In many of his characteristics Hadad closely resembled En-lil.
Like him he was designated 'the great mountain,' and seems to have
been conceived of as almost a counterpart of the older god. It is
peculiar that while in Assyria and Babylonia Hadad has many of the
characteristics of a sun-god, in his old home in Syria he possessed
those of a thunder-god who dwelt among the mountains of northern
Palestine and Syria and spoke in thunder and wielded the lightning. But
even in Assyria the stormy characteristics of Hadad are not altogether
obscured. Hadad's cult in Babylonia is probably not much older than the
days of Khammurabi, in whose time the first inscriptional mention of
him is made. His worship obtained a stronger hold in the times of the
Kassite dynasty, for we find many of its monarchs incorporating his
name with their own and altogether affording him a prominent place.
Hadad, Dáda, David, and Dido
In a curious and interesting passage in his _Hibbert Lectures_,[1]
Professor Sayce indicates resemblances between the name Hadad,
Dáda, the abbreviated form of the name of Abd-Hadad, who reigned at
Hierapolis in the fourth century, Queen Dido of Carthage, and that of
the Biblical David. Speaking of Hadad he says: "He was, as I have said,
the supreme Baal or Sun-god; whose worship extended southward from
Carchemish to Edom and Palestine. At Damascus he was adored under the
Assyrian name of Rimmon, and Zechariah (xii 11) alludes to the cult
of the compound Hadad-Rimmon in the close neighbourhood of the great
Canaanitish fortress of Megiddo. Coins bear the name of Abd-Hadad, 'the
servant of Hadad,' who reigned in the fourth century at Hierapolis,
the later successor of Carchemish, and, under the abbreviated form
of Dáda, Shalmaneser speaks of 'the god Dáda of Aleppo' (Khalman).
The abbreviated form was that current among the nations of the north;
in the south it was confounded with the Semite word which appears in
Assyrian as _dadu_, 'dear little child.' This is the word which we
have in Be-Dad or Ben-Dad, 'the son of Dad,' the father of the Edomite
Hadad; we have it also in the David of the Old Testament. David, or
Dod, as the word ought to be read, which is sometimes written Dodo with
the vocalic suffix of the nominative, is the masculine corresponding
to a Ph[oe]nician goddess whose name means 'the beloved one,' and who
was called Dido by the writers of Rome. Dido, in fact, was the consort
of the Sun-god, conceived as Tammuz, 'the beloved son,' and was the
presiding deity of Carthage, whom legend confounded with Elissa, the
foundress of the city. In the article I have alluded to above, I
expressed my conviction that the names of Dodo and David pointed to
a worship of the Sun-god, under the title of 'the beloved one,' in
southern Canaan as well as in Ph[oe]nicia. I had little idea at the
time how soon my belief would be verified. Within the last year, the
squeeze of the Moabite stone, now in the Louvre, has been subjected
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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