Note 85.4 — Chapter V · The Predominance of the Goddess.

The Aramaic inscriptions only reveal the goddess Ishtar by the side of many powerful gods such as Ramman, Adad the god of storms, Shamash the sun-god, Reshef the god of lightning and war, Baal-charran the Lord of Harran.85.4 An eighth-century Aramaic inscription found at Sinjerli in North Syria, written in the reign of Tiglath-Pileser III., mentions no goddess, but regards the kings as under the protection of Hadad, Elreshef, and Shamash.85.5 Even in Canaan and Phoenicia we have no reason to say that Astarte rose above Baal; such an epithet as “the Face of Baal” appears to maintain the supremacy of the God. In Moab we have the evidence of the Mesha stone, which mentions the divine pair Ashtor-Chemosh, and in Numbers86.1 the Moabites are called the people of Chemosh. But we have Phoenician inscriptions of the period of Persian supremacy in which the king of Byblos, Jachumelek, speaks of himself as raised to the kingdom by the Baalat, the queen-goddess of that state; and he prays to her that the queen may give him favour in the eyes of the gods and in the eyes of the people of his land.86.2 Astarte was par excellence the city-goddess of Sidon, and on the later Imperial coinage we see her image drawn in a car. Two representations of her have been found, in one of which she is seated in front of the king,86.3 the other shows her embracing him.86.4 King Tabnit of Sidon, whose sarcophagus is in the Museum of Constantinople, styles himself “priest of Astarte, King of the Sidonians.”86.5 But in the other Phoenician settlements, such as Tyre, Cyprus, and Carthage, the memorials of the male divinity, whether Baal, Baal Samin, Baal Ammon, Reshef Mikal, Esmun-Melqart, are at least as conspicuous. It is likely that at certain places in the Mediterranean the Semites were touched by the influences of the aboriginal Aegean goddess’s cult; this may well have been the case at Sidon, and still more probably at Askalon, and it may have penetrated as far as Bambyke.