Resheph

Phoenician god of plague, war, and lightning whose arrows bring fever; 'Lord of the Arrow', equated with Apollo at Idalion.

Domains

• plague
• war

Powers

• Shoot arrows of plague and burning fever
• Hurl lightning as a destructive warrior

Epithets

• Resheph of the Arrow latin · Resheph Hetz · cultLord of plague, war, and the netherworld; the archer-god whose arrows are pestilencePhoenician and Ugaritic inscriptions; identified with Nergal and Apollo (primary)
• 𐤓𐤔𐤐 𐤇𐤑 Phoenician · ršp ḥṣ · cultResheph of the ArrowPhoenician inscriptions; KAI corpus (Resheph epithets) (primary)
• 𐤓𐤔𐤐 𐤌𐤊𐤋 Phoenician · ršp mkl · cultResheph-Mukol (Annihilator), equated at Idalion with Apollo AmyklosTrilingual and Phoenician inscriptions of Idalion, Cyprus (CIS I) (primary)

Relations

• equated with: ReshephReciprocal of canaanite_resheph.equated-with — Ugaritic Rašpu and Phoenician-Cypriot Reshep are one plague-archer god in successive streams. Preserves arrows, fever, and gatekeeping of the sun; the Cypriot cult adds the Apollo identification.DDD (2nd ed. 1999), s.v. 'Resheph' (secondary)
• interpretatio: ApolloReciprocal of greek_hesiod_apollo.interpretatio — Cypriot bilinguals equate Reshep with Apollo. Preserves the plague-archer whose arrows bring fever — Apollo's Iliad 1 aspect exactly; breaks on Apollo's oracular, musical, and ephebic sides.Phoenician-Cypriot bilingual dedications from Idalion, Cyprus (Reshep Mikal = Apollo Amyklos), 4th c. BCE (primary)

Sources

• existence: Phoenician inscriptions (Resheph of the Garden, lord of the arrow) (primary); Idalion (Cyprus) Apollo–Resheph identification (secondary)