MELQART מלך צר ‘King of Tyre’
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According to Cicero (Nat. deor. III 42) and Philo Byblius (in Eusebius, P.E. I 10, 27), Melqart is a descendant of Uranus, son of →Zeus Demarous and Asteria (the Phoenician →Astarte). Nonnos of Panopolis (Dionys. XL 311–580) links him with the foundation of Tyre, while Herodotus (II 44) says that his sanctuary was founded at the same time as the city. This historian gives also some precious data on the cult of the Tyrian Heracles (esp. about rites and the two pillars in his temple), a personage to whom, Herodotus says, the Tyrian people paid homage as if to a hero, i.e. as if to one who had died, one who was originally mortal. An important passage of Menander Ephesius (quoted by Josephus, Ant. Jud. VIII 146) informs us that Hiram, the king of Tyre contemporary with Solomon, pulled down the ancient temples and erected new ones to Heracles and Astarte; the same king was the first to celebrate the ‘awakening’ (Gk ἔγερσις) of Heracles, in the month of Peritios (February–March). Other references in classical literature inform us about this annual festival, which from many points of view recalls analogous cultic situations in honour of other dying and rising gods (cf. →Adonis and Eshmun). It was probably the greatest festival of Melqart: the god, burnt with fire, as the Greek hero, was brought to life by means of a hierogamic rite with his divine partner Astarte, through the participation of a particular celebrant, the mqm ʾlm, ‘awakener of deity’ (cf. perhaps the ἐγερσείτης of the Greek inscriptions). The myth runs parallel to this rite, describing the god’s disappearance and return (Athenaeus IX 392 D and Zenobius, Cent. V 56). According to these traditions Heracles/Melqart was slain by the Libyan →Typhon and recalled to life by his friend Iolaos, who caused him to smell a roasted quail. In this connection one can also recall the gold lamina from the fifth century BCE, found at Santa Severa (Pyrgi, Southern Etruria) in a sanctuary of the Etruscan goddess Uni; it was dedicated to the Phoenician Astarte. The inscription mentions “the day of the burial of (an unnamed) deity”, ym qbr ʾlm, i.e. perhaps, a ceremony of mourning for Melqart (KAI 277:8–9).
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