Melqart
Punic · deity · mythic · deity
'King of the City' (Tyre), the Tyrian Herakles: the dynastic god of Tyre and inherited ancestral patron of Carthage, to whose temple at Tyre Carthage sent an annual tithe. His mythic profile is the death-and-awakening cycle (egersis), here given as a two-phase lifecycle (death by fire → egersis awakening). Shares theonym and origin with the eastern Phoenician Melqart (corpus id phoenician_melqart); authored here in his Punic/Carthaginian role. Father of Sid of Sardinia (punic_sid). The Herakles/Hercules interpretatio is recorded here, not wired as a relation (counterpart not in this batch). The death-by-fire is reconstructed from Greek material; a perpetual fire at Tyre is uncertain.
Children
Domains
- kingship
- colonization and the sea
- ancestral patron of carthage
Powers
- Dies and is annually awakened at the egersis
- Founds and guards the Tyrian colonies overseas
Epithets
- Baʿl Ṣur (bʿl ṣr, 'Baal/Lord of Tyre')
- Archēgetēs ('Founder-Leader'; Greek of the Cippi)
Relations
- father of: Sid