e purely
Semitic deities, formed on the pattern of human rulers and deriving
their attributes from that character. When a state becomes highly
organised before it is quite civilised in other respects, its
religion is apt to be stern and cruel; of this various instances may
be found in the history of religion, and the present is one of them.
The Phenician gods were of such a character as to favour the survival
of savage practices; the Semite, as we saw, is extremely
matter-of-fact and practical in his religion, and a god who was a
king would receive the same kind of offerings as the king of Sidon or
of Tyre was accustomed to. A strict and dreadful religion thus
survives beyond the savage state; pleasure is taken in trampling on
natural feelings and in setting forth shocking spectacles at the
bidding of the deity.

Astral Deities of Phenicia.--It is not possible to arrange in a
system the remaining phenomena of Phenician religion. In the
historical period the gods have another character besides that of
being heads and rulers of communities. They are connected with the
heavenly bodies. The chief god, whatever name he bears, El, Baal,
Moloch, Rimmon, or Adonis, is always the sun. A sun-god may have come
from Egypt or Babylon, but there is no reason why the Phenicians may
not have had a sun-god from the first, whose character spread to
their other deities. And in accordance with the tendency above spoken
of, the sun-god has a consort. Sometimes his consort is the earth;
and then we have a sensuous and immoral worship such as that of the
Canaanites. Sometimes it is the moon; her name is Astarte or
Ashtoreth, and she is a very different being from the Ashera of
Canaan; the names are not the same, and the characters are opposite.
Ashtoreth, like the primitive Semitic goddess (chapter x.), is a
chaste matron; she is represented robed and in stately attitude, and
is a fit companion for the strict Moloch of the cities. Her worship
is described to us by Jeremiah, in whose time the matrons of
Jerusalem made cakes for her and poured out drink-offerings and
burned incense to her as the "queen of heaven"; all this was done
with the knowledge and co-operation of their husbands, so that the
worship had nothing immoral about it. This strict goddess is not to
be identified with Istar of Babylonia, although the names are alike.
Istar is not a moon-goddess like Ashtoreth; in Babylonia, in fact,
the moon is masculine, and the characters of