The sanctuary of Aphrodite at Old Paphos (the modern Kuklia)
was one of the most celebrated shrines in the ancient world.
According to Herodotus, it was founded by Phoenician colonists from
Ascalon; but it is possible that a native goddess of fertility was
worshipped on the spot before the arrival of the Phoenicians, and
that the newcomers identified her with their own Baalath or Astarte,
whom she may have closely resembled. If two deities were thus fused
in one, we may suppose that they were both varieties of that great
goddess of motherhood and fertility whose worship appears to have
been spread all over Western Asia from a very early time. The
supposition is confirmed as well by the archaic shape of her image
as by the licentious character of her rites; for both that shape and
those rites were shared by her with other Asiatic deities. Her image
was simply a white cone or pyramid. In like manner, a cone was the
emblem of Astarte at Byblus, of the native goddess whom the Greeks
called Artemis at Perga in Pamphylia, and of the sun-god
Heliogabalus at Emesa in Syria.
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