Encylodaedia Biblica; a critical dictionary of the literary, political and ...

PHCENICIA PHCl3NICIA
(see HADAD, RIMMON). His name does not occur in
Phoenician inscriptions : but Philo (224) knows him as
‘king of the gods’ who, with ‘the greatest Astarte’
(4 peylurq ’Aurdprq) and with Zeus son of Demarus,
rules the land by the authority of Cronos (El). Philo
mentions also DAGON [q...], whom he takes for a corngod,
but who is of Babylonian origin, and whose cultus
came to Philistis before the Philistine settlement (Dagantakala,
Am. Tab. 215f:).
On Assyrian gods in Sidon, see below, fj 21. Here
and there also we find traces in the later period of the
deity, originally from Gaza, known as hlarna, ‘our
Lord’ in the proper names ‘Abdmarfiai (‘jmmy, CZS
116 6) and MarThai (i6. 93 [Cyprus] ; cp the Tyrian
lamp with the dedication 6’eG BseXpapr CZS1 p. 111).
With the Macedonian period the Greek deities began
to be introduced and, as we have already seen, to be
put as much as possible on a level with the native ones.
Such, apart from a few other figures in Philo quite
unintelligible - to us. are the deities known to have been
worshipped among the Phoenicians.
142tt;y Though the general type, however,
state after was the same everywhere, the details
.. of the Dantheon were. as niieht he
aeatn* exoected. different in ‘each inchdual
city. The only one of these pantheons about which we
possess precise information is that of Carthage, which
we know through the Greek translation of the treaty
between Hannibal and Philip of Macedon (Polyb. 79).
In that treaty the gods of Carthage are arranged in
groups of three, invoked in the following order :-(I)
Zeus [Ba‘al-Sami%n], Hera [‘AHtart Sme Ba‘al= Coelestis],
Apollo [unknown : hardly ReSep ; many have thought
of Ba‘alhammh, hut ESmtin is also possible]; (2)
Gaipwv KapXqGoviwv [Astarte of Carthage], Herakles
[Melkart]. Iolaos [unknown ; in any case he is thought
of as a constant attendant of Melkart] ; (3) @so2 oi
uuurpareubpwor-by which we are to understand
fetishes carried along with the army to the field as was
the ark of Yahwk--, sun, moon, earth ; (4) rivers, harbours,
streams ; (5) all the gods who inhabit (KadXouur)
Carthage. The name most conspicuous by its absence
is that of Tnt-for it cannot be represented by any of
the deities mentioned.
The Phoenician worship differs in no essential particular
from that of the allied members of the Semitic
family. Sacred territories are dedicated to the various
gods, and altars and niassebahs grow up. Out of
these the image of the god is gradually developed, often
(as we have seen) borrowing its forms from the nations
more advanced in civilisation. The image of the god
demands also a house for the god, a temple, which in
the Phmnician cities was built throughout in the Egyptian
style. Alongside of the newer, however, the older
forms of religion continued to hold their ground. The
arrangements of a Phoenician temple, as we learn from
the coins and excavations in Cyprus (see Ohnefalsch-
Richter ; especially instructive is his [partly reconstructed]
temenos of Idalium. Plate lvi.), included a
large open court, in which stood the stone-fetish of the
god and the worshippers set up their votive pillars (mas-
SEbahs) and divine images. Limitation of space forbids
a lengthened discussion as to the various sacred animals
(doves to Astarte, etc.), or of the festivals or the ritual.
From Carthage have been recovered several fragments of sacrificial
ordinances (CIS 1 165 167.170 -amongst them the great
sacrificial tariff of Marseilles) which fix with exactitude the
various dues of the priests, just as in P, or in the Greek ordinances
relating to the same subject. Moreover, we have from
Cilium fragments of a list of expenses for temple servants and
sacrifices (i6. 86), and from Carthage a fragment of a sacrificial
calendar (i6.166), as also of a list of large expenditures by the
citizens on the temple (3. 171). Amongst the personnel of the
temple, the ‘ hair-cutters (barbers) of the gods’ (&K 152, CIS
186aPJ, 257-259588) have a prominent place (cp BEARD); as
1 The existence of a God 5” (as conjectured by Berger in a
dissertation cited by Noldeke in ZDhfG42 471 [1888])can hardly
be said to have been sufficiently proved.
3749
also have the temple-servants (86247&, etc.); other ofiicial
designations (e.c., 260J 377 ; and some in the passages already
cited) still remain ohscure (cp Doc;, $ 3).
Of all that the individual or the state receives by the
favour of the god, a certain portion, and that the first
and hest-an (irrapxf or nvmi (CZS15, as in 0T)-
is rendered to the giver. So also the deity receives
a share of the spoils of war. The practice, the
existence of which we know from the OT, of sacrificing
to the god after any great victory or deliverance. if not
all the prisoners, at least the best and choicest of them,
*upon the altar before the holy tent ’ was still followed in
Carthage in 307 R. c., after the victory over Agathocles
(Diod. 2065). When angry, however, the godhead
demands for propitiation also the blood of the wor-
shipper’s own kin. The maxim ‘every firstborn is
mine ’ plainly held good in Phoenicia also, and applied,
as amongst the Israelites, to the firstborn of men as
well as of earth (see FIRSTBORN). In ordinary times
no doubt the debt was redeemed, as in Israel ; but in
times of extremity a man would offer to his god his
own grown-up son. See MOLECH.
If it were his only son, the sacrifice would be all the more
efficacious, as we learn from the story of El (like that of
Abraham ; see ISAAC) in the legend narrating the institution of
this kind ofoffering(see above, $11, col. 3743). As civilisation ad-
vanced, the Carthaginians sought to escape thedire obligation by
settingapart forsacrificechildrenofslaves whom they brought up
as their own. In 310, however, when Agathocles had reduced the
state to the utmost straits and the enemy lay encamped before the
city, they once more laid 200 boys of their nohlest families upon
the arms of the brazen image of Cronos where they were allowed
to fall into the fiery furnace flaming beneath (Diud. 20 14).
This seems to have been the last occasion on which matters
were brought to such extremity; in the agonies of the Punic
wars we do not read of any similar measure being resorted to.
In other cases, when a catastrophe threatens or has
already befallen, the head of the state offers himself as
a sacrifice to the offended deities and ascends the
sacrificial pyre. So, according to the legend, did Dido-
Elissa, the foundress of the city ; so did Hamilcar after
the battle on the Himera; and a similar step was
meditated by King Juba of Numidia after the battle of
Thapsus, and would actually have been taken by him
if Cirta his capital had not shut her gates upon him.
The deity demands yet other sacrifices besides. Among
these was circumcision-a practice borrowed by the Phcenicians,
as by the Israelites, from Egypt (Herod. 2 108), and according
to Philo (224) performed by El upon himself in the first instance
and so imposed upon his subjects. We find no allusion, however
to the practice of castration in honour of the gods so frequentl;
found in Syria and Asia Minor. On the other hand ecstatic
L prophets ’ who in honour of ‘the Ba‘al ’ perform wild dances
and wound themselves with swords and spears in orgiastic
frenzy as was done by the followers of the goddess of Comma,
and ishven now done by the Persians at the mourning festival
of Hasan and Husein were known to the Phoenicians also (cp
I K: 18 26fi). In the’Golenischeff Papyrus (see B 5) a page of
the King of Ryhlos, seized by the god during a sacrifice, gives
an oracle in his ecstasy. Another sacrifice to the deity is the re-
quirement that virgins should prostitute themselves in the service
of the great goddesses and make over the profits to the temple
treasury-a practice that was widely diffused among the
Semites and the peoples of Asia Minor. Perhaps Rohertson
Smith is right in finding here a religious survival of primitive
conditions, under which fixed marriages were still unknown and
the sexual coitus was considered as a manifestation of the
divinity in human life. We have direct evidence of the existence
of the custom at Byhlos (Luc. De Dea Syr. 6) and in Cyprus
(Herod. 1 199, Justin 18 5). For another analogous practice in
the service of the deity which seems to have been current in
Phcenicia cp Eus. Vit. Const. 3 55.
With regard to what happens to men after death the
views of the Phoenicians, as of the other Semitic peoples,
remained quite undeveloped. From the sepulchral
inscriptions of Eshmunazar and Tabnit we see that
undisturbed rest in the grave was desired, and to ensure
it imprecations were employed ; to open a grave or
coffin is an ‘abomination unto Astarte’ (Tabnit 6). It
is, however, hut a comfortless, shadowy existence that is
lived in the dark kingdom of death ‘ among the ghosts
or Rephiinz’ (A40ot. nn. the god of death, son of El,
mentioned in Philo, 2 24). The Phoenician, like the
Israelite, had no more heartfelt longing than for a
descendant to continue his family and with it his earthly
3750