The Historians' History of the World 02 [Israel, India, Persia, Phoenicia, Minor Nations of Western Asia]

Phœnician Priest

(From a statuette in the Metropolitan Museum, New York)

The name of Ashtoreth or Astarte does not appear in early Greek writers, to them the principal goddess of the Phœnicians is Aphrodite or Venus Urania (the Celestial). It is said to be Phœnician, but we can gather from it no hint of the primary physical or cosmical character of the goddess who bore it. She was identified with the Moon, as distinguished from the Sun, and with Air and Water, as opposed to Fire. Herodotus says that the oldest seat of her worship was at Askalon, and identifies her with the Babylonian Mylitta and the Alitta or Alilat of Arabian tribes.

The worship of Mylitta at Babylon was accompanied by wanton rites, but these do not seem to have been associated at first with the character of Urania or Astarte, and in the Scriptures the religion of the Phœnicians is reprobated rather for its cruelty than for its licentiousness. It was from the worship of the goddess Mylitta, at Babylon, that the corruption of morals spread to the worship of Venus in Syria, Phœnicia, and Cyprus, tainting it with an impurity which formed no part of it originally.

The worship of Venus must have been established in Cyprus long before the Greeks began to colonise the island, though it owed its great development, in part at least, to their plastic imagination. Here, too, the license which characterised the worship of Mylitta prevailed, and the ports of the island became celebrated for the number and beauty of their courtesans. Large bodies of hierodulæ, at once prostitutes and ministers of the goddess, were attached to the temples of Venus in Asia, and afterward in Greece. The origin of this custom, evil as it was, must originally have been religious in character, for the daughters of noble Armenian families passed without reproach from the service of the goddess to marriage with their equals in rank. We find traces of the same customs in remote Phœnician settlements.

Cronos or Saturn is mentioned by Greek and Latin writers among the principal deities of Phœnicia and Carthage, but it is by no means certain which particular Phœnician god answered to the Cronos of the Greeks. The most characteristic circumstance we learn concerning him is that human sacrifices were made in his honour. “The Phœnician history of Sanchoniathon,” says Porphyry, “is full of instances in which that people, when suffering under great calamity … chose, by public vote, one of those most dear to them, and sacrificed him to Saturn.” In the fragmentary history preserved to us, we find no mention of such sacrifices, but in the siege under Alexander it was proposed to revive a custom obsolete for ages, and sacrifice a boy to Saturn. That such a practice prevailed in earlier times is certain; we trace it in the Phœnician colonies, and above all in Carthage. On the occasion of any extraordinary calamity an unusual number of victims was sacrificed, but human sacrifice was also part of the established ritual, and every year a youthful victim was chosen by lot.

Infants were burnt alive, and the most acceptable of all sacrifices was that of an only child. The image of Saturn was of brass, the outstretched hands were hollowed so as to receive the body of the child, which slid thence to a fiery receptacle below. Mothers brought their infants in their arms, and quieted them by caresses till the moment they were thrown into the flames, since any manifestation of reluctance would have rendered the sacrifice unacceptable to the god. Human sacrifices were not made to one god only, or to one answering to the Saturn of the Greeks and Romans; but since Saturn was reputed to have devoured his own children it was natural that they should call any god to whom infants were offered by his name. Wherever human sacrifices prevailed they assumed that Saturn was worshipped; but, although Chiun (mentioned by the prophet Amos) was undoubtedly the planet Saturn, it does not appear that infants were offered to him.

The gods hitherto mentioned belonged to Phœnicia as a whole, but Melkarth, “king of the city” was the tutelary god of Tyre, and by Tyrian colonies his worship was spread far and wide throughout the ancient world. Under the name of Melicertes he appears in Greek mythology as a Sea-god, and bears the synonym of “the wrestler,” an epithet of Hercules. The Egyptians worshipped Hercules as one of their great gods, but Herodotus found no trace to show that his worship had been brought from Egypt to Tyre.

We should expect to find among a seafaring people the worship of a god corresponding to the Greek Poseidon, but though several marine deities are mentioned by Sanchoniathon, very few traces of any such god appear in the public worship of Phœnicia. This may perhaps be explained by the circumstance that they brought their religious system with them to the shores of the Mediterranean. The mythology of Semitic nations appears to have contained no god to correspond with Neptune. The divinities who really presided over navigation among the Phœnicians were the Cabiri, the reputed sons of Vulcan, who were represented in the garb of smiths, and whose images were placed on the prows of Phœnician vessels.