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His worship was not perhaps very widely spread; but there are traces of it at Byblus, in Cyprus, and in Malta. Ammon was identified with Baal in his solar character, and was generally worshipped in conjunction with Tanith, more especially at Carthage. He was represented with his head encircled by rays, and with a perfectly round face.
There remain fifteen important cities, of which six may be placed in the first rank and nine in the second the six being Tyre, Sidon, Aradus, Byblus or Gebal, Marathus, and Tripolis; the nine, Laodicea, Simyra, Arka, Aphaca, Berytus, Ecdippa, Accho, Dor, and Joppa. It will be sufficient in the present place to give some account of these fifteen.
THE MYTH of Adonis was localised and his rites celebrated with much solemnity at two places in Western Asia. One of these was Byblus on the coast of Syria, the other was Paphos in Cyprus. Both were great seats of the worship of Aphrodite, or rather of her Semitic counterpart, Astarte; and of both, if we accept the legends, Cinyras, the father of Adonis, was king.
They burnt their vessels that they might be as useless to the enemy as to themselves, and, exhorting each other not to dim the glory of their past exploits, shut up still in the small town of Byblus situated in the isle of Prosopitis, resolved to defend themselves to the last. The blockade endured a year and a half, such was the singular ignorance of the art of sieges in that time.
Wine from Byblus in Phœnicia saturated the atmosphere with a fragrance as penetrating as bottles of perfume; that from Lesbos which on being poured gave forth a ravishing odor of roses, and, in addition to these, cups were filled with cordials from Erythrea and Heraclea, strong and spiritous, and those from Rhodes and Chios, prudently mixed with sea-water to aid the digestion.
The consensus of ancient opinion on this subject seems too great to be rejected as a mere fancy. So closely did the rites of Osiris resemble those of Adonis at Byblus that some of the people of Byblus themselves maintained that it was Osiris and not Adonis whose death was mourned by them.
While reigning on earth as king of Byblus, or king of Phoenicia, he had fallen in love with a nymph of the country, called Anobret, by whom he had a son named Ieoud. This son, much as he loved him, when great dangers from war threatened the land, he first invested with the emblems of royalty, and then sacrificed.
Often when, in Asia, in scorching India, and later here also, wounded or exhausted, it was ready to refuse its service, a spirit voice within cried, 'Do not forget that he touched it'; and then, as if I had drunk the noble wine of Byblus, a fiery stream flowed from my heart into the paralyzed hand, and, as though animated with new life, I used it again and kept it worthy of his touch.
Later on it was at Byblus, and in the valleys of the Lebanon depending on it, that the inhabitants celebrated those mysteries of Astarte, together with that orgiastic worship of Adonis or Tammuz, which were so popular in Syria during the whole of the Greco-Roman period. The fourth Phoenician "world" was that of Tyre and Sidon, beginning at the Tamyras and ending with the promontory of Carmel.
Here he erected altars and offered sacrifices to the gods, after which he received the submission of the principal Phoenician states, among which Tyre, Sidon, Byblus, and Aradus may be distinctly recognized. He then proceeded inland, and visited the mountain range of Amanus, where he cut timber, set up a sculptured memorial, and offered sacrifice.
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