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Asherah, Consort of Yahweh? New Evidence from Kuntillet ʿAjrûd

It is well known that the Hebrew Bible contains some 40 veiled references to the cult of the old Canaanite fertility deity Asherah, consort of El at Ugarit. But her appearance has always constituted something of a problem. This is witnessed by: (1) the confusion already in the MT among "Asherah," "asherim," "asheroth," and the bastardized form "Ashtoreth"/"Ashtaroth"; and (2) the ambiguity in the use of these terms, which may refer apparently indiscriminately either to a putative deity or to an enigmatic cult-image, rendering many texts seemingly unintelligible.' Nearly all later commentators, Jewish and Christian, have interpreted the texts in a "minimalist" fashion, preferring to see in these awkward references simply the persistence of Canaanite religious practices. However, the possibility that the goddess Asherah may have been personified and actually worshipped in ancient Israel as the consort of Yahweh has generally been downplayed. The most extreme view is that recently stated by E. Lipinski (1972: 116): "It seems that no biblical passage mentions the goddess Atirat or her emblem."2 But even A. Lemaire (1977: 607), who has reconstructed an actual reference to "Yahweh and his asherah" in the el-Qom funerary Inscription No. III, nevertheless concludes that "the word Asherah in the biblical texts seems most likely to designate a sacred tree placed in the traditional sanctuary of ancient Israel, situated beside the altar and the stele (massebah)."3 It is the contention of this article that recent archaeological discoveries provide both texts and pictorial representations that for the first time clearly identify "Asherah" as the consort of Yahweh, at least in some circles in ancient Israel. In 1975-76 Ze'ev Meshel excavated a 9th-8th century B.C. Israelite-Judean caravanserai and attached shrine at Kuntillet 'Ajrud (Horvat Teiman) in eastern Sinai. Early reports of this sensational discovery noted that the sanctuary had yielded several dipinto dedicatory inscriptions and inscribed votive offerings. But only cautious references were made to two large pithoi, on which were painted both Hebrew blessing formulae and cultic (?) scenes. The material was seen promptly by many scholars, including this writer, and in 1978 was featured in an Israel Museum special exhibition (Meshel 1978a, b). More recently, Pirhiya Beck (1982) published the long-awaited official edition of the drawings on both the pithoi and the wall-plaster fragments.4 Although the editio princeps of the texts has not appeared, Naveh (1979) recently offered a translation of two of the pithoi inscriptions, of which fortunately nearly every letter is legible (Pithos A is partly shown in fig. 1, here).