The Religion of Ancient Palestine in the Second Millenium B.C.

by Stanley Arthur Cook

CHAPTER VI

THE GODS

Their vicissitudes.—The deities were not originally personifications of any one power of nature; like the secular heads of small local groups they were the supreme patrons of their little circle. They were usually nameless, but were known by an epithet, or were styled 'god' (el) or 'lord, owner' (baal), with the corresponding feminine form. Each might be distinguished by the name of its locality. The 'god' of Sidon was otherwise the 'Baal' of Sidon, the 'goddess' of Byblos was known as the 'Baalath' of the city; the Baal of Tyre was called Melkart, i.e. simply 'king of the city'; the proper-name of the Baal of Harran was Sin (the moon-god); the Baal of Heaven, according to Philo of Byblos, was the Sun. When Baal and El were used as generic terms, their application was perfectly intelligible locally; and when they occur in forty or more place-names, and numerous old personal names in Palestine, it is unnecessary to suppose that they represent two distinct and definite deities. From the old Palestinian names we learn that the deity is high, great and good; he opens, builds, heals, sows, gathers; he remembers, hastens, helps, protects, blesses, etc.[[1]] Such conceptions would be generally true of all; the power of each was not unlimited, but it extended to all that man usually desired.

[[1]] Apart from names whose meaning is uncertain (e.g. Jacob-el, God supplants?), the list could be easily enlarged; a number of names of western (as opposed to the usual Babylonian) type can be gleaned from the records of the First Babylonian Dynasty.

From the general resemblance subsisting between the distinct local gods it was possible to regard them as so many forms of a single god; and when groups combined and individual gods were fused, multiplicity of types ensued. The status of a local tutelary was affected when commercial intercourse widened the horizon of both the traveller and the native; and in the growth of political power and the rise of a kingship the conceptions entertained of the deity's attributes and powers were elevated. Through the extension of authority the way lay open to groups of gods who could not be fused, and equally to the superiority of one national patron deity over the rest. Political or other changes led to the promotion of this or the other god, and prominent or specialised deities in superseding others acquired fresh attributes, though local divergencies were again necessarily retained. This does not complete the vicissitudes of the gods or the intricacies caused by assimilation or identification. A popular epithet or appellative could appear by the side of the proper deity as a new creation, or the deity was sub-divided on cosmical and astral theories. The female deity (whose name may be without the usual distinguishing mark of gender) could even change her sex; the specific name could also become employed as a common term for any deity, and the plural 'gods' could be applied to a single being as a collective representation of the characteristics it embodied.

Amid the intricate careers of the great names, the local deities obstinately survived in popular religious life. They have found their parallel in the welis or patrons, saints and holy sheikhs of the modern shrines (see pp. 21 sqq.). The modern analogy is instructive in many points of detail, particularly when we observe the vicissitudes which the occupants of the shrines have experienced. It is natural to ask for the ancient counterparts of the Allah, the supreme god in the official religion, who, as we have said, is vague and remote in the practical religious life of the peasant of to-day. A series of well-defined historical events made him pre-eminent over all other gods and goddesses and established Mohammedanism; internal and external causes shaped the varying conceptions of his nature, and gave birth to numerous sects. All the Oriental religions have this twofold aspect: the historical circumstances which affected the vicissitudes of the deities, and the more subtle factors which have influenced forms of belief. But we have no direct information upon the rise of the general conditions in Palestine during our period, and such problems as the origin of the term El 'God' (common to all the Semitic peoples) belong to the pre-historic ages.

Their representative character.—When the gods reign like feudal princes over their principalities their sphere is limited and other districts or kingdoms belong to other gods. Residence in an alien land brought one under the influence of alien gods, whose reality was not denied, though their power could be variously estimated. At Serabit, for example, the Egyptians had combined the worship of their god Sopdu with that of the local 'lady of turquoise,' whom they identified with their Hathor, and the caves and temples of both stood side by side. The Egyptian inscriptions there refer to 'the gods and goddesses of this land,' and an officer, probably of the Twelfth Dynasty, encourages a cult which was largely utilitarian: 'Offer ye to the mistress of heaven, appease ye Hathor; if ye do it, it will be profitable to you; if ye increase to her, it shall be well among you.' Some centuries later, we read that Ramses III., desirous of the precious treasures, sent clothes and rich presents to his 'mother' Hathor, 'lady of the turquoise.'

The relationship between countries and their respective national gods (cp. Judges xi. 24) is frequently illustrated. When Tushratta, king of Mitanni, writes to Amenhotep III., he ascribes a victory to the weather-god Teshub (if that was the native name), and trusts that his lord Teshub will never permit him to be angry with his 'brother' the king of Egypt. Similarly, he prays that the sun-god (Shamash) and the goddess Ishtar may go before his daughter and make her in accord with the king's heart.[[2]] On the other hand, it is 'the gods,' or Teshub and Amon (of Egypt),[[3]] who will make the present alliance a lasting one, and his gods and those of his 'brother,' or Ishtar, 'lady of ladies,' and Amon who will guard the damsel on the journey and give her favour with the king.

[[2]] In the names in chapters vi. and vii., the more familiar Astarte is employed for Ashtart (Old Testament, Ashtoreth). Where cuneiform evidence is used the Babylonian form (e.g. Shamash, Ishtar) is usually retained.

[[3]] Amon, the predominant god of Egypt, owed his rise from an obscure local deity of Thebes to the political growth of the city. He was then assimilated to Re (the solar-orb) of Heliopolis.

Towards the close of the reign of Amenhotep III. Tushratta despatched to Egypt, Ishtar of Nineveh 'lady of lands, lady of heaven,' in pursuance to her oracle 'to the land that I love I will go.' She was doubtless sent to exercise her powers in Egypt, and Tushratta expresses the hope that the king may revere her tenfold more than on the occasion of a previous visit. He also invokes a hundred thousand years and great joy for his 'brother' and himself. There is a parallel to this in the late popular story where Ramses II. sent one of the images of Khonsu (moon-god and god of healing) to cure a Hittite princess, the sister of his queen, of an evil spirit. The god accompanied by a priest was received with all reverence, the demon was expelled and allowed to depart in peace to the place he desired, and a great feast was celebrated. Indeed, the Hittite chief kept the useful god with him for nearly four years, when, frightened by a vision of the god flying upwards towards Egypt, he restored it to its rightful soil. The very human limitations of the deities render it necessary that some representation or emblem should be employed when their help is required.

In political Treaties and Covenants the representative gods of the respective countries are invoked as witnesses, and their curses are expected to fall upon the defaulter. It was generally felt that curses as well as blessings had a very real potency, and the thrilling denunciations at the end of Khammurabi's Code of Laws and contemporary examples from Egypt threaten desolation, hunger, thirst, flaming fire, and the avenging pursuit of the gods. Political treaties are instructive for the light they throw upon the ruling powers. In Esarhaddon's treaty with Baal, king of Tyre (677-6 B.C.), the gods of the latter are Baal-shamen (Baal of heaven), two other specified Baals, Melkart of Tyre, Eshmun and the goddess Astarte. Later, in Hannibal's covenant with Philip of Macedon, the Carthaginian gods are enumerated in two triads, then follow the gods who took part in war, and finally, sun, moon, earth, rivers, harbours (?) and streams. But the most illuminating example is the Egyptian version of the treaty (about 1290), between Ramses II. and the Kheta (Hittites), the two great rival influences over the intervening lands. Here the representative heads of Egypt and the Kheta are respectively the sun-god Re and Sutekh (i.e. Set, the Egyptian equivalent of a weather- or storm-god whose native name can only be conjectured). Formerly, we learn, '[the] god prevented hostilities' between the two lands by treaty, and this new pact is made for 're-establishing the relations which Re made and Sutekh made for the land of Egypt with the land of Kheta' to prevent future warfare. The thousand gods male and female both of the Kheta and of Egypt are called to witness. Those of the former are particularly interesting, they comprise the sun-god lord of heaven, the sun-god of the city of Ernen (also called 'lord of every land'), Sutekh lord of heaven, Sutekh of Kheta, Sutekh of the city of Ernen, and the Sutekh of various specified cities, Antheret (probably Astarte) of the land of Kheta, nine gods and goddesses of certain named cities. Next come 'the queen of heaven; gods, lords of swearing; the mistress of the soil, the mistress of swearing, Teshker, the mistress of the mountains, and the rivers of the land of Kheta,' and, finally, the gods of a North Syrian ally of Kheta. On the Egyptian side are Amon, the sun-god, Sutekh (here an Egyptian deity, see p. [83]), the male and female gods of the mountains and the rivers of Egypt, of the heavens, the soil, the great sea, the wind and the storms. The treaty also bore a representation of the king of the Kheta and his queen embraced respectively by Sutekh the ruler of the heavens, and a goddess whose name is lost. To the gods of Palestine there is no reference; Palestine did not enjoy political independence.

The Influence of Egypt.—Our latest source is the Egyptian account of the visit of Wenamon to Byblos to procure cedar-wood from Lebanon for the sacred-barge of Amon-Re, King of Gods (about 1100). The human messenger took with him the divine messenger in the shape of a statue of 'Amon-of-the-Way,' reputed to confer life and health; a sacred image upon which no common eye might gaze. When at length Zakarbaal granted an interview (see p. [54]), he was inclined to ignore the political supremacy of Egypt, although he appears to allow that Amon had civilised Egypt and thence all lands, and that artisanship and teaching had come from Egypt to his place of abode. Wenamon, for his part, showed that former kings not only sold cedars to Egypt, but spent their lives sacrificing to Amon. Even the evidence of 'the journal of his fathers' did not remove the king's reluctance. But the envoy urged the claim of Amon to be lord and possessor of the sea and of Lebanon, and solemnly warned Zakarbaal: 'wish not for thyself a thing belonging to Amon-Re, yea the lion loves his own.' Ultimately the king sent the wood, and he commemorated his obedience to Amon-Re by an inscription which was likely to be profoundly beneficial. For, as the envoy observed, should Byblos be visited by Egyptians who were able to read the stele with his name (the all-essential adjunct), he would 'receive water in the West (the world of the dead where the sun-god descended nightly) like the gods who are here' (presumably at Byblos).

Although the narrative is written from an Egyptian standpoint, the conviction which is ascribed to Zakarbaal finds a parallel in the familiar story of the journey of Osiris, the founder of Egyptian civilisation, from the Delta to Byblos. Even before the Hyksos period Egyptian women named themselves after the Baalath of Byblos whom they identified with Hathor and evidently regarded as an appropriate patroness.[[4]] The connection between Egypt and the port of Lebanon may have been exceptionally close, but there were Egyptian settlements at Gezer, Megiddo, and the north at an equally early age. Under the conquerors of the Eighteenth Dynasty, the daughters of the small tributaries were taken into the royal harem, and the sons were removed as hostages and safely guarded in Egypt. Some of the latter settled down, others were appointed in due course to the thrones of their fathers, after having received the necessary anointing-oil from the great king. One of the latter recalls in the Amarna letters how he had served the king in Egypt and had stood at the royal gate, and from the grave-stone of a Palestinian soldier at El-Amarna we may see how settlement upon Egyptian soil had led to the acceptance of Egyptian ideas of the other world.

[[4]] A. Erman, Zeitschrift fur Aegyptische Sprache, xlii. p. 109.

Meanwhile Palestine and Syria were under the direction of Egyptian authorities, to whose presence the Amarna letters frequently allude, and one of the writers quaintly likens the solicitude of a certain official on his behalf to that of a mother or a father. Where there were Egyptians or where princes had been in Egypt, some trace of the national religion may be expected, and it is probable that every military garrison possessed some kind of sanctuary. Moreover, Thutmose III. had dedicated three cities in the Lebanon district to Amon; later, Egyptian gods 'dwelt' in the north at Tunip. A stele, a few miles south of Tell 'Ashtarah (cp. the name Ishtar) in Bashan represents Sety I. offering a libation to Amon, and the pure Egyptian workmanship points to a strong foreign influence in the locality. Ramses II. set up a statue of his majesty in Tunip, and a city in South Lebanon was called after his name. Still descending, we read that cities were set apart for Amon-Re in the reign of Ramses III., and this king built in Canaan 'a mysterious house like the horizon of heavens which is in the sky' (i.e. the abode of the sun-god), with a great statue of 'Amon-of-Ramses-ruler-of-Heliopolis,' to which the natives brought tribute, 'for it was divine.'

Elsewhere, Ramses III. asserts that he built strongholds in Asia in honour of Amon, taxing them year by year to bring their offerings to the ka of the 'lord of gods.' Accordingly, down to the first half of the twelfth century the cult of Amon followed the extension of Egyptian supremacy, and although the subsequent political history is obscure, the story of Wenamon would indicate that some sixty or seventy years later the prestige of the god's name was not entirely lost. Wenamon's claim corresponds to the explicit recognition (in the Amarna letters) that the land belonged to Egypt's gods; it was the natural corollary of political extension. Like Zakarbaal and his ancestors, all the tributary princes were expected to acknowledge the suzerainty of Egypt's king and his deity. To refrain from sacrificing to the conqueror's gods was one of the signs of open revolt, as we know from Assyria and Babylonia. The king identified himself with the sun, like the contemporary Hittite king Subbiluliuina and other monarchs, from Khammurabi 'the Sun of Babylonia' who 'caused light to go forth over the lands of Sumer and Akkad' to the Assyrian Shalmaneser II. Although the result is confusing, the subordinate chiefs of Palestine and Syria were accustomed to the thought. They address the king as their gods, their Sun, the son of the Sun whom the Sun loves, the Sun in heaven, the Sun of the lands, or the everlasting Sun. This deified Sun or Shamash (to retain the Babylonian form) answers to the Egyptian Re or Amon. So Abimilki (Abimelech) of Tyre writes, 'My lord is the Sun which goes up over the lands daily according to the decision of the Sun (Shamash) his gracious father.' And again, 'I have said to the Sun, the father of the king, my lord, "when shall I see the face of the king, my lord?"' Another writer ascribes his victory to the king's gods and Sun which went before his face. The chief of Megiddo, in a letter interesting for its glosses in the native language, announces his intentions should the king's gods assist him, and other writers invoke the god or gods of the king and acknowledge the might of Shamash. Nevertheless, the identification of the Egyptian and the Asiatic sun-god would not, and probably did not, prevent them from being regarded as two deities, and a private tablet at Taanach not only recognises the god Amon and the weather-god Addu, but even appears to add Shamash. It is natural to suppose from the identification of the king, the sun, and the national sun-god Amon (or Shamash) that many apparently ordinary rites had a deeper significance, whether it was the anointing of a vassal or the fasting for a dead monarch (p. [56]). The custom of offering sacrifices on behalf of kings is well attested, and it is possible that the position of divine kings throws light upon the fact that the king of Cyprus has to explain his failure to send a representative to Egypt when Amenhotep was celebrating a sacrificial feast.

The Treatment of Alien Gods depends largely upon political relations (cp. pp. 69 sqq.). New settlers might add the established deities of the soil to their own. A conqueror might recognise the deities of the district to which he laid claim. The gods of a defeated land were not invariably deposed, although the Assyrian kings would sometimes destroy them or present them to their own deities. Mesha king of Moab (about 850 B.C.) records that he brought before his god certain captured objects of cult, and it is possible that the pillar at Gezer which is not of local origin had a history of this kind (p. [14]). The Philistines were dismayed at the 'mighty gods' which the Hebrews, in accordance with a familiar custom, took with them into battle, and, on another occasion, their own gods, left behind in their flight, were carried away by David (1 Sam. iv. 8, 2 Sam. v. 21). The mere capture of the gods was sometimes enough to lead to overtures for peace. But an Assyrian king would even repair the dilapidated captive deities, and having inscribed upon them the 'might' of his god and the 'writing of his name' would restore them to a trusted vassal. In Palestine the petty rulers enjoyed considerable freedom provided they paid their tribute, and supported their suzerain. We do not learn that Egypt sought to amalgamate subdued peoples and make of them 'one folk' (lit. mouth), as was claimed by Tiglath-Pileser I. and other Assyrian kings. Nor do we find that the Egyptian king sent skilled emissaries to teach (as Sargon II. says) 'the fear of God and the king,' although, if the reference be merely to the promulgation of the official cult, this was probably the chief results also of Egypt's supremacy.

On the other hand, a Syrian prince who had recaptured his Sun-god from the Hittites besought Amenhotep III. (whom he addresses as 'Son of Shamash') to put his name upon it as his fathers had done in the past. The text is somewhat obscure, but the recognition of the Asiatic Shamash is clear, and intelligible on the identification of Shamash and Amon-Re. So, also, when the king of Byblos asserts that 'the gods, Shamash, and the Baalath' of the city had brought about the king's accession, we have to remember that the goddess had long before been identified with the Egyptian Hathor. At a later date, a stele found north of Tell 'Ashtarah depicts Ramses II. paying homage to a deity whose crown, horn, and Semitic title prove him (or her) to be a native deity whom the king evidently respected.[[5]] Respect for alien gods ceases when they are found to be powerless; but Egypt was constantly troubled by her warlike Asiatics, and so far from their gods being ignored or rejected, they entered Egypt and found an extremely hospitable reception (see Chapter vii). Asiatic conquerors in Egypt appear to have been less tolerant. The Hyksos ruled 'in ignorance of Re,' and their god (Sutekh) was planted in the land; and, later, during the brief period of anarchy when a Palestinian or Syrian chief held Egypt until his overthrow by Setnakht, the upstarts 'made the gods like men and no offerings were presented in the temples.' We may assume then that the religion of our land remained practically unchanged during Egyptian supremacy except in so far as this involved the official recognition of the Egyptian national god and his representative upon the throne.

[[5]] Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins, xiv. p. 142, xv. p. 205. The stele, known as the 'stone of Job,' has entered into the worship of a Moslem place of prayer, and is appropriately connected with a story of the patriarch, many traditions of whom are current in this part of Hauran.