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The Sea and the Goddess
This chapter by Donald B. Redford discusses the "ever-present struggle between land and sea, fair weather and storm", which "dominat[ed] the mythology of the maritime cities of the eastern Mediterranean", in the form of stories of hero vs monster - tales describing creation and providing "an archetypal rationalization of kingship". The version of ( Read more... ) -
Anat and Astarte, Egypt and Phoenicia
Over in Tumblr, my strange little hobby is trying to identify gods and demons in photos from Egypt. When the name is visible in hieroglyphs, of course, it's a pushover. At other times, I can only make an educated guess from other clues, because the iconography of many deities overlaps: Isis and Hathor; Amun and Khnum; Re and Ra-Horakhty; and the ( Read more... ) -
Anat bits and pieces ft Astarte and Set
- Falsone, Gioacchino. "Anath or Astarte? A Phoenician Bronze Statuette of the Smiting Goddess". in Religio Phoenicia: acta colloquii Namurcensis habiti diebus 14 et 15 mensis Decembris anni 1984. Namur, Société des études classiques, 1986.This article discusses the rare bronze figurines of goddesses in the "smiting god" pose - left foot forward, ( Read more... )
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Asherah, Anat, Astarte
Brief notes from Archaeological Perspectives on the Transmission and Transformation of Culture in the Eastern Mediterranean.
In "Minoan Asherah", Stephanie Budin seeks to explain the form of the Judean Pillar Figure*, goddess figurines holding their breasts and with "a pillar-shaped, free-standing base". She argues that these combine features from ( Read more... ) -
Snippets from "Gods and Men in Egypt"
I couldn't remember for the life of me why I'd borrowed this, so I just went through the index looking for interesting stuff. What an appalling thing to do with a book. Anyway ( Read more... ) -
The Old Testament: A Very Short Introduction
What a helpful and enlightening little book! Not just for comparisons with other Ancient Near Eastern cultures, but because everyone bangs on about the Bible these days, with varying levels of informedness ( Read more... ) -
The Papyrus of Astarte
... is in so many tattered pieces, apparently, that it's not even clear what the story is about. Alan H. Gardiner thinks the Egyptian gods ask Astarte to intervene on their behalf with the greedy, bellicose sea, but even that's just an educated guess. One of the few fragments that's more than a few words in length is this bit of dialogue, ( Read more... ) -
Horses, goddesses, royalty, and doctors
Dimitri Meeks points out that since the horse was introduced into Egypt from the Near East, it makes sense that horse-riding deities in Egypt are also from the Near East. The most prominent rider is Astarte, who's actually better known from Egyptian examples than from Near Eastern ones. He highlights three in particular:- Hibis, where Astarte and ( Read more... )
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Randomness and leftover bits
From a review in BAOS 357 Feb 2010 of The Origins of Aphrodite by Stephanie Lynn Budin, a book upon which I must lay my grubby paws because of its examination of goddesses (Inanna/Ishtar, Ishara, Asherah, Astarte, Qudshu) and cults (in Ugarit, Alalakh, Megiddo, Beth Shan, Tel Mevorakh, Lachish, Egypt) which may have influenced A.- "sex goddess ( Read more... )
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Forty Lion Goddesses
A footnote in Mistress of the House, Mistress of Heaven gives a list of "almost forty [Egyptian] goddesses with leonine associations". Using the footnote's spelling, they are ( Read more... )
