more clearly defined character than any other Phoenician deity except Ba'al, Melqart, and 'Astart. He appears as having characteristics possessed by no other god; while his special function of healing is asserted by all classical authors who refer to him, and by comparisons made in all bilingual inscriptions in which he is mentioned. Recognizing him from early times as the counterpart of their therapeutic deities, the Egyptians equated him with Thoth (Tauut or Thout), Ptaḥ, and I-m-hotep; and adjoining nations made similar assimilations. The Greeks identified him with Asklepios, as is shown both by literature (Philon Byblios, v, 8; Damaskios, apud Photios, Bibliotheca, p. 573) and inscriptions,10 this equation being further supported by abundant evidence in bilingual inscriptions; while a votive tablet on which the name 'Asklepioi' was inscribed was uncovered in excavating the temple at Sidon." A Phoenician coin found at Sidon bears the image of Asklepios; a Roman coin from Berytos has the youthful figure of Eshmun, of the type adopted by Kalamis for his statue of Asklepios at Sikyon, rather than the more usual one resembling Zeus; and a coin of Septimus Severus shows the Romano-Punic assimilation of Eshmun and Asklepios, youthful and beardless, supported by two serpents and with a baton in his hand, a type derived from the Græco-Phoenician period.18 The earliest evidence for the identification of Eshmun with Asklepios is given by two coins of Marathos and by one of Ptolemais-Akka (about the third century B.C.), if these may be regarded as Greek transformations of the native

16 Baudissin, op. cit., pp. 221-238; also Eiselen, op. cit., p. 135. 17 W. von Landau, "Vorläufige Nachrichten über die im Eshmuntempel bei Sidon gefundenen phönizischen Alterthümer," in MVG, 1904, ix, 289.

18 Anonymous, "The Figure of Esculapius in Ancient Art," in Lancet, 1904, ii, 1362-1363.

Eshmun.1 A river near Sidon was named Asklepios, and a grove between Sidon and Berytos was called Asklepios's grove (Strabo, XVI, ii, 22 = p. 756 C).

The clearest and most direct evidence of the equation of the two deities in the character of healers comes from a trilingual inscription on the base of a bronze altar, dedicated to them about 180 B.C., and found near a thermal spring in Sardinia (CIS i, 143).20 The text is written in Phoenician, Greek, and Latin, and mentions Eshmun, Asklepios, and Esculapius, each being given the obscure epithet 'Merre,' the meaning of which is not clear, though it has been interpreted as 'life-giving,' 'life-prolonging,' or 'protector of wayfarers,' etc. The Latin version, which almost exactly follows the Greek, runs: "Cleon salari[us] soc[iorum] s[ervus] Escolapio Merre donum dedit lubens merito merente." "Partem phoeniciam sic verte: Domino Eśmuno Merre: Altare æreum ponderis librarum centum c, quod vovit Cleon, [servus sociorum] qui in re salaria; audiit vocem ejus, sanavit eum. Anno suffetum Himilcati et Abdeśmuni, filii Himilci." The translation of the Punic text reads: "To the lord Eshmun Merre-the altar of bronze, in weight 100 pounds, which Cleon of HSGM, who is over the salt-mines (?), vowed; he heard his voice [and] healed him. In the year of the Suffetes Himilkath and 'Abd-eshmun, son of Himilk. '920

To summarize, although neither Philon nor Damaskios refer to Eshmun as a healing deity and his relation to medicine is, therefore, traditional, Eshmun and Asklepios were regarded as identical at Sidon in the Phoenician motherland and, if we may believe Damaskios, at Berytos; they were possibly so equated at Marathos, Ptolemais-Akka, on the island of Ruad, and at Duma near Byblos; probably so at Oia, in Africa Proconsularis, and 19 Baudissin, op. cit., p. 221. 20 Cooke, op. cit., pp. 109-110.

in the Spanish and Sicilian settlements of the Carthaginians; and certainly so at Carthage and in Numidia, Mauretania, and Sardinia."

21

That the worship of Eshmun was general is shown by the remains of sanctuaries dedicated to him in Phoenicia

22

and many of its colonies. Eshmun-'azar, King of Sidon, and his mother erected a temple in honor of the divinity at Sidon, south of the river Nahr-al-Auwaly; and Bod'Astart either completed it or built another to the god (CIS i, 3, 17). Excavations in 1900 at the site of the shrine revealed its ruins and an inscription running as follows: "King Bod-'Astart, King of the Sidonians, grandson of King Eshmun-‘azar, King of the Sidonians, [reigning] in Sidon by the sea, Shamin Ramin, the land of Reshaphim, Sidon of Mashal, 'SBN, and Sidon on the plain the whole (?) of this temple built to his god, Eshmun, Prince of Qadesh."" Eshmun also had a temple at Berytos (Damaskios, loc. cit.); several sanctuaries dedicated to him have been discovered near springs and streams, suggesting that water was a part of the healing ritual; and the ruins of a shrine at Cherchell in Algeria, supposed to have been for Eshmun, were found to contain a rough, crude image of the god about a metre in height. Of all the temples of Punic Carthage, the only one whose site appears fixed both by ancient texts and by modern discoveries is that which was situated on the summit of the citadel dedicated to Eshmun, destroyed in the siege of 146 B.C. Carthage was called the 'City of the King of Health,' and the god was termed Eshmun21 Baudissin, op. cit., p. 230.

23

22 Cooke, op. cit., pp. 401-403; cf. Eiselen, op. cit., pp. 143 ff.; C. C. Torrey, "A Phoenician Royal Inscription," in JAOS, 1902, xxiii, 156 ff.

23 A. Maury, "Sur une statuette du dieu Aschmoun ou Esmoun trouvée à Cherchell," in RA, 1846, iii, 763-793; also C. Texier, "Extrait d'un aperçu statistique du monuments de l'Algérie," in ib., pp. 729 ff.

'Astart (CIL i, 245, 3-4), an association which may receive support in the collocation of Esculapius (Eshmun) and Dea Cælestis ('Astart) in a Latin inscription from Africa Proconsularis and another from Dacia (CIL viii, suppl. 16417; iii, 993; cf. Tertullian, Apologeticus, xxiii). A sanctuary to Eshmun-Melqart stood on a low hill, called Batsalos, in the salt lagoons, near the site of Kition in Cyprus (CIS i, 16); and excavations in 1894 revealed the foundations of a small building, probably the shrine of this deity, a portion of these ruins being placed in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.

Beyond the assimilations. mentioned, the evidence at hand gives no indication of the nature and character of the deity as conceived by the Phoenicians. No object referring to him as a healer was found at the temple at Sidon, and nothing is known of his worship or of the therapeutic practices of his worship, although it is assumed that they were similar to those of other Semitic healing cults of the same period.

It would seem, on the whole, that Eshmun was primarily a deity of the renewal of life in the changing seasons of the year. Accordingly, he was associated with 'Astart, the goddess of reproductive nature, and with Melqart, the revivifying divinity; and was perhaps identified with the Greek Dionysos," as the god who again awakens the forces of life, and certainly with Asklepios, as granting the new life of health.25

TANIT

TANIT,26 an important goddess of Carthage, but unknown outside that city and its dependencies in North Africa,

24 Baudissin, op. cit., p. 241; and in ZDMG, 1905, lix, 483-484. 25 Id., Adonis, p. 282.

26 Such is the conventional pronunciation of TNT, whose real signification is uncertain.

was probably a "native, possibly a pre-Carthaginian, deity, who in the process of religious syncretism, so characteristic of Semitic genius, was identified with various goddesses according to circumstances, with 'Ashtart, with Demeter, and with Artemis. '"27

Her temple stood on the Byrsa of Carthage near that of Eshmun, and a large number of inscriptions to her have been found at Carthage, many addressing her as 'the Lady of Tanit of Pne-baʻal '28 (CIS i, 181) and as 'the great mother Tanit' (ib., 195, 380). She may have been regarded as a daughter of 'Astart;29 but almost nothing is really known of her, although her identification with Iuno, Diana, and Venus has led to the belief that she was also a healing deity, as well as a protectress of child-birth and of children.

30

Note. It is highly probable that all the great West-Semitic pagan stocks possessed healing deities as did the Phoenicians; but the only name of such a divinity which has survived is Yarḥibôl ('moon-Baʻal'), a lunar god who presided over a medicinal spring at Palmyra; Baethgen, Beiträge zur semitischen Religionsgeschichte, p. 87.

27 Cooke, op. cit., p. 133.

28 For the various interpretations of this phrase (literally, 'face of Ba'al') cf. P. Berger, "Tanit Pene-Baal," in JA, VII, 1877, ix, 147160; Cooke, op. cit., p. 132; Paton, in ERE ix, 892.

29 Baudissin, op. cit., p. 267.

30 Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, p. 373.