Melqart

deity · Lebanon · Middle East and North Africa

Melqart was the tutelary god of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre (in modern Lebanon) and one of the most important deities in the Phoenician and Punic pantheons. His name means 'King of the City' in Phoenician. Melqart was a complex deity embodying multiple roles: sea god and protector of navigation, a dying-and-rising vegetation god, the divine patron of Phoenician colonization, and a heroic figure identified by the Greeks with Heracles. Every Phoenician colony founded by Tyre included a temple to Melqart as the city's spiritual center. He was depicted riding a winged hippocampus on Tyrian c

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