What is "melqart"

Melqart ( Phoenician: , lit. Melek-qart, "King of the City"; Akkadian: Milqartu) was the tutelary god of the Phoenician city of Tyre. Melqart was often titled Ba‘l Ṣūr, "Lord of Tyre", and considered to be the ancestor of the Tyrian royal family. In Greek, by interpretatio graeca he was identified with Heracles and referred to as the Tyrian Herakles.

As Tyrian trade and colonization expanded, Melqart became venerated in Phoenician and Punic cultures from Lebanon to Spain. The first occurrence of the name is in a 9th-century BCE stela inscription found in 1939 north of Aleppo in today northern Syria, the "Ben-Hadad" inscription, erected by the son of the king of Aram, "for his lord Melqart, which he vowed to him and he heard his voice".