The sources on the Phoenician religion are multiple and come from various cities. There are two large groups of data for the study of the Phoenician religion:
Those extracted from the Ugarit texts . These inform us about the epic-mythological poems that preceded the Phoenician era. The Ugaritic religion is defined as West-Semitic, as Canaanite and must have had a notable influence on the other Semitic peoples at the time of transition from Bronze to Iron.
The second important source which reveals the Phoenician religious life, are the works of Sancuniatione , Phoenician priest of the city of Beritus, who around the twelfth century a. C. exposed in his writings the Phoenician conception of the creation of the world.
The problem with these two large groups of data is that they give two very different visions of religion, since they correspond to very distant times chronologically.
The material for the reconstruction of Phoenician religiosity is abundant in appearance but, in reality, limited. There is information on names and concepts of divinities, but the forms of worship, prayer, temples and mythology are hardly known. Considering that the Phoenicians were the bridge between East and West, it is clear that Phoenicia was the origin of the Pantheon of Carthage and that through Carthage, Eastern religious ideas passed to the West.
As a primary characteristic, in the Phoenician religious panorama, its lack of homogeneity stands out, possibly due to the numerous contributions and influence of African and Eastern cultures (Egypt, Libya and Mesopotamia).
The divinities
The geographical and political fractionation of Phoenicia is reflected in its religion, in which essential characteristics are found:
- The continuity of elements, which already come from primitive historical periods.
- The great diffusion of the names of the divinities and their functions, which are attributed to each god, according to the cult received in each city.
Byblos
The first great Phoenician city was Byblos already known in the III Millennium a. C. The temple of Rashap is known from the II Millennium (Reshep in Hebrew pronunciation), also called Temple of the Obelisks because in its patio there are numerous obelisks. The great goddess of Byblos was the Ba'ala. Gubal , name that means Lady of Byblos . She was the main goddess of the city. She was identified with the Inanna of the Sumerians, the Ishtar of Babylon and Assyria and the Isis egyptian Her name was present in Ugarit and in Canaanite she received the title of the merciful .
Her pre-eminent mission at Byblos was that of goddess of the fertility of the earth or of agriculture and, finally, of human fertility.
Prayers to the Ba’alat Gubal of the kings of Byblos were continually repeated. The iconography of her has a great similarity with the Hathor-Isis egyptian
Sometimes to the cult of the Ba’alat Gubal she was associated with a Ba'al . In the inscriptions of the tenth century a. C. only once is it associated with Ba'al Shamen, Lord of the Skies and to the Assembly of the Holy Gods of Byblos .
For the rest, it cannot be maintained with the documentation that we have, that in Byblos a triad composed of El or Ba al Shamen, the Ba'alat of Byblos and a young god who would be Adonis was worshiped, not to speak systematically of triads worshiped in the Phoenician cities although, sporadically, they exist in some of them.
Sidon
The female goddess of Sidon she is Ashtart (Astarte ), who lived in this city with her priests, in a temple and was honored by her kings, who qualify in her royal title as priests and priestesses of the goddess Astarte is a goddess parallel to the Ba'alat of Byblos . She was also a goddess of fertility and will later be identified with the Greek Aphrodite.
The great divinity of Sidon was Eshmun , who unlike the previous gods, was not known before. He is cited in the sixth century B.C. for the first time. He is always referred to as Holy Prince (as he is first mentioned in the treaty between Asarhaddon of Assyria and the city of Tyre, for the construction of a temple).
Also his identification is uncertain. He may be a kind of Asclepius and is also related to the natural cycle of life and death, although his main function seems to be that of a healing god.
Shoot
We have little news about the cults in Tyre. Milkart or Melkart he was the main god of the city, the etymology of his name means King of the city .
In a bilingual Greco-Phoenician votive inscription from Malta he is called Ba’al Sor or Lord of Tire and in the Greek text of an inscription Heracles Arkhégètés. The character and functions of him are analogous to those of Adonis and Eshmun . There is even evidence of a festival in Tire when the resurrection of the god takes place in spring.
The importance of Melkart it was such that Alexander the Great himself went to sacrifice to the temple of him.
Melkart they share the cults in Tire with the goddess Astarte, Anat, Eshmun and various forms of Ba'al such as Ba'al shamen (Lord of the heavens ) and Ba’al Sapon Lord of Mount Sapon , sacred mountain that is mentioned in the texts of Ugarit.
At the time of the Phoenician expansion, this people took religious elements from the cultures with which it came into contact, while the cult of the Phoenician gods spread. Finally, the same gods, albeit under different names, will be worshiped throughout the classical world.
Temples and sanctuaries
The oldest Phoenician places of worship are found in Byblos and Ugarit dating from the Middle Bronze and are of three kinds:Closed enclosures, open-air chapels and high places , bamah or altars on the mountains, of which the Old Testament makes numerous mentions and are sometimes represented on Phoenician coins.
So. a Byblos coin from the 3rd century AD. represents a pyramidal obelisk enclosed in an enclosure. In the West, temples, on the other hand, used to be located sometimes on flat land, next to ports and also on mountains.
The tophet , already from the Punic period, was the site of human sacrifices. The best known is that of Tanit, on the hill of Salambó (Carthage), where numerous urns have been found with the remains of burned children, aged up to twelve years, but the most abundant correspond to children under two years of age, and fetuses. (although there are many theories about this type of sacrifice, called molk ).
Although these human sacrifices were practiced in the Phoenician religion, there was soon a tendency to replace children with lambs, as reflected in the Old Testament in the sacrifice of Isaac. In Carthaginian times, it seems that these sacrifices were reserved for especially dangerous occasions for the city, in which greater protection from the gods was needed.
Eissfeld has shown that the name of Moloch , terrible Punic divinity, to whom children were offered to be burned, comes from a misreading of the word MOLCHOMOR , which is the name of the sacrifice molk followed by lamb , so that word molchomor means sacrifice of the lamb . The priests succeeded each other in several generations of the same family, the same as the priestesses. Also belonging to the service of the cult were the scribes, the musicians, the sacred barbers and the boys and girls who practiced sacred prostitution as a religious offering to these divinities of fertility, in the same rooms of the temple.
Funeral customs
Burial was the most common form of burial, especially in the most ancient times, cremation was used, approximately, from the eighteenth to the twelfth century BC. as we see in Moyta, where the oldest tombs, which already correspond to this period, are of incineration. Most are rock-cut shaft tombs. In non-rocky soils the graves are dug into the ground.
The Phoenicians also used anthropoid sarcophagi, in one piece, although other times they were several. The decorated sarcophagi indicate a wealthy bourgeoisie. In the tombs a funerary trousseau was deposited (the oldest tombs are richer) with ceramics, metal vessels with food and drinks and small containers of wood, ivory, glass, perfumes, cosmetics, combs, teaspoons, knives, etc.
There are also jewels, needles, bottle glasses and ostrich eggs in the tombs, the latter decorated and painted ocher on the inside, perhaps as a symbol of life or rebirth, because red is the color of blood and therefore of life.