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The religious practices and beliefs of Phoenicia were cognate generally to their neighbours in Canaan, which in turn shared characteristics common throughout the ancient Semitic world.[186][187][188] "Canaanite religion was more of a public institution than of an individual experience." Its rites were primarily for city-state purposes; payment of taxes by citizens was considered in the category of religious sacrifices.[189] Unfortunately, many of the Phoenician sacred writings known to the ancients have been lost.[190][191]

Figure of Ba'al with raised arm, 14th–12th century BC, found at ancient Ugarit (Ras Shamra site), a city at the far north of the Phoenician coast.
Musée du Louvre

Phoenician society was devoted to the state Canaanite religion.[192][193][194] Several of its reported practices have been mentioned by scholars, such as temple prostitution,[195] and child sacrifice.[196] "Tophets", built "to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire", are condemned by Yahweh in the Hebrew bible, particularly in Jeremiah 7:30–32, and in 2nd Kings 23:10 and 17:17). Notwithstanding these and other important differences, cultural religious similarities between the ancient Hebrews and the Phoenicians persisted.[192][197]

Canaanite religious mythology does not appear as elaborate compared with the literature of their Semitic cousins in Mesopotamia. In Canaan the supreme god was called El (𐤀𐤋, "god").[198][199] The son of El was Baal (𐤁𐤏𐤋, "master", "lord"), a powerful dying-and-rising storm god.[200] Other gods were called by royal titles, as in Melqart meaning "king of the city",[201] or Adonis for "lord".[202] (Such epithets may often have been merely local titles for the same deities.) On the other hand, the Phoenicians, notorious for being secretive in business, might use these nondescript words as cover for the secluded name of the god,[203] known only to a select few initiated into the inmost circle, or not even used by them, much as their neighbors and close relatives the ancient Israelites/Judeans sometimes used the honorific Adonai (Heb: "My Lord") in place of the tetragrammaton—a practice which became standard (if not mandatory) in the Second Temple period onward.[204]

The Semitic pantheon was well-populated; which god became primary evidently depended on the exigencies of a particular city-state or tribal locale.[205][206] Due perhaps to the leading role of the city-state of Tyre, its reigning god Melqart was prominent throughout Phoenicia and overseas. Also of great general interest was Astarte (𐤀𐤔𐤕𐤓𐤕)—a form of the Babylonian Ishtar—a fertility goddess who also enjoyed regal and matronly aspects. The prominent deity Eshmun of Sidon was a healing god, seemingly cognate with deities such as Adonis (possibly a local variant of the same) and Attis. Associated with the fertility and harvest myth widespread in the region, in this regard Eshmun was linked with Astarte; other like pairings included Ishtar and Tammuz in Babylon, and Isis and Osiris in Egypt.[207]

Religious institutions of great antiquity in Tyre, called marzeh (𐤌𐤓𐤆𐤄, "place of reunion"), did much to foster social bonding and "kin" loyalty.[208] These institutions held banquets for their membership on festival days. Various marzeh societies developed into elite fraternities, becoming very influential in the commercial trade and governance of Tyre. As now understood, each marzeh originated in the congeniality inspired and then nurtured by a series of ritual meals, shared together as trusted "kin", all held in honor of the deified ancestors.[209] Later, at the Punic city-state of Carthage, the "citizen body was divided into groups which met at times for common feasts." Such festival groups may also have composed the voting cohort for selecting members of the city-state's Assembly.[210][211]

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