Myth and Cult of Adonis
Adonis is a young
fertility god, a comely youth beloved by Astarte, and represents death
and rebirth in an oriental vegetation cult. He is also known as the
agricultural divinity named Eshmun.
derived from the Canaanite title, Adon. It is the Semitic word for
master or lord and i means my, therefore Adonai
(Adonis is the Hellenized version of the same) translates as my
similarly the meaning of Baal, with whom he shares traits, is also lord or master.
The myth of Adonis
suffers from a lot of confusion. This study will show that he had two
origins, several fathers and mothers, in some ways. His mother was
Greek Aphrodite, the equivalent of Phoenician Astarte and Roman Venus.
lover was also Astarte and Venus; while his fathers were several kings
The Greeks knew the
cult of Adonis in the sixth century BC, unquestionably through
with Cyprus. In the same period Ezekiel (8:4) notes his existence
in Jerusalem under the Babylonian name of Tammuz, who saw the women
Jerusalem weeping for him at the north gate of the temple. Adonis
parallels the eastern companion god Dumuzi/Tammuz and the Hittite Telipinu.
is a Semitic immigrant to the Greek pantheon and is therefore not
counted among the greater gods. His cult was established in Greece
by 600 BC
and his worship was known to Sappho and her circle.
Adonis has two origins:
Cyprus and Byblos. On Cyprus, his father is either Canaanite/Phoenician
king Theias or Cinyras, king of Paphos, or Pygmalion; his mother
was Myrrha, the king's daughter. At Byblos, it is Phoinix, father of
the Phoenicians. Paphos sees him linked to the goddess Aphrodite, with
whom a tie has already been established. The worship of Adonis, a cult
especially popular with women, was celebrated on flat rooftops by the
planting of plants and the offering of incenses. It also involved lamentations
for the dead god. The incense and wailing of women are identical practices
to those found in Baal worship. In Greece, the goddess Persephone fulfills
much of his role. In Phoenicia, his worship supplanted that of Aleyin,
a vegetation god and son of Baal, who was killed by Mot.
According to legend
the king of Canaan, Theias, had a daughter named Myrrha or
Smyrna who was cursed by Aphrodite. She was forced to commit incest
with her father when she was twelve; with the complicity of here nurse
she succeeded in deceiving him for eleven nights, but on the twelfth
night Theias discovered whom she really was and prepared to kill her.
Myrrha fled, and the gods taking pity on her, turned her into a tree,
the myrrh tree. Ten months later the bark peeled off and an infant
emerged and was named Adonis. Aphrodite was very moved by the beauty
of the child, placed him into a coffin and she gave him to Persephone,
goddess of the Underworld, to bring up. Becoming infatuated with the
beautiful child Persephone refused to give him back. When Aphrodite
returned to retrieve the coffin she discovered that Persephone had
opened it and claimed the handsome child for herself. Zeus became the
arbitrator in settling the dispute between the two goddesses, and it
was decided that Adonis should live one-third of the year with Aphrodite
on earth, one-third with Persephone in the Underworld, and the final
third with whichever he pleased. Adonis chose to spend two-thirds of
the year with Aphrodite and one-third with Persephone in the Underworld.
Adonis was an avid
hunter. Astarte fell deeply in love with him. She tried to
persuade him to give up the dangerous sport. Adonis
refused. The story goes that while out hunting,
Adonis was killed by a wild boar. The Phoenician goddess Astarte tried
to save him but she was too late. And so it is the blood of Adonis
that each spring turns to red the torrential river,
the Adonis River (modern Nahr Ibrahim in Lebanon) . Afqa is the sacred
source where the waters of the river emerge from a huge grotto in a
200 meters high. It is there that the myth of Astarte (Venus) and Adonis
Across from the grotto
are the remains of the Roman Temple of Venus. The temple was destroyed
by the Christian Emperor Constantine (285 - 337 AD), it was later rebuilt
by Julian the Apostle (362 - 363). His
most important temples were at Byblos and Paphos. The temple of Astarte,
celebrated the annual death and resurrection of Adonis.
Phoenician festival appears to have been a vernal one, for its date
was determined by the discoloration of the river Adonis, and this has
been observed by modern travelers to occur in spring. At that season
the red earth washed down from the mountains by the rain tinges the
water of the river, and even the sea. The blood-red hue and the crimson
stain were believed to be the blood of Adonis. Again, the scarlet anemone
is said to have sprung from the blood of Adonis, or to have been stained
by it. The anemone blooms in Canaan/Phoenicia may be thought to show
that the festival of Adonis, or at least one of his festivals, was
held in spring.
His death appears
to have been annually mourned, to the shrill music of flutes, by men
and women about midsummer in the month named after him, the month of
Tammuz (July). The dirges were seemingly chanted over an effigy of
the dead god, which was washed with pure water, anointed with oil,
and clad in a red robe. At the same time the fumes of incense rose
into the air, as if to stir his dormant senses by their pungent fragrance
and wake him from the sleep of death. Women bewail him, because his
lord slew him so cruelly, ground his bones in a mill, and then scattered
them to the wind. The women (during this festival) eat nothing which
has been ground in a mill, but limit their diet to steeped wheat, sweet
vetches, dates, raisins, and the like. Images of him, dressed to resemble
corpses, were carried out as to burial and then thrown into the sea
or into springs; and in some places his revival was celebrated on the
following day. The red anemone marked his reappearance on earth.
Laments for the death
of Adonis is contained in several hymns, which liken him to plants
that quickly fade.
that in the garden has drunk no water,
Whose crown in the field has brought forth no blossom.
A willow that rejoiced not by the watercourse,
A willow whose roots were torn up.
A herb that in the garden had drunk no water."
The voices of the
singers chanting the sad refrain and to catch, like far-away music,
the wailing notes of the flutes:
"At his vanishing
away she lifts up a lament,
Oh my child! at his vanishing away she lifts up a lament;
My Damu! at his vanishing away she lifts up a lament.
My enchanter and priest! at his vanishing away she lifts up a lament,
At the shining cedar, rooted in a spacious place,
In Eanna, above and below, she lifts up a lament.
Like the lament that a house lifts up for its master, lifts she up a lament,
Like the lament that a city lifts up for its lord, lifts she up a lament.
Her lament is the lament for an herb that grows not in the bed;
Her lament is the lament for the corn that grows not in the ear. Her chamber
is a possession that brings not forth a possession,
A weary woman, a weary child, forspent.
Her lament is for a great river, where no willows grow;
Her lament is for a field, where corn and herbs grow not.
Her lament is for a pool, where fishes grow not.
Her lament is for a thickest of reeds, where no reeds grow.
Her lament is for woods, where tamarisks grow not.
Her lament is for a wilderness where no cypresses (?) grow.
Her lament is for the depth of a garden of trees, where honey and wine grow
Her lament is for meadows, where no plants grow.
Her lament is for a palace, where length of life grows not."
In the great Phoenician
sanctuary of Astarte at Byblos, the death of Adonis was annually mourned,
to the shrill wailing notes of the flute, with weeping, lamentation,
and beating of the breast. On the next day he was believed to come
to life again and ascend up to heaven in the presence of his worshippers.
The disconsolate believers, left behind on earth, shaved their heads
as the Egyptians did on the death of the divine bull Apis. Women who
could not bring themselves to sacrifice their beautiful tresses had
to give themselves up to strangers on a certain day of the festival,
and to dedicate to Astarte the wages of their shame. In
Phoenician temples women prostituted themselves for hire in the service
of religion, anyway, believing that by this conduct they propitiated
the goddess and won her favor. "It was a law of the Amorites,
that she who was about to marry should sit in fornication seven days
it appears that before marriage all women were formerly obliged by
custom to prostitute themselves to strangers at the sanctuary of the
goddess and to dedicate to the goddess the wages earned by this sanctified
harlotry. The sacred precinct was crowded with women waiting to observe
the custom. Some of them had to wait there for years. At Paphos the
custom of religious prostitution is said to have been instituted by
King Cinyras, and to have been practiced by his daughters, the sisters
of Adonis, who, having incurred the wrath of Aphrodite, mated with
strangers and ended their days in Egypt. In this form of the tradition
the wrath of Aphrodite is probably a feature added by a later authority,
who could only regard conduct which shocked his own moral sense as
a punishment inflicted by the goddess instead of as a sacrifice regularly
enjoined by her on all her devotees. At all events the story indicates
that the princesses of Paphos had to conform to the custom as well
as women of humble birth.
But at different
places the ceremonies varied somewhat in the manner and apparently
also in the season of their celebration. At Alexandria images of Aphrodite
and Adonis were displayed on two couches; beside them were set ripe
fruits of all kinds, cakes, plants growing in flowerpots, and green
bowers twined with anise. The marriage of the lovers was celebrated
one day, and on the morrow women attired as mourners, with streaming
hair and bared breasts, bore the image of the dead Adonis to the sea-shore
and committed it to the waves. Yet they did not mourn without hope,
because they sang that the lost one would come back again. The date
at which this Alexandrian ceremony was observed is not expressly stated;
but from the mention of the ripe fruits it has been inferred that it
took place in late summer.
There were continuous
classical and patristic proofs that existed throughout the Mediterranean
world of this touching cult, in which the joy of Adonis' and Astarte's
reunion was succeeded by the grief of his sudden death and the women's
funeral lament. Ephemeral gardens symbolized the grace and prompt decline
of the deity.
fertility rite continued in Lebanon into the 5th century AD.
Adonis or Adonai and Hebrew
settled in Cyprus around 900 B.C. They conquered
Cypriot Idalion, and brought their cultic practices to it.
In Phoenician the two
words that mean "Lord":
Ba'al and Adon, as indicated earlier. Ba'al had a
very specific identity for Phoenicians -- including the Phoenician
-- as the primary male
deity. Thus Ba'al was not available as an appellation for the native
deity encountered by Phoenician traders at Idalion. Since the local
Cypriots called their god the Wanax -- that is, the Lord -- the
Phoenicians likely called this native god by their other word for "Lord": Adon.
The name "Adon" appears
in a number of Phoenician inscriptions in Cyprus, including one from
Idalion. The title "Adon" must
have been used to designate the local deity by Phoenician visitors
to worship in this shrine.
The Greeks took over
the administration of Idalion from the Phoenicians around 300 B.C.
The primary language when the Greeks
arrived was Phoenician. So it would have been natural for the Greeks
to assume that "Adon" was the name of the local deity rather than a
title. The name "Adon" was then Hellenized by adding the Greek ending "IS" --
Creating the familiar "Adonis."
Later, after the
Romans conquered Cyprus in the first century B.C., a number of
poets cited lovely Idalion as the place where
Venus had her fabled affair with Adon or Adonis.
In the Bible the
Israelite god Yahweh is sometimes referred to as Adon, though the term
is used as a title, not as the personal name of Yahweh. Eventually,
the appellation "Adonai" (my Lord) became a substitution name
for pronouncing in prayer the unutterable name Yahweh, which by the
early rabbinical period (first and second centuries A.D.) had become
too sacred to pronounce. To this day, when Jews encounter the consonants
of "Yahweh' (YHWH) in prayer, they pronounce it "Adonai." They might
be shocked to learn that this substitution word is related to the Phoenician
"Adon" and the Greek Cypriot "Adonis." Further, Muslim, Jews and Arabic-speaking,
Aramaic/Syriac-speaking Christians might be shocked also to learn that
their words for God come from the Phoenician god's name of "El" as
in "Elah," "Allah," "Elahona,""Eloh," "Elohaino," "Eli," "Eloi," "Elohak"...etc
(the prohibition against graven images) and the use of a standing
stone (massabah in
Hebrew) -- are characteristic of Israelite cultic practices. Therefore,
if is there a connection between worship in ancient Cyprus and worship
in ancient Israel, the link is the Phoenicians.
Popular religion among the Israelites as opposed to the "official" religion
promoted in the Hebrew Bible, especially the Book of Deuteronomy-was
similar to Phoenician religion. The Bible presents a purified,
elite monotheism devoted exclusively to the worship of Yahweh.
nationalistic parties that produced the Hebrew Bible proscribed
the worship of Ba'al and suppressed all but the faintest traces
of a theology
that included a consort of Yahweh. But both Ba'al and this female
goddess continued to live on in Israelite popular religious practices
as in Phoenician (formerly Canaanite) practice.
The local Cypriot
god the Wanax, or the Lord, was worshiped by the Phoenicians as
Adon and then later by the Greeks as
Adonis. This god had a female consort, much like the Phoenician
Asherah -- a goddess whom the official Israelite religion had much
about other Phoenician gods, please see the assay in this
website entitle "Phoenician Canaanite Religion -- Pagan."