Asherah

For the small research submarine, see Asherah (submarine).

Asherah (from Hebrew אשרה), generally taken as identical with the Ugaritic goddess Athirat (more accurately transcribed as ʼAṯirat), was a major northwest Semitic mother goddess, appearing occasionally also in Akkadian sources as Ashratum/Ashratu and in Hittite as Asherdu(s) or Ashertu(s) or Aserdu(s) or Asertu(s).

In Ugarit

In the Ugaritic texts (before 1200 B.C.E.) Athirat is three times called ʼaṯrt ym, ʼAṯirat yammi, 'Athirat of the Sea' or as more fully translated 'She who treads on the sea', the name understood by various translators and commentators to be from the Ugaritic root ʼaṯr 'stride' cognate with the Hebrew root ʼšr of the same meaning. The sacred sea (lake) upon which Asherah trod was known as Yam Kinneret and is now called Lake Galilee.

In those texts, Athirat is the consort of the god El and there is one reference to the 70 sons of Athirat, presumably the same as the 70 sons of El. She is not clearly distinguished from ʿAshtart (better known in English as Astarte), although Ashtart is clearly linked to the Mesopotamian Goddess Ishtar. She is also called Elat (the feminine form of El; compare Allat) and Qodesh 'Holiness'.

Among the Hittites this goddess appears as Asherdu(s) or Asertu(s), the consort of Elkunirsa and mother of either 77 or 88 sons.

In Egypt

In Egypt, beginning in the 18th dynasty, a Semitic goddess named Qudshu ('Holiness') begins to appear prominently, equated with the native Egyptian goddess Hathor. Some think this is Athirat/Ashratu under her Ugaritic name Qodesh. This Qudshu seems not to be either ʿAshtart or ʿAnat as both those goddesses appear under their own names and with quite different iconography and appear in at least one pictorial representation along with Qudshu.

But in the Persian, Hellenistic and Roman periods in Egypt there was a strong tendency towards syncretism of goddesses and Athirat/Ashrtum then seems to have disappeared, at least as a prominent goddess under a recognizable name.

In Israel and Judah

Biblical references have been taken to indicate that a goddess Asherah was worshipped in Israel and Judah, as the Queen of Heaven whose worship Jeremiah so vehemently opposed:

"Seest thou not what they do in the cities of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem? The children gather wood, and the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead their dough, to make cakes to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto other gods, that they may provoke me to anger."

—Jeremiah 7:17–18

"... to burn incense unto the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink offerings unto her, as we have done, we, and our fathers, our kings, and our princes, in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem ..."

—Jeremiah 44:17

The Hebrews baked small cakes for her festival.

Asherah pole

The word asherah also refers to a standing pole of some kind, pluralized as a masculine noun when it has that meaning. Among the Hebrews' Phoenician neighbors, tall standing stone pillars signified the numinous presence of a deity, and the asherahs may have been a rustic reflection of these. Or asherah may mean a living tree or grove of trees and therefore in some contexts mean a shrine. These uses have confused Biblical translators. Many older translations render Asherah as 'grove'. There is still disagreement among scholars as to the extent to which Asherah (or various goddesses classed as Asherahs) was/were worshipped in Israel and Judah and whether such a goddess or class of goddesses is necessarily identical to the goddess Athirat/Ashratu.

Most of the forty references to Asherah in the Hebrew Bible derive from sources edited by the Deuteronomist. Tilde Binger notes in her study, Asherah: Goddesses in Ugarit, Israel and the Old Testament (1997, p. 141), that there is warrant for seeing an Asherah as, variously, "a wooden-aniconic-stela or column of some kind; a living tree; or a more regular statue." For Asherah often a wooden-made rudely carved statue planted on the ground of the house was her symbol, and sometimes a clay statue without legs and stood in the same way. Her cult images— "idols"— were found also in forests, carved on living trees, or in the form of poles beside altars that were placed at the side of some roads.

When the young reformer Hezekiah came to the throne of Judah (possibly some time around the 7th century B.C.E.) "He removed the high places, and broke the pillars (massebahs), and cut down the Asherah." (2 Kings 18.4). In the Authorized Version of the Bible, the name Asherah is always mistranslated "grove". That error caused a theory that "the Hebrews cut down all the sacred groves, whereupon the land soon stopped flowing with milk and honey" (see deforestation).

Asherah and other gods

At Kuntillet 'Ajrud (in Hebrew Horvat Teman) in the Sinai Desert in the 1975 excavation, a pottery ostracon was inscribed "Berakhti et’khem l’YHVH Shomron ul’Asherato" ("I have blessed you by YHVH of Samaria and His Asherah"). This inscription would appear to show northern Israelite influence but others have suggested that "Shomron" should be read “shomrenu”, "our Guardian". There may also be another reference to YHVH and His Asherah in an inscription on the building wall.

Scholars have argued that Kuntillet 'Ajrud was a sacred site but others suggest it was a resting place, of a religious nature, for travellers following trade routes through the Sinai of the eighth century B.C.E.

An additional reference to YHVH and His Asherah, has been found at Khirbet el-Qom, near Hebron, where an inscription reads "Blessed be Uriyahu by Yahweh and by his Asherah; from his enemies he saved him!" (Berlinerblau).

These inscriptions have raised great speculation. At Kuntillet there are accompanying drawings (not a later Hebrew custom) and more fundamentalist scholars argue that the oasis was a center of the religious cross-fertilization called syncretism.

Ashira in Arabia

A stele, now at the Louvre, discovered by Charles Huber in 1883 in the ancient oasis of Tema (modern Tayma), southwestern Arabia, and believed to date to the time of Nabonidus's retirement there in 549 B.C.E., bears an inscription in Aramaic which mentions Ṣalm of Maḥram and Shingala and Ashira as the gods of Tema. This Ashira might be Athirat/Asherah. Since Aramaic has no way to indicate Arabic th, corresponding to the Ugaritic th (more pedantically written as ṯ), if this is the same deity, it is not clear whether the name would be an Arabian reflex of the Ugaritic Athirat or a later borrowing of the Hebrew/Canaanite Asherah.

Asherah and `Ashurah

In the ancient lunar calendar that became the Islamic calendar, the Day of ʿAshurah, transliterated also as Aashurah, Ashura or Aashoorah, falls on the 10th day of Muharram. On that day, in the year of the Hejira 61 (AD 680), Husayn bin Ali, the grandson of Muhammad was killed by Umayyad forces at the Battle of Karbala (now in Iraq). Still called by its ancient name, the Day of Ashurah, it has been observed ever since as a day of mourning by Shī`ites.

The name `Ashurah is interpreted as meaning "ten" in Arabic. (The normal Arabic word for ten is `asharah cognate to the Hebrew root `śr = "ten", the differing forms of s being the normal correspondence found in cognate roots between Arabic and Hebrew.)

Some try to connect the Arabic :Ashurah instead to the goddess Athirath/Asherah through the Ashira of Tema. But :Ashurah with initial letter :ain (ﻉ) is difficult to equate with 'Asherah; with beginning 'alef (here indicated by an apostrophe but normally omitted initially in popular transliterations from Semitic languages).

The connection is controversial. It is as though in English one were to say that the word juice refers to the god Zeus. The sound difference is very distinctive to Arabic ears. Yet cognate Semitic roots display this switching between ain and alif, and some Arabian accents pronounced, and indeed still do pronounce `ain as a glottal stop (like the tribe of Tamim whose name is given to this way of pronunciation).

Asherah in fiction

In the science fiction book Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson, Asherah is portrayed as a meta-virus brought to earth naturally or by alien broadcast. The Sumerian figure Enki is a proto-hacker or as Stephenson puts it "a neurolinguistic hacker" who uses his ability to manipulate people through language to introducing sentience to mankind and save them from the restrictive dogma of Asherah. Modern day glossolalia is attributed to a resurgence of the "cult of Asherah" and the meta-virus in humanity.

The worship of 'Asherat of the Sea' plays a large part in the plot of Jacqueline Carey's novel Kushiel's Chosen, placed in a fantasy version of Venice.

In the video game, Fire Emblem 'Path of Radiance', Ashera is a goddess, worshipped by the entire world. Armor blessed by the goddess can only be penetrated by weapons that are also blessed.

See also

• Asherah pole
• El in Ugarit El (god)
• Elohim (God [plural], the pantheon of gods or divine beings in general)
• The Hebrew Goddess

Related publications

• William G. Dever: Did God Have A Wife? Archaeology And Folk Religion In Ancient Israel (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company 2005)
• Judith M.Hadley: The Cult of Asherah in Ancient Israel and Judah (U of Cambridge 2000)
• Jenny Kien: Reinstating the Divine Woman in Judaism (Universal 2000)
• Asphodel P. Long: In a Chariot Drawn by Lions (Crossing Press 1993).
• Raphael Patai: The Hebrew Goddess (Wayne State University Press 1990 and earlier editions)
• Steve A. Wiggins: A Reassessment of "Asherah": A Study According to the Textual Sources of the First Two Millennia B.C.E. (Kevelaer: Verlag Butzon & Bercker; Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1993).

External links

• Asherah
  • Asphodel P. Long, "The Goddess in Judaism - An Historical Perspective"
  • "Asherah, the Tree of Life and the Menorah"
  • Jewish Encyclopedia: Asherah
  • University of Birmingham: Deryn Guest: Asherah
  • El (god) in Ugarit.
  • Lilinah biti-Anat, Qadash Kinahnu Deity Temple "Room One, Major Canaanite Deities"
• Kuntillet inscriptions
  • Jacques Berlinerblau, "Official religion and popular religion in pre-Exilic ancient Israel" (Commentary on Yahweh's Asherah.)
  • ANE: Kuntillet bibliography
  • Jeffrey H. Tigay, "A Second Temple Parallel to the Blessings from Kuntillet Ajrud" (University of Pennsylvania) (This equates Asherah with an asherah.)
• Israelite Religion
  • David Steinberg, "Israelite Religion to Judaism: the Evolution of the Religion of Israel"

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