Hadad, like Dagon, obtains his right to be included in the list of
Phoenician deities solely from the place assigned to him by Philo.
Otherwise he would naturally be viewed as an Aramean god, worshipped
especially in Aram-Zobah, and in Syria of Damascus.[1156] In Syria,
he was identified with the sun;[1157] and it is possible that in the
Phoenician religion he was the Sun-God, worshipped (as we have seen)
sometimes independently of Baal. His image was represented with the
solar rays streaming down from it towards the earth, so as to indicate
that the earth received from him all that made it fruitful and
abundant.[1158] Macrobius connects his name with the Hebrew _chad_,
“one;” but this derivation is improbable.[1159] Philo gives him the
title of “King of Gods,” and says that he reigned conjointly with
Astarte and Demaroüs,[1160] but this does not throw much light on the
real Phoenician conception of him. The local name, Hadad-rimmon,[1161]
may seem to connect him with the god Rimmon, likewise a Syrian
deity,[1162] and it is quite conceivable that the two words may have
been alternative names of the same god, just as Phoebus and Apollo were
with the Greeks. We may conjecture that the Sun was worshipped under
both names in Syria, while in Phoenicia Hadad was alone made use of. The
worship of Baal as the Sun, which tended to prevail ever more and more,
ousted Hadad from his place, and caused him to pass into oblivion.
Adonis was probably, like Hadad, originally a sun-god; but the myths
connected with him gave him, at any rate in the late Phoenician times, a
very distinct and definite personality. He was made the son of Cinryas,
a mythic king of Byblus,[1163] and the husband of Astarte or Ashtoreth.
One day, as he chased the wild boar in Lebanon, near the sources of the
river of Byblus, the animal which he was hunting turned upon him, and
so gored his thigh that he died of the wound. Henceforth he was mourned
annually. At the turn of the summer solstice, the anniversary of his
death, all the women of Byblus went in a wild procession to Aphaca, in
the Lebanon, where his temple stood, and wept and wailed on account of
his death. The river, which his blood had once actually stained, turned
red to show its sympathy with the mourners, and was thought to flow with
his blood afresh. After the “weeping for Tammuz”[1164] had continued for
a definite time, the mourning terminated with the burial of an image of
the god in the sacred precinct. Next day Adonis was supposed to return
to life; his image was disinterred and carried back to the temple with
music and dances, and every circumstance of rejoicing.[1165] Wild orgies
followed, and Aphaca became notorious for scenes to which it will be
necessary to recur hereafter. The Adonis myth is generally explained
as representing either the perpetually recurrent decay and recovery of
nature, or the declension of the Sun as he moves from the summer to the
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