Summary
Melqart is the god of Tyre, the Phoenician city on the coast of southern Lebanon, and is also called "Baal of Tyre", its lord. Its people saw him as the founder and protector of their city, and carried him with them wherever they founded settlements, in Cyprus, Malta, Carthage, Sicily, Sardinia and Cádiz in Spain; the Greeks called him Heracles. Ribichini, "Melqart", Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, pp. 563–564, Bonnet, "Melqart", Iconography of Deities and Demons, p. 1.
Herodotus, in the fifth century BCE, tells how he sailed to Tyre to learn how old Heracles was. He found the temple rich in offerings, with two pillars, one of refined gold and one of emerald that shone at night. He asked the priests how old the temple was, and they said it was built when Tyre first became a city, two thousand three hundred years before. Herodotus 2.44. Josephus quotes Menander, who translated the records of Tyre into Greek: King Hiram, Solomon's contemporary in the tenth century BCE, pulled down the old temples, built one for Heracles and one for Astarte, and was the first to hold the "awakening" of Heracles in the month Peritios, at the end of winter.
The Greeks keep the story of his death and return. Eudoxus of Cnidus, as Athenaeus reports him, says the Phoenicians sacrifice quails to Heracles, because Heracles, son of Asteria and Zeus, went to Libya and was killed by Typhon; his companion Iolaus brought a quail and held it to his nose, and the smell brought him back to life. Cicero says that Heracles son of Jupiter and Asteria is worshipped at Tyre above all places, and that Carthage is said to be his daughter. Athenaeus, Deipnosophists 9.47 (392d), Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 3.42. Scholars take Asteria to be Astarte, and in Philo of Byblos Melqart, whom he calls Melcathrus, is born to Demarus, a name scholars compare with a title of Baal. Ribichini, p. 564, Eusebius, Preparation for the Gospel 1.10.
The idea Melqart's stories turn on is that the city has a king who dies and is awakened. He was a king at root, and a king is a man who dies, which is why Herodotus says some Greeks offer to Heracles both as an immortal god and as a dead hero. Every year the people of Tyre held his feast of "awakening": the god dies and is woken at the end of winter, and Ribichini thinks Astarte was his partner in it and that a priest called "awakener of the god" performed the rite. Wherever Tyrian traders went they took their king with them, and he became the founder of new cities along the shores of the sea.
We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. The Phoenicians wrote mlqrt, which is two words: mlk, Arabic malik, king, and qrt, the city, Arabic qarya. So Melqart is "king of the town", king of the city. The k fell away next to the q, so the Assyrians wrote mi-il-qar-tu, while Philo kept it in Greek Melcathrus. Lane gives qarya as a town or village, and from the same root qiran, water collected in a trough for the beasts to drink; malik is the holder of dominion and authority. This is the Canaanite essay's reading, which it counts as certain, and it is what the records say: king of Tyre, its builder and its lord.
Linguistic Root
Melqart and malik al-qarya
| Form | Use |
|---|---|
| mlqrt | Phoenician and Punic, and Aramaic on the Bir-Hadad stela |
| mlk | Ugaritic and Phoenician, king |
| qrt | Ugaritic and Phoenician, city |
| mi-il-qar-tu | Akkadian, Esarhaddon's treaty with Baal of Tyre |
| bʿl ṣr | "Baal of Tyre", his title on the Malta cippus |
| Μελκαθρος, Melkathros | Philo of Byblos, in Greek |
| Ἡρακλῆς ἀρχηγέτης | "Heracles the founder", the Greek text of the Malta cippus |
Every letter is present in Arabic, in order. m, l, k are malik; q, r, t are qarya, where the final t of the Phoenician word is the feminine ending that Arabic writes as tāʾ marbūṭa, and the Arabic y is a weak letter the Phoenicians did not write. The k clings to the following q and is lost in speech, so the Assyrians said Milqartu without it and the Phoenicians did not write it, while Philo kept it in Melkathros.
Ribichini suggests a second layer in the meaning of "city". Melqart is equated in some sources with Nergal, lord of the dead, and the Mesopotamians called the world of the dead "the great city", Irkallu. So "king of the city" may be king of Tyre and king of the city where the dead go, which suits a king who dies and is woken.
Other readings in the essays
The Roman essay makes Melqart a possible source for the name of Mercury, proposes markaz, centre, beside it, and makes the Roman Hercules Melqart himself. But the bilingual witness sets Melqart against Heracles, not Mercury, and the tie between Melqart and Heracles is an attested tie of worship, not of sounds; Heracles' name has its own reading on his page. The Troy dossier reads the name of Astyanax, "lord of the city", as a Greek translation of the build of Melqart's name..
Key Mythic Narratives
The earliest witnesses
The earliest record of Melqart by name is a basalt stela found at Breij north of Aleppo, from about 800 BCE, dedicated to Melqart by Bir-Hadad, king of Aram, in an Aramaic inscription. It shows a man striding barefoot, bare-chested, a fenestrated axe on his shoulder and in his other hand something like the Egyptian sign of life or a lotus flower. Then he appears in the treaty of Esarhaddon of Assyria with Baal, king of Tyre, in the seventh century BCE, as a witness with Eshmun: "May Melqart and Eshmun deliver your land to destruction and your people to deportation, and take away the food from your mouth, the clothes from your body and the oil for your anointing." Bonnet, p. 1, Esarhaddon's treaty with Baal of Tyre, iv 14.
The Malta cippus
The Louvre holds a marble cippus from Malta, of the second century BCE, with a dedication in two languages. The Phoenician reads: "To our lord Melqart, Baal of Tyre, dedicated by your servants ʿAbdosir and his brother Osirshamar, sons of Osirshamar son of ʿAbdosir, because he heard their voice; may he bless them." The Greek reads: "Dionysios and Serapion, sons of Serapion, Tyrians, to Heracles the founder." The same two men give the same god two names. With this bilingual stone the Abbé Barthélemy first deciphered the Phoenician alphabet in the eighteenth century.
The king of Tyre in the Bible
Ezekiel addresses the prince of Tyre: "Because thou hast said: I am a god, I sit in the seat of God, in the heart of the seas; yet thou art man, and not God", and scholars see behind these words the Tyrian kingship that Melqart stands for. When Elijah mocked the prophets of Baal on Carmel he said: "Cry aloud, for he is a god; either he is musing, or he is gone aside, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked", and some scholars see Melqart in the Baal of Carmel, the god who travels with his people and is woken every year.
The day of the god's burial
A gold tablet from Pyrgi on the Etruscan coast, of the fifth century BCE, dedicated to Astarte, mentions "the day of the burial of the god" without naming the god. Ribichini thinks it may be a mourning for Melqart.
Symbolic Reading
The Canaanite essay reads Melqart as a god of the city and of protection: protector of traders and sailors, a victorious warrior, worshipped by the Phoenicians in all their settlements, the image of "urban and royal protection" in a society built on sea trade.
The evidence shows how a city becomes a person. The living king of Tyre rules in the name of Tyre's first king, and the yearly feast puts the founder to death and wakes him, so the city returns to its beginning each year. Traders who build a house for Melqart at Cádiz or Malta carry their city with them, so the first king becomes the founder of many cities, and the Greeks call him "the founder". Ribichini thinks Melqart began in the cult of dead kings and ancestors known in Syria since the Bronze Age, then became a founder of cities and a culture hero, and then a cosmic lord who grants prosperity.
Cross-Cultural Parallels
His link with Heracles is an attested link of worship: the Malta cippus names him both ways, Herodotus calls his temple at Tyre the temple of Heracles, and Herodotus judges that the Heracles honoured as a dead hero differs from the immortal god. The two meet in deeds and journeys and in a death followed by deathlessness: Heracles dies on the pyre on Mount Oeta and a cloud lifts him to the sky, Melqart dies and is woken. Library 2.7.7. The quail story ties him to Typhon, Zeus's enemy, who kills him in Libya.
The feast of awakening sets him beside Adonis, Eshmun and Baal in death and return, and Ribichini says it recalls the feasts of Adonis and Eshmun. If Astarte was indeed his partner in the awakening, the rite belongs to the sacred marriage. And travelling with the settlers as founder of cities, he became one of the culture heroes. Ribichini, p. 564.
For the Romans Romulus is the founder and king of his city who vanished in a storm and was worshipped as Quirinus, and his page proposes on the method that the first part of that name is the qarya, the qrt in Melqart's own name; see Quirinus.