Glossary Religion and cult
Syncretism
Also called: syncretic
The merging or equating of gods from different cultures, so that one deity is worshipped under two names or with combined features.
Cyprus, with Greek, Phoenician and local Eteocypriot communities side by side, offers many examples. Bilingual inscriptions of the fourth century BCE pair the Phoenician Reshef with Apollo, and the Phoenician Melqart merged with the Greek Herakles in the lion-skin figures of Herakles-Melqart. The island's chief goddess was identified with the Greek Aphrodite. Whether worshippers understood such pairs as one god or two is often unclear.
Related terms
- Reshef
A Canaanite and Phoenician god of plague, war and protection, worshipped in Iron Age Cyprus and equated there with Apollo.
- Astarte
A Phoenician goddess associated with love, fertility and war, worshipped in Iron Age Cyprus at Kition, Tamassos and elsewhere.
- Great Goddess
A modern name for the chief goddess of Palaepaphos, and for a single prehistoric mother goddess that many scholars now doubt.