Death as an Enemy 4
Oct. 25th, 2017 09:39 pmThe next part is "Terms for Sin". This oughta be good. Let's see:
Words (ḏw, bin) which just mean "bad" or "unpleasant", which can also be used to refer to (for example) disease, misfortune, nightmares, or sour milk.
Words for "disaster and misery"
Words for being bent or crooked
Words for "taboo" - things which "man may not touch, which he must respect".
Ṯmś "red" - perhaps connected to the words ṯmś.w, "sin".
Wn - "guilt"
Ḳn - "damage", "also used in connection with famine"
Words for sin as rebellion
Words for sin as transgression, such as Thi, "also used of overstepping a limit"
Sp - a neutral word meaning case or character
And last but not least, the "most usual term", isf.t - "often opposed to maʿ.t and parallel with grg, lie". It means literally: "What is worn out, what is flimsy".
In the next part of the book, Jan Zandee takes a much more detailed look at the individual terms used for the concepts I've summarised. I think I'll poke through those looking for interesting tidbits.
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Zandee, J. Death as an Enemy According to Ancient Egyptian Conceptions. (Studies in the Histories of Religions, Supplement to Numen, V). Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1960.
Death as an Enemy 3
Oct. 20th, 2017 09:20 pmThe deceased's journey may take him or her to Osiris, who may be located in "heaven" or in the Ḥtp-field; and to Re and his solar barque. Like someone travelling from town to town, the deceased might have to pass gates, using spells to "impose his will" on the "demoniacal gate-keepers". Other spells protected the deceased from various demons and dangers, such as a pool of fire. Another spell gains the use of a ferry-boat and helpful spirits in order to cross a stream on the way to the ʾI3r-w-field. Zandee points out the parallel journey of "the funeral procession and the funerary voyage".
The dead also face judgement, on the basis of their actions towards other people, and towards the gods and their cults. The most famous scene is in the Book of the Dead Chapter 125, in the "hall of the double truth" and its forty-two judges / executioners, in which the deceased makes the "negative confession", Anubis weighs their heart against the feather, and The Devourer eats anyone who fails to be acquitted. Various versions of the judgement are based on real-life Egyptian court hearings, with a judge (Osiris or Re), an "opposing party" (called ḫfty, "enemy"), there's a verdict, and so forth. Multiple spells prevent the dead person's own heart from giving evidence against them. Apparently the dead could bring court cases against each other in the hereafter! The deceased could also bring a case against a living person who interfered with the tomb, winning the right to "annoy, as a ghost, the tomb robber still living on earth".
Death as an Enemy 2
Oct. 18th, 2017 05:52 pmAs "absolute destruction", death is like ceasing to exist; like being burned away to nothing (the netherworld is full of fire, and fire-breathing entities); like being cut with blades, butchered, beheaded. There are demons who devour the deceased, erasing them completely. These punishments were applied to the enemies of Re or Osiris or to "sinners". On the other hand, the deceased may also be tied to a post and subjected to torture (which Zandee describes as "eternal punishment"), imprisoned, caught in a net or with a lasso, or seized by demons.
Various spells were intended to ward off all of these dangers.
Next bit: the journey through the netherworld, and the judgement of the soul.
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Zandee, J. Death as an Enemy According to Ancient Egyptian Conceptions. (Studies in the Histories of Religions, Supplement to Numen, V). Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1960.
Death as an Enemy
Oct. 16th, 2017 09:29 pmHe opens Chapter One by describing the two different ways in which the Ancient Egyptians thought about death. The "monistic view" is this: "Death is considered the necessary condition for eternal life... plants and crops mature and die down, but they spring up again from the seed which has been put into the earth and has died. After each setting the sun rises in the East through its own spontaneous power. This resurrection from death points to the fact that the secret of spontaneous life lives under the earth in the realm of the dead." This concept contrasts with the "dualistic view", in which "death is considered the enemy of life". Although Ancient Egyptian religion takes the monistic view, the dualistic view still crops up: the Egyptians enjoy life and want a long one. The various netherworld texts describe dangerous place where the soul risks complete destruction.
In the earliest writings about the afterlife, the Pyramid Texts and the Coffin Texts, only the king can ascend to heaven; the ordinary people stay in the lightless subterranean realm, where no-one eats, drinks, or has sex: "He who formerly walked on the earth, now walks with his feet against the bottom of the flat disk of the earth, as it were against a ceiling, head down." Spells in various texts help the deceased ward off this doom, and the similar topsy-turvy fate of having to eat excrement. Later, this condition is reserved for the damned.
Next: "Views based on direct observation of death as a physical phenomenon." Should be fun.
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Zandee, J. Death as an Enemy According to Ancient Egyptian Conceptions. (Studies in the Histories of Religions, Supplement to Numen, V). Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1960.
Sworn virgins
Oct. 4th, 2017 08:48 pm(Would that I had time to more than glance at Suzana Milevska's thesis Gender Difference in the Balkans. Into the infinite queue it goes.)
Changing Ones
Sep. 13th, 2017 12:30 pmRoscoe writes: "Alternative gender roles were amongst the most widely shared features of North American societies. Male berdaches* have been documented in over 155 tribes... In about a third of these groups, a formal status also existed for females who undertook a man's lifestyle, becoming hunters, warriors, and chiefs." These groups "occur in every region of the continent, in every kind of society, and among speakers of every major language group."
The "core set of traits" of these third and fourth genders were "[s]pecialized work roles", "gender difference [ie] temperament, dress, lifestyle, and social roles"; "spiritual sanction"; and "same-sex relations... with non-berdache members of their own sex". As well as taking on jobs usually done by the "opposite sex", there might also be special tasks reserved for gender variant people. Their "active sex life" meant they were "considered fortuitous in all matters relating to sex and romance" - matchmaking, love magic, curing STDs. Their same-sex relations were the result of their gender status, rather than the other way around. "... rather than an opposition of heterosexuality to homosexuality, native beliefs opposed reproductive to non-reproductive sex." "[K]inship-based social organization" dictated most people's sexual availability, but the same restrictions didn't apply to gender variant people; similarly, some of the elements of marriage, such as bridewealth and political alliances between families, didn't apply.
Third and fourth gender people both had roles in war, from "provid[ing] support, entertainment, and luck", to "joining in the fighting, handling enemy scalps, and directing victory ceremonies". Roscoe remarks on "[t]he associations of alternative genders with death", such as in war or as "undertakers or mourners". He says: "They point to a nexus of beliefs difficult to grasp from a Western perspective, in which nonprocreative sexuality and fertility, creativity and inspiration, and warfare and death are linked". (I think there's something similar in Aztec culture, which Peter Sigal talks about in The Flower and the Scorpion: Sexuality and Ritual in Early Nahua Culture, of which more later.) In some groups, the alternative genders "enjoyed special respect in privileges"; in a few, their supernatural powers were feared.
In an overview of third and fourth genders in various groups, Roscoe mentions a study of "central arctic Inuit, in which arbitrary gender assignments along with individual preferences result in complex and varied 'gender histories' for many individuals. Boys and girls are raised in accordance with the gender of one or more names selected for them before their birth. Consequently, some children are raised with cross- or mixed-gender identities" which they may retain or change at puberty. Also "[t]he Inuit believe some infants, called sipiniq, change their anatomical sex at birth." My curiosity is piqued.
* Roscoe mounts a thoughtful defence of this term, but I think it's now largely been discarded.
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Roscoe, Will. Changing Ones: Third and Fourth Genders in Native North America. London, Macmillan, 1998.
Well this is disappointing
Sep. 2nd, 2017 04:12 pmMultiple sources say the Chukchi people of Siberia have, or had, seven genders, citing a 1904 account by Russian anthropologist Waldemar Borgoras. For example, Sue-Ellen Jacobs and Christine Roberts in the chapter cited below say that "three were female and four were male". Looking at his account, I can only find four: man, "soft man" / "similar to a woman", woman, and "similar to a man". I'll pursue this - it'd be much more interesting if there really were three more.
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Borgoras, Waldemar. "The Chukchee". in Franz Boas (ed). The Jesup North Pacific Expedition. Memoir of the American Museum of Natural History 11, part 2, 1904, pp 449-451.
Jacobs, Sue-Ellen and Christine Roberts. "Sex, Sexuality, Gender, and Gender Variance". in Sandra Morgen (ed). Gender and Anthropology: critical reviews for research and teaching. Washington DC, American Anthropological Association, 1989. p 440.
ETA: I thought this might be the case: Jacobs and Roberts count the intermediate stages of gender transformation as separate genders. Women start by changing how their arrange their hair, then begin dressing as men, and finally take on men's behaviour and tasks; men follow the same pattern. The seventh gender in this schema is the transformed person "feeling like" their new sex and taking on an appropriate spouse and domestic role.
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Jacobs, Sue-Ellen and Jason Cromwell. Visions and Revisions of Reality: Reflections on Sex, Sexuality, Gender, and Gender-Variance. Journal of Homosexuality 23(4), 1992. pp 43-69.
Ambiguous Aztecs
Aug. 31st, 2017 09:25 pmThird Gender?
Aug. 21st, 2017 07:08 pmMoreover, adding additional genders doesn't guarantee a system in which individuals are free to express themselves. Towle and Morgan quote Anuja Agrawal re the hijra of India: "The greater the number of genders, the greater their oppressive potential as each may demand the conformity of the individual within increasingly narrower confines." A "real" hijra is a castrated man, not just a cross-dressing or effeminate one. Another researcher, Don Kulick, argues that the Brazilian travesti helps "solidify normative binary gender system, but not the Euro-American system that makes gender contingent on sex." Rather, the role in intercourse determines gender; the travestis "understand and position themselves as women". (Cf Unni Wikan's comments on the xanith.) So a "third gender" may uphold "a rigid gender system by formalizing variation."
Woman-woman marriage in Africa, redux
Aug. 13th, 2017 05:43 pmIn Nnobi, writes Ifi Amadiume, "'male daughters', first daughters, barren women, rich widows, wives of rich men and successful female farmers and traders" all might have wives of their own. The term for woman-woman marriage was igba ohu. "Such wives, it seems, came from other towns. The 'female' husband might give the wife a (male) husband somewhere else and adopt the role of mother to her but claim her services. The wives might also stay with her, bearing children in her name."
Wives and children were a kind of wealth, for both men and women - "a question of a large workforce versus a small workforce". Women's wealth might also include animals and crops, but not land, which was passed from father to son. What to do, then, when there was no son? As with the Hittites and Hurrians, the solution was simple: give a daughter the status of a son, with a ceremony in which the father summoned "members of his patrilineage and gave them palm wine".
Generally, men owned the land and women worked it; Amadiume notes that women's access to gardens and farm land depended on men. She writes: "On the death of a husband, a wife's continued access to farmland depended on her having a son, or a 'male daughter'. On the death of a woman as wife and mother, the continuation of her matricentric household depended on the woman's son, or a 'male daughter', or respected ada, first daughter, marrying a woman to take the place of the dead wife."
This is only one of many societies in which marriage was not defined as one man and one woman, with polygamy and woman-woman marriage both well-established customs.
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Links July 2017
Jul. 30th, 2017 12:51 pmAnat: Autonomous Goddess Of Ugarit. Presented by Ellie Wilson at the Society of Biblical Literature's annual meeting, November 1993.
Artefacts found in Pilbara cave show Aboriginal life in northern WA dates back 50,000 years (ABC, 19 May 2017) | The extraordinary science behind an Aboriginal history discovery 65,000 years in the making (SMH, 20 July 2017). "Artefacts found in Kakadu national park show that Aboriginal people have lived in Australia for a minimum of 65,000 years, 18,000 years longer than the previous estimate."
The world's oldest observatory? How Aboriginal astronomy provides clues to ancient life (Lateline, 13 October 2016) | How astronomy paved the way for terra nullius, and helped to get rid of it too (phys.org, 14 October 2016)
Ancient Humans Liked Getting Tipsy, Too (Smithsonian.com, 10 July 2017) | What wine did Jesus drink at the Last Supper? (phys.org, 17 April 2017) | Barley dormancy mutation suggests beer motivated early farmers (phys.org, 21 November 2016) | Revealing the science of Aboriginal fermentation (phys.org, 24 October 2016)
Late last year the Brooklyn Museum's Tumblr posted about the use of "Visible-Induced Luminescence imaging to map the presence of Egyptian blue". Meanwhile, the earliest known use of Egyptian blue has been identified in a bowl from the time of King Scorpion.
Archaeologists discover earliest monumental Egyptian hieroglyphs (phys.org, 26 June 2017)
DNA from ancient Egyptian mummies reveals their ancestry (Washington Post, 30 May 2017)
The origin of the tabby coat and other cat mysteries revealed (ABC Science, 20 June 2017)
Prehistoric cannibalism not just driven by hunger, study reveals (The Guardian, 6 April 2017)
Psychics, witches and pagans: What do people get out of alternative spirituality? (ABC Radio National, 12 February 2017)
Information-age math finds code in ancient Scottish symbols (Scientific American, 31 March 2010)
How we discovered that people have been cooking plants in pots for 10,000 years (phys.org, 24 January 2017)
Scientists find advanced geometry no secret to prehistoric architects in US Southwest (phys.org, 23 January 2017)
Why we'll always be obsessed with – and afraid of – monsters (Medical Xpress, 31 October 2016)
Inscription About Ancient 'Monkey Colony' Survives [Daesh] Attacks (LiveScience, 9 December 2016)
Women Are the Backbone of the Standing Rock Movement (Time, 29 November 2017)
This is your brain on God: Spiritual experiences activate brain reward circuits (Medical Xpress, 29 November 2016)
Pristine pressed flower among 'jaw-dropping' bronze age finds (The Guardian, 30 September 2016)
“Gay” Caveman Wasn’t Gay… (En|Gender, 7 April 2011) "... she was trans." Or non-binary. Or...
Unearthing the origins of East Africa's lost civilization (CNN, 19 October 2015). Kilwa in Tanzania, part of the Azania trading society.
Thesaurus Linguae Aegyptiae
Ishara again
Jul. 26th, 2017 09:36 pmETA: Here's Išḫara at Iconography of Deities and Demons in the Ancient Near East.
van Wyk, Susandra J. The concealed crime of the naditu priestess in §110 of the Laws of Hammurabi. Journal for Semitics 24/1 (2015) 109-145.
"Another emblem associated with MÍ.É.GAL as the scorpion, a motif that has been found in both official and private contexts on numerous items from the women's quarters of various palaces. The scorpion symbol is associated with Išhara (the goddess representing Ištar in her married state) and is usually found only on items related to women."
Herbordt, Susan. "Neo-Assyrian Royal and Administrative Seals and Their Use." in H. Waetzoldt and H. Hauptmann (eds), Assyrien im Wandel der Zeiten, 39 RAI Heidelberg July 1992, HSAO 6 (1997) 279-283.
"... there is good reason to assume the scorpion to be a symbol associated with the administration of the queen -- at least in the reign of Sennacherib. A symbolic meaning of the scorpion in this context is not clear. Since late Kassite times, it was used as a symbol for the goddess Išḫara, who shows a variety of characteristics from being a goddess of love, mother goddess and goddess of extispicy to being war goddess."
Stol, Marten and F. A. M. Wiggermann. Birth in Babylonia and the Bible: Its Mediterranean Setting. Styx, Groningen, 2000.
This book quotes a passage from Atrahasis:
And remarks: "We know from other texts that Ištar, the goddess of love, in marriage has the name Išḫara. Incantations show that she was a married goddess under this name: 'What Ištar does for Dumuzi, what Nananja does for her mate, what Išḫara does for her husband.' In a number of 'bed-scenes' we also see a scorpion; we assume that in these scenes the couple thus indicated is to be married. Her temple has the name 'House of the womb (šassuru)."
(Curse my inability to read German, or I'd be able to further pursue the references...)
Barton's androgynous Ishtar
Jul. 16th, 2017 05:57 pmThis short article from the year 1900 suggests that Ishtar was originally an androgynous deity before being "split" into male and female aspects. Similarly, Barton argues, Enlil and Ninlil were originally one and the same god. This intriguing idea is based on three pieces of evidence: one, in South Arabia, the goddess Athtar became the god Athtar, the deity's female aspect becoming a separate goddess, Shamsu; an inscription which Barton argues should read in part "the king of countries, the god Ishtar, the lady, the goddess Ishtar"; and an incantation in which both Enlil and Ninlil are called "mother-father". Barton also mentions Phoenician inscriptions referring to "Ashtart of the name of Baal" and "Tanit of the face of Baal".
This is appealing, but I don't quite know what to do with it. I can't find any citations of this article (which makes me wonder how I found it in the first place); apparently no-one else has built on this idea (although Barton discussed it further in his 1902 book A Sketch of Semitic Origins: Social and Religious). Connections suggest themselves: the primordial Aztec creator deity Ometeotl, both male and female, who can also appear as a male god, Ometecuhtli, and a goddess, Omecihuatl. OTOH, the Egyptian god Atum seems to have started off male and acquired female characteristics as a necessary part of being a creator.
There's also a mention of a Phoenician idol of a bearded goddess (Tanit, but with Baal's face?). I tried randomly searching for "bearded goddess" and came up with various examples, including a bearded Isis (which I will ETA), and the bearded Aphrodite / Aphroditus / Hermaphroditus, and his/her festival in which men and women swapped clothes - shades of the transvestism apparently involved in Inanna's rituals. Scholars have argued over whether Anat wore a beard. (Which I will also ETA because I can't lay hands on the photocopies right now.)
ETA: After much faffing about I found a section on Anat's beard in Neal H. Walls' book The Goddess Anat in Ugaritic Myth. There's a description of the god El mourning the slain Baal in a series of ritual actions, which includes shaving his beard and whiskers. Then Anat goes through the same series of steps. IIUC what El does, literally, is to "cut his cheeks and chin", where the word for "chin" is also used to mean "beard". So in Anat's case, she "gashed her cheeks and chin". Walls remarks: "the comparative evidence for bearded goddesses is dubious". I shall pursue this question. (Does Sekhmet's ruff count?)
ETA: Here's bearded Isis (click for larger size):

This is a plate from Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Völker: besonders der Griechen (Symbolism and mythology of the Ancient Peoples, Especially the Greeks) by Friedrich Creuzer. This in turn reproduces an illustration from Nachträge zu meinem Werke betitelt "Reise zum Tempel des Jupiter Ammon in der libyschen Wüste" (Supplements to my work titled "Journey to the Temple of Jupiter Ammon in the Libyan Desert) (whew!) by Heinrich Karl Minutoli. Here, alas, the trail runs out: Minutoli tells us that this is a relief in the Palazzo Grimani in Venice, and that is Graeco-Roman, but gives no further information.
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Barton, George A. An Androgynous Babylonian Divinity. Journal of the American Oriental Society 21, 1900, pp. 185-187
Walls, Neal H. The Goddess Anat in Ugaritic Myth. Scholars Press, Atlanta GA, 1992.
Ithyphallic Sekhmet
Jun. 3rd, 2017 03:54 pm
These figures appear on the back pillar of a magical healing statue, Turin 3031, which portrayed a man holding a Horus cippus. Only the lower part has survived.
If that's an accurate rendering of "Sekhmet the Great, beloved of Ptah", then her phallus seems to have slid down to her knees. Kákosy compares her to other lioness-headed, ithyphallic figures, from Karnak and Hibis, and also "the statue in Naples inv. 1065 back pillar right side ref V.1.", which alas I seem to have neglected to photocopy.
There are enough examples of this figure - the ithyphallic lioness-headed goddess - to say that it was definitely A Thing, a rare example of androgyny in Egyptian religion. But what did it mean to the ancients? If it's a syncretism between Mut or Sekhmet and a specific male god or gods, then why not name them? Perhaps it was comparable to pantheistic figures - showing that the deity in question had the powers of all the gods, male and female?
ETA: Figures labelled as Sekhmet appear elsewhere on the same statue - which makes sense for a goddess associated with sickiness and healing. The goddess takes various forms: holding two snakes; holding a long double-headed snake ("Sekhmet who subdues the Rebel"); as a lion-headed uraeus, presented with the wedjat by a baboon (presumably a reference to the tale of the Distant Goddess); and as a lion lying on a shrine, wearing the atef crown ("Sekhmet the Great who dwells in the City" (perhaps Thebes)).
Nefertum also makes multiple appearances, firstly to the left of Horus on the cippus, in the form of a lotus with tall plume hung with two pairs of menits. The texts on the cippus which refer to this symbol name "Horus the Saviour", who Kákosy speculates was identified with Nefertem in this case. Kákosy writes that this symbol was "a potent emblem" and says that Nefertem and his lotus often appear in magic; Horus on the papyrus, which appears on the right side of the cippus opposite Neferterm's symbol as its "counterpart", "may have been the symbol of rejuvenation and freshness of health" as well as the union of male and female (many goddesses hold a papyriform sceptre).
There are several other interesting figures, such as Sobek pulling a snake out of his mouth and two cats flanking a sistrum. "Khonsu the Great who came forth from the Nun" appears in the form of a crocodile on a pedestal with a falcon-head and sun-disc emerging from its back.
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Kákosy, László. Egyptian Healing Statues in Three Museums in Italy: Turin, Florence, Naples. Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali, Soprintendenza al Museo delle antichità egizie, 1999.
The Sea and the Goddess
Feb. 25th, 2017 08:10 pmVariations of the story occur further south, in cities where the worship of the goddess, called Astarte, "seems to outshine" her male consort. ("This may hark back to the Bronze Age when the cult of Asherah, the mother of the gods, as more prominent in the Levant. In the hinterland of the south, indeed, she continued to dominate as the consort of Baʿal and Yahweh.") In Byblos, "the goddess reigned supreme". She was known as "the Mistress of Byblos" - probably Astarte. Byblos also had the tale of the battle with the sea, but he "is worsted, killed and has to be revived by a loyal partner". (The story of Adonis and the Egyptian tale of the Doomed Prince, among others, show traces of this myth.) There were further variations at Sidon and Tyre.
A second storyline involves the "sexually-avaricious Sea who turns his attention to the beautiful goddess, the Baʿal's consort". Derivations include Typhon's pursuit of Aphrodite, the abduction of the Phoenician princess Europa, and Perseus' rescue of the Ethiopian princess Andromeda. Redford drily remarks: "There can be no doubt that the prospect of the innocent, voluptuous beauty ravished by the monster had an irresistable appeal to the collective subconscious of many a community in the Aegean". There are related stories of the goddess Atagatis / Derceto turning into a fish (along with her son) after being thrown or leaping into the water.
At Gaza, Anat, Astarte, Dagon, Reshef, Arsay, and Marnas were worshipped (later as their Greek incarnations, Athena, Aphrodite, Zeus, Apollo, possibly Persephone). "A Ramesside ostracon speaks of a festival of Anat of Gaza for which a 'cover' (? for a shrine?) seems to be one of the requirements". Redford links Plutarch's story of Isis and Osiris with Gaza. As Isis returns from Byblos, bad weather on the River Phaedrus provokes her to dry it up. Next, as Isis inspects Osiris' body at a "deserted spot", a prince of Byblos, Palaestinus, sneakily observes her and is struck dead by Isis' angry look. Plutarch writes: "Some say that... he fell into the sea and is honoured because of the goddess... and that the city founded by the goddess was named after him." Gaza is described with the same Greek word for "deserted spot" in Acts 8:26, and "Palaestinus" is derived from "p3-knʿn", "the town of Canaan".
(Bit more to come from this article; but now it is time for pizza!)
(OK pizza and "Game of Thrones" now complete)
Redford compares the stories from the southern Levant, which feature the water monster, the goddess, and her child, with Egyptian versions, including Astarte and the Sea (the Astarte Papyrus), the Story of the Two Brothers, and Set's hunt for Isis and Horus. "In Egypt, however, the motif has been largely separated from a maritime venue, and is now informed by the denizens and landscape of the Nile valley. The monster now takes shape as a crocodile, or serpent; the hero as ichneumon, falcon or scorpion. Horus defeats the serpent, the creator god subdues the water-monster (crocodile)." So for example, "the great battle... when Re had transformed himself into an ichneumon 46 cubits (long) to fell Apophis in his rage." (That's over 21 m fyi.)
Redford concludes by reminding us that it's impossible to draw a simple "family tree" of these stories, due to "the very general nature of the basic plot, and the mutual awareness and ease of contact enjoyed by eastern Mediterranean communities."
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Redford, Donald B.. "The Sea and the Goddess". in Sarah Israelit-Groll (ed). Studies in Egyptology: presented to Miriam Lichtheim. Magness Press, Hebrew University, 1990.
And her brother is beautiful, how very beautiful!
May she devour his flesh without a knife,
May she drink his blood without a cup:
May she face the spring of shame.
From the spring of shame may she face the spring of the market, the spring of the assembly, the spring of the gate."
Tarazi interprets this as Anat performing fellatio on Baal to obtain his semen, which she then distributes to the underground springs and brings to the surface, fertilising ("beautifying") the land. Baal's "flesh and blood" is his "entire essence and nature", the rainwater; the "spring of shame" is Baal's penis. The market, assembly, and gate are all "components of civilized life in Ugarit", so Anat's visit "vivif[ies] these sectors of life and civilization." The title of the hymn can be less poetically interpreted as "A cloud roams and irrigates by emitting out rainwaters", fertilising the earth "so that it brings forth magnificent life, vegetation, and civilization".
The Ugaritic word 'nn means both "cloud" and "servant, messenger"; it makes perfect sense for the storm-god's servants and messengers, including in this case Anat, to be clouds.
"Shame" seems like such an odd word in such a positive context. I wonder if it's really the right translation. Tarazi points out that Anat herself might not feel ashamed, even if "she is shameful by certain social standards".
Tarazi argues that it's Baal who does the fertilising here; although she acquires his waters in an *ahem* active manner, Anat is his agent, not a fertility goddess in her own right. He believes this is a deliberate change from an older view of Anat as having the "innate capacity to fertilize the earth". ("It also accords well with iconographic images depicting her with small breasts, thus internally deficient of life-sustaining fluids." OTOH, Ishtar is depicted proferring full breasts, and yet is arguably a goddess of sexual desire rather than fertility per se*.) I guess that would fit with the image of Anat taking Baal's semen in her mouth, rather than her vagina. (This is not the same thing, but I thought of Atum, who is what Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty would call a "male androgyne", producing Shu and Tefnut by taking his semen in his hand and placing it in his mouth.)
The author discusses at some length "a literary convention wherein [poet-scribes] would pluralize a term that denotes a particular person, typically a deity, to refer to the essential manifestation of that person". (He argues in particular that the word "brother" is actually "brothers".) "... deities are construed as ultimate sources of certain constituents and phenomena of the natural world [which in turn are] construed as coming out from the body of the person of the deity himself, and embodying that deity's essential nature." The point of this convention was to show that the god and their essence were different, but intimately related. It also addresses the idea that a god can manifest simultaneously in multiple places; similarly, in the Hebrew Bible, "plural forms of deity names... can be used to refer to idols of that deity [because] an idol is construed as sharing in the very essence and nature of the god whom it represents."
* I can't remember for the life of me who made this argument.
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Doniger O'Flaherty, Wendy. Women, androgynes, and other mythical beasts. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1980.
Tarazi, Matthew S. A Cloud Roams and Beautifies by Spitting Out Her Brother: KTU 1.96 and its Relation to the Baal Cycle. Ugarit-Forschungen 36 2004, pp 445-509.
Links September 2016
Sep. 28th, 2016 02:38 pmA Very Remote Period Indeed: A blog reviewing recent archaeological publications having to do with Paleolithic archaeology, paleoanthropology, lithic technology, hunter-gatherers and archaeological theory.
Untangling an Accounting Tool and an Ancient Incan Mystery (NYT, 2 January 2016)
Diodorus Siculus describes the Assyrian king Sardanapallus (perhaps Ashurbanipal) as a transvestite / transgender bisexual and blames him for the destruction of the Assyrian Empire - although the Greek historian's account mostly sounds like a pretty ordinary war.
Ancient Egyptian herbal wines (Patrick E. McGovern, PNAS 106(18), 5 May 2009) | Archaeological team prepares 4,000-year-old Hittite meals (Slate, 8 September 2016)
Ancient 'Mad Libs' Papyri Contain Evil Spells of Sex and Subjugation (LiveScience, 20 May 2016)
Scientist debunks nomadic Aboriginal 'myth' (GA, 9 October 2007) | Waking our sleeping Indigenous languages: 'we're in the midst of a resurgence' (GA, 31 August 2016) | Indigenous Australians most ancient civilisation on Earth, DNA study confirms (GA, 21 September 2016) | World-first genome study reveals rich history of Aboriginal Australians (ABC, 22 September 2016) | Indigenous Australians know we're the oldest living culture – it's in our Dreamtime (GA, 22 September 2016)
How human sacrifice helped to enforce social inequality (Aeon, 8 June 2016)
The Exotic Animal Traffickers of Ancient Rome (The Atlantic, 30 March 2016)
Have archeologists found the only female ruler of ancient Canaan? (Jerusalem Post, 2009)
Scientists use 'virtual unwrapping' to read ancient biblical scroll reduced to 'lump of charcoal' (GA, 21 September 2016)
Where the naked ladies dance
Jul. 17th, 2016 02:16 pm"Generally, there is no reason to believe that the ancient inhabitants of Mesopotamia and Syria could not separate the fields of eroticism and human procreation," writes Pruss. In fact, in the ANE, fertility was more closely linked with male deities, such as Dumuzi. By contrast, the patroness of sexual desire, Inanna/Ishtar, was childless ("except for some ephemeral traditions").
That said, questions remain about who used these sexually aggressive little figures, and exactly what for (household rituals? votive offerings?).
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Pruss, Alexander. "The Use of Nude Female Figurines". in S. Parpola and R. M. Whiting (eds). Sex and gender in the ancient Near East: proceedings of the 47th Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale, Helsinki, July 2-6, 2001. Helsinki : Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2002. pp 537-545.