STACK 
 ANNEX 
 
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 071 
 542 
 
 ANCIENT- & -MODERN 
 
 THE RELIGION 
 
 OF ANCIENT 
 
 PALESTINE 
 
 
 
 * Yl'Zl*
 
 2>0
 
 RELIGIONS ANCIENT AND MODERN 
 
 THE RELIGION OF 
 ANCIENT PALESTINE
 
 RELIGIONS: ANCIENT AND MODERN 
 
 Animism. By EDWARD CIX>DD, author of The Story of Creation. 
 Pantheism. By JAMBS ALLAHSON PICTON, author of The Religion of t\t 
 
 Universe. 
 The Religions of Ancient China. By Professor GILM, LL. D. , Professor 
 
 of Chinese in the University of Cambridge. 
 The Religion of Ancient Greece. By JAMX HARBISON, Lecturer at 
 
 Newnh&ra College, Cambridge, author of Prolegomena to Study of Greek 
 
 Religion. 
 Illam. By the Rt. Hon. AMUR ALI HYBD, of the Judicial Committee of His 
 
 Majesty's Priry Council, author of Tht Spirit of Islam and Ethics of lAam. 
 Magic and Fetishism. By Dr. A. 0. H ADDON, F.R.S., Lecturer on 
 
 Ethnology at Cambridge University. 
 The Religion Of Ancient Egypt. By Professor W. M. FLINDERS PKTRIB, 
 
 F.R.S. 
 The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. By THIOPHILUB G. PINCHBS, 
 
 late of the British Museum. 
 Early Buddhism. By Professor RHTS DAVIDS, LL.D., late Secretary of 
 
 The Royal Asiatic Society. 
 Hinduism. By Dr. L. D. BARUKTT, of the Department of Oriental Printed 
 
 Books and MSS., British Museum. 
 Scandinavian Religion. By WILLIAM A. ORAIOII, Joint Bditor of the 
 
 Oxford English Dictionary. 
 Celtic Religion. By Professor AHTTYL, Professor of Welsh at University 
 
 College, Aberystwyth. 
 The Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland. By CHARLBS 
 
 SQUIRE, author of The Mythology of the British Itlandt. 
 Judaism. By ISRAEL ABRAHAMS, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in Cam- 
 
 bridge University, author of Jewish Life in the Middle Ages. 
 The Religion of Ancient Rome. By CYRIL BAILEY, M.A. 
 Shinto, The Ancient Religion of Japan. By W. G. ASTON, C. M. G. 
 The Religion of Ancient Mexico and Peru. By LEWIS SPKNCK, M.A. 
 Early Christianity. By S. B. BLACK, Professor at M'Gill University. 
 The Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion. By Professor 
 
 J. H. LKCBA. 
 
 The Religion of Ancient Palestine. By STAWLZY A. COOK. 
 Mithraism. ByYT. J. 
 
 PHILOSOPHIES 
 
 Early Greek Philosophy. By A. W. BINW, author of T\e Phttoeophy of 
 
 Greece, Rationalism in the Nineteenth Century. 
 Stoicism. By Professor ST. GKOHOI STOCK, author of Deductive Logic, 
 
 editor of the Apology of Plato, etc. 
 PlatO. By Professor A. B. TAYLOR. St. Andrews University, author of 
 
 Tht Problem of Conduct. 
 Scholasticism. By Father RIOKABT, 8. J. 
 HobDOS. By Professor A. . TAYLOR. 
 Locke. By Professor ALEXANDER, of Owens College. 
 Comte and Mill By T. WHITTAUB, author of Tht Neoplatonitts Apollo 
 
 niiu of Tyana and other Essays. 
 Herbert Spencer. By W. H. HUDSON, author of An Introduction to 
 
 Speneer't Philetophy. 
 Schopenhauer. By T. WHITTAKR. 
 Berkeley. By Professor OAMPBILJL PBASXK, D.O.L., LL.D. 
 Swedenborg. By Dr. SEWAI.L. 
 
 Nietische : His Life and Works. By AWTHONT II. LTOOVKE. 
 Bergson. By JOSEPH SOLOMON. 
 Rationalism. By J. M. ROBERTSON. 
 Pragmatism. By D. L. MURRAY. 
 Rudolf Encken. By W. TUDOR-JONES. 
 Epicurus. By Professor A. B. TAYLOR. 
 William James. By HOWARD v. KNOX.
 
 THE 
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT 
 PALESTINE 
 
 IN THE SECOND MILLENNIUM B.C. 
 In the Light of Archeology and the Inscriptions 
 
 By 
 
 STANLEY A. COOK, M.A. 
 
 EX-FELLO\V, AND LECTURER IN HEBREW AND SYRIAC, GONV1LLE AND CAIUS 
 
 COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE j AUTHOR OF ' A GLOSSARY OF THE ARAMAIC 
 
 INSCR1PTIOKS,' ' THE LAWS OF MOSES AND THE CODK OF 
 
 HAMMURABI,' ' CRITICAL NOTES ON OLD 
 
 TESTAMENT HISTORY,' ETC. 
 
 4 
 
 LONDON 
 CONSTABLE & COMPANY LTD 
 
 10 AND 12 ORANGE STREET LEICESTER SQUARE W.C.2 
 1921
 
 PREFACE 
 
 THE following pages deal with the religion of 
 Ancient Palestine, more particularly in the latter half 
 of the Second Millennium, B.C. They touch upon the 
 problem of the rise and development of Israelite 
 religion ; a problem, however, which does not lie 
 within the scope of the present sketch (pp. 4, 114 sq.). 
 The Amarna tablets, Egyptian records, and the results 
 of recent excavation form the foundation, and the 
 available material has been interpreted in the light 
 of comparative religion. The aim has been to furnish 
 a fairly self-contained description of the general 
 religious conditions from external or non-biblical 
 sources, and this method has been adopted partly 
 on account of the conflicting opinions which prevail 
 among those who have investigated the theology of 
 the Old Testament in its relation to modern research. 
 Every effort has been made to present the evidence 
 accurately and fairly ; although lack of space has 
 prevented discussion of the more interesting features 
 of the old Palestinian religion and of the various 
 secondary problems which arose from time to time. 
 
 T 
 
 3800G
 
 vi RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 Some difficulty has been caused by the absence of any 
 more or less comprehensive treatment of the subject \ 
 although, from the list of authorities at the end it will 
 be seen that the most important sources have only 
 quite recently become generally accessible. These, 
 and the few additional bibliographical references given 
 iu the footnotes are far from indicating the great 
 indebtedness of the present writer to the works of 
 Oriental scholars and of those who have dealt with 
 comparative religion. Special acknowledgements are 
 due to Mr. F. LI. Griffith, M.A., Eeader in Egypt- 
 ology, University of Oxford ; to the Rev. C. H. W. 
 Johns, M.A., Lecturer in Assyriology, Queen's College, 
 Cambridge, and King's College, London ; and to Mr. 
 R. A. S. Macalister, M.A., F.S.A., Director of the 
 Palestine Exploration Fund's excavations at Gezer. 
 These gentlemen enhanced their kindness by reading 
 an early proof, and by contributing valuable sugges- 
 tions and criticisms. But the responsibility for all 
 errors of statement and opinion rests with the present 
 writer. 
 
 STANLEY A. COOK. 
 
 July 1908.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE. 
 
 I. INTRODUCTORY : 
 
 The Subject Method Survey of Period and 
 
 Sources The Land and People, . .1-12 
 
 II. SACRED SITES : 
 
 The Sanctuary of Gezer Other Sacred Places 
 Their Persistence The Modern Places 
 of Cult, 13-23 
 
 III. SACRED OBJECTS : 
 
 Trees Stones Images and Symbols, . . 24-32 
 
 IV. SACRED RITES AND PRACTICES : 
 
 s 
 
 General Inferences Disposal of the Dead 
 Jar-burial Human Sacrifice Foundation 
 Sacrifice Importance of Sacrifice Broken 
 Offerings 'Holy' and 'Unclean' Sacred 
 Animals, 33-49 
 
 V. THB WORLD OF SPIRITS : 
 
 Awe Charms Oracles Representatives of 
 Supernatural Powers The Dead Anim- 
 ism The Divinity of Kings Recognised 
 Gods, 50-85 
 
 vii
 
 viii RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 CHAP. PAOR 
 
 VI. THE GODS : 
 
 Their Vicissitudes Their Representative Char- 
 acter In Political Treaties and Covenants 
 The Influence of Egypt Treatment of 
 Alien Gods, 66*82 
 
 VII. THE PANTHEON : 
 
 Asiatic Deities in Egypt Sutekh Baal Re- 
 sheph Kadesh Anath Astarte Ashirta 
 Sun - deity (Shamash) Moon - god (Sin) 
 Addu (Hadad) Dagon Nebo Ninib 
 Shalem Gad k Righteousness' Nergal 
 Melek Yahweh (Jehovah), . . . 83-97 
 
 VIII. CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT : 
 
 Miscellaneous Ideas The Underlying Identity 
 of Thought Influence of Babylonia Con- 
 clusion, 98-115 
 
 PRINCIPAL SOURCES AND WORKS OF REFERENCE, 116 
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TA'BLE, 118 
 
 / 
 
 INDEX, 119
 
 THE EELIGION OF ANCIENT 
 PALESTINE 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 The Subject. By the Religion of Ancient 
 Palestine is meant that of the Semitic land 
 upon which was planted the ethical monotheism 
 of Judaism. The subject is neither the growth of 
 Old Testament theology, nor the religious en- 
 vironment of the Israelite teachers : it anticipates 
 by several centuries the first of the great prophets 
 whose writings have survived, and it takes its 
 stand in the second millennium B.C., and more 
 especially in its latter half. It deals with the 
 internal and external religious features which 
 were capable of being shaped into the forms with 
 which every one is familiar, and our Palestine is 
 that of the Patriarchs, of Moses, Joshua, and the 
 Judges, an old land which modern research has 
 placed in a new light. 
 
 Successive discoveries of contemporary histori- 
 
 A
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 cal and archaeological material have made it im- 
 possible to ignore either the geographical position 
 of Palestine, which exposes it to the influence of 
 the surrounding seats of culture, or its political 
 history, which has constantly been controlled 
 by external circumstances. Although Palestine 
 reappears as only a small fraction of the area 
 dominated by the ancient empires of Egypt and 
 Western Asia, the uniqueness of its experiences 
 can be more vividly realised. If it is found to 
 share many forms of religious belief and custom 
 with its neighbours, one is better able to sever 
 the features which were by no means the ex- 
 clusive possession of Israel from those which were 
 due to specific influences shaping them to definite 
 ends, and the importance of the little land in the 
 history of humanity can thereby be more truly 
 and permanently estimated. 
 
 Method. Although Palestine was the land of 
 Judaism and of Christianity, and has subsequently 
 been controlled by Mohammedanism, it has pre- 
 served common related elements of belief, which 
 have formed, as it were, part of the unconscious 
 inheritance of successive generations. They have 
 not been ousted by those positive religions which 
 traced their origin to deliberate and epoch-making
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 innovators, and they survive to-day as precious 
 relics for the study of the past. Indeed, the com- 
 parative method, which investigates points of 
 resemblance and difference among widely-severed 
 peoples, can avail itself in our case of Oriental 
 conservatism, and may range over a single but 
 remarkably extensive field. From the archaeology 
 and inscriptions of Ancient Babylonia to Punic 
 Carthage, from the Old Testament to the writings 
 of Rabbinical Judaism, from classical, Syrian, and 
 Arabian authors to the observations of mediaeval 
 and modern travellers, one may accumulate a 
 store of evidence which is mutually illustrative 
 or supplementary. But it would be incorrect to 
 assume that every modern belief or rite in Pales- 
 tine, for example, necessarily represents the old 
 religion : there have been reversion and retrogres- 
 sion ; some old practices have disappeared, others 
 have been modified or have received a new inter- 
 pretation. This warning is necessary, because 
 one must be able to trace the paths traversed by 
 the several rites and beliefs which have been 
 arrested, before the religion of any age can be 
 placed in its proper historical perspective. Un- 
 fortunately the sources do not permit us to do 
 this for our period. The Old Testament, it is 
 true, covers this period, and its writers frequently 
 
 3
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 condemn the worship which they regard as con- 
 trary to that of their national God. But the Old 
 Testament brings with it many serious problems, 
 and, for several reasons, it is preferable to ap- 
 proach the subject from external and contem- 
 porary evidence. Although its incompleteness 
 has naturally restricted our treatment, the aim 
 has been to describe, in as self-contained a 
 form as possible, the general religious conditions 
 to which this evidence points, and to indicate 
 rather more incidentally its bearing upon the 
 numerous questions which are outside the scope 
 of the following pages. 
 
 Survey of Period and Sources. Many differ- 
 ent elements must have coalesced in the history 
 of Palestinian culture from the days of the early 
 palaeolithic and neolithic inhabitants. It is with 
 no rudimentary people that we are concerned, 
 but with one acquainted with bronze and exposed 
 to the surrounding civilisations. The First Baby- 
 lonian Dynasty, not to ascend further, brings with 
 it evidence for relations between Babylonia and 
 the Mediterranean coast-lands, and intercourse 
 between Egypt and Palestine dates from before the 
 invasion of the Hyksos. 1 With the expulsion of 
 
 i For approximate dates, see the Chronological Table. 
 4
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 these invaders (about 1580 B.C.), the monarchs 
 of Egypt enter upon their great campaigns in 
 Western Asia, and Palestine comes before us in 
 the clear light of history. The Egyptian records 
 of the Eighteenth to Twentieth Dynasties furnish 
 valuable information on the history of our period. 
 Babylonia and Assyria lie in the background, and 
 the rival parties are the kingdom of the Nile and 
 the non-Semitic peoples of North Syria and Asia 
 Minor (' Hittites ') whose influence can probably 
 be traced as far south as Jerusalem. Under 
 Thutmose in. (fifteenth century) Egypt became 
 the queen of the known world and the meeting- 
 place of its trade and culture. But the northern 
 peoples only awaited their opportunity, and fresh 
 campaigns were necessary before Amenhotep in. 
 (about 1400 B.C.) again secured the supremacy of 
 Egypt. His successor, the idealist Amenhotep iv. 
 (or Ikhnaton), is renowned for his temporary 
 religious reform, and, at a time when Egypt's 
 king was almost universally recognised, he estab- 
 lished in Egypt what was practically a universal 
 god. Meanwhile, amid internal confusion in 
 Egypt, Hittites pressed downwards from Asia 
 Minor, seriously weakening the earlier Hittite 
 kingdom of Mitanni (North Syria and Mesopo- 
 tamia). The cuneiform tablets discovered in 1887 
 
 5
 
 at El-Amarna in Middle Egypt contain a portion 
 of the diplomatic correspondence between Western 
 Asia (from Babylonia to Cyprus)* and the two 
 Amenhoteps, and a few tablets in the same script 
 and of about the same age have since been 
 unearthed at Lachish and Taanach. It is at this 
 age that we meet with the restless Knabiri, a 
 name which suggests a connection with that of 
 the ' Hebrews.' The progress of this later Hittite 
 invasion cannot be clearly traced; at all events, 
 Sety i. (Sethos, about 1320 B.C.) was obliged to 
 recommence the work of his predecessors, but 
 recovered little more than Palestine. Ramses n., 
 after much fighting, was able to conclude a treaty 
 with the Hittites (about 1290), the Egyptian ver- 
 sion of which is now being supplemented by the 
 Hittite records of the proceedings. Nevertheless, 
 his successor, Merneptah, claims conquests extend- 
 ing from Gezer to the Hittites, and among those 
 who ' salaamed ' (lit. said ' peace ') he includes the 
 people (or tribe) Israel. 
 
 The active intercourse with the Aegean Isles 
 during this age can be traced from Asia Minor to 
 Egypt (notably at El-Amarna), and movements in 
 the Levant had accompanied the pressure south- 
 wards from Asia Minor in the time of the Amen- 
 hoteps. A similar combination was defeated by 
 6
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Ramses in. (about 1200); among its constituents 
 the Philistines may doubtless be recognised. But 
 Egypt, now in the Twentieth Dynasty, was fast 
 losing its old strength, and the internal history of 
 Palestine is far from clear. Apart from the sudden 
 extension of the Assyrian empire to the Mediter- 
 ranean under Tiglath-pileser i. (about 1100 B.C.), 
 no one great power, so far as is known, could 
 claim supremacy over the west ; and our period 
 comes to an end at a time when Palestine, accord- 
 ing to the Israelite historians, was laying the 
 foundation of its independent monarchy. 
 
 Palestine has always been open to the roaming 
 tribes from Arabia and the Syrian desert, tribes 
 characteristically opposed to the inveterate prac- 
 tices of settled agricultural life. Arabia, however, 
 possessed seats of culture, though their bearing 
 upon our period cannot yet be safely estimated. 
 But a temple with an old-established and contem- 
 porary cult, half Egyptian and half Semitic, has 
 been recovered by Professor Petrie at Serabit el- 
 Khadem in the Sinaitic Peninsula, and the 
 archaeological evidence frequently illustrates the 
 results of the excavations in Palestine. Excava- 
 tions have been undertaken at Tell el-Hesy 
 (Lachish), at various sites in the lowlands of 
 Judah (including Tell es-Safy, perhaps Gath), at 
 
 7
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 Gezer, Taanach, and Tell el-Mutesellim (Megiddo), 
 and, within the last few months, at Jericho. 
 Much of the evidence can be roughly dated, and 
 fortunately the age already illuminated by. the 
 Amarna tablets can be recognised. Its culture 
 associates it with North Syria and Asia Minor, 
 and reveals signs of intercourse with the Aegean 
 Isles ; but, as a whole, it is the result of a gradual 
 development, which extends without abrupt gaps 
 to the time of the Hebrew monarchy and beyond. 
 Chronological dividing-lines cannot yet be drawn, 
 and consequently the archaeological evidence 
 which illustrates the ' Amarna ' age is not charac- 
 teristic of that age alone. 
 
 The Land and People. For practical purposes 
 a distinction between Palestine and Syria is 
 unnecessary, apart from the political results of 
 their contiguity to Egypt and Asia Minor respec- 
 tively. Egypt at the height of its power was a 
 vast empire of unprecedented wealth and splen- 
 dour, and the imported works of art or the 
 descriptions of the spoils of war speak eloquently 
 of the stage which material culture had reached 
 throughout Western Asia. Even the small town- 
 ships of Palestine and Syria the average city 
 was a small fortified site surrounded by dwellings, 
 
 8
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 sometimes with an outer wall could furnish rich 
 booty of suits of armour, elegant furniture, and 
 articles of gold and silver. The pottery shows 
 some little taste, music was enjoyed, and a great 
 tunnel hewn out of the rock at Gezer is proof of 
 enterprise and skill. The agricultural wealth of 
 the land was famous. Thutmose in. found grain 
 ' more plentiful than the sand of the shore ' ; and 
 an earlier and more peaceful visitor to N. Syria, 
 Sinuhe (about 2000 B.C.), speaks of the wine more 
 plentiful than water, copious honey, abundance of 
 oil, all kinds of fruits, cereals, and numberless 
 cattle. Sinuhe was welcomed by a sheikh who 
 gave him his eldest daughter and allowed him to 
 choose a landed possession. Life was simpler and 
 less civilised than in Egypt, but not without 
 excitement. He led the tribesmen to war, raiding 
 pastures and wells, capturing the cattle, ravaging 
 the hostile districts. Indeed, ''lions and Asiatics' 
 were the familiar terror of Egyptian travellers, 
 and the turbulence of the petty chieftains, whose 
 intrigues and rivalries swell the Amarna letters, 
 made any combined action among themselves 
 exceptional and transitory. We gather from these 
 letters that foreign envoys were provided with 
 passports or credentials addressed to the ' Kings 
 of Canaan,' to ensure their speedy and safe passage 
 
 9
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 as they traversed the areas of the different local 
 authorities. Such royal commissioners are already 
 met with in the time of Sinuhe. 
 
 Egyptian monuments depict the people with 
 a strongly marked Semitic physiognomy, and 
 that physical resemblance to the modern native 
 which the discovery of skeletons has since 
 endorsed. We can mark their dark olive com- 
 plexion ; the men with pointed beards and with 
 thick bushy hair, which is sometimes anointed, and 
 the women with tresses waving loosely over their 
 shoulders. The slender maidens were admired 
 and sought after by the Egyptians, and later (in 
 the Nineteenth Dynasty) we find the men in 
 request as gardeners and artisans, and some even 
 hold high positions in the administration of Egypt. 
 The script and language of Babylonia were still 
 in use in the fifteenth century, although the 
 supremacy of that land belonged to the past; 
 they were used in correspondence between Western 
 Asia and Egypt, also among the Hittites, and 
 even between the chieftains of Palestine. Apart 
 from the tablets found at Lachish and Taanach, 
 several were unearthed at Jericho, uninscribed 
 and ready for use. But the native language in 
 Palestine and Syria was one which stands in the 
 closest relation to the classical Hebrew of the 
 10
 
 INTRODUCTORY 
 
 Old Testament, and it differed only dialectically 
 from the Moabite inscription of Mesha (about 
 850 B.C.), the somewhat later Hamathite record of 
 Ben-hadad's defeat, and the Phoenician inscrip- 
 tions. 
 
 The general stock of ideas, too, was wholly in 
 accord with Semitic, or rather, Oriental thought, 
 and the people naturally shared the paradoxical 
 characteristics of the old Oriental world : a sim- 
 plicity and narrowness of thought, intensity, 
 fanaticism, and even ferocity. 1 To these must be 
 added a keen imagination, necessarily quickened 
 by the wonderful variety of Palestinian scenery, 
 which ranges from rugged and forbidding deserts 
 to enchanting valleys and forests. The life of 
 the people depended upon the soil and the agri- 
 cultural wealth, and these depended upon a 
 climate of marked contrasts, which is found in 
 some parts (e.g. the lower Jordan valley) to be 
 productive of physical and moral enervation. In 
 a word, the land is one whose religion cannot be 
 understood without an attentive regard to those 
 factors which were unalterable, and to those 
 specific external influences which were focussed 
 upon it in the entire course of the Second Mil- 
 
 1 See Th. Noldeke, Sketches from Eastern History (London, 
 1892), chap, i., 'Some Characteristics of the Semitic Race.' 
 
 II
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 lennium B.C. We touch the land at a particular 
 period in the course of its very lengthy history ; 
 it is not the beginnings of its religion, but the 
 stage it had reached, which concerns us. 
 
 12
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 SACRED SITES 
 
 The Sanctuary of Gezer. Of the excavations 
 in Palestine none have been so prolific or so fully 
 described as those undertaken by Mr. Macalister 
 on behalf of the Palestine Exploration Fund at 
 Gezer. This ancient site lies about eighteen 
 miles W.N.W. of Jerusalem, and, between its two 
 knolls, on a commanding position, one of the most 
 striking which Palestine can offer, were found the 
 remains of a sanctuary whose history must have 
 extended over several centuries. Gezer itself has 
 thrown the strongest light upon the religion of 
 the land, and a brief description of its now 
 famous 'high-place' will form a convenient in- 
 troduction to the cult and ritual of the period. 
 
 Looking eastwards we face eight rough mono- 
 liths, which stretch in a slightly concave line, 
 about 75 feet in length, from north to south. 
 They are erected upon a platform of stones about 
 13
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 8 feet wide; they vary from 5| ft. to 10 ft. in 
 height, and have uniformly a fairer surface on 
 the western (front) than on the eastern side. 
 Number 1, on the extreme right, is the largest 
 (10 ft. 2 in. high, and 4 ft. 7 in. by 2 ft. 6 in.). 
 Next (No. 2), stands the smallest (5 ft. 5 in. high, 
 1 ft. 2 in. by 1 ft. 9 in.), whose pointed top with 
 polished spots on the surface speaks of the 
 reverent anointing, stroking and kissing which 
 holy stones still enjoy at the present day. No. 7, 
 the last but one on our extreme left, is of a 
 limestone found around Jerusalem and in other 
 districts, but not in the neighbourhood of Gezer. 
 Under what circumstances this stone was brought 
 hither can only be conjectured (see p. 80). The 
 pillar (7 ft. 3 in. high, 2 ft. 10 in. by 1 ft. 3 in.) 
 bears upon its front surface a peculiar curved 
 groove; No. 1, too, has a groove across the top, 
 and four in all have hollows or cup-marks upon 
 their surfaces. Nos. 4 and 8 are more carefully 
 shaped than the rest, and the latter stands in a 
 circular socket, and is flanked on either side by 
 the stumps of two broken pillars. Yet another 
 stone lay fallen to the south of No. 1, and there 
 is some reason to suppose that this and the 
 unique No. 2 belonged to the earliest stage in 
 the history of the sanctuary. In front of Nos. 5 
 14
 
 SACRED SITES 
 
 
 and 6 is a square stone block (6 ft. 1 in. by 5 ft. 
 
 by 2 ft. 6 in.), with a cavity (2 ft. 10 in. by 1 ft. 11 
 in. by 1 ft. 4 in.); a curved groove runs along 
 the front (the western side) of the rim. It 
 is disputed whether this stone held some idol, 
 stele, or pillar; or whether it was a trough for 
 ritual ablutions similar to those which Pro- 
 fessor Petrie recognised at Serabit el-Khadem, or 
 whether, again, it was a sacrificial block upon 
 which the victim was slain. 
 
 In the area behind (east of) these monoliths 
 are entrances leading to two large underground 
 caverns which appear to have been used originally 
 for habitation; their maximum diameters are 
 about 40 ft. and 28 ft., and .they extend nearly the 
 whole length of the alignment. The caverns 
 were connected by a passage, so short that any 
 sound in one could be distinctly heard in the 
 other, so small and crooked, that it is easy to 
 imagine to what use these mysterious chambers 
 could be put. In the larger cave a jar containing 
 the skeleton of an infant rested upon a stone, and 
 close by were the remains of an adult. Further 
 behind the pillars was found a bell-shaped pit 
 containing numerous animal and human bones. 
 In a circular structure in front of pillars Nos. 7 
 and 8, the bronze model of a cobra lay amid 
 15
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 potsherds and other debris. A little distance to 
 the south in a bank of earth were embedded 
 several broken human skulls, cow-teeth, etc. ; the 
 heads had evidently been severed before burial, 
 and there was no trace of the bodies. Below the 
 whole area, before and more particularly behind 
 the pillars, several infants were found buried 
 head-downwards in large jars; they were mostly 
 new-born, and two, as also two older children, 
 bore marks of fire. Finally, throughout the debris 
 that had accumulated upon the floor of the sanc- 
 tuary were innumerable objects typical of nature- 
 worship, representations in low relief of the nude 
 mother-goddess of Western Asia, and male em- 
 blems roughly made of limestone, pottery, bone, 
 and other material. 
 
 Other Sacred Places. Scarcely fifty yards to 
 the south of these pillars was a rock-surface about 
 ninety feet by eighty, covered Avith over eighty of 
 the singular cup-marks or hollows which we have 
 already observed. One little group surrounded 
 by small standing-stones was connected by a drain 
 which led to a subterranean cave. Here, too, was 
 another almost concealed chamber, and the dis- 
 covery of a number of bones of the swine (an 
 animal seldom found elsewhere in Gezer) gave 
 16
 
 SACRED SITES 
 
 weight to the suggestion that mysterious rites 
 were practised. 
 
 Although the monoliths of Gezer do not appear 
 to have lost their sacred character until perhaps 
 the sixth century B.C., they were not the only 
 place of cult in the city. Above, on the eastern 
 hill, were the remains of an elaborate building 
 measuring about 100 ft. by 80 ft.. Its pur- 
 pose was shown by the numerous religious 
 emblems found within its precincts. In two cir- 
 cular structures were the broken fragments of the 
 bones of sheep and goats devoid of any signs of 
 cooking or burning. Jars containing infants had 
 been placed at the corners of some of the 
 chambers; and below an angle of a courtyard 
 close by, a pit underneath the corner-stone dis- 
 closed bones and potsherds, the latter bearing 
 upon them the skull of a young girl. 
 
 At the north-east edge of the plateau of Tell es- 
 Safy the excavations brought to light a building 
 with monoliths ; in the d6bris at their feet were 
 the bones of camels, sheep and cows. At the 
 east end of the hill of Megiddo, Dr. Schumacher 
 found pillars with cup-marks enclosed in a small 
 building about 30 ft. by 15 ft. ; a block of stone 
 apparently served as the sacrificial altar. Besides 
 several amulets and small idols, at one of the 
 
 B 17
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 corners were jars containing the skeletons of 
 new-born infants. The structure belonged to a 
 great series of buildings about 230 ft. long and 
 147 ft. broad. At the same site also was dis- 
 covered a bare rock with hollows; it was ap- 
 proached by a step, and an entrance led to a 
 subterranean abode containing human and other 
 bones. At Taanach, Dr. Sellin found a similar 
 place of sacrifice with cavities and channel ; the 
 rock-altar had a step on the eastern side, and 
 close by were a number of flint-knives, jars with 
 infants (ranging up to two years of age), and the 
 remains of an adult. 
 
 Continued excavation will no doubt throw fuller 
 light upon the old sacred places, their varying 
 types, and their development; even the recent 
 discovery of a small pottery model of the facade 
 of a shrine is suggestive. It represents an open 
 fore-court and a door-way on either side of which 
 is a figure seated with its hands upon its knees. 
 The figure wears what seems to be a high-peaked 
 cap; it is presumably human, but the nose is 
 curiously rounded, and one recalls the quaint 
 guardians of the temple-front found in other 
 parts of Western Asia. 
 
 Their Persistence. Whether the choice of a 
 18
 
 SACRED SITES 
 
 sacred place was influenced by chance, by some 
 peculiar natural characteristic, or by the impres- 
 siveness of the locality, nothing is more striking 
 than its persistence. Religious practice is always 
 conservative, and once a place has acquired a 
 reputation for sanctity, it will retain its fame 
 throughout political and even religious vicissi- 
 tudes. The history of Gezer, for example, goes 
 back to the neolithic age, but the religious 
 development, to judge from the archaeological 
 evidence, is unbroken, and although there came 
 a time when the city passed out of history, Pales- 
 tine still has its sacred stones and rock-altars, 
 buildings and tombs, caves and grottoes, whose 
 religious history must extend over untold ages. 
 At both Gezer and Tell es-Safy a sacred tomb 
 actually stands upon the surface of the ground 
 quite close to the site of the old holy places. 
 
 At Serabit the caves with their porticoes had 
 evolved by the addition of chambers, etc., into a 
 complicated series sacred to the representative 
 goddess of the district and to the god of the 
 Egyptian miners. It is estimated that the cult 
 continued for at least a thousand years. In the 
 neighbourhood of Petra several apparent 'high- 
 places' have been found. They are perched 
 conspicuously to catch the rays of the morning 
 19
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 sun or in view of a holy shrine ; and the finest of 
 them is approached by two great pillars, 21 to 22 
 feet high. Although as a whole they may be 
 ascribed to 300 B.C. 100 A.D., their altars, basins, 
 courts, etc., probably permit us to understand the 
 more imperfect remains of sanctuaries elsewhere. 1 
 But independently of these, from Sinai to North 
 Syria an imposing amount of evidence survives 
 in varying forms for the history of the sacred sites 
 of antiquity. In the rock-altars of the modern 
 land with cup-marks and occasionally with steps, 
 with the shrine of some holy saint and an equally 
 holy tree, sometimes also with a mysterious cave, 
 we may see living examples of the more un- 
 developed sanctuaries. For a result of continued 
 evolution, on the other hand, perhaps nothing 
 could be more impressive than the Sakhra of the 
 Holy Temple at Jerusalem, where, amid the asso- 
 ciations of three thousand years of history, the 
 bare rock, with hollows, cavities, channels, and 
 subterranean cave, preserves the primitive features 
 without any essential change. 2 
 
 The Modern Places of Cult. Notwithstanding 
 
 1 G. Dalman, Petra und seine Felsheiligtiimer (Leipzig, 1908). 
 
 9 R. Kittel, Studien zur Hebraischen Archdologie und 
 Seligionsgeschichte (Leipzig, 1908), chap. i. Chap. ii. illus- 
 trates primitive rock- altars of Palestine and their development. 
 
 20
 
 SACRED SITES 
 
 the religious and political vicissitudes of Pales- 
 tine, the old centres of cult have never lost the 
 veneration of the people, and their position in 
 modern popular belief and ritual affords many 
 a suggestive hint for their history in the past. 
 Although Mohammedanism allows few sacred 
 localities, the actual current practice, in Palestine 
 as in Asia Minor, attaches conceptions of great 
 sanctity to a vast number of places. The shrines 
 and sacred buildings dotted here and there upon 
 elevated sites form a characteristic feature of the 
 modern land, and there is abundant testimony 
 that they are the recipients of respect and awe far 
 more real than that enjoyed by the more official 
 or orthodox religion. Although they are often 
 placed under the protection of Islam by being 
 known as the tombs of saints, prophets, and holy 
 sheikhs, this is merely a disguise ; and although 
 it is insisted that the holy occupants are only 
 mediators, they are the centre of antique rites 
 and ideas which orthodox Mohammedanism re- 
 jects. Their power is often rated above that of 
 Allah himself. Oaths by Allah are freely taken and 
 as freely broken, those at the local shrines rarely 
 (if ever) fail ; the coarse and painful freedom of 
 language, even in connection with Allah, becomes 
 restrained when the natives visit their holy place. 
 
 21
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 The religious life of the peasants is bound up 
 with the shrines and saints. There they appeal 
 for offspring, healing, and good harvests; there 
 they dedicate the first-fruits, firstlings, and their 
 children, and in their neighbourhood they prefer 
 to be buried. No stranger may intrude heed- 
 lessly within the sacred precincts, and one may 
 see the worshipper enter barefooted praying for 
 permission as he carefully steps over the thresh- 
 old. The saint by supernatural means is able 
 to protect everything deposited in the vicinity 
 of the tomb, which can thus serve as a store or 
 treasure-house. He is supreme over a local area ; 
 he is ready even to fight for his followers against 
 the foe ; for all practical purposes he is virtually 
 the god of the district. Some of the shrines are 
 sacred to a woman who passes for the sister or the 
 daughter of a saint at the same or a neighbour- 
 ing locality. Even the dog has been known to 
 have a shrine in his honour, and the animal 
 enters into Palestinian folk-lore in a manner 
 which this unclean beast of Mohammedanism 
 hardly seems to deserve. As a rule the people 
 will avoid calling the occupant of the shrine by 
 name, and some circumlocutionary epithet is 
 preferred: the famous sheikh, father of the 
 lion, rain-giver, dwarf, full-moon, or (hi case of 
 22
 
 SACRED SITES 
 
 females) the lady of child-birth, the fortunate, 
 and the like. 
 
 The shrines are the centres of story and legend 
 which relate their origin, legitimise their per- 
 sistence, or illustrate their power. In the course 
 of ages the name of the saint who once chose to 
 reveal himself there has varied, and the legends 
 of earlier figures have been transferred and 
 adjusted to names more acceptable to orthodoxy. 
 Some of the figures have grown in importance 
 and have thus extended their sphere of influence, 
 and as difference of sect is found to be no hind- 
 rance to a common recognition of the power of 
 the saint, the more famous shrines have been 
 accepted by worshippers outside the original 
 circle. In course of time, too, isolated figures 
 have gained supremacy, and have superseded 
 earlier distinct authorities, with the result that 
 the same name will be found under a number of 
 locally diverging types. Most conspicuous of all 
 are St. George and the ever-youthful prophet 
 Elijah, who have inherited numerous sacred places 
 and their cults, in the same manner as St. George 
 has become the successor of Apollo in the Greek 
 isles. Similarly the Virgin Mary, in her turn, has 
 frequently taken the place formerly held by the 
 female deities of antiquity. 
 23
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 SACRED OBJECTS 
 
 THE modern holy places, under the care of some 
 minister, dervish, or priestly family, are the scenes 
 of periodic visits, liturgical unctions, processions, 
 the festal display of lights, etc., and al though -in 
 the course of their lengthy history there have been 
 certain modifications, it is to them that one must 
 look for the persisting religion which underlay 
 the older official cults. The rocks with cup-marks 
 and channels, the gloomy caves and grottoes, the 
 mountain summits, the springs or fountains which 
 still receive the offerings of worshippers, the holy 
 trees, the sacred sacrificial stones these form the 
 fundamental substructure of the land's religion, 
 and whatever be the true origin of their sanctity, 
 they continue to be visited when superhuman aid 
 is required. 
 
 Trees. It is not the shrines alone which are 
 sacred on the ground that some saint had once 
 24
 
 SACRED OBJECTS 
 
 revealed his presence there ; there are trees (the 
 terebinth, and more especially the oak) which are 
 inviolable because spirits have made them their 
 abode, or which owe their supernatural qualities 
 to some holy being who is currently supposed to 
 have reclined beneath them. Such trees are 
 virtually centres of worship. Incense is burned 
 to them, and they receive sacrifices and offerings; 
 they are loaded with food, gifts, and (on special 
 occasions) with lamps. They give oracles, and 
 the sick sleep beneath their shade, confident that 
 a supernatural messenger will prescribe for their 
 ailments. They are decked with rags, which thus 
 acquire wonderful properties ; and the worshipper 
 who leaves a shred as a pledge of attachment or, 
 it may be, to transfer a malady, will take away a 
 rag which may serve as a charm. Sacred trees 
 were well known to early writers, and according 
 to the Talmud there were some beneath which 
 priests sat but did not eat of their fruit, remains 
 of heathen sacrifice might be found there, and 
 the Jew who sat or passed in its shade became 
 ceremonially impure. It is unnecessary, however, 
 to multiply examples of a feature to which the 
 Old Testament also attests; popular belief has 
 universally associated religious and superstitious 
 ideas with those beneficent objects which appear 
 25
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 to be as much imbued with motion, animation 
 and feeling as man himself. 
 
 The sacred tree tends to become convention- 
 alised and is replaced by the trunk or post. As 
 the home of a powerful influence there is an 
 inclination to symbolise it, and to identify it with 
 the supernatural being, with the deity itself. 
 The development of the image (not necessarily 
 female) from an aniconic wooden post can be 
 illustrated by the pillars representative of Osiris, 
 by the head of Hathor of By bios (p. 75 sq.) upon 
 a pillar in Egypt (Nineteenth Dynasty), and by 
 the votive tablets at Serabit bearing the head of 
 Hathor mounted upon a pole, which stands upon 
 a base, or is flanked by a tree on either side. Some 
 tree-like post is evidently intended by the asherah 
 of the Old Testament, a common object at the 
 ' high-places ' during the monarchy. In this case, 
 the relation between the tree and deity is absolute, 
 and we shall meet with a goddess of this name 
 (see below, p. 87). 
 
 Stones. The inanimate stone is partly com- 
 memorative, partly representative. In Palestine 
 we see it marked with the curious hollows which, 
 when found upon the bare rock, served, amid a 
 variety of purposes, for libations and for the blood 
 26
 
 SACRED OBJECTS 
 
 of the sacrifices. The erect pillar appears to be 
 secondary, but dates, at least in Serabit, from 
 before our period. The hollows upon such stones 
 are equally adapted for offerings, although, when 
 they are lateral, it is probable that they were 
 smeared or anointed like the door-posts of a modern 
 shrine. These holes are also transferred to slabs 
 or are replaced by vessels, while the stone itself 
 is not merely 'the place of sacrificial slaughter' 
 (the literal meaning of ' altar ' in the Old Testa- 
 ment), but embodies the power whose influence 
 is invoked. It is practically a fetish, the tangible 
 abode of the recipient of veneration. At Serabit 
 Professor Petrie discovered before a stele a flat 
 altar-stone which bore cavities (Twelfth Dynasty), 
 and even in Abyssinia at Aksum have been ob- 
 served great monoliths, at whose base stood stone 
 blocks with vessels and channels. Similar com- 
 binations have been found at Carthage. Through- 
 out, neither the stone nor the significance attached 
 to it remains the same. The sacred stone may 
 lose its value and be superseded, and it by no 
 means follows that the number of pillars implies 
 an equal number of in-dwelling beings. While 
 the stone develops along one line as an object 
 of cult and becomes an altar, it takes other 
 forms when, by an easy confusion of sentiment, 
 27
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 it comes to represent a deity (of either sex). 
 It is then shaped or ornamented to depict the 
 conceptions attached to the holy occupant, and 
 when this deity is anthropomorphic, the pillar 
 becomes a rude image, and finally the god in 
 human form. It is now clothed and decked with 
 ornaments. Thus, one finds the groove along 
 the top or the bifurcation suggestive of early 
 steps towards the representation of the horns of 
 an animal ; or, as among the pillars at Gezer, one 
 perceives two (Nos. 4 and 8) which assume some 
 resemblance to a simulacrum Priapi, 
 
 The growing wealth of cult, the influence of 
 novel ideas, and the transformation of the attri- 
 butes of a deity make the history of the evolution 
 of the objects of cult extremely intricate. At the 
 same place and time they may be found in vary- 
 ing stages of development, and if the interpreta- 
 tion of the several features as they appealed to 
 worshippers is often obscure to us, the specula- 
 tions of the contemporary writers cannot always 
 be accepted without careful inquiry. 
 
 Images and Symbols. Thutmose in. relates 
 
 that he carried off from Megiddo and the 
 
 Lebanon a silver statue in beaten work; also 
 
 some object [words are lost] with a head of gold, 
 
 28
 
 SACRED OBJECTS 
 
 the staff having human faces, and a royal image 
 of ebony wrought with gold, the head of which 
 was adorned with lapis lazuli. Although no 
 sacred statues of Ancient Palestine have as yet 
 come to light if they escaped the zeal of later 
 iconoclasts it would seem that they were of no 
 mean workmanship, and it may be inferred that 
 they did not differ radically from the gods and 
 goddesses whose outward appearance can be 
 observed on the monuments of Western Asia. 
 This inference is supported by the repeated dis- 
 covery, in course of excavation, of representations 
 of a goddess who was evidently the embodiment 
 of life and fertility. A few figurines and numerous 
 small ' Astarte-plaques,' with moulds for their 
 manufacture, prove the prevalence of a mother- 
 goddess and patroness of nature, essentially 
 identical with that familiar in the old Oriental 
 religions. The plaques, which are about 6 to 7 
 inches in length, offer a large variety of types 
 from the coarsest exaggeration of sexuality to 
 highly conventionalised forms. The goddess is 
 generally nude, but a bronze figurine from 
 Taanach gives her a conical head-dress and a 
 thin robe reaching down to her ankles. The 
 characteristic type at this city, however, depicts 
 a striated crown, rings on neck and feet, and is 
 29
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 generally suggestive of Babylonian influence. 
 Otherwise, when depicted with bracelets, neck- 
 lace and lotus-flowers, she resembles the Egyptian 
 Hathor; indeed she is often marked with the 
 Egyptian uraeus. A specimen from Tell es-Safy 
 curiously combines an Egyptianised form of the 
 goddess with typical Babylonian five- and six- 
 rayed stars. Yet a fourth variety with huge and 
 disfiguring earrings finds its parallels in North 
 Syria and Cyprus. The occurrence and com- 
 bination of elements of different origin are in- 
 structive for the culture and religion of Palestine. 
 This fourth type has sometimes a bird-like 
 head, which recalls a curious example from 
 Lachish with large ears and hooked nose or beak. 
 A small bronze image of the goddess, which 
 was found at Gezer, among broken lamps and 
 pottery within the area of the pillars, gives her 
 horns which coil downwards like those of a ram. 
 It is through such development and modification 
 that the horns of the great goddess could come 
 to be regarded as the representation of a crescent 
 moon when philosophical speculation busied itself 
 with the heavenly bodies. The traces of animal 
 attributes take another form in various rude and 
 almost shapeless objects of bronze which have 
 been interpreted, thanks to a more realistic 
 30
 
 SACRED OBJECTS 
 
 specimen from the Judsean Tell Zakariya, as 
 models of an amphibious creature with human 
 head and the tail of a fish. Here it is natural 
 to see the famous Derceto or Atargatis, well 
 known later as a deity of the Astarte type, and, 
 as an illustration of the evolution of symbols, it 
 may be added that a splendid Carthaginian sarco- 
 phagus of a priestess represents a woman of 
 strange beauty with the lower part of the body 
 so draped as to give it a close resemblance to a 
 fish's tail. 1 
 
 The manifold representations of the Palestinian 
 ' good goddess ' extend over a lengthy period, and 
 vary in taste and nuance from the crudest of 
 specimens to veritable artistic products of the 
 Seleucid age. They indicate that the funda- 
 mental religious conceptions agreed with those of 
 Western Asia as a whole, and it may be assumed 
 that the conclusions which can be drawn from 
 the figurines and plaques of this deity would 
 apply, mutatis mutandis, to others. 
 
 Among other objects which hardly belong to 
 public cult, but were probably for household or 
 private use, may be noticed the small idols; e.g. 
 one from Megiddo in the clumsy 'snow-man' 
 
 1 Mabel Moore, Carthage of the Phoenicians in the Light of 
 Modem Excavation (London, 1905), p. 146 sq. and frontispiece. 
 
 31
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 technique, another from Jericho with the head of 
 a bull. Numerous small phalli have also been 
 unearthed. Some are roughly carved in human 
 shape, others approximate the form of a fish. 
 They do not necessarily belong to the cult of any 
 male deity, but the true significance of these and 
 other small emblems is often uncertain. As with 
 the many small models of the heads of bull, cow, 
 or serpent, or the two small conical stones from 
 the temple at Serabit, each with a groove along 
 the base, it is often difficult to distinguish the 
 fetishes and symbols, which involve ideas of some 
 relationship with a supernatural being, from the 
 charms, amulets, and talismans, wherein other 
 religious ideas are involved. The possibility that 
 some of the objects are really toys cannot be 
 excluded.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 SACRED RITES AND PRACTICES 
 
 General Inferences. That the old places of cult 
 had their duly ordained t)fficials may be taken for 
 granted; even the smallest of them, like those 
 of to-day, must have had appointed attendants. 
 The Amarna letters mention the wealthy temple 
 of Byblos with the handmaidens of the goddess 
 of the city, and in Merneptah's reign we hear of 
 a man of Gaza who is described as a servant of 
 Baal. We may be sure, also, that the rites and 
 festivals were similar to those usually prevalent 
 among agricultural peoples. The nature-worship 
 of the age can be realised from a survey of the 
 old cults of Western Asia, and from the denunci- 
 ations of the Old Testament, which prove the 
 persistence of older licentious rites. Popular 
 religion often continues to tolerate practices 
 which social life condemns, and the fertility of 
 crops, cattle, and of man himself, was co-ordinated 
 C 33
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 by an uncontrollable use of analogy in which the 
 example was set by the ' sacred ' men and women 
 of the sanctuaries (kadesh; Deut. xxiii. 17, R. V. 
 marg.). Sympathetic magic the imitation of 
 the cause to produce a desired effect underlay 
 a variety of rites among a people whose life de- 
 pended upon the gifts of the soil, whose religion 
 was a way of life. Here, however, we are restricted 
 chiefly to some miscellaneous evidence which the 
 excavations suggest. 
 
 The Disposal of the Dead. Incineration or 
 cremation had been originally practised by a 
 people physically distinct from that among whom 
 inhumation prevailed. The latter innovation has 
 been ascribed to the invading Semites. Subse- 
 quently, in Carthage, cremation is found to re-enter, 
 presumably through foreign influence ; but the two 
 practices co-exist, even in the same family, and 
 it is probable that there, at all events, cremation 
 was only followed in special circumstances. A 
 large burial-cave at Gezer with a thick layer of 
 burnt ash proves the lengthy duration of the 
 earlier custom. The same cave was afterwards 
 utilised by those who inhumed their dead, and 
 thenceforth there is little evolution in the history 
 of early Palestinian burial. No particular orienta- 
 34
 
 SACRED RITES AND PRACTICES 
 
 tion predominates; the dead are placed upon a 
 layer of stones, or within cists, or in pits in the 
 floor of the caverns. Both the contracted or 
 squatting and the outstretched attitude occur. 
 From the story of Sinuhe (p. 9), it would seem 
 that burial in a sheep-skin was also customary. 
 The needs of the dead are supplied by vessels of 
 food, which occasionally show traces of burning ; 
 drink was more important, and the large jars 
 sometimes contain small cups for the convenience 
 of the thirsty soul. In the case of a jug with two 
 mammillary projections one is reminded of a type 
 usually associated at Carthage with the burial of 
 infants. A variety of miscellaneous objects pro- 
 vided for other needs : weapons, jewels, ostrich 
 eggs, seals, scarabs, amulets, small figures in 
 human or animal form, etc. Especially charac- 
 teristic of the later tombs are the abundant 
 deposits of lamps. 
 
 The abode of the dead being one of the centres 
 of the religion of the living, the tomb always 
 possesses sanctity. The internal arrangements, 
 with platforms or hewn benches, will often 
 suggest some burial-ritual. The cup-marks, which 
 frequently appear near or even in the tomb itself, 
 like those still to be seen upon Palestinian 
 dolmens, could serve for sacrifices or libations : 
 35
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 or to collect the refreshing rain for the soul 
 of the deceased. Or, again, later usage will 
 suggest that they were planted with flowers 
 which, like the 'Gardens of Adonis,' symbolised 
 the mysteries of death and revival. Often, the 
 dead are buried beneath the streets (if the narrow 
 windings deserve that name), or within the 
 houses, under circumstances which preclude the 
 foundation - sacrifices to be noticed presently. 
 This feature is scarcely accidental ; it is well 
 known elsewhere, and was probably intended to 
 keep the spirit of the dead near its former abode, 
 over which it could continue to exercise a bene- 
 volent influence. 
 
 Jar Burial. It is sometimes difficult to dis- 
 tinguish between an ordinary burial and some 
 sacrificial ceremony. The burial of new-born or 
 very young infants in jars, in or near some sacred 
 locality (p. 16 sq.), points very strongly to the 
 sacrifice of the first-born to which the Old 
 Testament bears witness (Micah vi. 7). But 
 where the circumstances make this view less 
 probable, the special treatment of those who died 
 in early infancy needs consideration. In in- 
 humation and the return of the dead to the 
 ground we are in the midst of ideas associated 
 36
 
 with ' mother-earth,' the begetter of all things. 
 The burial in a contracted or squatting position 
 might naturally represent the usual crouched 
 posture of the individual as he sat in life- time 
 among his fellows ; it might also point to a belief 
 in the re-birth of the soul of the dead. The jar- 
 burials, where the infant is inserted head down- 
 wards, are more suggestive of the latte?, and 
 evidence from Africa and Asia shows that pro- 
 vision is sometimes made for the re-birth of still- 
 born or very young babes on the conviction that 
 at some future occasion they will enter again into 
 a mother's womb. The numerous emblems of 
 nature-worship and the mother-goddess, especi- 
 ally at Gezer, raise the presumption that the 
 deities of the place were powers of fertility and 
 generation; and, just as the shrines of saints 
 to-day are visited by would-be mothers who hope 
 for offspring, it is not improbable that in olden 
 times those who had been prematurely cut off 
 from the living were interred in sacred sites 
 venerated by the women. This view, which has 
 been proposed by Dr. J. G. Frazer, will not apply 
 of course to those jar-burials where human- 
 sacrifice is clearly recognisable. 1 
 
 1 Adonis, Attis, Oairis, pp. 77 q., 82 *</. 
 
 37
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 Human Sacrifice. A gruesome discovery was 
 made in a cistern at Gezer where, together with 
 a number of adult skeletons, lay the upper 
 half of a young girl about sixteen years of 
 age. Near the mouth were the decapitated 
 heads of two girls. In another case at Gezer 
 (described as a 'foundation deposit') the upper 
 half of the skeleton of a youth had been placed 
 with two adults. Perhaps we should here in- 
 clude the cases where only a few bones of the 
 deceased were preserved, e.g. in one tomb the skull 
 and certain other bones were missing. Vessels, 
 also, were found containing only one or two 
 human bones: the patella of an adult, the cal- 
 varia of a skull; but in the majority of instances 
 they belonged to infants. Partial burial of this 
 character has been explained on the theory of 
 cannibalism; this practice, often based on the 
 idea of absorbing the attributes of the deceased, 
 has loft scattered traces among the Semites. But 
 the dismemberment of the dead (known at Susa, 
 Egypt, and common to many savage races) admits 
 of other explanations, whether, for example, we 
 observe the use of bones as amulets (p. 51 sq.), or 
 recall the story of the severed Osiris. In the 
 latter, however, it may be suspected that a sacri- 
 fice for magical purposes underlies an aetiological 
 38
 
 SACRED RITES AND PRACTICES 
 
 legend. 1 The bank of skulls south of the mono- 
 liths of Gezer (p. 16) may perhaps recall the 
 mound (or pillar ?) of heads which certain Assyrian 
 kings erected in front of the cities they conquered 
 (e.g. Ashur-nasir-pal i.). Such a deed, like their 
 holocaust of children after a victory, was no un- 
 meaning ferocity; religion entered profoundly 
 into ancient life, and every war was a ' holy war.' 
 The horrid rites in honour of the gods who fought 
 for their followers are to be traced in Egypt, 
 Assyria, and the Old Testament, and even as late 
 as 307 B.C. the Carthaginians after their defeat of 
 Agathocles slew the choicest prisoners ' before 
 the altar in front of the holy tent.' 
 
 The widespread custom of Foundation Sacri- 
 fice survives in Palestine when popular opinion 
 requires that blood shall be shed at the in- 
 auguration of every important building, at the 
 breaking-up of unoccupied land, or at the opening 
 of a new well. Thus, a sheep was sacrificed at 
 the building of a jetty for the landing of the 
 German Emperor at Haifa in 1898. The rite 
 is a propitiation to the numen of the place. 
 
 1 J. G. Frazer, Adonis, etc., pp. 273 sq. , 321, and especially 
 331 sqq. Here one may perhaps refer to the tradition that the 
 prophet Isaiah was sawn in half, hidden as he was in a tree 
 (comp. ftlso Ep. Hebrews, xi. 37). 
 
 39
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 Mohammed in his day tried to prohibit such 
 sacrifices to the jinn, but the inveterate senti- 
 ment is summed up in the words of a modern 
 native : ' every house must have its death, either 
 man, woman, child, or animal.' The animal- 
 victim is recognised as a substitute, and vulgar 
 superstition still associates with the foundation 
 of buildings some vague danger to human life 
 if not its loss. Traditions of human sacrifice 
 are recorded by mediaeval and older writers, and 
 excavation has disclosed authentic examples. At 
 Gezer the skeleton of an adult female had been 
 placed under the corner of a house, and the bones 
 of infants were often found in or under the walls 
 of houses down to the later Israelite period. At 
 Megiddo, a young girl of about fifteen was laid 
 across a foundation-stone, and a victim at the 
 foot of a tower in Taanach was a child scarcely in 
 its teens. Ajar with the remains of a new-born 
 infant rested upon a platform in the Gezer 
 crematorium, and the evidence allowed the infer- 
 ence that it was a dedicatory sacrifice when the 
 cave was taken over and used for inhumation. 
 Infants buried in jars were found, together with 
 bowls and lamps, under the foundations in Gezer 
 as late as the latter part of the Israelite monarchy, 
 although a modification had already been intro- 
 40
 
 SACRED RITES AND PRACTICES 
 
 duced in the simple deposits of lamps and bowls, 
 usually at the corners of houses or chambers 
 or under the jambs of doors. If the bowls 
 represent the sacrificial offerings, the significance 
 of the lamps is uncertain. The victim in the rite 
 had not been burned, but probably buried alive, 
 and it may be conjectured that the identification 
 of life and light (familiar from the Old Testament) 
 underlies the symbolical lamp. The modern 
 Palestinian custom of hanging lights in shrines, 
 etc., in cases of sickness possibly involves the 
 same association of ideas. On the other hand, 
 the lamps found in tombs naturally recall the 
 widespread custom of lighting the soul on its 
 dark journey, or of kindling a lamp in the home 
 to enable it to retrace its steps on the anniversary. 
 These purely burial lamps are very well known 
 (e.g. in Carthage), and they survive in Palestine to 
 the Christian age, when they are inscribed with 
 such distinctive mottoes as ' Christ is my light,' or 
 ' the light of Christ shines for all.' 
 
 The Importance of Sacrifice makes itself felt 
 at every sacred site from the enormous quantities 
 of burnt ash before the caves of Serabit to the 
 similar accumulations upon the summit of Mount 
 Hermon. The worshipper believes that the rite
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 brings him into contact with the powers who 
 are to be nourished, invoked, or recompensed. Its 
 prevalence vividly indicates man's dependence 
 upon them throughout the seasons of the year and 
 on the great occasions of life : birth, circumcision 
 (already practised in our period), marriage and 
 death. Underlying the sacrifice is the profound 
 significance of blood. It is the seat of existence ; 
 it has potent virtues whether for protection, 
 expiation, or purification; and the utmost care 
 is taken to dispose of it according to established 
 usage. The fat, too, has no less its living 
 qualities, and since the oldest unguents were 
 animal fats modern usage is often content with 
 butter it is probable that anointing originally 
 had a deeper meaning than would at first appear. 
 Wanton bloodshed called for vengeance, and 
 when a Babylonian king demanded that Ikhnaton 
 should slay the Canaanites who had killed his 
 merchants, and thus 'bring back their blood' 
 and prevent retaliation, the inveterate blood- 
 revenge of primitive social life finds an early 
 illustration. But as a sacrifice, the slaughter of 
 human victims, though perhaps not regular, was 
 at least not exceptional, and the frightful blood- 
 shed which the Old Testament attests emphasises 
 the difficulties which confronted those teachers 
 42
 
 SACRED RITES AND PRACTICES 
 
 of Israel who would disassociate their national 
 God from an inveterate practice (Ezek. xvi. 20 sq., 
 xx. 31). 
 
 For a striking illustration of the diffusion and 
 persistence of human sacrifice we may refer to 
 Carthage where the distress caused by Agathocles 
 in 310 B.C. was attributed to the wrath of the god 
 to whom the rich had been offering purchased 
 children instead of their own. But there is a 
 general tendency in religion to soften crude 
 rites, save when a particularly efficacious offering 
 is felt necessary in the midst of some grave 
 crisis, and of the changes in that background 
 of cult which has survived throughout the 
 history of Palestine, the substitution of the 
 animal for the human victim is the most sig- 
 nificant. Yet, as we have seen, the idea of 
 human sacrifice has not entirely disappeared 
 (p. 40). The animal is still recognised as a 
 'ransom,' and in the present rite of that name 
 loss of human life is averted by the sacrifice of 
 some animal, and it is explained that the sacrifice 
 will combat and overcome the cause of the im- 
 pending danger. It would be only logical, there- 
 fore, to proceed on the assumption that the 
 greater the danger the more powerful and effica- 
 cious must be the sacrifice. Current beliefs thus 
 43
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 afford suggestive hints for earlier usage, and 
 when we learn that to-day a natural death finds 
 consolation in the thought that it may have 
 been the ransom for another, we meet with an 
 idea that could be put into practice: it is no 
 great step to the ceremonies (observed in Africa) 
 which give effect to the conviction that a man's 
 life may be prolonged or his old age recuperated 
 by the actual sacrifice of another human being. 
 It is essentially the same idea when Egyptian 
 kings, like Arnenhotep n. and Ramses n. slew the 
 prisoners of war that they themselves or their 
 name ' might live for ever.' (On the name, see 
 below, p. 60.) 
 
 Sacrificial rites were never irrational, however 
 difficult it may be to perceive their object, and 
 from a survey of comparative custom one can 
 sometimes picture the scenes by which they were 
 accompanied. It is only by such means that 
 one can conjecturally explain the discovery near 
 the temple-area at Gezer of animal bones, sliced, 
 hacked, and broken into fragments, with no 
 signs of having been cooked. One is tempted 
 to refer to a rite practised by the Arabs of the 
 Sinaitic desert towards the close of the fourth 
 century A.D. The old ascete, Nilus, describes 
 a solemn procession of chanting worshippers 
 44
 
 SACRED RITES AND PRACTICES 
 
 who move around an altar of rude stones upon 
 which is bound a camel. The beast is stabbed, 
 and the leader drinks of the gushing blood. At 
 once the assembly hack the victim to pieces, 
 devouring it raw until the whole is consumed 
 the entire ceremony begins with the rise of the 
 morning star (in whose honour it was performed) 
 and ends with the rising sun. Was some rite 
 of this kind practised in Palestine? It must 
 be a matter for conjecture; the least that can 
 be said is that the scene is not too barbaric for 
 our land and period. 
 
 Broken Offerings, e.g. figurines, models, and 
 other articles, when found deposited in tombs, 
 have been explained in the light of comparative 
 custom as destroyed or ' killed ' to the end that 
 their ' soul ' may accompany that of the deceased. 
 But other ideas are evidently involved when the 
 area of the sanctuary at Serabit proved to be 
 covered with a mass of pottery, plaques, bracelets, 
 wands, sistra, etc., so fragmentary that no single 
 specimen could be pieced together. At Gezer, 
 also, although the plaques of the goddess were 
 fairly tough, all had been broken, and apparently 
 with intention. We may compare the modern 
 custom of breaking pottery in fulfilment of a 
 45
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 vow, an interesting illustration of which was 
 furnished by the late Professor Curtiss from 
 Bludan on the road from Zebedany to Damascus. 
 At a spot, familiarly known as the 'mother of 
 pieces/ is a rock-platform with cave, shrine, sacred 
 grove and hereditary ministers. Hither come the 
 women to break a jar when they have gained 
 their one wish, and it is singular to observe that 
 the traditions which are attached to the custom 
 include the belief that a girl, the patroness of 
 the shrine, lies buried there. The likeness to 
 the suggested rites at Gezer will be noticed (p. 37). 
 But the stories do not elucidate the peculiar 
 treatment of the offerings, and the usage finds 
 its most probable explanation in the persuasion 
 that things once dedicated or put to a sacred 
 use are 'holy,' and cannot be used for ordinary 
 purposes. We touch upon a fundamental institu- 
 tion embodying a series of apparently paradoxical 
 ideas the universal ' tabu.' 
 
 'Holy' and 'Unclean.' The terms Holy or 
 Sacred (coinp. the Latin sacer) are not to be 
 understood in the ethical or moral sense. A 
 holy thing is one which has been set aside, dedi- 
 cated, or restricted; it is charged with super- 
 natural influence which is contagious ; everything 
 46
 
 SACRED RITES AND PRACTICES 
 
 that comes in contact with it also becomes holy. 
 In some cases it is provided that this inconvenient 
 sanctity may be purged; in others, the thing 
 has to be destroyed. When the Talmud says 
 that a Canonical Book of the Old Testament 
 ' defiles ' the hand, it means that the very sanctity 
 of the book demands that the hand should be 
 ceremonially purified or cleansed before touching 
 anything else. 'Holy and unclean things,' to 
 quote Robertson Smith, 'have this in common, 
 that in both cases certain restrictions lie on men's 
 use of and contact with them, and that the breach 
 of these restrictions involves supernatural dangers. 
 The difference between the two appears, not in 
 their relation to man's ordinary life, but in their 
 relation to the gods. Holy things are not free 
 to man, because they pertain to the gods ; unclean- 
 ness is shunned, according to the view taken in 
 the higher Semitic religions, because it is hateful 
 to the god, and therefore not to be tolerated.' 
 
 Sacred Animals, in the light of the above, 
 are those associated with cults which might be 
 regarded as illegitimate. An example is afforded 
 by the pig which enters into the rites and myths 
 of Adonis, Attis, Ninib, and Osiris. In a cavern 
 south of the monoliths of Gezer a number of 
 47
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 pig-bones lay underneath a shaft which led to 
 the cup-marked surface above (p. 16) ; the 
 circumstances recall the Thesmophoria, the 
 caves and vaults in the Greek area connected 
 with Demeter and Proserpine, and the use of 
 the pig in mystic rites of chthonic and agri- 
 cultural deities. In Palestine and Syria the 
 animal was used in certain exceptional sacrifices 
 which were recognised as idolatrous (Isaiah 
 Ixv. 4 ; Ixvi. 17), and it was an open question 
 whether it was really polluted or holy. If, as 
 the excavations suggest, the sacrifice of the swine 
 dates from the earliest inhabitants of Gezer, with 
 whom it was also a domestic animal, it is inter- 
 esting to observe the persistence of its character 
 as a proper sacrificial animal from pre-Semitic 
 times by the side of the apparently contradictory 
 belief that it was also unclean. 
 
 The camel bones at Tell es-Safy, also, are of 
 interest since Robertson Smith has shown that the 
 animal (which became ' unclean ' to the Israelites), 
 though used by the Arabs for food and sacrifice, 
 was associated with ideas of sanctity, and its flesh 
 was forbidden to converts to Christianity. The 
 model of a bronze cobra found in a temple- 
 enclosure (p. 15) might be conjecturally ex- 
 plained, but it will suffice to remember that 
 48
 
 SACRED RITES AND PRACTICES 
 
 serpents were and still are connected with spirits 
 both benevolent and malevolent. The recur- 
 rence of models of the animal- world, the numerous 
 representations upon seals of deer, gazelles, etc. 
 (animals connected with Astarte), or the pre- 
 dilection for the lion upon objects discovered at 
 Megiddo need not have any specific meaning for 
 the religious ideas. On the other hand, the 
 animal-like attributes which appear upon some 
 plaques of the mother-goddess are scarcely mean- 
 ingless. There is no ground for the assumption 
 that Palestine was without the animal-deities and 
 the deities with special sacred animals, which 
 have left their traces in the surrounding lands, 
 and it would be misleading to suppose that the 
 myths and legends which have grown up around 
 these features account for their origin. The con- 
 viction that man was made in the likeness of the 
 gods (who are therefore anthropomorphic) implies 
 certain conceptions of their nature, the develop- 
 ment of which belongs to the history of religion, 
 and in turning next to the spirit- world of Ancient 
 Palestine it is necessary that we should be pre- 
 pared to appreciate a mental outlook profoundly 
 different from our own. 
 
 49
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE WORLD OF SPIRITS 
 
 Awe. A fundamental sense of awe was felt in 
 the presence of anything unusual or contrary to 
 experience, and man's instinctive philosophy 
 shaped his ideas from the suggestions of daily 
 life, accounting for all cases of causation by 
 assimilating them to the intentional acts of 
 voluntary agents like himself. There was no 
 doubt of the existence and influence of surround- 
 ing unseen powers; they must be cajoled, ap- 
 peased, bribed and rewarded. Some were in- 
 evitably malevolent ; with others man could enter 
 into relations which were mutually beneficial. 
 Even at the present day there is no clear dis- 
 tinction between what we should call the natural 
 and the supernatural; a demon or a saint can 
 appear in human or animal form ; and the marvel 
 or miracle is that which happens to lie outside 
 the intellectual horizon of the individual. The 
 modern phenomena can be traced back through 
 50
 
 THE WORLD OF SPIRITS 
 
 early sources and appear now in grosser and 
 now in more elevated forms; even the presence 
 of any advanced material culture, or of more 
 spiritual conceptions of the Godhead does not 
 annihilate that lower supernaturalism which 
 flourishes uncontrolled among more rudimentary 
 races. It would be unreasonable to suppose that 
 the religion of our period was more free from 
 imprecision than that of more progressive 
 peoples: the whole routine of life brought the 
 individual into constant contact with unseen 
 agencies, and the world of spirits involved a 
 medley of beliefs, more embarrassing to the 
 modern inquirer who seeks to systematise them, 
 than to the Oriental mind which has always been 
 able and willing to accept the incredible and 
 the contradictory. 
 
 Man's relations with the spirits whom he 
 shuns or seeks are illustrated in magical prac- 
 tices ; e.g. incantation, symbolic magic (p. 34). 
 Charms, on the other hand, possess a magical 
 virtue which is effective without interference on 
 the part of the possessor. Many little objects 
 of this character have been unearthed : pendants 
 of red coral (still a prophylactic against the evil 
 eye), beads (still supposed to possess curative 
 properties), small articles cut out of bone (especi-
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 ally the heads of human femora, sawn off and 
 perforated). Here may be included the occa- 
 sional jewels {e.g. a silver pendant crescent) 
 amulets and ornaments were closely associated, 
 and the latter continue to convey ideas which 
 could be regarded as idolatrous (compare Gen. 
 xxxv. 4). The representations of Egyptian gods 
 and the ' Horus-eyes ' should also be mentioned 
 here. ' Eyes ' are still on sale in the East, they 
 are expected to be on the watch for evil in- 
 fluences. But the anxiety to avert evil and to 
 procure favour need not involve an intelligent 
 interest in the means employed, and some of the 
 objects (when not originally possessed by 
 Egyptian settlers) may have as much bearing 
 upon the question of Egyptian influence upon 
 the religion of Palestine as the use of foreign 
 (Phoenician ?) formulae in Egyptian magical texts. 
 
 Oracles are obtained at those places where 
 supernatural beings have manifested themselves, 
 or from their symbols or their human repre- 
 sentatives. In the stone enclosures at Serabit 
 Professor Petrie would recognise the sacred places 
 visited by those who worked the mines and hoped 
 for useful dreams. The value attached to visions 
 of the night needs no telling, and when the 
 52
 
 THE WORLD OF SPIRITS 
 
 Egyptian king Merneptah saw in his sleep the 
 god Ptah offering him the sword of victory, or 
 when the god Ashur directed the Lydian Gyges 
 to 'lay hold of the feet' of Ashurbanipal (i.e. 
 place himself under his protection), we perceive 
 among relatively advanced societies important 
 factors in the growth of all religions. Divine 
 advice and help could be granted by the statues 
 of the gods: a cuneiform tablet from Taanach 
 refers to an omen given by the finger of the 
 goddess Ashirat, and the writer asks for the sign 
 and its interpretation. As in the 'nodding' of 
 the gods in Egyptian records the modus operandi 
 must not be too closely examined. Some of the 
 old caverns of Palestine were certainly used for 
 magical or religious purposes, and when we find 
 them connected by small and curved passages, 
 it is not improbable that they were the scenes of 
 oracles, theophanies, and the like (p. 15 sq.). As 
 Mr. Macalister has observed, apropos of such 
 caverns in the lowlands of Judah and at Gezer, 
 mysterious responses and wonders could be easily 
 contrived, and would be as convincing to the 
 ignorant as the Miracle of the Holy Fire is to 
 the modern Russian pilgrim in the Church of 
 the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem. The associa- 
 tion of caves and other hidden resorts with the 
 53
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 worship of deities and oracles is well-known 
 in other fields (e.g. Greece). Susa also had a 
 god of oracles who dwelt in secret retreats, and 
 other deities whose remote haunts were burned 
 by Ashurbanipal when he carried them off. 
 
 The representatives of the supernatural 
 powers include prophets, priests, and even kings ; 
 they are also the possessors of supernatural 
 qualities, the one involved the other. Between 
 the modern Palestinian majnun ('possessed by 
 the jinn') and fakir, and the prophet of old 
 contemptuously called ' madman ' the difference 
 is one of degree. The frenzied utterer is capable 
 of incalculable good or harm, and often enjoys a 
 respect out of all keeping with his merits. His 
 very sanctity places him in a class by himself, 
 and he is allowed a licence which would not be 
 tolerated in others. An early example of inspira- 
 tion appears in the story of Wenamon of Egypt 
 who visited Zakarbaal of Byblos, probably in the 
 reign of Ramses xu. (about 1100 B.C.). Although 
 the envoy had with him the statue of the great 
 Egyptian god Amon, for nineteen days he re- 
 ceived scant courtesy and was unable to obtain 
 the desired interview. At length, as the king 
 was sacrificing to his gods, one of his noble youths 
 54
 
 . THE WORLD OF SPIRITS 
 
 was seized with ecstasy which lasted the whole 
 night, and in this state he demanded that 'the 
 messenger of Amon' be summoned (for the 
 sequel see below, p. 74 sq.\ Prophecy, as Dr. Frazer 
 has shown, by means of numerous examples, is ' a 
 phenomenon of almost world-wide occurrence,' 
 and it is important to remember that the rela- 
 tions between man and the spirit-world are not 
 to be estimated in the light of modern precon- 
 ceptions. There were orthodox and unorthodox 
 relations, legitimate and illegitimate communion, 
 true and false representatives of the supernatural 
 powers; distinctions were maintained although 
 the evidence is often insufficient for us to appre- 
 ciate older standpoints. Broadly speaking, it 
 may be affirmed that the test lay in the com- 
 munal aspect of religion (whether of clan, tribe, 
 or people) which was opposed to practices which 
 were private or independent of the official cult. 
 
 The dead, in their turn, depart into the 
 mysterious unseen which looms so largely in the 
 thoughts of the living, and burial and mourning 
 rites are shaped by many different principles 
 depending upon theories of the nature of spirits, 
 affection for the dead, the safety of his soul, fear 
 of malignant influences, etc. But the interpreta- 
 55
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 tion of the religious rites which attended every 
 crisis in life becomes unusually difficult when the 
 community suffer a loss, and perhaps no other 
 study stands so much in need of careful 'com- 
 parative ' treatment. Unfortunately Palestine has 
 furnished no funerary texts, and little direct 
 evidence; the dead 'go to their fate,' the king 
 of Mitanni fasts on the day he hears of the death 
 of Amenhotep ill., and Zakarbaal of By bios offers 
 to show Wenamon the tomb where the members 
 of a former embassy sleep (lit. lie, or pass the 
 night). A people accustomed to the annual 
 death and revival of nature might easily for- 
 mulate theories of the survival of the dead, 
 and care is accordingly taken to provide for the 
 needs of the deceased (p. 35). But the same 
 thoughts are not necessarily symbolised by the 
 same rites. Thus, cremation, the earlier custom, 
 may have been intended to sever the soul from 
 the body, to destroy the haunting spirit, or to 
 prevent contamination and contagion. However, 
 the subsequent use of the Gezer crematorium by 
 those who practised inhumation involved a con- 
 tinuity of thought, albeit with some adaptation and 
 adjustment, since identical conceptions of death 
 and the dead scarcely encircled the two distinct 
 customs. This is instructive for the growth of 
 56
 
 THE WORLD OF SPIRITS 
 
 complex ideas, and the subsequent prohibition 
 in Palestine of certain mourning rites may find a 
 probable explanation in their association with 
 cults which were regarded as illegitimate. 
 
 The attitude of the living towards the dead, 
 raises the problem of ancestor-worship and the 
 relation between deified ancestors and gods. In 
 the absence of contemporary evidence from 
 Ancient Palestine, we may notice the inscription 
 of King Panammu of North Syria (eighth century), 
 where he acknowledges his indebtedness to his 
 gods, especially Hadad, to whose honour he 
 erects a colossal statue of the deity. The text 
 invokes the god's blessing upon the successor 
 to the throne, provided that the latter when he 
 sacrifices makes mention of Panammu's soul with 
 Hadad or prays that Panammu's soul may eat 
 and drink with the god. Should these duties 
 be neglected, Hadad is besought not to accept 
 the sacrifices, to refuse his requests ; and sleepless- 
 ness and other troubles are called down upon 
 the unfilial descendant. It appears from this, 
 therefore, that while the dead relies upon the 
 attentions of the living, and it was necessary that 
 his name should be kept fresh; the dead could 
 only exert an indirect influence, and the soul or 
 vital principle, apart from the body, could be 
 57
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 regarded as potent only through its companion- 
 ship with the deity. This may be supplemented 
 from Egypt in the account of the relations be- 
 tween Eamses II. and his dead father, Sety I. 
 The latter is reminded of the benefits which his 
 son had conferred upon him, his statue, and his 
 Jca or vital force. These he may still continue 
 to enjoy, and, since he now has the companion- 
 ship of the gods, Ramses beseeches him to in- 
 fluence them to grant him a long reign. The 
 deceased king acknowledges the bread and water 
 which had been regularly offered to him; and 
 relates that he has become a god more beautiful 
 than before ; he now mingles with the great gods, 
 and he declares that he has successfully inter- 
 ceded on his son's behalf. 
 
 The dead relied upon his descendants and upon 
 the benevolence of future generations, and 
 Egyptian kings (at least) hoped to partake of the 
 food offered to the recognised deities. Religious 
 and other works were undertaken that the 
 ' name ' might ' live.' Promises and threats 
 were freely made to ensure due attention, and 
 were usually respected by the living; but the 
 frequent acts of desecration would indicate that 
 fear of the dead was not necessarily a predominat- 
 ing or lasting feeling, at all events outside a man's 
 58
 
 THE WORLD OF SPIRITS 
 
 own family. The above-mentioned Panammu 
 and Ramses are somewhat exceptional cases since 
 individuals, distinguished by rank, sanctity, or 
 even more ordinary qualifications, readily acquire 
 distinguished positions in after-life. Moreover, 
 Ramses, at all events, was already a god, in his 
 life-time, in accordance with Egyptian belief, and 
 all those who had had the advantage of being 
 representatives of the supernatural powers scarcely 
 lost this relative superiority. The protection 
 afforded by famous tombs and the virtues of the 
 dust taken from such sacred spots are recognised 
 to the present day. The venerated shrines 
 regularly found their justification in the tradi- 
 tions which encircled the illustrious occupant: 
 to violate them was not merely an insult, it 
 struck a blow at one of the centres of cult and 
 prosperity. Unfortunately for the problem, by 
 the side of the tendency to elevate an illustrious 
 ancestor must be placed the very human and 
 inveterate weakness of tracing for oneself a noble 
 ancestry. Like the claim of the modern Palestinian 
 peasant to be descended from the alleged occupant 
 of the local shrine which he venerates, every 
 apparent case of ancestor-worship stands in need 
 of a critical examination. As in most problems of 
 religion, ambiguity of terminology (viz. ' worship ') 
 
 $9
 
 is responsible for much confusion. It must be 
 admitted that there would be a natural inclina- 
 tion for every individual to regard his dead 
 ancestor in the spirit- world as more powerful and 
 influential than himself. If this were so even 
 when there were recognised gods, it is obvious 
 that allowance must be made for the crucial 
 stages, before the deities gained that recognition, 
 and after they had lost it. 
 
 Space prevents any adequate reference to the 
 part which animism has held in the history of 
 Palestinian religion ; without a recognition of this 
 fundamental factor in all religions much of our 
 evidence would be unintelligible. 1 When we take 
 the ideas which are associated with the name, we 
 find that it has magical powers, its use enlists or 
 confers protection or possession ; it is the nature 
 or essence of the thing which bears it indeed, 
 almost identical with it (comp. Is. xxx. 27). 
 Hence the meaning of names is always instructive. 
 The supposition that the child who bears an 
 animal-name will acquire something of the quality 
 of the animal in question (whatever be the original 
 
 1 It must suffice to refer to works dealing with primitive 
 religion, see E. Clodd, Animism, the Seed of Religion (London, 
 1905), A. 0. Haddon, Magic and Fetishism (1906), in this 
 series. 
 
 60
 
 THE WORLD OF SPIRITS 
 
 motive) preserves more than metaphor, and 
 indicates a stage when man saw little difference 
 between animals and himself. Even at the 
 present day it is still believed that the soul of an 
 ancestor can reappear in an animal (comp. p. 50). 
 In like manner, the personal names of our period 
 which denote kinship with a deity point to a 
 belief in a physical relationship as natural as the 
 conviction of the modern native when he refers to 
 Allah in terms which imply that man is in every 
 detail the literal image of the Almighty. A differ- 
 ence between human and superhuman is scarcely 
 recognised at the present day. The women of 
 the land continue to visit the holy sites to obtain 
 offspring, and it is freely acknowledged that welis 
 and spirits of the dead can be physical fathers. 
 This absence of any clear dividing-line between 
 natural and supernatural is inveterate. The 
 Egyptian Pharaoh of old was both a god and the 
 son of a god, and a record is preserved of the visjt 
 of the god Amon to queen Ahmose in the form of 
 her husband. The halo of divinity was perhaps 
 not so distinct as in earlier times, but in their 
 king the people still saw the earthly likeness of 
 the deity. 
 
 The Divinity of kings was a fundamental belief 
 61
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 which reveals itself in a variety of forms through 
 Western Asia and Egypt. The inscriptions of 
 Gudea, the code of Khammurabi, the Assyrian 
 records and the praises of the Pharaohs reflect 
 conceptions which are materialised now in the 
 insignia of the kings, and now in their costume 
 and toilet. In a Babylonian myth the royal 
 ornaments lay before the supreme god awaiting 
 the monarch; in Egypt the king is the god's 
 ka, his first-born; chosen, created and crowned 
 by the divine father. The kings stood in the 
 closest relationship to the gods; they were not 
 only the heads of the state, they were also (in 
 early Assyria) priest-kings, and in Egypt theo- 
 retically all offerings for the living and the dead 
 were made by the Pharaoh. All this was neither 
 mere empty formality nor an isolated eccen- 
 tricity. It is quite in accordance with the 
 powers commonly ascribed to divine representa- 
 tives, that the control of the rain and storm is 
 held to depend upon the influence of Ramses n. 
 with the weather-god. It is equally intelligible 
 (from anthropological evidence) when the same 
 king caused the gods to take up their abode in 
 the images which had been prepared for them ! 
 
 Khammurabi could declare that he carried in 
 his bosom the people of Sumer and Akkad, and 
 62
 
 THE WORLD OF SPIRITS 
 
 the Pharaoh could call himself the husband of 
 Egypt, while Egypt was 'the only daughter of 
 Re (the sun-god) whose son sits upon the throne.' 
 Not only was he the incarnation and the son of 
 the deity (or of all the recognised deities), but he 
 was the cause of the land's fruitfulness, pro- 
 sperity, and protection. The Pharaoh, ' the god 
 of all people ' (as he is once called), received the 
 adoration of his subjects, and one could some- 
 times believe that he was more essentially a deity 
 than the gods themselves, were it not that the 
 subordinate gods always maintained their hold 
 upon the people locally. With all allowance for 
 the difference between conventional and practical 
 religion, the fundamental relations between land, 
 people, ruler and the deity persisted in many 
 related though varying forms, which are ex- 
 tremely interesting in any consideration of the 
 social changes at the rise of a monarchy and 
 after its downfall. 
 
 This digression is necessary, because, although 
 the practical working of such beliefs as these may 
 perplex us, the fact remains that they were shared 
 in Palestine. The petty rulers in the Ainarna 
 letters thoroughly recognise the divine nature of 
 the king who was a god and had the god for his 
 father (see p. 78 sq.). Later, when Palestine had its 
 63
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 own king, the ' Lord's anointed ' was almost as the 
 deity himself (Ex. xxii. 28, cp. 2 Sam. xiv. 17); 
 king and cult were one (Hos. iii. 4), and the king's 
 death could be regarded as the extinction of the 
 nation's lamp (2 Sam. xxi. 17). Not to mention 
 other details, ,the Messianic ideals of the divinely- 
 begotten son and of the ruler whose origin was 
 of aforetime preserve the inveterate belief in the 
 divine ancestry of rulers, an honour which in 
 other lands continued to be conferred upon rather 
 than claimed by them. 
 
 Recognised gods. It is very important to find 
 that the representatives or possessors of divine 
 powers are the worshippers of their deity in life 
 and his inferiors in death. The recognised gods 
 have their definite circles of clients, and if their 
 human representatives are subsequently wor- 
 shipped or even deified, this is a not unnatural 
 development, especially as the official deities are 
 apt to be at the mercy of political and religious 
 changes. The older gods can be degraded and 
 sink to the rank of demons (from newer stand- 
 points), but the potty deities and the lower super- 
 natural beings are as little influenced by external 
 vicissitudes as the lower ranks of humanity with 
 whom they always stand in closer relationship. 
 64
 
 THE WORLD OF SPIRITS 
 
 Their persistence in popular belief is as typical as 
 the descent of the more august beings, although 
 even the latter are understood to retain an in- 
 fluence which those of more recent introduction 
 have not yet acquired or are unable to exert. 
 While the general fundamental conceptions re- 
 main virtually unchanged, they are shaped by the 
 social and political institutions, for religious and 
 political life formed part of the same social 
 organism.
 
 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 correspond- 
 ing 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 
 66
 
 THE GODS 
 
 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 con- 
 ceptions would be generally true of all ; the power 
 of each was not unlimited, but it extended to all 
 that man usually desired. 
 
 From the general resemblance subsisting be- 
 tween 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 com- 
 mercial 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 con- 
 ceptions 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 superi- 
 ority of one national patron deity over the rest. 
 
 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 Baby- 
 lonian) type can be gleaned from the records of the First 
 Babylonian Dynasty. 
 
 67
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 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 com- 
 plete 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 experi- 
 enced. It is natural to ask for the ancient 
 counterparts of the Allah, the supreme god in the 
 68
 
 THE GODS 
 
 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 informa- 
 tion 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 princi- 
 palities 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 
 69
 
 local 'lady of turquoise,' whom they identified 
 with their Hathor, and the caves and temples of 
 both stood side by side. The Egyptian inscrip- 
 tions 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 profit- 
 able to you ; if ye increase to her, it shall be well 
 among you.' Some centuries later, we read that 
 Ramses in., 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 te Amenhotep in., he ascribes 
 a victpry 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. 1 On 
 
 1 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) u usually retained. 
 
 70
 
 THE GODS 
 
 the other hand, it is 'the gods,' or Teshub and 
 Amon (of Egypt), 1 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. 
 
 Towards the close of the reign of Amenhotep 
 in. Tushratta despatched to Egypt, Ishtar of 
 Nineveh 'lady of lands, lady of heaven,' in pur- 
 suance 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 n. 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 
 
 1 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. 
 
 71
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 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 em- 
 ployed 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 denuncia- 
 tions 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 La two triads, then follow the gods 
 who took part in war, and finally, sun, moon, earth, 
 72
 
 THE GODS 
 
 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 in- 
 fluences 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 hos- 
 tilities' 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 Erneu, 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 
 73
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 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 
 74
 
 THE GODS . 
 
 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 
 75
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 whom they identified with Hathor and evidently 
 regarded as an appropriate patroness. 1 The con- 
 nection 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 con- 
 querors 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. 
 
 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 solici- 
 tude of a certain official on his behalf to that of a 
 
 1 A. Er.i.Kn, Zeitachrift fur Aegyptiscfte. Sprache, xlii. 
 p. 109.
 
 THE GODS 
 
 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 
 in. 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 in., 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 in. 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 
 77
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 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. Wenarnon'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 Sub- 
 biluliuma 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 n. 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 Abiinilki (Abimelech) of Tyre writes, 
 78
 
 THE GODS 
 
 ' 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 
 79
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 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 in- 
 scribed upon them the 'might' of his god and 
 80
 
 THE GODS 
 
 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 n. says) ' the fear of God and the king/ 
 although, if the reference be merely to the pro- 
 mulgation 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 in. (whom he addresses as ' Son of 
 Shamash ' ) to put his name upon it as his 
 fathers had done in the past. The text is some- 
 what obscure, but the recognition of the Asiatic 
 Shamash is clear, and intelligible on the identi- 
 fication of Shamash and Amon-Re. So, also, when 
 the king of By bios 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 n. 
 
 F 81
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 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. 1 Re- 
 spect 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 recep- 
 tion (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 re- 
 ligion 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. 
 
 1 Zeitachrift des Deutschen Paldstina-Vereins, xir. p. 142, 
 xv. p. 205. The stele, known as the 'stone of Job,' has 
 entered into the worship of a Moslem place of pra3'er, and is 
 appropriately connected with a story of the patriarch, many 
 traditions of whom are current in this part of Hauran. 
 
 82
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 THE PANTHEON 
 
 UNTIL the necessary evidence comes to light it is 
 scarcely possible to do more than collect a few 
 notes upon some of the gods and goddesses of our 
 period. The most important sources are from 
 Babylonia, Assyria, and Egypt; but some ad- 
 ditional information can be gleaned from Pales- 
 tinian names, allowance being made for the fact 
 that a personal name compounded with that of 
 a deity is not enough to prove that the bearer 
 was its worshipper. 
 
 Asiatic Deities in Egypt date from before the 
 age of the Hyksos invasion, as can be gathered 
 from the history of the mixed cult at Serabit 
 and from the introduction of Baalath of Byblos 
 (p. 75). Apophis, a Hyksos king, has left an 
 altar dedicated to his 'father Sutekh/ who had 
 set all lands under his feet, and after the 
 expulsion of the Hyksos, this foreign deity, 
 83
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 Egyptianised as Set (or Sutekh), became firmly 
 established. Both SUTEKH and BAAL were re- 
 garded as essentially gods of battle, and the 
 latter often occurs in descriptions of the prowess 
 of the Pharaohs of the Nineteenth and Twentieth 
 Dynasties. Thus, the king is like Baal in the 
 lands, mighty in strength, far-reaching in courage, 
 strong-horned ; he is like Sutekh great in might. 
 He is the equal of Baal, ' his real son for ever,' 
 and he is as Baal in his hour (i.e. of manifestation). 
 When he appears upon the battlefield like Baal, 
 his flame consumes the foe, and Amon-Re an- 
 nounces to Rainses in., ' I overthrow for thee 
 every land, when they see thy majesty in strength, 
 like my son, Baal in his wrath.' Baal is in his 
 limbs ; his roaring is like Baal in heaven, and his 
 enemies fall down in fear of him like Baal. Baal 
 was virtually identical with Sutekh who is repre- 
 sented as a foreign god and is sometimes horned 
 (e.g. at Serabit). A curious scarab shows a winged 
 Sutekh with horned cap and long streamer stand- 
 ing upon a lion. 
 
 Another foreigner is RESHEPH, lord of heaven, 
 lord of eternity, or governor of the gods; he is 
 the warrior, the god of fire and lightning (subse- 
 quently identified with Apollo). Valiant Egyptian 
 officers are likened to him. He appears on 
 84
 
 THE PANTHEON 
 
 the Egyptian monuments with Semitic profile, 
 and conical hat (or otherwise a fillet) from which 
 projects the head of a gazelle; he holds a lance 
 and shield in the left hand, and in his right a 
 club. According to a magical text his consort 
 was '-t-m, a deity who seems to be combined with 
 Shamash in an old North Palestinian place-name, 
 and may recur in the familiar Obed (servant of) 
 -Edom. In Egypt Resheph also formed a triad 
 with Min (the old harvest-deity and god of repro- 
 duction) and the goddess KADESH (' holy '). The 
 last, whose name suggests the sacred licentious 
 rites of Asiatic cults (p. 33 sq.\ is called lady of 
 heaven, mistress of the gods, the eye of Re, etc. 
 She was assimilated to Hathor, and stands nude 
 upon a lion with lotus flowers in her right hand 
 and a serpent in her left ; her head framed with 
 heavy tresses of hair is sometimes surmounted by 
 the sun-disk between two horns. Among foreign 
 war-goddesses Egypt had ANATH, well known 
 from Palestinian place-names. Her priesthood 
 at Thebes is mentioned under Thutmose in., and 
 the favourite daughter of Ramses n. was named 
 'daughter of Anath.' The deity is represented 
 sitting clothed upon a throne with lance and 
 shield in the right hand and battle-axe in the 
 left ; or holding instead the papyrus sceptre and 
 85
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 the emblem of life she stands erect clad in a 
 panther- skin ; her feathered crown sometimes has 
 a pair of horns at the base. She is called lady of 
 heaven, or of the world, daughter of the sun, 
 mother, etc., and is often paired with Astarte. 
 
 ASTARTE found a place in several Egyptian 
 temples. We also hear of her prophets, and a 
 fragmentary myth apparently describes how, as 
 daughter of Ptah, she entered the pantheon of 
 Memphis. Here, as we learn from another text, 
 Egyptian and foreign deities met together, and 
 among the latter is a Baalath Saphun (B. of 
 the North ?), whose male counterpart appears in 
 Baal-Zephon near the Red Sea (Ex. xiv. 2) and 
 the equivalent Baal-Sapun, one of the gods of 
 king Baal (see p. 72). The Egyptians depict 
 Astarte with the head of a lioness, driving her 
 quadriga over the foe; and as goddess of war 
 she is 'mistress of horses and lady of chariots.' 
 But that both Anath and Astarte were also 
 dissolute goddesses is recognised in a text which 
 ascribes their creation to Set. The prevalence 
 of the cult of the goddess of love and war in 
 Palestine is well known from the references in 
 the Old Testament to Ashtoreth (an intentional 
 perversion to suggest bosheth ' shame '), from the 
 place-names, and from the plaques which in- 
 86
 
 THE PANTHEON 
 
 dicate numerous minor local types (p. 29). 
 In the Amarna tablets Astarte (or rather the 
 Babylonian Ishtar) coalesces with ASHIRTA who 
 is sometimes written in the plural (Ashrati). Like 
 the place-names Anathoth (the Anaths) and 
 Ashtaroth (the Astartes), the different conceptions 
 of the goddess in all her local forms seem to 
 be combined in one term. Ashirta appears to 
 have been essentially the goddess of the west. 
 In a text of the First Babylonian Dynasty she is 
 paired with Ramman as 'bride of the king of 
 heaven, lady of exuberance (or vigour) and 
 splendour'; later, she is called the consort of 
 the ' lord of the mountain,' an appellative corre- 
 sponding to the Baal of Lebanon. In old Arabia 
 she was the wife of the moon-god, and the 
 masculine form Ashir, on cuneiform Cappadocian 
 tablets of our period, seems to be no other than 
 the great god Ashur himself. Her name cannot 
 be severed from the Asherah, but it is not clear 
 whether it was transferred to or derived from the 
 object of cult (see p. 26). The intricacy of the 
 history of the divine-names will be understood 
 when the Assyrian equivalent of Beth (house of) 
 -El becomes the name of a deity, or when the 
 plural of Ishtar is used of goddesses in general, or 
 when Resheph (above) in Hebrew denotes a spark, 
 87
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 flame, or fire-bolt. But the career of the goddess 
 of love and war is even more complicated. The 
 phonetic equivalent of Ishtar in old Arabia was 
 a god (so perhaps also in Moab, ninth century), 
 and Ishtar herself appears in Assyria with a beard 
 and is likened to the god Ashur, thus finding a 
 later parallel in the bearded Aphrodite (Astarte, 
 Venus) of Cyprus. 
 
 The sex of the sun-deity SHAMASH is equally 
 confusing, for, although he was lord of heaven 
 (p. 73), and kings of Egypt and the Hittites 
 identified themselves with him, the deity was 
 female in old Arabia, among earlier Hittite 
 groups, and probably once, also, in Palestine and 
 Syria. 1 Place-names compounded with Shemesh 
 attest the prevalence of the deity, and around 
 the district of Gezer lie Beth-Shemesh and the 
 stories of Samson (sun) wherein solar elements 
 have been recognised. Among pastoral and 
 agricultural peoples, however, the moon is more 
 important. To the prominence of new-moon 
 festivals and the probable connection between the 
 lunar body and the name Jericho we must add 
 the moon-god SIN, in Sinai and the desert of Sin 
 
 1 H. Winckler, Mitteilungen dcr Deutschen Orient-QetellscJiaft 
 (Berlin, 1907), No. 35, p. 53; id., Amarna Tablets, No. 208, 
 1. 22 (Knudtzon, No. 323). 
 
 88
 
 THE PANTHEON 
 
 in the south of Palestine, and in the north at 
 Harran, where his worship survived to the 
 Christian era. At Hamath, in N. Syria, about 
 800 B.C., Shamash and the moon-god find a place 
 by the side of the supreme 'Baal of heaven.' 
 Later, at Nerab near Aleppo the moon-god is 
 associated with his wife N-k-l (Nin-gal ' the 
 great lady'), Shamash, and Nusku (fire-god, 
 messenger of Bel). Specific Assyrian influence 
 might be expected at this date, but the consort's 
 name appears in an Egyptian magical text, not 
 later than the Twentieth Dynasty, as the wife of 
 ' the high god ' (here, the Sun ?). x 
 
 Quite as prominent as the sun was the weather- 
 god, god of storm, lightning and thunder. 
 Known as Teshub (p. 70), Hadad, Ramman 
 (comp. the Biblical Rimmon), Adad, Dad, Bir, 
 etc., the form ADDU, which was recognised as 
 the god's 'Amorite' designation, is adopted here 
 in preference to the more familiar Aramaean 
 HADAD. This is supported by the spelling of 
 the name of Rib-Addi, king of Byblos. The 
 interchange of Baal and Addu in certain names 
 in the Amarna letters shows that Addu could 
 naturally be called Baal, and to the Egyptians 
 he was apparently the Baal. The importance of 
 
 1 A. H. Gardiner, Zeit.f. Aeg. Spr. t xliii. p. 97. 
 8 9
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 the weather-god in the religion of agricultural 
 and pastoral peoples may be illustrated from one 
 of Khammurabi's curses: 'May Adad, lord of 
 abundance, regent of heaven and earth, my 
 helper, deprive him (i.e. the disobedient) of the 
 rain from heaven and the water-floods from the 
 springs; may he bring his land to destruction 
 through want and hunger; may he break loose 
 furiously over his city and turn his land into the 
 heap left by a storm.' The gifts of Addu pre- 
 served men from dearth and starvation ; a too 
 plenteous supply brought flood and rum. Thus 
 the god had a twofold aspect, and his thunder in 
 the heavens, his fiery darts, in fact the destructive 
 side of his character made him an appropriate 
 war-god. This aspect of the nature-deity was 
 especially cultivated by warlike peoples. 
 
 Babylonian and Hittite sculptures depict the 
 god brandishing a hammer with his right hand, 
 while the left holds up a triad of lightning-flashes 
 or thunder-bolts. On an inscription from North 
 Syria (eighth century) Had ad has horns, and with 
 this agrees the association of the bull with the 
 god. Like all predominant gods he includes a 
 variety of attributes, and we may conjecture that 
 the small heads of bulls unearthed by the excava- 
 tions are connected with his worship (p. 32). 
 90
 
 THE PANTHEON 
 
 The inscription in question (see also p. 57) places 
 Hadad at the head of a small pantheon with El, 
 Resheph, R-k-b el (steed, chariot, or charioteer 
 of El) and Shamash. In the Amarna letters one 
 writer calls the king of Egypt his Addu, and 
 Abimelech of Tyre, who likens him to both 
 Shamash and Addu, addresses him as 'he who 
 gives his thunder in the heavens like Addu.' 
 
 Together with this combination it is to be 
 noticed that while Khammurabi 'the Sun of 
 Babylonia' calls himself the mighty bull who 
 gores the enemy, old Egyptian scenes actually 
 represent 'the strong bull' breaking down fort- 
 resses with its horns or expelling the inhabitants. 
 The Pharaoh was symbolised by the bull, and 
 even the Egyptian sun-god is styled ' the bull of 
 the gods.' The animal is doubtless typical of 
 generative force and of strength, while the union 
 of the attributes of Shamash and Addu are intel- 
 ligible since to the sun and weather man owed 
 the necessaries of life. It is noteworthy that the 
 two deities are prominent in the Hittite treaty, 
 where each is called 'lord of heaven' (p. 73), 
 and, as early as the nineteenth century, the 
 Assyrian compound-name Shamshi-Adad indi- 
 cates that they could be easily combined. The 
 name f s borne by two kings ; one a ' priest-king '
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 of the god Ashur, the other a son of Ishme 
 Dagan (' D. hears '). 
 
 Dagan (DAGON) has left his traces in place- 
 names and in the ruler, ' Dagan is strong ' ( Amarna 
 letters). The deity seems to have been of Assyrian 
 or Mesopotamian rather than of Babylonian 
 origin. It is possible that he was a corn -god. 
 The Babylonian NEBO, the ' teacher/ can only 
 be recovered from place-names in Judah and 
 Moab. NINIB (native form is uncertain), both 
 sun- and war-god, appears in the Amarna letters 
 in two place-names (one in the vicinity of Jeru- 
 salem), and in the personal- name 'Servant of 
 Ninib.' The swine was sacred to Ninib, as also 
 to Tammuz and the Phoenician Adonis; but 
 neither of the latter can be traced in our period. 
 
 SHALEM, in Jeru-salem (Uru-salim in the Am- 
 arna letters), has been identified (on the analogy 
 of Jeru-el) with a god who is known later in 
 Phoenicia, Assyria, and North Arabia, and who is 
 perhaps combined with Resheph on an Egyptian 
 stele of our period. He was perhaps identified 
 with Ninib. The antiquity of GAD, the deity of 
 fortune, can be assumed from place-names. In a 
 disguised form the goddess, 'Fortune' was the 
 guardian-deity of the cities in the Greek age, and 
 allusion is made in the Talmud to the couch 
 92
 
 THE PANTHEON 
 
 reserved for the ' luck of the house.' A deified 
 ' Righteousness ' (sedek) has been inferred from a 
 name in the Amarna age ; it would find a parallel 
 in 'Right' and 'Integrity' the sons of the 
 Assyrian god Shamash, and both ' Integrity ' and 
 'Righteousness' find a place in the Pho3nician 
 cosmogony which, in spite of its late dress, pre- 
 serves many old features which recur in Hebrew 
 myths. 
 
 The Babylonian NERGAL, god of war, burning 
 heat and pestilence, and ruler of Hades, the deity 
 with whom was identified Saturn (and also Mars), 
 should find a place in the pantheon. A seal from 
 Taanach describes its owner as ' servant of Nergal ' 
 (p. 110), and the king of Cyprus reports to Egypt 
 the desolation caused by the god's hand. Even as 
 late as the third century B.C. we hear of a Phoe- 
 nician who was his high-priest. As a solar fire-god 
 he had in the west the name Sharrab or Sharraph 
 with which the familiar Seraph may be identified. 
 The god El of later PhcBnician myth (the Greek 
 Kronos ; Saturn) was depicted with six-wings like 
 the Seraphim. He was the god to whom children 
 were sacrificed, whence the story that he had set 
 the example by killing his own.- If infants had 
 been slain to Sharrab in Palestine, this would be 
 in harmony with Nergal's character, and it may 
 93
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 be noticed that Nusku, who is sometimes as- 
 sociated with Nergal, was symbolised by a lamp 
 (cp. above, p. 41). In the Old Testament the 
 grim rites belong to Molech (properly Melek), but 
 there are independent reasons for the view that 
 the latter was the proper-name of the Phrenician 
 El. 1 However this may be, the name MELEK, 
 although really an appellative ('king'), passes 
 over into a true proper-name ; but it is not clear 
 whether this is the case in our period where we 
 meet with the personal names ' servant of Melek ' 
 (or, the king), ' El is Melek,' etc. 
 
 It is uncertain whether there is external 
 evidence for the name YAHWEH (Jehovah), the 
 national God of the Israelites. Unambiguous 
 examples outside Palestine appear in North Syria 
 in the eighth century hi the form Yau (Yahu), 
 which hi one name interchanges with El. Cunei- 
 form evidence for the name in the First Baby- 
 lonian Dynasty has been adduced, and in the abbre- 
 viated Ya it possibly occurs in ' house of Ya/ a 
 Palestinian town taken by Thutrnose in. Further, 
 in Akhi-yami (or, yawi), the author or a cuneiform 
 tablet from Taanach, an identification with Akhi- 
 yah (the Biblical Ahijah) is not improbable, 
 although other explanations are possible. While 
 
 1 M.-J. Lagrange, fitudes sur les Eel. Semitiques, p. 107 sq. 
 
 94
 
 THE PANTHEON 
 
 other writers salute Ishtar (or Astarte)-Washur, 
 the governor of Taanach, with : May Addu, or may 
 the gods preserve thy life, Ahijah (?) invokes ' the 
 lord of the gods.' In the course of his letter he 
 asks whether there is still lamentation for the lost 
 cities or have they been recovered, and continues : 
 ' there is over my head some one (who is) over the 
 cities; see, now, whether he will do good with 
 thee ; further, if he shows anger, they will be con- 
 founded, and the victory will be mighty.' It is 
 not clear whether these words refer to the divine 
 Pharaoh or to a deity, the supreme god whom he 
 invokes. If the latter view be correct, it is diffi- 
 cult to decide whether the reference be to the 
 Sun-god, patronised by the ruling powers (whether 
 Egyptian or Hittite), or the great Addu who 
 would be quite in keeping with the allusions to 
 war and victory. Some, however, would recognise 
 a Providence, or, from their interpretation of the 
 writer's name, Yahweh himself. But a single 
 tablet has little evidential value and we can 
 merely mention the possibilities. 
 
 The preceding paragraphs touch only the fringe 
 of an important subject the Palestinian pantheon 
 in and after the Amarna age. Egyptian supremacy 
 involved the recognition of Amon-Re, but it is 
 difficult to determine to what extent this deity 
 95
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 differed from the Palestinian Shamash. Excava- 
 tions illustrate the result of intercourse, especi- 
 ally in the southern part of the land, but the 
 numerous characteristic scarabs, and the repre- 
 sentations of Osiris, Isis, Ptah, Sebek, Anubis, 
 and the ever-popular Bes (with moulds), need 
 have no significance for the gods of Palestine. 
 They may not always be specifically Egyptian; 
 Bes, for example, appears to be of non-Egyptian 
 ancestry. Further, a number of the names 
 in the Amarna letters are neither Egyptian nor 
 Semitic, but of northern origin, and the name 
 of the king of Jerusalem, 'servant of Khiba,' 
 introduces a goddess of the earlier 'Hittite' 
 peoples whose influence upon Palestine is to be 
 inferred upon other grounds. 1 
 
 In Egypt, Babylonia and Assyria numerous 
 deities of varying rank were venerated by the 
 people. Bes, himself, in spite of his subordinate 
 position in the pantheon was a favourite 
 among all Egyptians outside the more elevated 
 classes. The popular beings, like the popular 
 religious ideas, are not to be found in royal in- 
 scriptions or temple-hymns. The state and the 
 priesthood often refused to recognise them, but 
 they are to be found not rarely among the per- 
 
 1 H. Winckler (Mittheil., No. 35), p. 48. 
 9 6
 
 THE PANTHEON 
 
 sonal names of ordinary individuals. This pro- 
 bably holds true also of Palestine, and conse- 
 quently we must not suppose that the influence of 
 foreigners upon the popular cults of the land is 
 to be ignored or that the more honourable names 
 which we have been noticing were the sole 
 claimants to the worship of the peasantry. 1 
 
 1 Comp. M. Jastrow, Religion Bdbyloniens und Assyriens, 
 i. p. 164 sq. ; H. P. Smith, ' Theophorous Proper Names in the 
 Old Testament,' in 0. T. and Semitic Studies in memory of 
 William Rainey Harper, i. pp. 35-64 (Chicago, 1908). 
 
 G 97
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT CONCLUSION 
 
 Miscellaneous Ideas. Although the native liter- 
 ature of our period consists almost entirely of the 
 begging-letters and reports in the Amarna Tablets, 
 yet even from the language addressed to the 
 human representative of the Sun-God, we may 
 gain some idea of the intellectual environment, 
 some hints, it may be, suggestive of the religious 
 thought of the age. 1 The Egyptian monarch is 
 addressed not only as king of lands, king of battle 
 but as a god (pp. 63, 78). His commands are as 
 powerful as the Sun (Shamash) in Heaven ; he is 
 like the Sun which rises over the lands every day, 
 and, as for the rising of the Sun in Heaven, so the 
 writers await the words which come from his 
 mouth. They keep the king's command day and 
 night and acknowledge that the king will curse 
 
 1 It need hardly be remarked that the paragraphs classifying 
 the more interesting ideas in the letters from Palestine and 
 Syria have been made as literal as possible. 
 
 9 8
 
 CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT 
 
 the man who. does not serve him. He who 
 hearkens not to the word of the king, his lord, 
 his city and house go to ruin, and his name will 
 not be in the land for ever ; but (says the writer, 
 the king of Tyre) the servant who hearkens to 
 his lord, his city and house flourish, and his 
 name is unto eternity, 'for thou art the Sun 
 which rises over me and the wall of bronze which 
 is lifted up for me.' 
 
 The vassals do obeisance seven and seven 
 times ; they prostrate themselves upon breast and 
 back. (Both attitudes are illustrated in the 
 rather later tomb of Harmheb.) They call them- 
 selves the throne on which the king sits, his 
 footstool, the dust of his feet and of the soles 
 of his sandals. They are the ground upon 
 which he treads, the dirt over which he walks; 
 his yoke is upon their neck and they bear it. 
 'Whether we mount up -to heaven or descend 
 to earth, our head is still in your hand,' writes 
 one, and he makes the following striking acknow- 
 ledgement : ' I look here and I look there and there 
 is no light, but I look to my lord the king and 
 there is light; and though a brick move away 
 from under its coping, I will not move away 
 from under the feet of my lord.' These phrases, 
 which were evidently popular, are used by two 
 99
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 other writers. A vassal thus declares his fidelity : 
 ' I have not sinned in aught against the king my 
 lord, I have not sinned; may the lord my king 
 know his evil-doers.' Another seeks the way to his 
 lord, and from his lord deserts not. A confident 
 vassal prays the king not to take anything to 
 heart; let not thy heart be pained, he writes. 
 One writer asks if he is a dog that he should not 
 obey the royal commands, and a second emphasises 
 his remarks by a repetition of the oath 'as the 
 king, my lord, liveth.' 
 
 The king of Byblos, who calls his city the king's 
 faithful handmaid, complains of a deed against 
 his city which had not been done since eternity ; 
 the dogs (i.e. his adversaries) act after their hearts 
 and cause the king's cities to go up in smoke. 
 The fields are like a wife without a husband 
 through lack of sustenance. He himself is caught 
 like a bird in a cage. Again, he is old and stricken 
 with disease ; the gods of Byblos are enraged, and 
 the illness is very severe, but, he continues, 'I 
 have opened (confessed) my sins to the gods.' 
 He declares that since the day he received favour 
 from the king his heart had not changed, his face 
 is (fixed) to serve him ; if the king's heart is for 
 his city (or, elsewhere, if it is on his heart) let him 
 send help. 
 
 TOO
 
 CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT 
 
 The vassals write that they stretch out their 
 hand to the king's feet, or pray that the king 
 may extend his hand unto them. The citizens of 
 Tunip assert : ' thy city weeps and its tears flow ; 
 there is no seizing of the hand (help) for us.' The 
 ruler of Beirut trusts that the royal troops may 
 shatter the heads of the king's enemies, while his 
 servant's eyes gaze (i.e. with pleasure) upon the 
 king's life. The elders of a city entreat: 'May 
 the king our lord hearken to the words of his 
 true servants, and give a present to his servants, 
 while our enemies look on and eat the dust ; let 
 not the king's breath depart from us.' The king 
 is the breath of his vassals' lives; they rejoice 
 when it reaches them, for without it they cannot 
 live. The thought was a common one, and in 
 an Egyptian text the defeated Hittites are repre- 
 sented as saying to Ramses n. 'in praising the 
 Good God (i.e. the king) " Give to us the breath 
 that thou givest, lo, we are under thy sandals." ' 
 Equally interesting are the words of the prince 
 of Sidon on the receipt of tidings from the king, 
 'my heart rejoiced, my head was uplifted and my 
 eyes shone/ 
 
 Finally, the king of Jerusalem in his letters to 
 his god, his Sun, protests that one has slandered 
 him (lit. eaten the pieces). While other writers 
 101
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 disclaim guilt or sin (khitu), i.e. rebellion, he 
 asserts that he has been loyal (saduk) in his 
 dealings. He acknowledges that neither his 
 father nor his mother appointed him in his 
 place, the king's strong arm has set him up 
 in his father's house, he has ' put his name upon 
 Jerusalem for ever,' therefore he cannot abandon 
 its territory. Indeed, his recognition of Pharaoh's 
 supremacy is unique, and in one of his communi- 
 cations to the king his Sun, after the usual 
 obeisance (' at the feet of my lord, seven times and 
 seven times I fall '), he declares that his lord ' has 
 put his name upon the East and upon the West.' 
 
 The Underlying Identity of Thought through- 
 out the old Oriental world shows itself alike in 
 Egyptian texts and in Hittite tablets from Boghaz- 
 keui. The literature of Babylonia, Assyria, and 
 often, too, of Egypt so frequently has analogies 
 and parallels in the Old Testament, that we may 
 assume that similar points of contact would be 
 found, had we some of the religious writings of 
 the Palestine of our period. Though we do not 
 know how the Palestinian addressed his gods, 
 the evidence whether direct or indirect partially 
 enables us to fill the gap. Even the simplicity 
 and poverty of Oriental pastoral life have never 
 1 02
 
 CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT 
 
 been accompanied by a corresponding inferiority 
 of expression or dearth of religious reflection. An 
 unbiased examination of the external religious 
 literature shows the position which the deities 
 held in the thoughts of their groups of wor- 
 shippers. Religion was quite part of life, and the 
 same fundamental conceptions underlay the mani- 
 fold social-religious systems whether tribal or 
 monarchical. To their head each group looked 
 for all the gifts of nature and also for protection 
 and succour ; him they were loyally prepared to 
 sustain, and they expected a corresponding loyalty 
 on his part. 
 
 A topical example of the identity of thought is 
 furnished by a hymn of the monotheist Ikhnaton 
 in honour of Aton. The deities are largely what 
 circumstances make them; the extension of 
 Egypt's empire extended the supremacy of the 
 national-god, the situation encouraged the con- 
 ception of a world-god. Now, this domesticated 
 and somewhat weak monarch, holding himself 
 aloof from politics, endeavoured to found a cult 
 of the sun-disc which was characteristically devoid 
 of the usual association of the sun with the 
 destructive aspect of the storm- or weather-god. 
 Like other individual faiths, it was stamped with 
 a profound spirit of humanity. Ikhnaton's deity 
 103
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 was the sole god, beside whom there was no other ; 
 the beginning of life, the creator of ' the countries 
 of Syria, Nubia, the land of Egypt ' ; the maker of 
 all mankind diverse in speech, and of all that is 
 upon the earth and on high. It was a despotic 
 and ill-timed monotheism. It introduced a cult 
 which was too far from ordinary worship, one 
 which threatened to overthrow the old-established 
 deities. What was probably more important was 
 the fact that the deity had not the forceful and 
 dominating attributes of the old sun-god. He 
 was not a god of war, and, from the current stand- 
 point, would be of no avail in the political storms 
 which were beating upon the Egyptian empire in 
 Asia. But this remarkable attempt at a reform 
 claims attention especially because the cult was 
 as little upon traditional and specifically Egyp- 
 tian lines as was the idea of the beneficent life- 
 giving sun whose rays were not confined to Egypt 
 alone. As Professor Breasted has observed, the 
 hymn is especially interesting for its similarity in 
 thought and sequence with the late Psalm civ. 
 There is no evidence, however, that any effort was 
 made to spread Ikhnaton's cult over the Egyp- 
 tian dominions in Western Asia, and the possi- 
 bility of Asiatic influence upon the shaping of the 
 cult cannot be altogether excluded. We quote a 
 104
 
 CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT 
 
 few lines from Professor Breasted's translation to 
 illustrate Ikhnaton's conceptions of the sun-god, 
 whose worship was one of the most popular in 
 Babylonia and Assyria, who, indeed, was regarded 
 there not merely as an illuminator but as a 
 supreme and righteous judge, the god of truth 
 and justice. 
 
 ' When thou risest in the eastern horizon of heaven, 
 Thou fillest every land with thy beauty. 
 
 When thou settest in the western horizon of heaven, 
 The world is in darkness like the dead. 
 
 Bright is the earth when thou risest in the horizon, 
 
 When thou shinest as Aton by day. 
 
 The darkness is banished, when thou sendest forth thy rays. 
 
 How manifold are all thy works, 
 
 They are hidden from before us, 
 
 O thou sole god, whose powers no other possesseth, 
 
 Thou didst create the earth according to thy desire, 
 
 While thou wast alone. 
 
 The world is in thy hand, 
 
 Even as thou hast made them. 
 
 When thou hast risen, they live. 
 
 When thou settest, they die. 
 
 For thou art duration, beyond thy mere limbs, 
 
 By thee man liveth, 
 
 And their eyes look upon thy beauty, 
 
 Until thou settest.' 1 
 
 1 See further the appreciative account of the reform by J. H. 
 Breasted, History of Egypt, pp. 355-378. 
 
 105
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 The Infiuence of Babylonia. The fact that 
 Palestine used the script and language of 
 Babylonia suggests that it shared other features 
 of its culture. Among the Amarna Tablets were 
 Babylonian mythological texts which had been 
 carefully studied or used for reading-exercises in 
 Egypt.., One, the my th of Eresh-ki-gal and Nergal, 
 narrating the descent of the latter into Hades, 
 recalls the story of Persephone. Another, the 
 myth of Adapa, tells how the hero who refused 
 the food and water of life in heaven was denied 
 the gift of immortality. It is inconceivable that 
 Palestinian speculation did not turn to the mys- 
 teries of life and death, or that a people should 
 acknowledge Nergal or any other deity without 
 some formal beliefs. May we assume, therefore, 
 that Palestinian thought was pre-eminently Baby- 
 lonian? The question is as important for our 
 period as for the Old Testament, and, in the 
 absence of texts wherewith to institute a compari- 
 son, we conclude with a brief account of the bear- 
 ing of the available evidence upon the problem. 
 
 The formulated beliefs, the theology, and the 
 mythology which all races possess to some degree 
 or other have grown up from that primitive 
 philosophy of man which seeks to explain all 
 that he saw about him. The old question: 
 1 06
 
 CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT 
 
 ' What mean ye by this service ? ' (Exod. xii. 26) 
 is typical of the inquiry which ritual (and indeed 
 all other) acts invariably demand ; the danger 
 lies in our assuming that the proffered explana- 
 tions necessarily describe their origin, and in con- 
 fusing the essential elements with those which 
 are accidental and secondary. The excavations 
 at Gezer suggest an illustration. What rites 
 were practised in its caves or in the great tunnel 
 which leads to the subterranean spring cannot be 
 asserted, but there is a living tradition that the 
 waters of the flood burst forth in the neighbour- 
 hood. Similar flood-stories can be localised else- 
 where. In Hierapolis water was poured into a 
 chasm below the sanctuary twice a year, and 
 according to the Pseudo-Lucian it was here that 
 the waters of Deucalion's flood were absorbed 
 hence the rite ! But Melito reports that water 
 was emptied into a well in the city in order to 
 subdue a subterranean demon evidently some 
 earlier chthonic deity. Similar water-rites were 
 known in Palestine and Syria as a c descent ' or 
 Yerld, and it may be presumed that an echo of 
 the term survives in 'Ain Yerdeh at the foot of 
 Gezer. We do not reach the root of the matter, 
 but we can notice the diverse explanations of the 
 same rite (which probably originated in a charm 
 107
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 to procure rain), the ubiquity of certain traditions, 
 their persistence, and the ease with which they 
 adjust themselves. Further, it is instructive to 
 observe how the rite has been shaped in the 
 Jewish Feast of Tabernacles and has been dressed 
 in accordance with specific religious beliefs (cp. 
 Zech. xiv. 16 sq.). 
 
 Some archaeological details may next be sum- 
 marised. An altar at Taanach, with protuberances 
 suggestive of horns, bore in bold relief winged 
 animals with human faces, lions, a tree with 
 a goat on either side, and a small human figure 
 clutching a serpent. Though it may belong to 
 the eighth or seventh century, similar scenes 
 recur upon seals and other objects of all dates. 
 Animals (especially of the deer or gazelle kind) 
 are common, either alone or in conjunction with 
 trees or men. Man-headed bulls with wings, 
 sphinxes, and scenes of combat also appear. The 
 ubiquitous myth of the dragon-slayer finds a 
 parallel in the Egyptian scene of a foreign god 
 (Sutekh) piercing the serpent with his spear, or 
 in the later grandiose representations of the 
 sturdy boy at Petra who grips the dragon. 1 One 
 
 1 The former is given by F. L. Griffith, Proceedings of the 
 Society of Biblical Archce.ology, xvi. p. 87, the latter by 
 A. Jeremias, Alte Test., etc., p. 456 sqq., fig. 151. 
 
 1 08
 
 CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT 
 
 seal shows a seven-branched tree grasped by two 
 men with the sun and moon on one side and two 
 stags on the other. In a second, a human figure 
 stands before a kind of pillar which is surmounted 
 by an eight-rayed star. A third had been im- 
 pressed upon a tablet from Gezer which bore 
 nineteen distinct objects, including sun, moon, 
 star, serpent, fish, crab, animals, etc. Some of the 
 signs were at once recognised as zodiacal, and 
 less elaborate specimens from Gezer and Megiddo 
 furnish parallels. But inscribed Babylonian 
 boundary-stones of our period bear analogous 
 symbols; they are the emblems of the deities 
 whose powers are thus invoked by the inscription 
 should the land-mark be damaged or removed. 
 The more gods, the more powerful the charm. 
 
 Such objects with all their Babylonian associa- 
 tions may hi certain cases have been imported or 
 copied from foreign originals; the scenes could 
 have been absolutely meaningless or even subject 
 to a new interpretation. But it is as difficult to 
 treat every apparently foreign object as contrary 
 to Palestinian ideas, as it is to determine how 
 sacrificial and other scenes would otherwise have 
 been depicted. Religion found its expression in 
 art ; art was the ally of idolatry, and the later 
 uncompromising attitude of Judaism towards 
 109
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 display of artistic meaning implies that the 
 current symbolism, etc., reflected intelligible 
 religious conceptions. But it does not follow that 
 these conceptions were everywhere identical. 
 
 Again, when a scimitar from a tomb at Gezer 
 resembles that which a priest holds in a sacrificial 
 scene upon a Gezer seal, we may suppose that 
 the seal represents a familiar Palestinian cere- 
 mony. But the same type of weapon is found in 
 Assyria and Egypt in the age of the Nineteenth 
 Dynasty, and it is therefore impossible to treat 
 it or the scene as distinctively Palestinian. The 
 ubiquity of the dragon-conflict, too, warns us that 
 the same underlying motive will present itself in a 
 great variety of external shapes, and it is interesting 
 to find that the idea of the slayer as a child actu- 
 ally points away from Babylonia. Features which 
 find their only parallel in the accumulation of 
 Babylonian evidence are not inevitably of Baby- 
 lonian origin. Our land was exposed to diverse 
 influences, an illustration of which is afforded by 
 certain seals with cuneiform characters. The owner 
 of one is styled a servant of Nergal (see p. 93) ; 
 it bears Egyptian symbols (those of life and 
 beauty), and a scene of adoration, partly Egyptian 
 and partly Babylonian in treatment. It has been 
 ascribed to the First Dynasty of Babylon. Later 
 no
 
 CONTEMPORARY THOUGHT 
 
 come the seals of the Sidonian Addumu ' beloved 
 of the gods(?)' and his son; on one is an Egyp- 
 tianised representation of Set, Horus, and Resheph. 
 Yet another combines two conventional scenes, 
 the priest leading a worshipper before a deity 
 (Babylonian), a king slaying a kneeling enemy 
 (Egyptian). 1 In the presence of such fusion the 
 problem becomes more complex. If, in the Greek 
 age, it is found that Adonis and Osiris or Astarte 
 of Byblos and Isis resembled each other so closely 
 that it was sometimes difficult to determine 
 which deity was being celebrated, the relation 
 between the Baalath of Byblos and Hathor, or 
 between Shamash and Amon-Re could have been 
 equally embarrassing in our period. In fact, 
 as Palestine continues to be brought into line 
 with other lands the task of determining specific 
 external influences becomes more intricate. 
 
 Finally, whatever was the true effect of the 
 early Babylonian supremacy, both Palestine and 
 Syria, when not controlled by Egypt, were in- 
 fluenced by the northern power of Mitanni and 
 by the Hittites who preserve distinctive features 
 
 1 See (a), Sellin, Tell Ta'annek, fig. 22, pp. 27 sq. , 105 (Vin- 
 cent, Canaan, fig. 117, p. 170 sq.) ; (b) Wiiickler, Altorient. 
 Fomchungen, iii. p. 177 sq. ', and (c) E. J. Pilcher, Proc. Soc. 
 Bill. Arch., xxiii. p. 362. 
 
 Ill
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 of their own. According to Professor Sayce most 
 of the seals we have been noticing are Syrian 
 modifications of the Babylonian type ; and 'the 
 more strictly archaeological evidence of Babylonian 
 influence upon Canaan is extraordinarily scanty.' 1 
 It is obvious that one must allow for the direct 
 influence exerted upon the religious conditions 
 from a quarter of which very little is known 
 as yet. The fact that Babylonian was used in 
 Palestine and among the Hittite peoples clearly 
 does not allow sweeping inferences. Indeed, so 
 far from the script or language having been 
 imposed from without, the people of Mitanni 
 apparently borrowed the cuneiform script and 
 adapted it to their own language ; while, in the 
 Amarna Tablets, the native tongue of Palestine 
 and Syria has left a distinct impress upon the 
 Babylonian. 2 This individuality repeats itself in 
 Palestinian pottery, which has neither originality 
 of concept nor fertility of resource. But it has 
 vigour and vitality, and has not developed into 
 the superior art with which it came into contact. 
 In general the archaeological evidence shows very 
 
 1 A. H. Sayce, Archaeology of the Cuneiform Inscriptions 
 (London, 1907), pp. 151 sq. 
 
 * For Mitanni, see Sayce, op. cit. , p. 167 ; and for the dialect 
 of the Amarna letters, Zimmern, Keilinschr. u. d. AUe Test., 
 p. 651. 
 
 112
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 clearly that Palestine was not absorbed by Baby- 
 lonian culture, still less by that of Egypt. 1 
 
 Conclusion. Recent research gives us a glimpse 
 of the Religion of Ancient Palestine which 
 becomes more distinct as it is found to be in 
 general harmony with Oriental religions. The 
 picture, as we see it, is neither Egyptian nor 
 Babylonian, and if the latter colours it, this was 
 inevitable, partly through the still obscure rela- 
 tions under the First Babylonian Dynasty, partly 
 (though indirectly) through the influence of the 
 northern peoples, and again partly because both 
 (as opposed to Egypt) are Semitic. The picture, 
 nevertheless, has distinctive traits of its own. By 
 the side of sacred places of cult and rites often 
 cruel and gross appear those indications of loftier 
 elements which prove that we have no mere 
 inchoate nature- worship. This co-existence need 
 cause no surprise. The institutions which com- 
 bine to make civilisation do not necessarily move 
 at the same rate or in parallel lines, either with 
 each other or with the progress of religious 
 thought. A variety of stages of development 
 such as can be observed in a single province of 
 modern India could have been easily found amid 
 
 1 Cp. Vincent, op. eit., p. 341 (also p. 439 and note 1). 
 H 113
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 conflicting political groups, or in the presence of 
 foreign mercenaries or settlers. One may also 
 assume that then, as now, there were the usual 
 contrasts between the exposed sea-ports and the 
 small inland townships, between the aristocracy 
 and the peasantry, between the settled agricul- 
 turists and the roaming sons of the desert. 
 
 The fundamental religious conceptions have 
 from time to time been elevated and ennobled by 
 enlightened minds; but what European culture 
 was unable to change in the age of Greek and 
 Roman supremacy, influences of Oriental origin 
 could not expel. Official cults, iconoclastic re- 
 forms, new positive religions have left the back- 
 ground substantially unaltered, and the old canvas 
 still shows through the coatings it has received. 
 
 Our evidence has taken us down through the 
 age of Egyptian supremacy, which can be traced 
 to the time of Ramses in., if not to the days of 
 Wenamon and Zakarbaal (1100 B.C.). With the 
 decay of "Egypt we reach the close of a period 
 which corresponds broadly to that wherein 
 Israelite history has placed the Patriarchs, Moses, 
 Joshua, and the Judges. The picture which the 
 external sources furnish was not effaced at a 
 stroke. But the transformation from Egypt's 
 suzerainty to an independent Israelite monarchy, 
 114
 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 from the polytheism of the Amarna age to the 
 recognition of a single God does not belong to 
 these pages. The rise of Yahweh as the national 
 God, and the development of conceptions regard- 
 ing his nature must be sought in the native 
 Israelite records themselves, and in such external 
 evidence as the future may produce. Our task is 
 finished when we point out that the external 
 (archaeological) evidence does not reveal that 
 hiatus which would have ensued had there been 
 a dislocation of earlier conditions by invading 
 Israelite tribes ; earlier forms are simply de- 
 veloped, the evolution is a progressive one. 1 
 
 1 Cp. B. A. S. Macalister, ' Excavation of Gezer,' Quarterly 
 Statements, 1904, p. 123 ; 1907, p. 203 ; Sellin, op. cit. , p. 102 ; id. , 
 Der Ertrag der Ausgrabungen in Orient fur die Erkenntnis der 
 Entwicklung der Religion Israels (Leipzig, 1905), pp. 33, 36 sq., 
 39 sq., see, in general, Vincent, op. cit., pp. 19 aq., 147 sqq., 
 199-204, 225, 345, 352 sq., 463 sq., and S. A. Cook, English 
 Historical Review, 1908, pp. 325 sq.
 
 PRINCIPAL SOURCES AND WORKS OF 
 REFERENCE 
 
 FOR the Excavations : R. A. S. Macalister, ' Keports on the 
 Excavation of Gezer,' in the Quarterly Statements of the 
 Palestine Exploration Fund (October 1902-October 1905 ; 
 July 1907- July 1908) ; id., Bible Side-lights from the 
 Mound of Gezer (London, 1906, numerous illustrations) ; 
 Ernst Sellin, 'Tell Ta'annek,' in the Denkschriften of 
 the Vienna Academy (1904-5) ; W. M. Flinders Petrie, 
 Researches in Sinai (London, 1906) ; Hugues Vincent, 
 Canaan d'apres V Exploration Retente (Paris, 1907 ; a 
 valuable account, from the archaeological standpoint, of 
 the results of excavation contained in the above works 
 and elsewhere) ; G. Schumacher, Tell el-Mutesellim 
 (Leipzig, 1908), vol. i., text and plates. 
 
 Evidence from Babylonian or Assyrian Texts : H. Winckler, 
 The Tell-el-Amarna Tablets (London, 1896) ; new 
 edition by J. A. Knudtzon, Die El-Amarna-Tafeln 
 (Leipzig, 1907-8 ; Parts i.-x.) ; H. Zimmern, Die 
 Keilinschriften und das Alte Testament (Berlin, 1903 ; 
 pp. 345-643); A. Jeremias, Das Alte Testament im 
 Lichte des Alten Orients (Leipzig, 1906) ; M. Jastrow, 
 Die Religion Babyloniens und Assyriens (Giessen, 
 1905-). 
 
 Egyptian Sources : W. M. Miiller, Asien und Europa nach 
 Alt-dgyptischen Denkmalern (Leipzig, 1893) ; J. H. 
 116
 
 WORKS OF REFERENCE 
 
 Breasted, Hittory of Egypt (London, 1906) ; id., Ancient 
 Records of Egypt: Historical Documents (1906-7); 
 Zeitschrift fur Aegyptische Sprache, etc. etc. 
 
 Of general works, W. K. Smith, Lectures on the Religion of 
 the Semites: the Fundamental Institutions (London, 
 1894), is naturally indispensable. Important, also, are 
 G. A. Barton, A Sketch of Semitic Origins, Social and 
 Religious (New York, 1902) ; Marie-Joseph Lagrange, 
 fyudes sur les Religions Simitiques (Paris, 1905) ; J. G. 
 Frazer, Adonis, Attis, and Osiris : Studies in the History 
 of Oriental Religion (London, 1907). For Modern 
 Semitic Religion there is a large mass of scattered 
 evidence ; the moat illuminating works are those of 
 C. M. Doughty, Arabia Deserta (Cambridge, 1888) ; 
 S. I. Curtiss, Primitive Semitic Religion To-day (London, 
 1902) ; A. Jaussen, Coutumes des Arabes au Pays de 
 Moab (Paris, 1908). For the history of the period may 
 be consulted the works of G. Maspero (Histoire Ancienne ; 
 Paris, 1904, etc.), or the popular account, with typical 
 illustrations, by G. Cormack, History of Palestine in 
 Early Times (forthcoming). 
 
 For those unacquainted with modern comparative study in the 
 field of religion, one of the most serviceable introductory 
 books is J. A. Macculloch's Comparative Theology 
 (Churchman's Library, London, 1902). 
 
 117
 
 CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE 
 
 THE following dates are based upon the latest researches, but 
 are to be regarded as provisional. Some Biblical dates are 
 added for comparison, those marked with an asterisk follow 
 the margin of the Authorised Version. 
 
 FIRST BABYLONIAN DYNASTY (the 'Kham- 
 murabi age ') between . . . 
 
 TWELFTH EGYPTIAN DYNASTY, began about 
 Abram enters Canaan ... 
 Descent of Jacob into Egypt . . . 
 Hyksos invasion of Egypt, about . . 
 
 EIGHTEENTH EGYPTIAN DYNASTY . . 
 Thutmose in ....... 
 
 Exodus of Israel . . . . 
 
 Invasion of Palestine .... 
 
 Amenhotep in ....... 
 
 Amenhotep iv. (Ikhnaton). . . . 
 
 NINETEENTH EGYPTIAN DYNASTY . . 
 Sety i ........ 
 
 Ramses n. (1 Pharaoh of the oppression, 
 
 Exod. i. 11) . . . . . 
 Merneptah (? Pharaoh of the Exodus ; 
 
 defeats Israel in Palestine) . . 
 
 TWENTIETH EGYPTIAN DYNASTY . . 
 Ramses in. (first mention of Philistines) . 
 Ramses xii. (? age of Eli) .... 
 Tiglath-pileser i., about .... 
 Saul, King of Israel (? 1025) . . . 
 David, King of Judah (? 1010) . . . 
 Solomon, about ..... 
 
 2060-1800 B.C. 
 
 2000. 
 1921*. 
 1706*. 
 1680. 
 
 1580-1350. 
 
 1500. 
 
 1491*. 
 
 1451*. 
 
 1411. 
 
 1375. 
 
 1350-1200. 
 1320. 
 
 1310. 
 
 1244. 
 
 1200-1090. 
 
 1200-1169. 
 
 1118. 
 
 1100. 
 
 1095*. 
 
 1056*. 
 
 970. 
 
 118
 
 INDEX 
 
 ADDTT, weather-god, 79, 89 sq. , 95. 
 Adonis, 36, 47, 92, 111. 
 Aegean isles, 6, 8. 
 Agriculture, 7, 9 sq., 11, 83 sq., 
 
 88,90. 
 
 Allah, 21, 61, 68. 
 Altar, 18 sqq., 27, 39, 108. 
 Amarna tablets, 6 8, 10, 33, 63, 
 
 76, 78, 92, 96, 98 sqq., 106, 112, 
 
 etc. 
 
 Amenhotep II., 44. 
 Amenhotep in. ,5 sq. , 56, 70 sq. , 
 
 81, 118. 
 
 Amenhotep rv. See Ikhnaton. 
 Am on, the god, 54 sq. t 61, 71, 
 
 74 sqq., 77 sq., 81, 95, 111. 
 
 <SeRe. 
 
 Amulets, 17, 32, 85, 38, 51 sq. 
 Anath, goddess, 85. 
 Ancestor-worship, 57 sqq. 
 Animals, 22, 30 sq. , 39 sq. , 43 sqq. , 
 
 47 sqq., 50, 61,85, 108 sq. 
 Animism, 60. 
 
 Anointing, 14, 27, 42, 64, 76, 79. 
 Anubis, 96. 
 
 Anthropomorphism, 28, 49. 
 Apollo, 23, 84. 
 Arabia, 7, 87 sq., 92. 
 Archaeology, 2, 7 sq., etc. 
 Arts, 8sq., 112 sq. 
 Ashfrah, 26, 87. 
 
 Aahirat, Ashirta, goddess, 53, 87. 
 Tell 'Ashtarmh, 77, 81. 
 
 Ashur, the god, 53, 87 sq., 92. 
 Assyria, 5, 7, 39, 62, 78, 87 sqq., 
 
 92, 102. 
 Astarte, 29 sq., 45, 49, 70, 73, 
 
 16 sq. 
 
 Atargatis, 31. 
 Aton, 103 sqq. 
 
 BAAL (title 'lord'), 66 sq. See 
 
 Heaven. 
 
 Baal (proper name), 33, 84, 89. 
 Baalath (title 'lady'), 66, 88. 
 
 See Byblos. 
 Baal-Zephon, 86. 
 Babylonia, 4 sq., 10, 30, 62, 70, 
 
 87, 90 sqq., 94, 102, 106 sqq., 
 
 110 sqq., 118. 
 Bes, 96. 
 
 Blood-revenge, 42. 
 Bludan (near Damascus), 46. 
 Broken offerings, 45 sq. 
 Bull, 32, 90 sq. 
 Burial, 15, 17 sq., 36 sq., 40. See 
 
 Dead. 
 Byblos, 66, 74 sq., 83, 100. See 
 
 Zakarbaal. 
 
 CAMEL, 17, 45, 48. 
 
 Cannibalism, 38. 
 
 Carthage, 3, 27, 31, 34 sq., 39, 41, 
 
 43, 72. 
 Caves, 15 sq., 19 sq., 24, 34, 38, 
 
 41, 46, 53, 107. 
 
 119
 
 RELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 Charms, 32, 38, 51 sq., 107, 109. 
 Cobra, model of, 15, 48. 
 Cremation, 34, 40, 56. 
 Cup-marks, 14, 16, 20, 26, 35 sq. 
 Curse, 72, 90, 98. 
 
 DAGON, 82. 
 
 Dead, disposal of, 22, 34 sqq. ; in 
 
 religion, 55 sqq., 58 sqq., 75. 
 Demons, 50 sq., 64, 71. 
 Derceto, 31. 
 Dog, 22, 100. 
 Dreams, 25, 52 sq. 
 
 EGYPT, historical sketch, 4 sqq. ; 
 influence Of national cult, 74 
 sqq., 95 sqq. ; received Asiatic 
 gods, 83 sqq., etc. 
 
 El (title 'god'), 69 sq., 69. 
 
 El (proper name), 91, 93 sq. 
 
 Emblems, 32, 72, 109. 
 
 FETISH, 27, 32. 
 
 Fish, 31 sq., 109. 
 
 Foundation sacrifice, 39 sq., 43. 
 
 GAD (the god), 92. 
 
 Gaza, 38. 
 
 Gezer, 6, 8 sq., 13 sqq., 17, 19, 28, 
 30,34,37 J^.,44 sqq., 76,80, 
 88, 107, 109 sq. 
 
 Gods. See chaps, vi. and vii. ; 
 gods and animals, 47 sqq. ; 
 demons and spirits, 50, 64 ; 
 kinship with men, 61 sqq. ; their 
 human representatives, 54 sq., 
 57, 59, 62 sqq. ; their vicissi- 
 tudes, 66 sqq. ; subordinate 
 gods, 68, 69 sq. , 96 sq. ; national 
 gods, 64 sq., 67 sqq. ; lord or 
 king of gods, 74, 77, 84, 95. 
 See Saints. 
 
 Oudea, 62. 
 
 HADAD, 57, 89 sq. See Addu. 
 
 Hathor, 26, 30, 70, 76, 81, 85, 111. 
 
 Heaven, king or lord of (title), 66, 
 72 sqq., 84, 87 sqq., 91 ; lady or 
 mistress of, 70 sq. , 73, 85 sq. 
 
 Hittites, 5 sq., 71, 73 sq., 78, 81, 
 88, 90 sq., 96, Wl sq., Ill sq. 
 
 Holy, sacred, 34, 46 sqq. , 85. 
 
 Horus, 111. 
 
 Horus-eyes, 52. 
 
 Human sacrifices, 38 sqq., 42 sq. 
 
 Hyksos invasion, 4 sq. , 82 sq., 118. 
 
 IDOLS, 17, 26, 28 sq., 31 iq., 49, 
 53 sq., 71 sq., 77. 
 
 Ikhuaton, 5, 42, 103 sqq., 118. 
 
 Infant burial or sacrifice, 15 sqq., 
 36 sqq., 93 sq. 
 
 Ishtar, 70 sq., 87 sq., 95. 
 
 Iis, 96, 111. 
 
 Israel, Israelite religion, 1 sqq., 6, 
 8, 10 sq., 17, 33 sq., 36, 39 sqq., 
 42 sq., 47 sq., 64, 80, 86, 88, 94, 
 102,104, 106, 108 sq.,lU sq. 
 
 JEHOVAH. See Yahweh. 
 Jericho, 8, 10, 32, 83. 
 Jerusalem, 5, 14, 20, 53, 92, 96, 
 
 101 sq. 
 Jinn (demon, q.v.), 40, 54. 
 
 K0desh('}io\j'), 34,85. 
 Khammurabi, 62, 72, 78, 90 sq., 
 
 118. 
 
 Khiba, 96. 
 Khonsu, 71. 
 Kings, divinity of, 59, 61 sqq., 
 
 78 sq., 98; their breath or 
 
 spirit, 101. 
 Kinship with supernatural beings, 
 
 60s?., 62 sq., 83*g-. 
 
 1 2O
 
 INDEX 
 
 LACHIH, 7, 30. 
 
 Lamps, 25, 35, 40 sq. , 94. 
 
 Lebanon, 28, 77, 87. 
 
 Legends, 23, 49. See Myths. 
 
 Lion, 49, 84. 
 
 Loyalty (s-d-k), 102 tq. 
 
 MAGIC, 34, 38, 51, 53, 55. 
 Megiddo, 8, 17, 28, 31, 40, 49, 76, 
 
 79, 109. 
 
 Melek (king), 94. 
 Merneptah, 6, 33, f>3, 118. 
 Mesha, king of Moab, 11, 80. 
 Messianic ideals, 64. 
 Mitanni, 5, 70, 111 sq. 
 Mohammedanism, 21 sq., 40, 68 
 
 sq. See Palestine. 
 Molech, 94. 
 Monotheistic tendencies, 5, 23, 
 
 67 sqq., 72 sq., 81, 95 sq., 
 
 103 sq. 
 
 Moon god, 88 sq. 
 Murder, 42. 
 Myths, 49, 62. 86, 106 aqq., 110 
 
 sq. 
 
 NAMB, 44, 57 sq., 60, 81, 99, 102. 
 
 Nebo, 92. 
 
 Nergal, 93, 106, 110. 
 
 Nin-gal, 89. 
 
 Ninib, 47, 92. 
 
 Nusku, 89, 94. 
 
 OATH, 21, 100. 
 
 Oracles, 25. 52 sq. 
 
 Oriental thought, 11, 10'2, 113. 
 
 Ornaments, 52. 
 
 Osiris, 26, 38, 47, 75, 96. 
 
 PALESTINE, history, 4 sqq. ; land 
 and people, 8 sqq. ; modern re- 
 ligion, 21 sqq., 25, 37, 39 sqq., 
 
 43 tq., 46, 50, 53, 59, 68 sq. ; 
 
 its gods, chaps, vi. tq. ; thought, 
 
 98 sqq. ; chronology, 118. 
 Petra, 19 sq. ; 108. 
 Philistines, 7, 80. See Dagon. 
 Phoenician gods, 72, 92 sq. 
 Pillars, 13 sqq., 26 sq., 109. 
 i Politics and religion, 64 si/. , 67 sq. , 
 
 72, 78, 80. 
 
 Prophets, 54 sq., 86. 
 Ptah, 53, 96. 
 
 RAM, 30. 
 
 Rainman, 87, 89. '. 
 | Ramses n., 6. 44, 58, 62, 71, 73, 
 
 77, 81, 85, 101, 118. 
 Ramses m., 7, 70, 77, 114, 118. 
 ' Ransom,' tho, 43 sq. 
 Re, 63, 71, 73. See Am on. 
 Reshepb, 84 sq., 87, 92, 111. 
 
 SACRIFICE, 15 sqq., 22, 25, 27, 36, 
 38 sqq., 41 sqq., 79. 
 
 es-Safy, 7, 17, 19, 30. 
 
 Saints (welis, etc., in modern 
 Palestine); virtually local gods, 
 Zliqq. ,2isq; their vicissitudes, 
 23 ; resemble those of the gods, 
 67 sq. ; appear in animal form, 
 22, 50; physical fathers, 59, 
 61. See Godg, Tombs. 
 
 Samson, 88. 
 
 Sanctuaries, 13 sqq., 77; their 
 persistence, 19 aqq. ; in modern 
 religion, 21 sqq., 24, 87. 
 
 Seals, 93, 108 sqq. 
 
 Sebek, 96. 
 
 Serabit el-khadem (Sinaitic penin- 
 sula), 7, 15, 19, 26*?., 32, 41, 
 45, 52, 69 ; 84. 
 
 Seraph, 93. 
 
 Serpents, 15, 32, 48, HK 
 
 12!
 
 KELIGION OF ANCIENT PALESTINE 
 
 Set. See Sutekh. 
 
 Setyr., 6, 58,77,118. 
 
 Shalem, 92. 
 
 Shamash, sun (-deity), 70 sq., 
 
 78 sqq., 88 sqq., 93, 95 sq., 98, 
 
 11 J. See Sun. 
 Shamshi-Adad, 91. 
 Sin, 55, 100, 102. 
 Sin (the god), 66, 88 sq. 
 Sinuhe, 9, 35. 
 Soul, the, 37, 41, 45, 57. 
 Spirits, 50 sqq. 
 Stones, 13^7., 2657., 32. 
 Sun-god. See Amon, King, Re, 
 
 Shamash. 
 
 Susa (in Elam), 38, 54. 
 Sutekh (Set), title and proper- 
 
 name (cp. Baal, El), 73 sq., 82, 
 
 84, 108, 111. 
 Swine, 16, 48, 92. 
 Symbols. See Emblems. 
 
 Thought, Oriental, 11, 102 sqq. 
 Thutmose in., 5, 9, 28, 77, 85, 91, 
 
 118. 
 
 Tiglath-pileser I., 7, 81, 118. 
 Tombs, 19, 21 sqq., 35 sqq., 46, 
 
 59. 
 
 Trees, 25 sq. 
 Tushratta( King of Mitanni), 56, 
 
 70 sq. 
 
 UNCLEAN, 47 sq. 
 Vows, 46. 
 
 WAR, 22, 39, 72, 80, 82, 84 sqq., 
 
 90, 93, 95, 104. 
 Water-rite*, 107 sq. 
 Weli (patron). See Saint. 
 Wenamon. See Zakarbaal. 
 
 YAHWBH, 94 sq. See Israel. 
 
 TAANACH, 8, 18, 29, 40, 53, 93 sq. \ ZAKARBAAL, 54, 50, 74 sq., 78. 
 
 108. 
 Teshub, 705?., 89. 
 
 114. 
 Tell Zakariya. 31. 
 
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 T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty 
 
 at the University Press, Edinburgh
 
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