Glossary Religion and cult
Reshef
Also called: Resheph
A Canaanite and Phoenician god of plague, war and protection, worshipped in Iron Age Cyprus and equated there with Apollo.
Reshef came to Cyprus with Phoenician settlement and was honoured at Idalion and Tamassos. Phoenician and Greek bilingual inscriptions of the fourth century BCE from these towns name him beside Apollo under local epithets, one of the clearest cases of the island's paired gods. His sanctuary at Idalion, often called that of Apollo-Reshef, is one of the main find-places of temple boys.
Related terms
- Syncretism
The merging or equating of gods from different cultures, so that one deity is worshipped under two names or with combined features.
- Astarte
A Phoenician goddess associated with love, fertility and war, worshipped in Iron Age Cyprus at Kition, Tamassos and elsewhere.