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Melqart () was the tutelary god of the city-state of Tyre and a major deity in the Phoenician and Punic pantheons. He may have been central to the Founding myth of various Phoenician colonies throughout the Mediterranean, as well as the source of several myths concerning the exploits of Heracles. Many cities were thought to be founded (in one way or another) and protected by Melqart, no doubt springing from the original Phoenician practice of building a Temple of Melqart at new colonies. Similar to Tammuz and Adonis, he symbolized an annual cycle of death and rebirth.
Reflecting his dual role as both protector of the world and ruler of the underworld, he was often shown holding an Ankh or Lotus Flower as a symbol of life, and a Axe as a symbol of death.
As Tyrian trade, colonization and settlement expanded, Melqart became venerated in and Punic cultures across the Mediterranean, especially its colonies of Carthage and Cádiz. During the high point of Phoenician civilization between 1000 and 500 BCE, Melqart was associated with other pantheons and often venerated accordingly. Most notably, he was identified with the Ancient Greece Herakles and the Roman Empire Hercules from at least the sixth century BCE, and eventually became interchangeable with his Greek counterpart.
In Cyprus, Melqart was syncretized with Eshmun and Asclepius, and also in Ibiza, as given by a dedication reciting: "to his lord, Eshmun-Melqart".
To the Greeks and the Romans, who identified Melqart with Hercules, he was often distinguished as the .
The Phoenician novelist, Heliodorus of Emesa, in his Aethiopica, refers to the dancing of sailors in honor of the Tyrian Heracles: "Now they leap spiritedly into the air, now they bend their knees to the ground and revolve on them like persons possessed."
The historian Herodotus recorded (2.44):
Josephus records ( Antiquities of the Jews 8.5.3), following Menander of Ephesus the historian, concerning King Hiram I of Tyre (c. 965–935 BCE):
The annual celebration of the revival of Melqart's "awakening" may identify Melqart as a dying-and-rising god.
Melqart played the central role in the Phoenician spring festival during which he died and was resurrected.
The Roman Emperor Septimius Severus was a native of Lepcis Magna in Africa, an originally Phoenician city where worship of Melqart was widespread. He is known to have constructed in Rome a temple dedicated to "Liber and Hercules," and it is assumed that the Emperor, seeking to honour the god of his native city, identified Melqart with the Roman god Liber.
Archaeological evidence for Melqart's cult is found earliest in Tyre and seems to have spread westward with the Phoenician colonies established by Tyre as well as eventually overshadowing the worship of Eshmun in Sidon. The name of Melqart was invoked in oaths sanctioning contracts, according to Dr. María Eugenia Aubet,María Eugenia Aubet, The Phoenicians and the West: Politics, Colonies and Trade, 2nd ed., 2001. thus it was customary to build a temple to Melqart, as protector of Tyrian traders, in each new Phoenician colony: at Cádiz, the temple to Melqart is as early as the earliest vestiges of Phoenician occupation. (The Greeks followed a parallel practice in respect to Heracles.) Carthage even sent a yearly tribute of 10% of the public treasury to the god in Tyre up until the Hellenistic period.
In Tyre, the high priest of Melqart ranked second only to the king. Many names in Carthage reflected this importance of Melqart, for example, the names Hamilcar and Bomilcar; but Ba‘l "Lord" as a name-element in Carthaginian names such as Hasdrubal and Hannibal almost certainly does not refer to Melqart but instead refers to Baal Hammon, chief god of Carthage, a god identified by Greeks with Cronus and by Romans with Saturn, or is simply used as a title.
Melqart protected the Punics areas of Sicily, such as Cefalù, which was known under Carthaginian rule as "Cape Melqart" (, ). Melqart's head, indistinguishable from a Heracles, appeared on its coins of the 4th century BCE.
The Cippi of Melqart, found on Malta and dedicated to the god as an ex voto offering, provided the key to understanding the Phoenician language, as the inscriptions on the cippi were written in both Phoenician and Greek language.
Another temple to Melqart was at Ebyssus (Ibiza), in one of four Phoenician sites on the island's south coast. In 2004 a highway crew in the Avinguda Espanya, (one of the main routes into Ibiza), uncovered a further Punic temple in the excavated roadbed. Texts found mention Melqart among other Punic gods Eshmun, Astarte and Baʻl.
Another Iberian temple to Melqart has been identified at Carthago Nova (Cartagena). The Tyrian god's protection extended to the sacred promontory (Cape Saint Vincent) of the Iberian peninsula, the westernmost point of the known world, ground so sacred it was forbidden even to spend the night.
Another temple to Melqart was at Lixus, on the Atlantic coast of Morocco.
Athenaeus (392d) summarizes a story by Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 355 BCE) telling how Heracles the son of Zeus by Asteria (= ‘Ashtart ?) was killed by Typhon in Ancient Libya. Heracles' companion Iolaus brought a quail to the dead god (presumably a roasted quail) and its delicious scent roused Heracles back to life. This purports to explain why the Phoenicians sacrifice quails to Heracles. It seems that Melqart had a companion similar to the Hellenic Iolaus, who was himself a native of the Tyrian colony of Thebes. Sanchuniathon also makes Melqart under the name Malcarthos or Melcathros, the son of Hadad, who is normally identified with Zeus.
The Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions (10.24) speaks of the tombs of various gods, including "that of Heracles at Tyre, where he was burnt with fire." The Hellenic Heracles also died on a pyre, but the event was located on Mount Oeta in Trachis. A similar tradition is recorded by Dio Chrysostom ( Or. 33.47) who mentions the beautiful pyre which the Tarsians used to build for their Heracles, referring here to the god Sandon.
In Nonnus' Dionysiaca (40.366–580) the Tyrian Heracles is very much a Solar deity. However, there is a tendency in the later Hellenistic and Roman periods for almost all gods to develop solar attributes, and for almost all eastern gods to be identified with the Sun. Nonnus gives the title Astrochiton 'Starclad' to Tyrian Heracles and has his Dionysus recite a hymn to this Heracles, saluting him as "the son of Time, he who causes the threefold image of the Moon, the all-shining Eye of the heavens". Rain is ascribed to the shaking from his head of the waters of his bath in the eastern Oceanus. His Sun-disk is praised as the cause of growth in plants. Then, in a climactic burst of syncretism, Dionysus identifies the Tyrian Heracles with Belus on the Euphrates, Zeus Ammon in Libya, Apis by the Nile, Cronus, Zeus, Serapis, Zeus of Egypt, Cronus, Phaethon, Mithras, Apollo, Gamos 'Marriage', and Paeon 'Healer'.
The Tyrian Heracles answers by appearing to Dionysus. There is red light in the fiery eyes of this shining god who clothed in a robe embroidered like the sky (presumably with various constellations). He has yellow, sparkling cheeks and a starry beard. The god reveals how he taught the primeval, earthborn inhabitants of Phoenicia how to build the first boat and instructed them to sail out to a pair of floating, rocky islands. On one of the islands there grew an olive tree with a serpent at its foot, an eagle at its summit, and which glowed in the middle with fire that burned but did not consume. Following the god's instructions, these primeval humans sacrificed the eagle to Poseidon, Zeus, and the other gods. Thereupon the islands rooted themselves to the bottom of the sea. On these islands the city of Tyre was founded. Gregory of NazianzusGregory of Nazianzus, Oratio, 4.108 (See in and in ) and CassiodorusCassiodorus, Variae, 1.2.7 (See in and in English translation) relate how Tyrian Heracles and the nymph Tyrus were walking along the beach when Heracles' dog, who was accompanying them, devoured a murex snail and gained a beautiful purple color around its mouth. Tyrus told Heracles she would never accept him as her lover until he gave her a robe of that same colour. So Heracles gathered many murex shells, extracted the dye from them, and dyed the first garment of the colour later called Tyrian purple. The murex shell appears on the very earliest Tyrian coins and then reappears again on coins in Imperial Roman times.
From the sixth century BCE. onward in Cyprus, where there was strong Phoenician cultural influence on the western side of the island, Melqart was often depicted with Heracles' traditional symbols of a lion skin and club, although it is unclear how strongly this connection between the figures was throughout the rest of Phoenician culture.
In late 2021, archeologists from Seville University claimed to have located the historical Temple of Melqart of Spain, which classical authors believed to have contained the supposed Tomb of Melqart, at modern-day Sancti Petri, Cádiz.
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