The History of Antiquity (Vol. 1-6). Duncker Max

Adonis, as one account maintains, then in the minds of the Syrians the destructive sun-god, the glow of the midsummer sun which makes vegetation wither, was the cause of the death of Adonis.

Philo further told us of the two sons of the giants, the brothers Samemrumus and Usous, at Tyre (p. 354). The name Samemrumus means the High One of the Sky, a meaning which is clearly confirmed by the Greek attribute Hypsuranius. Hence Samemrumus was the god, the Baal of Tyre, Baal Melkarth. That Usous also was a god of Tyre is clear from the observation of Eusebius, that Usous, a man of little account, had been deified at Tyre beside Melicertes.[559] Usous, who knew how to catch and destroy wild animals, and clad himself in their skins, the ancestor of hunters, reminds us of the Esau of Hebrew tradition. Compared in point of language the names of Usous and Esau coincide: "Usous" (Usov) means, like "Esav," the hairy one. Completely reversing the natural connection, Philo ascribes to Usous the erection of the pillars which belong to his brother, and represents the hunter as embarking on the earliest ship, whereas Samemrumus, the father of the fisherman, must have embarked on the first ship. We saw that the name Sidon means "fish-catchers" (p. 344). Hence the legends of the Phenicians carried back the origin of the Sidonians, to whom not only the city of Sidon but also Tyre belonged, to Baal Melkarth. From this god the tribe of the Sidonians, as it seems, pretended to have sprung. At a later period the mariners of the coast, i.e. the population of the harbour towns, looked down with scorn on the shepherds and hunters of the mountains, although they could not refuse to recognise the greater antiquity of this mode of life. Usous, therefore, must be regarded as the elder brother, the hunter of the mountains, like the Esau of the Hebrews, while the younger Melkarth takes up his abode in Tyre. That Usous is the firstborn is clear from Philo's remark, that Samemrumus rebelled against his brother. The contrast between the two brothers is marked by the statement of Eusebius, that Usous was of little account, more strongly than in Philo. From this we may perhaps conclude that Usous, the older god, was originally looked upon as a hostile power, as Baal Moloch; while in Samemrumus the friendly, helpful, beneficent power of the deity was personified as Baal Melkarth. An obscure trace of the contrast of the two gods is to be found also in the name Surmubel, i.e. Opponent of Baal, in Philo, which seems to belong to Baal Melkarth in opposition to Baal Moloch.[560]

The gods, whom the various cities of the Phenicians worshipped as their tutelary deities, were placed side by side as soon as the feeling of community in the cities became more lively, and intercourse between them more vigorous. Hence it came about that a common worship was also paid to these tutelary deities. Beside their significance in the natural and moral world, there resided from antiquity in certain deities peculiar relations to hunting and agriculture, and it was natural that as naval occupations, trade, and industry developed in the cities, the gods should be brought into relation to these spheres of activity also. In the same degree as it was felt that trade and commerce could only prosper amid internal peace and security in the cities, and under the protection of law and justice, the gods who maintained order in the world must become the protectors of order and law in the cities. In this feeling, and starting from conceptions of this kind, the priests of the Phenicians brought the gods of their cities into a connected system which, following the sacred number seven, included seven gods. The deities brought into this circle were known by the collective name Cabirim, i.e. the "Powerful," the "Great." Among the descendants of the "field" and the "husbandman," Philo has already mentioned Misor, i.e. Sydyk (justice). As powers ruling in justice, law, and equity, and maintaining order in the cities, the Cabiri are the children of Sydyk. The Greeks call them children of the sun-god, i.e. of Baal Samim; and if others connect the Cabiri with Ptah, the god of light among the Egyptians, the conclusion to be drawn is, that it was Baal Samim who, in his relation to the Cabiri, was denoted by the name of the Just, the supreme champion of justice. From the hunter and the fisher Philo derives Chusor, who discovered the working of iron; he calls him Hephæstus (p. 354). Chusor, so far as we can tell, was the foremost deity within the circle of the Cabiri. Phenician coins exhibit him with a leather apron, hammer, and tongs; the name seems to denote "arranger." He was the tutelary god of the life of the cities occupied in navigation and handicraft. Next to Chusor came a female deity, Chusarthis, also called Turo (Thorah, law), whom the Greeks call by the name Harmonia. As the same deity is also called the goddess of the moon, we cannot doubt that Chusarthis is Astarte, which is also sufficiently clear from other evidence; only in the new system the severe goddess was connected in a definite manner with the upholding of justice and preservation of law. Next to Astarte in the series of the Cabiri comes Baal Melkarth of Tyre, who is known to the Greeks under the name of Cadmus. He is regarded as the discoverer of mining and masonry and the inventor of writing. He searches for the lost Harmonia, and with her when found celebrates the sacred marriage. Hence Cadmus could be worshipped in this system as a life-awakening, phallic god, as well as the tutelar god of marriage. A peculiar reverence was enjoyed among the Cabiri by the deity who was added as an eighth to these seven; his name was Esmun, i.e. the Eighth. In this form it seems that the peculiarities of the seven gods were taken up and gathered together. At any rate in Carthage the temple of Esmun stood in the Byrsa, and on the highest part of it. In this temple the holiest relics of the city were preserved and the most important deliberations held. The Greeks call Esmun by the name of Asclepius, but also add that he was different from the Greek Asclepius. He was, it appears, a healing, i.e. an appeasing deity, like Jasion in the Cabiric mysteries of Samothrace. Esmun is also compared and confounded with Hermes, as with the Thoth of the Egyptians. Just as Thoth revealed the sacred books of the Egyptians, did Esmun reveal the sacred books of the Phenicians. Esmun was represented with a serpent in his hand as the serpent-holder (Ophiuchus), and his head as surrounded by eight rays. The forms of the eight tutelar gods were carved by the Phenicians on the prows of their ships; it was the Cabiri, as Philo told us, who discovered the ship. Even now Phenician coins exhibit the Cabiri in that dwarfed and distorted form in which the Phenicians loved to represent the nature and superhuman power of the gods.[561]

      From the circumstance that the Greeks, when settling in Lemnos, Imbros, Samothrace, and Rhodes, found the worship of the Cabiri in existence, and adopted it, though not without certain alterations, we may conclude that the Cabiric system was established before the year 1000 B.C. In the tutelary gods of the sea-loving nation of the Phenicians the Greeks recognised and worshipped the deities favourable to mariners, and from this side they combined them with their own Dioscuri. On the other side the myth of Melkarth and Astarte, who were adopted into this circle of divinities, the myth of Melkarth, who discovers the lost moon-goddess in the land of gloom, and returns thence with her to new light and life, and who wakes to new life after the slumber of the winter, gave the Greeks an opportunity of connecting with the mysteries of the Cabiri those conceptions of the life after death, which grew up among them after the beginning of the sixth century.

      When the great deities had been combined with the circle of the Cabiri, the subordinate spirits followed in their course. By degrees a scheme of thrice seven was reached, a scheme of twenty-one or rather twenty-two deities, since an eighth was added to the seven Cabiri. These, beginning with El, were arranged according to the twenty-two letters of the Phenician alphabet, and stood in a certain relation to them. From this number of deities, their various names, and the order of succession, various schemes of the origin of the gods were developed, and with the help of these genealogies certain systems of theogony and cosmogony were formed, of which the dislocated and confused fragments were found in Philo; and the chief of them I have given above. The wind Kolpia (p. 353) modern research would explain by Kol-pyah, i.e. "breath of the month;" Baau, the wife of this wind, by Bohu, i.e. Chaos, the Tohu-wa-Bohu of the Hebrews. The more abstract the potentialities with which these systems begin, the later we may assume their origin to be.

Like the Arabs, the Syrians originally worshipped their gods upon the mountains and in stones; then they erected pillars of wood