Eshmun

The healing god of Sidon, identified by Greek writers with Asclepius and worshipped at a major sanctuary at Bustan esh-Sheikh near the city, where excavated dedications and a therapeutic spring attest a cult of physical healing continuing into the Roman period. His only surviving foundational myth is preserved secondhand, in the sixth century CE Neoplatonist Damascius's "Life of Isidore": a beautiful young man of Beirut, hunting, is pursued by the goddess Astronoe, and mutilates himself to escape her advances; Astronoe restores him to life and divinity, transforming a mortal youth into the healing god worshipped afterward at Sidon. The tale survives only through Damascius's late, philosophically framed retelling, centuries after Phoenician religion as a living practice had receded, so it should be read as a Greek-language echo of an older Phoenician story rather than the story in its own words.