Here is my continued research on
Melqart so far:
The name
Melqart comes from "mlk" meaning
king and "qrt" meaning city. Therefore the rendering would be "
King of the city." The city is generally acknowledged to be that of Tyre. In Phoenician, he is known as mlkqrt bsr or "
Melqart in Tyre." The earliest known mention of the god
Melqart is found on the Aleppo
stele from the ninth/eighth century B.C. in which Bir Hadad,
king of
Aram mentions him as a warrior god.
Melqart is identified with the Greek
Heracles (
Hercules), and almost without fail, the Hellenistic temples and altars dedicated to the worship of
Heracles were originally that of the Phoenician cult of
Melqart. One can certainly use the names of
Heracles and
Melqart interchangeably.
“A bilingual
inscription from Malta (second century BCE), shows that Melqart/Heracles was specifically considered the bʿl ṣr, ‘
Baal of Tyre’, or, as the Greek has it, its ἀρχηγέτης, ‘tutelary hero; eponymous ancestor’, of
his own city. Epigraphical, archaeological and classical records prove also that
Melqart had a remarkable role in the religious ideology of the commercial expansion of Tyrians westward throughout the Mediterranean world, and that
his cult was very popular in all Phoenician colonies, from
Cyprus to Malta, from
Carthage to the whole of
North Africa, from Sardinia to
Iberia.” - S. RIBICHINI
Ezekiel makes a pronouncement against the
king of Tyre in Ezekiel 28:1–19. Because the name
Melqart can be translated “
King of the city [of Tyre],” the passage refers to the human
king and
his deified counterpart interchangeably.
Biblical scholars also equate this rendering as referring to the devil or Satan as the fallen one who became the tempter in the garden of Eden. Throughout the Old Testament scriptures, the manifestation of Ba’al (a general term for the several Canaanite gods simply meaning “lord” or “master”), specifically that of Ba’al
Melqart of Tyre, became the antithesis of the God of
Israel. To the devout Jews, the Phoenician
Melqart and Greek
Hercules were more than false gods. They were thought of and preached against as manifestations of the devil.
The Ba’al brought to
Israel by Queen Jezebel, the Phoenician wife of
King Ahab was Ba’al
Melqart. Therefore we reasonably infer that the cult of
Baal seen in the showdown on Mt. Carmel in 1 Kings 18:20–40 is that of
Melqart. In the passage, Elijah mocks the festival of the annual egersis ("awakening"):
"And it came to pass at noon that Elijah mocked them and said, 'Cry out loud: for he is a god; either he is lost in thought, or he has wandered away, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is sleeping and must be awakened.'"“A trace of
Melqart’s worship at Tyre may also be found in 2 Macc 4:18–20, which tells that during the second century BCE, every five years games were celebrated in Tyre in honour of the local
Heracles, i.e.
Melqart. Most probably the
king was present at these games and the rulers or heads of neighbouring states, peoples and provinces sent representatives bearing rich gifts; sacrifices were also offered to
Heracles (MORGENSTERN 1960:162–163;
BONNET 1988:57–58).” - S. RIBICHINI
Reference taken from an article written by S. Ribichini
Dictionary of deities and demons in the Bible DDD (2nd extensively
rev. ed.) (p. 563). (1999).
