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.'