Ashtoreth, The Goddess of Zidonians - Grey Hubert Skipwith PDF
Ashtoreth, The Goddess of Zidonians - Grey Hubert Skipwith PDF
Ashtoreth, The Goddess of Zidonians - Grey Hubert Skipwith PDF
Early
Journal
Content
on
JSTOR,
Free
to
Anyone
in
the
World
This
article
is
one
of
nearly
500,000
scholarly
works
digitized
and
made
freely
available
to
everyone
in
the
world
by
JSTOR.
Known
as
the
Early
Journal
Content,
this
set
of
works
include
research
articles,
news,
letters,
and
other
writings
published
in
more
than
200
of
the
oldest
leading
academic
journals.
The
works
date
from
the
mid-‐seventeenth
to
the
early
twentieth
centuries.
We
encourage
people
to
read
and
share
the
Early
Journal
Content
openly
and
to
tell
others
that
this
resource
exists.
People
may
post
this
content
online
or
redistribute
in
any
way
for
non-‐commercial
purposes.
JSTOR
is
a
digital
library
of
academic
journals,
books,
and
primary
source
objects.
JSTOR
helps
people
discover,
use,
and
build
upon
a
wide
range
of
content
through
a
powerful
research
and
teaching
platform,
and
preserves
this
content
for
future
generations.
JSTOR
is
part
of
ITHAKA,
a
not-‐for-‐profit
organization
that
also
includes
Ithaka
S+R
and
Portico.
For
more
information
about
JSTOR,
please
contact
support@jstor.org.
ASHTORETH, THE GODDESS OF THE ZIDONIANS 7I5
VOL. XVIII. 3 A
716 THE JEWISH QUARTERLYREVIEW
the light, perhaps the sun, the other the heavens ." And,
in the present instance, no Egyptian would have failed to
recognize a Horus in the hawk upon the seal of Abiba'al.
"Some said that the sky was the Great Horus, Haro6ris,
the sparrow-hawk of mottled plumage, which hovers in
highest air, and whose gaze embraces the whole field of
creation2." In this case the sky is also regarded as a
face (horQ), of which the Sun is the right, and the Moon
the left eye. On the other hand, "whether under the name
of Horus or of Anhfri, the sky was early identified with
its most brilliant luminary, its solar eye, and its divinity
was as it were fused into that of the Sun3." This is
parallel to the identification of Sin, or Nannar, with Anu,
the Moon-god with the Lord of Heaven.
Again, the Sky was regarded as a female divinity,
having either the human form4, or that of a cow5, "a
large-eyed H&thor, of beautiful countenance 6.' Hat-hor,
"the abode of Hor," was naturally considered as his
mother, and is therefore represented bearing the solar disk
between her horns 7; a piece of symbolism important for
our purpose, since it was applied to the goddess of Byblos,
the ba'alath Gebal, who is thus represented on the stele
of king Jehawmelek in the Persian period 8. But it would
in my opinion be a mistake to seek in this direction
the origin of the Disk and Crescent. "The Egyptian
emblem of the moon became a half-moon with the sun
or a star above it," says Prof. Meyer, with a certain lack
of precision 9. If we turn to The Dawn of Civilization,
1 Perrot and
Chipiez, op. cit., II, 268, note citing Clermont-Ganneau.
2 E. B., art.
Phoenicia, ? 8.
3 Dawn ' P. and C., I, fig. 234.
of Civilization, p. 22i.
5 Ibid., 6 Ibid., I, figs. 58 and I99.
II, fig. 47.
7 Explorations in Bible Lands during the Nineteenth Century,by H.V. Hilprecht
. . . with the co-operation of ... Benzinger... Hommel . .. Jensen . .
Steindorff, Philadelphia, I903, p. 763; cf. p. 271.
ASHTORETH, THE GODDESS OF THE ZIDONIANS 725
Yes; but if you invoke the aid of a god, you must needs
call upon his name, and when you pay your vows you
must in like manner come before his presence. When,
therefore, we meet with divine appellations which may
1 Perrot and
Chipiez, Phoen., II, fig. 267, pp. 343-6 (description of
Clermont-Ganneau).
2 Art. Phoen., col. 3744.
726 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
It will then be seen that she holds really the second place,
as vicar and visible representative of the supreme god.
Nor is this conception merely fanciful. The second triad
is distinctly symbolized by two monuments figured in the
work of Perrot and Chipiez 2. A curious group discovered
in the cemetery of Tharros, in Sardinia, is composed of
" a large rectangular stele, decorated on its face with a
disk and crescent moon in relief; right and left a pyramidal
cippus with a double moulding about its summit. All
three of these columns stand upon a single base." And
a similar group is represented on the well-known stele of
SPz:n 1: K3nfrom Lilybaeum, only that in this case the
1 I am bound to state a fact apparently unfavourable to this hypo-
thesis-the discovery at Bord-el-Djedid of a Punic inscription of nine
lines, commencing with these words: "' To the Goddess Ashtoreth and to
the Goddess Tanith of Lebanon, two new sanctuaries" (Monthly Review,
July, I904, "Recent Excavations'in Carthage," by Miss Mabel Moore,
pp. 133, I34). This is evidence for an Ashtoreth distinct from Tanith;
not that "Tanith of Lebanon" was not an Ashtoreth and 3aifzwv KapXt,-
Boviwv. The text is given in Cooke, North Semitic Inscriptions.
2 Phoenicia, E.
T., I, figs. 174 and 232.
730 THE JEWISH QUARTERLY REVIEW
disk and crescent are placed above, and not upon, the
midmost and highest of the three pillars. The disk is
here so small that it must stand for the star of Ishtar,
as at Paphos. I shall presently show the identity of Tanith
with the deity of disk and crescent. It is remarkable that
this group should occur on a stele dedicated to in i p.
Who now are the inferior members of the triad? The
answer is not far to seek. As Ashtoreth, or Tanith, stands
to Rachel, so must her consort the "Heracles" of the
Greek Treaty, stand to the wrestler hero, of whom it could
be said, MK:p;Y,or i 45nW7;and so must "Iolaos" stand
to " Benjamin," I should perhaps have placed the son,
rather than the suitor, at the right hand of the matriarch.
If this was the position assigned to him in the cultus,
it would furnish an explanation of his name.
Evans, in The Mycenaean Tree and Pillar Cult, p. 41,
fig. 22, has given another representation of the triad of
pillars surmounted by the Tanith symbol, which occurs
on a stele from Nora in Sardinia. "On the Carthaginian
stelae," he writes, "it is not infrequent to see three divine
pillars like truncated obelisks, grouped together within
the same shrine and upon a single base ... Elsewhere we
see two groups of three pillars and the divine symbols
above them, and on a monument from Hadrumetum as
many as nine pillars in a triple group of three occur on
a single base'." Unfortunately the distinguished anti-
quary has failed to correlate these triads of sacred pillars
with the trinities of divine persons enumerated in the
Greek Treaty.
Of the stelai of Tanith, found by thousands on the site
of Carthage, one among the simplest and rudest is no
more than a " naive rendering " of a conical stone 2, closely
similar to that which formed the object of worship at
Paphos. The apex of the cone is surmounted by a circle
to suggest the head, and crossed by a transverse bar to
1
Referring to Pietschmann, Geschichteder Phonizier, p. 205.
2 Perrot and Chipiez, Phoen., I, fig. 29.
ASHTORETH, THE GODDESS OF THE ZIDONIANS 731
already met her in Sardinia'. It is the same with the robed and
seated goddess2, who is encounteredwith a different head-dress,and
her arms in another position, in the western island 3. In Phoenicia,
Cyprus, and Rhodes, no type was more popular than that of the
woman, priestess or deity, who presses a dove against her breast;
many examples have been found at Tharros,and in other Sardinian
cemeteries; they 4 are, however, less careful in 'execution than their
eastern congeners."
In the chapter especially devoted to Cyprus and Cypriot
Sculpture , a whole section deals with "Figures of
Divinities," especially with those, often of extreme rude-
ness, which represent a goddess of Fertility under various
forms.
"There was a whole series of monuments in which the goddess
mother is shown seated upon a throne and holding her child across
her knees6. This goddess no doubt presided over child-birth;
Ariadne-Aphrodite was especially honoured at Amathus as the
patroness of women in labour7. Several small groups in stone or
terra-cottahave been found in Cyprus; they must have been ex-votos,
to record some happy delivery. In one example8, now in the
Louvre,we see a seated woman with another woman fainting upon
her knees, while a third kneels before them with a baby in her
arms9
In such objects, we are dealing, not I think with a
different class of deities, but with a different kind of
worship, from that previously discussed; with the domestic
cultus of the women as opposed to the public religion
of the State. In the necropolis of Idalion, and in the
oldest of the 15,000 tombs explored by Cesnola, repre-
senting the earliest period in the civilization of Cyprus,
we are toldl0:
"A constant relation could be traced between the character of
1Perrot and 2 Ibid., I, fig. 20.
Chipiez, II, fig. 15.
3 Ibid., II, fig. 46. 4 Ibid., I, fig. 142.
5 Ibid., II, chap. ii. 6 Ibid., II, fig. io1.
7 "In the sacred grove of Aphrodite-Ariadne at Amathus in
Cyprus was
also shown her tomb,"Evans, op. cit., p. 22. Need I again refer to the
death, and grave, of Rachel ?
8 Ibid. II, 9 Ibid., II, p. 15I.
fig. I2.
10 Ibid., I, p. 2i8.
ASHTORETH,THE GODDESSOF THE ZIDONIANS 737