Adon
Phoenician · deity · phoenician archaic · Recorded classification
Adon is a title that became a name in a foreign language. In Phoenician he is 'the lord' — worshippers would have used the word the way the Hebrew Bible uses adonai, as a way of not saying the name — and Greeks hearing it took the substitution for the thing itself, which is how the West ended up with a god called Adonis. He is the dying-and-returning god of Byblos, mourned each spring when the Nahr Ibrahim runs red with silt. The registry had no record of him under any tradition.
Domains
- vegetation
Sources
- Adon is the Phoenician god worshipped at Byblos beside El and Baalat Gebal, representing the annual cycle of nature, whose name means 'lord' and whom the Greeks received as Adonis.: Reference treatment of Phoenician religion and of the Byblos triad. (secondary)