Image Details

The Israel Museum, Jerusalem

One foreign deity who the Bible says was worshiped in Israel during the Iron Age is Asherah, shown here in a 13th-century B.C.E. Canaanite clay figurine from Tel Miqne (biblical Ekron). The Canaanite Asherah was the wife of El, and certain evidence has been interpreted as indicating that some Israelites regarded her as the divine consort of Yahweh. She is absent from Israelite names, but that does not necessarily mean that she wasn’t worshiped. She appears rarely in Ugaritic names, too, though it is certain that she was worshiped at Ugarit.