The Cult of the MOther Goddess in Palestine
The presence of the symbol of the goddess Asherah
next to Yahweh'saltar most naturally suggests that she was regarded in syn-
cretistic circles as Yahweh'sconsort. The Kuntillet 'Ajrud inscriptions date
from about 800 B.C.and thus give us a direct insight into the nature of the
popular religion so scathingly condemned by Israel's preexilic prophets. It
is natural to recall the later Aramaic papyri from Elephantine in Egypt, in
which the god Yahu (i.e., Yahweh) appears to have a consort in the form of Anat-Yahu.23 It is understandable that in certain circles Yahweh should have
Asherah as a consort, since Asherah was originally El's consort and we
know that El and Yahweh were equated in ancient Israel.
left represents Yahweh in the form of
a bull and the figure in the middle depicts the goddess Asherah.
Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and Northwest Semitic Literature
Author(s): John Day
Source:
Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 105, No. 3 (Sep., 1986), p
https://www.andrews.edu/weblmsc/moodle/public/courses/relb274/lesson02/lesson02supp02.pdf
| 1979
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| In: |
Shenatôn ha-miḳrâ u-le-heḳer ha-mizraḥ ha-ḳadûm ...
Year: 1979, Volume: 3, Pages: 129-137 |
|---|
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdf/10.1086/369770
the officially recognized worship of the national god Yahweh
under the form of a bull.
Another pervasive metaphor for ANE kings is that of the bull;82 kings are
imagined as bull-calves, either the sons of powerful divine mothers, who in their
ability to bestow abundance are portrayed as cows, or as sexually potent young
bulls destined to please Inanna/Ištar. Hence, in Sumerian poetry Bilgameš is often
referred to as a bull83 and his mother Ninsun/Ninsumun is mentioned as the Wild
Cow.84 In fact, Enmerkar, Lugalbanda and Bilgameš – the three legendary kings of
Uruk systematically honoured in later legends – were repeatedly praised through
bull imagery.85 Affluent cities were also characterized as bulls: hence, in the Lord
of Aratta Uruk (known as Kulaba or Unug Kulaba) is referred to as a “majes-
tic bull bearing vigour and great awesome splendour” and its king, the son of
the Sumerian Sun god Utu (dumu dutu, for example, l.68, 104, etc.), born of the
“good cow . . . in the heart of the mountains” (ll.179–82), appears as a skilled
ox driver (l.206).
the Babylonian akītu to the “divine bull, [the] brilliant light which burns the darkness”
The reference to the Persian king as bull is appropriate
not only for the allegorical context of Pythia’s responses in which the king stands for
the sacrificial victim
the association between bulls, divinity, and kingship was still
strong in the Near East. As a result, though bovine symbolism was deeply ingrained in Greek
myth and ritual, a human figure with bovine attributes had more emphatic Near Eastern
associations. Two particular aspects of Near Eastern bovine symbolism seem to have affected the
Classical Greek reception of the Minotaur: the tradition of a bull-headed or bull-horned deity and
the shamanistic ritual of bull-mask or bull-horn wearing.
He sailed to the far West
to steal the cattle of Geryon and defeated the Cretan Bull as part of his 12 canonical labours.
the PIE root *gʷou- means "ox, bull, or cow" and is the direct ancestor of the English word "cow", the Greek bous (as in bovine), and the Sanskrit go.
*gwou-
Proto-Indo-European root meaning "ox, bull, cow," perhaps ultimately imitative of lowing; compare Sumerian gu, Chinese ngu, ngo "ox."
The Germanic Gott and the English God come from another Indo-European root, Go, which surprisingly means "the bull".p. 49, Gods of Love and Ecstasy: The Traditions of Shiva and Dionysus by Alain Danielou.
In the god-list An:Anum (53), the title of balang servant-gods was written with the logogram GUD.BALAĜ, where GUD is the logogram for the bull.
From bull to god was a small gap to jump in Mesopotamian culture: anthropomorphic gods carried horns on their headgear, betraying an original bovine nature. According to the ritual, it happened by way of the death of the bull. It was important that it was not a working animal, not touched by goad or stick in the ritual, even less touched by civilization in the OB version of the oratorio Uru’amma’irabi an undomesticated aurochs bull.
Balang-gods were given the title GUD.BALAĜ in An:Anum, a term translated as mumtalku ‘the one with whom one takes counsel, confidant’ in KAV 64 II 17. The same function was expressed in Sumerian with the title ad-gi4-gi4, literally ‘sound repeating’, in conventional translation ‘adviser’, or as we might say ‘sounding board’.Gabbay (PHG:103–109) pointed out that the designation GUD.BALAĜ is restricted to An:Anum, not attested as Sumerian word, and probably a logogram of ad-gi4-gi4 ‘adviser’.
“(Sumerian) Harpist (= Akkadian) seer, BALAĜ = lyre.” [62]
The conventional transliteration of the word for lyre is gi-na-ru12-um. The sign GI was used to write /ki/ elsewhere in Ebla texts, and the Hebrew word, kinnōr begins with /k/. The word na-ṭi3-lu-um has been understood to mean ‘to raise one’s voice’. [63] In Akkadian, it means ‘to raise one’s eyes, observe’, and at Mari is also as substantive, ‘observer’. An observer (igi-du8) working with the balang instrument, used to control weather-storms, is attested in Ur III texts (29, cf. Section 3c2).
The Sumerian expression “its porch of the balang was a princely sounding bull (21)” may refer to the fact that the cover of the soundbox was a bull hide rather than to the actual cattle-like sound.
wolfgang heimpel on sumeriaTo see this we will consider two Sumerian hymns to the Moon-god, Nanna-Suen, that were studied by my teacher Professor Wolfgang Heimpel in the Festschrift for Ake Sjoberg, where the stars are referred to as cows and cattle, living in heavenly cattle pens
The cult of Zeus Atabyrios on Rhodes, for example, revered cattle
who were supposed to bellow if danger was near and was likely influenced by the influence of
Phoenician worship of the horned god, Baal Tabor.
The hieros gamos is also present
in mythology in the union of Zeus and Io, Zeus and Europa, and Pasiphae and the bull. Morris
writes that the union between Pasiphae and the bull “derives from legendary encounters between
gods-as-bulls and women, common in Near Eastern images and myths.”295 She draws special
attention to the union between a god as a bull and a goddess in the story of Baal and Anat.296 In
the story of Pasiphae and the birth of the Minotaur, the Greeks effectively reject this tradition:
the union between bull and mortal woman inevitably result in the birth of a monster.
two points in Hebrew history. Not only do we find an explana-
tion of the representation of Yahwe in the Desert and later at
Bethel, and Dan by the bull, but we may see how it was that Ahaz
copied the altar at Damascus. 51Veare told, II ilQings16:10-16>
that when, after Tiglath-pileser had conquered Damasous, and
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