The History of the Ancient Civilizations. Duncker Max

not the deity only, but the old supremacy of the Phenicians, and their settlements on their islands and coasts. The Hebrews tell us that once, when a great drought attacked the land, the priests of Baal assembled at Carmel and invoked the god to consume with his rays the bull which they placed as a sacrifice on the billets of the altar. But the god heard them not. Then Elijah, the prophet of the Jews, mocked them. "Call louder," he said: "perhaps he is meditating or hath a pursuit; he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and will wake up again." The priests called louder, and became frantic, and cut themselves with knives and lancets, so that the blood gushed out.[541]

As Baal and Moloch, the beneficent and the baneful powers, were united in Baal of Tyre, and in the form of Melkarth, so also was the goddess of reproduction, of birth, and procreation amalgamated with the warrior goddess, the maiden who brought death. It was this deity which in turn gave blessing and destruction, sensual enjoyment and war, birth and death. She inspired consuming sensual passion, and then caused death to overtake her lover, even if she did not slay him herself. Thus a Roman poet can put into the mouth of a Carthaginian the invocation, "Goddess Astarte, power of gods and men, life and safety, and again destruction, death, and dissolution."[542] We find that the Venus of Tyre was called Astarte, that at Ashtaroth Karnaim, the ancient seat of the worship of the horned Astarte, the maiden with the horns of the moon, there was a sanctuary of Atargatis,[543] and that fire-festivals were celebrated at Hierapolis in the sanctuary of Atargatis, which festivals belonged to Astarte; that the Urania, i.e. the birth-goddess, of Ascalon, Cyprus, and Cythera became an Aphrodite Areia, i.e. a warlike Aphrodite;[544] that after Cinyras, the king of Byblus, whose daughters paid service to the goddess of Byblus with their bodies, Pygmalion became king, and he regarded with abhorrence the unchaste daughters of Cinyras, and worshipped the pure goddess of heaven, and taught how to appease her anger by human sacrifices.[545] At Carthage a good goddess of the sky (bona cœlestis) was worshipped beside an evil one (inferna cœlestis). If human sacrifices were here burnt to the goddess Dido, just as the supposed foundress of Carthage is said to have burnt herself,[546] her sister Anna, i.e. the charming one, was worshipped with cheerful rites. Other accounts mention that the two sisters Dido and Anna were one and the same goddess. Without doubt they are right. We saw that with the Babylonians the planet Venus, when rising, was the war-goddess Istar, and, when setting, she was Mylitta, the goddess of love (p. 270).

The relation of the Tyrian goddess Astarte to the moon has already been touched upon. As goddess of the moon, she was a changing, wandering deity. With the waning light of the moon she retired into the gloom of the west, the region of the setting sun; and on the disappearance of the goddess on the "bad evening," the Tyrians performed rites of mourning. As a "wandering goddess,"[547] Astarte was called among the Phenicians Dido, i.e. the rover, and among the Westerns Europa, i.e. the dark one.[548] With the retirement of the goddess was connected the legend how her destructive power was overcome; it showed how Astarte could be worshipped in Tyre as the wife of Melkarth, as Milkath (Melecheth, i.e. queen).[549] The wandering sun-god went in search of the lost goddess. At length he found her in the remote distance, and loosed her girdle; the goddess surrendered herself to him, and sacred marriage changed the warlike goddess into the friendly deity favourable to procreation, Astarte into Ashera, Dido into Anna, Artemis or Athena into Atargatis. The "maiden of the sky" is now the wife of the god of Tyre, the Hera of the sky, the Ada (Athe) of the Syrians. From the embraces of Melkarth and Astarte, the sun-god and the moon-goddess, and the conquest of the cruel goddess of war, spring life, order, and law. The sacred marriage is said to have taken place in the West, at Samothrace, and further still, on the Cadmeia, the citadel of Cadmus,[550] i.e. of the searching Melkarth, and finally beyond the pillars of the god, on the happy islands of the Western Sea, where all fruits of every kind grew spontaneously, especially the apples of life, the pomegranates of Ashera, the apples of the Hesperides—the pledge of love, the symbol of life and light returning out of darkness. Here also Melkarth sank down to rest in the streams of the Western Sea, which his beams had warmed.[551]

The Syrians did not remain content with combining the beneficent and destructive powers into one form only, into Baal-Melkarth and Astarte-Ashera. While searching for the unity of the divine powers and the divine nature, they also combined the male and female deities into one figure, and the creative and receptive powers were amalgamated in one and the same form. As the combination of mighty heroic power with luxurious sensuality is the practical ideal of the East, so in theory also the highest union of the powers of nature and divine being, the amalgamation of male and female is attained by the same combination. When Astarte had become Ashera, and had surrendered herself to the god, the god in turn surrendered himself to the goddess. He plied female tasks, she carried the weapons. But even their nature became one, their forms were combined. Astarte and the Baal placed at her side became one deity. The male deity of the Moabites was Camos. When Mesha, king of Moab, took Nebo from the Israelites, he dedicated it to Ashtor-Camos.[552] At Carthage Dido-Astarte was represented with the beard of Melkarth.[553] At Paphos there was a standing image of the bearded Aphrodite, which was worshipped as a great divinity. It is this unification which lies at the root of the legends of Heracles (Melkarth) and Omphale (perhaps, mother[554]), of Semiramis and Sardanapalus. At certain festivals of Baal the priests and worshippers of the androgynous deity appeared in red transparent female garments, and were otherwise dressed as women, while the women were dressed as men, and carried swords and lances.[555] The law of the Jews strictly forbids the erection of Astartes and pillars, the bringing of the hire of the harlot or the pay of the fornicator into the house of Jehovah, the tearing of the skin, or the cutting of the hair (which was customary among the Syrians in different ways as the symbol of the worship of certain deities), and insists that no eunuch shall come into the people of Jehovah, that no woman shall wear a man's clothes, and no man the clothes of a woman.[556]

Philo told us above (p. 355) that Eljon of Byblus, who was called the Highest, was slain in conflict with wild beasts, and was worshipped by after generations with libations and sacrifice. In Byblus, under the name Adonis (Adon, i.e. Lord), a god was worshipped, who was thought to have disappeared, or to have been carried off in the bloom of youth. Eljon and Adonis are one and the same form. When the maritime river named after this deity, the Adonis (now Nahr Ibrahim), near Byblus, began to run red in July (Thammuz), owing to the red earth washed down from the mountains, then it was believed that the beautiful Adonis was slain on Libanus by the savage boar of the war-god. With lamentations and cries the women sat in the shrine at Byblus; or lingered by the wayside lamenting the death of Adonis. They cut off their hair, tore their breasts, and cried out—Ailanu, ailanu (woe to us). Adonis was lost, and was now called Thammuz (the Departed).[557] A time of lamentation was observed, during which his wooden image was washed and anointed, and laid upon a bier, which the priests carried about with their garments rent and beards shorn. But the god appeared again; he came to life again, as it seems, with the new spring. And as the lamentations for his death had