Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/87

 RELICIOX. 67 In the Phoenician texts, in Phoenician proper names, and in the historical books of the Old Testament, the divine name which crops up oftenest is that of Baal. Baal means tlic master ; a title of honour which seems to have been applied to all divinities ; hence the term in the Bible, Baalim, or Baals. There were as many Baals, that is to say, masters, as cities or places devoted to the rites of any particular worship. The Baal adored at Tyre, at Sidon, on Lebanon, on Peor, became Baal-Tsoitr, Baal-Sidon, Baal-Lebanon, Baal-Pcor. But even behind these local dis- tinctions, a confused notion of primordial unity may be traced, as in the terms Astoret-sem-Baal, or Astarte, name of Baal, in Phoenicia, and Tanit-Pene-Baal, or Tanit, face of Baal, at Carthage. In these formulae and a few others the term Baal -is put, by a kind of abbreviation, as the proper name of the supreme deity, but it never quite lost its wider and more general sense, which was completed by the apposition of the name of a town or mountain. Thus we find that Melkart, the great god of Tyre, whose name and fame were carried so far by the Tyrian colonists, was neither more nor less than the Baal of the Metropolis. " To the Lord Melkart, Baal of Tyre",' runs a dedication found at Malta. 2 In this name Melkart, handed down to us by the Greeks, is included another of those epithets with which the Phoenicians loved to honour their gods, namely, the word Moloch, or Melek , "the king." 3 As an isolated divine title this word has never yet been encountered, but it is often found in composition in proper names of people, and its importance is proved by its use in the title borne by the chief god of Tyre, that Melkart whom the Greeks called " the sea-god Melikertes." Melkart is a contraction of yJ/<?//-kart, "the God of the City." His complete name was Baal- Melkart) or Mclkart-Baal-Tsour, " Melkart, master of Tyre." The word Adon, " the lord," was employed in the same fashion. It was only at a comparatively recent date that it became the 1 PH. BERGER, La Ph'eiiide, p. 19; FR. LEXORMANT, M amid d' Histoire aiicienne > vol. iii. p. 127; DE VOGUE, Mcmoires sur les Inscriptions phenidennes de /'/</< de Cypre, and part (Considerations mythologiques, in the Melanges c? Archeologi e Orientale, 8vo. Paris, 1878). 2 Corpus Inscriptioniim Semiticarum, 122 and 122 (bis). 3 As only the consonants are noted in the Phoenician writing, we can only guess at the pronunciation of the name.