Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 1.djvu/97

 RELIGION. 77 the heart and elevate the mind. Torn on the one hand by their sensual desires and on the other by greed of gain, hardened by conflict with the sea and softened by the pleasures that awaited them ashore, the Phoenicians swung from one extreme to another. When their ventures were turning out badly, when their fleets were threatened by storms or their armies pressed by the enemy, they turned in despair to their gods and made those impious vows which they carried out only too well. A people of traders and harsh to their own debtors, they believed their gods to be as exacting and pitiless as themselves ; hence the terrors which led them to sacrifice so many young and innocent lives. Under the impulse of sentiments which are to be explained by the national habits, the Syrians and Carthaginians had, then, given a peculiar character to their religion ; but they had not created the gods whom they adored, and when they wished to give them visible bodies they were quite unable to invent for themselves. They borrowed the types and names of their gods from without, and especially from Chalda^a. Baal is much the same as Bel, and Tammouz is but little removed from the Dommouzi of the Assyrian texts ; l Astarte and Tar.it do not greatly differ from Istar and Anahit, while Baal-Hammon is neither more nor less than the great Libyan god, the supreme deity of Egypt. 2 Although the Phoenicians imported most of their gods from Mesopotamia, they gave them Egyptian disguises. The Phoenician civilization had its first development during the period of Theban supremacy, and it borrowed types for its deities from the gods of its Egyptian masters. The "great Lady of Gebal," on the stele of Jehawmelek (Fig. 23), is very like an Isis-Hathor, and here (Fig. 26) is a bronze, less ancient no doubt, which also comes from Syria : its workmanship is not quite that of Egypt ; there is reason, in fact, to believe that it was cast in Syria. It can be meant for none but Astarte ; the disk and horns of the moon seem decisive on that point ; but the forehead is surmounted by an asp, like the 1 FR. LENORMANT, Sovra /'/ mito d'Adone Tamuz (extracted from the proceedings of the Congress of Orientalists, held at Florence in 1878). 2 The influence exercised by the rites and beliefs of Egypt over those of Phoenicia did not escape the ancients. The pseudo-Lucian (Upon the Syrian Goddess, 5) declares its existence in so many words. According to Silius Italicus, a mediocre poet, but a fairly well-informed savant, the rites celebrated in the temple of Gades were Egyptian (iii. v. 20 et seq).