Baal Hammon

Baal Hammon, properly Baʿal Hammon or Hamon (Punic: lbʻl ḥmn), was the chief god of Carthage. He was a weather god considered responsible for the fertility of vegetation and esteemed as King of the Gods. He was depicted as a bearded older man with curling ram's horns. Baʿal Hammon's female cult partner was Tanit.

Cult and attributes

The worship of Baʿal Hammon flourished in the Phoenician colony of Carthage. His supremacy among the Carthaginian gods is believed to date to the 5th century BC, after relations between Carthage and Tyre were broken off at the time of the Punic defeat in Himera. Modern scholars identify him variously with the Northwest Semitic god El or with Dagon.

In Carthage and North Africa Baʿal Hammon was especially associated with the ram and was worshiped also as Baʿal Qarnaim ("Lord of Two Horns") in an open-air sanctuary at Jebel Boukornine ("the two-horned hill") across the bay from Carthage, in Tunisia. He was probably never identified with Baʿal Melqart, although one finds this equation in older scholarship.

Baal

Baal (/ˈbeɪəl/), properly Baʿal (Ugaritic: 𐎁𐎓𐎍;Phoenician: 𐤋𐤏𐤁; Biblical Hebrew: בעל, pronounced [ˈbaʕal]), was a title and honorific meaning "lord" in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied to gods. Scholars previously associated the theonym with solar cults and with a variety of unrelated patron deities, but inscriptions have shown that the name Baʿal was particularly associated with the storm and fertility god Hadad and his local manifestations. The Hebrew Scriptures, compiled and curated over a span of centuries, include early use of the term in reference to their God Yahweh, generic use in reference to various Levantine deities, and finally pointed application towards Hadad, who was decried as a false god. This use was taken over into Christianity and Islam, sometimes under the opprobrious form Beelzebub.

Word

The spelling "Baal" derives from the Greek Báal (Βάαλ), which appears in the New Testament and Septuagint, and from its Latinized form Baal, which appears in the Vulgate. The word's Biblical senses as a Phoenician deity and false gods generally were extended during the Protestant Reformation to denote any idols, icons of the saints, or the Catholic Church generally. In such contexts, it follows the anglicized pronunciation and usually omits any mark between its two As. In modern scholarship, the half ring ⟨ ʿ ⟩ or apostrophe ⟨ ' ⟩ in the name Baʿal marks the word's original glottal stop, a vocalization which appears in the middle of the English word "uh-oh".