In these sacrificial tariffs no mention is made of human sacrifices, and, as M. Clermont-Ganneau has pointed out, the ram takes in them the place of the man.  But this was the result of the milder manners of an age when the Phoenicians had been brought into close contact with the Greeks.  In the older days of Canaanitish history human sacrifice had held a foremost place in the ritual of Syria.  It was the sacrifice of the firstborn son that was demanded in times of danger and trouble, or when the family was called upon to make a special atonement for sin.  The victim was offered as a burnt sacrifice, which in Hebrew idiom was euphemistically described as passing through the fire.

Side by side with these human sacrifices were the abominations which were performed in the temples in honour of Ashtoreth.  Women acted as prostitutes, and men who called themselves “dogs” foreswore their manhood.  It was these sensualities practised in the name of religion which caused the iniquity of the Canaanites to become full.

It is pleasanter to turn to such fragments of Canaanitish mythology and cosmological speculation as have come down to us.  Unfortunately most of it belongs in its present form to the late days of Greek and Roman domination, when an attempt was made to fuse the disjointed legends of the various Phoenician states into a connected whole, and to present them to Greek readers under a philosophical guise.  How much, therefore, of the strange cosmogony and history of the gods recorded by Philon of Gebal really goes back to the patriarchal epoch of Palestine, and how much of it is of later growth, it is now impossible to say.  In the main, however, it is of ancient date.

This is shown by the fact that a good deal of it has been borrowed directly or indirectly from Babylonia.  How this could have happened has been explained by the Tel el-Amarna tablets.  It was while Canaan was under the influence of Babylonian culture and Babylonian government that the myths and traditions of Babylonia made their way to the West.  Among the tablets are portions of Babylonian legends, one of which has been carefully annotated by the Egyptian or Canaanite scribe.  It is the story of the queen of Hades, who had been asked by the gods to a feast they had made in the heavens.  Unable or unwilling to ascend to it, the goddess sent her servant the plague-demon, but with the result that Nergal was commissioned to descend to Hades and destroy its mistress.  The fourteen gates of the infernal world, each with its attendant warder, were opened before him, and at last he seized the queen by the hair, dragging her to the ground, and threatening to cut off her head.  But Eris-kigal, the queen of Hades, made a successful appeal for mercy; she became the wife of Nergal, and he the lord of the tomb.