Baal Hammon

Also Known As: Phoenician and Punic bʿl ḥmn; also written Ba’al Hamon and Baal Hamman; called Kronos by Greek writers and Saturn in Roman Africa
Region/Culture: North Africa
Mythos: Canaanite Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: Baal Hammon is an aged, fatherly lord who rules from a throne rather than a battlefield, his sceptre ending in an ear of grain.
Role in Mythos: Baal Hammon was the chief god of Punic Carthage, the lord to whom thousands of vows were cut in stone in the sanctuaries the Bible calls tophets.
Relation to Humans: Worshippers made vows to him and to Tanit and paid them with offerings marked by inscribed stones set over buried urns of burnt infant bone. Greek and Roman writers said those offerings were children, and archaeologists still argue over whether the bones bear them out.

The stone is no taller than a child. It stands in a field of others like it, a crowded orchard of limestone markers on the edge of Carthage, each one set over a buried pot of ash and small burnt bones. Its few lines of letters are cut neatly near the top: To the Lady Tanit, Face of Baal, and to the Lord Baal Hammon, which Arish son of Shaphat son of Arish vowed. Nothing else. No prayer, no story, no explanation of what was promised or why. A man made a vow, the vow was answered, and he paid it.

That is how Baal Hammon speaks to us, in thousands of near-identical sentences, and it is the reason he is both one of the best-attested gods of the ancient Mediterranean and one of the least known. No myth of him survives. There is no account of his birth, no quarrel with a rival, no marriage, no journey into the underworld. He is not the Baal of the Ugaritic poems, the storm god who battles Sea and Death. What survives is worship without story: inscriptions, carved stones, a few signet rings, and the horrified testimony of foreigners.

He begins far from Africa. Around 840 to 810 BCE Kilamuwa, king of the small state of Sam’al in what is now south-eastern Turkey, had a sixteen-line boast carved in Phoenician letters on an orthostat in his palace at Zincirli. At its close it names three gods: Baal-Semed, god of an earlier king called Gabbar; Baal-Hamman, god of a ruler whose name is written BMH; and Rakib-El. That is the oldest certain appearance of the name. In the Phoenician homeland itself he arrives late. Herbert Niehr, writing for the Iconography of Deities and Demons project, places his reception into the pantheon of Tyre only in the sixth century BCE. By then the Tyrian colony of Carthage had made him its chief god.

Baal simply means lord, owner or master, so the god’s real identity sits in the second word, and nobody agrees on what hammon means. Niehr reads the full name as Lord of the Amanus, the mountains near Zincirli, and notes that a title of this kind may have replaced a proper name the god once had. Richard Barnett took it as lord of the burning altar. Yigael Yadin thought him a moon god. Paolo Xella set both readings aside and built his picture of the god from the images instead. The name, in short, is a title that has lost its referent.

The images are surprisingly consistent. On a limestone stela from Hadrumetum, modern Sousse in Tunisia, carved in the fifth century BCE, he sits enthroned while a smaller figure stands before him. A gold ring from Utica and green stone scarabs from Tharros in Sardinia repeat the scene in miniature. He is old and bearded, wearing a tall conical cap or a crown of palm leaves, and his robe falls to his feet in wide sleeves. One hand is lifted in blessing. The other holds a sceptre that usually ends in what looks like an ear of grain. Sometimes he rides a winged sphinx instead of a throne, an incense stand smokes beside him when he is enthroned, and sometimes a winged sun disc hangs above his head. A bronze statuette found at Genoni in Sardinia, now in the museum at Cagliari, is the one image of him standing yet identified from the Punic period. Niehr’s summary is plain: where the storm god Baal of the Levant fights, Baal Hammon rules, majestic and fatherly, and what the two share is a concern with the crops.

At Carthage, though, the name stands second on the stones. The formula runs Tanit first, then Baal Hammon, and in the sanctuary at Carthage his consort’s sign, a triangle with a bar and a disc for a head, multiplies across the stelae. Whatever the order meant, the god of the city had a partner who in time took the front of the line.

Then there is the fire. When Greek writers met Baal Hammon they called him Kronos, the old god who devoured his own children, and the choice was not a compliment. Diodorus of Sicily, writing in the first century BCE, describes Carthage in 310 BCE, when the tyrant Agathocles of Syracuse had landed in Africa and beaten its army. The Carthaginians decided that Kronos was angry because noble families had been buying children and sending them to the god in place of their own. Diodorus says they publicly sacrificed two hundred children of the best families, and that three hundred more people who were under suspicion offered themselves. He describes a bronze image of the god with its arms extended, palms up and sloping toward the ground, so that each child placed upon them rolled down into a pit of fire. Plutarch adds the mothers, who had to stand by without a tear or a moan, and the flutes and drums played loudly before the statue so that no one would hear the crying.

Whether any of that is true is one of the longest arguments in Mediterranean archaeology. The urns under the Carthage stones do hold burnt bones of very young children. In 2010 J. H. Schwartz and colleagues studied 348 of those urns, holding the remains of about 540 individuals, found that many were prenatal or newborn, and argued that the tophet was a cemetery for children who died around birth, of any cause. Other specialists, reading the same bones together with the vows on the stones, still argue for sacrifice. The ancient accusers were Carthage’s enemies. The bones are real. Both statements stand.

Rome destroyed Carthage in 146 BCE, but not its god. Across Roman Africa he was worshipped as Saturn, and a great many carved votive stones show dedicants bringing him offerings. On the mountain the inscriptions call Mons Balcaranensis, the modern Djebel Bou Kornein in Tunisia, he was Saturn Balcaranensis. A terracotta from the sanctuary at Thinissut is dedicated to Baal-Saturn and Tanit-Caelestis together. Tertullian, the Christian writer of Carthage, claimed that children had been openly sacrificed to Saturn in Africa until a proconsul named Tiberius hanged the priests on the trees of their own temple grove. Modern scholars do not agree on how much of the Punic god survived inside the Roman one. Matthew McCarty has argued that the signs used to show the god changed deeply under the empire, and that the familiar story of a smooth passage from Baal Hammon to Saturn is too tidy. Natalie Mendes, studying the late temples, has argued that the cult did not collapse in the fourth century, as long supposed, but survived into the sixth.

His powers, then, are the powers of an old king. He hears vows and answers them, and those who are answered pay. He presides over the fields, the grain in his sceptre and the incense smoking at his side. He is the lord of a city, carried by its colonists as far as Sardinia and kept by its subjects for centuries after the city fell. His limits are just as visible. He has no story to defend him, so others wrote one, and the story they chose was Kronos eating his children. His own name is a title whose meaning was lost. On the stones of his own sanctuary his partner’s name comes first, and in the end the god of Carthage survived longest under a Latin name that was never his.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who was Baal Hammon?

Baal Hammon was the chief god of ancient Carthage and of the Punic world, a Phoenician deity whose name means Lord of Hammon. Carthaginians made vows to him and to the goddess Tanit and recorded them on thousands of inscribed stones. Greek writers identified him with Kronos, and in Roman Africa he was worshipped as Saturn.

What does the name Baal Hammon mean?

Baal means lord or master, but the meaning of Hammon is disputed. Herbert Niehr reads the name as Lord of the Amanus, a mountain range near the earliest inscription that mentions him, while Richard Barnett proposed lord of the burning altar and Yigael Yadin argued for a moon god. No reading has won general agreement.

Did the Carthaginians sacrifice children to Baal Hammon?

The question is still disputed. Diodorus of Sicily and Plutarch described Carthaginians sacrificing children to the god they called Kronos, and the Carthage tophet holds urns of burnt infant bones beneath stones dedicated to Baal Hammon and Tanit. A 2010 study of 348 urns argued the site was a cemetery for children who died around birth, while other specialists still read the evidence as sacrifice.

What did Baal Hammon look like?

Punic images show Baal Hammon as an old bearded man in a long, wide-sleeved robe and a conical cap or crown of palm leaves. He usually sits on a throne or on a winged sphinx, raising one hand in blessing and holding a sceptre that ends in an ear of grain.

What is the relationship between Baal Hammon and Tanit?

Tanit was Baal Hammon’s partner in the Carthaginian cult, and votive stones at Carthage are addressed to them both. The usual formula names Tanit first, calling her Face of Baal, and Baal Hammon second.