Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/88

68 HISTORY OF ART IN PIKKNICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. proper name of a god, worshipped especially at Gebal, whose cult was afterwards carried as far as Greece, and finally became one of the most famous in the antique world. From all this it follows that the titles given by the Phoenicians to the more august of their gods were determined chiefly by geographical limitations, and that they must have been far from awaking such clearly defined ideas as those attached by the Greeks to their Zeus, to their Poseidon or Hades, to their Hermes or Apollo. For the same reason they lent themselves much less kindly to plastic figuration, and the critic who attempts to define in words the conceptions embodied in the terms Baal, Melek, Adon, has no easy task. 1 The examination of certain rites and epithets allows us to catch a glimpse of a nature-god, worshipped chiefly in the most striking of his manifestations, namely, as a sun-god. All the Baalim seem to have had that character, but he in whom it was most strongly marked was the Baal of Gebal, that Tammouz who was invoked by cries of Adoni, Adorn, " My lord, my lord." This famous being, who was afterwards to become the simple Syrian hunter of the Greeks, was for the Phoenicians the great sun-god himself, the star that appeared to languish every year with the frosts of winter and to revive every spring ; and those seasons of alternate joy and sorrow had their counterpart in the rites with which Adon was worshipped. As in Egypt and Chaldata, the spectacle of an organic world in which all life sprang from the union of the sexes suggested the application of the same condition to the divine world. Every god had a goddess ; by the side of each Baal, or " master/' there was a Baalat, or " mistress." At Gebal this mistress was adored under the name of Baalat-Gcbal, or the " Mistress of Gebal." She is represented on the upper part of the stele of Jehawmelek (Fig. 23). Her reputation was great over the whole coast, and has come down to us through the Greeks as that of Beltis. At Carthage Tank shared the throne of Baal- Mammon ; at Tyre and Sidon Astoret was the Baalat of Baal-Melkart and Baal-Sidon. Astoret, or, to use a form to which we are better accustomed, Astarte, seems to have had a more real personality than any other Phoenician goddess. Her pre-eminence in that respect was due 1 M. BERGER mentions another title of the same kind, El^ which is found associated with the names both of gods and goddesses. - Hence, in all probability, the Greek form Adonis. BERGER, La Phenia'e, p. 20.