The one distinct example I can think of is how religiously tolerant the Greeks were to the Phoenicians and vice versa when they both lived in poleis around the Western Mediterranean in the seventh century B.C., and especially on Sicily. It was clear through archaeological remains of artifacts and buildings that there were Phoenician gods and names adopted by the Greeks when they both sailed in the waters of the Western Mediterranean waters. This was done in an effort to create better trade and cultural relations between the Phoenicians and the Greeks according to some ancient historians. Irad Malkin talks about this in his book, A Small Greek World: Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean (Greeks Overseas). The most clear example of two pagan religions tolerating each other was when the Greeks and Phoenicians praising of two heroes, the Greek Hercules and the Phoenician Melqart. These were heroes that fulfilled two very similar roles in each other mythologies so both heroes’ cults were adopted by both cultures. This would the best example I think of two pagan religions in the early Archaic Period that are accepting of each other. There is also another example of how pagan religions tolerated each other another the same time in the Eastern Mediterranean, in the Greek trade port in Egypt called Naukratis.

Nine Greek poleis Chios, Klazomenai, Teos, Phocaea, Rhodes, Halicarnassus, Knidos, Phaselis, and Mytilene were the poleis that shared a temple in Naukratis called the Hellenion. It was a place that these Greek poleis built where any Greek in the area could praise the Greek gods when they traded at Naukratis. However, it seems that the Egyptians allowed them to make this temple because they did not like the ideas of the Greek religion. This is shown through the absence of Egyptian religious objects in the excavations of Naukratis and it many temples. So while the Egyptians did not seem to mind the Greeks being there because of their trading prowess and the commodities they brought Egypt, it seemed that the pharaoh wanted them to have their own place of worship. A fact that doesn’t surprise me because of the overwhelming amount of exceptionalism the Egyptians thought they possessed in the ancient world over other civilizations.

So it is clear from these two examples, that there was religious tolerance between pagan religions in the Archaic Mediterranean world. However sometimes it was kept separated from certain populations because of their leader’s beliefs about their own culture. Then there were cases where the gods of both cultures were incorporated into the culture like on Sicily and other Mediterranean islands like with the Phoenicians. So in sum, the ancient pagan religions were tolerant of each other as long as the religion itself didn’t break the rules of the society or stop certain citizens from paying tribute. This was the religious tolerance policy that the first Persian king, Cyrus the Great, adopted because he just needed money to lead his empire, not religious backing. So while this does not paint the complete picture of ancient world religious tolerance, it does show there was some religious tolerance between the pagan cultures of the Mediterranean and the ancient Near East.