Melqart (less accurately Melkart, Melkarth or Melgart (Greek disposed of the letter Q (Qoppa), replacing it with additional use of K (Kappa) and G (Gamma)), Akkadian Milqartu, was the tutelary god of the Phoenician city of Tyre, as Eshmun protected Sidon. The name is a slight compression of Phoenician Milk-Qart "the King of the City". Melqart was often titled Ba‘al Ṣur "Lord of Tyre". In Greek he was normally referred to as the Tyrian Herakles and in Latin as the Tyrian Hercules, presumably because of a close resemblance to the Greek hero/god Herakles in mythology and cult. Qoppa Qoppa is an obsolete letter of the Greek alphabet and has a numeric value of 90. ... For other uses, see Kappa. ... Gamma (upper case Γ, lower case γ) is the third letter of the Greek alphabet. ... Akkadian (lišānum akkadÄ«tum) was a Semitic language (part of the greater Afro-Asiatic language famaily) spoken in ancient Mesopotamia, particularly by the Assyrians and Babylonians. ... Phoenicia was an ancient civilization in the north of ancient Canaan, with its heartland along the coastal plains of what are now Lebanon and Syria. ... For a wheel tyre, see the article under the US English spelling of the word, tire. ... Eshmun (or Eshmoun, less accurately Esmun or Esmoun) was a northwestern Semitic god of healing and the tutelary god of Sidon. ... Sidon, Zidon or Saida, (Arabic صيدا á¹¢aydā is the third-largest city in Lebanon. ... Baal is a Semitic title and honorific meaning lord that is used for various gods, spirits and demons particularly of the Levant. ... For the son of Alexander the Great, see Heracles (Macedon). ... Latin is an ancient Indo-European language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ... Hercules and Cacus, by Baccio Bandinelli, 1525 - 1534. ...

Cult

The historian Herodotus recorded (2.44): Bust of Herodotus at Naples Herodotus of Halicarnassus (Greek: Ήροδοτος, Herodotos) was a historian who lived in the 5th century BC (484 BC-ca. ...

In the wish to get the best information that I could on these matters, I made a voyage to Tyre in Phoenicia, hearing there was a temple of Heracles at that place, very highly venerated. I visited the temple, and found it richly adorned with a number of offerings, among which were two pillars, one of pure gold, the other of smaragdos, shining with great brilliancy at night. In a conversation which I held with the priests, I inquired how long their temple had been built, and found by their answer that they, too, differed from the Hellenes. They said that the temple was built at the same time that the city was founded, and that the foundation of the city took place 2,300 years ago. In Tyre I remarked another temple where the same god was worshipped as the Thasian Heracles. So I went on to Thasos, where I found a temple of Heracles which had been built by the Phoenicians who colonised that island when they sailed in search of Europa. Even this was five generations earlier than the time when Heracles, son of Amphitryon, was born in Hellas. These researches show plainly that there is an ancient god Heracles; and my own opinion is that those Hellenes act most wisely who build and maintain two temples of Heracles, in the one of which the Heracles worshipped is known by the name of Olympian, and has sacrifice offered to him as an immortal, while in the other the honours paid are such as are due to a hero.

Josephus records (Antiquities 8.5.3), following Menander the historian, concerning King Hiram I of Tyre (c. 965–935 BCE): Thasos (Greek: ) or Thassos is the name of an island in the north of the Aegean Sea, off the coast of Thrace and the plain of the river Nestos (during the Ottoman times Kara-Su). ... This article is not about the daughter of Tityus and mother of Euphemus (by Poseidon), who was also named Europa. ... Amphitryon, or Amphitrion, in Greek mythology, was a son of Alcaeus, king of Tiryns in Argolis. ... Greece, formally called the Hellenic Republic (Greek: Ελληνική Δημοκρατία), is a country in the southeast of Europe on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula. ... The twelve gods of Olympus. ... Josephus (c. ... Hiram I was king of Tyre from 969 BC to 936 BC.During his reign, Tyre grew out from a satellite to the more important city of Sidon to the most important of the Phoenician cities and the holder of a large trading empire. ... Centuries: 11th century BC - 10th century BC - 9th century BC Decades: 1010s BC 1000s BC 990s BC 980s BC 970s BC - 960s BC - 950s BC 940s BC 930s BC 920s BC 910s BC Events and Trends 967 BC - Tiglath-Pileser II becomes King of Assyria. ... Centuries: 11th century BC - 10th century BC - 9th century BC Decades: 980s BC 970s BC 960s BC 950s BC 940s BC - 930s BC - 920s BC 910s BC 900s BC 890s BC 880s BC Events and Trends 935 BC - Death of Zhou gong wang, King of the Zhou Dynasty of China. ...

He also went and cut down materials of timber out of the mountain called Lebanon, for the roof of temples; and when he had pulled down the ancient temples, he both built the temple of Heracles and that of Astarte; and he was the first to celebrate the awakening (egersis) of Heracles in the month Peritius.

(William Whiston's translation incorrectly has "first set up the temple of Heracles in ..".) The Macedonian month of Peritius corresponds to our February, indicating this annual awakening was in no way a solstitial celebration. It would have coincided with the normal ending of the winter rains. The annual observation of the revival of Melqart's egersis 'awakening' may identify Melqart as a life-death-rebirth deity. ‘Ashtart, commonly known as Astarte (also Hebrew or Phoenician עשתרת, Ugaritic ‘ttrt (also ‘Attart or ‘Athtart), Akkadian dAs_tar_tú (also Astartu), Greek Αστάρτη (Astártê)), was a major northwest_Semitic goddess, cognate in name, origin, and functions with the east-Semitic goddess Ishtar. ... William Whiston William Whiston (December 9, 1667 - August 22, 1752), English divine and mathematician, was born at Norton in Leicestershire, of which village his father was rector. ... The category life-death-rebirth deity also known as a dying-and-rising god is a convenient means of classifying the many divinities in world mythology who are born, suffer death or an eclipse or other death-like experience, pass a phase in the underworld among the dead, and are...

Archaelogical evidence for Melqart's cult is first found in Tyre and seems to have spread westward with the Phoenician colonies established by Tyre as well as eventually overshadowing the worship of Eshmun in Sidon, The name of Melqart was invoked in oaths sanctioning contracts, according to Dr. Aubet, thus it was customary to build a temple to Melqart, as protector of Tyrian traders, in each new Phoenician colony: at Cadiz, the temple to Melqart is as early as the earliest vestiges of Phoenician occupation. (The Greeks followed a parallel practise in respect to their Heracles.) Carthage even sent a yearly tribute of 10% of the public treasury to the god in Tyre up until the Hellenistic period. In Tyre, the high priest of Melqart ranked second only to the king. Many names in Carthage reflected this importance of Melqart, for example, the names Hamilcar and Bomilcar; but Ba‘al or Ba‘l as a name-element in Carthaginian names such as Hasdrubal and Hannibal almost certainly does not refer to Melqart but to Ba‘al Hammon the chief god of Carthage, a god identified by Greeks with Cronus and by Romans with Saturn. A map of the central Mediterranean Sea, showing the location of Carthage (near modern Tunis). ... The term Hellenistic (derived from HéllÄ“n, the Greeks word for themselves) was established by the German historian Johann Gustav Droysen to refer to the shift from a culture dominated by ethnic Greeks to a culture dominated by Greek-speakers of various ethnicities, and from the political dominance of... Hasdrubal was the name of several Carthaginian generals, among whom the following are the most important: 1. ... Hannibals feat in crossing the Alps with war elephants passed into European legend: a fresco detail, 1510, Capitoline Museums, Rome Hannibal (from Punic, literally Baal is merciful to me, 247 BC – 183 BC) (sometimes referred to as Hannibal Barca) was a politician and statesman, and is considered one of... Ba‘al Hammon (more properly Ba‘al Ḥammon or possibly Ba‘al Ḥamon) was the chief god of Carthage, generally identified by the Greeks with Cronus and by the Romans with Saturn. ... In a 5th-century BC red-figure, Cronus is deceived by his wife Rhea into thinking that the Omphalos Stone is his son Zeus, and devours it instead of Zeus. ... Rhea tricking Cronus with a wrapped stone. ...

Melqart protected the Punic areas of Sicily such as Ras Melqart 'Cape of Melqart', where his head, indistinguishable from a Heracles, appears on locally-minted coins of the 4th century B.C. Punic (from Latin pūnicus) was a Latin version of the term Phoenician. (After the Punic Wars, Romans used this term as an adjective meaning treacherous.) In archaeological and linguistic usage, it refers to the Greco-Roman era culture and dialect of Carthage and its empire as distinct from their... Sicilian disambiguates here; see also Sicilian language or Sicilian Defence. ...

Temples to Melqart are found at least three Phoenician/Punic sites in Spain: Cadiz, Ibiza in the Balearic Islands, and Cartagena.

Near Gades/Gadeira (modern Cádiz) was the westernmost temple of Tyrian Heracles, near the eastern shore of the island (Strabo 3.5.2–3). Strabo notes (3.5.5–6) that the two bronze pillars within the temple, each 8 cubits high, were widely proclaimed to be the true Pillars of Heracles by many who had visited the place and had sacrificed to Heracles there. But Strabo believes the account to be fraudulent, in part noting that the inscriptions on those pillars mentioned nothing about Heracles, speaking only of the expenses occurred by the Phoenicians in their making. City nickname: Tacita de plata (little silver cup) Official website: http://www. ... Strabo (squinty) was a term employed by the Romans for anyone whose eyes were distorted or deformed. ... Pillars of Hercules is the ancient name given to the promontories that flank the entrance to the Straits of Gibraltar. ...

Another temple to Melqart was at Ebusus (Ibiza), in one of four Phoenician sites on the island's south coast. In 2004 a highway crew in the Avenida España, (one of the main routes into Ibiza), uncovered a further Punic temple in the excavated roadbed. Texts found mention Melqart among other Punic gods Esmum, Astarté, and Baal. Flag of Eivissa Eivissa or Ibiza is one of the Balearic Islands located in the Mediterranean Sea, and belonging to Spain. ...

Yet another Iberian temple to Melqart has been identified at Carthago Nova (Cartagena). The Tyrian god's protection extended to the sacred promontory (Cape Saint Vincent) of the Iberian peninsula, the westernmost point of the known world, ground so sacred it was forbidden even to spend the night. Carthago Nova (New Carthage, Carthage already meaning new city in Punic) is the Latin name of the most important Carthaginian coastal trading colony in Spain. ... For other places of the same name, see Cartagena. ... The Cabo de São Vicente (Cape St. ...

Melqart is likely to have been the particular Ba‘al found in the Tanach from 1 Kings 16.31–10.26 whose worship was prominently introduced into Israel by King Ahab and largely eradicated by King Jehu. In 1 Kings 18.27 it is possible there is a mocking reference to legendary Heraclean journeys made by the god and to the egersis 'awakening' of the god: 11th century Targum Tanakh [תנ״ך] (also spelt Tanach or Tenach) is an acronym for the three parts of the Hebrew Bible, based upon the initial Hebrew letters of each part: Torah [תורה] (The Law; also: Teaching or Instruction), Chumash [חומש] (The five, also Pentateuch or The five books of... (Redirected from 1 Kings) The Books of Kings (also known as [The Book of] Kings in Hebrew: Sefer Melachim מלכים) is a part of Judaisms Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. ... Ahab or Achav (אַחְאָב Brother of the father, Standard Hebrew Aḥʼav, Tiberian Hebrew ʼAḥăʼāḇ, ʼAḫʼāḇ) was King of the province of Samaria in the greater Kingdom of Israel, and the son and successor of Omri (1 Kings 16:29-34). ... Jehu (יְהוּא The LORD is he, Standard Hebrew YÉ™hu, Tiberian Hebrew YÉ™hû) was king of Israel, and the son of Jehoshaphat (2 Kings 9:2), and grandson of Nimshi. ... (Redirected from 1 Kings) The Books of Kings (also known as [The Book of] Kings in Hebrew: Sefer Melachim מלכים) is a part of Judaisms Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. ...

And it came to pass at noon that Elijah mocked them and said, "Cry out loud: for he is a god; either he is lost in thought, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened."

The Hellenistic novelist Heliodorus of Emesa in his Aethiopica refers to the dancing of Tyrian sailors in honor of the Tyrian Heracles: "Now they leap spiritedly into the air, now they bend their knees to the ground and revolve on them like persons possessed." Heliodorus of Emesa, from Emesa, Syria, was a Greek writer generally dated in the 3rd century of the Common Era, and is known for the ancient Greek romance or novel called the Aethiopica (the Ethiopian Story) or sometimes Theagenes and Chariclea. According to his own statement, his fathers name...

Mythology

Athenaeus (392d) summarizes a story by Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 355 BCE) telling how Heracles the son of Zeus by Asteria (= ‘Ashtart ?) was killed by Typhon in Libya. Heracles' companion Iolaus brought a quail to the dead god (presumably a roasted quail) and its delicious scent roused Heracles back to life. This purports to explain why the Phoenicians sacrifice quails to Heracles. It seems that Melqart had a companion similar to the Hellenic Iolaus. Sanchuniathon also makes Melqart under the name Malcarthos or Melcathros the son of Hadad who is normally identified with Zeus. Athenaeus (ca. ... Eudoxus of Cnidus (Greek Εύδοξος) (410 or 408 BC - 355 or 347 BC) was a Greek astronomer, mathematician, physician, scholar and friend of Plato. ... Centuries: 5th century BC - 4th century BC - 3rd century BC Decades: 400s BC 390s BC 380s BC 370s BC 360s BC - 350s BC - 340s BC 330s BC 320s BC 310s BC 300s BC 360 BC 359 BC 358 BC 357 BC 356 BC 355 BC 354 BC 353 BC 352... Statue of Zeus Phidias created the 12-m (40-ft) tall statue of Zeus at Olympia about 435 BC. The statue was perhaps the most famous sculpture in ancient Greece, imagined here in a 16th-century engraving. ... Asteria can refer to: In Greek mythology, Asteria was the sixth killed by Heracles when he came for Hippolytes girdle. ... Typhon (Typhaon, Typhoeus, Typhus), in Greek mythology, was the final son of Gaia, this time with Tartarus, the offspring of the Earth and the cavernous void beneath: But when Zeus had driven the Titans from heaven, huge Earth bare her youngest child Typhoeus of the love of —Hesiod, Theogony 820... In Greek mythology, Iolaus was a son of Iphicles and thus a nephew of Heracles. ... Sanchuniathon or Sanchoniathon or Sanchoniatho is the purported Phoenician author of three works in Phoenician, surviving only in partial paraphrase and summary of a Greek translation by Philo of Byblos. ... Haddad - בעל הדד - حداد (in Ugaritic Haddu) was a very important northwest Semitic storm god and rain god, cognate in name and origin with the Akkadian god Adad. ...

The Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions (10.24) speaks of the tombs of various gods including "that of Heracles at Tyre, where he was burnt with fire." The Hellenic Heracles also died on a pyre, but the event was located on Mount Oeta in Trachis. A similar tradition is recorded by Dio Chrysostom who mentions the beautiful pyre which the Tarsians used to build for their Heracles, referring here to the Cilician god Sandan. Clementine literature (also called Clementia, Pseudo-Clementine Writings, The Preaching of Peter etc. ... Dio or Dio Chrysostom (c 40 AD - c 120 AD) was a Greek orator, writer, philosopher and historian of the Roman Empire in the first century. ... Tarsus is a city in present day Turkey, on the mouth of the Tarsus Cay (Cydnus) into the Mediterranean. ... Cilicia as Roman province, 120 AD In Antiquity, Cilicia (Ki-LIK-ya) was a region, and often a political unit, on the southeastern coast of Asia Minor (modern Turkey), north of Cyprus. ...

Gregory Nazianzen (Oratio 4.108) and Cassiodorus (Variae 1.2) relate how Tyrian Heracles and the nymph Tyrus were walking along the beach when Heracles' dog, who was accompanying them, devoured a murex snail and gained a beautiful purple color around its mouth. Tyrus told Heracles she would never accept him as her lover until he gave her a robe of that same color. So Heracles gathered many murex shells, extracted the dye from them, and dyed the first garment of the color later called Tyrian purple. The murex shell appears on the very earliest Tyrian coins and then reappears again on coins in Imperial Roman times. Saint Gregory Nazianzus (AD 329 - January 25, 389), also known as Saint Gregory the Theologian, was a 4th century Christian bishop of Constantinople. ... Flavius Magnus Aurelius Cassiodorus Senator (ca 484/490 - ca585), commonly known as Cassiodorus, was a Roman statesman and writer, serving in the administration of Theodoric the Great, king of the Ostrogoths. ...

It is generally suspected that the Greek Melicertes son of Ino was in origin a reflection of Melqart though no classical source explicitly connects the two. Melicertes (later called Palaemon), in Greek mythology, the son of the Boeotian prince Athamas and Ino, daughter of Cadmus. ... 173 Ino is an asteroid. ...

Because of the scanty evidence scholars vary widely on what kind of a god Melqart was. William F. Albright in Archaeology and the Religion of Israel (Baltimore, 1953; pp. 81, 196) suggested Melqart was a god of the underworld partly because a god Malku who may be Melqart is sometimes equated with the Mesopotamian god Nergal, a god of the underwold, whose name also means 'King of the City'. Others take this to be coincidental, since what we know about Melqart from other sources does not suggest an underworld god and it is more natural to understand the city to be Tyre. It has been suggested that Melqart began as a sea god who was later given solar attributes or alternatively that he bgan as solar god who later received the attributes of a sea god. In fact little is known of his cult. William Foxwell Albright (May 24, 1891 - September 19/20, 1971) was an evangelical Methodist archaelogist, biblical authority, linguist and expert on ceramics. ... The name Nergal (or Nirgal or Nirgali) refers to a deity in Babylonia with the main seat of his cult at Cuthah (or Kutha) represented by the mound of Tell-Ibrahim. ...

To be sure, in Nonnus' Dionysiaca (40.366–580) the Tyrian Heracles is very much a sun god. However there is a tendency in the later Hellenstic and Roman periods for almost all gods to develop solar attributes and for almost all eastern gods to be identified with the sun. Nonnus gives the title Astrochiton 'Starclad' to Tyrian Heracles and has his Dionysus recite a hymn to this Heracles, saluting him as: the son of Time, he who causes the threefold image of the Moon, the all-shining Eye of the heavens. Rain is ascribed to the shaking from his head of the waters of the his bath in the eastern Ocean. His sun disk is praised as the cause of growth in plants. Then, in a climactic burst of syncretism, Dionysus identifies the Tyrian Heracles with Belus on the Euphrates, Ammon in Libya, Apis by the Nile, Arabian Cronus, Assyrian Zeus, Serapis, Zeus of Egypt, Cronus, Phaethon, Mithras, Delphic Apollo, Gamos 'Marriage', and Paeon 'Healer'. Bacchus by Caravaggio Dionysus or Dionysos (Ancient Greek: Διώνυσος or Διόνυσος; also known as Bacchus in both Greek and Roman mythology and associated with the Italic Liber), the Thracian god of wine, represents not only the intoxicating power of wine, but also its social and beneficent influences. ... Oceanus or Okeanos refers to the ocean, which the Greeks and Romans regarded as a river circling the world. ... Belus or Belos in classical Greek or classical Latin texts (and later material based on them) in a Bablyonian context refers to the Babylonian god Bel Marduk. ... Ammon or Ammonites (עַמּוֹן People, Standard Hebrew Ê»Ammon, Tiberian Hebrew Ê»Ammôn), also referred to in the Bible as the children of Ammon, were a people living east of the Jordan river, who along with the Moabites traced their origin to Lot, the nephew of the patriarch Abraham, and who were... For other uses, see Apis (Disambiguation). ... The Nile (Arabic: النيل an-nÄ«l), in Africa, is one of the two longest rivers on Earth. ... The Arabian Peninsula The Arabian Peninsula is a mainly desert peninsula in Southwest Asia at the junction of Africa and Asia and an important part of the greater Middle East. ... Assyria in earliest historical times referred to a region on the Upper Tigris river, named for its original capital, the ancient city of Ashur. ... Serapis can refer to: A series of British ships named HMS Serapis. ... In a 5th-century BC red-figure, Cronus is deceived by his wife Rhea into thinking that the Omphalos Stone is his son Zeus, and devours it instead of Zeus. ... This article or section should be merged with Phaëton Phaethon A Greek god who the phrase a boy Doing a mans job comes from. ... Mithra and the Bull: fresco from Dura Europos late 2nd–early 3rd century Mithras was the central savior god of Mithraism, a syncretic Hellenistic mystery religion of male initiates that developed in the Eastern Mediterranean in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC and was practiced in the Roman Empire from... The theatre, seen from above Delphi (Greek Δελφοί - Delphoi; see also List of traditional Greek place names) is an archaeological site and a modern town in Greece. ... Statue of Apollo at the British Museum Apollo (Greek: Απόλλων, Apóllōn; Απελλων) is a god in Greek and Roman mythology, the son of Zeus and Leto, and the twin of Artemis (goddess of the hunt), one of the most important and many-sided of the Olympian divinities. ...

The Tyrian Heracles answers by appearing to Dionysus. There is red light in the fiery eyes of this shining god who clothed in a robe embroidered like the sky (presumably with various constellations). He has yellow, sparkling cheeks and a starry beard. The god reveals how he taught the primeval, earthborn inhabitants of Phoenicia how to build the first boat and instructed them to sail out to a pair of floating, rocky islands. On one of the islands there grew an olive tree with a serpent at its foot, an eagle at its summit, and which glowed in the middle with fire that burned but did not consume. Following the god's instructions, these primeval humans sacrificed the eagle to Poseidon, Zeus, and the other gods. Thereupon the islands rooted themselves to the bottom of the sea. On these islands the city of Tyre was founded.

See also

• For information on the title Ba‘al which was applied to many gods who would not normally be identified with Melqart see Ba‘al.
  
  
• For the meta-myth that Melqart, a baal or "king" was Moloch, see Moloch.

Baal is a Semitic title and honorific meaning lord that is used for various gods, spirits and demons particularly of the Levant. ... Moloch or Molech or Molekh representing Hebrew מלך mlk is either the name of a god or the name of a particular kind of sacrifice associated historically with Phoenician and related cultures in north Africa and the Levant. ...

External links

• Rodney R. Baird, "Melqart"
• Melqart stele
• Roger Wright, review of María Eugenia Aubet, The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade, 2nd ed., 2001: a circumstantial review that gives a good sketch of Aubet's book, in which Melqart figures strongly; Aubet concentrates on Tyre and its colonies and ends, ca 550 BCE, with the rise of Carthage.