Ashtoreth-Karnaim, Paphos, Pessinus, and Carthage. At Sidon the kings
were sometimes her high-priests;[1134] and her name is found as
a frequent element in Phoenician personal names, royal and other:
e.g.--Astartus, Abdastartus, Delæastartus, Am-ashtoreth, Bodoster,
Bostor, &c.
The other principal Phoenician deities were El, Melkarth, Dagon, Hadad,
Adonis, Sydyk, Eshmun, the Cabeiri, Onca, Tanith, Tanata, or Anaitis,
and Baalith, Baaltis, or Beltis. El, or Il, originally a name of the
Supreme God, became in the later Phoenician mythology a separate and
subordinate divinity, whom the Greeks compared to their Kronos[1135]
and the Romans to their Saturn. El was the special god of Gebal
or Byblus,[1136] and was worshipped also with peculiar rites at
Carthage.[1137] He was reckoned the son of Uranus and the father of
Beltis, to whom he delivered over as her especial charge the city of
Byblus.[1138] Numerous tales were told of him. While reigning on earth
as king of Byblus, or king of Phoenicia, he had fallen in love with a
nymph of the country, called Anobret, by whom he had a son named Ieoud.
This son, much as he loved him, when great dangers from war threatened
the land, he first invested with the emblems of royalty, and then
sacrificed.[1139] Uranus (Heaven) married his sister Ge (Earth), and Il
or Kronos was the issue of this marriage, as also were Dagon, Bætylus,
and Atlas. Ge, being dissatisfied with the conduct of her husband,
induced her son Kronos to make war upon him, and Kronos, with the
assistance of Hermes, overcame Uranus, and having driven him from his
kingdom succeeded to the imperial power. Besides sacrificing Ieoud,
Kronos murdered another of his sons called Sadid, and also a daughter
whose name is not given. Among his wives were Astarte, Rhea, Dioné,
Eimarmené, and Hora, of whom the first three were his sisters.[1140]
There is no need to pursue this mythological tangle. If it meant
anything to the initiated, the meaning is wholly lost; and the stories,
gravely as they are related by the ancient historian, to the modern, who
has no key to them, are almost wholly valueless.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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