Glossary

GLOSSARY

of Phœnician Terms, Deities, and Key Concepts

Ahiram. King of Byblus (c. 1000 BCE or earlier). His sarcophagus (KAI 1) bears the earliest known fully developed Phœnician alphabetic inscription. The curse formula on his sarcophagus is among the oldest examples of Phœnician royal ideology.

Amarna Letters. Diplomatic correspondence of the mid-14th century BCE, discovered at Tell el-Amarna, Egypt. The letters from the kings of Byblus (Rib-Hadda), Tyre (Abi-Milku), Sidon (Zimredda), and Berytus (Ammunira) to Pharaohs Amenhotep III and Akhenaten provide the earliest detailed political portrait of the Phœnician coast.

Astarte (Ashtart). Principal goddess of Sidon and Tyre, consort of Melqart. A deity of love, war, fertility, and royal authority. Equated by the Greeks with Aphrodite and by the Romans with Venus. Her emblem was the bull, and her cult involved the veneration of meteoritic stones.

Ataba. A traditional Lebanese song form; the improvisational opening of a mawal, often expressing longing, parting, or remembrance. Invoked in the dedication of this history.

Baal. "Lord" or "Master." A title applied to various local manifestations of the divine. Baal Shamem is the Lord of Heaven; Baal Hammon is the chief god of Carthage; Baal Saphon is the Lord of Mount Cassius; Baal Sidon and Baal Tyre were the patron deities of those respective cities.

Baalat Gebal. The "Lady of Byblus." The patron goddess of Byblus, worshipped from at least the third millennium BCE. Her temple was excavated by Maurice Dunand. She was equated by the Egyptians with the goddess Hathor.

Bætulia (Bethel). Sacred stones, anointed with oil and worshipped as dwelling-places of the divine. This practice was adopted by the Hebrew patriarch Jacob (Genesis 28), and the term "Bethel" ("House of God") entered the Hebrew tradition from this Canaanite custom.

Berytus. The ancient name for the site of modern Beirut. It appears in the genealogy of Sanchuniathon as Beruth, wife of Elioun. It was ruled by King Ammunira during the Amarna period and was the home city of the historian Sanchuniathon.

Bireme. A galley with two banks of oars, a warship of Phœnician origin. It is depicted on a relief from Sennacherib's palace at Nineveh (c. 700 BCE) and was the precursor to the Greek trireme.

Byblus (Gebal, Gubla). Considered by both Sanchuniathon and modern archaeology to be the oldest continuously inhabited Phœnician city, with Neolithic origins (c. 8800–7000 BCE). It was the site of the temple of Baalat Gebal and the royal necropolis where the Ahiram sarcophagus was discovered.

Cabiri (Dioscuri, Corybantes). The seven sons of Sydyc, who, according to Sanchuniathon, built the first complete ship. Their eighth brother was Asclepius. They were the scribes who set down the first human records at the command of Taautus.

Cadmus. A Phœnician prince (or, according to Phœnician sources, the intendant of the royal household) from Tyre. In Greek tradition, he founded the city of Thebes, introduced the Phœnician alphabet to Greece, and was the ancestor of the Thelidae clan from which the philosopher Thales descended.

Carthage (Qart-Hadasht, "New City"). Founded by Elissa (Dido) of Tyre around 814 BCE. The greatest of the Phœnician colonies, it grew into a metropolis of half a million people, commanded a double harbour and a massive circuit of walls, and was governed by a constitution praised by Aristotle. It was utterly destroyed by Rome in 146 BCE.

Cronus (Ilus, Il). In Sanchuniathon's euhemeristic history, a mortal king of the second generation of the gods. He overthrew his father Ouranus, founded the first city at Byblus, introduced the practice of circumcision, and offered his only son Ieoud as a sacrifice in a time of plague. After his death, he was deified and instated in the planet Saturn.

Dagon. "Bread-corn" (Siton). The deified discovery of cultivated grain and inventor of the plough, later called Zeus Arotrius ("Zeus of the Plough"). He was a major deity among the Philistines and is mocked in the Hebrew scriptures, but his antiquity and importance as the foundation of agricultural civilisation are undeniable.

El. The generic term for "god" in the Canaanite languages. El was the father of the Phœnician pantheon, an aged and wise ruler seated at the source of the rivers. The Hebrew names for God—El, Elohim, Elyon, El Shaddai—are linguistic borrowings from this older Phœnician and Canaanite tradition.

Elissa (Dido). A princess of Tyre, sister of King Pygmalion. Fleeing her brother's tyranny, she led a band of followers to North Africa and, by a clever stratagem, secured the land to found Carthage around 814 BCE. She was later deified by the city she founded.

Elioun (Hypsistus, "Most High"). The ancestor of Ouranus (Heaven) and Ge (Earth), killed in a conflict with wild beasts and subsequently deified by his children. His name is the direct source of the Hebrew divine title El Elyon ("God Most High"), used of Yahweh in Genesis 14:18–20.

Eloeim. The plural of Eloah ("mighty one" or "god"). In Sanchuniathon, it refers to the mortal allies of King Cronus. In the Hebrew scriptures, the grammatically plural Elohim becomes a principal name for the one God of Israel, a linguistic and theological evolution that reflects the older Canaanite polytheistic background.

Eshmun. The healing god of Sidon, equated by the Greeks with Asclepius. His magnificent temple in the hills above the city, expanded over centuries by Sidonian kings, was one of the finest sanctuaries of the ancient world.

Eshmunazar II. King of Sidon in the 5th century BCE. His massive basalt sarcophagus (KAI 14), now in the Louvre, records that the Persian king rewarded Sidon's loyalty with the grant of the cities of Dor and Joppa, territories that the Hebrew scriptures claim for the tribes of Israel.

Euhemerism. The doctrine that the gods were originally mortal benefactors, kings, or inventors who were deified after their deaths, and that myths are distorted memories of these historical events. The approach is named after the 4th-century BCE Greek writer Euhemerus, but was practised a thousand years earlier by Sanchuniathon.

Gad Yaton. "Fortune gives." The Phœnician moniker adopted by the narrator of this history, , in honour of the original historian, Sakkun Yaton ("Sakkun gives") of Berytus.

Gadir (Cádiz, Spain). One of the earliest Phœnician trading posts in the far west, founded beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, perhaps as early as 1100 BCE. It commanded the immensely lucrative silver trade with the kingdom of Tartessos.

Gaulos. The Phœnician round ship, a broad-beamed, sail-driven cargo vessel that was the workhorse of Mediterranean maritime commerce for centuries.

Hamilcar Barca. A leading Carthaginian general who fought Rome to a stalemate in Sicily during the First Punic War, crushed the Mercenary Revolt, and then carved out a new empire for Carthage in southern Spain. He was the father of Hannibal and died in battle in 228 BCE.

Hannibal Barca. The son of Hamilcar, considered by this history to be the greatest general of the ancient world. He famously marched his army, including war elephants, across the Alps to invade Italy in 218 BCE, winning devastating victories at the Trebia River, Lake Trasimene, and Cannae. He was eventually defeated by Scipio Africanus at the Battle of Zama in 202 BCE and died in exile.

Hanno. A Carthaginian admiral who, around 500 BCE, led a colonising expedition of sixty ships beyond the Pillars of Hercules and down the West African coast. His Periplus records encounters with various peoples, volcanic activity, and the "gorillai," giving us the modern word "gorilla."

Hephaestus. The Greek god of metalworking and fire. In the euhemeristic system of Sanchuniathon, he is the mortal Phœnician inventor Chrysor ("Golden Worker"), who discovered iron-smelting and was the first to sail with deliberate intent.

Heracles. The Greek hero, son of Zeus. Sanchuniathon demonstrates that Heracles is a mythologised appropriation of the Phœnician god Melqart, the "King of the City" and patron deity of Tyre. The twelve labours are later Greek poetic accretions.

Hiram I. King of Tyre (c. 980–947 BCE), a contemporary of King Solomon of Israel. This history corrects the biblical account by demonstrating that Hiram was the senior partner in the relationship, providing Solomon with timber, craftsmen, and maritime access for his modest highland kingdom.

Ieoud. "Only son." The term used by Sanchuniathon for the son whom King Cronus sacrificed during a time of war. The word is the exact Phœnician cognate of the Hebrew yahid ("your only son"), used by God to describe Isaac in Genesis 22:2.

Ieuo. The god of the priest Hierombalus, from whom Sanchuniathon received the ancient records. The name is almost certainly an early form of the Hebrew divine name Yahweh (Jehovah).

Ithobaal I (Ethbaal). A priest of Astarte who seized the Tyrian throne around 887 BCE and reigned for thirty-two years. He was the father of the infamous Queen Jezebel.

KAI. Kanaanäische und aramäische Inschriften, the standard modern scholarly edition of Canaanite and Aramaic inscriptions, used throughout this book for referencing Phœnician texts.

Kition (Citium). A Phœnician city-kingdom on the southern coast of Cyprus, under Tyrian control. It was the gateway for Phœnician influence entering the Aegean world and was the birthplace of the philosopher Zeno.

Kothar-wa-Hasis. The Ugaritic (Canaanite) god of craftsmanship, magic, and invention, who matches Sanchuniathon's Chrysor in precise detail. The discovery of this deity in the Ugaritic texts at Ras Shamra provides powerful independent corroboration of Sanchuniathon's tradition.

Mawal. A traditional Lebanese vocal improvisation; a long, drawn-out, melismatic song of longing and nostalgia.

Melqart (Melicarthus). "King of the City." The tutelary god of Tyre, a dying-and-rising god associated with the annual cycle of death and rebirth. His temple in Tyre was one of the oldest in the Mediterranean, dated by its priests to c. 2750 BCE, as recorded by Herodotus. The Greeks absorbed him into their myth of Heracles.

Menander of Ephesus. A historian of the 2nd century BCE who compiled a now-lost history of the city of Tyre from its own official chronicles. His king-list is preserved in fragments quoted by the Jewish historian Josephus and is the most complete surviving record of any Phœnician dynasty.

Mijana. A traditional Lebanese rhythm and song form, the steady beat that drives the melody forward; a symbol of the enduring pulse of the Phœnician people.

Mochus (Moschus) of Sidon. A Phœnician proto-philosopher from Sidon. On the authority of the Stoic polymath Posidonius, the geographer Strabo records that Mochus lived "before the Trojan War" and was the original author of the atomic theory. Mochus's priority was later acknowledged by the scientists Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton.

Môt. In the Phœnician Cosmology, the primordial mud or putrefaction of a watery mixture, generated from the union of the dark wind and Chaos, from which all life sprang.

Motya. A small but wealthy Phœnician island-city off the western coast of Sicily. Its extensive excavation by Lorenzo Nigro has provided exceptional insights into the daily life, industry, and religious practices of a Phœnician colony.

Murex. The collective name for the sea snails (Murex brandaris, Murex trunculus, and Purpura) from which the famous Tyrian purple dye was extracted through a secretive and malodorous process.

Ouranus (Heaven). In Sanchuniathon's history, a mortal king, the son of Elioun and Beruth, who was later deified. His politically motivated murder and dismemberment by his son Cronus at a specific location was allegorised by the Greek poet Hesiod into the cosmic myth of the castration of the sky god.

Philo of Byblos. A Phœnician scholar and grammarian (c. 64–141 CE) who translated the ancient history of Sanchuniathon from the Phœnician language into Greek. He dedicated the work, in nine books, to the Roman empress.

Porphyry of Tyre. A major Neoplatonist philosopher of the 3rd century CE. Born Malchus ("king") into a distinguished Phœnician family in Tyre, he was a student of Plotinus and a prolific writer, whose notice of Sanchuniathon was preserved by Eusebius.

Pothos. In the Phœnician Cosmology, "Desire" is the irresistible principle that caused the primordial Wind to fall in love with the dark Chaos, an embrace that initiated the creation of all things.

Proto-Sinaitic. The earliest known alphabetic inscriptions, discovered at the Egyptian turquoise mines of Serabit el-Khadim in the Sinai Peninsula. Dated to c. 1850–1550 BCE, these carvings were made by Canaanite workers and represent the direct ancestral script of the Phœnician alphabet.

Pygmalion. King of Tyre (c. 831–785 BCE). According to the Tyrian chronicles and the Roman historian Justin, it was during his reign that his sister Elissa (Dido) fled and founded the city of Carthage.

Ras Shamra. The modern name for the archaeological site on the Syrian coast where the ancient city of Ugarit was discovered by a French expedition in 1929. The subsequent excavation of a substantial library of cuneiform clay tablets from the 14th–13th centuries BCE provided independent, contemporary proof of the Canaanite myths and traditions recorded a thousand years later by Sanchuniathon.

Sakkun Yaton. "The god Sakkun gives." This is the theophoric, or divine, name of the historian Sanchuniathon of Berytus. The god Sakkun is attested in both Late Bronze Age Ugaritic texts and later Phœnician inscriptions.

Sanchuniathon. The Greek rendering of the name Sakkun-yaton. He was a priest and historian of Berytus who lived before the Trojan War and compiled the ancient religious and historical records of the Phœnician cities. His work, once dismissed by some modern scholars as a late forgery, was decisively vindicated by the discovery of the Ugaritic texts at Ras Shamra, which demonstrated that the myths he recorded were already part of a robust Canaanite tradition centuries before Homer.

Sidon (Ṣīdūn). A major Phœnician metropolis and, according to Sanchuniathon, the city where the art of the musical hymn was invented. Its name became so emblematic that the Hebrew scriptures sometimes used "Sidonians" as a general term for all Phœnicians.

Suffetes. A title for the chief governing magistrates or judges of the Phœnician cities. The office is well-documented in Tyre during the period of the Babylonian siege and became the standard title for the annually elected chief executives of the Carthaginian Republic.

Sydyc. "The Just" or "The Righteous One." An important ancestor figure who, with his brother Misor, discovered the use of salt. He was the father of the Cabiri.

Taautus. The inventor of the alphabet and the father of all written records. Sanchuniathon identifies him as a mortal man who was later deified. He was equated by the Egyptians with the ibis-headed god Thoth and by the Greeks with the messenger god Hermes (Trismegistus).

Tanit. The chief goddess of the city of Carthage, the consort of Baal Hammon. Often referred to as "Tanit face of Baal," she was the supreme heavenly patroness of the Punic world, and her distinctive symbol—a triangle, horizontal line, and circle—appears on thousands of votive stelae.

Tartessos. A legendary, metal-rich kingdom in the south of the Iberian Peninsula (modern Andalusia). The quest to trade for Tartessian silver, tin, and copper was the primary driver of early Phœnician colonization of the far western Mediterranean.

Thales of Miletus. The first philosopher in the Greek tradition. This history stresses that he was himself of Phœnician descent, a scion of the Thelidae clan who traced their lineage to the Tyrian Cadmus.

Tophet. A sacred open-air precinct, most famously found at Carthage, containing urns with the cremated remains of infants and young animals, buried under carved stone stelae. The stelae are dedicated to Baal Hammon and Tanit, often with the phrase molk ("vow" or "offering"). The interpretation of the tophet as a site of ritual child sacrifice remains one of the most emotionally charged debates in the study of Phœnician religion.

Tyre (Ṣūr, "the Rock"). The great island-city of the Phœnician coast, a maritime power whose merchants, according to the Hebrew prophet Ezekiel and the chronicles of its own kings, plied the seas to the farthest reaches of the known world.

Tyrian Purple. The world's most expensive dye, extracted from the glands of several species of murex sea snail. A closely guarded Tyrian industrial secret, the colour it produced was so vibrant and colourfast that it became the symbol of royalty and imperial power from the Assyrian kings to the Roman emperors.

Ugarit. An ancient Canaanite port city, flourishing in the 14th–13th centuries BCE, located at the modern site of Ras Shamra on the Syrian coast. Its discovery in 1929, and the decipherment of its unique cuneiform alphabet, unlocked a vast library of early Canaanite myths, rituals, and administrative texts that provided a direct, contemporary precedent for Sanchuniathon's much later work.

Utica. A Phœnician city in North Africa (modern Tunisia), reputedly founded by Tyrians around 1178 BCE, making it even older than Carthage. It later became a reluctant ally of Rome in the Punic Wars.

Zeno of Citium (Kition). The founder of the Stoic school of philosophy (c. 334–262 BCE). Born on Cyprus in the Phœnician city of Kition, he was called "the Phœnician" by his contemporaries and his doctrines of universal reason (logos) have deep roots in the Phœnician natural philosophy recorded by Sanchuniathon.

Zeus Belus. One of the three sons born to Cronus in the region of Peræa. His theophoric name combines the Greek sky-god Zeus with the Semitic title Baal ("Lord"), a perfect symbol of the deep syncretism between Greek and Phœnician religion during the Hellenistic age.

Zophasemin. "The Overseers of the Heavens." In the Phœnician Cosmology, these are the first intelligent, animate beings, produced from the primordial mud Môt in the shape of an egg, who were awakened by the first thunder.