Note 44.1 — Chapter III · NOTES

As regards the other Semitic stocks, the cumulative evidence of early inscriptions, literary records, and legends is sufficient proof that the belief in high personal divinities was predominant in this millennium. It is not necessary to labour here at the details of the proof; the other lines of inquiry that I am soon going to follow will give sufficient illustration of this; and it is enough to allude to the wide prevalence of the designation of the high god as Baal or Bel, which can be traced from Assyria through Syria, in the Aramaean communities, in Canaan and Phoenicia, and in the Phoenician colonies: the Moabite Stone tells us of Chemosh; the earliest Carthaginian inscriptions of Baal-Hammon and Tanit; from our earliest witness for Arabian religion, Herodotus,44.1 we learn that the Arabs named their two chief divinities, Orotal and Alilat, a god and a goddess, whom he identifies with Dionysos and Aphrodite Ourania.