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Melqart (less accurately Melkart, Melkarth or Melgart (Greek disposed of the letter Q (Qoppa), replacing it with additional use of K (Kappa) and G (Gamma)), Akkadian Milqartu, was the tutelary god of the Phoenician city of Tyre, as Eshmun protected Sidon. The name is a slight compression of Phoenician Milk-Qart "the King of the City". Melqart was often titled Ba‘al Ṣur "Lord of Tyre", the ancestral king of the royal line. In Greek he was normally referred to as the Tyrian Herakles and in Latin as the Tyrian Hercules, presumably because of a close resemblance to the Greek hero/god Herakles in mythology and cult.