 333, says: "Europa was anciently called Hellotia, '[Greek: hoti hoi
Phoinikes ten parthenon Hellotian klousin].'" Eloth signifies "goddess."
[549] Jeremiah vii. 18; xliv. 17-23.
[550] Pindar, "Pyth." 3, 90; Cic. "De Nat. Deor." 3, 23.
[551] Appian, "De Reb. Hisp." c. 2; Movers, "Kolonieen der
Phoenizier," s. 63 ff. We shall see below what a conglomeration of
fables the Greeks have gathered round the wandering Astarte, who rides
on a bull and is represented with the crescent of the moon, and a cow's
horns. With them she is not only Europe whom the Bull-Zeus carries from
Phoenicia, who is sought by Cadmus the son of Phoenix. In her crescent
and cow's horns they also recognise their Argive Moon-goddess, Io, and
represent her as wandering to Phoenicia and Egypt, where Isis, who here
again wears the cow's horns or head, or is entirely represented as a
cow, becomes their Io. The wanderings of Dido-Astarte then became
confused with the stories of Helena, with the wanderings and fortunes of
the foundress of Carthage, and the travels of AEneas, the favourite of
Aphrodite, were directed to the most famous seats of the worship of
Ashera.
[552] Noeldeke, "Inschrift des Mesa."
[553] Serv. ad AEn. 2, 632; Gerhard, "Kunst der Phoeniker," s. 36, 38.
[554] According to Lenormant, _um-pali_, "mother of the sword."
[555] Joh. Lyd. "De Mensibus," 4, 46.
[556] Lev. xix, 27-29; Deut. xiv. 1; xxii. 5; xvi. 21; xxiii. 1.
[557] Ezek. viii. 14.
[558] Lucian, "De Dea Syria," c. 8; Strabo, p. 755.
[559] "De Laudib. Constant." c. 13.
[560] Bunsen, "AEgypten," 5, 1, 379.
[561] Herod. 3, 37; Gerhard, "Kunst der Phoenicker Taf." 4, 5; Movers,
"Phoenizier," 2, 87-99; "Phoeniz." in Ersch. s. 391 ff.
[562] Jerem. x. 5; Baruch, vi. 3, xxv. 26; Diod. 20, 65.
[563] Lucian, "De Dea Syria," c. 49.
[564] Polyb. 31, 20; Diod. 20, 14; Just. 18, 7; Curt, 4, 13.
[565] 1 Kings xviii. 17-24.
[566] Movers, "Phoeniz." in Ersch. s. 419.
[567] Movers, "Opferwesen der Karthager," s. 8; Blau, "Opfertarif von
Karthago;" Zeitschrift d. d. M. G. 16, 438.