Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

356 The Ram and the Sun in Egypt

half-idol, mid-way between the aniconic block and the anthropo-
morphic statue. He reminds us that Ba'al-hamman appears to
have taken his name from such sacred stones, and notes that the
Cypriote Aphrodite was likewise ' worshipped in the form of an
omphalos1!

I am disposed to accept Meltzer's conclusion and to support it
by two further considerations. In the first place, Ba'al-hamman
was akin to the Baal of Tyre, better known as Melqarth or the
Tyrian Herakles2. If, therefore, the Tyrian Herakles can be shown
to have had a cult-object similar to the emerald-set omphalos of
Zeus Amnion, it will—in view of the rarity of such objects—
become highly probable that the example in the Oasis belonged
by rights to Ba'al-hamman and that its usage attests his influence
on the cult of Zeus Ammon. Now Theophrastos a propos of
emeralds has the following paragraph:

' This stone is scarce and of no great size,—unless we are to believe the
records concerning the kings of Egypt. Certain writers declare that the king
of Babylon once sent to Egypt as a gift an emerald four cubits in length and
three in breadth, and that in the sanctuary of Zeus too there were dedicated four
obelisks of emerald forty cubits long and from four to two cubits broad. This
is what the writers in question assert. Of the so-called Bactrian emeralds the
one at Tyre is the largest. It is a good-sized stele in the sanctuary of Herakles,
—unless indeed it is of pseudo-emerald, for that species too is to be found.'
Etc. etc.3

This passage proves that the Tyrian Herakles had an dgalma

of emerald. It is, I suspect, represented on
imperial coins of Tyre, which show a portable
shrine containing a sacred stone shaped much
like an omphalos (fig. 273)4. However that
may be, our passage further indicates that such
emerald-blocks had reached Egypt and that
obelisks5 of the sort were to be seen there in
a precinct of Zeus, i.e. of Amen-Ra. Since

1 Serv. in Verg. Aen. 1. 720 apud Cyprios Venus in modum umbilici vel, ut quidam
volunt, metae colitur.

2 Ba'al-hamman is himself called Herakles in Polyb. 7. 9. 2 (W. W. Baudissin op. cit.
p. 285). A bronze statuette at Vienna shows Zeus Ammon holding the club of Herakles
(Von Sacken Ant. Bronzen Wien ii no. 7, Reinach Rep. Stat. ii. 12 no. 4): see also
supra p. 348 n. r.

3 Theophr. lap. 24^, cp. Plin. nat. hist. 37. 74 f.

4 Brit. Mus, Cat. Coins Phoenicia p. 283 no. 435 Gordianus iii, p. 290 nos. 471 f.
Valerianus Senior pi. 34, 14. Mr G. F. Hill ib. p. cxl suggests that the type ' may
perhaps...be connected with Astarte.'

5 Theophr. lap. 24 avaKeiadai 8e Kal ev rod Aids o^eXiffKOVS a fxapdydov
r^rrapas, fxrjKos' [lev TeTTapdnovra ir^x^v, edpos 8e rrj fj.ev rerrapas, rrj 5e 5i/o. But

Fig. 273.