Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/93

 RELIGION. / J Astarte, there are similarities upon which it is needless to insist. As our knowledge of the Chaldsean religion increases, we shall perhaps come upon still more striking evidence of the parental relation in which it stood to that of Phoenicia ; we may, perhaps, be enabled to trace a descent which is for the present only a very great probability. Like the other tribes by whom the Syrian coast has been peopled, the Phoenicians arrived there with all the elements of a religion whose cradle must be sought about the lower waters of the Euphrates, but in the course of the cosmopolitan existence they led for so long they never ceased to borrow deities and forms of worship from the nations with whom they had dealings, and from those under whose sceptre their country successively passed. The influence of the great empires on the Tigris and Euphrates may be traced in many things. In an inscription at Athens a Phoenician calls himself " Priest of Nergal." A bi-lingual inscription found at Larnaca of Lapethus, in the island of Cyprus, contains a dedication to the goddess Anat, whose name is rendered in the Greek part by Athene. 2 But a far greater influence was exercised by Egypt, with whom Phoenicia had such long and intimate relations. Osiris, Horus, Bast, Harpocrates, all had their worshippers in the coast cities. And their status was not that of foreign gods to which a few individuals turned in temporary and dilettante fashion. This is proved by the place their titles occupy in Phoenician proper names, and by the parallelism established between them and purely Phoenician gods. As the Phoenicians said Melek-Baal, so they said Melek-Osir. Osiris certainly had his place in the pantheon, although his admission must have taken place at a comparatively late period, and as a consequence of the confidential intercourse between the two countries, that lasted from the days of the Theban Pharaohs to those of the Ptolemies. Carthage came so late upon the scene, and her relations with her mother city were so intimate, that her religious beliefs cannot have sensibly differed from those of her eastern cousins. Her chief divine couple, the Baalim in whose protection the city mainly trusted, were Baal-Hamnwn and Tanit ; Esnwun completed the 1 Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum, part i. No. 119. 2 Ibid. No. 95. VOL. I. I.