Civiltà e Religioni, n. 10 (2024), ISSN 2421-3152 The Making of a God. The Baal Oz of the Trophy Inscription (Larnaka, Cyprus) * Giuseppe Garbati Institute of Heritage Science, National Research Council of Italy (Rome) giuseppe.garbati@cnr.it Abstract A Phoenician inscription found in Larnaka (Cyprus) in 1990 records the offering of a trophy to the god Baal Oz, “Lord of Strength”. The object was dedi- cated by Milkyaton, king of Ki- tion and Idalion, during the first year of his reign (392/391 BCE). The offering followed the victo- ry that was won – granted by the god, as the epigraph states – over certain enemies (who are not named in the text). Quite apart from its importance for the re- construction of the eventful his- tory of Cyprus, the document is undoubtedly of interest since it represents to date the only attes- tation of the onomastic formu- la b‘l ‘z. The objective of these notes is therefore to re-examine the inscription as a whole in an attempt to frame historically the figure of Baal Oz and to recog- nize some of the mechanisms through which divine qualifiers were “constructed” in the Phoe- nician context. Keywords Phoenicians, Cyprus, Baal Oz, theonyms, epicleses. * This work is the result of a period of scholarship spent at the Getty Villa Museum in Malibu, Los Angeles (CA, USA) from April to June 2023. I would like to thank all my colleagues at the Villa and at the Getty Center for their support. I am especially grateful to Mireia López Bertran, who was the first to read the original notes from which this article is derived. Moreover, several colleagues and friends helped me with their brilliant suggestions: I thank especially Corinne Bonnet, Rossana De Simone and Sergio Ribichini. I warmly thank also Dr. Giorgos Georgiou, Director of the Dept. of Antiquities of Cyprus for sending me the photographs of the “trophy inscription” (inv. MLA 1513), preserved in the Archaeological Museum of the Larnaka District, granting the permission to use them in the present article. Lastly, this contribution belongs to a wider project, which I coordinate, called “MAGO. Making Gods: The Role of Ritual Practice in the Construction of Divinities” (https://www. ispc.cnr.it/it_it/eventienews/mago-making-gods-ciclo-di-seminari-su-rituali-e-denominazi- oni-nei-politeismi-antichi/). This study is dedicated to the memory of Maria Giulia Amadasi Guzzo, who had the generosity to follow and guide the maturation of the reflections pre- sented here. I really owe her a lot, both on a professional and personal level.