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CHAPTER VI.
THE RELIGIOUS RITES OF THE CANAANITES

Our knowledge of the religious conceptions of the Canaanites consists of scattered and meagre statements. Yet these statements are enough to show with certainty that the ideas of the Syrians about the powers of Heaven rested on the same basis as the worship of the Babylonians. But the sensual and lascivious side of this worship, no less than the cruel and bloody side, is more strongly and broadly developed in Syria than in Babylonia, while, on the other hand, the complete development of the star-worship, as we found it on the lower Euphrates, is unknown in Syria. The gods who were regarded as alien and hostile to natural life were worshipped by the Canaanites with severe abstinence and harsh asceticism, with self-mutilation and human sacrifices; while the deities of procreation and birth, who were considered favourable to life, were worshipped with the most shameless prostitution and the most unbridled debauchery. Indeed these rites, distinguished by sensual excess and bloody asceticism, were united by that mysterious link which in the human breast brings debauchery and pain into close connection; and hence this worship is a true copy of the Semitic mode of feeling, which wavers between luxurious enjoyment and fanatical destruction, between cringing servility and stiff-necked obstinacy, between effeminate retirement in the harem, and bold achievements in the battle-field.

The Phenicians are said to have possessed sacred scriptures of very great antiquity. In Babylonia we found a city to which the sacred scriptures were specially allotted, Sepharvaim on the Euphrates; in Canaan, Debir, in the neighbourhood of Hebron, was at one time called Kiriath Sepher, i. e. "city of scriptures." The scriptures of the Phenicians are said to be derived from Esmun one of their gods, or from a series of hierophants, Thabion, Isiris, Sanchuniathon and Mochus. According to the evidence of Poseidonius, Mochus lived before the Trojan war.⁴⁹⁷ Sanchuniathon also, a Sidonian according to some, according to others a Syrian, and to others a Berytean, is said to have lived before or during the time of the Trojan war. He is said to have collected his writings from the archives of the Phenician cities, from the records in the temples, and a document of Hierombal which had been placed by the latter before Abelbaal, king of Berytus, and had met with approval, and it is maintained from the catalogue of the Phenician kings that Hierombal and Sanchuniathon lived before the Trojan war.⁴⁹⁸ Of the writings of Sanchuniathon, Philo of Byblus, who wrote in the first half of the second century, B.C., is said to have given a Greek translation in his History of the Phenicians. Of this supposed translation of a supposed original, discovered after much research by Philo, besides which he pretended to have made use of the sacred scriptures of the Egyptians, the Books of Thoth, some excerpts and fragments have come down to us. Scanty and unconnected as these are, they show us at once that Philo, whatever his original may have been, was far removed from any mere repetition of old religious views, that the syncretistic culture of his time had exercised a strong influence on his own ideas, and that his whole point of view belongs to that kind of enlightenment which pretended to find in the gods a number of deified kings, who had once ruled over the land in ancient days. Yet Philo also allowed that, over and above these, the sun, moon, planets, and certain elements were worshipped as gods.⁴⁹⁹

Following the cosmogonic systems, as they may have been drawn out with greater definiteness after the Hellenistic period, Philo assumes as the beginning of all things an obscure and moving atmosphere, and a dark and melancholy chaos. When the wind of his Beginning felt the yearning of love, a mixture took place, and this combination was named Desire. Desire is the beginning of all things. From the union of the wind with itself arose Mot, which some explain as mud, others as putrefaction of a watery mixture. Out of this arose the seeds of all and the origin of all things. Mot was fashioned after the form of an egg. "And then shone forth the sun and moon, and the great constellations. As the air now sent forth a fiery glow, winds and clouds arose from the kindling of the sea and the earth, and vast tempests of rain streamed down; and when all this dashed together, there followed thunderings and lightning, by which the creatures were awaked, and on the earth and in the sea the male and the female elements began to move.⁵⁰⁰ And from the wind Kolpia and his wife Baau, which means night, Aeon and Protogonus, mortal men, were begotten. Aeon discovered the nourishment obtained from trees. And Aeon and Protogonus begot Genos and Genea, who dwelt in Phœnicia; and when the fierce heat came they stretched out their hands to the sky and the sun. As they regarded the sun as the only lord of the sky, they called him Belsamen, which among the Phenicians means lord of the sky, and among the Greeks Zeus." But Aeon and Protogonus had also begotten children, called by the names of Phos (light), Pyr (fire), and Phlox (flame). These discovered fire by rubbing two pieces of wood together, and taught the use of fire, and begot children who surpassed all others in size and stature. The names of these giants were given to the mountains of which they possessed themselves, to Casius, Libanus, Anti-libanus, and Brathy (Tabor?). The giants begot Samemrumus, who is also called Hypsuranius, and Usous. These made a traffic of their mothers, for it was the custom in those days for the women to associate with any one. Samemrumus lived at Tyre, and discovered the art of making huts out of reeds and sedge, while Usous invented clothing made of the skins of the beasts which he knew how to slay. Samemrumus rebelled against Usous, but the latter took a tree and divested it of the branches, and was the first who went on board a vessel. Then he dedicated two pillars to the fire and the wind, and offered to these the blood of the beasts which he had taken. When the brothers were dead, prayers were offered to the pillars, and each year a festival was celebrated in honour of them. And for a long time afterwards Agreus (the hunter) was among the descendants of Usous, and Halieus (the fisher) among those of Samemrumus. From these sprung two brothers, of whom the one was Chusor, i. e. Hephaestus, who discovered the working of iron, and the other, who invented the fish-hook and was the first navigator, was named Zeus Meilichius;⁵⁰¹ and the two together discovered the building of walls by bricks. From these came Agros (the field), and Agrotes (the husbandman), who was worshipped in Phœnicia as a god, and was called the greatest god in Byblus. From these sprung Misor and Sydyk; from Sydyk came the Cabiri, who invented the ship.

About this time Eljon, named "the Highest," was born, and a woman of the name of Beruth; and these two dwelt at Byblus. They begot Uranus and Ge, and when "the Highest" fell in conflict with wild beasts, he was worshipped by his children as a god with libation and sacrifices. But Uranus succeeded his father in the kingdom, and took his sister Ge to wife, and with her begot El, who is also called Cronus, Dagon, who, after discovering corn and the plough, was called Zeus Arotrius, and Atlas. But as Uranus begot children with other women, El, when he was grown up, determined to revenge the slight put upon his mother. He provided himself with a sickle and a lance of iron, attacked Uranus, drove him from his throne, expelled him from the land, and took the kingdom for himself. He surrounded his house with a wall, and built Byblus, the first city of the Phenicians. His brother Atlas, whom he suspected, he threw into the abyss, and covered him with earth; his son he slew with the sword, and cut off his daughter's head. When in the thirty-second year of his reign he had laid an ambush for his father Uranus in the interior of the land, and in this way had got him into his power, he cut off his genitals, close by some springs and rivers. The blood flowed into these springs and streams, and this place became sacred, and is shown even at the present day. At the wish of El, "Astarte the Great," the daughter of Uranus, and Zeus Demarus, the son of Uranus by a concubine, and Adodus "the king of the gods," ruled over the land. As a symbol of her supremacy, Astarte placed the head of an ox on her own head, and when she had wandered over the whole earth she found a star fallen from heaven, took it, and dedicated it at Tyre on the sacred island. But when a pestilence came, and a mortality, El burnt his only son in royal robes as a sacrifice to Uranus on the altar which he had erected, and circumcised himself and forced his comrades to do the same. The city of Byblus he handed over to the goddess Baaltis, Berytus to the sea-god, to the Cabiri, and to the descendants of Agrotes (the husbandman) and of Halieus (the fisher), and when El came into the land of the South, he gave all Egypt over to Taauthus to be a royal habitation for him. To El, after his death, was consecrated the star named after him.⁵⁰²

We should indeed be in an evil case if we were restricted for our knowledge of Canaanitish rites to these fragments, which carry so plainly on the front of them their late origin, their fictitious genealogical combinations, into which the gods are brought, their over-subtle Euhemerism, and their mixture with Greek and Egyptian ideas. That threads of various systems of cosmogony intertwine and cross each other in these fragments is proved by the derivation of the origin of the world, first from the wind, and next from chaos, and then from Kolpia and Baau, and by the repetition even to the third time of the discovery of hunting, agriculture, and navigation. Happily there are other sources of information which allow us to bring the statements of Philo into some sort of order, and to supplement them in very essential points. We saw that the highest god of the Babylonians was El. If Philo tells us that the star known by his name, i. e. the planet Saturn, was consecrated to king El after his death, and if this king allows Astarte, Demarus, and even Adodus, the king of the gods, to rule after his death, – if he apportions cities and provinces to Baaltis and the Cabiri, – it becomes clear enough that for the Canaanites also El was the ruling god, and that in Syria also the planet Saturn belonged to him. But from the contest of El with Uranus, i. e. with the sky-god, in Philo, we may also with certainty conclude, that among the Canaanites also the highest place was allotted to Baal-Samim, i. e. to the lord of the sky, as Philo rightly explains that name; Philo denotes him as the god worshipped by the earliest generations of mankind. Among the Greeks also there was a myth, borrowed no doubt from the East, that Zeus (Baal) had once striven with El-Cronus.⁵⁰³ As the god of Saturn, the El of the Canaanites would have to be placed beside the Adar of the Eastern Semitic nations. The inscriptions of Ramses II. have already mentioned Baal as the god of the Cheta. We also saw that the nomads of the peninsula of Sinai consecrated their highest mountain summit to the god of this name. The Moabites invoked Baal on Mount Peor. In Canaan also the mountain summits were sacred to this deity; in the south of the land the lonely peak of Casius on the Serbonian lake, then Carmel, Tabor, and Hermon. The Philistines worshipped him at Ekron; the names of numerous places in Canaan, – Baal Hamon, Baal Hazor, Baal Meon, Baal Gad, Baal Perazim, Baal Tamar, Baalath, Baalbec, &c., – give us sufficient proof of the widespread worship of Baal in Canaan. We shall not go wrong if we regard him as the deity of the beneficent operation of the sun. If El cuts off the genitals of Uranus, i. e. of Baal-Samim, and the blood flows into the springs and streams, the meaning of the myth is without doubt that the beneficent god has imparted his life-giving, creating power to the fertilising water. Among the Phenicians springs and streams were sacred. The Carthaginian Hannibal swore to his compact with Philip king of Macedonia before "the rivers, meadows, and waters," and the Zeus Demarus of Philo must be explained as Baal Tamar, i. e. Baal in the procreative power. Northward of Sidon there falls into the sea a river especially sacred to Baal Tamar, which the Greeks called Tamyras (now Nahr Damur). It marks, no doubt, the spot where the act in the myth was localised, which, as Philo observes, was still pointed out. Pliny tells us that with the Belus, i. e. Baal (Sihor Libnath of the Hebrews), a mountain stream falling into the sea southward of Sidon, after a brief, and in the plain, a sluggish course from the parent lake, customs of a very sacred nature were connected.⁵⁰⁴

The goddess whom the Syrians invoked, beside the sun-god, had various names. According to the fragments of Philo, El had handed over the government of the city of Byblus to Baaltis, i. e. to Bilit, the "mistress." At Ascalon she was known as Derceto, at Hierapolis (Bambyke, Membidsh) as Atargatis;⁵⁰⁵ the Hebrews call her Ashera. Herodotus calls the goddess of Ascalon Aphrodite Urania; he also denotes her as the goddess of the sexual impulse and of procreation, and mentions the temple at Ascalon, as the oldest temple of this goddess which he knew; "from this comes the shrine of Urania in Cyprus, as the Cyprians themselves said; and the Phenicians, who also belonged to Syria, founded the temple of Urania on Cythera." Pausanias observes that the Assyrians had been the first among men to worship Urania, and after the Assyrians came 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, they had secretly purchased and substituted other children. Inquiry showed that this had been done in some cases. In expiation, 200 boys of the first families were selected as victims, and the families, who were suspected of previously withdrawing their children from the god, now spontaneously brought forward 300 children. "In Carthage," so Diodorus, who tells us this incident, continues, "there was an iron image of Cronus, which held out the hands in a downward position, so that the victim placed upon them rolled into a cavity filled with fire."⁵²⁷ The cries of the victims, Plutarch tells us, were drowned by the noise of drums and flutes; the mothers were compelled to stand by without lamentation or sighing. If a sigh or a tear escaped them, they were regarded as dishonoured; but the child was burnt just the same. A Roman poet gives an invocation to the "paternal gods" of Carthage, whose temples are cleansed by murder, and who rejoice in being worshipped by the agony of mothers.⁵²⁸

The inscriptions of Ramses II. mentioned Astarte as the goddess of the Hittites; the name of their city Astaroth we have already found in the form of Astartu in the inscriptions of Tuthmosis III. (p. 343). The Philistines worshipped Astarte; for the Sidonians, the "great Astarte" was the goddess of their city. "A virgin-goddess"⁵²⁹ she ruled over the fortune of battle; she is the goddess of war, bringing death and destruction, the goddess of death. Coins of Sidon represent her with a spear in her hand. As the goddess of war she carried a spear in her temples in Cyprus and Cythera.⁵³⁰ In her temple on the ancient fortress of Carthage, she was represented riding on a lion, with a spear in her hand. The Istar of the Babylonians and Assyrians carried the bow (p. 270). When the Philistines carried off the armour of Saul, king of Israel, they dedicated it in the house of Astarte. If Astarte, according to Philo, consecrates a star on the island of Tyre, we have already seen (p. 270) that Venus when rising was the star of Istar at Babylon. Yet the Astarte of the Syrians stood in a closer relation to the moon. Philo told us that she carried on her head the head of an ox. The monuments of Sethos display, beside the bull's image of Baal, a cow's head with a segment of the moon; and on Carthaginian stones we find the full moon between the horns of an ox. With the horns of the moon the goddess is known as Astaroth Karnaim, i. e. the horned Astarte. The priests of Astarte were pledged to continence and celibacy, and on the priestesses of the "heavenly maiden," the "maiden of the sky,"⁵³¹ virginity was imposed. No married woman could enter her temples. In her temples, as in those of Moloch, burned the eternal fire.⁵³² Like Moloch, Astarte also received human sacrifices. To the virgin-goddess the youthful were offered, and maidens and women were burned.⁵³³ As in the worship of Ashera the Syrians attempted to transfuse themselves into the nature of the goddess, to sink and pass into her being, so also the worship of Astarte required that they should become like the goddess, and that lust should be killed in them. It was the highest and most acceptable sacrifice, if priests and laymen made themselves eunuchs in honour of the virgin-goddess. During the festival of Astarte it was the custom, while the congregated people were thrown into excitement and frenzy by the sound of cymbals, drums, and double pipes, for young men to spring forward, seize the ancient sword which lay on the altar of the goddess, and therewith to mutilate themselves.⁵³⁴ At a later time there were thousands of eunuch-attendants in the temples of Astarte, while others went about through the land in female clothing, their faces painted after the manner of women, begging and mortifying their flesh. To the sound of drums and pipes they whirled round with wild movements and contortions of the body, and bent their heads to the ground, so that their hair trailed in the mire. At the same time they bit their arms and cut themselves with swords. The most frenzied began to moan and prophesy. At last he bewailed his sins, took up the knotted whip, and beat himself on the back till the blood ran down. When the dancing and the scourging was ended, the eunuchs collected subscriptions from the bystanders. Some gave money; others, milk, wine, cheese, and meal. These they hastily gathered together in order to compensate, by a hearty meal at evening in their retreat, for the torments of the day.⁵³⁵

These friendly and hostile, creative and destructive, natural and supernatural powers stood mutually opposed in the religious consciousness of the Syrians. Just as the Egyptians went forward, and saw in the myth of Osiris the beneficent deity as the conqueror of the evil god in the process of vegetative life and in the revolution of the year, so did the Semitic nations unite the beneficent and destructive powers of heaven in the same deities, who in turn dispensed blessing and destruction, and by themselves and in themselves overcame the destructive element. This combination is obvious in the form of Baal of Tyre, whom the Tyrians invoked as the king and protector of their city under the name of Melkarth, i. e. city-king.⁵³⁶ The Greeks identified this god with their own Heracles; but as the protector of navigation and the god of the sea, they are acquainted with Melkarth, under his native name of Melicertes. Herodotus was astonished at the splendour of the ancient temple of this god at Tyre, at the richness and beauty of the votive offerings, and the two rectangular pillars in the temple, the one of pure gold, the other of emerald, and so large that it shone by night.⁵³⁷ Hiram, king of Tyre, had dedicated the first about the year 1,000 B.C. to Melkarth. To the Phenicians Baal Melkarth was a labouring and conquering deity, who creates new life out of destruction, vanquishes the baneful signs in the zodiac, brings back the sun from perigee and apogee, from excessive heat and wintry cold, to beneficial operation, whose life is seen in the sun's course.⁵³⁸ When the sun burned with the fiercest glow, and stood in the sign of the lion, then the good sun-god must vanquish the lion or symbol of fiery heat; he pressed the lion to his own breast, forced back into himself the fiery beams, and consumed himself in his own heat. The good sun-god must overcome the evil sun-god, or he must consume himself, so that with renewed youth he may again secure gentler warmth for the earth. When the sun appeared most remote from the earth, Baal of Tyre had gone on a journey or was asleep. In the Phenician colonies in the West, in Crete, Sicily, and at Gades, in the distant land of the setting sun, were pointed out the resting-places of the deity, from which he arose with the vernal sun to new activity and life. At the end of February or the beginning of March the festival of the awakening of the god took place;⁵³⁹ and if the Greeks tell us that Iolaus awoke the god, Iolaus is merely a Grecised form of Jubal, i. e. the beauty of Baal, and therefore only a mythical expression for the god himself as re-awakening with the beautiful vernal sun.⁵⁴⁰ From these ideas of strife and conquest Melkarth could become in the eyes of the Phenicians a warrior-hero, who was thought to have wandered over the earth, as the sun revolves round it, in order to set it free from hostile powers. With this conception may be connected the story that the procreative power was taken from Uranus and transferred to the springs and rivers, and that El's brother Atlas, i. e. Atel, a name which perhaps may be explained as meaning darkness, is overthrown and cast into the abyss. In the legends of the Phenicians it was Melkarth who reduced the barbarous tribes of the distant coasts, who founded the ancient colonies of the Phenicians on the western coasts of the Mediterranean, and set up, as the boundary stone of his wanderings, the two great pillars at the end of the earth, the rocks of Calpe and Abyle on the Straits of Gibraltar. As the restrainer of the burning heat, of the lion, and of giants, Melkarth is the Heracles of the Greeks; as a wandering god who gives order to the life of mankind, he bears, in Greece, the names Minos and Cadmus (the name Kadmon means, "the man of the East"), by which forms they expressed 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