* The author of the De Dea Syra classed the temple of Byblos among the Phoenician temples of the old order, which were almost as ancient as the temples of Egypt, and it is probable that from the Egyptian epoch onwards the plan of this temple must have been that shown on the coins; the cloister arcades ought, however, to be represented by pillars or by columns supporting architraves, and the fact of their presence leads me to the conclusion that the temple did not exist in the form known to us at a date earlier than the last Assyrian period.

At an early time El was spoken of as the first king of G-ablu in the same manner as each one of his Egyptian fellow-gods had been in their several nomes, and the story of his exploits formed the inevitable prelude to the beginning of human history.  Grandson of Eliun who had brought Chaos into order, son of Heaven and Earth, he dispossessed, vanquished, and mutilated his father, and conquered the most distant regions one after another—­the countries beyond the Euphrates, Libya, Asia Minor and Greece:  one year, when the plague was ravaging his empire, he burnt his own son on the altar as an expiatory victim, and from that time forward the priests took advantage of his example to demand the sacrifice of children in moments of public danger or calamity.

[Illustration:  253.jpg]

     Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the original in the Cabinet
     des Medailles.

He was represented as a man with two faces, whose eyes opened and shut in an eternal alternation of vigilance and repose:  six wings grew from his shoulders, and spread fan-like around him.  He was the incarnation of time, which destroys all things in its rapid flight; and of the summer sun, cruel and fateful, which eats up the green grass and parches the fields.  An Astarte reigned with him over Byblos—­Baalat-Gublu, his own sister; like him, the child of Earth and Heaven.  In one of her aspects she was identified with the moon, the personification of coldness and chastity, and in her statues or on her sacred pillars she was represented with the crescent or cow-horns of the Egyptian Hathor; but in her other aspect she appeared as the amorous and wanton goddess in whom the Greeks recognised the popular concept of Aphrodite.  Tradition tells us how, one spring morning, she caught sight of and desired the youthful god known by the title of Adoni, or “My Lord.”  We scarce know what to make of the origin of Adonis, and of the legends which treat him as a hero—­the representation of him as the incestuous offspring of a certain King Kinyras and his own daughter Myrrha is a comparatively recent element grafted on the original myth; at any rate, the happiness of two lovers had lasted but a few short weeks when a sudden end was put to it by the tusks of a monstrous wild boar.  Baalat-Gublu wept over her lover’s body and buried it; then her grief triumphed over death, and Adonis, ransomed