Ba'al's Relations with Canaanite Goddesses

[ikhet_sekhmet]

A few notes from this chapter of Religion in the Ancient World:

• "It is also striking that Ba'al and Osiris, the dying fertility gods, each have two goddesses caring for them: Isis and Nephthys for Osiris, 'Ashtart and 'Anat for Baal." (Hmm, adds Kate: in the "Contendings of Horus and Seth", Seth gets 'Ashtart and 'Anat as wives. Ishtar and Anat do seem like a natural pairing - or even a redoubling of the same goddess? While I'm thinking out loud, is there any connection between the Sumerian ninan "lady of heaven" and the Egyptian nbt pt "mistress of heaven"?)
  
  
• And in one myth, "El apparently mates with both Athirat and 'Anat". The dirty old man. Colless suggests that the lyre-playing figure at the right of this drawing of "Yahweh and his Asherah" may be 'Anat, as she plays a lyre in the Ba'al myth. ("A tenuous little link", to quote Kenny Everett.)
  
  
• There's a male Ugaritic god, 'Ashtar, whose name is cognate with Ishtar, but is not the same deity as 'Ashtart. Ishtar appears as Ba'al's consort in a myth "only preserved in a tattered state, in a Hittite version."
  
  
• "Deities are like words: some of them maintain their original meaning throughout the ages, but some of them shift their ground and acquire new functions over time."
  
  
• Colless debates whether 'Anat or 'Ashtart was the Biblical "Queen of Heaven", mentioning that 'Anat-Bet'el and 'Anat-Yahu were worshipped at Elephantine alongside Yahweh.
  
  
• Meanwhile in the Sinai peninsula, where the Egyptians got their turquoise, proto-alphabetic inscriptions use the title Ba'alat ("goddess") and name three goddesses: Elat, Tanit, and 'Anat. "Tanit has been variously identified as 'Ashtart, 'Anat, or Ashirat, but she may be a completely separate personage."

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Colless, Brian. "Ba'al's Relations with Canaanite Goddesses." in Matthew Dillon (ed). Religion in the Ancient World. Amsterdam : A.M. Hakkert, 1996.

Comments

[lemon-cupcake.livejournal.com]

Ishtar and Anat do seem like a natural pairing - or even a redoubling of the same goddess?

They seem distinct enough to me. I think that a scarcity of data on our part always leads to someone claiming that deities are one and the same.

"Deities are like words: some of them maintain their original meaning throughout the ages, but some of them shift their ground and acquire new functions over time."

Or, mirabile dictu, like persons with names, of whom we come to know more as we spend time with them.

[ikhet-sekhmet.livejournal.com]

If, as Henri Frankfort suggests, we can't meaningfully compare deities unless we can also contrast them, then the fragmentary information about Anat is even more frustrating - the similarities with Inanna/Ishtar are striking, but how do we get at the differences!

[wirrrn.livejournal.com]

Just watched the awesome film HOWL, with James Franco as Allen Ginsberg. There's an impressive animated section with Moloch, the Canaanite god with an appetite for the flesh of children...

[ikhet-sekhmet.livejournal.com]

I dunno which is more gobsmacking - the idea of that animation, or the fact that someone made a film of HOWL!