Patriarchal Palestine

by A. H. Sayce

The borrowing, however, was not altogether one-sided. Palestine enriched the literary language of Babylonia with certain words, though these do not seem to have made their way into the language of the people. Thus we find words like bin-bini, "grandson," and înu, "wine," recorded in the lexical tablets of Babylonia and Assyria. Doubtless there were writers on the banks of the Euphrates who were as anxious to exhibit their knowledge of the language of Canaan as were the Egyptian scribes of the nineteenth dynasty, though their literary works have not yet been discovered.

The adoption of the Babylonian system of writing must have worked powerfully on the side of tincturing the Canaanitish language with Babylonian words. In the age of the Tel el-Amarna tablets there is no sign that any other system was known in the West. It is true that the letters sent to the Pharaoh from Palestine were written in the Babylonian language as well as in the Babylonian script, but we have evidence that the cuneiform characters were also used for the native language of the country. M. de Clercq possesses two seal-cylinders of the same date as the Tel el-Amarna correspondence, on one of which is the cuneiform inscription—"Hadad-sum, the citizen of Sidon, the crown of the gods," while on the other is "Anniy, the son of Hadad-sum, the citizen of Sidon." On the first, Hadad-sum is represented standing with his hands uplifted before the Egyptian god Set, while behind him is the god Resheph with a helmet on his head, a shield in one hand and a battle-axe in the other. On the seal of Anniy, Set and Resheph again make their appearance, but instead of the owner of the cylinder it is the god Horus who stands between them.

When the cuneiform syllabary was superseded in Palestine by the so-called Phoenician alphabet we do not know. The introduction of the new script was due probably to the Hittite invasion, which separated the Semites of the West from the Semites of the East. The Hittite occupation of Carchemish blocked the high-road of Babylonian trade to the Mediterranean, and when the sacred city of Kadesh on the Orontes fell into Hittite hands it was inevitable that Hittite rather than Babylonian influence would henceforth prevail in Canaan. However this may be, it seems natural to suppose that the scribes of Zebulon referred to in the Song of Deborah and Barak (Judges v. 14) wrote in the letters of the Phoenician alphabet and not in the cuneiform characters of Babylonia. As long, indeed, as the old libraries remained open and accessible, with their stores of cuneiform literature, there must have been some who could read them, but they would have been rather the older inhabitants of the country than the alien conquerors from the desert. When the Moabite Stone was engraved, it is clear from the forms of the letters that the Phoenician alphabet had long been in use in the kingdom of Mesha. The resemblance of these letters to those found in the earliest of the Greek inscriptions makes it equally clear that the introduction of the alphabet into the islands of the Ægean must have taken place at no distant period from the age of the Moabite Stone. Such an introduction, however, implies that the new alphabet had already taken deep root among the merchants of Canaan, and driven out before it the cumbrous syllabary of Chaldæa. It was in this alphabet that Hiram and Solomon corresponded together, and it is probable that Moses made use of it. We may even conjecture that the Israelitish settlement in Palestine brought with it the gift of the "Phoenician" alphabet.

As we have already seen, the elements of Babylonian art were quickly absorbed by the Canaanites. The seal-cylinder was imitated, at first with but indifferent success, and such Babylonian ornamental designs as the rosette, the sacred tree, and the winged cherub were taken over and developed in a special way. At times the combination with them of designs borrowed from Egypt produced a new kind of artistic ornament.

But it was in the realm of religion that the influence of Babylonia was most powerful. Religion, especially in the ancient world, was inextricably bound up with its culture; it was impossible to adopt the one without adopting a good deal of the other at the same time. Moreover, the Semites of Babylonia and of Canaan belonged to the same race, and that meant a community of inherited religious ideas. With both the supreme object of worship was Baal or Bel, "the lord," who was but the Sun-god under a variety of names. Each locality had its own special Baal: there were, in fact, as many Baals, or Baalim, as there were names and attributes for the Sun-god, and to the worshippers in each locality the Baal adored there was the supreme god. But the god resembled his worshipper who had been made in his image; he was the father and head of a family with a wife and son. The wife, it is true, was but the colourless reflection of the god, often indeed but the feminine Baalah, whom the Semitic languages with their feminine gender required to exist by the side of the masculine Baal. But this was only in accordance with the Semitic conception of woman as the lesser man, his servant rather than his companion, his shadow rather than his helpmeet.

The existence of an independent goddess, unmarried and possessing all the attributes of the god, was contrary to the fundamental conceptions of the Semitic mind. Nevertheless we find in Canaan an Ashtoreth, whom the Greeks called Astarte, as well as a Baal. The cuneiform inscriptions have given us an explanation of the fact.

Ashtoreth came from Babylonia. There she was known as Istar, the evening star. She had been one of those Sumerian goddesses who, in accordance with the Sumerian system, which placed the mother at the head of the family, were on an equal footing with the gods. She lay outside the circle of Semitic theology with its divine family, over which the male Baal presided, and the position she occupied in later Babylonian religion was due to the fusion between the Sumerian and Semitic forms of faith, which took place when the Semites became the chief element in Babylonia. But Sumerian influence and memories were too strong to allow of any transformation either in the name or in the attributes of the goddess. She remained Istar, without any feminine suffix, and it was never forgotten that she was the evening-star.

It was otherwise in the West. There Istar became Ashtoreth with the feminine termination, and passed eventually into a Moon-goddess "with crescent horns." Ashtoreth-Karnaim, "Ashtoreth with the two horns," was already in existence in the age of Abraham. In Babylonia the Moon-god of ancient Sumerian belief had never been dethroned; but there was no Moon-god in Canaan, and accordingly the transformation of the Babylonian goddess into "the queen of the night" was a matter of little difficulty.

Once domesticated in Palestine, with her name so changed as to declare her feminine character, Ashtoreth soon tended to lose her independence. Just as there were Baalim or "Baals" by the side of Baal, so there were Astaroth or "Ashtoreths" by the side of Ashtoreth.