Origin of Phoenician religious concepts

As their trading and military abilities had developed, so had the religion of the Phoenicians. To what extent their religious ideas were home--grown or imported is hard to say, since so little evidence has so far been found of the origin of Canaanite, or Phoenician, culture save that it is the coastal culture of the hinterland Assyria. One concept that seems to have been borrowed from their trading partners the Egyptians is that of the importance of the entrance to the next world. Such was the importance the Egyptians attached to this idea that when the two Egyptian Kingdoms, North and South were united, a great Obelisk or Pillar was erected at each of the Capitals, Memphis and Thebes, (one of these obelisks is now in London, Cleopatra's Needle, which stands on Victoria Embankment on the North Bank of the River Thames, and the other in France whose tip is dramatically viewed a mile and a half away from the Church of the Madeleine in Paris when looking from its door to the front door of the Royal Palace three miles away). The concept proposed that the passage of the Sun each day in its arching route over them symbolised re-birth at sunrise and repeated death at sunset of the great god Ra each day, and described allegorically the entrance to the next world.

The Phoenicians had established a religion by which they believed that God, Melqart, which means in Aramaic "The Lord (Melq) of the City (Qart)". Melqart was to be worshipped at the Temple erected to his name in Tyre. We know that one of the features of the Temple of Melqart at Tyre was a pair of pillars, one at each side of the entrance. It is also known that entrance to the temple of Melqart at Tyre was permitted only to the High Priests.

Biblical and Egyptological concepts of The Pillars

According to the Book of Kings, and recorded in great detail by Flavius Josephus in "The Antiquities of the Jews" (written in 79 AD), in about 969 BC, Solomon, King Kingdom of Judeah, adjacent to the Kingdom of Tyre, decided to build a Temple to replace the tented structure in which was kept the Ark of the Covenant, the gilt wooden chest containing the Tablets of the Law which according to the Bible was given by God to Moses during the flight from Egypt. According to Josephus Solomon sent word to Hiram, King of Tyre, whom, he recognised, had the expertise and the necessary materials, that he wished to have this temple built as one of the great buildings of its time, and as one entirely worthy of its sacred purpose. Although we do not yet know what, if any, the allegorical significance of the Pillars outside the Temple of Melqart at Tyre was to the Phoenicians, it is recorded in the Book of Kings, and Josephus repeats it, that at the entrance of the first Temple at Jerusalem were a pair of bronze pillars, cast in the nearby desert by Hiram, (the 'architect' who had been sent by King Hiram from Tyre) whose mother was a widow from the tribe of Naphtali (1 Kings ch7 v13 and also according to Josephus), as two great hollow bronze cylinders (about 9 feet in diameter and 34 feet high, with a thickness to their bronze walls of about 2 inches), one of which contained the Scrolls of the Law. He was also, according to Kings 1, a great worker in Wood, Brass, Bronze, Glass and a number of other materials. One of the pillars was finished in silver and the other was gilt and studded in emeralds. To Solomon the Pillars represented the dual Pillar, which had assisted his people in their flight from Egypt. The account in the Bible of the flight from Egypt, the Exodus, of the enslaved Jews states that God provided Moses with "a pillar of fire by night to show your People the way (hence the Emeralds on Gold, which would operate together to shine and refract the sun's rays), and a pillar of smoke (hence the Silver finish) by day to hide them from the sight of the soldiers of the Pharaoh, that your People might be saved from his wrath" (Exodus ch13 vs21-22). None but the High Priest and then only one High Priest in each generation might enter the Holy of Holies in King Solomon's Temple, and the Inner Sanctum, The Holy of Holies, only on a particular day of the year, the Day of Atonement, so we know that to the population in general the Pillars of Solomon's Temple, which may have been based on the architectural language of the Pillars of the Temple to Melqart at Tyre (the architectural vernacular of Hiram the architect according to Flavius Josephus), symbolised an extremely clear and restrictive prohibition, the entrance to a sacred and secret place. So strict was the prohibition that a rope was tied to the High Priest when he entered, and bells sewn onto the rim of his garment. The bells advised those outside that the High Priest was moving in his prayer, and the rope would serve to remove the High Priest from the Temple should he die or collapse while he was inside, thus avoiding the risk that any caring assistant might be tempted to rush into the Temple in a medical emergency.