Divinity in Part or in Full?

Tanit (tnt) was a word used in Phoenician as a divine title and as the name of a goddess who was fundamentally relational. The epithet tnt pn bʿl, “Tanit Face-of-Baʿal,” shows that Tanit was the sky god Baʿal’s mouthpiece, face, or some other manifestation of a part of him. The epithet both indicates that these gods formed a paredros, or divine pair, and that the pairing had something to do with the interdependence of their bodies. It is believed that Tanit was represented in art aniconically, anthropomorphically, and in the form of the so-called sign of Tanit. The last is a usually diminutive motif in which a grouping of quasi-corporeal elements resulted in a schematic human form. This brief survey of texts and images argues that the “sign of Tanit,” like the epithet tnt pn bʿl, expressed the transcendence of the natural world through the rejection of corporeal wholeness. Both the “sign” and the epithet underscore the extra-human qualities of the Tanit and Baʿal pairing, especially with respect to the interrelation and appearance of their bodies.