Heliopolitan Triad
In early modern scholarship, a cult to a supposed Heliopolitan Triad of Jupiter Heliopolitanus, Venus and Mercury (or Dionysus) was thought to have originated in ancient Canaanite religion, adopted and adapted firstly by the Greeks, and then by the Romans when they colonised the city of Heliopolis (modern Baalbeck) in the Beqaa Valley of Lebanon. The Canaanite god Baʿal (Hadad) was equated with Jupiter Heliopolitanus as sun-god, Astarte or Atargatis with Venus Heliopolitana as his wife, and Adon, the god of spring, with either Mercury or Dionysus as third member of the triad, son of Heliopolitan Venus and Heliopolitan Jupiter.