{"id":3672,"date":"2010-06-10T09:18:22","date_gmt":"2010-06-10T09:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/melqart\/"},"modified":"2020-12-05T07:42:22","modified_gmt":"2020-12-05T07:42:22","slug":"melqart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/melqart\/","title":{"rendered":"Melqart"},"content":{"rendered":"

M<\/strong>elqart<\/strong> was the son of El the supreme deity of the Phoenicians<\/a>.\u00a0He was the \"Melqart\"<\/a>principal god of the city of Tyre and was sometimes known as Baal. As Tyre gained supremacy throughout the Phoenician world, Melqart also gained prominence. Melqart is the only Phoenician god mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. The Temple of Melqart in Tyre was similar to that built\u00a0for Solomon in Jerusalem. This is understandable as craftsmen from Tyre built the temple in Jerusalem and there would have had a natural exchange of religious ideas, as they were neighbours. Herodotus<\/a>\u00a0describes the main entrance to the sanctuary as being flanked by two columns or pillars known as \u2018betyls\u2019, one made of gold and the other of \u2018smaragdus\u2019\u2014 often translated as \u2018emerald.\u2019<\/p>\n

The cult of Melqart was brought to Carthage<\/a>, the most successful Tyrian colony, and temples dedicated to Melqart are found in at least three sites in Spain; Gades<\/a> (modern Cadiz<\/a>), Ebusus, and Carthago Nova. Near to Gades, at the Strait of Gibraltar<\/a>, the mountains on either side were first known as the Pillars of Melqart, and then later changed to the Pillars of Heracles. Across the Strait of Gibraltar, at the Atlantic coast of Morocco<\/a> was the Phoenician colony of Lixus<\/a>, where there was another temple of Melqart.<\/p>\n

In classical literature, Melqart and Heracles have been referred to interchangeably, by many historians such as Josephus<\/a> Flavius.<\/p>\n

It is thought that the city of Cadiz was originally founded as Gadir (walled city) by the Phoenicians\u00a0around 1100 BC, although hard evidence does not prove a date earlier than the 9th<\/sup> century BC.\u00a0In his 2011 book, Ancient Phoenicia,<\/em> Mark Woolmer has claimed [<\/sup><\/span><\/strong>1053<\/sup><\/a>.46]<\/strong><\/span><\/sup> that the archaeological evidence indicates a date around the middle of the 8th<\/sup> century BC.<\/p>\n

It is regarded as the most ancient functioning city in Western Europe<\/a>. Gadir had a temple that was dedicated to the Phoenician god Melqart. Some consider that the columns of this temple were the origin of the reference of the Columns of Heracles. Commentators on Plato\u2019s Atlantis story have\u00a0linked Cadiz (formerly Gades) with the second son of Poseidon, Gadirus<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Melqart was the son of El the supreme deity of the Phoenicians.\u00a0He was the principal god of the city of Tyre and was sometimes known as Baal. As Tyre gained supremacy throughout the Phoenician world, Melqart also gained prominence. Melqart is the only Phoenician god mentioned in the Hebrew Bible. The Temple of Melqart in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3635,678,2309,190,266,2784,579,3626,191,59,90,48,1252,46],"class_list":["post-3672","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-cafiz","tag-carthage","tag-gadeirus","tag-gades","tag-herodotus","tag-josephus","tag-lixus","tag-mark-woolmer","tag-melqart","tag-morocco","tag-phoenicians","tag-pillars-of-heracles","tag-strait-of-gibraltar","tag-tyre"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3672","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3672"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3672\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47329,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3672\/revisions\/47329"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}