Baal is known to have had temples at Baalbek, at Tyre, at Tarsus, at
Agadir[1123] (Gades), in Sardinia,[1124] at Carthage, and at Ekron.
Though not at first worshipped under a visible form, he came to have
statues dedicated to him,[1125] which received the usual honours.
Sometimes, as already observed, his head was encircled with a
representation of the solar rays; sometimes his form was assimilated to
that under which the Egyptians of later times worshipped their Ammon.
Seated upon a throne and wrapped in a long robe, he presented the
appearance of a man in the flower of his age, bearded, and of solemn
aspect, with the carved horn of a ram on either side of his forehead.
Figures of rams also supported the arms of his throne on either side,
and on the heads of these two supports his hands rested.[1126]
The female deity whose place corresponded to that of Baal in the
Phoenician Pantheon, and who was in a certain sense his companion and
counterpart, was Ashtoreth or Astarte. As Baal was the embodiment of the
generative principle in nature, so was Ashtoreth of the receptive and
productive principle. She was the great nature-goddess, the Magna Mater,
regent of the stars, queen of heaven, giver of life, and source of
woman’s fecundity.[1127] Just as Baal had a solar, so she had a lunar
aspect, being pictured with horns upon her head representative of the
lunar crescent.[1128] Hence, as early as the time of Moses, there
was a city on the eastern side of Jordan, named after her,
Ashtoreth-Karnaim,[1129] or “Astarte of the two horns.” Her images are
of many forms. Most commonly she appears as a naked female, with long
hair, sometimes gathered into tresses, and with her two hands supporting
her two breasts.[1130] Occasionally she is a mother, seated in a
comfortable chair, and nursing her babe.[1131] Now and then she is
draped, and holds a dove to her breast, or else she takes an attitude
of command, with the right hand raised, as if to bespeak attention.
Sometimes, on the contrary, her figure has that modest and retiring
attitude which has caused it to be described by a distinguished
archæologist[1132] as “the Phoenician prototype of the Venus de Medici.”
The Greeks and Romans, who identified Baal determinately with their
Zeus or Jupiter, found it very much more difficult to fix on any single
goddess in their Pantheon as the correspondent of Astarte. Now they made
her Hera or Juno, now Aphrodite or Venus, now Athene, now Artemis, now
Selene, now Rhea or Cybele. But her aphrodisiac character was certainly
the one in which she most frequently appeared. She was the goddess of
the sexual passion, rarely, however, represented with the chaste and
modest attributes of the Grecian Aphrodite-Urania, far more commonly
with those coarser and more repulsive ones which characterise Aphrodite
Pandemos.[1133] Her temples were numerous, though perhaps not quite so
numerous as those of Baal. The most famous were those at Sidon, Aphaca,
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