The pantheon of the Phoenician city states of the Levantine coast, Tyre, Sidon and Byblos chief among them, and of their western Mediterranean colonies, Carthage foremost. Chief figures include Melqart, the tutelary god of Tyre carried to every Tyrian colony; Eshmun, the healing god of Sidon; Baal Shamem and Baalat Gebal at Byblos; and Tanit, who rose to become the presiding goddess of Carthage. Almost no native Phoenician mythological narrative survives, unlike the neighboring Ugaritic corpus, so the pantheon is reconstructed chiefly from votive and dedicatory inscriptions, temple remains, coinage, and Greek and Roman ethnographic accounts, supplemented by the closely related Ugaritic material for background.
Facts
Attestation
Era of AttestationAttested from Phoenician and Punic inscriptions from the early first millennium BCE, through the Phoenician city-states and their colony Carthage, until the destruction of Carthage in 146 BCE and the gradual Romanization of Phoenician religion. 1 Correspondences & Relations
Connections
Associated With
Baal, Deities This source names Baal directly: "Eshmun, the healing god of Sidon; Baal Shamem and Baalat Gebal at Byblos; and Tanit, who rose to become the presiding goddess of Carthage."
Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn
This source names Carthage directly: "their western Mediterranean colonies, Carthage foremost."
Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn
This source names Phoenicians directly: "The pantheon of the Phoenician city states of the Levantine coast, Tyre, Sidon and Byblos chief among them, and of their western Mediterranean colonies, Carthage foremost."
Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn
This source names The Pantheon directly: "The pantheon of the Phoenician city states of the Levantine coast, Tyre, Sidon and Byblos chief among them, and of their western Mediterranean colonies, Carthage foremost."
Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn
This source names Ugaritic directly: "survives, unlike the neighboring Ugaritic corpus, so the pantheon is reconstructed chiefly from votive and dedicatory inscriptions, temple remains, coinage, and Greek and Roman ethnographic..."
Source In Search of the PhoeniciansJosephine Quinn
Sources
1. Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005View the Source In Search of the Phoenicians
Josephine Quinn, Princeton University Press, 2018Quinn's survey of Phoenician and Punic religious identity as the basis for the pantheon overview
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