Adonis in Canaanite Myth: Love, Death, and Rebirth

The legend of Adonis

With the emergence of the Phoenicians at the beginning of the first millennium BC and the rise of coastal Lebanon, the legend of Baal was fading away in the plains and valleys, and in its place arose the legend of Adonis with a local rhythm and adjacent to the climates of Mesopotamia and the Nile.

The Canaanites called the god of Byblos “Adon,” meaning “master” or “Lord.” Adon is a Mesopotamia god of origin represented by the Sumerian Dumuzi and Babylonian Tammuz, the gods of pastures, fertility and beauty, who were linked in a love affair with the two goddesses: Inanna with Damuzi and Ishtar with Tammuz, and this love duo was the origin of love myths in the ancient world.

Adon also has a symmetrical relationship with Osiris, the Egyptian god and his wife Isis, and the cult of Adonis traveled to Egypt and had a temple in the ancient city of Pharos “Alexandria”, and on the other hand, the legend of Osiris extended to the city of Byblos and he and his wife had a temple there. But Adon moved in the first millennium BC to the country of the Greeks and then the Romans and became called “Adonis”, while his beloved Astarte was compared to the Greek goddess Aphrodite (the Roman Venus) and we still lack the original Canaanite or Phoenician legend of the god Adon; but the Roman version of it is the one that has reached us, and it is on the tongue of the Roman poet Ovid.

The worship of Adonis in Syria and Lebanon seems to have been relatively late, but we find a Greek reference to him in the fifth century BC. Documents speak of annual festivals held for him, with much weeping and wailing, in Athens and Alexandria under the Ptolemies (Ptolemy II), then in Byblos and Antioch around the second century AD, and his worship reached Rome around the first century BC.

Table of Characters in the Adonis Myth

Character / Element	Role in the Narrative
Adonis (Adon)	Beautiful youth linked to seasonal life–death–renewal; hunted to death by a boar; source of the anemone motif.
Myrrha	His mother; transformed into the myrrh tree after the taboo union; Adonis is born from the tree’s split bark.
Aphrodite / Venus	Goddess who falls in love with Adonis; warns him against dangerous hunts; mourns him and inspires the flower myth.
Persephone	Queen of the underworld who fosters the child Adonis; disputes custody with Aphrodite.
Zeus	Arbitrates the dispute: Adonis’s year is divided among Aphrodite, Persephone, and Adonis’s own choice.
Eros / Cupid	Agent of fateful desire; in some tellings shoots the shafts that kindle Myrrha’s passion.
Boar	The beast that fatally wounds Adonis during the hunt—often read as a symbol of untamed nature or divine jealousy.
Byblos / “Adonis River”	Levantine cult–landscape where Adonis’s blood mythically reddens the waters; center of ritual mourning.
Anemone Flower	Springs from Adonis’s blood; emblem of love cut short and cyclical rebirth.

The birth of Adonis

The tragic love of Myrrha and her father

Myrrha was a very beautiful girl who once bragged to the goddess Venus about the softness of her hair, so Venus envied her and condemned her to fall in sinful love with her father, so she directed the angel of love, Cupid, to shoot her with love arrows while she was asleep. But Myrrha rejected them all, and the love of her father grew inside her until she told her nanny one day, who arranged a trick for her to meet her father and make love with him.

She waited until the father was drunk, so the nanny entered and told him that one of his slaves wanted to have sex with him. The father agreed, and his daughter “Myrrha” entered with a scarf on her face so that she would not allow her father to recognize her, and so she made love to him. After some time, she conceived a fetus from this profane love, and then she made love again several times with her father until he discovered her one day and got out of bed with a sword in his hand to kill her; but she escaped in the darkness and left the palace wandering on her face. When her due date approached, she prayed to the gods to become between life and death and turn into a tree.

Transformation into the myrrh tree and the miraculous birth

The earth gathered around her feet, her fingers stretched and turned into thin roots, her leg turned into a tree trunk, her hands turned into branches, her bones turned into wood, her skin turned into bark, and so she turned into the myrrh tree, which is used as incense on the festivals of Adonis. When the hour of her birth approached, the bark of the tree split and the newborn emerged from its trunk, and the grandmother of the nymphs hurried to pick him up, wash him with his mother's tears and put him on the grass, and the child was beautiful and resembled the goddess.

Marcantonio Franceschini (1648–1729), "Birth of Adonis," circa 1685, oil on copper, 48.5 x 69 cm, Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Accession No. 390), Source: ArtKnowledgeNews.com, References: Bildindex der Kunst und Architektur, object 32000785

Aphrodite and Persephone's dispute over Adonis

Aphrodite hides the child in the underworld

Aphrodite was watching the scene of Adonis' birth, and her heart was attached to him because of his beauty, so she descended from heaven and took the child and put him in a box and wanted to hide him from the eyes of people and the gods, so she descended to the underworld and asked her sister “Persephone”, the queen of Hades and goddess of the underworld, to keep him and take care of his upbringing.

Zeus divides Adonis’s time between the goddesses

Adonis grew up in the arms of Persephone, and she was also attached to him, and the two sisters quarreled and complained to the god Zeus to judge between them, so he ordered that Adonis' year be divided into three sections (each section in four months); the first third would be with Aphrodite, the second third with Persephone, and the last third would be left for Adonis to spend freely with one of them, so Adonis chose to spend it with Persephone in the earthly world.

Infographic – The Adonis Myth at a Glance

🌳 Born from the myrrh tree after Myrrha’s tragic fate.
💔 Loved by Aphrodite/Venus, contested by Persephone.
🩸 Killed by a wild boar during the hunt—symbol of decline.
🌺 From his blood sprang the red anemone flower.
♻️ Myth reflects cycles of love, death, and seasonal rebirth.

Venus and Adonis

Adonis’s passion for hunting

Adonis spent a third of the year with Venus. Adonis's hobby was hunting, and he hunted indifferently, but Venus watched him from her celestial chariot and fell in love with him and tried to seduce him; but he was not interested in her, and her love for him intensified until she was able to drag him into a violent carnal love.

Venus’s warnings and Adonis’s fatal wound

She warned him about the animals he hunted, and one day she told him the story of Atlanta, who beat Hippomenes in running, and she married him; but they made a mistake when they made love in a temple and desecrated its shrine, turning into two lions who lived in the jungle. But Adonis did not heed these warnings, and a wild boar that the hounds were chasing came out to him, and Adonis threw his spear at it, but the boar uprooted the spear, followed Adonis, and bit his thigh near his testicles with its tusk, and Adonis wriggled and died on the sand alone.

Blood of Adonis

The mourning of Venus in Byblos

Venus heard the moans and the sound of Adonis' pain, and she was on her chariot led by winged swans towards Cyprus, so she turned her white birds towards Byblos in Lebanon, and when she arrived there, she was frightened and saddened by the sight of Adonis' blood, so she decided to turn Adonis' blood into a red color that sweeps white flowers, and so Venus poured the nectar of a fragrant flower on the blood of Adonis, and the blood boiled and clear bubbles rose from it, then a flower emerged from among the blood, a flower the color of blood, the anemone flower.
In order to analyze this Roman myth and trace it back to its Canaanite origin, we will analyze some of the events as follows: -

Cornelis Holsteyn (1618–1658), "Venus and Cupid Lamenting the Dead Adonis" (1655), oil on canvas, 99 x 207 cm, Frans Hals Museum (Accession No. os I-224), signed lower left: CHolsteyn.ƒe; CH merged. References: Lib-Art, Frans Hals Museum, WGA (RKDimages ID: 2491)

Adonis and his relationship with the sky

We cannot fail to notice the name of Adonis' mother “Myrrha”; this name reminds us of the name “Mora” which was the name given to the land of Palestine, which in our opinion has a great relationship with the Amorites, whose god “Martu” was their national deity.

Adonis and his relationship with the sun

We see that “Adon” is a deep corruption of the word “Atun” which means the sun, and its origin is the Sumerian sun god “Utu”, the friend of Damuzi (the shepherd god), the Egyptian sun god that Akhenaten raised to the level of absolute monotheism “Atun”. There are references to Adonis' relationship with the sun in his appearance and disappearance every six months; he appears during the spring and summer seasons, strong and bright, and disappears or reduces his light during the fall and winter seasons, which explains the periodic appearance of Adonis every six months, so if Baal explains the seven-season cycle of fertility of the earth, Adonis explains the four-season cycle.

Adonis and his relationship with plants

Adonis is considered by many to represent the spirit of the plant; he was born by his mother, the myrrh tree, and before that he fed on the sap of plants. His life cycle represents the life cycle of a plant; when he is a seed in the ground, then appears in the spring until the fall, when he withers and his seeds fall to the ground, and so on. People used to worship Adonis, rejoicing at his birth and weeping at his death for the love of plants, especially wheat, which was their first source of food. The anemones also refer to the union of Adonis' blood or soul with the plants, turning it into a red color, and the legend states that Adonis' blood flowed into the River Abraham, which was called the “River Adonis”, where Adonis' blood mixed with the river water, turning the river water red

Adonis' roots are in Tammuz

Tammuz and Ishtar (originally Sumerian: Damozi and Inanna); Tammuz disappears into the underworld and Ishtar searches for him when she descends to this world and is killed by her sister Ereshkigal, then the goddess decrees that Tammuz stays six months on earth and six months underground.

Key Takeaways

Adonis fuses Greek–Roman storytelling with Levantine cult geography (Byblos) and Near Eastern seasonal myth.
His life–death–renewal arc explains cyclical fertility, mirrored by the anemone and ritual mourning.
Aphrodite and Persephone’s rivalry maps love/eros against death/underworld in a calendrical partition of time.
Motifs echo older Near Eastern figures (Dumuzi/Tammuz) while adapting to Hellenistic–Roman poetics.
Hunting and the boar stage the clash between human desire and untamed, perilous nature.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Who is Adonis in ancient mythology?

A youth of extraordinary beauty linked to seasonal life, death, and rebirth; loved by Aphrodite and mourned at Byblos.

Why do Aphrodite and Persephone dispute over Adonis?

Each claims him: Aphrodite for love and life on earth; Persephone as ward of the underworld. Zeus divides Adonis’s year between them.

How does Adonis die?

He is fatally gored by a boar during a hunt, a scene read as the turning of the fertile season toward decline.

What is the meaning of the anemone flower?

It springs from Adonis’s blood, symbolizing love cut short and nature’s cycle of return.

Is Adonis related to Near Eastern deities?

Yes. His cult resonates with Dumuzi/Tammuz traditions of seasonal disappearance and return.

Why is Byblos important in the Adonis myth?

Byblos in Lebanon hosted mourning rites; the local river was poetically said to redden with Adonis’s blood.

What does the custody division tell us?

It encodes a calendar: time with Aphrodite (growth) alternates with Persephone (dormancy/underworld).

Is the story purely Greek–Roman?

No. The literary form is classical (e.g., Ovid), but themes and cult practice reflect Levantine/Canaanite layers.

Sources

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Translated eds. (various). Classical Latin source for the Roman literary version of Adonis.
Burkert, Walter. Greek Religion. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985.
Smith, Mark S. The Ugaritic Baal Cycle. Leiden: Brill, 1994.
Day, John. Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan. London: T&T Clark, 2000.
Pardee, Dennis. Ritual and Cult at Ugarit. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2002.
Dalley, Stephanie. Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood, Gilgamesh, and Others. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.