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Updated: May 10, 2025
Smile upon his love, that thy light and his worship may be eternal. Behold! for thee I cast aside the worship of the lord Melkarth!" He tore apart his long, violet tunic, showing his throat and bosom hung with necklaces. His arms, bare to the shoulders, glittered with heavy bracelets.
The famous temple of Melkarth, with its two bronze pillars in front bearing inscriptions, has wholly perished, as have all other vestiges of the ancient buildings. This is the result of the continuous occupation of the site, which has been built on successively by Phoenicians, Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Moors, and Spaniards.
Thereupon they threw back their heads and laughed loud and long; and then the Africans noted it, and hoarse cries of joy broke from their ranks. "The schalischim must be sure of victory. Praise be to Melkarth!" Sergius saw a captain of one of the squares run out and touch his forehead to the earth before his commander; but no Roman heard the man's words pregnant with fate.
First there filed past the priests of the Pataec Gods, then those of Eschmoun, of Melkarth, and all the other colleges in succession, with the same insignia, and in the same order as had been observed at the time of the sacrifice. The pontiffs of Moloch passed with heads bent, and the multitude stood aside from them in a kind of remorse.
'Take what you wish one talent, two, three; only bring back the words that shall win favour; and Hasdrubal added: 'And harken! lord; if you win not favour, we shall yet march, and peradventure you shall come with us if they drive not the nails too deep; but there was an outcry at this, for they trembled lest Melkarth should smite them, and Hasdrubal spoke again, grumbling: 'Ah, masters, you have not seen soldiers as I have seen them, becoming bloated with wine and food, and soft in the arms of courtesans; but Hannibal interrupted him, crying out to me again: 'Go! go!
The other principal Phoenician deities were El, Melkarth, Dagon, Hadad, Adonis, Sydyk, Eshmun, the Cabeiri, Onca, Tanith, Tanata, or Anaitis, and Baalith, Baaltis, or Beltis. El, or Il, originally a name of the Supreme God, became in the later Phoenician mythology a separate and subordinate divinity, whom the Greeks compared to their Kronos and the Romans to their Saturn.
From the square of Khamon to the temple of Melkarth the streets were cumbered with corpses; and, as it was the end of the summer, the combatants were annoyed by great black flies. Old men carried off the wounded, and the devout continued the fictitious funerals for their relatives and friends who had died far away during the war. Waxen statues with clothes and hair were displayed across the gates.
I have climbed the steps of Eschmoun, god of the planets and intelligences; I have slept beneath the golden olive of Melkarth, patron of the Tyrian colonies; I have pushed open the doors of Baal-Khamon, the enlightener and fertiliser; I have sacrificed to the subterranean Kabiri, to the gods of woods, winds, rivers and mountains; but, can you understand? they are all too far away, too high, too insensible, while she I feel her mingled in my life; she fills my soul, and I quiver with inward startings, as though she were leaping in order to escape.
The Greeks, who identified Baal with their Zeus, viewed Melkarth as corresponding to their Heracles, or Hercules; and the later Phoenicians, catching at this identification, represented Melkarth under the form of a huge muscular man, with a lion's skin and sometimes with a club. Melkarth was especially worshipped at Tyre, of which city he was the tutelary deity, at Thasos, and at Gades.
There were roofs of sound fir and sweet cedar, carven cornices, cave-like window embrasures with no glass, and little circular rooms built about shrines in which sat broken images of Baal the sun god, of a sandaled Astarte, and a ravening Melkarth, with the lion's skin.
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