Baal Shamem
Punic · deity · primordial · deity
'Lord of the Heavens', the inherited Phoenician sky-god present in the Punic pantheon and invoked in the Carthaginian state oath (the first god of the Hannibal–Philip V treaty, Polybius 7.9). Shares theonym and origin with the eastern Phoenician Baalshamin (corpus id phoenician_baalshamin); authored here in his Punic role. SOLITARY in this batch: no Punic kinship is attested, so no kin edge is asserted. The Zeus/Caelus interpretatio is recorded here, not wired as a relation (counterpart not in this batch).
Domains
- the heavens
Powers
- Rules the heavens and guarantees oaths
Epithets
- Baʿal Šamem ('Lord of the Heavens')
Sources
- Phoenician-Punic inscriptions invoking bʿl šmm; Polybius 7.9 (Carthaginian treaty oath)
- E. Lipiński, Dieux et déesses de l'univers phénicien et punique (Studia Phoenicia XIV, 1995)