Phoenicia
Phoenicia (in Phoenician 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍, kanaʿan; or 𐤐𐤕, Pūt) is the name of an ancient region of the Near East, cradle of the Phoenician-Punic civilization, which stretched along the Mediterranean Levant, on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea. Its territory ranged from the mouth of the Orontes River to the north, to the Bay of Haifa to the south, comprising areas of present-day Israel, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine, a region formerly called Canaan, with whose denomination it is often included in the sources.
History
Inhabited since the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. C. by Canaanite Semites, historical Phoenicia extended over a narrow coastal strip of 40 km, from Mount Carmel to Ugarit (about 300 km). Its soil, mountainous and unsuitable for agriculture (although they made an effort to take advantage of it), oriented its inhabitants towards maritime activities. All the more reason the sea was imposed on this town, when it was divided into small city-states separated by rocky spurs, since cabotage was better than land routes for contact between the cities, which spread out from Acre and Tyre, through Sidon. and Byblos, to Arados and Ugarit. Phoenicia, being a narrow passage between the sea and the Syrian desert, in contact to the south, through Canaan and Sinai, with Egypt, and to the north, through the Euphrates, with Mesopotamia and Asia Minor, was destined to be a rich commercial crossroads, coveted by the great neighboring empires.
Phoenician people
The ethnic name that the Phoenicians gave themselves was 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍𐤉 (kenaʿani, “Canaanites”) or 𐤁𐤍 𐤊𐤍𐤏𐤍 (bin kenaʿan, "sons of Canaan") and coincides with the Canaanite people mentioned in the Bible. purple with which they traded. From phoiniks he derived the term "Phoenician", which is applied rather to the descendants of the Canaanites who inhabited the coastal strip from Dor (present-day Israel) to Arados or Arwad (present-day Syria), between the 13th century B.C. C. and the Muslim conquest. However, the term phoíniks can easily be a popular etymology derived from the ethnonym pōnīm, a demonym of Pūt. This term strictly referred to the coastal region of Canaan, and many of the Phoenician peoples used it as a synonym. From pōnīm would also derive the Latin forms poenus and punicus.
The Phoenician culture is an ancient civilization that did not leave firm physical traces of its existence. Its geographical place in history is the current Lebanese Republic, and the disproportionate growth of cities, as well as the frequent warfare of the past, have made it difficult to find remains that reveal their material culture. Unlike others, however, it left an important cultural legacy to later civilizations, business principles, and the alphabet.
According to Herodotus, the Phoenicians migrated from the shores of the Persian Gulf (called the Erythraean Sea in history) to later settle permanently in the region that later became known as Phoenicia.
Economy
Agriculture and Forestry
Although the region's geography was rugged, the Phoenicians took full advantage of the soil's possibilities for agricultural exploitation and cultivated even on the slopes of the mountains. Its cedar forests of Lebanon.
Phoenician wine
The Phoenicians were one of the first ancient peoples to have a major effect on the history of wine. Through contact and trade they spread their knowledge of viticulture and wine production and propagated ancient vine varieties. They introduced or encouraged the expansion of viticulture and wine production in several countries that continue to produce varieties suitable for the international market, such as Lebanon, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Greece, Italy, Spain or Portugal. Although they could have an effect indirect in the expansion of viticulture in France, they are often confused with the Phocaean Greeks, who founded the wine-growing colony of Massilia (Marseille) in 600 BC. C. and took the production of wine inland.
Industry
Phoenician pottery was widely used and traded; as well as colored glass objects and woolen fabrics dyed with Tyrian purple, a dye extracted from a mollusk (the murex, of the genus Murex, and whose name in Greek —phoinikes , derived from phoinos: "blood red"—identified both the dye and the people who traded it).
The Phoenicians developed an industry of luxury items that were highly sought after at the time and of great commercial value, such as jewelry, perfumes, and cosmetics, among others.
Trade and Navigation
Trade was a major activity. Initially it consisted of the exchange in the form of barter of the products made in Phoenicia for the merchandise available in other places (either other manufactured products —especially from the most developed civilizations—, or raw materials, such as metallic minerals —copper and tin— or precious metals -especially of the most primitive peoples of the West). Later, the invention of currency allowed for more sophisticated trade relations.
The need for long-distance transportation stimulated shipbuilding and improved navigation techniques.
They were the great merchants of antiquity. The geography of its coasts, which favored the installation of ports, and the wood of its forests provided them with the basic elements to build ships and organize shipping companies. One of them was hired by the Persian king Darius I in the 5th century BC. C. To some extent they managed to establish a thalassocracy or "government of the seas" that allowed them to commercially control the Mediterranean.
Phoenician voyages established lasting links between the eastern and western Mediterranean, not just trade; but also cultural.
Phoenician colonization
During their long journeys they had to stock up at different points along the way. It was even assumed that the inherent limitations of primitive navigation (avoidance of night navigation) would prevent voyages much greater than 60 km, although it has been proven that they covered much greater distances without touching port. Over time, these scales were transformed into permanent establishments that allowed storage and stable trade with indigenous peoples, which historiography calls factories or colonies, similar to the Greek colonies. The Phoenician colonization was a commercial and settler phenomenon located in easily defended ports, peninsulas or islands close to the coast, without territorial conquests in the interior.
Phoenician colonies were also established in the vicinity of some cities with a higher degree of civilization, where they obtained concessions, such as the Egyptian city of Memphis.
Trading seafarers from Sidon created walled warehouse-settlements. Those of Tire founded towards the year IX century a. C. in North Africa Qart Hadasht (Carthage), whose strategic position between the western and eastern Mediterranean made it the most important of all colonies. It ended up hosting the center of Punic civilization when the metropolitan cities of the Levant were conquered by the Persian Empire (6th century BC).
The secular rivalry between the Greeks and the Phoenicians for trade routes and the establishment of colonies led, also in the 6th century B.C. C., to a large-scale military confrontation, the battle of Alalia (6th century BC), in which the Phocian Greek colony of Alalia faced the Carthaginian fleet, allied with the Etruscans, redefining the relationship of forces in the region.
The Phoenician factories spread practically throughout the entire southern shore of the Mediterranean and its islands: from Gadir, beyond the Strait of Gibraltar, around the mythical kingdom of Tartessos and the gateway to the routes of Atlantic Ocean, to the north —Europe— and to the south —Africa—, to the coasts of Asia and the Black Sea.
On the African coast, Tangis, Mogador and Lixus (present-day Morocco), Sidi Abdeselam del Behar —mouth of the Martín River— and Kudia Tebmain —Emsá River— (present-day Algeria), Utica —from which he thinks it was the first colony to be founded, or perhaps the second after Gadir—, Hadramemtum, Leptis Minor, and Thapso (present-day Tunisia), Leptis Magna, Tripoli, and Sabratha (present-day Libya).
In the western Mediterranean islands, Iboshim or Eubussus (Ibiza), Nora (Nurri), Sulcis, Tharros (San Giovanni di Sinis), Bithia and Olbia (Sardinia), Motia (Sicily) and Malta; in those of the eastern Mediterranean Kition (Cyprus).
The Phoenicians were the first of the historical colonizing peoples of the Iberian Peninsula. The oldest archaeological remains discovered to date come from Malaka (Málaga) and Gadir (Cádiz), although they also established colonies in the peninsular Mediterranean such as the site of Río Real de (Marbella), Los Toscanos (Vélez-Málaga), Sexi (Almuñécar), Abdera (Adra), Cerro del Prado, Chorreras, Villaricos, Mazarrón and Guardamar de Segura. As for the peninsular Atlantic area, there are Phoenician sites in Cádiz, Chiclana de la Frontera and the archaeological site of Doña Blanca in El Puerto de Santa María. It is more disputed, as to whether they were Phoenician settlements or belonging to Tartessos with a strong Phoenician influence due to the important trade between the two, places such as Onuba (Huelva), Abul (Alcacer do Sal) and perhaps Olissipo (Lisbon).. Other stops on the Phoenician trade route, which, being of prehistoric origin, could reach Galicia and even the British Isles to the north and the Canary Islands to the south.
The foundation of the new Qart Hadasht (New Cartago, present-day Cartagena) was a later initiative, responding to the new criteria of the Punic-Carthaginian civilization of the 3rd century BC. C., at the time of the Punic wars against Rome. The Punic remains of Melilla also belong to that time.
Tyrian colonies and Sidonian colonies
Most of the Phoenician colonies were Tyrian (founded by Tyre). The tutelary divinity has been proposed as a difference with the Sidonian colonies (founded by Sidon): Melkart for Tyre, Astarte for Sidon. Another difference is that several Sidonian colonies were established on the northern shore of the Mediterranean, such as Temesa (near Naples), the islands of Cythera, Cyprus, Crete, and Rhodes, or in Asia. It has been pointed out as a characteristic of the Sidonian colonies in the Iberian Peninsula their place names with the ending -ipo (Baicipo, Dipo, Acinipo, Lacipo, Iripo, Oripo, Ostipo, Sisipo, Ventipo, Olisipo). It is said that, among the colonies of Sidon, Paros supplied marble, Thasos, gold, Melos, sulfur and alum; while the purple dye came from Cytherea and Crete.
Culture
The Phoenician people contributed to creating an important link between the Mediterranean civilizations and even more between the artistic forms of the ancient world, by imitation, fusion and diffusion of them, although they are not considered as original creators of their own great culture.
The Phoenicians used a phonetic alphabet, which the Greeks adapted to their own language and, over time, served as a model for later Western alphabets. This alphabet consisted of twenty-two signs for the consonants, and had no vowels, but it was very important, as it was simple and practical, unlike other contemporary alphabets that only scribes and high officials mastered, after arduous learning.
The Phoenician culture was very important in its time but, unfortunately, few traces of its history remain. We know of their existence, above all, through the texts of other peoples who came into contact with them, particularly the Assyrians, Babylonians and, later, the Greeks. It is mainly studied in the ruins of the cities that were colonies of Sidon or Tyre, such as those in Sardinia and Andalusia and, above all, in those established on the island of Cyprus.
Phoenician art
Their productions were more artisanal than artistic, and in their sculptures, ceramics, jewelry and metal objects, Egyptian influences dominate from the 10th century BC. C. (which is the oldest date that is usually assigned to Phoenician art), with Assyrian elements, up to the 7th century BC. C. However, from then on the Greek influence predominates, sometimes getting to confuse its productions with the Greek ones, as those prior to the 10th century BC are confused. C. with the Assyrians and Egyptians.
The forms of architecture are inferred more by the drawings of the seals and other reliefs than by the ruins of their buildings, although there are some remains of architectural pieces found in Cyprus and Phoenicia. Among these is the capital with scrolls, inspired by oriental art and which could well be the predecessor of the Ionic capital. Phoenician temples (such as the one at Byblos) were distinguished by having the sanctuary without a cover. In it, a stone or betyl was worshiped, which generally consisted of a conical-shaped meteorite (like a stone fallen from heaven) located in the middle of the room, which was preceded by an atrium surrounded on the inside by columns. Also characteristic was the shape given to the sumptuous stone sarcophagi by the Sidonite Phoenicians, which more or less adapted to the outline of the human figure like the Egyptian wooden sarcophagi (anthropoid sarcophagi).
Subsequently, this art spread along the entire Mediterranean coast where the Phoenicians had influence, taking it to those places, as well as influencing native cultures, Tartessos being a clear example, which came to have an important acculturation.[citation needed]
Phoenician Literature
Everything about Phoenician and Punic literature is surrounded by a halo of mystery given the few vestiges that have been preserved: all that remains is a series of inscriptions, few of which have a purely literary character (only some historical narration, poems, etc.), coins, fragments of the History of Sanjuniaton and the Treatise of Mago, the Greek translation of the voyage of Hanno the Navigator, and the text of Plautus's Poenulus. It is a proven fact that both in Phoenicia and Carthage there were libraries and that the Phoenicians had a rich literary production inheriting from the Canaanite past, of which works such as those written by Philo of Byblos or Menander of Ephesus are a tiny part.
Alphabet
The Phoenicians were the inventors of the alphabet. The Phoenician alphabet began as a series of ideograms, a set of symbols that represented animals and objects. These ideograms were assigned a phonetic value according to the name, in the Phoenician language, of the animal or object represented; this alphabet contained only consonants, twenty-two in all. It was a simple system, which allowed the diffusion of knowledge and culture.
Later, the Phoenician alphabet was adopted and modified by the Greeks to represent their language. The Greeks took some letters from the Phoenician alphabet and gave them vowel value; Due to linguistic differences between the two languages (Greek = Indo-European, Phoenician = Semitic) they also changed the pronunciation of some letters, and added some symbols to represent non-existent sounds in Phoenician. The Latin alphabet comes from the Etruscan alphabet, which was itself an adaptation of the Greek alphabet.
The Hebrews also adopted the Phoenician alphabet, although given the similarity of their languages and the mutual influence due to their geographical proximity there was less modification than by the Greeks.
The Phoenician alphabet has been in one way or another the basis for the Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, and Arabic alphabets, and some scholars consider that it also gave rise to the Abugidas of the Asian subcontinent.
| Letra |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | ↓alp | bet | gaml | delt | I | wau | zai | ḥet | ṭet | Yod | kap |
| Meaning | ox | house | Camel | door | window | hook | gun | wall | wheel | hand | palm (handed) |
| Transliteration | ↓ | b | g | d | h | w | z | ḥ | Δ | and | k |
| Value | / | /b/ | /g/ | /d/ | /h/ | /w/ | /z/ | /// | /t// | /j/ | /k/ |
| Unicode | | | | | | | | | | | |
| Letra |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |  |
| Name | lamd | Mem | nun | semk | ventricularain | pe | zerade | qop | roš | šin | tau |
| Meaning | Aguished | water | snake | fish | eye | mouth | hunting | monkey | head | too | brand |
| Transliteration | l | m | n | s | 日本語 | p | . | q | r | š | t |
| Value | /l/ | /m/ | /n/ | /s/ | /// | /p/ | /s// | /q/ | /r/ | / | /t/ |
| Unicode | | | | | | | | | | | |
Politics
Phoenicia never formed a unitary political entity of national character. Its name is more of a geographical-cultural designation and refers to a series of city-states that gradually emerged from the 3rd millennium BC. C., autonomous political units with their own government.
Initially having monarchic governments in each city, with the passage of time, this political structure would be modified by the immense economic development achieved by the Phoenician cities (the work of both individuals and the State). The struggles sustained for hegemony and commercial expansion in the Mediterranean altered power relations within their societies and in their external relations. This is appreciated in those city-states that came to be governed by councils of businessmen from whom the monarch was chosen. And in some cities where the oligarchies that were formed (sometimes confronted with "popular" movements) decided to "replace" the monarch with annual magistrates called sufets, who only lasted one year in office.
In line with this, when describing the political organization of the Tyrian colony of Carthage in the III century B.C. C., Polybius describes:
“... in my understanding, the Republic of Cartago in its principles was very well established by what it does to the main points. Porq ue had Kings or Suphetes12, there was a Senate with an aristocratic authority, and the people were lord over certain things of their inspection. In one word, the liaison of all these powers resembled that of Rome and Lacedony.”
Religion
The gods worshiped by the Phoenicians vary from city to city. Thus the Sidon pantheon differs from that of Tire or Cyprus. Furthermore, some divinities are present in one form or another in most significant cities. These divinities are mainly Astarte, Baal, Dagon, Resef and Melkart.
Astarte
Astarte was the main goddess of Sidon and with a presence in the other Phoenician cities. Astarte is the goddess of fertility, although her characteristics and depending on the cities are different. She is also worshiped as a warrior goddess, of the hunt, or even as the patron saint of sailors.
She is usually depicted perched on a lion and holding a lotus flower and a snake. In other representations she accentuates her character as a fertility goddess and she appears touching her breasts or nursing two children. She was assimilated into other cultures with different names such as the Greek Aphrodite, the Roman Venus or the Egyptian Isis. She had abundant sanctuaries in Sidon and Tyre. A sanctuary dedicated to Astarte is documented in El Carambolo (Seville), dated to the VIII century BC. c.
Astarte is the queen of heaven whom the Canaanites had burned incense in the Bible (Jeremiah, 44).
Eshmun
Eshmun was worshiped in Sidon and Cyprus. He is assimilated to Apollo and Aesculapius as a healing god. He had several temples distributed throughout the Mediterranean coast, from Lebanon to Spain. Among the temples, a great sanctuary stands out on the outskirts of Sidon in a place where a fountain gushed, and the Temple of Eshmun in the city of Carthage. In the rituals of worship to Eshmún, ablutions and dances were performed. It is also known that there were games in his honor and that the winner won a purple cloth.
Baal
Baal (in Phoenician 𐤁𐤏𐤋, AFI: [ba'ʕal], «lord») was a divinity (possibly solar) of various peoples located in Asia Minor and their influence: Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Chaldeans, Babylonians, Sidonians and Philistines. Its meaning is close to that of master or lord. He was the god of rain and war. In the Bible, Baal (בעל Ba'al) was considered by the Hebrews as one of the false gods, however, they worshiped him on some occasions when they moved away from his worship of Yahweh. He was worshiped by the Phoenicians as the most important god in their pantheon and also had a wife named Baalit who was represented as a beautiful woman.
Anath
Anat was the wife of Baal, she was both a Semitic fertility goddess and a brash young goddess of war, who has been linked to the Egyptian goddess Hathor and the Greek Athena. She was also revered in Ancient Egypt.
Reshef
God of a warrior character, owner of calamities. He achieved great veneration in Ancient Egypt, beginning in the New Kingdom, when Amenophis II adopted him as a protective genius, assimilating him with Montu, the Egyptian god of war, and associating him with Astarte.
Fucking
Considered the first of mankind's navigators, the Phoenicians believed that this god had built the palace of Baal, he is also considered the discoverer of fishing and shipbuilding, as well as being the god of blacksmiths and gunsmiths.
Hadad
God of the air, storm, lightning, rain, and wind. According to the beliefs of the Phoenician sailors, his voice sounded in storms.
Melkart
Originally, Melkart was a Phoenician divinity from the city of Tyre, being the Phoenician form of the god Baal. He was originally an agricultural god, of the field, vegetation, fertility and spring, so his ritual included a series of annual cyclical death and resurrection rites, coinciding with the seasons of the year; However, he was also a marine deity, since he was a syncretic divinity. He later came to be considered "king of the city", which is the etymological meaning of his name (melk, "king"; qart, "city"), and as patron of the city of Tyre, he also became the god of colonization and the protection of navigation. The Tyrians considered him the guide of their sea voyages and explorations, so they consecrated the temple founded at the same time as the city of Cádiz at the other end of the main island, where today is the islet of Sancti Petri and on the that, according to the legend, Hannibal swore the oath of eternal hatred to the Romans before marching towards Sagunto and starting the second Punic war. Although it was also said that he did it as a child in Carthage. It was known in antiquity as the sanctuary of Heracles or Heraklion.
The place where the initial temple was located in Cádiz, near the Strait of Gibraltar, fostered the legend of the separation of the Pillars of Hercules, originally called Melkart's Pillars by the Phoenicians, later Pillars of Heracles by the Greeks to the current Roman name.
He was credited with the civilization of the savage tribes of distant shores, the founding of the Phoenician colonies, and the introduction of law and order among men.
In various archaeological remains, among which coins stand out, he is often represented riding on a hippocampus. In the late Phoenician civilization, he was also considered the god of the Sun who was in union with Baal and Moloch, the evil and benign forces of heaven, respectively. He removed the hostility between the two and therefore reduced the effect of solar glare and winter cold. That is why on his altar there should be a perennial fire.
Each day he followed the elusive Astarte until he found her in a remote part of the West and they were handcuffed. Marriage that brought the downfall of the goddess and transformed her into the sweet Ashera.
The Greeks called him Melicertes and compared him to Heracles, due to the warrior attributes that characterized him.
Best
God protector of childhood, life and the house imported from Egypt. Considered the tutelary god of Ibiza.
Dagon
He is mentioned in the Bible when, when he talks about the god Dagon who was worshiped in the temple of Ashdot (I Samuel 5, 1-7), or occupying his temple as public baths.
It is possible that the name was actually used to refer to three different gods: a Ben Dagon, who appears in the first Ugaritic texts fighting against the god Baal; a second Dagan, the Sumerian god of fertility, revered throughout the Ancient East; and, finally, in Phoenicia, Dagon, a sea god, a being half man and half fish. The possible confusion may be caused by a dubious etymology. The Chaldean word dagan is translated as 'grain,' 'wheat' or 'seed' and if derived from the ancient Hebrew dag, it means 'fish'.
According to the most probable interpretation, Dagon was described as having a face and hands, and one part of his body was similar to a fish, "Dagon's trunk" (verse 5). From the text received from the Seventy it appears that he too had feet, although the Swete edition gives this point a different reading. In the Greek translation this phrase is shown with the characteristics of having a polished shine appearance. The description in the Bible coincides with that which can be seen on the coins of various cities, Philistines or Phoenicians; in most of them Dagon is represented as a composite figure, the upper part of the body is human, and the lower part is that of a fish. It seems to follow that Dagon was a fish god, a fact not in the least surprising, since he seems to have been the chief deity of maritime cities, such as Ashdod, Gaza (the original places are supposed to be buried under the dunes). of sand that run along the shore), Ashkelon, and Arvad. On monuments, and also probably in popular worship, Dagon is sometimes associated with a female half-fish deity, Derceto or Atargatis, often identified as Astarte.
Some specialists, however, do not value these data, and consider that Dagon was the god of agriculture. His opinion is based on the following biblical statement: "Dagon, that is, spike ' [the Hebrew word for spike is dagan]. "Dagon, after discovering wheat and the plow, was called Zeus of the plough" (2, 16). The same writer tells us (in Eusebius, Prep. Evang. 1, 6) that, according to an ancient Phoenician legend, Dagon was one of the four sons born from the marriage of Anu, the lord of heaven, with his sister, the land. Moreover, in a seal that has certain symbolic signs there is a provision of wheat, the name of Baal-Dagon can be read written in Phoenician characters but not the image of a fish. It is possible to question whether these arguments have more value than those that support the other opinion; for those who accept the biblical phylum etymological interpretation, the possible error is due to a mistake in the name. It might also be admitted that in the course of time, along the Mediterranean shore, a double conception and representation of Dagon developed as a result of the supposed double derivation of the name. All scholars agree that both the name and the cult of Dagon were imported from Babylon.
The Amarna letters (ca. 1480-1450 B.C.), which have contributed the names of Yamir-Dagan and Dagan-takala, rulers of Ascalon, testify to the antiquity of the cult of Dagon among the inhabitants of Palestine. We know from the Bible that the deity had temples in Gaza (Judges, 16, 21, 23) and Ashdod (I Samuel 5, 1-7); We assume that there were pools in other Philistine cities as well. The cult of Dagon seems to have spread even beyond the confines of his confederacy. The testimony of the monuments is positive for the Phoenician city of Arvad; Furthermore, the Book of Joshua mentions two towns called Bét Dagón, one in the territory of Judah (Joshua 15, 41), and the other on the border of Asher (Joshua 19, 27); Josephus also speaks of a Dagon "beyond Jericho" (Antiq. Jud., XIII, 8, 1; De Bel. Jud. I, 2, 3): all these names predate the Israelite conquest, and, unless we derive them from dagan, testify to a wide spread of the cult of Dagon throughout Palestine. This cult was maintained, at least in certain Philistine cities, until the last centuries B.C. C. This was the case of Ashdod; the temple of Dagon that was there was burned by Judas Maccabee (1 Mac.10, 84; 11, 4).
Unlike the Baals who, among the Canaanites, were essentially local deities, Dagon seems to have been considered by the Philistines as a national god (I Chronicles 10, 10). To him they attributed his success in the war; they gave him thanks with great sacrifices, before him they rejoiced at the capture of Samson (Judges 16, 23); to his temple they brought the trophies of his victories, the Ark (I Samuel 5, 1, 2), the armor, and the head of Saul (1 Samuel 31, 9, 10; I Chronicles 10, 10). A bronze bas-relief of Phoenician Assyrian work would also suggest that Dagon had a prominent role in the doctrines of death and the afterlife. About the ritual of his cult, little can be gleaned either from the documents or from Scripture. The detailed agreements to return the Ark (1 Samuel 5; 6) may have been inspired more by circumstance than by any Dagon-worshipping ceremony. We only know from ancient authors that, for religious reasons, most Syrians refrained from eating fish, a practice one is inclined to associate with the worship of a fish god.
Paam
The meaning of Paam is none other than "phallus" and in honor of him ritual prostitution was carried out, very common among the Phoenicians and other ancient cultures, which was carried out for prophylactic purposes.
Moloch
Moloch was the supreme god and protector of the city of Carthage. The Phoenician navigators exported, through trade, the cults of various gods represented as bull-deities: the god El, the god Baal and, above all, the bloodthirsty god Moloch. The statue of Moloch represented him with the body of a man and the head of a horned bull. Every year young people were locked inside and offered as sacrifices and burned. Moloch is mentioned several times in the Bible, related to child sacrifices.