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An astounding inscription has been found in the Sinai Desert which indicates that some worshippers believed that Yahweh did have a consort or asherah.
The inscription, dating from the second half of the 9th century B.C., was uncovered in the remains of a wayside chapel at an intersection of ancient desert routes—one track leading from Kadesh Barnea to Eilat, another leading across the Sinai, and a third branching off to southern Sinai. The site (known as Kuntillat Ajrud) and some of its rare religious inscriptions have already been described for BAR readers. (See “Cache of Hebrew and Phoenician Inscriptions Found in the Desert,” BAR 02:01).
A forthcoming BAR article, however, will reveal that one of the inscriptions found at Kuntillat Ajrud mentions a consort of Yahweh. Yahweh is the holiest name for God in the Hebrew Bible. It is, indeed, THE name of the Hebrew God. (In a well-known passage in Exodus 6:2, God says to Moses: “I am Yahweh. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make myself known to them as Yahweh.”)
The Yahweh-Asherah inscription was found on a large storage jar, together with a drawing. The inscription, in early Hebrew letters and drawn with red ink that still faintly survives, states in part:
“May you be blessed by Yahweh and by his Asherah.”
The full story of this inscription as well as other religious inscriptions from this extraordinary excavation led by Israeli archaeologist Ze’ev Meshel will be told in a forthcoming issue of BAR.
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Was the Past Better?
“I have had the impression from some questioners after public lectures that the real point of the question was to buttress a belief in the superiority of modern man over his predecessors—’They were only savages you know, my dear, not like us’—while conversely, others seemed angled to seek reinforcement for perhaps hazily held ideas about the ‘noble savage’ and the inherent ‘betterness’ of times gone by. One can only add that those who look for achievement in the past on which to fasten their admiration seem, in the light of current archaeological research, to have picked the better bet.”
Peter Fowler, Approaches to Archaeology (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), p. 31.
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Do You Agree?
“A society might well prefer simply to receive and perpetuate a traditional view of its past without further enquiry. In such a case we recognize that the past, and the attitude towards it among the society which is its product, is primarily serving a social function irrespective of the historical accuracy of the version of the past that is being received. This point is well worth stressing at an early stage for it is a common, if often unconscious, assumption by students of the past that there is an unquestionable validity in seeking ‘historical truth’ or at least in producing more accurate information. In the interests of scholarship, perhaps this is so; socially it may not be desired or even desirable at all. A traditional view of the past may well be a vital bond of social or political cohesion—communal cement—which could easily be weakened by academic research.”
Peter Fowler, Approaches to Archaeology (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1977), p. 14.
An astounding inscription has been found in the Sinai Desert which indicates that some worshippers believed that Yahweh did have a consort or asherah.
