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Detail from a clay cult stand discovered at Taanach, a little village in Israel, dating back to the X century B.C. On this object two Canaanite divinities have been identified: a male one (Baal) and the other a goddess (Athirat), the latter represented with two lions at her sides. Athirat was a West Semitic goddess whose name derived from the verbal form “to walk” and at Ugarit she was called the “Lady Walking on the Sea”. She was also known as the “mother of the gods”.
The name of the goddess Athirat is related to the Hebrew term ašerah, meaning “holy place”, and was sometimes confused with it. The presence of some epigraphic documents in which is found the expression “Yahweh and His ašerah” has brought some scholars into the supposition of the existence of an ancient female divinity who was the consort of the Hebrew god. However, in the Old Testament the term refers exclusively to holy places, generally connected with the presence of trees or groves, sometimes associated with a pole or a standing stone, whose phallic aspect was a reference to a symbolism related to the fertility of humans and fields. No explicit documentation relates these places with a female goddess, nevertheless the themes of fertility and generative force, expressed in the growth of vegetation, unite these Jewish traditions to the vast complex of the goddesses cults widely spread throughout the Ancient Near East (Lipinski 2005b). The object is in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

[Image: http://stock.irablock.com/media/8a635616-e3d5-11e0-a126-81da66260745-cult-stand-of-taanach]




Female Symbols

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Detail from a clay cult stand discovered at Taanach, a little village in Israel, dating back to the X century B.C. On this object two Canaanite divinities have been identified: a male one (Baal) and the other a goddess (Athirat), the latter represented with two lions at her sides. Athirat was a West Semitic goddess whose name derived from the verbal form “to walk” and at Ugarit she was called the “Lady Walking on the Sea”. She was also known as the “mother of the gods”. The name of the goddess Athirat is related to the Hebrew term ašerah, meaning “holy place”, and was sometimes confused with it. The presence of some epigraphic documents in which is found the expression “Yahweh and His ašerah” has brought some scholars into the supposition of the existence of an ancient female divinity who was the consort of the Hebrew god. However, in the Old Testament the term refers exclusively to holy places, generally connected with the presence of trees or groves, sometimes associated with a pole or a standing stone, whose phallic aspect was a reference to a symbolism related to the fertility of humans and fields. No explicit documentation relates these places with a female goddess, nevertheless the themes of fertility and generative force, expressed in the growth of vegetation, unite these Jewish traditions to the vast complex of the goddesses cults widely spread throughout the Ancient Near East (Lipinski 2005b). The object is in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. [Image: http://stock.irablock.com/media/8a635616-e3d5-11e0-a126-81da66260745-cult-stand-of-taanach]