Gods of byblos - baalat gebal and reshef

Each city in Phoenicia had a different form of worship and cultic pantheon. The Cultic pantheon consisted of a two tier hierarchy comprising a supreme male and/or female deity, a Baal or Baalat and a lower tier included all other deities worshipped in the city. The upper tier was linked to the ruling dynasty. For example in Byblos, Baalat Gebal the Lady of Byblos was venerated and was associated with fertility, birth and seafaring. In Byblos in addition to Baalat and Reshef it is said there was also an Assembly of the Holy Gods, members of which included Adonis. Adonis was primarily a semi-god associated with beauty, desire, regeneration and rejuvenation. Religious cult was also related to the seasonal cycle and to the agricultural calendar.

Festivals, feasts and celebrations were the most common worship cult. In addition to these larger festivals smaller ceremonies were used to mark a variety of occasions in the public and private life of a citizen including their birthday, marriage and death.  The temples had festivals corresponding to the changes of the seasons. They worshiped the energy shown by nature in destroying and reproducing life. It was a place for festivities. For instance dancing and singing formed one of the chief characteristics of worship.  

Priesthood appears to have been a hereditary position drawn from the ranks of the aristocracy. The main duties of a Phoenician priest were to supervise religious ceremonies and festivals and offer regular sacrifices to the gods and updating the temple library.

The cultic life of a Phoenician city revolved around a calendar of feasts, festivals and celebrations. Most important cultic events coincided with significant points within the agrarian cycle. The Phoenicians divided their cult calendar into 12 lunar months. The New Moon (Neomenia) had an important role in Phoenician religious life and it appears in the popularity of the Phoenician name (Bnhd ' son-of- the-new-moon'). Another significant date in the Phoenician calendar was New Year. Phoenician New Year celebrations were held in the month of Peritia (February­ March).

Music and dancing were important features of Phoenician cult worship. Drums and tambourines were also used. Another important way of divining the future was the consultation of oracles. Water, Libations and the Burning of Incense was an important part of the cultic life of the sanctuary. The most common type of libation consisted of a mixture of wine and water, oil, milk, honey.

Philo of Byblos suggests that the Phoenicians believed in some form of afterlife. The lotus flower was often used to represent the protection and renewal of the spirit. Inhumation was one of the main forms of burial practice during the Late Bronze Age.

The Phoenicians constructed two types of temple: the open-air precinct and the built enclosed temple. Open-air precincts consisted of a paved open courtyard which housed the altar or betyl (sacred stone). Open-air complexes tended to be elevated by means of a built platform. Temples had ceremonial basin. The enclosed temple had a central temple or chapel, a large open courtyard and an ornate portico through which the site was entered. 

 Upon Philo of Byblos, the god El represented by a Betyl( a stone) is the father of gods and men and he who founded Byblos. Ashtrat (Baalat Gebal), the great goddess of the seas, fused in a tree trunk was his wife and they had sons Dagon (Reshef) and Atlas (Adoni). The House of El is the oldest form of the worship in Phenicia. Ashtrat as of El can have the shape of a divine bull but they were humans. Ashtrat is a goddess-Sanctuary. Ashtrat also the god of the morning star. There are the morning star and the evening star and they were represented by two lions, then a single lion symbolizing the planet Venus and the servant of Ashtart. The third deity is Dagon associated with the wheat field and the plow and the grains wheat. This god has a double character, celestial and terrestrial. In heaven he was the rider of the clouds, master of the lightning, dispenser of the rain, the high man. On land he was represented by vegetation and crops. To this triad is added a divinity less important than the others named Atlas. Atlas is essentially the god who carries the sky, therefore the god-Mountain. The mountains had a divine personality and were represented by bearded gods. Atlas it is he who makes the legend.   

 An inscription on a scarab dedicated to the goddess Astrate the Lady of Goubal or Gebal (meaning Byblos) mentions the granted favor of the goddess to her people. A mythological fragment form the second millennium evokes the activity of the goddess Astrate. A tablet found mentions some horses of Astarte. There are records of Astarte on horseback according to a representations from the 18th dynasty in Egypt. In the first millennium the goddess Astarte was venerated in all the cities of Phoenicia. The title Baalat Gebal is reproduced on the inscription of King Abibaal of Byblos dated from 880 b.c, which honors his Lady. Since the ancient empire the Egyptian Goddess Hathor has been identified with the goddess of Byblos. Isis will succeed Hathor in the Egyptian version of the Lady of Byblos. Astrate was associated with the idea of good.

 Many copies of the cult Reshef dating back to the third millennium or earlier. The type of the cult of Reshef in Mycenaean Crete, Cyprus and in the Aegean world is comparable to the one in Phoenicia and the religious iconography is similar. The genesis and evolution could come from Egypt. The name of divine or heroic Reshef with the threatening weapon has been perpetuated in various artistic forms and with varied identities both in the East and overseas. Reshef the god of gold with the attitude, the garment, the armament and the equipment is the protector of the metallurgy. Some of the statuettes represent him as a horned god. Reshef was represented by a god with lightning and storm. Offerings by worshipers, like the statuettes and figurines, were presented to the god Reshef to avoid being dazzled by a divine epiphany.

Two real geographical entities appear to have been archetypes of this idealized God’s Land for Egypt. One was Punt in Egypt, in the south, the other Byblos, in the north. As a God’s Land located at the limits of the world or as far as the limits of heaven.  Byblos was not only economic but also a religious and ideological mission aiming to extend the Pharaoh’s authority symbolically as far as the God’s Land and the limits of the world.T his cosmographic narrative go back as far as the Old Kingdom in Egypt. Egyptian Goddess Hathor was associated with Baalat Gebal and for the Egyptian a Goddess lived in the city of Byblos. 

The Phoenician temples were always of extreme simplicity. The god had and altar and no statues. The altar, with a stepped ornament sometimes, were in stone or bronze in the case of the temple of Baalat-Gebal in Byblos. The temple is the reduction of an Egyptian shrine adapted to the city where the god is worshiped. The small cella of the temple was closed from three sides. Water is abundant in Phoenician temples. In the temple of Baalat-Gebal gold was largely used in the decorations, as cited in a stele  by King Yehawmelek of Byblos. In general in Phoenician temples less importance is attached to the cella and the focus was on the great court or the open air hall in the centre of which the tabernacle rises. 

The basic structure of the theogony may be said to have four generations. In the first generation there was a diety called Elioun or El the Most High. 

The second generation were Ouranos and Ge. Things begin to heat up with Ouranos who by his sister Ge has four children. Ouranos had much issue by other wives also and the jealous reproaches of Ge caused them to separate. Ge however got some allies to help her and chief among them was her own son Kronos. 

Kronos had two daughters Perse­phone and Athena. Kronos started to battle against Ouranos on behalf of Ge. Kronos overthrew his father and succeeded to the kingdom. 

Kronos surrounds his own house with a wall and he founds the first city Byblos. He gave the city of Byblos to the goddess Baaltis (Astrate).  Astarte put on her head the sign of the bull as an indication of royalty.