Phoenicians The ancient people who occupied the strip of seaboard on the west of Palestine, with Tyre and Sidon as principal towns; noted among other things for their great development in trade, commerce, and navigation. The Phoenicians themselves, and the their neighbors the Israelites, called their land Canaan (Khena`an). According to Herodotus (2:44) Tyre was founded about 2300 years before his time, or 2756 BC.
The ancient deities of Phoenicia and their religion, as with other ancient peoples, was connected spiritually and physically with the great powers and processes of universal nature; indeed so far did this go that each river, spring, headland, etc., was under the influence of a deity; yet undoubtedly beyond and above all these hierarchical divisions there was always the ineffable, unthinkable, eternal, intelligence-life.
As time went on certain deities became more prominent in theological thought and speculation, acquiring celestial attributes as well as earthly ones, such as Ba`al, Astarte (made equivalent to Isis by Plutarch), and the Tyrian Melqarth (associated with Herakles). Originally each masculine deity had the title Ba'al ("lord," equivalent to Babylonian Bel), and the feminine deities had the title of 'Amma (mother), just as the ancient Hebrews spoke of their 'em or 'ammah (fountain, beginning, womb, mother). The gods were called 'elomim or 'elim, from the original Shemetic root 'el. The god of the moon was Sin, the deity of the flame or lightning was Resh Reshuf and Eshmun was the god of vital force or healing (worshiped especially at Sidon) -- clearly 'Eshmun is from the Shemitic verbal root
''esh (fire, cosmic fire or vitality) -- cosmic vital electricity or fohat. Blavatsky states that the Phoenicians also propitiated the kabeiroi, deities of Samothrace.
