Eshmun

Summary

Eshmun is the healing god of Sidon, the Phoenician city on the coast of Lebanon. From about 500 BCE he was its chief god, with a temple in the city shared with Astarte and another outside it by a spring at Bostan esh-Sheikh. King Eshmunazar II, whose own name is built on the god's, says in the inscription cut on the lid of his sarcophagus: "we built the house for Eshmun, the holy prince, by the spring YDLL in the mountain, and enthroned him there".

No story of his survives in his own language; what remains is dedications and requests for healing. On Sardinia an inscription of the second century BCE carries a dedication in three languages, naming the god in Punic "Eshmun Merre", in Greek "Asklepios Merre" and in Latin "Aesculapius Merre", and the dedicator says that "he heard his voice and healed him". So to the Greeks and Romans Eshmun is Asclepius, god of medicine. Ribichini, p. 307. When a man of Sidon argued with the traveller Pausanias in the sanctuary of Asclepius at Aegium, he told him the Phoenicians understood the gods better than the Greeks, for they made Apollo the father of Asclepius but no mortal woman his mother: Asclepius is the air that gives health to people and animals, and Apollo is the sun that gives the air its health as it runs through the seasons.

In the sixth century CE the philosopher Damascius recorded a late story from Beirut. Their Asclepius was a handsome young hunter loved by Astronoë, mother of the gods for the Phoenicians, whom scholars take to be Astarte. When she pursued him with her love he cut off his manhood with an axe and died; grieving, she brought him back to life and made him a god. Damascius says the Phoenicians named him "Esmounos" from "the warmth of life".

The idea Eshmun's records turn on is healing that comes from water and oil. His temple stands by a spring in the mountain, his dedications thank him for hearing the sick man's voice and healing him, and his name, as we will see, comes from the oil with which the body is anointed. When an Assyrian treaty cursed whoever broke it in the names of Melqart and Eshmun, part of the curse was that the breaker would lose his food, his clothes and the oil for anointing his body. The Beirut tale is the story of a youth who dies and is brought back, and Ribichini reads it as a late explanation of how Eshmun became a god.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. The Phoenicians wrote ʾšmn; the glottal stop at its head is an added onset, leaving šmn, which in Ugaritic and Hebrew is oil and fat, and in Arabic samn, with Arabic s answering Canaanite š as in salām and šlm. Lane says that samn counteracts all poisons, cleans foul ulcers, ripens tumours and removes spots and freckles from the face when applied as a liniment. So on this reading Eshmun is the lord of the healing oil, which is the reading of the Canaanite essay: "fat, grease and the scented oil used in healing".

Linguistic Root

Eshmun and samn

The glottal stop at the head of the name is an onset used when a word begins with two consonants, which is why other scripts handle it differently: the Assyrians write y, the Greeks a vowel. The root is three letters, š, m, n. Canaanite š is answered by Arabic s in this word as in salām and samiʿa, so šmn is samn. Lane gives samina, to become fat, with much flesh and fat; samn, what is drawn from butter or milk; samina al-burr, the wheat became full in the grain; arḍ samīna, good soil that makes plants grow; and he describes samn as a liniment against poisons, ulcers and tumours. The root joins fat, fullness and health.

Lipiński, as Ribichini reports, traces the path of meaning: oil, then the one who anoints, then the one who heals; the word was first an epithet, then a title of the god of Sidon, then his name. He cites a rare Hebrew word in Isaiah 59:10, bāʾašmannîm, which he reads "among the healers", and a plant name in Dioscorides meaning "herb of health". The oil reading is also supported by a god named šmn in the ritual texts of Ugarit, perhaps a forerunner of Eshmun.

The reading "the eighth"

Philo of Byblos makes Asclepius the eighth brother of the Cabeiri, the seven sons of Sydyk, and Damascius knows this explanation; both read the name from the number eight, Hebrew šəmōneh. The number in Arabic is thamāniya, with th, and in Ugaritic ṯmn, also with ṯ, while oil there is šmn with š, so the two words are different at root. Phoenician merged ṯ and š into one letter, so there the two words came to be written alike, which is where the "eighth" explanation came from. The earlier Ugaritic god is written with š, so he is the oil. The Canaanite essay sets duhn, grease, beside samn for the sense of healing, the same act in another word.

Key Mythic Narratives

Eshmun beyond Sidon

From the eighth century BCE Eshmun's name appears in Syria, Palestine, Cyprus, Egypt, Carthage and other Phoenician cities. His first certain mention is in the treaty of Esarhaddon of Assyria with Baal, king of Tyre, in the seventh century, beside Melqart, and the two names are restored together in an earlier treaty between Ashur-nerari V and the king of Arpad. At Kition in Cyprus he is named with Melqart, and at Carthage with Astarte. Personal names include "servant of Eshmun" and others.

The eighth in Philo

Philo of Byblos says that Sydyk, "the Just", had Asclepius by one of the daughters of Kronos, and that Sydyk's seven sons, the Cabeiri, and their eighth brother Asclepius were the ones who wrote down the stories of the gods as Taautus commanded them. In this account Eshmun is a brother of the first writers and a descendant of the Just.

Symbolic Reading

The Canaanite essay reads Eshmun as a god of healing and renewal, tied to the fluids of life and to healing mineral springs; it says women in particular worshipped him for healing, and makes him the example of medicine among the social functions in Canaanite names: kingship in Melqart, craft in Kothar, healing in Eshmun.

In the evidence healing rests on two things people knew from daily life: the spring beside which the temple stood, and oil to anoint the body. The king takes part in it: King Eshmunazar builds the god's house by the spring, bears his name, and asks in his inscription that his body not be moved from its resting place. The prayer for healing follows a set path: the sick man raises his voice, the god hears, and the dedication is written afterwards in thanks, the same formula found on Melqart's cippus at Malta and on the stelae of Tanit: "because he heard his voice".

Cross-Cultural Parallels

The Beirut tale is close to the story of Adonis: a handsome young hunter loved by a great goddess, who dies young and is mourned by her. They differ in the death and the return: a boar kills Adonis and he is mourned every year, while Eshmun cuts off his manhood to escape the goddess and she revives him and makes him a god. Scholars have long set the two together, and the feast of Melqart, in which the god is woken, is of the same kind, so all three belong to death and return. The equation of Eshmun with Asclepius links him to Apollo, Asclepius's father among the Greeks, and the Sidonian in Pausanias reads that fatherhood as the sun giving the air its health.

In Japan the tiny kami Sukunabikona lays down, with Ōkuninushi, the methods of healing diseases for people and beasts, and the fudoki connect him with cures at hot springs: a god of healing who came from the sea and returned to it; see Sukunabikona.