The History of the Ancient Civilizations. Duncker Max

the Paphians in Cyprus, and the Phenicians at Ascalon.[506] Hence we may conclude that Baaltis, in nature or in name, was not far removed from the Bilit or Mylitta of the Babylonians, and this conclusion is sufficiently confirmed by all that we know of the worship of Baaltis. Cinyras, the first king of Byblus, is said to have erected shrines to Aphrodite at Byblus and in Cyprus, and his daughters are said to have paid service to the goddess with their persons. The maidens of Byblus waited for strangers in the market-places, just as the maidens of Babylon waited in the temple (p. 269), and the price of compliance was paid, as in Babylon, to Aphrodite.[507] Of the maidens of Cyprus we are told that they went down to the sea shore in order to sell themselves to the sailors on landing.[508] We also find that sacred servants, male and female, who dedicated themselves to this form of worship, were always to be found in the temples of the Syrian goddess, and even married women entered their ranks at certain times.[509] The Hebrews tell us that the women wove tents for Ashera, and that paramours, male and female, were in her sanctuaries.[510] In shady groves, on green hills, and among the mountain forests of Libanus, sacrifice was offered to this goddess. The lofty trees, the terebinth, the evergreen pine and the cypress were sacred to her; the pomegranate, the symbol of fruitfulness, was her peculiar fruit. The ram, the he-goat, and the dove, especially the white dove, animals of vigorous procreation and reproduction, were dedicated to her, and formed the most welcome offerings. In the temples of the goddess before the cell in which she was worshipped under the form of conical stones or upright pillars of wood, were dove-cotes and pools of water.[511] Fish also were dedicated to this goddess; and certain kinds of fish were sacred among the Syrians. These were not to be injured, and enjoyed divine honours.[512] Beside the rich and ancient temple of Derceto at Ascalon was a lake abounding in fish. At Hierapolis the image of Atargatis, which had a dove on the head, was carried down to the lake near the temple. This image of "the Assyrian Urania" was also carried down to the sea, amid a great crowd collected from Syria, Arabia, and Mesopotamia.[513] The image of Derceto at Ascalon, on the shore of the sea, in that temple which was the oldest of Urania, known to Herodotus, was a woman as far as the waist, but from the thighs downwards she had the body of a fish.[514] From the custom of carrying the image of the goddess to pools of water, and the form of the goddess at Ascalon, has arisen the legend of the Greeks, that at Ascalon or Hierapolis she threw herself into the water, and was changed into a fish. The colonies of the Phenicians worshipped a Venus Marina, and the goddess of Berytus is said to have come from the sea; with the Greeks the goddess of Cyprus and Cythera is said to have risen from the sea.[515] Appian remarks that the goddess of Hierapolis was regarded by some as Aphrodite, by others as Hera, and by others again as the source and spring of all that came out of moisture.[516] Hence the Bilit (Baaltis) of Byblus, the Derceto of Ascalon, the Atargatis of Hierapolis, the Ashera of the Hebrews, was a deity favourable to birth and fertility, the power of nature which creates from moisture and water.

A male deity also, who gave fruit and increase from water, was worshipped by the Canaanites. At Gaza and Ashdod, the cities of the Philistines, and near the coast, at Beth-Dagon, and Kaphar-Dagon, the god Dagon was invoked, whom Philo mentioned as the Zeus Arotrius, the Zeus of the field, the god of nourishment. His temple at Gaza was the pre-eminent shrine of the Philistines, the centre of their federation. The image of Dagon in his temple at Ashdod had the face and hands of a man, the body of a fish, and again the feet of a man.[517] Philo's account denotes Dagon as the discoverer of the plough and the god of nourishment, as the giver of corn and protector of the field, and therefore he must in any case have been a spirit of increase and fertility. We found the name of this god in Babylonian inscriptions of the time of Hammurabi, and before it, his image, and that of his priests, among the monuments of Assyria. We saw that his name designated him as a fish-god, and know that Babylonian legends connected him with the sea, and represented him as arising from the sea (p. 272).

By the side of the deities of the beneficent powers of nature and of birth, the Canaanites placed severe and gloomy deities, who were averse and hostile to the bloom of nature, the life and generation of mankind. These were Moloch and Astarte. The first is known to the Greeks under the name of Cronus, and from Philo's account of El we must deduce the relation of this god to Saturn. The Moloch of the Canaanites is the cruel destroying god of war; fire in its consuming, though also in its purifying properties, was his element. He is said to have been represented in the form of a bull or with a bull's head or horns.[518] Among the booty which Sethos I. (1439–1388 B.C.) brought back from his campaigns against the Cheta and Retennu we may see, in the sculptures at Karnak (p. 150), the image of a bull.[519] The Canaanites offered human sacrifices to Moloch. If we remember that the Sepharvites of Babylonia offered up men to Adrammelech, i.e. "to king Adar," the spirit of the planet Saturn, we may venture to regard the Moloch of the Canaanites as the god of Saturn, without excluding the possibility that the burning glow of the midsummer sun may have lain at the root of the Canaanite conception of this god.[520] Not only were captives, often to the number of thousands, sacrificed to Moloch in gratitude for the victory bestowed;[521] but also at the beginning of an important undertaking, or the opening of a campaign, his favour was sought by human sacrifices. These were indispensable in order to appease his wrath, and turn destruction from all upon the head of a few.[522] If the crops withered, or a pestilence devastated the cities, or great reverses fell upon the land in war, human victims were burned as expiatory offerings.[523] Such offerings could only be taken from among the native families. Pure victims as yet undefiled by sexual intercourse, children and youths, were, as it seems, the most welcome sacrifice. The dearest possession was the most powerful expiation. The best beloved children, the firstborn or only son, must be offered to the god "as a ransom."[524] We have seen above (p. 356), how Philo represents El himself as performing this sacrifice of a son. Only the surrender of what was dearest could touch the cruel feeling of the relentless god, and turn his wrath upon the enemy so that he laid his curse upon him. Thus it came to pass that the eldest son of the king was clothed with purple and burned to Moloch in the place of the ruler of the land. When Joram, king of Israel, had shut up the king of Moab in Kir Harosheth, "the Moabite took his firstborn son, who would have been king in his place, and sacrificed him as a burnt offering upon the wall. Then there was great indignation against Israel, and Israel turned back to his own land."[525] Hamilcar, Hanno's son, burnt himself in the year 480 B.C., when the battle of Himera went against the Carthaginians; and when Himilco, in the year 406 B.C., besieged Agrigentum, and a pestilence came upon the army, he sacrificed a boy to Cronus, in order to stay the plague.[526] When Agathocles of Syracuse, after landing in Africa had defeated the Carthaginian army, and encamped under the walls of Carthage, the Carthaginians believed that they had brought the anger of the god upon them because of late, instead of sacrificing the children of the noblest citizens,