Tyre, renamed by Greece
The king of the city they called Heracles
Melqart
Before the club and the lion-skin, there was Milk-qart: King of the City. He walked west with every colony.
The Tyrian lord
Melqart — Milk-qart, King of the City — is the tutelary god of Tyre. His temple, Herodotus was told (Histories 2.44), was already ancient when the Greek visitor saw its two pillars, one of gold and one of emerald that shone at night. The Tyrians dated that house in millennia, not in generations.
He is a dying-and-rising city-god, a king of the civic order, a traveller with the ships. At Gadir, at the Pillars, his temple stood where the sun falls into the Atlantic. The west still runs the bulls and does not always remember why.
The rename
The Greeks identified him with Heracles and invented a visit: the hero comes to Tyre, as if Tyre had been waiting for a club. The identification is a habit. Astarte they called Aphrodite. Eshmun they called Asclepius. Baal-Shamem they called Zeus. Melqart they called Heracles.
Sanchuniathon already names Melicarthus among the old kings who were later deified. The man first. The god after. The Greek poet last, and loudest.
Gad Yaton: they did not bring Heracles to Tyre. They found Melqart already on the throne and put a Greek name on him.
Gad Yaton · the thread
All visits