Phoenician sky god 4 letters. Gods. Phoenicians. The most revered Phoenician gods

Agricultural gods On the contrary, having ordered life, which has become, in essence, secular, he willingly censes the agricultural gods, undemanding and complaisant, and ascribes harvests to them. Hence these indignant words: "You forgot the intercessor who gave birth to you, and did not remember

Underground gods In ancient Greek mythology, Hades and his wife Persephone, whom he kidnapped from her mother Demeter, belonged to the underground gods. They rule in Erebus over all the underground gods and monsters. Before the arrival of Hades, there was no other government in Erebus, except for Erebus himself,

Yu.B. Tsirkin

The Phoenicians worshiped virtually the same or nearly the same gods as the Ugaritians. But they pronounced their names in accordance with the laws of their language. So, they called the god Ilu El, and Balu - Baal. Of course, despite the fact that both the Ugaritic and Phoenician religions belonged to the West Semitic and had a common origin, there was no complete identity between the two religious and mythological systems. First, the Phoenicians and Ugaritans were, although closely related, but still different peoples. Secondly, the sources of our knowledge about the Phoenician and Ugaritic gods date back to different times. True, the time of the appearance of the composition of the Berite priest Sanhunyaton most likely coincides with the last period of Ugarit's existence and is probably not much later than the time of the creation of those mythological poems that were written down by the Utarian scribe Ilimilku. In other words, if we attribute the data of Sanhunyaton to the II millennium BC. NS. (and this seems quite reasonable), then we can consider the information that has come down to us about the Ugaritic and Phoenician religions as almost simultaneous. But the work of Sanhunyaton itself was largely reinterpreted by Philo of the Bible, who lived more than a thousand years later, and it takes considerable work of a scientist to restore (at least approximately) the content and meaning of the work of Sanhunyaton. We also have at our disposal evidence of a later time, already the 1st millennium BC. NS. These are not always clear messages from Greek and Roman authors, and genuine inscriptions left by the inhabitants of Phenicia and its colonies, especially Carthage, which contained certain news about the Phoenician gods. So, a significant part of our information may reflect a new, in comparison with the time of Sanhunyaton, stage in the history of the West Semitic, in this case Phoenician, religion.

The supreme god of the Phoenicians was E-mail... True, the Phoenicians, at least the Phoenicians of the 1st millennium BC. e., with their real needs they turned little to him. Al, so to speak, reigned, but did not rule. Only on the outskirts of the Phoenician world was El still quite actively rendered cultic honors as the Creator of creation. It is possible that El was also worshiped in Byblos and Berit. But in most Phoenician cities, including the colonies, El's "duties" were already passed on to other gods.

One of these gods was Baal-Shamim("Lord of heaven"). He held a very high place in the world of Phoenician deities. The Phoenicians placed him at the head of the universe. Baal-Shamim's residence was located high above the ground. It was said about him that he was one of the most ancient gods and that people were the first to worship him. Baal-Shamim was apparently connected with the sea, patronizing navigation. Baal-Shamim headed the entire list of gods in various Phoenician cities - Byblos, Tire, Carthage and others. But, as one French scholar notes, in religious life as well as in politics, "popularity and official status are two different things." Still, Baal-Shamim was not particularly popular.

Along with Baal-Shamim, the Phoenicians placed other gods at the head of their divine hierarchy, who, apparently, in the 1st millennium BC. NS. also already played in fact a relatively small role in the religious life of Phenicia and its colonies. These were Baal-Malaki(or Baal-Malaga) and Baal-Tsafon... Baal-Malaki is most likely another sea deity, and it was he who patronized sea voyages. Perhaps it was in his honor that the Phoenicians named one of the cities they founded in Spain, Malaka (modern Malaga). As for Baal-Tsaphon, this is a very ancient god. In Ugarit, where he was called the Strongman Balu, he, as we have already seen, played a very important role in religious beliefs, being the god of rain, fertilizing the earth, the god of thunder and storm, associated with the sea. Apparently, in Phenicia, he was endowed with the same features and functions. Of these three gods, Baal-Tsaphon was probably comparatively more revered. Religious honors were given not only to God himself, but also to Mount Tsafon (Ugaritic Tsapan), where, as it was assumed, the palace of this god is located. Temples of Baal-Tsaphon were in many Phoenician cities, and the Phoenicians often included the name Tsafon in the names of their children, thereby placing the child under the protection of this god. And the neighbors of the Phoenicians, the Jews, compared Mount Tsaphon with their sacred Mount Zion.

Unfortunately, there is no information about how these three gods were related to the family of the Phoenician gods. I must say that the Phoenicians, and indeed many other (if not all) ancient peoples, considered their gods as members of one or more divine families. Many, and perhaps all, deities of Phenicia and its colonies were considered to one degree or another to be descendants of the god Heaven or his son El, who eventually overthrew his father and himself became the head of the world of gods and people. Heaven, however, had not only sons, but daughters as well. And among them Astarte played a particularly important role.

Astarta belonged to the most ancient deities not only of the Phoenicians, but also of other peoples who spoke Semitic languages, especially in the western part of the Semitic-speaking world. In Mesopotamia, she or a goddess very close to her performed under the name Ishtar. In Syria and the surrounding areas, she was known as Astarte. Since 1973, archaeologists have been excavating the ancient city of Ebla in northeastern Syria. Scientists have deciphered and read many of the texts found during excavations. And Astarte is clearly mentioned in them, and sometimes she is even called "the goddess of Ebla", that is, she obviously plays the role of the supreme goddess of this kingdom, which occupied an important place in the political geography of Asia Minor in the III millennium BC. NS. Then and later, already in the II millennium BC. BC, Astarte was revered in other places in the region, including in Ugarit, although there she was inferior to the primacy of Anat. In the 1st millennium BC. NS. Astarte was worshiped by the peoples neighboring with the Phoenicians - the Arameans in Syria, the Ammonites and Moabites in the Jordan region, the Philistines in Palestine and even the Egyptians, who became closely acquainted with the cult of this goddess in the previous millennium. She was also widely known to the Jews of Palestine. And when monotheism began to be established there and God Yahweh began to be perceived as the only true God of the whole world, the biblical prophets unleashed their anger on Astarte, seeing in her and in Baal (which god is meant by this name, it is not known exactly) the main enemies.

For the Phoenicians, Astarte was one of the most basic and widely revered deities. No wonder the Greeks considered the whole of Phenicia to be a country dedicated to Astarte. By her origin, Astarte was primarily the goddess of fertility. When later these functions of her were transferred to the human world, she began to be perceived as the goddess of love. It seemed that her cares increased the number of people on earth, that she patronizes the family and procreation. But society and the state itself were perceived by the ancients as a big family. And therefore, Astarte was also thought of as a goddess, patronizing the civil order and civil society. In the city-states of Phenicia, where power was in the hands of the king, who personified this state, Astarte was closely associated with the royal power, and she herself was perceived in many ways as a queen. She was called "great", "mistress". In addition, Astarte was a warrior goddess and a hunter goddess.

Sometimes she was also considered the goddess of the moon (although the Phoenicians had a separate lunar deity), and later she was seen in the evening star.

Over time, the image of Astarte has evolved. In Carthage, she, starting from the middle of the 5th century. BC e., is pushed aside, although, apparently, not officially, into the background, but in the rest of the Phoenician world, on the contrary, it acquires more and more comprehensive cosmic features, is perceived as the nurse of the entire universe. The Greeks and Romans usually thought that Astarte was the same goddess as their Aphrodite or Venus, that is, first of all, the goddess of love, but sometimes, and more and more, she was compared with the supreme Roman goddess Juno. And one Roman author said that the divine Astarte is the strength, life, health of people and gods and at the same time a fatal disease, as well as the sea, earth, sky, stars. For him and many others who shared this opinion, Astarte became the supreme deity, governing life and death, health and disease, the earthly and heavenly worlds.

But even without such a cosmic exaggeration, Astarte was a very versatile goddess. One modern scholar says that this name alone hid thousands of divine individuals. This, of course, is a figurative expression, but it well emphasizes the diversity of Astarte's "duties". And there were quite a few different manifestations, hypostases, Astarte. For example, Astarte of Ericin is known, revered on the Sicilian Mount Erica. It was said about her that she left Sicily for nine days and flew to Africa, accompanied by sacred pigeons. In the image of Astarte Ericinsky, her role as the goddess of the fertility of the earth and the fertility of the human race was especially emphasized. Another type of Astarte is associated with the sea.

The images of Astarte were also varied. As the goddess of fertility, love and fertility, she was usually depicted as a naked woman clutching her breasts with her hands. But her image is often found in the form of a queen sitting on a throne. The throne was in this case so important that sometimes only he was depicted, and it was understood that the goddess invisibly sits on it. Sometimes a conical stone was placed on the throne, designed to symbolize Astarte. The image of the goddess in the form of a special stone was a relic of very ancient times, when the gods were not yet represented in human form. This alone testifies to how ancient the cult of this goddess was. The lion and the dove were considered the sacred animals of Astarte. Closely associated with the cult of Astarte is the image of a kerub - a fantastic creature with a lion's body, human head and wings, very similar to the Egyptian and, especially, the Greek sphinxes. Kerubs sometimes guarded the throne of Astarte, they were generally associated with the concept of a royal deity, they acted as guardians of the sanctity of the place. The Phoenicians often depicted Astarte looking out of a window: perhaps at that moment they were thinking about the goddess watching earthly affairs from her palace. Sometimes Astarta was even portrayed as armed.

As the Ugaritans perceived their goddess Anata, so the Phoenicians perceived Astarte both as a virgin and as a spouse and mother. She was one of Al's wives and bore him seven daughters, probably Tinnit among them. In Phenicia, in some cities, she was venerated along with Astarte. In Carthage, where, as already mentioned, the cult of Astarte from the middle of the 5th century. BC NS. began to be pushed into the background, the first place was taken by the veneration of Tinnit. However, officially and after that Astarte retained one of the first places among the Carthaginian deities.

Tinnitus was considered by the Carthaginians primarily as a heavenly goddess, appearing before earthly inhabitants in the form of the moon. She moves clouds and winds, leads the stars and moves across the sky on a lion. As a heavenly goddess, Tinnitus sends down beneficent rain to the earth, fertilizing the earth, which allows the earth to produce plants and animals. Therefore, she is the “nurse” and “great mother”. The Carthaginians transferred these "duties" of her to the human world. The sacred bird of Tinnit, like Astarte, was considered a dove, connecting heaven and earth in its flight. And when the goddess was portrayed as a woman, she was always enveloped in pigeon wings. Like Astarte, Tinnit is a virgin and at the same time a goddess of fertility; like Astarte, she was thought of as a warlike goddess, symbolizing the victory and power of the Carthaginian army. Therefore, she was sometimes called "powerful". But more often she acts as "mistress" or "great mistress". She was perceived by the inhabitants of Carthage and its neighbors as the Lady of Carthage. She was depicted on Carthaginian coins as a symbol of this state. She personified Carthage, its squares and streets, as well as the hearth of Carthage with its eternal flame. The Carthaginians considered Tinnit a "advising" goddess and believed that she invisibly presided over the meetings of the Carthaginian Senate and gave advice to its members for the good of the state. And later they began to perceive her as a "true ruler", the queen of all the gods.

Rare images of Tinnitus in humanoid form. More often it was depicted symbolically in the form of a rhombus (since ancient times this geometric figure has been associated with the idea of ​​growth, birth, birth). Palm and pomegranate were considered other symbols of Tinnit. The so-called sign of a bottle in the form of a vessel with a cylindrical or ovoid body and a short cylindrical neck or a hemispherical cap is also associated with the cult of Tinnitus; sometimes, instead of a cap, an image of a human head appears, and on the body - female breasts or phallus. Apparently, this sign personifies both a child sacrificed (this will be discussed later) and who acquired immortality in such a terrible way, and a funeral vessel in which the ashes of the victim are buried. Especially often in Carthage and in other places of its power, the so-called Tinnitus sign is found in the form of a triangle or a trapezoid with a crossbar placed on the apex of a triangle or a short upper side of a trapezoid, and the ends of the crossbar are often raised up, and higher, above the very apex of the triangle or the middle of the trapezoid , is cool. Scientists have been trying to figure out the meaning of this mysterious sign for many years. An angle or a triangle, especially a shaded one (and such is also found in Carthage), has long been a symbol of a woman, a female fruiting principle, and a circle can symbolize the sun, while a devil means not separation, but, on the contrary, a combination of these figures. And in this case, the "sign of Tinnit" is a symbol of the union of the goddess of fertility with the god of the sun. Baal-Hammon was considered such a god in Carthage.

Baal-Hammon was an ancient and highly revered god, the son of El. And later, when El began to be worshiped much less, some of his father's features were transferred to Baal-Hammon. Baal-Hammon was worshiped not only in Phenicia itself (including Tire), but also in neighboring places, as well as in the Tyrian colonies. Except for the Utaritic names like Abdihamanu ("slave to Hamanu") and the dubious mention of Hammon in Emara, the earliest mention of this god dates back to the 9th century. BC NS. and is contained in an inscription made in one of the Aramaic states, which is under strong Phoenician influence. The name of this god is found on an amulet found in Tire. With the Phoenician colonists, the cult of Baal-Hammon spread early throughout the Mediterranean. In the very west of the Phoenician world, in Hades, there was a Baal-Hammon temple. On the coins of another Phoenician colony in Spain, Malaki, there is a symbol of this god - a circle with rays. The existence of the Baal-Hammon cult was noted in almost all areas of Phoenician colonization, as well as where the local population experienced a strong Phoenician influence, such as in Numidia in Africa. He enjoyed particular popularity in Carthage. There he was highly revered from the earliest times of the city's existence. At first, Carthage was founded on a hill near the coast, and later on this hill was the Carthaginian citadel of Bierce. In the place where the colonists originally landed, a sanctuary arose. For a long time it was dedicated to one Baal-Hammon, and then (no later than the 4th century BC) - to Baal-Hammon and Tinnit. And already quite early, dedicatory steles appeared here in honor of Baal-Hammon. So we can say that Baal-Hammon from the very beginning belonged to the most significant deities of Carthage. Later he began to perform in a pair with Tinnit (nothing is known about a pair with Astarta), which did not detract from his status. In the Phoenician colonies of Malta, Sicily and Sardinia, he is still alone, although Tinnit was also known there.

Like Tinnit, and before her Astarte, Baal-Hammon absorbed more and more new essences, acquired more and more new features. He was a sun god; not without reason one of its symbols was the solar disk, sometimes winged, like the Egyptian one. Baal-Hammon was located above the heavenly ocean. The sun was often in ancient times a symbol and guardian of justice. And Baal-Hammon also acted as such a guarantor, listening attentively to the prayers and complaints of believers. At the same time Baal-Hammon was an agrarian deity; he was believed to ensure the fertility of the earth, and by association - and the fertility of man, symbolizing the male productive power, like Astarte and Tinnit-female. Sometimes they called him just Powerful. Being a sun god, Baal-Hammon descended in the west in the evening and returned to the east through the underground ocean, in order to rise above the world in the morning. During his journey through the underworld, he never lost his royalty. Moreover, there, in the gloomy world of the dead, he acted as the ruler. Thus, Baal-Hammon was thought of as a triune god - heavenly (sun), earthly (fruiting of the earth and fertility of men) and otherworldly (lord of the underworld).

Baal-Hammon was portrayed in different ways. Sometimes he was presented in the form of a disk resembling the sun, sometimes with large ears, so that he could listen to all the prayers of people. Sometimes - in the form of a pillar tapering upward, which reminded of his earthly essence. Images of Baal-Hammon in a humanoid form were also often met. Then he appeared as a mighty old man sitting on a throne (which emphasized his royal position), decorated with kerubs. On his head he wore a conical tiara or a crown of feathers. God raised his right hand in a blessing gesture, and in his left he held a staff, decorated with either an ear of bread or a pine cone, which has long been considered a symbol of immortality and male fertility. In this form, it was sometimes placed on a ship crossing the underground ocean. In Carthage, a very ancient gem (carved stone) of the 6th, and maybe the 7th century was found. BC BC, which depicts Baal-Hammon, sitting on a throne; the throne is on the ship, and below it are the plants stretching downward, and this should have meant that the ship is crossing the waters of the underground ocean. Baal-Hammon himself is dressed in a long royal robe, with a crown on his head, next to which is a solar disk, and in his hand he holds a staff with an ear of bread. Thus, here God appears in his triune essence.

Al's daughter was a goddess Anat... This is a very ancient goddess, but, like her father, she gradually lost her worshipers. Anat is extremely similar to Astarte, being both the goddess of love and fertility, and the goddess of war and the hunt. The increasing spread of the cult of the latter reduced the scope of action assigned to Anat. Only in Cyprus did her cult, to a greater or lesser extent, retain its significance for quite a long time. There, in the image of Anat, they emphasized, rather, her warlike nature. It was not for nothing that the Greeks living in Cyprus believed that Anat was the same goddess as their Athena.

Sister Anat and daughter El the Phoenicians considered Sheol, goddess of the underworld. It was said about her that her father killed her when she was still a virgin. Descending into the underworld, Sheol became its mistress. Sometimes she was called that - the Lady of the Dungeon. The fact that the Phoenicians considered Sheol a virgin should not, in their understanding, interfere with her position as the wife of the god of death Mota, also the son of El. The name Mot means death. This god was revered, but at the same time they were very afraid. Death has always been considered as the inevitable end of earthly life, so that at birth it seemed to the people to be one of the two sides of life. And some Phoenicians even ranked Mota as one of the creators of this world. In the kingdom of the dead, the Rephaims, probably the souls of their ancestors, played a significant role.

To a certain extent, God was associated with the kingdom of death Reshef, the god is very ancient. He was revered not only by the Phoenicians, but also by many other peoples who spoke West Semitic languages. The cult of Reshef was well known to the Egyptians. " It was a warlike god, a god of war, who at the same time acted as a god of epidemics, but he also delivered from them. His very name meant "flame, lightning, spark." And it may indicate that Reshef was also considered the god of lightning and heavenly light. And since lightning is associated with a storm, Reshef was also perceived as the god of the storm, sending beneficial rain to the earth. This god also acted as the keeper of treaties. The Phoenicians and their neighbors attributed irresistible strength to him. Reshef was usually portrayed as a warrior armed with a bow. Lightning was thought to be Reshef's arrows. They could portend misfortune and disease, the death of livestock and all property. In this case, Reshef's name was sometimes called in the plural. And the biblical Shulamith tells his beloved Solomon that love is strong, like Mot (death), jealousy is inevitable, like Sheol (hell), her Reshefs (arrows) are fiery Reshefs. This warrior killed people, and could, on the contrary, save them from death. Reshef's sacred animal was a deer (or gazelle).

Another god connecting life and death was Eshmun... He can be called one of the great Phoenician gods. First of all, it is a god-healer. In addition, Eshmun was considered a dying and resurrecting god, closely associated with the world of fertility, with the world of dying and resurrecting nature. According to the myth, the young men Eshmun died, but Astarte brought him back to life. He was the eighth brother of Kabirov.

Seven Kabirs and their eighth brother was the children of Tsidik ("righteous"), one of the most ancient gods, who, together with his brother Misor ("just"), personified world and social order and the inviolability of existing institutions, the legitimacy of royal power and loyalty to divine and human laws. True, sometimes Eshmun was considered not the son of Tsidik, but Reshef, thereby emphasizing the inextricable connection between death and healing. The Kabirs, including Eshmun, are the discoverers of medicinal herbs and the inventors of the ship. But this is an unusual ship - it transports the soul of the deceased across the heavenly ocean to the world of eternity. The Kabirov ship is the ship of the dead. Such a ship is painted on the wall of a tomb found on the territory of the Carthaginian Republic that existed in antiquity. There are eight warriors on the ship. These are the Kabirs, including Eshmun. The role of the helmsman is played by a solar deity.

The first role among the Kabirs is played by their eighth brother - Eshmun. He dies and is resurrected, he is connected with the world of death and can prevent it through healing. And if it is impossible to be cured, Eshmun helps the soul of the deceased to find bliss in the next world, where it is being cured of the diseases of this world. And in this capacity, the Phoenicians highly revered Eshmun. He was for them the master of life and death. The sacred animal of Eshmun was considered a snake - a symbol of eternal life and constant renewal, for the Phoenicians, like many other peoples of antiquity, sincerely believed that snakes do not die, but only change their skin, after which they are reborn to a new life. The Phoenicians called the snake itself "a good deity" and was extremely revered.

The cult of the healing gods was widespread among the Phoenicians. In addition to Eshmun, they had a whole constellation of such divine healers. Shadrapa was one of them. Like Eshmun, he was considered the god of a dying and resurrecting nature; perhaps he was associated with the cultivation of grapes, patronizing this branch of agriculture. In addition, Shadrapa was a warrior, and also probably a hunting god and, equally important, a god reigning over the world and people and beasts, associated with the sky and mountains. On a stele found in Amrit (in the north of Phenicia, not far from Arvad), Shadrapa is depicted standing on a lion, which, in turn, stands on the mountains; on the god's head is a royal crown with an Egyptian sacred snake (the Egyptian pharaoh was usually depicted in such a crown, and of the gods - Osiris), in one hand he holds a beast, in the other - a weapon (or lightning), and above Shadrapa's head is a solar disk and wings . It is possible that there is a connection between Shadrapa and the Egyptian god Shed, since, according to some scholars, the very name of the god means “Shed the healer”. Shadrapa personified life-giving forces, he healed people, if not in this, then in the other world, where their souls are reborn to the afterlife.

The same gods-healers were Cid, which was also associated with hunting and fishing, and Horon, whose field of activity included, inter alia, the treatment of cattle diseases and assistance in cases of wolf and snake bites. In different Phoenician cities, the meaning of the healing gods could be different. So, in Sidon and Carthage the dominant place was occupied by Eshmun, in the Phoenician city of Leptis in Africa - Shadrapa.

Among the children of El, the Phoenicians also named God Yevo, or Yehuda, whom Anoret gave birth to Elu (unfortunately, we do not know anything about her). This is a sea god, especially revered in Berit, and it was his priest who was known to us Sanhunyaton. Yevo has been associated with sea deities. The Phoenicians worshiped several of these deities.

The ancestor of many sea deities was Bel, the son of El, perceived as the god of flowing water. His grandson is the god of the sea Yam .

The son of Yama was a god whom the Greeks identified with their god of the sea element Poseidon and called him by his name. This god was considered very powerful, he was especially revered in Berit and in Carthage. He was often depicted as a rider, racing on the hippocampus (half fish, half horse). Together with him, various deities lived in the sea, patronizing navigation. Among them, the so-called pathekas, creatures in the form of dwarfs, were very popular. Their images were placed on the prows of ships to ward off misfortune from ships and to protect sailors while sailing.

The sea played a very important role in the life of the Phoenicians. But the land was also dear to them in its own way.

For these brave seafarers, she was a safe haven and a breadwinner. The Phoenicians worshiped her as a goddess Arts which means "earth". The sun shone over her during the day ( Shepesh), and at night the moon ( Yarich). And they, too, were the gods worshiped by the Phoenicians. Of these, they especially worshiped the Sun. The Phoenicians even said that the Sun was generally the first deity that people perceived and to whom they gave divine honors. Sometimes the solar deity was perceived as a man, but more often the Sun was still a woman, depicted with rays around the head. The Phoenicians also worshiped the stars. They identified some of them with other gods. If they perceived the evening star as the goddess Astarte, then the morning star as the god Astara. This god was highly revered by some other Semitic-speaking peoples, for example, the southern Arabs, he was known in Ugarit, but in Phenicia he was rather little known.

The brothers of the supreme god El and the sons of Heaven and Earth were Betil and Dagon... Betilus was the personification of those sacred stones that the Phoenicians put up. Dagon was connected to the earth. First of all, he acted as the god of agriculture, it is not for nothing that his name is associated with the name of grain in the Phoenician language. Dagon invented the plow, he also taught people to sow grain and make bread. His adopted son was Demarount, at the same time Dagon's half-brother, for Demarount's real parents were Heaven and his concubine. But this pregnant concubine was captured and given to Dagon, in whose house she gave birth. And according to the custom widespread in Western Asia, the child acquired the rights of a member of the family in whose house he was born. Perhaps this is how Demarount became a member of the Dagon family. Demarount fought with the god of the sea Yam, and this recalls the Utarian myth about the war with the sea god Yammu the Strong Balu, who was the son of Daganu, that is, the same Dagon. True, the battle of Demarount with Yam was unsuccessful, and Demarount had to flee. But on the whole, this enterprise ended, apparently in favor of Demarount, for El gave him, along with Astarte and Hadad, power over almost all of Phenicia. And although we do not know other myths about Demarount, and his cult is still far from being investigated, it can be assumed that, like Astarte, Demarount belonged to the most significant Phoenician deities. He probably personified, together with Astarte, the life-giving fruitful power of the earth and was considered her husband (or, rather, one of the spouses). Their son was Melqart. The third ruler of Phenicia, Hadad, was more connected with the mountains, especially with Lebanon, separating Phenicia from the interior regions of Syria, and sometimes he is known under the name of the Lord of Lebanon (Baal-Labnan).

Melqart, the son of Demarount and Astarte, belonged to the group of the so-called young gods. To her belonged Eshmun and Adonis... This is already a new generation of Phoenician deities. They were united by the fact that they were all thought of as dying gods (more precisely, forcibly perishing) and resurrected, associated with dying and reborn nature. But no less important was the fact that by their dying and subsequent resurrection, they connected two worlds - the earthly and the underground, this-worldly and the other-worldly, the world of life and the world of death. Usually these gods patronized individual cities. Even Eshmun, the general Phoenician god, was especially venerated in Sidon. Melqart was the patron saint of Tyrus, and later became the patron saint of numerous Tyrian colonies. Adonis was the god of Byblos.

The "young" gods were not the only patrons of cities. Along with them, older deities also acted in this capacity. So, in Tire, and especially in Sidon, Astarte played this role. In the Bible, the goddess who was called the Lady of the Bible, Baalat-Gebal, was worshiped (the Phoenicians called the Bible Gebal or Gubla). Like Astarte, she was one of the spouses of El, acted as the goddess of fertility and love. She patronized Baalat-Gebal and navigation. But her sphere of authority was limited to the area of ​​the Bible. In this city and its surroundings, she was worshiped as the supreme divine queen. It was she who, it was believed, bestowed on specific earthly kings power over the Bible, prolonged their days and years, and could overthrow them if the kings violate their obligations to the gods, and primarily to her, the Lady of the Bible. The biblical king considered himself a servant of Baalat-Gebal. Her cult has existed in Byblos since ancient times. They portrayed Baalat-Gebal sitting on a throne, dressed in Egyptian clothing, with horns on her head, between which the sun disk was placed; the goddess raised her right hand in a blessing gesture. It was the image of the queen and mistress. But she could, like Astarte, conditionally depict in the form of a sacred conical stone. Namely, but so Baalat-Gebal was presented in the biblical temple, which is still the most ancient Phoenician temple excavated by archaeologists.

In one version of the myth, Baalat-Gebal was considered the wife of El, in the other, the god Khusor was her husband. He was an artisan god, especially patronizing construction (including shipbuilding) and blacksmithing. It was sometimes said that Khusor was the inventor of the first ship (although he shared this honor with other deities). As a shipbuilder, he could later be identified with the sea deity Eresh, at the same time also a builder, especially a city planner. The craftsman Khusor was sometimes considered one of the creators of the existing universe. He was portrayed as a mature man in a conical hat (which was worn by artisans, especially blacksmiths, at work) and with pincers in his hands. The cult of Khusor was widespread throughout the Phoenician world.

In the military environment, special deities were popular, patronizing precisely the soldiers. Reshef aroused great respect among them. There was also a special warrior god - Baal-Magonim, that is, "the lord of the shields", whose sacred animal the horse was considered. Baal-Magonim was depicted as a rider in a helmet, with a round shield and spears.

In the Phoenician religion, often several deities performed the same or very similar functions. For example, there were four healing gods (although other deities could successfully heal people), two (or more) sea gods, etc. Similar deities (there could be two, and sometimes three) merged into one image over time ... Later, this spread to other deities, for some reason they were perceived by people as very close. This is how, for example, Tsidtinnit, Tsidmelkart, Milkastart appeared. They were also very revered, in some cities ascending to the position of the highest gods - the patrons of this city.

For example, although the main god of Hades was Melqart, Milkastart was called “the mighty lord” there, which testifies to his rather high position. An inscription with his mention was found on a massive gold ring - a dedication from the "people of Hades" (the latter speaks of the official nature of the dedication). It is clear from the inscription that although the name of this deity contains the element "Astarte", it is itself masculine. In Leptis, Milkastarta and Shadrapa were called "lords of the Leptis", and this also allows us to conclude that both have a high position as "paternal gods", that is, the highest gods of Leptis. The cult of Milkastart is attested in many other Phoenician cities in both the east and west. In Carthage, in particular, there was a temple of this god. Over time, the cults of such double, and sometimes triple gods, which arose quite early (for example, the worship of the god Astar-Kamosh has been known since the 9th century BC), become more and more widespread.

In addition to especially important, influential and powerful gods, the Phoenicians worshiped various small gods, demons. Perhaps among the minor gods, about which there is almost no information, were the children of Astarte - the six sisters of Tinnitus, as well as the deities whom Philo calls the Greek names Eros ("love") and Pot ("passion"). The Phoenicians treated demons with great respect, especially those that averted various troubles from the living and the dead. Among them were the already mentioned Patekas, and gods with horns, the figurines of which are found in different parts of the Phoenician world. The Phoenicians, especially those who lived in the center of the Mediterranean, put masks with exaggerated features, laughing or tragic, in the graves - they also depicted demons designed to ward off troubles from the dead.

Long communication of the Phoenicians with the Egyptians led to the fact that the cults of a number of Egyptian deities penetrated into Phenicia. From the earliest times the inhabitants of Byblos worshiped the goddess Hathor, whom they considered the same goddess as their Baalat-Gebal. Gained great popularity among the Phoenicians Demon depicted as a bow-legged dwarf, often holding snakes. It is possible that even several similar gods were hidden under this name. All of them were considered deities to help people and heal them from various diseases. Phoenicians, especially Western ones, sometimes put the figures of the Demon in the graves, apparently in order to either ward off evil forces from the dead, or, perhaps, on the contrary, to protect people from the harmful effects of the dead. The image of Bes appears on coins as well. Many Phoenicians worshiped the supreme Egyptian god Amun-Ra. Gradually, the cults of Isis and Osiris penetrated into Phenicia, and those Phoenicians who, for various reasons, lived in Egypt itself, especially worshiped the goddess Bastet .

As the Phoenicians and the inhabitants of their colonies, primarily the Carthaginians, came into contact with the Greek world and these contacts became increasingly close (in Carthage from the beginning of the 4th century BC, and in Asia after the conquests of Alexander the Great) , the penetration of Greek myths and Greek cults into the Phoenician environment intensified. Both the Greeks and the Phoenicians themselves often considered the Phoenician gods as almost the same Greek, but with different names, or they gave the Phoenician gods Greek names. But there were also Greek deities, which the Phoenicians made objects of worship, without identifying them with their original deities. Such are the Greek goddess of fertility, Demeter, and her daughter Cora, or Persephone. They were very close to Astarte and Tinnit. However, there was no merger with the latter, and the cult of Demeter and Cora remained completely independent. According to Greek myth, Cora was abducted by the underground god Hades and became his wife and queen of the underworld, but she spent a significant part of the year on earth with her mother. Thus, these goddesses, especially Cora, made a connection between the world of the living and the world of the dead, and this aspect of religion has always attracted the Phoenicians very much. In Carthage, Cora was even called "great" or "mistress", like Astarte and Tinnitus, so she was elevated to the rank of great goddesses.

Another Greek deity, quite early adopted by the Phoenicians, was the god of viticulture and winemaking Dionysus... His image had many different features, but the Phoenicians chose from them those that were especially close to them. Dionysus was considered by the Greeks to be a dying and resurrecting god - this is what attracted the Phoenicians to him. They identified this god with Shadrapa.

The Phoenicians also received other gods of Greece, and then Rome. The Phoenicians who lived in Asia identified Cronus with El, and the Carthaginians with Baal-Hammon. But if for the Greeks Cronus was only the father of the supreme god Zeus, deposed by his son from the throne, then the Phoenicians revered Cronus (and the descendants of the Phoenician colonists living in Africa - Roman Saturn) as an effective supreme god. Other Greek and Roman deities worshiped by the Phoenicians in Asia, Africa and Europe also had their own characteristics. Greek and Roman deities, and no less their own, although more and more often under Greek or Roman names, enjoyed immense popularity among the Phoenicians until the time when they were supplanted by Christianity. And this displacement did not take place so quickly and easily. Even when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire and all pagan cults were banned, the old beliefs continued to exist in the “lower classes” of the Phoenician people in one form or another. Gradually, ideas about the old deities changed, they were perceived either as saints or as demons. And the establishment of Islam did not lead to the complete eradication of ancient cults. Remnants of old religious beliefs are still sometimes found in the form of superstitions and popular beliefs.

Notes (edit)

Very little is known about Philo of the Bible. It is unclear whether he was a Phoenician who mastered the Greek language well and assimilated Greek culture, or a Greek who lived in the Phoenician Byblos, who studied Phoenician antiquities and knew the Phoenician language. It is possible that he was first a slave and then became a freedman, as indicated by his Roman name - Herennius. With a good knowledge of Greek literature, Philo himself was a fairly versatile and highly prolific writer. He lived for a long time: he was born about 50, and died after 138 AD. NS. During this time, he wrote the essay "On cities and what was remarkable in each of them" in 30 books, "On the acquisition and selection of books" in 12 books, "Dictionary of synonyms" and other works. Almost nothing of all of his works has survived, although materials from them were widely used by later writers. Philo also turned to history. He wrote a biography of the emperor Hadrian, the essay "On the Jews" and, finally, "The Phoenician History." The last work consisted of 9 books. But, unfortunately, we do not even have a hint of the content of eight of them, that is, those where history itself was set out. Only excerpts from the first book, which dealt with the mythological prehistory of the Phoenicians, have come down to us in quotations cited by the early Christian writer Eusebius. And now we cannot say with certainty whether Philo used the work of Sanjunyaton for his entire composition or only for the first book. Philo's goal is clear: to acquaint the Greco-Roman reader (and the educated Romans freely read and wrote in Greek) with the history of Phenicia. Several centuries before Philo, after the conquests of Alexander the Great, a desire arose to insert the history of the Eastern peoples conquered by him into a general historical context, the basis of which was considered Greek history. And there were works by oriental authors in Greek, which introduced the Greek-speaking readers to the history of Eastern countries. In this direction, Manetho created his history of Egypt and the history of Mesopotamia Berossus, and the Alexandrian Jews translated the Bible into Greek (the so-called Septuagint, that is, the translation of 70 interpreters). Such writers also appeared in Phenicia. The Tyrian historians Menander and Dius wrote the stories of Tyrus in Greek. Philo worked in the same vein. Philosophically, he was an adherent of euhemerism. The founder of this trend, the Greek philosopher Evemer, believed that the gods were originally ordinary mortal people who, for their merits, became objects of worship, and there were never and never were immortal gods. This interpretation of religion was relatively widespread at the time. And Philo interpreted in the appropriate sense the information of Sanhunyaton about the Phoenician gods. This circumstance creates additional difficulty when using Philo's data.

Like the Ugaritic (Amorite) word "ilu", the Phoenician "el" simply means "god." But, as in Ugarit, this is the name of a specific god, a god par excellence, comparable in all respects to the Ugaritic Ilu. In fact, El is the same god as Ilu, he was endowed with the same qualities. In the work of Sanjunyaton-Philo El, whom Philo calls Cronus, plays a rather large role. He acts as an active participant in the struggle of the gods for supreme power and finally captures this supreme power. The signs of his sovereignty are, according to Philo, four eyes (two in front and behind) and four wings, while only two eyes are constantly closed and only two wings are folded, and therefore, God is both asleep and awake. In addition, two more wings crown El's head, they indicate the mind and feelings of this god. And such a dress is peculiar only to Al. True, Philo writes that El gave various parts of the world to other deities. But this practically does not differ from the Utarian ideas about Ilu. Like Ilu, the Phoenician El represents a cosmic force governing the entire universe, and individual gods governing certain countries act as baals - "lords". And this, as it seems, once again confirms the antiquity of the source of Philo - Sanhunyaton, the attribution of the time of his life to the II millennium BC. NS. In the 1st millennium BC. NS. There are very few traces of real worship of El by the Phoenicians. Apparently, at the turn of the II-I millennium BC. NS. there have been significant changes in the Phoenician religious consciousness. God El, whose image was, rather, an abstract symbol of the highest god, no longer occupies the minds of the Phoenicians - they, perhaps, turned out to be closer to more concrete deities, stronger, as it seemed, influencing their daily life. This does not mean that El disappeared altogether from the religious life of the Phoenicians. The kingdom of Samaal existed in the southeast of Asia Minor. Its main population was probably the Luwians (one of the Asia Minor peoples who settled in Asia Minor after the collapse of the Hittite state), but they, especially their ruling elite, experienced a huge Phoenician influence, and Phoenician was the second official language of this kingdom. An inscription made in the 8th century has come down to us. BC NS. simultaneously in Luwian and Phoenician languages. And in the Phoenician part of this inscription El is mentioned with the epithet Creator of creation. It is this title that, as you know, the god Ilu bore, and undoubtedly, his Phoenician analogue El, in the II millennium BC. NS. It is characteristic that in the Luwian part of the inscription Elu corresponds to the Mesopotamian god Ea. In Ugarit, the analogue of Ea was considered the god Kotaru-va-Hasis, as already mentioned. The Phoenicians transferred the features of Ea to their El. Ea was considered one of the creators of the existing universe, as was El. Ea was also a water god. This sheds light on several aspects of Al's image. According to the Phoenicians, which will be discussed later, the world was created from some kind of watery substance. Therefore, the creator of the world El turned out to be associated with her, which makes him related to the Mesopotamian Ea. And later, in those rare cases when El is still mentioned, he is usually identified with the Greek Poseidon and, perhaps, the Roman Neptune. Philo, as we noted, identifies El with Cronus. Cronus did not play a large role in Greek mythology, but was considered the father of the gods ruling the world of that time.

And it is this aspect (and in Ugarit Ilu is also the progenitor of the gods) justifies in the eyes of the author of the 1st-2nd centuries. n. NS. the naming of Al Cron.

It must be emphasized that while the Phoenicians actually worshiped El less and less, their neighbors still saw him as the supreme god. El was much more worshiped by the Arameans of Syria than the Phoenicians. Although the Jewish Yahweh by his position was at first more a “baal” than “evil,” he, as he turned into one God, was identified with El. And in the biblical Book of Genesis, he is called the Highest El, the Creator of heaven and earth, that is, he bears almost the same title as the Ugaritic Ilu and the Samal god. Whether the title "supreme" was originally attributed to El or its appearance was caused by the union of two different gods in one figure is debatable. As we have already seen, this title was given to the Ugaritic Balu, and the idea of ​​an independent existence in Ugarit of the god Eliun ("the highest") is now rejected. On the other hand, Eliun is mentioned by Sanhunyaton as an independent god, and El (if Philo understood this correctly) turns out to be Eliun's grandson. Syrian Arameans in the 7th century BC NS. also worshiped such a god, different from El. Therefore, it seems that while in Ugarit the "highest" was the title of the heavenly (and living on high mountains, which were also considered a variant of heaven) gods, their Semitic neighbors, the Phoenicians-Canaanites, and later the Arameans worshiped the independent god Eliun. It is not excluded that the appearance of such a god could have occurred as a result of the bifurcation of a previously single image. As for the naming of the biblical Yahweh as the Highest, it could be either the result of the reverse process - the union of two divine figures, or the presence of a single figure of the “highest god” - El Eliun. The Jewish tribal community, as you know, emerged as a result of its breakaway from the Amorean-Sutic unity and complex ethnic transformations in the tribal world of Western Asia in the II millennium BC. e „so that by their origin the Jews were closer to the Ugaritians than to the Phoenicians, although they were greatly influenced by the Canaanites who lived in Palestine. Therefore, it can be assumed that among the Amorites, the heavenly gods were "superior", and among the Canaanites and Arameans, the "superior" was a separate god.

The management scheme of the conquered territories, in accordance with which the local kings retaining their power recognized the supremacy of another sovereign (Egyptian or Hittite), in the 1st millennium BC. e., when the first empires arose, became in many ways an anachronism. However, it was in Phenicia that such a scheme has not yet lost its effectiveness. Under the rule of the Assyrian, Babylonian, and Persian kings, some of the cities of Phenicia retained their dynasties. But even under these conditions, the control of the supreme rulers became much more stringent than in the previous era. This circumstance, as well as the general direction of the political life of the 1st millennium BC. e., perhaps, contributed to the fact that in the field of religious thought there was an actual rejection of the scheme providing for the presence of a supreme king and subordinate kings. And this could be reflected in the position of El in the Phoenician pantheon.

Byblos was considered a city founded by Al himself. So the preservation of the real cult of this god in him is not surprising. In Berit, the sea god was highly revered, who could be identified with El. More surprising is the preservation or appearance of the cult of El in the African colonies of Tire, in which he was identified with the sea god. No traces of the cult of El have been found in Tire itself. There are two explanations for this. First, little direct evidence of religious life has come down from Tire, and it is possible that in the course of further work traces of the cult of El will be found in it. Second: in the colonies, in conditions of confrontation with the local environment, the resurrection of previously forgotten cults, including the cult of the old supreme god, could well have occurred.

The placement of Baal-Shamim at the head of the universe suggests that in the 1st millennium BC. NS. this god is clearly taking Al's place. Like El, he, despite the retention of the word "baal" in the name, is understood, apparently, as "el", that is, the god of the entire cosmos. Philo calls Baal-Shamim Zeus, considering him, therefore, the supreme god, reigning, in contrast to Cronus, at the present time. Whether Sanhunyaton already had such an idea is difficult to say. The fact that the cult of this god existed in the II millennium BC. e., undoubtedly. Talking about the struggle of the gods, Sanhunyaton talks a lot about the God of Heaven, considering him the father of El. Philo calls this god Uranus and, therefore, distinguishes him from Baal-Shamim-Zeus. But we cannot assert that Sanhunyaton already had such a difference. No matter how this issue is resolved, it must be said that Baal-Shamima Sanhunyaton knows. In the XIV century. BC NS. the Tyrian king Abdimilki appeals to his supreme ruler, the Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten, comparing him with the heavenly Baal, that is, with the Baal-Shamim. If Baal-Shamim and Heaven (Shamim) are one and the same, then the worship of this god was spread relatively widely in Syria in the 2nd millennium BC. NS. King Alalah (one of the states of Northern Syria) Idrimi in the second half of the 15th century. BC NS. calls Heaven the main god, who is accompanied by other gods of heaven and earth. The god Shamumu is also mentioned in Ugarit, although nothing other than a mention is known about him. The veneration of Baal-Shamim also penetrates into Egypt. And Pharaoh Ramses III says that his heart fluttered like Baal in heaven. In Egypt, Baal was revered, distinguishing him from Baal-Tsaphon (Balu-Tsapanu) and identifying him with their god Seth. Both Seth and both Baals were originally associated with the storm. No wonder the Tyrian king in a letter to Akhenaten says that the whole earth trembles at the voice of Baal in the heavens. Apparently, Baal-Shamim at that time was considered primarily as the god of the formidable sky. Later, however, his character changed. He became the god of the sky in general and the head of the universe. Official veneration was provided for him. Tire king Hiram in the X century. BC NS. erected a golden column in Tire in honor of, as the Greek-speaking author writes, Olympian Zeus. Most likely, we are talking about Baal-Shamim. In Tire and other cities there were temples of this god. In the VII century. BC NS. Baal-Shamim, together with some other gods, is called upon as a guarantor of the observance of the treaty between the Tyrian king and his Assyrian ruler. Even earlier, in the X century. BC BC, the biblical king Yehimilk prayed first of all to Baal-Shamim to extend the years of his reign over the Bible. There was also a Baal-Shamim temple in Carthage. And there he was also recognized as the highest god. At the beginning of the II century. BC NS. the Roman comedian Plautus wrote a comedy in which the Carthaginian merchant Hannon is displayed. And this Gannon swears by Baal-Shamim. The Roman writer could hardly have introduced such a detail arbitrarily. So officially Baal-Shamim remains the supreme god, probably until the very end of the Phoenician civilization.

This is evident first of all from the already mentioned agreement of the Tyrian king Baal (this was his own name) with the Assyrian king Esarhaddon. In the treaty between Baal-Shamim and two other gods, it is called upon to destroy the Tyrian ships if the king of Tire violates the terms of the treaty.

The cult of Baal-Shamim, apparently, remained entirely in the sphere of official state cults. In the private life of the Phoenicians, he, being too official, did not enjoy much popularity. In any case, both in the East and in the West, the Phoenicians did not give their children his name, which means they did not seek to place them under his special protection.

We practically do not know anything about Baal-Malaki, because his mention in the treaty of the Tyrian king Baal with the Assyrian king Esarhaddon is the only one. It is only clear that officially he was highly revered, like Baal-Shamim, and that he, too, is somehow connected with the sea and a possible shipwreck. There is an assumption that the Greeks called this god Zeus Melichius, proceeding from the fact that all Baals, unlike Ela-Kron, they identified with Zeus and his various manifestations (hypostases), and in the second part of the name they simply transferred Phoenician by means of the Greek language Malaki. But Philo of Biblical Zeus Melichius calls Khusor - perhaps not without good reason. Khusor was indeed associated with navigation, for he was considered one of the inventors of the ship. However, the scope of his actions was much broader. This will be discussed later. Another assumption that Baal-Malaki was in fact a patek god, whose images, the so-called Patekas, were placed by the Phoenicians on the prows of their ships, does not seem very convincing. Patekas, as will be said later, are most likely lower deities, demons, and Baal-Malaki was clearly one of the great gods - otherwise he would hardly have been called in the aforementioned treaty along with Baal-Shamim and Baal-Tsaphon, placing them above others. revered deities. It is also possible that in Carthage Baal-Malaki was identified with the Greek sea deity Triton. This god is named among the great gods of Carthage in the treaty concluded between Hannibal and the Macedonian king Philip V in 215 BC. NS.

Malash is the Phoenician name of the city, which has hardly changed in more than two and a half thousand years. On the Phoenician coins of this city, its name is rendered as mlk. On the same coins, there is an image of a god with blacksmith's tongs. The coins of Phoenician cities usually depicted a god associated with a given city. Consequently, the blacksmith god is closely associated with Malaka. Exactly the same god was called Hephaestus among the Greeks, and Vulcan among the Romans. Philo calls Husor Hephaestus. This, I think, confirms once again that the proper name of Baal-Malaki was Khusor (as the name of the Utarite Balu - Haddu).

Astarte is one of not only the most ancient, but also the great goddesses of the Semitic world. According to her original functions, this goddess was most likely a mother goddess. The cult of the mother goddess exists among almost all peoples and dates back to the distant primitive times. Providing the very existence of the human race (and specifically - a given tribe or people), she becomes the goddess of fertility. Such was Astarte among the Semites even during the time of the common Semitic community - not without reason among the Eastern Semites, Akkadians in Mesopotamia, the central female deity had a very similar name Ishtar. Among the Semitic-speaking peoples, the gods often appear in pairs. Astarte's pair in southern Arabia was the god Astar (Ashtar), about whom we know very little. In Ebla in the III millennium BC. NS. these deities, it seems, were still a couple. In the next millennium in Ugarit, as already mentioned, Ashtar (Astaru) was known, but not very revered, for, associated with the desert, he was considered an enemy of Balu. Apparently, by this time Astarte had finally separated from her male counterpart, but instead formed a pair with Anatu, with whom she was usually mentioned. Outside of Ugarit, Astarta was already considered a clearly independent figure, and played a rather significant role. In particular, she was highly revered in the cities on the Euphrates - Mari, and later in Emara. Studies have shown that in Syria, Astarte increasingly absorbed the image of Astar, eventually completely absorbing it. So, Astar in Arabia had the features of a hunter and a warrior, and these features have now passed to Astarte. "Astarte of War" and "Astarte of Destruction" they called her in Emara.

In the second half of the II millennium BC. NS. the cult of Astarte spreads in Egypt. There she is revered under her own name, but also identified with the goddess Sekhmet. This identification is very interesting. Sekhmet is associated with a lion: she has the head of a lioness and is fierce like a lion; the Egyptian myth is known about how Sekhmet, on the orders of the supreme god Ra, began to destroy the human race so zealously that with her ferocity she even frightened Ra, who could not stop her in any way until he gave her a red beer that looked like blood. Sekhmet was revered mainly in Memphis and was considered there the wife of the god Ptah, the creator of the universe. The Ugaritian Kotaru-va-Khasisu was identified with Ptah. Was not the Ugaritic Astarte associated with this god, as Anatu was with Balu? It should be noted that in Egypt Astarte gained such popularity that the myth of her salvation of the gods spread there. In this myth, Astarte is not a spouse, but the daughter of Ptah. This version of the myth indicates that the Egyptians still did not know Phoenician mythology very well. Considering that Astarte was not as popular in Ugarit as in Egypt, we can say that the cult of Astarte and related myths were borrowed by the Egyptians not from the Ugaritians, but from other Semites in the Syro-Palestinian region. In any case, in the II millennium BC. NS. the cult of Astarte was widespread in the Semitic-speaking world of this region and, apparently, already then occupied the first place, pushing back Anat-Anatu, in contrast to what was happening in Ugarit.

The Bible says that at the very beginning of the conquest of Palestine, shortly after the death of their first leader, Joshua, the Jews began to serve Astarte and Baal. The name of the goddess is plural. Probably all the goddesses of the Amorean-Canaanite cool are meant here. The words "baals and astartes" seem to be used by the biblical author (obviously much later than the events he describes) to refer to pagan deities in general. And it is characteristic that the feminine part of this divine world is named precisely "Astartes". Or by the time of the events themselves, or, rather, by the time this text was written, it was Astarte who became for the Jews the main representative of the wicked goddesses of foreign peoples, who so often seduce the sons of Israel. The cult of Astarte remained characteristic of the Jews for a very long time. If you believe the biblical author, then shortly before the formation of the kingdom, the judge and the prophet Samuel still urged his compatriots to refuse the service of the "baals and astartes." The formation of the kingdom did not lead to the abandonment of the worship of Astarte. The cult of Astarte was far from alien to King Solomon, so celebrated for his wisdom and piety. After the collapse of the single Jewish kingdom into northern (Israel) and southern (Judea), the cult of Astarte spread especially widely in Israel, which was closer to Phenicia, more developed and more actively supporting commercial and political, and as a result, cultural ties with its neighbors. But Judea did not remain completely aloof from this cult. In the VII century. BC NS. the Jewish king Manasseh even erected a statue of Astarte in the Jerusalem temple of Yahweh, and various gifts were openly brought to her. Only the grandson of Manasseh, Josiah, whose name is associated with the most important religious reform that led to the establishment of monotheism, ordered to take this statue out of the temple along with all the offerings and burn it all. A little later, the prophet Jeremiah declared this very act of Manasseh to be the main sin, the avenge of which would be the destruction of Jerusalem. The same Jeremiah reported that on the eve of the fall of Jerusalem, Jerusalem women performed prayers and made offerings to the heavenly goddess. According to many researchers, this goddess was precisely Astarte.

In the Bible, Astarte is constantly called a Sidonian, i.e., Phoenician, deity. Another pagan deity - Baal - is not usually named in this way; apparently, Baal was less connected with a specific people, unlike Astarte. In the eyes of the biblical authors, it is Astarte who is the main representative of the Phoenician religious world. In the 1st millennium BC. NS. Astarte practically ousted other goddesses from the religious thought of Phenicia. This, of course, does not mean that the Phoenicians no longer had any other female deities, but some of them had already eaten with Astarte, others were pushed into the background. This, in particular, happened with Anat, which at that time was far from being as popular as in the previous millennium. True, Astarte was revered then in different versions, and the ancient authors distinguished several Astartes. But nevertheless, these were different faces of the same goddess, and in each such manifestation one or another quality of Astarte was highlighted. Somewhat different, as we will see later, was the fate of Astarte in Carthage, but this is due to the historical conditions that arose there. In Phenicia itself, the cult of Astarte tried to resist even the onset of Christianity. The highly revered temple of this goddess in Athak (relatively close to Byblos) was destroyed in the 4th century. by order of the Emperor Constantine, but then it was clearly restored and existed until the 6th century, when it was destroyed by an earthquake. But until now, in popular beliefs, this place is considered sacred. With the Phoenician trade and especially with the colonization, the cult of Astarte spread widely throughout the Mediterranean. There is practically no area of ​​Phoenician colonization where the existence of this cult is not attested. Sanctuaries of Astarte arose in many cities created by the Phoenicians immediately after their foundation. Sometimes local sanctuaries were used for this. This happened in Malta, where an ancient sanctuary (Tas-Silg) that existed since the Copper Age in the VIII century. BC BC, when the Phoenicians settled on the island, it turned into the temple of Astarte, and the Phoenicians made only the minimum changes necessary for the new dedication of the temple. The Etruscans adopted the cult of Astarte from the Phoenicians (most likely from the Carthaginians). The Greeks and Romans knew about this goddess.

Queen Astarte was called in Sidon. Greek writer Plutarch in the II century. conveyed the Egyptian myth of Isis and Osiris and said that Queen Byblos, who sheltered Isis, who was looking for the body of her husband, was called Astarte. Plutarch clearly did not understand that Astarte was not an earthly queen, but a reigning goddess. Astarte was called the "Holy Queen" in Cyprus. Philo the Bible says that Astarte's head was decorated with horns as a sign of her royal power.

Greek writer II century. n. NS. Lucian identifies Astarte with the Greek goddess of the moon, Selene. True, the writer adds that this is his personal opinion, but it could hardly have arisen without any grounds. In the III century. n. NS. another author, Herodian, said that the Phoenicians call the goddess Urania, that is, "heavenly", Astroarch (and this is undoubtedly Astarte) and identify her with the moon.

Aphrodite herself, as most researchers now believe, is of oriental origin. When her cult penetrated into Greece is unknown. In the Greek texts of the 2nd millennium BC. NS. no mention of this goddess has yet been found. At the beginning of the 1st millennium BC. NS. Aphrodite is one of the most revered goddesses. And already in Homer's "Odyssey" Cyprus is named as the refuge of Aphrodite. Perhaps, even in the East, there was a meeting between Aphrodite and Astarte, but most likely it happened in Cyprus, after both the Greeks and Phoenicians settled on this island. Temples of Astarte have existed in the Phoenician cities of Cyprus since at least the 8th century. BC NS. Probably, the identification of Aphrodite and Astarte goes back to the same time, if not earlier. And this identification persisted throughout antiquity. No wonder the Phoenician Abdastart ("slave of Astarte"), composing the inscription in Greek, translated his name as "Aphrodisius". Philo directly writes that, according to the Phoenicians, Astarte is Aphrodite. The famous Roman orator and writer Cicero, in his essay On the Nature of the Gods, spoke of the four types of Venus and that one of these Venus comes from Syria and Cyprus and is called Astarte.

In 1964, during excavations in the Etruscan city of Pyrgi, which served as the harbor of the important political and economic center of Etruria - Ceres, gold tablets with two Etruscan and one Phoenician inscriptions were found, dating from about 500 BC. NS. These inscriptions say that Tefariye Velianas, king of Cere, created in Pyrgi the sanctuary of the goddess, who is called Astarte in the Phoenician inscriptions, and Uni-Astarte in the Etruscan inscriptions. Thus, we have before us the identification of Astarte with the Etruscan Uni - one of the three supreme deities of the Etruscans. Caere was associated with Carthage, so the cult of Astarte clearly came to the Etruscan city from there. It is possible that it was established in Cere at this very time, for Tefariye Velianas, as it is now believed, was most likely a usurper, and the adoption of a new cult could become one of the means of ideological justification of usurpation. In this case, the choice of Astarte as the patroness of royal power and the supreme goddess is characteristic. In Rome, the Etruscan Uni merged with Juno. And, most likely, from here comes the identification of Astarte with Juno, the wife of the Roman supreme god Jupiter. However, the identification of Astarte with Hero, the wife of Zeus, apparently, was not alien to the Greeks either. In Hannibal's treaty with the Macedonian king Philip V, Zeus (clearly Baal-Hammon) and Hera, in which Astarte should be seen, are mentioned among the first three gods.

This idea is already characteristic of a rather late time, when the idea of ​​the existence of a single all-encompassing deity ruling the world and directing its development is taking root more and more firmly in the minds of the inhabitants of the Roman Empire. For the role of such a deity, more than the old, familiar and by that time in many respects already shown their powerlessness Roman and Greek deities, the Eastern deities, less known, mysterious and mysterious, were suitable. It could be both male (for example, the Iranian eternal fighter Mithra) and female deities. But nevertheless, the goddesses, since they are more closely connected with the intimate experiences of man, were given preference. Such cults were supplanted only with the victory of Christianity.

The cult of Astarte of Ericin was probably not originally Phoenician, but local. The Phoenicians, having met him, recognized their Astarte in the local goddess. The cult of Astarte of Ericin was widespread in Carthage and the Carthaginian dominions in Africa and Sardinia. The African center of this cult was the city of Sikka, and there, in the temple of Astarte, the so-called sacred prostitution was actively practiced. In general, this is a very ancient oriental custom, characteristic of the cults of the goddesses of fertility, when special priestesses were given to visitors to the temple, and the money received for this went to the needs of the temple. Such acts were believed to help increase the fertility of the land and the fertility of humans. This custom was characteristic of the cult of Astarte in general. But in Sikka he was especially emphasized. It is characteristic that the Romans identified Astarte with both Venus and Juno, but Astarte of Ericin was identified only with Venus.

The concept of Astarte's connection with the sea was quite ancient. It is likely that already in the II millennium BC. NS. Astarte of the Sea was worshiped in Emara. If we consider Astarte as the development of the image of the mother goddess, then it is possible that this is connected with the Phoenician (and even common Semitic) concept of the appearance of the world from a moist substance, later understood as the sea. Later, such a view was transformed into the image of a goddess who patronizes navigation. When the cult of Astarte and the myth about her penetrated into Egypt, the goddess in this country also found herself connected with the sea and the sea god, and this idea was directly transferred to Egypt from the Semitic world, because the Egyptian pantheon did not have its own sea god. Let us recall that the Greek Aphrodite, according to the myth, had close contact with the sea element, for she was born from the foam of the sea.

The tradition of depicting the goddess of fertility as a naked woman squeezing her breasts is very ancient. In Phenicia, such figures are found already in the 18th century. BC NS. And throughout antiquity, such figurines were made in Syria and Palestine, as well as in the Phoenician colonies.

In the religions of the Middle East, the lion is commonly associated with fertility goddesses. Pigeons were also considered sacred birds and Greek Aphrodite. Is this connected with the common origin of Astarte and Aphrodite or with the influence of the cult of Astarte on the image of the Greek goddess? It seems that the latter is more likely. The dove (dove), as a bird that connects the earthly and heavenly worlds, has long been revered in the Eastern Mediterranean.

The biblical Yahweh sits on the kerubs. In the Christian tradition, the Holy Spirit is symbolized by a dove, or rather by a dove.

There is another interpretation of this image, also associated with the cult of Astarte. It is sometimes believed that the "woman in the window" depicts the "sacred prostitute" of Astarte. But the widespread distribution of this artistic motive in Phoenician art allows us to think about the image of the goddess herself.

In the city of Zarepta, located between Tire and Sidon, an inscription was found mentioning Tinnit-Astarte. Perhaps these two goddesses were also united in Malta. But there is evidence of a separate veneration for Tinnitus in Phenicia.

For a long time in science, Tinnit was considered a local deity of the Libyan tribes of Africa, adopted by the Carthaginians. However, discoveries in Phenicia forced to reconsider this point of view, and now no one doubts that the cult of Tinnitus was brought to Africa by Phoenician colonists. How long ago this cult arose in Asia is unknown. In no texts of the 2nd millennium BC. NS. the name of this goddess has not yet been found. The word ta ‑ ni ‑ ti is contained in an inscription from the 10th to 9th centuries. BC NS. in Luwian, but does not denote a goddess, but a special priestess of the storm god. The first mention of Tinnit as a goddess was noted in Tire on a vessel from the 8th century. BC NS. The current state of archaeological research on the territory of Phenicia itself does not yet allow us to speak about the degree of prevalence and importance of the Tinnit cult. It seems that in Carthage at first she was also hardly a great goddess, clearly inferior to Astarte. The situation changes in the middle of the 5th - beginning of the 4th century. BC NS. By this time, great changes had taken place. Carthage, which previously did not have land holdings in Africa outside its walls, now acquired these possessions. This led to the restructuring of the entire economic, and after it the socio-political structure of Carthage. The landed aristocracy appeared, which, along with the trade aristocracy, was established in power in the Carthaginian oligarchic republic. A vast and rather powerful Carthaginian state is being formed. There is a formation of the polis as a special type of socio-political structure, characteristic not for the ancient Eastern, but for the ancient way of development of the ancient society. All these profound changes could not but affect the cultural sphere. We can say that from this time on, a special Carthaginian (Punic, as it is usually called) branch of the Phoenician culture appears, which in a number of aspects differs from the general Phoenician. This was reflected in the area of ​​religious beliefs as well. In the sanctuary, where Astarte was clearly venerated earlier, the type of dedicatory steles and the images on them change. It is from this time that a large number of references to Tinnit appear here (usually together with Baal-Hammon). Probably, it was at this time that Tinnit became the main deity of Carthage. In Hannibal's treaty with Philip V, Tinnit is not mentioned, which is very surprising. But in the same treaty, among the great Carthaginian gods, the "deity of the Carthaginians" is called, and this, most likely, is Tinnitus. Apparently, in the world of Greek deities there was no one that the diplomats of the Macedonian king or the Greek historian Polybius, who transmitted the text of this treaty in Greek, could identify with Tinnitus.

A sarcophagus of the 4th-3rd centuries was found in Carthage. BC e., in which a rather elderly woman of the Negroid type is buried. On the lid of the sarcophagus there is a relief depicting a young woman of the Caucasian type, and the body of this woman seems to fit into the image of a dove: its head rises above the woman's head, and its wings envelop the hips and legs, leaving only the feet open. This sculpture clearly cannot be a portrait of a buried woman. Apparently, in this image both the idea of ​​the goddess and the ideal image of her priestess merged. A woman merging with her attribute - a dove - such is the image of the divine Tinnit.

In Carthaginian inscriptions, Tinnit is called "mistress". It is in the capacity of Mrs. Carthage that she appears on Carthaginian coins, which began to be minted in the 4th century. BC NS. By type, the image copies the nymph Aretusa, who was placed on their coins by the Greek Syracuse in Sicily. But on the Carthaginian coins, of course, Tinnit is depicted. In some cases, the head of the goddess is adorned with a royal diadem, which further emphasizes Tinnit's role as mistress of the Carthaginian Republic.

Tinnitus has been identified at different times with different Greek and Roman goddesses. And these identifications show the development of the image of Tinnit. Around 400 BC NS. she was identified with Artemis, which emphasized her features as a virgin goddess, but at the same time a mother and wet nurse. As mentioned above, at the end of the III century. BC NS. the translators of Hannibal's treaty with the Macedonian king call her the deity of the Carthaginians; by this time she is already the main patroness of Carthage. Somewhat later she is identified with Juno, and this indicates that the goddess is already ascending to the position of "queen of the gods", and the sometimes encountered identification with the goddess of agriculture Ceres and the goddess of the moon Diana speaks of the preservation of the lunar and agrarian aspects in her image. Over time, Tinnitus has become an increasingly versatile goddess. In the East, the identification with Artemis seems to remain more permanent.

The "bottle sign" has long attracted the attention of scientists who have given it various interpretations. What is given here is given by the famous French researcher C. Charles-Picard after a long study of a large number of Carthaginian monuments, and it seems the most probable. It should be noted that this sign appears somewhat earlier than the time when the cult of Tinnit comes to the fore, and, possibly, is also associated with the cult of Astarte, and then, as it were, inherited by Tinnit. And he disappeared even before the death of Carthage itself, probably as a result of the development of the religious ideas of the Carthaginians.

The shape of the Tinnitus sign did not remain unchanged. But on the whole, his scheme was preserved. Some scholars saw in this sign a symbol of prayer addressed to Tinnit, others - the conjunction of bethyl with the solar disk. It was suggested that the "sign of Tinnit" is the development in the Carthaginian environment of the Egyptian sign of life ankh, which is very often found in Egypt, especially when depicting the pharaohs. It is possible that there is some truth in all these assumptions. But nevertheless, the proposed interpretation of this sign as a symbol of the union of the female fruiting principle, embodied in the goddess of fertility, with the solar male deity seems more plausible. A trapezoid can be considered an unfinished triangle. This assumption is indirectly confirmed by one of the drawings on the stele, when the word "baal" is written over the trapezoid instead of a steep one.

Among the sons of Ela-Kron, Philo names Kron the younger. Most likely, this is Baal-Hammon. Sometimes he is identified with Zeus or Jupiter, that is, also with the son of Crohn or his Roman counterpart Saturn. But nevertheless, the rapprochement of Baal-Hammon with Cronus himself (and Saturn) was common. In the inscriptions in the Phoenician and Greek languages, Cronus appears in the Greek text, and Baal-Hammon appears in the Phoenician text. Of particular interest is one Greek-language inscription, which is composed entirely according to the Phoenician scheme, but Cronus is mentioned together with Tinnitus. After the death of Carthage in Roman times, the cult of Saturn was widespread in Africa, which became a direct continuation of the cult of Baal-Hammon. The very name Baal-Hammon is interpreted by scholars in different ways. Sometimes he is understood as "the lord of the incense altars" or "the lord of the hammanim", that is, the sacred pillars that were placed in front of the altars. Sometimes the name "Hammon" is understood as the name of the small town of Hammon, located south of Tire and subordinate to the latter. But this town was not large, and, judging by the finds made there, the god Milkastart was more revered in it, while traces of the veneration of Baal-Hammon have not yet been found. There is also an assumption that "Hammon" is the Aman Mountains in northwestern Syria, which played a fairly significant role in the history of this region. In this case, Baal-Hammon would be similar to Baal-Tsaphon. But such an interpretation seems to be overly artificial, especially since we have no direct evidence of the deification of these mountains. True, in the II millennium BC. NS. there are names containing the element "Hamanu", but this element could well mean not the name of the deified mountain, but the abbreviated "Balu-Hamanu", that is, "Baal-Hammon". In Carthage, where the cult of Baal-Hammon was one of the most important, in the sanctuary associated with this god, sometimes there was a mention of Hammon instead of Baal-Hammon, which, I think, proves the existence of such a reduction. These names only indicate that the cult of Baal-Hammon is quite ancient and dates back at least to the II millennium BC. NS. Much more likely is the translation of the name of this god as "lord of heat", which speaks of his solar character, confirmed by the monuments of his cult in Carthage.

Baal-Hammon took on some features not only of El, but, possibly, of that god, who in Ugarit was called the God of the fathers and who, as has already been said, was apparently considered primarily the god of the royal dynasty. If so, then in the Phoenician city-states it could have played the same role. When in Carthage rather soon after its foundation the royal power was liquidated, Baal-Hammon turned into the god of the Carthaginian republic.

The connection of Baal-Hammon with the fertility of the earth and masculine strength is emphasized by the epithets that were added to the name of Saturn in Africa and which were clearly a heritage of the Dorian time: the Fruitful, Parent (or Creator), and also the Elder. Baal-Hammon-Saturn acted thus in the role of a father. He was portrayed as very similar to Yahweh, as can be deduced from the biblical descriptions. It is likely that the role of Baal-Hammon in Carthage and some other Phoenician colonies was similar (of course, before the approval of Jewish monotheism). Baal-Hammon, and later him and Tinnit, sacrificed newborns. The existence of this custom speaks of the antiquity of the Baal-Hammon cult. Although it is possible that it arose after the transfer of some features of old El to Baal-Hammon. Most likely, that is why Baal-Hammon acquires the traits of a parent, previously peculiar to El (like the Ugaritic Ilu).

Anatu played a very large role in the Ugaritic religion and mythology. It was also known to the Canaanites - both the Phoenicians and those who lived in Palestine. This is evidenced by the existence in Palestine during the campaigns of conquest of the Egyptian pharaohs, and later of the Jewish tribes of the Canaanite cities Bet-Anat ("house of Anat") and Kart-Anat ("city of Anat"), Po Sanhunyaton, Anat is the daughter of El, and she helped her father fight for power with his father. For this, according to Philo, she later received power over Attica, and more likely over Greece in general. It seems that the last message goes back to a later source than Sanhunyaton, for such an opinion could have arisen after the appearance of the identification of Anat and Athena. And this identification appeared in Cyprus no later than the 5th century. BC NS. It is explained both by the similarity of names and the warlike nature of both goddesses. By this time, Anat, like her father El, was far from being as popular as in the previous millennium, retaining its importance only in Cyprus. Outside of Cyprus, it seems as if the existence of the cult of the goddess Anat-Bethel ("Anatdom Ela") is noted. She is mentioned in the treaty of the Tyrian king Baal with Esarhaddon. But in this treaty she is not among the Tyrian deities, but rather among those who from the Assyrian side, in case of violation of the treaty, will punish Tyrus and his king. This same goddess was highly revered by the Aramaic-speaking Jews who were in the Egyptian fortress of Elephantine in the service of the pharaoh in the 6th-5th centuries. BC NS. But, firstly, there is a doubt whether Anat-Bethel is the same goddess as Anat, although this is quite possible. And secondly, this does not at all prove that the Phoenicians also revered her at the same time. So for now, the sphere of the living Anat cult should be limited to Cyprus.

Sheol is an ancient goddess. Her cult existed in the II millennium BC. NS. in Emara, where she was already considered a female deity of the other world, the world of death. She is mentioned in the texts of Ugarit. In Ugarit, she was probably considered the consort of the god of death, Mutu. Sheol is also found in the Bible, but there this word does not mean a goddess, but the world of death. The ancient Jews, at least at an earlier stage in their history, treated death, on the one hand, more or less calmly, accepting it as inevitability and not trying to argue with this inevitability, and on the other, very pessimistic, denying any possibility for a long time. not only resurrection, but also posthumous retribution and even, perhaps, posthumous existence. Therefore, Sheol at that time seemed to them as the underworld in which everything disappears and in which, it seems, there is nothing. In Song of Songs, Sheol is compared to the ferocity of jealousy. The Phoenicians did not have such a pessimistic view of the other world. They believed in existence after death, as evidenced by their funeral cult. Philo calls Sheol Persephone.

Using modern logic, scientists are trying to more or less rationally explain the epithet Virgo, which often accompanied the name Anatu. It is believed that the word "virgin" expresses not virginity, but simply the youth of the goddess, or that this goddess was not actually giving birth (but one myth tells about the birth of her son from Balu), or that virginity is a specific socially significant trait of Anatu, which the goddess does not lose, despite the love and the birth of children. It seems that everything is easier to explain. The logic that underlies science and human daily activities is generally not characteristic of mythological ideas, for myth and science with its logic reflect different aspects of the human understanding of the world. Therefore, the idea that in the world of gods everything is possible that is impossible in the world of people, and that there can be combined logically the most incompatible qualities, fits well into the religious and mythological thinking of the Ugaritians. Apparently, the Utaritans (like the Phoenicians) highly valued virginity, considering it one of the highest female virtues. No wonder they called their great goddesses maidens. Such are Rahmayu and Anatu, and in Phenicia - Astarte and Tinnit. By viewing these goddesses as virgins, mothers, and spouses (or lovers) at the same time, people emphasized their deepest respect for them.

The fact that the name of the god of death simply means "death" testifies to the deep antiquity of Mota. We saw that in Ugarit the similar and, in fact, the eponymous god Mutu acted as an almost irresistible opponent of Balu, and only the belligerent and mighty Anatu could defeat him. It is possible that among the Phoenicians this god played a similar role, although no myths about his struggle with other gods have survived.

When the Phoenicians said that Mot was among the creators of the universe, they considered him one of the most ancient deities, descended directly from the original spirit. In this case, Mot turns out to be much older than Al.

Rephaim under the name of Rapaites were revered in Ugarit. In Phenicia, they enjoyed no less respect. There is no doubt that they were associated with the world of death. The Sidonian king Tabnit threatened the possible violators of the tomb that they would not have offspring among the living under the sun and would not rest with the Rephaim. In a rather late bilingual (Latin and Phoenician) inscription in Africa, the Phoenician term "Rephaim" fully corresponds to the Latin "gods of mana". Thus, Rephaim, like Roman mana, are the souls of the dead, to whom souls that have just departed into another world are entrusted. Rephaim is mentioned in the Bible. Thus, the prophet Isaiah proclaimed that if God visited and destroyed, then the dead will not come to life and the Rephaim will not rise. And in one of the psalms, Rephaim is again mentioned along with the dead. At the same time, the Rephaims were also some kind of Palestinian or neighboring ancient people, maybe fabulous, but, in any case, considered by the biblical authors as an earthly tribe. This led some researchers to the idea that the Rapaites-Rephaims are, as it were, on the borderline between the kingdoms of the living and the dead, uniting in a certain sense these two worlds that are so sharply different from each other. But in any case, in the world of death, they were the souls of their ancestors, whether all people or only the most important of them (kings, leaders) is not known for sure.

The Phoenician Reshef is the same god whom the Utaritans revered under the name Rashapa. Then, that is, in the II millennium BC. e., he was actively worshiped by the Phoenicians. One of the most ancient temples of Byblos was dedicated to Reshef. The bronze figurines of warriors found in Byblos (some of them still have traces of gilding) are considered by many scientists to be either images of Reshef or dedication to him. The Phoenician seafarers, apparently, carried Reshef's statues with them, probably in an attempt to gain his protection and avoid death at sea or on the nearest coast. Most likely, it was the image of Reshef that was the bronze figurine of the XIV-XIII centuries. BC e., found in the sea off the southern coast of Sicily and so far is perhaps the oldest evidence of Phoenician voyages to the area. With the colonization, the cult of Reshef spread widely throughout the Mediterranean. So, the temple of this god in Carthage was one of the richest. He was no less revered in his homeland. The whole area of ​​Sidon was called "the land of Reshef" (or "land of the Reshef"). The Greeks identified him with their Apollo. Under this name he is mentioned in Hannibal's treaty with Philip V. According to Philo, Apollo was the son of Cronus. It is clear that the Phoenicians considered Reshef the son of El and the brother of Baal-Hammon. In the aforementioned treaty between Hannibal and the Macedonian king, Apollo-Reshef ranks among the first three gods of Carthage.

The existence of the cult of Reshef in Ebla is attested already in the III millennium BC. NS. Finds of Reshef statuettes dating back to the very beginning of the 1st millennium BC. e., talk about the veneration of this god by the Jews of Palestine. Reshef is mentioned in some biblical texts. With the affirmation of monotheism, it turns into a destructive force in the service of Yahweh. As in the Phoenician world, his name is sometimes mentioned in the plural. The spread of the Reshef (Rashapu) cult outside the West Semitic world is not limited to Egypt. The Hittites revered him under the name Irshappa. And even before the founding of the Phoenicians in Cyprus, the inhabitants of this island, who maintained ties with the Syro-Palestinian coast of the Mediterranean Sea, including the Phoenician cities, also already knew Reshef.

Some traces of the cult of Eshmun are found in Syria and date back to the 3rd millennium BC. BC, but few traces of these have yet been found, and, perhaps, they are controversial. Sanhunyaton speaks of this god in the transmission of Philo, so, one must think, in the II millennium BC. NS. the Phoenicians knew Eshmun well. The next millennium showed a very wide popularity of this god throughout the Phoenician world. He was venerated in Arvada, Sidon, Tire and in many other cities of Phenicia itself, as well as in the overseas colonies. The cult of Eshmun also spread in Palestine, Egypt, Mesopotamia. Eshmun is named among the guarantors of the above-mentioned agreement between the Tyrian king Baal and Esarhaddon: together with Melqart, he had to destroy the country, expel the people from it, take away food, clothing and jewelry from the people if the Tyrians violate the agreement. Many Phoenicians received names in which Eshmun was mentioned.

The Greeks usually identified Eshmun with their healing god Asclepius, and the Romans with Aesculapius. After the conquest of Phenicia by Alexander the Great, and then Carthage and its possessions by the Romans, the cult of Asclepius-Aesculapius spread widely in these lands. Asclepius was considered the son of Apollo, and Apollo himself at times also acted as a healer. In Greece, there was even a special hypostasis of Apollo - Apollo the Doctor. And with this Apollo the Physician, Eshmun was sometimes also identified.

The Kabirs were highly revered and very mysterious deities in Greece. The Greeks themselves associated their origin with the islands of the northern part of the Aegean Sea - Samothrace and Lemnos. At one time, the active Phoenician trade and, probably, colonization at its first stage passed through these islands. Homer already calls Lemnos the Phoenician marketplace. The word “cabiri” itself sounds incomprehensible in Greek, and many researchers associate it with Phoenician, where it could mean “powerful”. True, in Greece, these deities, it seems, were not particularly powerful, but belonged to relatively lower gods. The Greeks usually considered them to be the children of the blacksmith god Hephaestus, with whom, as a rule, the Phoenician Khusor was identified. But such a relationship hardly came from Phenicia, even if the cult of the Cabiri was Phoenician in origin. Note that the number of Kabirs among the Greeks and Phoenicians was different. Among the Greeks, it fluctuated, but usually it was no more than four, while the Phoenicians numbered seven Kabirs (the number "seven" in the Middle East was sacred), to which the eighth, Eshmun, was added. Greek Kabirs were associated with fire and working with it (like the children of Hephaestus). But a myth has survived, allowing them to be connected with the underworld. And this indicates a relationship with the Phoenician Kabirs. On the other hand, the Greek Kabirs did not seem to have the function of healing people, while the Phoenicians did. So the relationship between the Greek and Phoenician Kabirs is practically limited to only one aspect. But it was the presence of this aspect that made it possible to identify them. The exact time of the appearance of the Kabir cult in Greece is not known. It seems that it can be attributed to the II millennium BC. e., by the time of at least the Trojan War, or somewhat earlier. Perhaps the healing function of the Kabirs appeared later, after the Greeks got acquainted with them. Most likely, the originally Phoenician Kabirs were associated exclusively with the underworld and only later became healers, becoming the progenitors of healers and healers. Philo also calls them Dioscuri. In Greek mythology, Dioscuri are gods who spent part of their lives in the kingdom of the dead, and part on Olympus. This means that they belonged to the dying and resurrecting gods, and that is exactly what Eshmun was. Does this mean that other Kabirs were of the same nature? Perhaps, although there is no information about this. Dioscuri were revered as sea deities, rescuing dying sailors. The Kabirs were also associated with the sea. Philo says that they buried the remains of the god of the sea in Take. The story of the burial of a god is clearly explained by the philosophical views of Philo himself, who, as already mentioned, believed that all the gods were previously mortal people. But it is important for us that this passage from Philo undoubtedly reflects the connection of the Dioscuri with the god of the sea, and it is based, apparently, on the story of Sanhunyaton. In any case, the Cabiri and Dioscuri were highly revered in the Roman era.

The fact that the Kabirs, including Eshmun, were considered the sons of Tsidik, emphasizes the connection between the just and correct order in general and the relations of life and death - the latter also turn out to be necessary and integral parts of the general world order.

How ancient the cult of Shadrapa is is difficult to say. Sanhunyaton does not mention this god. Perhaps because at the end of the II millennium BC. NS. the cult of Shadrapa was not yet widespread in Phenicia. But in the VIII century. BC NS. he already appears as a deity not only as a healer, but also as a reigning and warring deity. It is difficult to imagine that such an image of a powerful god could arise quickly and from scratch. Sometimes the image of Shadrapa is considered a special kind of the image of Eshmun. This is possible, although there is no basis for such a judgment.

This is evidenced by the identification of Shadrapa with the Greek Dionysus and the Roman Lieber.

The appearance of this god testifies to a strong Egyptian influence. Considering that Amrit is located next to Arwad and probably belonged to the territory of this northern Phœnician kingdom, we can say that this is how Shadrapa was depicted in this part of Phenicia. This does not mean that other Phoenicians did not revere him. The Shadrapa cult existed in Zarepta, Tire, Cyprus, in the western colonies. Later it was adopted by the Arameans. Maybe in different places the image of Shadrapa had its own characteristics. As it seems, in the east, the warlike and regal character of this god was emphasized to a greater extent, and in the west - the ability to heal and revive.

Little is known about the Egyptian Shed either. It appears quite late, not earlier than the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. NS. Some researchers suggest that he was a stranger in Egypt and originated from the Semitic world. In this case, we have before us the secondary appearance of this god in a somewhat complicated form among one of the Semitic-speaking peoples - the Phoenicians.

For a very long time, almost nothing was known about Tsida. But relatively recently, in the southwest of Sardinia, it was possible to open the sanctuary of this god. In this sanctuary, figurines of other healing gods - Shadrapa and Horon were found, but they are dedicated to Tsidu. Apparently, on this island, it was Tsid who took precedence among such deities. In Sardinia, Tsid was identified with the Greek hero Iolaus and the local deity, whom the Romans called Father Sardis, that is, the god - the ruler of the island and the father of its local population. Iolaus in Greek mythology was considered the nephew and companion of Hercules, who actively participated in various deeds of the hero. A legend has survived about the arrival of people in Sardinia under the leadership of Iolaus. But Zid was associated not only with Sardinia. This god under the name Iolaus is named in the treaty of Hannibal with Philip V. The names of people containing the name of this god have been preserved, these people lived in Carthage and Acre (Phenicia). The myth of the founding of Sidon by Tzid (Sid) (in Phoenician - Tzidon) has also survived. It is possible that Sidon in this case does not even mean a city, but the entire south of Phenicia. This, in particular, is indirectly evidenced by the so-called Table of Nations contained in the Bible. It says that the firstborn of Canaan was Sidon, and then the cities and peoples that had nothing to do with southern Phenicia are listed, while, undoubtedly, the well-known Bible of Tire is not mentioned here at all. It seems that Sanhunyaton does not say anything about Tsida (not all Greek names mentioned by Philo can be confidently attributed to one or another Phoenician deity, and therefore one has to give up confidence in what Sanhunyaton said or not said). This does not mean that Cyd was a relatively new god for the Phoenicians. We just don't know much about him yet.

Unlike Shadrapa and Tsid, Horon is undoubtedly the ancient deity of the Canaanites and Amorites. This is the Ugaritic Haranu, which has already been mentioned. Traces of the veneration of this god are found in Mari and in Palestine. True, in Phenicia itself, so far, very few traces of his cult have been found. But the fact that the Phoenicians of Sardinia revered him also testifies to the existence of the cult of this god among the Phoenicians.

Yevo was an ancient god worshiped in Ugarit as well. Sometimes it is even believed that this is another name for the god of the sea Yam (Utarian Yammu). There is evidence that Yevo was considered the god of autumn and harvest. It is possible that he became a sea deity later. If he was not just the god of the sea, but the god of the stormy sea, as it often happens in the fall, then it would seem more convincingly expressed at times about his connection with the Jewish Yahweh, who was originally the god of the storm, and then became the only and almighty God.

The name Bel was quite popular in the works of Greek and Roman writers when they talked about the mysterious East. They called the founder of Babylon white. The Roman poet Virgil (1st century BC) in his poem "Aeneid" calls White the father of Elissa (Dido), the founder of Carthage. Philo calls El's son Zeus White, thus identifying this sea (more precisely, just water) god with the supreme god of Greece. With Zeus, the Greeks identified other Phoenician gods, heirs of the ancient Baals; so, for example, Baal-Tsaphon became Zeus Kasius. Consequently, the god we are talking about now played a rather significant role, comparable to the role of Baal-Tsaphon. In the south of Phenicia there was a river called Belom, and on its bank was a place that was revered as the tomb of a dying and resurrecting god. Historian of the 1st century n. NS. Flavius ​​Josephus says that this is the tomb of the Greek hero Memnon, who was killed during the Trojan War and was always mourned by his mother, the goddess of the dawn, Eos. It is more likely that in reality it was a question of a local, i.e., Phoenician, deity, whom the Greeks, after Alexander the Great, considered Memnon or similar to him. According to legend, on the banks of this river, Hercules was treated for a wound received in a battle with the Lernean hydra. Hercules, as it will be said later, the Greeks constantly identified with only one character in Phoenician mythology - the god of Tire Melkart. Considering that the city of Akko, located near this river, at one time belonged to Tyrus, one can assume a connection between "Memnon" and Melkart - a dying and resurrecting god. Perhaps the Bel in question was the ruler of this river in the south of Phenicia, as Baal-Tsafon - the ruler of Mount Tsafon in the north. But a difficult question arises, how did Philo know about this god. The fact is that "Bel" is the Aramaic pronunciation of the name Baal, and the Phoenician Sanhunyaton clearly could not use it. In this case, two solutions are possible: either Philo, in parallel with Sanhunyaton, had some other source, much later, dating back to the time when the Aramaic language became the spoken language not only of the Arameans, but also of the population of the entire Middle East, or he did not quite correctly understand the name given by Sanhunyaton. In any case, we have a water god, who, apparently, from the god of a particular river turned into a god of flowing water in general, and in Phoenician mythology (at least of a later time) became the progenitor of all sea deities.

Philo's Pontus is clearly the Phoenician Yam, that is, the same god whom the Ugaritians revered under the name Yammu and considered the son of Ilu (Phoenician El): in Greek, the word "pont" meant "sea", like "yam" –Phenician. If the Ugaritans considered Jammu to be the son of Ilu, then for the Phoenicians he was his great-grandson. This proves that, despite the commonality of their origin, the mythological systems of the Utaritans – Amorites and Phoenicians could develop independently of each other.

In Berite, Poseidon was the “fatherly god”, the main patron saint of the city. The myth of the love of Poseidon and the nymph Beroi, who personified the city of Berit, has survived. Pictures of Poseidon are frequent on the coins of this city. The mention of Poseidon in the treaty of Hannibal with Philip V testifies to the high position of this god in Carthage. He came there from the metropolis. In 406 BC. NS. Before the battle, the Carthaginian commander Hamilcar begged the gods for victory and at the same time sacrificed children to Baal-Hammon, and sacrificed animals to Poseidon, throwing them into the sea, and he did this in accordance with the "paternal custom", as the historian Diodorus writes. In Carthage and the Carthaginian sphere of influence, traces of the Poseidon-Neptune cult are relatively numerous. But this god was worshiped not only in these two cities. Sidon was considered the sister of Poseidon (in both Greek and Phoenician languages ​​the word "city" is feminine). Therefore, one may think that in Sidon this god was highly venerated. And the fact that sacrifices to Poseidon were brought according to the "paternal custom" indicates the veneration of Poseidon in Tire, where the Carthaginians came from.

Images of funny dwarfs appear on some Phoenician coins. There are also terracotta figurines of dwarfs. Some scholars believe that the cult of these sea deities came to the Phoenicians from Egypt. But in Egypt, as we have already said, there was no sea god of its own: on the contrary, the worship of the sea god came to Egypt clearly from Phenicia. Although, of course, it is possible that the Phoenicians adopted the cults of some minor Egyptian deities and began to consider them the patrons of sailors. But even in this case, they had to compare them with their sea gods. In Greek mythology, such saviors and guardians of sailors are the Dioscuri. It has already been said that among the Phoenicians they are equivalent to Eshmun and his brothers, that is, Kabir. Isn't the idea of ​​Kabirs at the heart of the notions of pathekas, although the very image of such dwarfs could really come from Egypt?

The fact that common nouns are understood in this case as proper names shows the deep antiquity of these deities. Indeed, all of them have long been revered by Western Semites. Their cult existed both in Ugarit, as already mentioned, and in other places of the Semitic-speaking world. Their veneration by the Phoenicians was hardly different from that which existed in Ugarit. It is characteristic that, although the Phoenicians had solar and lunar deities, such as Baal-Hammon or Tinnit, these luminaries were preserved as independent objects of worship. All three - the sun, the moon and the earth (in that order) are named in the treaty between Hannibal and Philip V as "fellow gods." They, apparently, were perceived as an ancient trinity. Philo's Earth was one of the most ancient goddesses, the sister and wife of the god of heaven, that is, as already mentioned, Baal-Shamim, the mother of El and, in fact, the progenitor of almost all other gods. This is an ancient concept that is not unique to the Semitic peoples. The same role was played by Earth-Gaia in Greek mythology.

The incarnation of the sun in a female form has long been known among the Semites. In Ugarit, as in the south of Arabia (as discussed earlier), the sun was a female deity. Among the Eastern Semites in Mesopotamia (perhaps under the influence of the ideas of the Sumerians who lived in southern Mesopotamia before the Semites and along with them and had a tremendous impact on the religious and mythological ideas of the latter), the sun became a male god. The Phoenicians retained the old idea of ​​the embodiment of the sun in a female form, and the sometimes encountered perception of him as a man could be caused by Mesopotamian or, rather, Egyptian influence.

The cult of the stars was also very ancient. At one time in science it was believed that in general the worship of the stars was the essence of the religion of the Semitic peoples. This opinion has now been rejected. But this does not mean that the very idea of ​​star-worship is rejected along with it. The stars were worshiped as independent deities, the stellar aspect was inherent in some other gods and goddesses. No wonder the Greeks, and after them the Romans, called, for example, Astarte Astroarcha ("mistress of the stars") or Astronoe - a name also associated with the concept of a star.

In the extant text of Philo, Betilus is mentioned only once as a son of Earth and Heaven and as a brother of the god El. This does not necessarily mean that Sanhunyaton also mentioned him only once. Philo was already able to shorten the text of the Sanhunyaton. And the work of Philo, as we know, came down only in the quotations given by Eusebius. Therefore, it is impossible to talk about his little reverence only on this basis. True, so far, and in parallel sources, Betil as an independent deity is almost never found. Only in the treaty of Baal with Esarhaddon is the god Betil mentioned, but the context does not allow us to decide whether he refers to the gods of Tire. Sometimes this god is considered not Phoenician at all, but Aramaic. Nevertheless, his mention by Sanhunyaton allows us to speak of him precisely as the god of the Phoenicians. The nature and essence of this god, unfortunately, are still unknown. We know much more about Dagon. It has already been said that he belonged to the ancient and highly revered gods of the Western Semites. But in Ugarit, at the same time, they felt his some alienation, for the main center of his cult was the city of Tutgul. Besides Dagon of Tuttul, there was also Dagon of Canaan. And it was in this variety that Dagon was highly revered by the Canaanite-Phoenicians, and from them it was perceived by the Philistines who settled in Palestine. Dagon appears to be essentially the ancestor of another family of Phoenician gods, parallel to the one that came from El. Therefore, it is not surprising that sometimes he, like El and Baal-Hammon, who, as already mentioned, took over some of Al's features, was identified with Cronus and Saturn. More usually, however, his identification with Zeus Arotrius, that is, Zeus the farmer.

The fact that Demarount, along with Astarte and Hadad (which will be discussed a little below), was transferred to power over Phenicia, testifies to the great role that this god played in the religious consciousness of the Phoenicians. But one very important caveat must be made. Demarount opposes the god of the sea Iam. He was also the father of Melqart, the main god of Tyr. Melqart, as it will be said in his place, was killed by the same Yam and resurrected by Tzid, a god associated with Sidon, or perhaps even with all of Southern Phenicia. Thus, a group of gods appears in Phoenician mythology, hostile to the god of the sea and, apparently, to all the offspring of the god Bel. Although Bel himself was most likely the god of the southern river, sea deities were worshiped more in the north of Phenicia. As already mentioned, it is possible that South Phenicia at one time performed under the name "Sidon". A certain unity of this part of the country, despite the existence of separate states there - actually Sidon and Tire, is evidenced by the mention in the Ugaritic text of the goddess Asiratu as “Asiratu of the Tyrians, the Sidonians' Plateau”. Some researchers associate the god Demarount with the Damuras or Tamuras river, which flows near Sidon. Therefore, it may be that the royal position of Demarount was recognized mainly in the southern, Sidono-Tyrian part of Phenicia. It is interesting in this regard that Sanjunyaton from Berith and Philo from Byblos, that is, from the cities of Northern Phenicia, speak only of the defeat of Demarount and his flight from Pam, but not of his revenge. Therefore, the indication that he, together with two other deities, received power over the country seems unfounded. Apparently, the myth of the defeat of Pam by Demarount was completely deliberately omitted. At the same time, this opposition of the southern god to the northern is not particularly firmly entrenched in the minds of the Phoenicians. In any case, the natives of Tire, who founded Carthage,, as we have seen, greatly revered the northern sea god. As for Demarount, so far very few traces of his cult have been found. One can only hope that excavations in Tire or Sidon will give us more information about this god.

Perhaps the image of this god was the development of the old Semitic idea of ​​the god Astara, why Demarunt is united with Astarte both as the ruler of Phenicia and as Melkart's father.

The Hadad mentioned by Philo is undoubtedly the Ugaritic Haddu, that is, Balu-Tsapanu. We have already seen how widespread the worship of this god was in the Semitic-speaking world of Asia Minor. In the minds of the Phoenicians, apparently, a splitting of his image took place, as a result of which Baal-Tsaphon and Hadad turned out to be independent gods. Hadad separated from Mount Tsafon (Tsapanu) and became the ruler of the mountains in general, and Lebanon in particular. In Rome, a sanctuary was found for the Syrian gods, among whom was Ha-dad of Lebanon. The viceroy of the Tyrian king in one of the cities of Cyprus made a dedication to this god.

We know about Adonis only from Greek and Roman writers, in whom he appears as a character in Greek mythology. But the name Adonis itself is purely Phoenician and means "lord, lord." His constant "attachment" to the Byblos and its region testifies to the Biblical origin of this god.

According to the myth, on the island on which Tyr was located, Astarte found a star falling from the sky and dedicated it to herself, and the island itself was considered the holy island of Astarte. Tire Melqart was generally closely associated with Astarte. She, as we have already noted, was considered his mother. There was a temple to Astarte in Tire. In Sidon, this goddess was closely associated with Eshmun and with him patronized both the city and its king. These two deities probably shared a common sanctuary. The high priest of Astarte may have played the role of the high priest of the entire city.

Some researchers believe that this is a local, biblical version of Astarte. Since ancient times, Baalat-Gebal has been identified with the Egyptian Hathor. This goddess was associated with the great Egyptian solar god Horus, and her very name meant "the abode of Horus." In her main function, she was a heavenly goddess as well as a goddess of love. The Greeks identified her with Aphrodite, as did the Phoenician Astarte. And this is the basis for bringing Baalat-Gebal closer to Astarte. Still, the biblical goddess was a completely independent figure. And they identified her not with Aphrodite, but with her mother Dione, whom the Greeks considered one of the oldest goddesses, the daughter of Ocean or Earth-Gaia. According to Sanhunyaton (as retold by Philo), Baalat-Gebal was the sister of Astarte. El, after he became the ruler of the world, gave her power over Byblos, and Astarte, together with Demarount and Hadad, over the country, that is, over Phenicia (except, of course, Byblos and some other places). It is possible, however, that as Astarte acquired more and more features and more and more became a cosmic goddess, Baalat-Gebal merged with her.

Khusor is the same god whom the Utaritans worshiped under the name Kotaru-va-Hasisu. As in the case of the latter, his cult came from Arabia, where there was the god Kasr. It is characteristic that, unlike the Ugaritic god, the Phoenician had only one name. Perhaps the Bible was considered his residence. In one of the versions of the myth, Khusor is called the father of the biblical god Adonis. Khusor did not belong to the offspring of Al, he was much older than him, and according to some versions of the myth, he even preceded the appearance of the universe.

In attributing the creation of the first ship (and navigation and, accordingly, shipbuilding, as you know, played a huge role in the life of the Phoenicians) to different gods, you can see traces of different legends: one, obviously, is associated with Tire, and the other with Byblos as the most important centers of sea trade and navigation ... In addition to Khusor, other gods also claimed the role of inventor of the first ship, including Usoy (the god of the city of Ushu, which was the mainland of Tire in the 1st millennium BC) and Melqart.

Khusor was identified with the Greek god Hephaestus and the Roman Vulcan. Both gods were in their deepest essence gods of fire, later becoming the patrons of blacksmithing. It is possible that Khusor was also associated with the cult of fire. Like Kotaru-va-Hasis, Khusor was engaged in magic and divination.

The cult of Eres was widespread in the west of the Phoenician world. The Temple of Eresh was as if in Carthage. But to the west, Eresh arrived clearly from the east, where he was revered in Ugarit and the northern Syrian city of Alalakh in the II millennium BC. NS. It is possible that Khusor and Eresh were originally different deities, and traces of this can be seen in the veneration of both Khusor and Eresh in Carthage. But the similarity of the "responsibilities" associated with the sea and construction, could lead to the fusion of these two figures.

It is quite natural to identify the Phoenician Baal-Magonim with the Greek Ares and Roman Mars. In Hannibal's treaty with Philip V, Ares is mentioned along with Triton and Poseidon among the most revered gods of Carthage. Being together, in one triad, Poseidon, Triton and Ares suggests, perhaps, that all three were related to the army: Poseidon and Triton, apparently, patronized the military fleet, so developed among the Phoenicians in general and among the Carthaginians in particular, and Ares - the land army, with Ares named first in this group, which is not surprising given the nature of Hannibal's army operating in Italy. In Greek (and after it in Roman) mythology, Ares (Mars) was the beloved of Aphrodite (Venus). The question arises whether the Phoenician Baal-Magonim is in some way connected with Astarte. Although there is very little evidence of the cult of this god, we can say that he was highly revered (at least officially among the warriors). According to legend, Carthage was built exactly in the place where the horse's head was found, which promised war and power in the future. The Carthaginians placed the image of a horse on their coins, on the other side of which there was an image of Tinnitus. The horse also appears on some of the steles dedicated to Tinnit. So the connection between these two deities in the relatively late period of Carthaginian history (coins and steles in honor of Tinnitus appear in Carthage from the end of the 5th or from the 4th century BC) seems to be undeniable. It is likely that as Tinnitus appropriated the features of Astarte, the god who was thought to be associated with Astarte became increasingly associated with Tinnitus. If this is so, then the assumption of a close connection in the religious ideas of the Phoenicians of the images of Astarte and Baal-Magonim seems to be not unreasonable.
The goddess Bastet, whose sacred animal was considered a cat, has long been revered by the Egyptians. But especially her cult spread in the X-VIII centuries. BC BC, when the city of Bubast, whose city goddess Bastet was, was the actual capital of Egypt. At this time, the Egyptian pharaohs again made claims for domination in Phenicia, but they could only realize them on a very modest scale: perhaps for some time they were able to subdue Byblos, but for a very short time. Cultural ties between Egypt and the Phoenician cities during this period not only did not weaken, but, perhaps, even strengthened. It was at this time that the Phoenicians themselves began to more actively penetrate into Egypt both as merchants and as mercenaries. Naturally, they began to especially revere the metropolitan goddess who patronized the sovereigns of that time, which, according to tradition, was preserved in the future. With Bastet, the Egyptians also identified Hathor, so familiar to the Phoenicians, and this circumstance probably facilitated the adoption of the cult of Bastet by the Phoenicians.

In 396 BC. NS. by decision of the Carthaginian government, the cult of Demeter and Cora was officially established in Carthage. This was due to the difficult trials that befell the Carthaginians.

Shortly before that, Carthaginian warriors destroyed and plundered the sanctuary of Demeter and Cora in Sicily. The gods, as it was then believed, became angry and unleashed a terrible epidemic on the Carthaginian warriors. And after the war, a powerful uprising broke out in Africa, threatening the very existence of the Carthaginian state, and in this the Carthaginians also saw a sign of the anger of Demeter and Cora. And so, in order to appease the angry goddesses, the government of Carthage decided to introduce their cult, which until the very fall of this state was performed according to the Greek rite. At this time, the triumphal procession of Demeter across the Greek-speaking world generally begins. The Carthaginians, by that time more and more influenced by Greek culture, also took part in this triumph. In some of their aspects, the images of Demeter and Cora were close to those of Astarte and Tinnitus, which facilitated the adoption of the Greek goddesses by the Carthaginians. Moreover, in Greece, in the pair Demeter - Cora (Persephone), the first place was occupied by Demeter, who was considered the mother of Cora. In Carthage, the goddesses were reversed. Perhaps this is due to the proximity of Cora to Tinnitus, and Demeter to Astarte, and since at this time Tinnitus pushes Astarte away, Cora also occupies a higher place in the Carthaginian religious life compared to her mother. The introduction of the cult of Demeter and Cora was clearly aristocratic. Apparently, the upper strata of the Carthaginian society, more closely connected with the Greek world, perceived the Greek religion and tried to combine some of its aspects, the closest to the Phoenician consciousness, with traditional ideas. The bulk of the Carthaginian population remained more committed to the old beliefs and was not in any way seriously affected by the influence of foreign cults.

In the Phoenician world, there was a significant difference between the cults of Dionysus and the cults of Cora and Demeter. The cult of Dionysus never became independent there. Dionysian features were, as it were, attached to other gods, primarily to Shadrapa. It should also be noted that no special reform was carried out in order to establish the cult of Dionysus, as happened with the cults of Cora and Demeter in Carthage. True, in Carthage, the cult of Dionysus, like the cult of the Greek goddesses, was of an aristocratic character. In Leptis, where Dionysus was identified with Shadrapa, the situation was apparently different: there the cult of Dionysus penetrated to a greater extent into different strata of the local Phoenician population. Gradually the cult of Dionysus, moreover still identified. with the Egyptian Osiris, spread more and more widely in the Phoenician environment.

Back in the first half of the 5th century. n. NS. the famous Christian writer Augustine, bishop of the city of Hippon in North Africa, said that the local pagans opposed Saturn to Christ, that is, the ancient Baal-Hammon, venerating him as lord and god. And in the east, Astarte was a strong rival to the new religion. The temple of Aphrodite Urania, that is, the same Astarte, was finally destroyed only in the 6th century. Also, for a very long time, the inhabitants of Byblos worshiped Adonis.

So, the place associated with the death of Adonis and the veneration there of Astarte-Aphrodite, and now is a place of worship addressed to the forces that are believed to provide fertility.

Myths and legends of the peoples of the world. Volume 12. Western Asia. Yu.B. Tsirkin. M.2004

The ancient peoples of the East have similar gods ... They were all idolaters. For example, the Phoenicians deified the forces of nature (under the name of Baal and Astarte). “In civil terms, the Canaanite peoples were already at a fairly high degree of civilization. Not to mention the Phoenicians, who at that time already conducted extensive sea trade and were familiar with all aspects of civilized life, other Canaanite tribes after them knew how to extract metals from mines, forged gold and silver things for decoration, weapons and chariots for war. they built temples and palaces, knew how to fortify cities with walls, carried on trade and were familiar with bookkeeping and writing ... "

Since the vital interests of the Phoenicians lay not only in the regions of Egypt and Mesopotamia, but were also directed towards the Cretan-Mycenaean and Greek cultures, they were supporters of a multipolar world who brought closer and distant countries closer together. Communication between neighboring tribes became an axiom for the ancient East. Although each nation in ancient times had its own gods, they are somewhat similar. The similarity of customs, cultures, languages ​​and gods is undeniable. I will give just one typical example. In the East, the god Adonis was widely known - the dying and resurrecting god of the ancient world (which Christ later became). The writer Lucian observed the feast of mourning and the resurrection of Adonis. During the holiday, funeral processions, self-flagellation and mourning were performed. Women wash the wooden image, decorate and anoint it with incense. All these rituals were performed on about the same days when Christians celebrate Easter - on the days of the bright Resurrection. Among the Jews, the holiday is associated with the night of the exodus of their ancestors from Egypt (one of the three main holidays, when the whole family with its head gathers at the festive table). Just as Christians say: "Christ is Risen," the Phoenicians of that time rejoiced and congratulated each other with the words: "Adonis is risen!" The Jews revered not only Yahweh, but also from time immemorial the Egyptian god Khnum. The exploits of Melkart, the sun god of the Philistines and Phoenicians, and the Babylonian demigod Gilgamesh are akin to the exploits of the Greek hero Hercules (battle with the lion). The same can be said about Hercules and Samson. Eusebius called Hercules a pagan copy of Samson. There was a latent or overt competition between deities, as well as between nations. The deadly battles of heroes in the Homeric cycle are known. Rozanov wrote: “Consequently, the same God dwelt everywhere in the same temples. Only the Jews said: “he is not with them, but with us,” the Phoenicians: “no, not with you, the Jews, but with us”; "And your vessels must therefore be transferred to us." Even nomads, turning into sedentary pastoralists and farmers, did not forget the past. Their holidays, cults and gods are close to those around them.

Garofalo. Pagan sacrifice

Ancient peoples located a temple on a hill: near sacred waters, springs or groves. Among the Damascus Syrians, the supreme deity was Hadad, the king of the gods (the god of the sun, war and storm), with a beard and a club. The main deity of the Phoenicians was considered the lord of the sky - Baal (Baal). Astarte was also a highly revered goddess. She, who is responsible for the offspring, is mentioned more often than other goddesses in the Bible, along with the Baals. By the way, there is reason to see a relationship between the temples of the Jews, which are mentioned in the biblical texts, and the Syro-Phoenician deities. It is known, after all, that even Solomon at the end of his life succumbed to the influence of the Syrian cult: “Then Solomon built a temple for Hamos, the abomination of Moab, on the mountain that is in front of Jerusalem, and for Moloch, the abomination of the Ammonites. So he did for all his foreign wives, who went and sacrificed to their gods ”(1 Kings 11: 7, 8). True, King Yoshiyahu destroyed the altars of Astarte. But, considering that, according to the prophet Jeremiah, she was worshiped by all the women of Judah (Jer. 44: 17-19), her influence was still extremely great. This is understandable, because Astarte is the goddess of sexual love (eros), fertility and fertility, she is surrounded by the ancients with special honor. Archaeologists have found her clay figurines depicting the mother goddess in various places.

Image of a lion and a dog from the Mekala temple in Bet Shan

And other kings of Israel in different periods of history willingly turned to the services of foreign deities. Jeroboam, having become the king of Israel, immediately began to introduce foreign gods. It was by his order that two golden calves were made, so understandable and dear to the souls of the Jews. When the golden calves were ready, he told the people: “... you do not need to go to Jerusalem; These are your gods, Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt. And he put one at Bethel and the other at Dan. And it led to sin; for the people began to go to one of them, even to Dan, and left the house of the Lord. And he built a temple on the high ground, and appointed priests from among the people, who were not of the sons of Levi ”(1 Kings 12: 28-31). Then the outraged priests, who were opponents of such temples, and many Levites left him and went to Jerusalem, where the son of Solomon, Rehoboam, reigned at that time.

Not only the paintings, but also the image of the temple on the Cypriot coin, speaks of what those temples were like: apparently, this is an image of the temple of Astarte with a tower-like building with a rough idol standing under it. The historian Weiss noted that the temples of Tire were rich and luxuriously decorated, especially those built by Hiram. He did a lot for Tire: he built up most of the city with magnificent palaces, restored old temples, built many new ones in Tire and Phenicia. He restored the ancient temples of Melkart and Astarte. In the temple of Vaalsamin he put two columns, one gold, the other made of emerald, and supplied him with golden utensils. The temples were built from the same materials as the Temple of Solomon (from stone and cedar wood). For decoration, marble, noble and base metals could be used. The Phoenician temple at Hieropolis stood on a dais in the middle of the city, surrounded by a triple wall with a gate, 100 paces in length, located on the north side. The temple itself was built in the Ionian style and faced east. It housed a section where only priests could enter. There were idols - in the form of huge phalluses.

Figurine of the goddess of love and fertility

The Phoenicians worshiped El, Gad, Astarte. Deities appeared to them as dwelling in waters and holy springs, in oases and mountains, in rocks, under stones or trees. They were worshiped with extraordinary trepidation. At the entrance to the temple of Astarte (she was called "Lush") there were phalluses. Admirers of the cult of this goddess staged passionate and sensual processions in Hermopolis. Crowds of believers in women's clothes served the goddess Astarte. Driven by the divine services to ecstasy, people cut their hands bloody to the accompaniment of dancing and music, others even emasculated themselves. The functions and purposes of the gods were different - from Melek (Moloch), who personified the scorching heat of summer (in his honor, children were sacrificed), to the healing Baal or the Baal dances ... When the Romans conquered Sardinia, which had been in the possession of the Phoenicians for a long time, they saw that she all covered with statues of Moloch. In the red-hot womb of this terrible god, his priests and worshipers burned people alive for a long time.

Phoenician god Bes

It is worth remembering at least the famous scene of the sacrifice described by Flaubert in the novel "Salammbô". B.A. Turaev wrote: “The cult in Canaan was often cruel and demanded the blood of children, the innocence of women and the voluntary mutilation of men. In Gezer, a "height" was found with eleven fetishes - pillars (so-called massebs) running in a straight line from north to south, and the foot of the most important - the twelfth. Ugly fetishes and idols have been found in many places. In Meggido, a vessel with the remains of a child was found in the foundation of the wall, apparently a sacrifice made during the laying. Similar dire finds have been made at Jericho and Gezer. In the latter, in addition, evidence of a transition to greater softness in the cult was found - the replacement of human victims with silver figurines and other symbolic offerings. In general, for all the bleakness of the ancient Canaanite religion, it undoubtedly had its own progress. "

Phoenician gold earrings

The East gave the Greeks a lot of examples of the highest fine arts. But it is rather difficult to talk about literature, architecture, art of the ancient Phoenicians. Although Herodotus wrote that the Phoenicians, having arrived in Hellas, brought many sciences and arts to the Hellenes, little is known about their literary and artistic successes. In the literature we have - perhaps the meager works of Mago and Hannon (Carthaginians). In the museums of the world you will find rare vases, figurines of animals made of gold and ivory, female images or images of animals, gold pendants, seals, jewelry, daggers, rich sculptural compositions. Some of them are of Phoenician origin. Although the Phoenicians, let's give them their due, skillfully copied the samples of those countries with which they traded or whose tributaries they were. “But what kind of people,” exclaimed the Frenchman Charles Diehl, “who managed to imitate the works of Egypt and Assyria best of all, to mix these two dissimilar elements in their own works of art and spread them along all the shores of the Mediterranean Sea? These are the Phoenicians. The great kingdoms of Egypt and Assyria, no matter how powerful, did not have a fleet, and the navigators of Tire and Sidon took it upon themselves (the duty) to acquaint Greece with their art. At first their imitative genius came under the influence of the Egyptian; until the XII century. Phenicia was a vassal of Egypt, for a long time she did not know Assyria, which is why so few Assyrian things are found in Mycenae. Only later, in the 10th and 9th centuries, the Phoenicians brought to Greece the samples they had borrowed (by them earlier) from the great kingdom of Mesopotamia. "

Punia fortress near Carthage

The Phoenicians are a copycat people. Sidon became famous for his glassware, the production of which he borrowed from Egypt. Tire became widely known for the famous dyes, which in turn were borrowed from the East. The Phoenicians were famous for their glass and metalwork (bowls, cups, jugs made of gold, bronze or silver). Utensils were made of copper, tin and silver. Raw materials were imported from Cyprus and Crete, or from Spain and Britain (from the "Tin Islands"). Scholars mention a story that tells how the Phoenicians, having arrived with goods in Spain, received so much silver for it that their ships could not accommodate it. And then they had to go to the extreme measure: having dropped the extra load (tools, utensils), they stuffed their ships to the ground with silver. They said that they even replaced the anchors of the ships with new ones made of noble metal, although this looks like a legend.

The influence of the Egyptians and Assyrians in the industrial products and goods of the Phoenicians is very noticeable, as is the Egyptian influence in architecture. Their temples are imitations of Egyptian temple buildings. In the story of Un-Amun, the ruler Byblos admitted that Egypt was a source of culture for his country: “After all, Amun created all countries, he created them after he created the country of Egypt, where you came from, first of all. After all, art came out of her to reach my abode; for science came out of it in order to reach my abode. " Byblos, by years, is the same age as Egypt during the Old Kingdom. But the Egyptians also served the kings of Phenicia. Thus, the Phoenician ruler of Tire, Abimilka, had an Egyptian as a scribe. Cultural exchanges were common. On the model of the Melqart temple in Tire, the Jews will build the Jerusalem temple (architects from Tire and Sidon).

It is impossible not to admit the presence of engineering talent in them. This is confirmed by the fact that the great commanders of Assyria - Sargon and Nebuchadnezzar - were unable to take Tire by storm. And even the army of Alexander the Great took as much as 7 years to capture the city. The besieged inhabitants of Tire used machines against the Macedonian army, which showered them with red-hot iron cannonballs, so that even the invincible Macedonians almost lifted the siege from Tire. The city of Carthage was especially famous for its fortifications and harbors.

Bedouin travel. 19th century engraving

For a long time there has been a heated debate about who should give primacy in the origin of the alphabet ... The Phoenician letter was spread over part of the territory of the Middle East (beginning of the 1st millennium BC). It is known that it was alphabetic and contained 22 characters. In Ugarit they wrote from left to right, in Phenicia - from right to left. The alphabet was created in the 16th century. BC. The history of the discovery of the Ugaritic alphabet, based on the Assyrian-Babylonian cuneiform, is as follows. A peasant in Syria discovered a burial place (1929). Then, in the same place, they found the palace of the ruler of Ugarit: his rich tomb, rooms, jewelry, terracotta figurines, a large library and a black stele depicting the god El on the throne, before which the king himself bowed. The world's first alphabet was also found in the scribes' room. The dispute over leadership in the creation of the alphabet is between Ugarit and Byblos. Even the ancient Greeks are said to have adopted the Phoenician alphabet somewhere around 850-750. BC.

Some scholars insist that the first letters of the Greeks (alpha and beta), like the word "alphabet" itself, allegedly have their origins in the Phoenician or West Semitic words "Aleph" (bull) and "Bet" (house). Others categorically disagree with this, opposing to classify the Phoenician language as "one of the dead Semitic languages", and consider the Phoenicians as Semites who created the first alphabetic alphabet, which they then allegedly adopted by unintelligent Indo-Europeans (that is, the ancient Greeks , Etruscans, Romans, Germans, Romans and the latter, of course, generally incapable of anything "unreasonable Slovenia"). Such scholars rightly protest against considering the Semites the main civilizers of the entire Ancient East and Europe, although most of the current textbooks and reference books especially praise Jewish history (and its "antiquity").

The earliest known Phoenician inscriptions date back to the 11th century. BC. (they are made on arrowheads and were found in the Bekaa Valley, not far from Bethlehem). Probably, the Phoenicians still got the idea of ​​creating an alphabet from the Egyptians. Most experts now believe that they used modified Egyptian hieroglyphs as letters. After all, their early inscriptions were found in Palestine, where these two peoples most closely adjoined. In turn, the Greeks living on the islands of the Aegean Sea met in the 9th century. BC. with their alphabet and adopted the new writing system. So it's not worth discarding the achievements of the savvy Phoenicians altogether. "Without alphabetic writing," historians note, "the rapid development of world writing, science and literature, that is, records of any nature, not constrained by the area of ​​writing material and the slow study of writing and reading, would be impossible." It is characteristic that the Greeks borrowed from the Phoenicians even the names of some letters of their alphabet (alpha, beta, etc.).

It is unlikely that the Semites were the first "cultured people" who gave the world a letter. This is almost as impossible as it is impossible that the primitive tribes of the Amazon will suddenly present us with processors of a new generation or unravel the genetic codes of a person. By the way, it is known that in the V-III millennia BC, with the exception of groups of assimilated Semitic merchants, in the coastal Mediterranean there were no Semitic ethnic groups at all. In fact, only from 1200-1100. BC. in Palestine-Canaan, Jews emerged from Egyptian captivity. But they still wander far from the coasts, not having the slightest experience of navigation. Therefore, it is extremely doubtful that these nomads-Arameans, Amorites-Martu suddenly decided to embark on sea voyages. "People of the desert", "people of death" were terribly afraid of water and felt much more familiar in the desert, on donkeys and camels, than in the sea-ocean. In the IV-III millennia BC. Semites-Arabs - "Hagarians", nomadic tribes, did not have a language in the traditional sense of the word and did not know anything about pictographic writing.

The idea that they could, over the course of several centuries, as if by magic (or rather, under the pen of biblical historians-writers), develop into a civilized ethnos that gave the world an alphabetical letter is ridiculous, and hardly anyone would believe in this ... , as Jacobson justly emphasized, speaking of primary civilizations, “the cultures of early antiquity are the cultures of the texts”. If there are no texts, then there is no culture.

Deity figurine

“The alphabet could have appeared only in the most developed, civilized environment,” writes Yu. Petukhov, “which was the environment of the Veneti-Phoenicians, who connected anew the two worlds, Europe and the Middle East. And already from them it was borrowed by the Semites in a distorted form ... ”With some categorical judgments, one cannot but admit the presence of a certain logic in his constructions. As for the Jews, they came to the rich cultural layer of Canaanite culture, enriched by a wide inter-ethnic flow. This is also confirmed by the fact of the powerful colonization of the Phoenicians and their presence in the Mediterranean (Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, Spain, Carthage). The Phoenicians of Asia considered the Carthaginians to be their children, just as they saw the citizens of Tire as their "parents." Close contacts were established between Byblos, Tire, Sidon and Egypt, the policies of Greece - Athens, Delphi and Delos. By the way, the ancient Phoenician inscriptions have not been deciphered until now, largely because “they are not translated from the Semitic languages” (although the researchers of this period are most often Jews). The author claims: the solution to the Phoenicians, the mysterious sea people who “gave the world the alphabet”, is simple: the Phoenicians are none other than the Veneti-Wends (ed. “Veneti” is the ethnonym of the Rus). To see our distant ancestors in the Phoenicians ?! One could agree with this hypothesis (if only in theory) if we inherited their gift in trade.

However, in general, the position of T. Mommsen continues to dominate in science, which he unequivocally formulated in the "History of Rome". He wrote about them: “The Phoenicians, of course, have the right to be mentioned in history along with the Hellenic and Latin nations, but even on them - even almost more than on any other people - the truth is confirmed that antiquity developed popular forces unilaterally. Everything that was created among the great and durable Aramaic tribe in the field of spiritual culture was not the work of the Phoenicians: if faith and knowledge in a certain sense were originally the property of the Aramaic nations and passed to the Indo-Germans from the East, then still not the Phoenician religion, neither Phoenician science and art, as far as we know, have ever occupied an independent position among the Aramaic. The religious ideas of the Phoenicians are formless, devoid of beauty, and their cult stimulated rather than curbed voluptuousness and cruelty. No traces of the influence of the Phoenician religion on other peoples have survived, at least in the era available for historical research. There are no indications of the existence of such Phoenician architecture or plastics that could be compared, if not with what we find in the homeland of the arts, then at least with what we find in Italy. The earliest home for scientific observation and its practical application was Babylon or the countries along the Euphrates; there, probably, they began to observe the movement of stars for the first time; there for the first time they began to distinguish and express in writing the sounds of speech; there people began to think about time, space and the forces acting in nature: the oldest traces of astronomy and chronology, the alphabet, measure and weight lead us there. True, the Phoenicians were able to benefit from the artistic and highly developed Babylonian craftsmanship for their industry, from observing the movement of the stars for their navigation and from recording sounds and introducing the right measures for trade, and by delivering goods, they spread many important rudiments of civilization. But there is no indication that it was from them that the alphabet or any of the aforementioned brilliant creations of the human mind emanated, and those religious or scientific ideas that reached the Hellenes through them, they scattered not like farmers sowing the earth, but like birds accidentally dropping seeds. The Phoenicians were completely deprived of that ability to civilize and assimilate the peoples who came into contact with them and were accessible to culture, which we find among the Hellenes and even among the Italics. " The merchant is not given to be a scientist.

North America. Amateur archaeologists excavate burial mounds

Of course, there are still many blank spots in the odyssey of the cultural expansion of the Phoenicians. So, say, in America, for many years, strange stones with inscriptions have been found. In particular, in New Hampshire, a megalithic complex was discovered (in the area of ​​the so-called "Hill of Secrets"). When the American archaeologist and linguist B. Fell, author of the book "America before Christ", deciphered one of the inscriptions (1967), he was surprised to find that the inscription was a temple dedication to the Phoenician sun god Baal. And nearby they found another inscription, which was translated as a dedication to the sun god of the Celts - Belu. It turned out that the land next to it kept the signs of the culture of two ancient alien peoples. Other stone slabs were found nearby. On them one could see some mysterious letters and signs, which were sometimes also called the "Eyes of Bel" (Baal). The same Celtic motifs associated with many solar observatories are found at The Hill of Secrets and elsewhere in New England. Many residents began to come to the scientist and bring him mysterious stone slabs. After careful study of them, Fell and other American scientists came to the conclusion that they once, apparently, belonged to both the ancient Phoenicians and Celts. In ancient times, both of these peoples lived side by side in the coastal settlements of Iberia (Spain) and in America. This version is supported by the proximity of megalithic structures in Spain, Brittany, Portugal and Britain with those found in the United States at the "Mystery Hill". One of the inscriptions reads: "Ships from Phenicia: trading platform." Linguists have found that these inscriptions are in the Phoenician language of the period from 800 to 500 BC. Although fakes are possible.

Forum Romanum

The Hellenization policy of Phenicia turned out to be so impressive that the Phoenicians soon began to resemble the Greeks more and more (they speak Greek, study in gymnasiums, and learn the traditions and manners of the Hellenes). And after Pompey captured Syria with Phenicia, the cities of the Levantine coast received self-government. The Romans pacified Phenicia by destroying the robber nests in the Lebanese mountains, putting an end to the pirate raids. Rome began to conduct large-scale construction in those places. Emperor Hadrian forbade the felling of trees in the forests of Lebanon. Quintus Curtius Rufus spoke about the city of Tire: the city under the protection of the Roman "humane authority" enjoys a long-lasting peace, which certainly contributes to general prosperity. Phoenician quarters also arose in the cities of Italy. The Pax Romana era ended for Phenicia in 614 AD when the Persian army of Khosrow II invaded. In these places from the Romans now there are much more traces of their former presence than from the actual Phoenicians.

The modern history of deciphering Phoenician inscriptions dates back to the 18th century. After all, most of the inscriptions (and their number is small) are written in dead languages. One of the examples of these inscriptions is the stela of Meshi in Moab, dated 830. Its lines speak of the wars between Moab and Israel in the time of Omri and Ahab, recalling the biblical expressions: “And Chemosh said to me:“ Go and take Nebo from Israel ”. I went at night and fought from dawn to dusk. I took the city and killed everyone: 7000 men, boys, women, girls and maids, because I dedicated this to Astarte-Chemosh. I brought (vases?) To Yahweh and laid them in front of Chemosh. " Two significant inscriptions were found in 1947 and 1948 in Kara-Tepe. It is a pity that the work of the Phoenician Sanhunyaton, a man of "great learning and thoroughness," who expounded the beliefs and milestones of history, did not come down to us.

The example of Phoenician rich cities once again reminds us, citizens of the 21st century, how absurd and illusory reliance on material wealth, how blind and stupid the thirst for hoarding is. One cannot help recalling the words of the famous German economist of the 19th century. Friedrich Liszt: “The world of wealth does not exist! Only the concept of the spiritual or the living can be combined with the concept of the world ... Is it possible to speak, for example, about the world of minerals? Eliminate the spirituality, and everything that is called wealth will turn into only dead matter. What is left today of the treasures of Tire and Carthage, of the riches of the Venetian palaces, when the spirit flew away from these masses of stone? " All the riches sank into the abyss, and the people dissolved in the mass of alien tribes, poor, but brave and warlike.

Assyrian war chariot

Despite all its riches and cunning, Phenicia could not defend its independence, falling under the rule of the Assyro-Babylonian kingdom. Then the Persians invaded. They conquered Tire and resettled part of the population to Carthage. In the IV century. BC. the cities of the Phoenicians, led by Sidon, revolted against the oppression of the Persians, but the revolt ended in failure. The king of the Persians ordered the execution of noble citizens. Then the inhabitants set the city on fire and burned down (along with their treasures). Tire existed a little longer, but it too fell under the blow of the troops of Alexander the Great. In 64 BC. NS. Phenicia, Palestine and Syria were captured by the Romans, giving these lands a common name - the province of Syria. So Phenicia and Syria will become the property of the Romans, and then the Byzantines. The power of the conquerors remained here for 600 years. Under the onslaught of Greco-Roman culture, the Phoenician language disappeared, and this people completely lost all ethnic feelings.

Over time, Arab culture and the Arabic language reigned here (after the lands of ancient Phenicia were captured by the Arabs in the 7th century AD). Nowadays, a rather deserted Lebanese landscape, indented by hills and rocks, from time to time revive churches, the remains of Crusader fortresses, cedars and the memory of ancient gods and cults. In any case, back in the XII century. AD Jewish traveler Benjamin of Tudel, saw in one of the cities a statue of a Phoenician deity and a Phoenician temple. Local churchmen worship the Virgin Mary and Christ as reverently as the cedars of Lebanon. Of course, now on this earth there are more followers of Mohammed than Christ. Tourists admire the "cedars of Solomon", to which the Old Testament Solomon, frankly, had nothing to do with.

Warlike Arabs

Recently, the number of archaeological finds at the site of ancient Phenicia has increased markedly. However, all these inscriptions are still a drop in the sea of ​​Phoenician culture. D. Harden believes that, despite the available finds, the Punic epigraphic material is small. It is hoped that someday an archive of clay tablets comparable to the Canaanite or Ugaritic ones will be found. He writes: “We, of course, would very much like to find the authentic Punic text of Hannon's account of his travels or data on the cost of building the Melqart temple in Hades, which, according to Strabo, rested on two bronze steles ... Surely there were many other valuable documents, but we are very fortunate that Hannon's account has come down to us, at least in a Greek translation, albeit clearly distorted. " While these 600 Greek words of Hannon's translation are extremely important, they are, alas, a pitiful replacement not only for lost documents, but also for the vast library of Punic literature that we know existed in Carthage in 146 BC. The loss of Eastern Phoenician books (almost certainly there were historical and poetic works among other sources) is partially offset by finds of Ugaritic texts and Hebrew literature, but nothing like this happened in the west. “All that we have in the west is about forty quotes from twenty-eight agricultural treatises of Magon in Latin translation, which were made by the Romans after the siege of Carthage ... The loss of the monuments of Phoenician culture leads to the fact that the Phoenicians appear before us in a much less favorable light. If their epic had survived, it is possible that, for example, Phoenician merchants would have looked more likeable people in Homer's poems and Herodotus' remarks. Or if a comedy written by a Carthaginian playwright had reached us, then the image of a Punic merchant, created by Plato, who does not skimp on malicious ridicule, would have seemed just a caricature: “He knows all languages, but pretends that he does not know: he is definitely from Carthage; do you need comments? " Today, Phenicia is just an echo of its former greatness and glory.

We would like to hope that the long-suffering land of Lebanon, which has already survived a brutal civil war, will not again find itself in the center of bloody battles after the assassination of R. Hariri (apparently, committed at the behest of evil forces aiming to provoke a US strike on independent Syria). I remembered an ancient Arab legend. In ancient times, Nimvrod reigned in Lebanon. He sent the giants, ordering them to destroy the Baalbek fortress. Israel now fears that the missiles launched by Syria could do what Nimvrod once thought. But this will certainly happen if you do not curb the murderous policy of Israel and the United States ... Peaceful Lebanon and Syria can become in the XXI century. a place of interesting discoveries.

The daughters of Balu - Pidrai, Talay and Artsay - seemed to embody some aspects of Balu's activities and figures: heavenly dew, divine light and fertile earth. These were the goddesses of fertility, and they, together with the Strongman Balu, ensured the continuation of life on earth. Pidray and Talay usually lived with their father in his palace. Artsai, more connected with the earth, apparently lived somewhere on the earth, and perhaps in the underworld. Some scholars even think that Artsai was associated with the god of death, Mutu, and at some stage of myth-making she was perceived as the spouse of this underground god.

Balu also had brothers - gods of storm and fruiting rain, like Balu himself. But they all clearly obeyed Lord Tsapan, who could even betray them to the god of death Mutu instead of himself (although he did not).

The god Rashapu played an important role in Ugarit. We do not know the myths about him (it is possible that they did not exist). But in the life of the Ugaritians, he occupied a significant place. This god was associated with the earth and the underworld, he, the Ugaritians believed, sent diseases and epidemics to people, but could, if addressed to him, heal them from them. He acts on people, shooting at them with a bow; diseases are the result of the defeat of a person by arrows of Rashap. On earth, he most often appears during sunset, and therefore he is sometimes called the doorkeeper Shapasha. Rashapu, as it were, heads a group of deities, which the Ugaritians clearly did not love and were very afraid of. These deities were also likely associated with illness and death. These deities included the goddess Dadmishu, who in the list of Ugaritic deities immediately follows Rashap. She was thought of as a warlike goddess who destroyed people, and perhaps the Ugaritans considered her the wife of Rashapa.

The god Haranu occupied a significant place in the Ugaritic religion. We know little about him. It is only known that this god healed people and horses from the effects of snake venom. Perhaps Haranu was generally a healing god, but at the same time he could send diseases to both people and horses. In ancient times, including in Asia Minor, the horse was used not in agriculture, but in the army, and in the elite troops associated with the aristocracy. Therefore, perhaps, the cult of Haranu in Ugarit was more associated with the military aristocracy.

The Ugaritians also worshiped other deities who occupied a lesser place in their spiritual life. Among such deities was the god Yavu. Very little is known about him, namely, that he is somehow connected with the sea god Yammu. According to some assumptions, Yavu is the same god who was called Yevo in Phoenician Berit and who is called Jahweh in the Bible.

In the Ugaritic religion and mythology, there were also various lower deities who lived between heaven and earth. They helped or, conversely, harmed people, and they were also worshiped. Some people thanked for their help, asked to continue to help them, others they tried to appease so that they would not send them various troubles. The Ugaritans greatly revered the Seelie Goddesses - Kosaratum, whose sacred birds were considered to be swallows. These goddesses appeared to be helping with the birth of the child. The list of Utarian deities includes deified musical instruments. Some gods have their own servants and messengers. Messengers not only connect the gods with each other, but sometimes they are intermediaries between gods and people. Gods can create special creatures to carry out certain assignments. So, Ilu created the demon Satikatu specifically to heal King Karatu. And this whole motley divine world was piously venerated by the Ugaritians.

With the fall of Ugarit, some Ugaritic deities were forgotten, others, probably revered by the Canaanites, retained their cult, but took a more modest place than it was in Ugarit in the II millennium BC. NS.; still others continued to enjoy great veneration in the 1st millennium BC. NS.

THE PHENICIAN GODS

The Phoenicians worshiped virtually the same or nearly the same gods as the Ugaritians. But they pronounced their names in accordance with the laws of their language. So, they called the god Ilu El, and Balu - Baal. Of course, despite the fact that both the Ugaritic and Phoenician religions belonged to the West Semitic and had a common origin, there was no complete identity between the two religious and mythological systems. First, the Phoenicians and Ugaritans were, although closely related, but still different peoples. Secondly, the sources of our knowledge about the Phoenician and Ugaritic gods date back to different times. True, the time of the appearance of the composition of the Berite priest Sanhunyaton most likely coincides with the last period of Ugarit's existence and is probably not much later than the time of the creation of those mythological poems that were written down by the Utarian scribe Ilimilku. In other words, if we attribute the data of Sanhunyaton to the II millennium BC. NS. (and this seems quite reasonable), then we can consider the information that has come down to us about the Ugaritic and Phoenician religions as almost simultaneous. But the work of Sanhunyaton itself was largely rethought by Philo of Biblical, who lived more than a thousand years later, and it takes considerable work of a scientist to restore (at least approximately) the content and meaning of the work of Sanhunyaton. We also have at our disposal evidence of a later time, already the 1st millennium BC. NS. These are not always clear messages from Greek and Roman authors, and genuine inscriptions left by the inhabitants of Phenicia and its colonies, especially Carthage, which contained certain news about the Phoenician gods. So, a significant part of our information may reflect a new, in comparison with the time of Sanhunyaton, stage in the history of the West Semitic, in this case Phoenician, religion.

The supreme god of the Phoenicians was El. True, the Phoenicians, at least the Phoenicians of the 1st millennium BC. e., with their real needs they turned little to him. Al, so to speak, reigned, but did not rule. Only on the outskirts of the Phoenician world was El still quite actively rendered cultic honors as the Creator of creation. It is possible that El was also worshiped in Byblos and Berit. But in most Phoenician cities, including the colonies, El's "duties" were already passed on to other gods.

One of these gods was Baal-Shamim ("the lord of heaven"). He held a very high place in the world of Phoenician deities. The Phoenicians placed him at the head of the universe. Baal-Shamim's residence was located high above the ground. It was said about him that he was one of the most ancient gods and that people were the first to worship him. Baal-Shamim was apparently connected with the sea, patronizing navigation. Baal-Shamim headed the entire list of gods in various Phoenician cities - Byblos, Tire, Carthage and others. But, as one French scholar notes, in religious life as well as in politics, "popularity and official status are two different things." Still, Baal-Shamim was not particularly popular.

Along with Baal-Shamim, the Phoenicians placed other gods at the head of their divine hierarchy, who, apparently, in the 1st millennium BC. NS. also already played in fact a relatively small role in the religious life of Phenicia and its colonies. These were Baal-Malaki (or Baal-Malaga) and Baal-Tsafon. Baal-Malaki is most likely another sea deity, and it was he who patronized sea voyages. Perhaps it was in his honor that the Phoenicians named one of the cities they founded in Spain, Malaka (modern Malaga). As for Baal-Tsaphon, this is a very ancient god. In Ugarit, where he was called the Strongman Balu, he, as we have already seen, played a very important role in religious beliefs, being the god of rain, fertilizing the earth, the god of thunder and storm, associated with the sea. Apparently, in Phenicia, he was endowed with the same features and functions. Of these three gods, Baal-Tsaphon was probably comparatively more revered. Religious honors were given not only to God himself, but also to Mount Tsafon (Ugaritic Tsapan), where, as it was assumed, the palace of this god is located. Temples of Baal-Tsaphon were in many Phoenician cities, and the Phoenicians often included the name Tsafon in the names of their children, thereby placing the child under the protection of this god. And the neighbors of the Phoenicians, the Jews, compared Mount Tsaphon with their sacred Mount Zion.