Throughout much of last several decades since the discovery of inscriptions and drawings on some fragments of large storage jars at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, the scholarly community has been divided about how to interpret the pair of crowned semi-anthropomorphic standing figures on the fragment known as pithos A. Some scholars have been inclined to see a connection between the pair of figures and the inscription found immediately above them recording a blessing to Yahweh and his asherah, suggesting that the inscription is a kind of caption to the religious imagery of the drawings, while others have argued that a direct correlation of text and image is unlikely and have rather held to the view that the figures are depictions of the common Egyptian protective deity Bes.In recent years the case for interpreting the figures as our first epigraphically labeled depiction of the Israelite god and his consort has been advanced and put on much firmer ground thanks to the contributions of Brian Schmidt and Ziony Zevit, both of whom agree that the textual and iconographic context of the pithos should be determinative for explicating the figures’ identity.[1] And yet it would seem that there remains much confusion and disagreement about the issue, as the Bes interpretation of the figures continues to find broad acceptance among scholars working in biblical studies and the study of Israelite religion.
In order to clarify the state of the question, I would like to review the primary reasons for identifying the two standing figures as Yahweh and his asherah and in the process respond to some of the common objections that have been raised against the hypothesis. The treatment will necessarily be synthetic in nature, building on the insights of previous scholarship, but will also include some additional lines of evidence whose relevance to understanding the pithos figures has until now gone overlooked. As I hope to show, this evidence provides strong support for seeing an organic link between text and image on the pithos and throws new light on the iconography of Yahweh as it existed during the Israelite monarchy of the Late Iron Age.
Sexual Dualism
The first and most easily recognizable feature of the standing figures that supports interpreting them in light of the inscription is that they seem to consist of a male and female pair, parallel to the textual mention of Yahweh and “his asherah.”[2] The female sex of the right figure is signaled by the small circles on the chest that probably symbolize breasts and its smaller stature compared to the left figure, while the left figure lacks markings for breasts, is larger, and has a long narrow appendage between the legs that suggests the presence of male genitalia.
Earlier in the history of scholarship there was some doubt whether overt sexual dualism could be found in the two central figures on the pithos, partly because a marking between the legs of the right figure was thought to suggest that it might have a phallus/tail like the left figure. In addition, several critics argued that the breast symbols on the right figure were not necessarily indicative of female sex, since the dwarf god Bes often features exposed breasts or nipples, and sometimes even appears androgynous. [3]
However, with more recent analysis of the pithos it has become clear that the mark between the legs of the right figure was actually a smudge of dark soot and that there is no evidence of a phallus or tail-like appendage,[4] which has made a male or bisexual interpretation of the figure considerably less likely, if not completely invalidated. Because of this, there would seem to be little reason to dispute a straightforward understanding of the breast symbols as emblematic of female sex.
The argument from Bes iconography that breast symbols need not be interpreted as indicative of female sex is technically correct, and perhaps would have a bearing on the interpretation of the right figure if we could be certain that it was a conventional representation of Bes and that it was methodologically appropriate to explicate its iconography in isolation from the other figures on the pithos. But it is not at all clear that the figure is in fact a conventional representation of Bes or that its imagery should be explained solely within that conceptual and iconographic framework. As we will have occasion to note, both figures evince many details that distinguish them from known images of the Egyptian dwarf god. Furthermore, this approach to interpreting the breast symbols on the right figure ignores the immediate context of the pithos and fails to account for the discrete pattern in which they appear on the three humanoid figures, so that they constitute the most prominent indicators of sexual identity in the case of the right standing figure and the lyre player but are absent from the left figure who stands immediately next to the right standing figure.
This pattern of irregular application of the breast symbols is difficult to reconcile with the assumption that they were not intended as diagnostic of female sex. Because the presence of breasts in ancient Near Eastern art was generally a primary indicator for identifying a given figure as female, by placing one figure with breasts directly next to another without breasts the artist responsible for this juxtaposition has created a strong visual impression of sexual dualism. Furthermore, from what we know of Bes iconography, it would have been highly unusual for an artist, or even two artists living and working in the same immediate context, to render two images of Bes side by side that differ so dramatically with respect to this particular feature.[5] Throughout the long and highly variegated career of Bes imagery in Egypt and the Near East, the norm was to tend towards stereotyped representation, so that in particular time periods and contexts Bes would be repeatedly portrayed in the same generic guise, either naked or partially clothed, with relatively little emphasis placed on the breasts.
The fact that we have one standing figure with prominent markings for breasts, which are full circles and not merely dots,[6] and the other without any marking for breasts at all indicate that the symbols are iconographic shorthand for female breasts and that the pattern of evidence and absence among the humanoid figures is significant for determining a particular figure’s sex.
Further evidence that this understanding is correct is the appearance of what seems to be male genitalia between the legs of the left figure. Descending from the middle of the crotch about halfway the length of the legs is a narrow phallus-like projection and next to it a curved line that moves back towards the crotch that may be the outline of a scrotum (fig. 1).
There has been much disagreement and uncertainty about what these markings represent, in part because of the previously mentioned acceptance of the idea that the right figure had a narrow projection between its legs as well. For those who believe the standing figures are representations of Bes, the projection has generally been identified as a tail because of that iconographic tradition’s tendency to portray the deity with a connected leonine tail or lion-skin with a tail hanging between the legs.
But on closer examination of the available photos, there would seem to be little evidence to support the view that the projection is a tail and several considerations argue against it. First, there is no other indication for the presence of a lion-skin on the figures, such as a skin hanging over the front of the shoulders, and neither do they present other leonine features. As I hope to show later, it is more likely that the animal-like face of the figures has been shaped by bovine imagery. Second, a similar projection does not appear between the legs of the right figure, which is contrary to what we would expect if it were in fact a tail. The simultaneous absence of this feature from the figure with markings for breasts and conversely its presence on the figure that lacks breast markings suggest that it is a positive morphological indicator for male sex, just as were the schematic circles a positive morphological indicator of female sex. Third, the double line to the left of the projection that curves back toward the crotch is difficult to account for on the assumption that the latter represents a tail. The two lines are unlikely to be a second tale, as they move from the side of the projection in a direction that is oblique, almost horizontal, briefly follow the inside of the leg, and then gradually become one heavy line as they turn back to the place where the crotch and projection join. Semi-circular in shape and attached to the side of the projection without overlapping it, in this vicinity of the body it hard to see how this could be anything but a male scrotum.
Overlapping Pose
The next factor that supports an identification of the figures with Yahweh and his asherah is that they seem to be positioned in a stylized husband and wife pose. The two overlap to a substantial degree, with the arms and legs of the male figure fully crossing those of the female figure. The placement of the female is directly to the left and behind the male figure, as indicated by the higher ground line on which she is situated. As already noted by Schmidt,[7] this staggering of the figures so that the male is placed conspicuously in a dominant frontal position with respect to the female is highly reminiscent of the standard mode of representing standing couples face forward in Egyptian art, where the husband was typically placed to the right and in front of his wife, who was often smaller in stature.
We have no other evidence that this pose was known or commonly used in the Levant aside from the pithos from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,[8] but it is widely attested in Egypt on two-and three-dimensional art and it is not difficult to see how it could have been transferred into Levantine tradition. The iconographic utility of the pose was that it allowed husband and wife figures to be depicted frontally as a single conjoined pair while at the same time communicating the primacy of the male by placing him at the forefront.
The alternative to interpreting the figures as a conjugally related pair is to explain them by recourse to the conventions of traditional Bes iconography, where the dwarf god was often depicted in multiples. On this view the standing figures are simply two related versions of the same divine imagery, whose duplication functions to reinforce its protective power. But this understanding not only fails to account for the figures’ prominently displayed sexual dualism, but ignores or at least pays inadequate attention to other aspects of their presentation that are equally incongruent with an interpretation of them as representations of Bes, namely, the overlapping of the male and female figures and their placement on different ground lines.
From what we know of Bes iconography, this overlapping and staggering of two figures would have been a highly unusual if not unprecedented way of deploying Bes imagery in a single isolated context. We now have a fairly large corpus of Bes-like imagery used at many localities throughout the ancient Near East from the early second millennium to the late first millennium BCE, and from this material it is clear that the norm was to treat the figure as a conceptually self-contained and autonomous apotropaic symbol. The image was highly potent in itself and thus was most often depicted and used singularly, as on amulets and seals.[9] The imagery was also on occasion used in multiples on reliefs or elite objects, so as to intensify its symbolism, create balance and design, or adorn an architectural structure. But in almost all of these cases the repeated Bes symbols never overlap with their bodies. At the most they are found touching at the elbows, so that the apotropaic frontality of the image could have full effect.[10] Furthermore, in these situations the representation of Bes is always stereotyped, so that each individual figure is more or less exactly the same as the others, while all stand on the same ground line or mirror each other on opposite sides of a sacred shrine.
Because of the very nature of the Bes image and its use as a talisman, the figures on the pithos are unlikely to be two images of Bes, with one overlapping and partially obscuring the other. Rather the unusual configuration is more likely to be explained by the fact that the artist wanted viewers of the drawing to understand the two figures as closely and essentially related to one another, with the left male placed in a position of preeminence with respect to the female.
A different but related challenge to interpreting the two figures as a male and female couple is the art-historical argument that the two figures were drawn on the pithos by different hands at different times, an argument first advanced by Pirhiya Beck in her initial examination of the pithos drawings and subsequently taken up by others.
At the root of the argument is the perception that much of the imagery on the pithos are isolated motifs of diverse origins, in addition to several critical observations about the two standing figures themselves, including that they present some notable differences in their appearance and form, such as the distinctive headdresses and the contrasting shape of their arms and legs, and the fact that the male figure seems to have been drawn after both the female figure and the cow and calf and ibex and lotus motifs were in place.[11]
However, from the vantage point of today and in light of further research on the imagery of the pithos there would seem to be little to recommend the theory that the central drawings are a patchwork of elements added gradually over time and in particular that the standings figures were composed separately from one another.
We have already noted the highly unusual nature of overlapping Bes images, which calls into question the view that a later and unrelated hand would have intentionally arranged the left figure so that it stands in front of the right figure. The idea that this artist was cramped for space and so happened to overlap or bump into neighboring elements is belied by the careful positioning of the two standing figures, so that both barely enter into or touch the images of the cow-calf and lyre player. Taken as a whole, the arrangement of the three image complexes moves from soft juxtaposition of the cow-calf motif and male figure, to clear overlapping in the case of the male and female figures, and then to soft juxtaposition again with the female figure and lyre player, all of which is hard to explain as coincidental or the product of gradual compositional accretion. The artist of the male figure appears to have taken great care to place it in relation to other elements on the pithos. Otherwise, he could have avoided running into the cow-calf motif by moving the figure up to the same ground-line as the female figure, where there is slightly more space.
Given the careful arrangement of the right and left standing figures with the material on their outer sides, it seems likely that the overlapping positioning of the figures themselves was intentional and original to the pithos composition. As was brilliantly pointed out by Brian Schmidt, the use of the artistic technique of overlapping is evident at multiple places on both pithoi, so there is no compelling reason to see the placement of the male figure over part of the female figure and the cow-calf and ibex-lotus motifs as evidence of its secondary nature.[12] This layering of elements could have easily occurred during the process of composing the entire scene and reflect the intention of the artist to foreground the male figure.
More difficult to explain is the anomalous shape and appearance of the male figure, some of whose features contrast markedly from the female. His form is visibly less symmetrical, with the right arm bent awkwardly at shoulder height and then shooting down straight to the thigh, while the left arm is bent so that the hand comes to rest at a higher position on the waist. The torso is more rectangular, even box-like, without the gentle tapering seen on the female figure. The legs are more slender, straight, and set wide apart, so that the hips flare out at the torso. At least according to the published artistic reproduction, they seem awkward and ill formed. Lastly, the male’s feet both point to the left, in contrast to the opposite facing position of the female’s feet.
Comparing the figures side-by-side, it is somewhat understandable why Beck concluded that they had been drawn by different hands. The stance and shape of the figures differ in important respects and some elements of the male figure are so misshapen and unlike the female figure that removed from the pithos context and analyzed on their own it is indeed difficult to see how they could have been the product of a single artist.
Yet on closer inspection of the original pithos, the divergences between the figures are not as strong as Beck supposed and there are ways of explaining the anomalies of the male figure without having to resort to a speculative and complicated theory of distinct authorship.
With regard to the general shape of the figures, it is important to keep in mind that the artwork from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud as a whole was not of an exceptionally fine quality and that this was particularly the case for the pithoi drawings. The drawings on pithos A were rather imperfectly executed, and this is reflected in the bumpy and uneven lines, transgression of what should be impermeable boundaries, retracing of major elements, and lack of concern for precise proportionality and symmetry, which more or less characterize all of the animal and humanoid imagery.[13] Although irregularity and a lack of symmetry have been thought to be particularly evident in the male figure, because of the peculiar arrangement of his arms and legs, on closer analysis the female figure shows many of the same kinds of aesthetic infelicities and disproportion, which suggests that she was a product of the same compositional process as her male counterpart and other figures on the pithos. For example, the female’s eyes are not on the same plane, but are somewhat uneven; the right forearm is curved like a boomerang; the connection of the upper right arm to the shoulder is almost nonexistent; the line tracing the inner side of the upper left arm continues all the way through the shoulder; the knees and ankle hocks are not placed at the same height on each leg, etc.
The relatively unpolished and schematic nature of the drawings thus makes it difficult to establish that a given variation between the figures necessarily points to a different hand and style. From what can be gathered of the artist’s technique and facility from elsewhere on the pithos, some formal and stylistic inconcinnities are to be expected, especially in view of the difficult nature of the pithos surface as a medium for artistic representation.
On the other hand, the male and female figures share a number of technical, formal, and iconographic features that would be consistent with the assumption that a single artist was responsible for their composition, or at least two artists working closely together. First, the size of the brush used to paint the male is the same as that used to create the female; its broad width distinguishes the figures from their surrounding context and suggests a close association with each other. Second, some elements of the male’s body are very similar in shape to those of the female and could have easily been the work of the same artist. For example, the male and female heads are closely comparable, with their rectangular oblong pattern, long snouts, nostrils, almond-shaped eyes, and possible remnants of striations marking the neck. Finally, the frontal positioning, akimbo arms, and use of decorative dots point to a common iconographic origin for the figures and possibly common authorship.
Beyond these considerations, almost all of the contrasting formal features on the male and female figures that were so crucial to the development of Beck’s hypothesis of composite authorship lend themselves to alternative explanations, so that they can be seen as the conscious product of a single artist operating within the iconographic context of the pithos scene.
The first of these is the peculiar shape of the male’s right arm, which juts out a considerable distance to the right and then proceeds in a fairly straight line down to the thigh. Taken by itself, the element is unusually awkward and malformed compared to the well-proportioned arms of the female figure. But on closer inspection, we see that the shape of the arm is not arbitrary or evidence of a different hand or style. The artist of the male figure was clearly capable of drawing a well-proportioned and angular arm, as shown by the left arm that is more properly akimbo. Based on the right arm’s positioning with respect to the ibex-lotus motif, we can clearly see that the artist intentionally created the aberrant shape of the arm in order to overlap it with the lotus, suggesting that it was more important for the artist to link the male figure with this element than it was to render a perfectly angular arm. In other words, this feature of the male seems to provide evidence of ideology or mythology dramatically impacting the way the artistic representation was carried out.
The second is the contrast in the shape of the legs. As was mentioned before, the male legs are more slender, straighter, and set wider apart than the female legs; according to the artistic reproduction, they appear extremely schematic and even crooked. Yet upon examining high-resolution photos of the pithos, the rendering of the legs found in Beck’s analysis would seem to be inaccurate and there is actually much more similarity in shape between the male and female legs than can be detected at first glance. As with many other parts of the pithos imagery, a substantial amount of interpretation goes into the process of identifying and rearticulating the remains of the original painting. Because of a combination of blurring with age, the presence of soot, and the imprecisions of the original artwork, it is sometimes difficult to know the exact contours of the figures, as demonstrated by the previously held assumption that the female figure had a narrow phallus-like projection between her legs. However, based on my analysis, it is sufficiently clear that the male legs are much more animal-like in form: they are rounded at the hips and curve back toward what seems to be a hock joint, from which they angle obliquely back to the ground (fig. 2). The presence of the hock in particular shows quite decisively that these are not straight legs drawn in a rather arbitrary and awkward fashion, but have been intentionally bent so as to appear as hind legs. This shaping comports fairly closely to the female legs, which also show evidence of hock joints.
Of course, the male legs still differ from the female’s in their narrowness, length, and breadth with respect to the torso. But the important point is that they no longer appear prima facie to be stylistically distinct from the female. And in any case, all of these latter elements can be explained as a function of the artist’s attempt to represent and account for the figures’ different physical sex and build. The male has tall narrow legs, with sufficient space between them to allow for the depiction of male genitalia, while the female legs are short, thicker, and come together at the crotch. The tapering of the female torso also probably reflects the intention to imitate the curvature of the female body.
This leaves the feet on the male, which in contrast to the female, both point in the same direction. There is little reason to doubt that this feature was compositional in origin. Right and left directionality appear to have had an important role in the construction of the entire pithos scene, as suggested by the left facing directionality in the cow-calf motif on the left side of the male figure and the right facing directionality in the lyre player to the right of the female figure. By positioning the male’s feet toward the left, the artist seems to be trying to create a strong connection between the male figure and the cow-calf motif.
All of the remaining features that differentiate the male and female figures are minor iconographic issues and most likely stem from a need for individuating their character or reflect differences in their mythological conception or profile. The feather crowns on each figure are, of course, of a different style, with the male crown much larger than the female’s. The female has lines crossing her arms and ankles that probably represent bracelets or jewelry of some kind. Finally, the ears on the female seem to be more human than animal, which possibly points to her role as an exceptional listener or intercessor with her husband.
Bes- and Animal-like Appearance
The next factor that supports interpreting the figures in light of the inscription is that various aspects of their iconography suggest a connection to Israelite Yahweh, including the elements derivative of Egyptian Bes iconography and the bovine appearance of the figures.
The resemblance of the figures to Bes imagery has long been recognized and for the most part agreed upon. Bes is the somewhat artificial name given to a collection of apotropaic dwarf god-leonine symbolism that developed in Egypt to represent certain protective deities and was then borrowed and adapted by other cultures within the ancient Near East.[14] The imagery was transferred into the Levant at a fairly early date, where it evolved to fit local tastes, coexisted with more purely Egyptian forms imported from Egypt, and eventually became widespread as a result of the long history of Egyptian cultural domination of the region. The elements on the pithos figures plausibly derivative of the Egyptian-Levantine Bes tradition include the feather crown, grotesque animal-like face, arms akimbo with hands resting on the midsection, short kilt, nudity, frontal positioning, and possibly decorative dots on the body. In their combination here, they produce a gestalt that is prima facie Bes-like, which has understandably led many commentators to classify the figures as Bes-type figures.
Yet with further research it has become increasingly clear that the figures are not simply standard Bes representations, but lack a number of features basic to the tradition and present other elements that are unparalleled in Bes-like imagery of the pre-Hellenistic Near East. For example,
–The figures lack the rounded and broad muscular face, high cheekbones, grimacing and wrinkled expression, and protruding tongue typical of Bes. The heads are rather rectangular and oblong in shape, with the only markings on the face consisting of the outline of the nose bridge, nostrils, and mouth area.
–They have no beards or shaggy-haired mane. The vertical lines found underneath the male head are most likely striations marking the neck area, as shown by the appearance of the same feature on the female lyre player.
–There is no indication of a distended abdomen, stocky torso, bandy legs, or other dwarflike proportions. The figures are rather tall and slender.
–In a rather marked departure from Levantine images of Bes, the figures lack the feature of bent and outward facing knees. Here the presence of hock joints placed near the middle of the legs suggests the depiction of animal hind legs.
The significance of this combination of Bes-like and non-Bes-like features has been much discussed, with little agreement among scholars as to why the two pithos figures share an appearance and form that contrasts from all previously known types of Bes imagery, including the many images of Bes on amulets recovered from ancient Palestine.[15] Beck herself prescinded from exploring the issue further and described some of the elements on the figures in ways that softened their divergence from other Bes traditions.
Based on my own analysis of the figures, I would argue that both exhibit unmistakable bovine features and that a bovine interpretation satisfactorily explains their idiosyncratic and non-Bes-like qualities. These features include the rectangular oblong head, large ears above the level of the eyes, long and narrow nasal bridge with large nostrils, what appears to be a mouth extending along the total width of the bottom of the face, and hind legs with hock joints. Taken together these elements are morphologically suggestive of the bovine or cattle family, and in the context of ancient Israel could hardly be confused with any other animal.
A further consideration that supports interpreting the figures as bovine is the prevalence of cattle imagery on the Kuntillet ‘Ajrud pithoi as a whole. The cow-calf motif on pithos A is prominently depicted to the immediate right of the male figure. As we have already mentioned, the fact that the male’s right foot overlaps the cow-calf motif and that both feet have been positioned so that they point toward the animals suggests that the artist has constructed the scene so as to indicate a close relationship between the two image complexes. On pithos B we have an unfinished cow-calf motif similar to the one on pithos A and a large bull that is overlapped by an inscription and a member of the procession of worshippers.
Some scholars have nevertheless argued that the animal-like features are better understood as leonine, and raised several specific objections against the bovine interpretation, including that bovines are not generally depicted frontally in Near Eastern two-dimensional art; the pithos figures lack horns, generally a primary indicator of cattle; and Bes-like figures are not elsewhere portrayed with bovine heads.[16]
However, the identification of the figures as leonine is problematic, as it lacks iconographic support and seems to rest on little more than the comparative evidence that traditional Bes imagery was often closely associated with leonine imagery. The rectangular head and long narrow snout are completely at odds with Near Eastern convention for representing lions, which as a rule have more rounded heads and shorter nasal bridges.[17] Other characteristic indicators of a lion are noticeably absent, such as a shaggy mane, cat nose, divided upper lip with whiskers, or tail. Finally, no evidence of the characteristic lion-skin of Bes can be detected hanging over the figures’ shoulders.
Moreover, the argument that some features of the pithos figures necessarily exclude a bovine interpretation is not convincing. First, while the representation of bovines face forward is indeed scarce in attested two-dimensional Near Eastern art, it needs to be kept in mind how little two-dimensional art is available for comparison and particularly from the Iron Age southern Levant. Few images of animal or humanoid figures depicted on flat surfaces from this period have survived, and even fewer where the figures are depicted face forward, so it would seem somewhat prejudicial to assert that the formal characteristic of frontal representation was incompatible with a certain animal imagery, especially when this animal figured prominently in Israelite myth. On the other hand, we have clear examples of the frontal representation of bovines on other media from the southern Levant, such as the shallow relief of a bull headed deity from Bethsaida with a near two-dimensional character, and the terracotta protomes of bull heads on various cult stands.[18] If artists were capable of rendering bovines frontally in sculpture, then it is not difficult to imagine that they had the skill to do the same in the more ephemeral medium of two-dimensional painting. Note that Beck herself remarks that the trapezoidal crown of the right Bes figure is known primarily from three-dimensional faience amulets rather than two-dimensional representations of Bes.[19]
Second, although the presence of horns is generally one of the most important elements used to distinguish bovines from other animals in ancient Near Eastern art, their absence cannot be regarded a priori as determinative for disqualifying a particular figure as bovine. Despite the iconographic significance of horns, not all bovines are depicted with them, to the consternation of art historians, and in fact bovine and humanoid bull-headed figures can be represented with large horns, medium sized horns, sprouting horns, or no horns at all, depending on the age and maturity of the bovine in question. We have a wide variety of examples of what can be identified as young hornless bull calves in two- and three-dimensional art originating from the southern Levant and the cultural region of ancient Israel, including a bronze recumbent calf from Iron I Megiddo, terracotta calves from Iron II Megiddo, the terracotta bull calf found at the top register of the Iron I Ta’anach cult stand, a calf head seal from Iron II Tell el-Far’ah South, a calf head amulet from Iron II Beth Shemesh, and not least the calf in the calf-cow motif found at many sites, including Kuntillet ‘Ajrud on pithos A.[20]
Third, the fact that we have no precise parallel for a Bes image with a bovine head is not by itself a compelling argument to reject a bovine interpretation of the pithos figures. [21] We have already mentioned that the combination of Bes-like and non-Bes-like elements on the figures is unique in attested traditions of Bes imagery, which means that iconographic analysis must take priority in their identification and argues against eliding their idiosyncratic features by conforming them to better-known Bes types.
From a comparative perspective, we know that Bes imagery was highly fluid and that it evolved over time, developing among the various cultures where it was borrowed in ways that significantly diverged from Egyptian iconographic convention. In the Late Bronze Megiddo ivories, the Bes figure is shown with a leonine body, humanoid face, and bird-like wings.[22] In Phoenician ivory frontlets from the early first millennium, Bes appears with a humanoid body, leonine face, and horns.[23] In Phoenician green jasper scarabs from the 5-4th centuries, the morphology of Bes was unusually dynamic. While his face is consistently grotesque and dwarflike, the rest of the body is shown variously humanoid, leonine, winged, or sphinxlike. He sometimes has horns or uraei attached to his body and can appear naked or clothed.[24]
In this context, the combination of Bes imagery with bovine features is not all that unusual or extraordinary. In many cases it is clear that Bes had a well-known animal-like nature and persona and that this aspect could be accentuated, toned down, or transformed depending on the cultural and artistic setting.
Furthermore, although we lack an example of a Bes figure with a bovine head precisely parallel to the pithos figures from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud, we do have evidence of a local development of the Bes figure in Cyprus that shows that bovine or at least bovid imagery was at times combined with conventional Egyptian Bes imagery. At Amathus[25] archaeologists have discovered fragments of some twenty large limestone statues dating possibly to the 4th century BCE, which show elements that are recognizably Bes-like, such as dwarflike proportions, grotesque face, protruding tongue, master of lions attitude, loincloth, and attached uraei, and a few non-Bes-like features. Among these the most significant is the small sprouting horns on the heads, which have been identified by Isabelle Tassignon as bovine. Whether the horns are those of a young bull or goat is unclear, and it is possible that they were actually intended to represent goat horns since the Bes figure depicted on the 5th century sarcophagus from Amathus has horns that are twisted.[26] But in any case, this departure from Egyptian iconographic convention shows that bovine or bovid features could be applied to Bes figures as a result of local iconographic and cultural considerations, which is highly suggestive of the situation at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud. In addition, it is probably not insignificant that the horns are sprouting horns, or the horns of a young and vigorous animal, which correlates well with the calf-like presentation of the pithos figures.
With a determination of the precise nature of the animal-like features of the pithos figures, it is fairly easy to begin to see how the combination of bovine and Bes-like imagery would be explicable in terms of an identification with Yahweh and his asherah. We have abundant evidence from the Hebrew Bible that bovine symbolism deeply impacted ancient Israel’s conceptualization of the divine and specifically that Yahweh was represented in the form of a young bull calf or ‘egel.[27] The Pentateuch and Deuteronomistic-related literature contain polemics against Israelite calf worship and explicitly acknowledge its importance to the northern cults of Bethel, Dan, and Samaria. Jeroboam is alleged to have instituted calf worship at Bethel and Dan, which is seen as paradigmatic in causing the rest of Israel to sin (1 Kgs 12:29-30), and the author of Hosea implies that the identification of Yahweh with calf idols was endemic to Samaria and the northern kingdom as a whole (8:5-6; 10:5; 13:2). In fact, Hosea’s condemnation of “the calf of Samaria” (8:5-6) is likely a play on the very same title that we find attested in the inscription on the pithos with the figures, where we read a blessing dedicated to “Yahweh of Samaria.”
The connection of the Bes-like imagery to Yahweh is more difficult to recognize, since even though the features clearly derivative of Bes are limited to the feather crown and akimbo stance, they nevertheless imply that the pithos figures are somehow analogous or related to more standard Egyptian Bes imagery, as represented in the amulets used in family religion of private households found throughout the southern Levant.
In order to understand the Bes-like appearance of the pithos figures, it is necessary that we step back and reassess our understanding of the nature and origin of Egyptian Bes symbolism and consider what meanings were attached to it when other cultures borrowed and adapted the imagery for their own use.
Research on the meaning and function of Bes symbolism within Egypt has advanced in recent years, resulting in a much more complex picture of its historical development and mythological significance.[28] From the available evidence, Bes seems to have been a popular apotropaic figure with roots going back to the Old Kingdom, his iconography combining human, leonine, and eventually dwarflike elements. As a personal protective deity, his imagery evolved over time and eventually in later periods was assimilated to various deities in official cult and mythological contexts. Nevertheless, for at least the Pharaonic period he seems to have been conceptualized as a discrete and unitary figure, as he was repeatedly used in singular form as an object of focus, such as on amulets, figurines, and statues. Little is known about the figure’s precise identity, since our documentation is predominantly pictorial in nature and even the few names that have been connected to the deity, such as Aha or Bes, are best understood as generic titles that speak to his function rather than proper names. Based on the widespread distribution of his imagery, he appears to have been a powerful and significant deity in the lives of ancient Egyptians, functioning as the preeminent protector of the household and domestic sphere. For several millennia, traditional belief in his apotropaic powers remained something of a constant in the common religious practice of the people. Even as late as the Ptolemaic and Roman period, his role as a slayer of serpents and averter of malignant forces is identifiably related to the lion-man appearing on Middle Kingdom magical wands.
For our purposes, what is important to note is that Bes was a liminal figure associated with youthfulness, the concerns of women, and the emergence of new life.[29] His immature and dwarflike body is itself suggestive of a youthful character, whereas his protection and influence were most typically called upon at dangerous transition points in the human life cycle, such as birth, sleep, and death. He was closely associated with Horus and in fact appears to have been a popular manifestation and adaptation of the tutelary deity.[30] From the New Kingdom, he is represented with wings as a sky deity and associated with such emblems as the lotus, wadjet eye, scarab, and uraeus snake. Also comparable to Horus, his mythological profile is that of a serpent slayer and defender of the solar deity. The close affinity of the two figures eventually comes to the fore in the Late Period on Horus cippi, where the face of Bes sits like a mask immediately above Horus, who is shown holding snakes, scorpions, or lions and standing on crocodiles.
As we have already mentioned, the distinctive imagery of Bes had a long career outside Egypt’s borders and was borrowed and adapted by other cultures in the eastern Mediterranean from as early as the beginning of the second millennium. Over time the Bes image took on greater significance among these cultures and by the early first millennium we can see that it had become indigenized and elevated to the point of functioning as an iconography for representing various national tutelary deities.
In Phoenicia Bes appears on ivory frontlets from the 9-8th centuries as Melqart, the protector of Tyre. Though Bes-like in his leonine head and frontal position, the pose and dress is un-Egyptian and he features broad shortened horns and lacks the feather headdress. At the top of the frontlet is Reshef, the military companion of Melqart on early Phoenician bowls.[31] The peculiar addition of horns in turn links him to an indigenous Phoenician apotropaic figure seen on amulets from the 7th century, which also has horns, lacks the feather headdress, and is leonine in appearance.[32] More obviously Bes-like figures include a master of animals Bes with horns, feathered headdress, dwarflike head, protruding tongue, and uraei on an agate amulet from the 7th century,[33] and a Bes with horns, protruding tongue, and master of serpents pose on terracotta statuettes from the 4th century, fragments of which were discovered at a sanctuary dedicated to Astarte and Melqart at Tell Sukas.[34] Bes is found very frequently on 5-4th century Phoenician scarabs, where he is most certainly a representation of Melqart.[35] Here he is a master of animals and lions in the mode of Herakles and can be shown with attached horns and uraei, recalling the uraei hanging from Melqart’s kilt on the 9th century Bar-Hadad stela.
At Cyprus the figure of Bes was most likely an emblem of the local Cypriote Herakles. He is represented in a triad of nude Bes figures on a 6th century limestone wall bracket used in the Athienou-Malloura sanctuary that shows him wearing a leonine headdress, in the “smiting god” position, and standing on a base supported by two lions.[36] Together these motifs link him to the Cypriote Herakles, whose images have been found at many sanctuaries on Cyprus from the Archaic to Hellenistic periods. As a youthful anthropomorphic character, Cypriote Herakles is often portrayed wearing a lion skin, in the “smiting god” position, and holding a lion in his left hand.[37] In addition, a horned version of Bes appears repeated four times on the 5th century Amathus sarcophagus opposite a nude goddess, where the context suggests he functions as a protector of the deceased king.[38] The connection of this figure with a version of Cypriote Herakles is again underscored by the 4th century limestone statues of Bes from Amathus already discussed, since they show a similar bearded figure with short horns in the pose of master of lions.[39]
Interestingly, both Melqart and Cypriote Herakles are royal figures, with strong links to their respective Phoenician and Cypriote national cultures and dynasties. Melqart’s name means “king of the city” and a variety of inscriptional evidence indicates he was conceptualized as the tutelary hero and founder of Tyre and colonizer of other Phoenician cities.[40] On the other hand, the imagery associated with Cypriote Herakles, such as his master of lions role and royal uraei attached to his body, as well as his outsized presence within the remains of the Amathus agora, imply that he had a comparable tutelary function in Cyprus. A late tradition by Hesychius reports that the people of Amathus called Heracles Malika, which reinforces the idea that the deity’s nature was fundamentally that of a royal protective figure.[41]
During the Persian period, the Bes image was widely diffused through Phoenician expansion and the increased cross-cultural interactions sponsored by the development of the Achaemenid Empire. And here too the process of borrowing, imitation, and adaptation for the purpose of representing local protective deities continued, with Bes appearing on Philistian coinage, for example, in distinctive patterns and as a master of animals.[42] Kamyar Abdi has recently argued that the Bes image was assimilated to the deity Mithras in the Iranian context and associated with the military.[43]
With this broader context of cross-cultural borrowing and translation in mind, there are a number of reasons to think that Bes imagery was also applied to Israelite Yahweh from a rather early date.
First, we have several representations of Bes from ancient Palestine that can be connected to an indigenous Horus-like deity whose cult and mythology lived on into Late Iron Age Israel. On the 12-century BCE Megiddo Ivories we find a Bes-like figure with wings, humanoid head, and uraeus coming from the mouth, which Wilson has identified as a Levantine adaptation.[44] This Bes figure can be compared with an anthropomorphic figure found on scarabs and other objects from the 10th century at a number of Palestinian localities (Megiddo, Tel Zeror, Gezer, Tell el-Ajjul, Achzib, Taanach), which also has a uraeus coming from the mouth and is typically shown sitting underneath a winged solar disc on a throne above a nub gold sign with an arm raised in blessing and surrounded by four protective falcons.[45] This latter figure is clearly a deity, and the Egyptianizing motifs associated with him suggest a royal Horus-like divinity of significant standing in the urban religious culture of the southwest Levant. As remarked by Keel and Uehlinger, the motif of a uraeus coming from the mouth on a royal anthropomorphic figure is distinctively un-Egyptian.[46] Then on a 9th century seal from Lachish the figure of Bes appears again surrounded by four protective falcons in the exact same position as we see them in the case of the anthropomorphic royal figure.[47] From this interchange of motifs, so that Bes is depicted on two separate occasions with different aspects of the iconography of the Horus-like deity, that is, with the uraeus coming from the mouth and the four protective falcons, we see that the Bes image is actually a representation or manifestation of that same type of deity.[48]
It is unclear whether any of these images of Bes or a Horus-like deity can be identified as Yahweh or even a proto-Yahweh, since most of them stem from a fairly early date and were found at localities associated with the coast and the Shephelah. But the presence of a royal Bes figure at both Megiddo and Lachish is suggestive, especially since Keel and Uehlinger have documented the continuing vitality of a deity symbolized with Horus-like imagery in Israel proper during the 9-8th centuries. This includes a young solar deity shown wearing the double crown sitting on a lotus or papyrus plant found in the Samaria ivories and on Hebrew name seals,[49] as well as a falcon/human headed sphinx-like figure also depicted wearing the double crown on objects recovered from many localities in the north and south (Samaria, Megiddo, Dan, Lachish, Tell el-Far’ah south, Shechem).[50] The deity behind these figures is undoubtedly a major Israelite deity and his Horus-like features link him to the earlier royal Bes-like figures mentioned above.
Second, the use of Bes amulets appears to have been very common in Iron Age II Israel, which would lead us to suspect that its imagery had been assimilated to some native Israelite deity. The amulets have been recovered at many sites excavated throughout Palestine and the discovery of molds shows that they were at times produced locally and thus that the iconography had been incorporated into the complex mixture of influences that characterized the regional symbol system.[51] Even in its more purely Egyptian form, the Bes image had been adopted and indigenized. Based on the archaeological contexts in which the amulets have been found, the Bes figure seems to have played a prominent role in the sphere of personal and family religion, as did Bes in Egypt. Associated primarily with domestic and funerary contexts, he protected families and individuals from malevolent influences and has been reasonably assumed based on Egyptian parallels to have been particularly implicated in the concerns of women.[52]
So who did this figure symbolize in the context of ancient Israel? We have already noted that in Egypt and everywhere the Bes image was adopted it was consistently used to represent discrete and identifiable figures, often with a mythology bridging the divide between personal/popular and national religion. Although the distinctive animal-like and grotesque imagery of the Bes figure made it particularly suitable as an apotropaic symbol, which was easily understood and appreciated by a wide variety of cultures and contributed to its widespread appeal outside Egypt, its use was always embedded within specific mythological and cultural settings so that the image represented not simply an abstract concept of protection but was a manifestation of known divine entities.
From the widespread distribution of the Bes figure on amulets, we can assume that it signified a well-known deity in Israel, who operated in the sphere of personal and family religion but was shared by the culture more broadly. Like the Bes figure in Egypt, he was more than simply a monstrous face, but was a known mythological quantity. On the other hand, the contexts of use indicate he was regarded as especially powerful and efficacious in the realm of personal protection, since he was charged with safeguarding those most sensitive and fraught of all socio-cultural spaces, that is, the private household and tomb. With the latter conceived as an extension of the former, these areas were commonly seen as endangered by a variety of demonic and destructive forces, as reflected, for example, in the Arslan Tash incantation against night demons, Jeremiah’s description of Mot climbing through the windows of houses to take the lives of children (Jer 9:21), the Passover threshold ritual against the night Destroyer (Ex 12:21-23), and the Khirbet el-Qom grave inscription invoking Yahweh’s blessing over the dead.[53] Because the forces of death and chaos were conceptualized as powerful and difficult to restrain, always threatening to break down the door as it were, they could only be countered through the assistance of an equally powerful divine aid, in this instance symbolized by the figure of Bes.
Based on all these considerations, an identification of the Bes figure on amulets as a potent apotropaic manifestation of the god Yahweh is entirely plausible. Aside from the fact that we lack another viable candidate for fulfilling this important role of popular protective deity, there is substantial evidence that during the monarchic period Yahweh was conceptualized as a warrior and tutelary deity and that his activities straddled both personal and national religious spheres. His importance in this regard is underscored by his prominence in Israelite personal names, where he generally appears as a protector and savior figure, while in the Bible a number of hints remain that he was conceived as the primary adversary of Mot and other baleful demons.[54] As a manifestation of Yahweh, the material object of the Bes figure would have allowed the deity memorialized in public cultic settings to be localized and invoked in the domestic context.
Third, another factor that supports linking Bes imagery with Yahweh is a number of other items in the epigraphic and iconographic record that imply Yahweh and his mythological character were closely bound up with Horus and Horus/Bes symbolism. We have already described how the Bes figure was seen as a popular form of Horus in Egyptian religion, so if Yahweh in Israel was understood as a figure comparable to Horus in terms of his function as a tutelary deity, then a cross-cultural translation of deities would naturally facilitate the Israelite cult’s assimilation of some Horus/Bes symbolism and Horus-related paraphernalia.
Here we can briefly mention the following:
- The evidence for the veneration of a young Horus-like protective deity on Israelite glyptic that was already alluded to above. This evidence includes a wide variety of forms, such as the more purely Egyptian imagery of Horus on a lotus or falcon on a nub sign, as well as a winged figure holding lotus plants, falcon-headed winged figure, winged uraeus, winged scarab-beetle, and human- or falcon-headed sphinx.[55] The repeated presence of certain motifs on these figures, such as the double crown, falcon symbolism, lotus plant, wings, and solar imagery, as well as the common characteristics of youthfulness and protective stance, links them together conceptually and functionally and suggests that they are comparable representations of a type of deity that had a prominent role in Israel.
- The close association of Yahweh with Horus as reflected in Israelite personal names. There are near ten individuals in the Bible with names that can be plausibly understood as bearing the theophoric element Horus (ḥwr), and as Ziony Zevit has recently noted, these individuals derive from several different tribes and are set in disparate time periods, from premonarchic to post-exilic eras.[56] We also have twelve instances of the Horus theophoric that have been found in inscriptions from the 7-6th centuries, making it decidedly the best represented foreign divine name in the Israelite onomasticon as a whole.[57] The Egyptian name pšḥwr, “son of Horus” was particularly popular, with 9 instances attested in the epigraphic record; the book of Jeremiah reports that pšḥwr was the name of the chief officer over the temple in the days of Zedekiah. Especially revealing is the attestation of the name ʾšḥwr both in inscriptions and the Bible, “Horus gave,” since the predicate ʾš “to give” is otherwise attested only with a Yahweh theophoric, appearing in inscriptions twenty four times as ʾšyhw or ʾšyh and six times in the Bible as yhwʾš and ywʾš. In most of these instances a straightforward interpretation of ḥwr as the name of a foreign deity is ill suited to the context, even if the Egyptian names pšḥwr and ḥrnpr (1 Chr 7:36) show that the divine name Horus undoubtedly stands behind the theophoric. Rather, the prominent usage of Horus as a theophoric in an onomasticon that is highly Yahwistic, has few foreign divine names, and particularly its seeming interchangeability with the name Yahweh suggests that in the later period of the monarchy it had become something of a divine title that could be applied to Yahweh, likely because of what Horus symbolized and a mythological compatibility in the two deities’ profiles.[58]
- The appearance of the theophoric Bes in Israelite personal names. The name Bes occurs five times as a theophoric in inscriptions and the Bible, all in the same name bsy, “belonging to Bes.”[59] The usage of this name certainly reinforces the general impression of strong Egyptian influence on Israelite thought and the area of personal religion, since Bes, Horus, and Isis are among the few foreign divine names attested in larger numbers in Israelite anthroponyms. The problem with the name, however, is that its representation in the onomasticon is entirely disproportionate to the popularity of the Bes image as reflected in the distribution of the figure in Israelite archaeological contexts. If the name Bes could be used as a theophoric because of the deity’s role in personal and family religion, why do we not find it more frequently? The answer is probably that the name Bes did not represent strictly a foreign deity whose cult had been adopted by Israelites, but that like the name Horus, it had become assimilated to Yahweh in the sphere of popular religion. A similar synthesis and translation of an Egyptian deity into the local Israelite context can be assumed in the case of Isis, whose name appears 6 times in the Hebrew formulation mʾs, “from Isis,” and whose imagery is often encountered in the archaeological record.[60]
- The use of wadjet eyes and pataikos figures as amulets. Wadjet eyes and pataikos figures were the most popular of all amulets used in Iron Age Palestine, with Herrmann’s corpus registering 543 wadjet eyes and 258 pataikos figures, as compared to 173 examples of Bes figures.[61] They are frequently found in domestic contexts along with Bes amulets and are well known for their strong Horus associations as apotropaia. The meaning of the wadjet eye in an Israelite context can be gathered from several pieces, including a scarab from late 8th century Megiddo that associates it with the crowned sphinx figure already identified as a Horus-like protective deity, an Israelite seal of unknown provenance that places it below the winged solar disc as if it were a shorthand for the sphinx figure, and a Samarian ivory that combines the wadjet eye with several motifs that we earlier linked to the Horus deity, including a falcon claw, uraeus, and solar disc.[62] On the other hand, the pataikos figure seems to have been an alter ego of the Bes figure and a symbol of Horus in a childlike or infantile state.[63] His pose and dwarflike features are recognizably Bes-like, with bandy legs, arms bent to the thighs, and frontal position. Several attributes link him to standard Bes imagery, such as the frequent depiction of him holding knives and biting snakes, recalling the Bes figure’s close association with swords and snakes. As a child-like or infantile manifestation of Horus, he often features a scarab-beetle on his head, symbol of solar rebirth and rejuvenation, and can be shown walking on crocodiles and associated with falcons. In Egypt he is sometimes accompanied by mother-type goddesses, such as Sachmet, Isis, or Nephthys.
Mythological Compatibility in Divine Profiles
A further reason to link Bes with Yahweh in an Israelite context is the evidence that Yahweh had an important role in facilitating childbirth in family religion, thus suggesting a significant compatibility in their divine profiles. Helping mothers be safely delivered of a child was one of Egyptian Bes’s most prominent and long-lasting roles as a personal protective deity, which is understandable considering the high mortality rate for both women and infants in antiquity.[64] From very early on, his function was to drive away evil spirits and relieve the mother in labor and this remained his special prerogative until well into the Common Era.[65] We can surmise that something very similar was the case in Israelite culture with Yahweh, since he is so often invoked in personal names as the agent by which pregnancy and birth come to a successful completion.
The importance of the birth context for understanding the meaning of Israelite personal names has recently been underscored by Rainer Albertz, who catalogued all known epigraphic names and divided them into various categories based on grammatical, intentional, and form-critical criteria, including names of thanksgiving, names of confession, praise names, equating names, birth names, and secular names.[66] Based on this analysis, he found that birth names represented the dominant name type, making up at least one-third of all epigraphic names, and concluded that many of the theophoric names found in other categories “should also be primarily interpreted in the wider context of birth.”[67]
Yaweh’s role in making birth feasible or providing protection and salvation during the birth process is reflected in a variety of names, including names where Yahweh is seen as responsible in general for a successful birth: ntnyhw (“Yahweh gave”); mtnyhw (“gift of Yahweh”); ʾšyhw (“Yahweh gave”); yhwndb (“Yahweh presented”); brkyhw (“Yahweh blessed”); šmʿyhw (“Yahweh heard”); yʾznyhw (“Yahweh heard”); ḥnnyhw (“Yahweh was gracious”); ʾmryhw (“Yahweh commanded”); qlyhw (“Yahweh spoke”); bnyhw (“Yahweh made”); mqnyhw (“possession of Yahweh”); ṣpnyhw (“Yahweh sheltered”); ʾḥzyhw (“Yahweh held tight”); bdyhw (“in the hand of Yahweh”); smkyhw (“Yahweh has supported”).
Other names portray Yahweh in a militant fashion, as if he were a strong warrior fighting on behalf of the name-giver against the forces of death: ʾnyyhw (“my strength is Yahweh”); ʾbryhw (“strength is Yahweh”); ʾmṣyhw (“Yahweh is strong”); yhwḥyl (“Yahweh is strength”); ḥzqyhw (“Yahweh is my strength”); yhwqm (“Yahweh has arisen [on my behalf]”); mgdlyhw (“Yahweh is a battlement”); yhwṭr (“Yahweh is a wall”); yklyhw (“Yahweh has triumphed”); gbryhw (“Yahweh has proven mighty”); gdlyhw (“Yahweh has shown himself to be great”); yhwʿz (“Yahweh is my protection”); ʿzzyhw (“Yahweh has proven strong”); mḥsyhw (“Yahweh is my refuge); ʿlyhw (“Yahweh is exalted”); šmryhw (“Yahweh protected”); plʾyhw (“Yahweh acted wonderfully”); plṭyhw (“Yahweh rescued”); gʾlyhw (“Yahweh redeemed”); pdyhw (“Yahweh ransomed”); hṣlyhw (“Yahweh delivered”); yšʿyhw (“Yahweh saved”); hwšʿyhw (“Yahweh saved”); yhwʿzr (“Yahweh is help”), or has put forth a substantial amount of physical effort to achieve the birth: ʿmlyhw (“Yahweh labored”); ʿmsyhw (“Yahweh lifted/carried”); ʿśyhw (“Yahweh made”); mʿśyhw (“work of Yahweh”); knyhw (“Yahweh established”).
Finally, Yahweh is shown to be the agent who completed or effected the delivery/parturition: dlyhw (“Yahweh drew out”); ḥlṣyhw (“Yahweh drew out, delivered”); hṣlyhw (“Yahweh delivered”); gmryhw (“Yahweh completed”); gmlyhw (“Yahweh completed”); ḥwyhw (“Yahweh caused to live”); ʾṣlyhw (“Yahweh set aside, preserved”); yḥmlyhw (“Yahweh spared [the child]”); yrmyhw (“Yahweh loosened [the womb]”); bqyhw (“Yahweh poured out, emptied [the womb]”); ʾspyhw (“Yahweh removed”); ptḥyh (“Yahweh opened”); pqḥyhw (“Yahweh opened”).
Iconographic Context of the Figures
The final consideration that supports identifying the figures as Yahweh and his asherah is the larger iconographic context of the pithos, which suggests that the various elements of plant, animal, and humanoid imagery plus inscriptional text are one meaningful interrelated whole.
First, the overlapping of the male figure with the lotus plant recalls the close association of the protective Horus-like deity with lotus imagery that we noticed earlier. As we mentioned before, the overlapping seems to have been a deliberate move by the artist, thus linking the male figure to a significant royal and divine symbol in the sacred iconography of ancient Palestine.[68] On ivory and glyptic the Horus figure was closely associated with the lotus: he is variously shown sitting on a lotus, holding lotus flowers, or standing in the vicinity of lotus symbolism.[69] At Kuntillet ‘Ajrud two caprids eat from a sacred tree with lotus blossoms guarded by a lion on the other side of pithos A, while a lotus flower is held by an unidentified enthroned youthful figure on wall painting no. 9. The importance of the lotus to the imagery of the tutelary deity so prevalent in Israelite glyptic suggests that the Bes-like figure may be a royal figure in the same tradition.
Second, the presence of symbolism evocative of a mother-type goddess on the pithos is also suggestive. The conventional use of the cow-calf motif throughout the eastern Mediterranean to depict primary goddesses in their role as birth mother is well known.[70] On early Phoenician bowls the motif appears in highly mythological contexts, where it clearly indicates more than an abstract concept of fertility and sustenance. For example, it is found on the bowl from Kourion, which is dominated by scenes of divine warriors battling with lions and griffins and occasionally broken up by sacred tree imagery and the figure of a nurturing and protective goddess, or on a bowl of unknown provenance at the Rijksmuseum, where it is centrally placed and surrounded by similar views of battling deities. As Glenn Markoe has observed, the backdrop of a papyrus thicket on several bowls “confirms the [the cow-calf] scene’s symbolic association with the motif of Isis suckling the infant Horus that traditionally occurs in this setting.”[71] In addition, Eleanor Beach has insightfully noted that Phoenician ivory artisans used the cow-calf motif with a limited number of other iconographic motifs to decorate specialized furniture, including the woman at the window, infant on a lotus, human-headed sphinx, winged guardian, and grazing stag, suggesting that they form an interrelated tableau of mythological scenes.[72]
In ancient Israel the cow-calf motif was most likely understood similarly as in Phoenicia, given the prominent use of bull and calf symbolism to represent major deities reflected in the Bible and the significance of bovine imagery to the Canaanite cultural region as a whole.[73] The analogy of female deities to cows, parallel to chief male deities imaged as strong and sexually potent bulls, was endemic to the mythological language of the region, as it provided a ready means of speaking about the divine world in sexual and procreative terms. Divine bovine imagery of various forms is attested in the archaeological record of ancient Israel throughout the Iron Age and in Papyrus Amherst 63 we find a unique textual elaboration of the theme, where the wife of Bethel is depicted as a nourishing cow goddess who suckles the people and brings forth fruit for her bull husband.[74]
The interpretation of the cow as a divine emblem is further reinforced by another prominent symbol of the nurturing goddess on the back of the pithos: the sacred tree flanked by caprids and guarded by a lion. The connection of the sacred tree to Levantine naked goddess symbolism and Canaanite Asherah is abundantly documented and has recently been treated by Irit Ziffer.[75]
Because the cow figure likely symbolizes the primary goddess in Israel, the artist’s intentional association of the male figure with her on the pithos, both by crossing his foot over her leg and by depicting him as bovine indicates that he is a major deity in the Israelite context and not a minor figure as some have supposed. He is a prominent and regular member of the pantheon and, in light of his calf-like and royal features and special connection to the birth goddess, should probably be identified as her son.[76]
Third, the lyre player to the left of the standing female figure is also a divinity, based on the depiction of her sitting on a throne and the mythological ambience of the larger pithos scene.[77] There has been much debate about her identity, with Bill Dever notably arguing that she is a representation of Asherah. However, several iconographic factors indicate that she is simply a replication of the standing female figure in anthropomorphic form and not a separate deity. First, the iconographic portrayal of the female lyre player coheres well with the standing female figure: the left ear on both is shaped almost precisely the same; both feature the same circle markings for breasts with similar horizontal lines set above them; the size and distribution of dots on their bodies is very similar; and both are royal figures (one denoted by a crown and the other by a throne). Second, a replication of the male figures’ image seems to be at play in the juxtaposition of his calf-like form with the cow-calf motif to his right, suggesting that repetition of divine imagery may have been a structural element in the design of the pithos scene. In other words, the male figure is a calf and he is linked to an image that again features a young calf (along with a cow), as though the latter constellation were a mythological elaboration of the male figure’s persona and nature. So the fact that the technique of association through overlapping/touching is found on both sides of the standing figures lends support to understanding the lyre player as a replication or mythological elaboration of the standing female. Third, the lyre player is set facing a direction oblique to the standing female, which would be consistent with an understanding of the image as playing a subsidiary role with respect to the frontal standing female. It does not compete for the main attention of the viewer but extends naturally from the central focus on the standing male and female. Finally, nothing about the lyre player’s visual presentation would be incompatible with this identification, including the short Phoenician wig or the figure’s lyre-playing. The well-known text from Ugarit that describes Anat playing a lyre and singing for Baal may in fact suggest that a goddess making music for her partner was a standard mythological trope, which would explain why it appears here on the pithos in the context of a divine couple.
Finally, one last consideration that supports interpreting the standing figures as Yahweh and his consort is the general arrangement of the figures on the pithos and their relationship to the inscription. Reconstructions of the jar have shown that they were placed near the center of the area between the handles below the shoulder, just as the motif of the sacred tree, caprids, and lion was placed centrally on the other side.[78] The arrangement and design appears to have been deliberate, indicating that the imagery was intended for display at the site, perhaps in the Bench-room. As such, the figures were of some significance for the artist(s) responsible for decorating the pithoi as a focal element of a symbol system that was presumably shared with those who frequented and lived at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud.
Furthermore, the inscription accompanying the figures is likewise placed in a central position, crossing the crown of the male figure just below two circumferential grooves at the top of the pithos. This placement is not likely to have been accidental, since the inscription’s level horizontality indicates that it was written when the pithos stood upright and was elevated, i.e. the same design phase in which the standing figures were drawn. Shmuel Ahituv and Esther Eshel in their analysis of the inscriptions concluded that at least inscriptions 3.3, 3.4, and other upside down scribbles were applied to the pithos after it was lying on its side, thus assigning them to a different phase from the main inscription associated with the standing figures, 3.1.[79] From this it would seem that the central “blessing” inscription preceded these other inscriptions and was intended for public display along with the drawings.
We have already had occasion to note that the technique of overlapping was intentionally deployed more than once on the pithos to communicate meaningful relationships among the images, so the overlapping of text and image is completely intelligible in this context. From all appearances, the crossing of the inscription through the figure seems to have been planned and carefully executed.[80] The final words of the blessing containing the invocation “to Yahweh of Samaria and his asherah” have been brought down to a second line so as to effect the overlap, running directly and decisively though the feather crown. Moreover, the limitation of the textual overlapping to the male figure alone even corresponds to the distinctive position of Yahweh in the inscription, since he is the main object of blessing and his female partner is designated by reference to him, “I bless you to Yahweh of Samaria and to his asherah.”
Further confirmation for this understanding of the inscription can be seen in pithos B, where we find a similar arrangement of a central inscription invoking a local manifestation of Yahweh (here Yahweh of Teman) at the top of the pithos above a scene containing imagery evocative of cult, in this case a procession of worshippers. Much less is known about the precise meaning of this scene, as the imagery appears more disconnected, heterogeneous, and incomplete than pithos A. But as Brian Schmidt has observed, the positioning of the cow-calf motif and the inscription of divine blessing at the top of the pithos parallel to pitho A suggests that the two pithoi scenes are structurally and conceptually analogous, if not “two parts of a larger unified field of meaning.”[81] So because the imagery on pithos B is explicitly of a cultic nature, the content of the imagery on pithos A is likely to represent another expression of the cult of Yahweh as practiced at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud.
Conclusion
In sum, the above exploration of the identity of the standing figures on pithos A has resulted in the conclusion that a broad range of evidence lends support to interpreting them in line with the inscription as representations of Yahweh and his consort, including their marked sexual dualism, overlapping and integrated pose as male and female partners, their Bes-like and bovine features, the evidence for a shared mythological compatibility between Horus/Bes and Yahweh, and the larger iconographic context of the figures on the pithos.
Much research remains to be done on the iconography of Yahweh as it existed during the Israelite monarchies and varied over time and region,[82] but if the above reconstruction of Yahweh’s relationship to Horus and Bes symbolism is correct, then it would appear that iconic representation of this deity in semi- and non-anthropomorphic form was far more acceptable, conventional, and prevalent in ancient Israel as a whole than scholars have hitherto imagined, with the image at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud constituting only one variation on a popular theme. Assuming that Bes amulets were used as manifestations of Yahweh’s protective power, then icons of Yahweh in fact seem to have been virtually ubiquitous in everyday life, from household to family grave and everywhere in between.
[1] Brian Schmidt, “The Iron Age Pithoi Drawings from Horvat Teman or Kuntillet Ajrud: Some New Proposals,” JANER 2 (2002): 91-125; Ziony Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches (New York: Continuum, 2001), 381-389.
[2] For the purpose of this paper, I interpret “his asherah” as a reference to a goddess, but not necessarily the goddess Asherah.
[3] Cf. Pirhiya Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” in Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman): An Iron Age II Religious Site on the Judah-Sinai Border (ed. Z. Meshel; Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 2012), 169; Judith Hadley, “Some Drawings and Inscriptions on Two Pithoi from Kuntillet ‘Ajrud,” VT 37 (1987): 191-192; Othmar Keel and Christoph Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God in Ancient Israel (trans. Thomas Trapp; Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998), 218-219.
[4] Z. Meshel, editorial note in Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), 165.
[5] Cf. the repeated Bes figures on an ivory plaque from Megiddo, the Amathus sarcophagus, and a wall bracket from Athienou-Malloura, Veronica Wilson, “The Iconography of Bes with Particular Reference to the Cypriote Evidence,” Levant 7 (1975): 84-86; Derek B. Counts and Michael K. Toumazou, “New Light on the Iconography of Bes in Archaic Cyprus,” in Common Ground: Archaeology, Art, Science, and Humanities – Proceedings of the XVI International Congress of Classical Archaeology (ed. A. Donohue and C. Mattusch; Oxford: Oxbow, 2006), 598-602; for multiples of Bes from New Kingdom Egypt, see Véronique Dasen, Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 71-72.
[6] For a comparable example of breast circles on a near two-dimensional representation, see the winged goddess on a shield from Luristan of the early first millennium, P. Amiet, Art of the Ancient Near East (trans. John Shepley and Claude Choquet; New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1980), 305.
[7] Schmidt, “The Aniconic Tradition: On Reading Images and Viewing Texts,” in The Triumph of Elohim (ed. Diana Edelman; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 98-99; “The Iron Age Pithoi Drawings,” 109, n. 40. For discussion of Egyptian overlapping, see Heinrich Schäfer, Principles of Egyptian Art (ed. and trans. John Baines; Oxford: Griffith Institute, 2002), 172-177; Gay Robins, Proportion and Style in Ancient Egyptian Art (Austin: University of Texas, 1994), 19-21.
[8] For much earlier frontal representations of male and female couples, see Ora Negbi, Canaanite Gods in Metal (Tel Aviv: Institute of Archaeology, 1976), 4-7, where the female can be shown with her arm around the back of the male. For a very late example of a staggered couple, see the image of King Ahasuerus at Dura Europos, where he sits enthroned in front of the queen to her right.
[9] Cf the catalogues found in J. F. Romano, “The Bes-image in Pharaonic Egypt” (Ph.D. diss., NYU, 1989); Christian Herrmann, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994); Kamyar Abdi, “Bes in the Achaemenid Empire,” Ars Orientalis 29 (1999): 111-140.
[10] The only exception I could find was the wall-bracket from Athienou-Malloura, where the triad of Bes-figures is staggered with the central Bes standing at the forefront. Because in this instance the Bes image seems to be repeated in order to bring the frontal Bes into focus, it doesn’t really contradict the above mentioned norm to represent Bes figures as defined and autonomous symbols.
[11] Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 165-183.
[12] Schmidt, “The Iron Age Pithoi Drawings,” 108-111.
[13] Cf. Becks comments, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 143, 162-165.
[14] For overviews of the development of the Bes image in Egypt, see Dasen, Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece and Michel Malaise, “Bes” in The Ancient Gods Speak: A Guide to Egyptian Religion (ed. Donald Redford; New York: OUP, 2002), 28-29; for the spread of the image into the Levant, see Wilson, “The Iconography of Bes”; cf. Christian Vartavan, “Bes the Bow-legged Dwarf or the Ladies’ Companion,” BP&MOS 1 (2005), 81-95.
[15] Cf. Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 168-169; Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God, 217-219; Schmidt, “The Aniconic Tradition,” 100-101.
[16] Keel and Uehlinger, 217, n. 47; cf. Hadley, “Some Drawings and Inscriptions,” 189.
[17] Cf. the ivory lion heads in R. D. Barnett, A Catalogue of the Nimrud Ivories (London: British Museum, 1957), L.2, U.9, V.3; the leonine Bes head on Phoenician ivory frontlets in Eric Gubel, “Phoenician and Aramean Bridle-harness Decoration,” in Crafts and Images in Contact: Studies on Eastern Mediterranean Art of the First Millennium BCE (eds. Claudia E. Suter and Christoph Uehlinger; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2005), 124; and lions depicted frontally on Phoenician gems in John Boardman, Classical Phoenician Scarabs: A Catalogue and Study (Oxford: The Beazely Archive and Archaopress, 2003), pl. 40.
[18] For the Bethsaida stele, see Othmar Keel, Goddesses and Trees, New Moon and Yahweh (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 115-120. For bull protomes on cult stands, see Raz Kletter, Irit Ziffer, and Wolfgang Zwickel, Yavneh I: The Excavation of the ‘Temple Hill’ Repository Pit and the Cult Stands (Academic Press Fribourg, 2010), 69-73. Cf. also a phoenician scaraboid with frontal bull head in Eric Gubel, “The Iconography of Inscribed Phoenician Glyptic,” in Studies in the Iconography of Northwest Semitic Inscribed Seals (ed. Benjamin Sass; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 116-117, fig. 32.
[19] Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 169.
[20] Rainer Albertz and Rüdiger Schmitt, Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 144; Herbert May, Material Remains of the Megiddo Cult (OIP 26; Chicago: Oriental Institute, 1935), 34; Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel, 321; Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God, 145, no. 169; Herrmann, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina, 519, no. 2.3.C; Elizabeth Willett, “Women and household shrines in ancient Israel” (Ph.D. diss., University of Arizona, 1999), 122.
[21] Even in Egypt dwarf symbolism was sometimes linked with bovine symbolism: the back of the pataikos figure was often carved with a mother-type goddess with cow horns, Dasen, Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt, 86.
[22] Wilson, “The Iconography of Bes,” 85-86, figs. 2.1, 2.2.
[23] Gubel, “Phoenician and Aramean Bridle-harness Decoration,” 124, fig. 13.
[24] John Boardman, Classical Phoenician Scarabs: A Catalogue and Study (Oxford: The Beazely Archive and Archaopress, 2003).
[25] Isabelle Tassignon, “Le Baal d’Amathonte et le Bès égyptien,” in Egypt and Cyprus in Antiquity (eds. D. Michaelides, V. Kassianidou, and R. Merrillees; Oxford: Oxbow, 2009), 118-124.
[26] Antoine Hermary and Joan R. Mertens, The Cesnola Collection of Cypriot Art: Stone Sculpture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 360.
[27] For discussion, see Mark Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (2nd ed.; Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2002), 83-84; The Origins of Biblical Monotheism (New York: OUP, 2001), 32, 146-147; Daniel Fleming, “If El is a Bull, Who is a Calf?” Eretz-Israel 26 (1999): 23-27.
[28] For a recent survey of Bes imagery, see Giuseppina Capriotti Vittozzi, “Note Su Bes Le Sculture Del Museo Egizio Di Firenze e Del Metropolitan Museum of Art,” in Aegyptiaca et Coptica. Studi in onore di Sergio Pernigotti (eds. P. Buzi; D. Picchi; M. Zecchi; Oxford: BAR, 2011), 69-84.
[29] He is frequently associated with sa and ank signs, symbols of protection and life, and papyrus and lotus plants. See Romano, no. 73, 78, 82, 85, 87, 89, 91, 116, 117, 119, 152, 178, 182A, 187B. See also H. J. Kantor, Plant Ornament in the Ancient Near East (1999), 722-723.
[30] Dasen, Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece, 48-50, 64-67.
[31] Gubel, “Phoenician and Aramean Bridle-harness Decoration,” 124.
[32] William Culican, “Phoenician Demons,” JNES 35 (1976): 21-24.
[33] A. Furtwängler, Die Antiken Gemmen (Berlin, 1900), pl. 7, no. 21, referenced in Sandra Blakely, Myth, Ritual, and Metallurgy in Ancient Greece and Recent Africa (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 148-149.
[34] Tassignon, “Le Baal d’Amathonte et le Bès égyptien,” 122.
[35] Boardman, Classical Phoenician Scarabs, pls. 19-22.
[36] Counts and Toumazou, “New Light on the Iconography of Bes in Archaic Cyprus.”
[37] For a discussion of the hybrid iconography of this figure, see Derek Counts, “Master of the Lion: Representation and Hybridity in Cypriote Sanctuaries,” American Journal of Archaeology 112 (2008), 3-27.
[38] Antoine Hermary and Joan R. Mertens, The Cesnola Collection of Cypriot Art: Stone Sculpture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2014), 353-361.
[39] Tassignon, “Le Baal d’Amathonte et le Bès égyptien.”
[40] S. Ribichini, “Melqart,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (eds. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst; 2nd ed.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 563-565.
[41] Tassignon, “Le Baal d’Amathonte et le Bès égyptien,” 121-122.
[42] See Haim Gitler and Oren Tal, The Coinage of Philistia in the Fifth and Fourth Centuries BC: A Study in the Earliest Coins of Palestine (New York: Amphora Books/B & H Kreindler, 2006). Cf. Oliver Hoover’s review in Schweizerische numismatische Rundschau 86 (2007): 193-194.
[43] Kamyar Abdi, “Bes in the Achaemenid Empire.”
[44] Wilson, “The Iconography of Bes,” 84-86.
[45] Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddessess, and Images, 136-139, no. 158, 159.
[46] Ibid., 137.
[47] Keel and Uehlinger, 221-222, no. 227, first published in Barbara Parker, “Cylinder Seals from Palestine,” Iraq 11 (1949), 12, no. 27.
[48] Cf. also an 8th century scaraboid from Hazor depicting Bes flanked by worshippers and associated with sphinx, falcon, and uraei, which Keel and Uehlinger say may have been imported from Phoenicia, 221-222, no. 228.
[49] Keel and Uehlinger, 249-251, no. 240-241.
[50] Keel and Uehlinger, 252-257, no. 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254. For more examples, see Sass, Benjamin Sass, “The Pre-exilic Hebrew Seals: Iconism vs. Aniconism,” in Studies in the Iconography of Northwest Semitic Inscribed Seals (ed. Benjamin Sass; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993).
[51] The amulets have been catalogued and documented by Christian Herrmann in several volumes, beginning with Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994). See the recent summary in “Weitere ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel,” ZDPV 123 (2007): 93-132. Cf. also Keel and Uehlinger, Gods, Goddesses, and Images of God, 220-222; Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel, 387-388.
[52] Carol Meyers, “From Household to House of Yahweh: Women’s Religious Culture in Ancient Israel,” Congress Volume Basel 2002 (ed. André Lemaire; Supplements to Vetus Testamentum, 92; Boston: Brill, 2002), 287-288; Elizabeth Willett, “Women and household shrines in ancient Israel” (Ph.D. diss., University of Arizona, 1999), 309-311.
[53] For a discussion of the place of demonology in ancient Judaism and the broader Near East, see Ida Fröhlich, “Theology and Demonology in Qumran Texts,” Henoch 32 (2010):101-129.
[54] E.g. Isaiah 25:6-8; 28:15-22; 30:28; Ps 91.
[55] For Horus on the lotus, see Keel and Uehlinger, 249, no. 240, 241; a standalone falcon, Sass, 218, fig. 98, 99; winged anthropomorphic figure with lotus, Keel and Uehlinger, 195-198, no. 211, 212; falcon-headed anthropomorphic figure, 198, no. 213; 351, no. 340; Sass, 235, no. 141; standalone winged uraeus, Sass, 212-213, fig. 75-81; winged scarab beetle, Keel and Uehlinger, 256-257, no. 256, 257, 258; Sass, 214-217, no. 87, 88; human- or falcon-headed sphinx, Keel and Uehlinger, 252-259, no. 246, 248, 249, 250, 251, 252, 253, 254, 258, 259.
[56] Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel, 586-605.
[57] See Rainer Albertz and Rüdiger Schmitt, Family and Household Religion in Ancient Israel and the Levant (Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns, 2012), 323, 508, tab. 5.7.
[58] Cf. Keel and Uehlinger, 206 and Zevit, 589, n. 15, 677.
[59] See Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 322-323; Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel, 605. Another Bes name is possibly qdbs from the Samaria ostraca, cf. Keel and Uehlinger, 205.
[60] Albertz and Schmitt, 365. For Isis in Palestine, see Herrmann, Ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina, 111-131; Keel and Uehlinger, 249-251, no. 243; 378, no. 363-364.
[61] Herrmann, “Weitere ägyptische Amulette aus Palästina/Israel,” ZDPV 123 (2007), 94.
[62] Keel and Uehlinger, 254, no. 254; 257-259, no. 260.
[63] Dasen, Dwarfs in Ancient Egypt and Greece, 84-98.
[64] Elizabeth Ann R. Willett, “Infant Mortality and Women’s Religion in the Biblical Period,” in The World of Women in the Ancient and Classical Near East (ed. B. A. Nakhai; Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2008),
[65] Dasen, 67-75.
[66] Albertz and Schmitt, Family and Household Religion, 245-367. Though, as Albertz himself admits, the categories overlap and the distinctions among them are somewhat artificial.
[67] Albertz and Schmitt, 253.
[68] For the early background of the lotus, see Irit Ziffer, “Symbols of Royalty in Canaanite Art in the Third and Second Millennia B.C.E.,” Bulletin of the Israeli Academic Center in Cairo 25 (2002): 11-20.
[69] E.g. Keel and Uehlinger, no. 241, 211, 212, 232.
[70] Cf. Glenn Markoe, Phoenician Bronze and Silver Bowls from Cyprus and the Mediterranean (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California, 1985), 43-44; Barnett, A Catalogue of the Nimrud Ivories, 143-145; William Culican, “The Iconography of Some Phoenician Seals and Seal Impressions,” Australian Journal of Biblical Archaeology 1 (1968): 55.
[71] Markoe, Phoenician Bronze and Silver Bowls, 44.
[72] Eleanor Beach, “The Samaria Ivories, Marzeah, and Biblical Text,” BA 56 (1992), 130-139.
[73] The cow-calf motif is missing from glyptic art in Israel of the Iron IIB, which led Keel and Uehlinger to conclude that the instance at Kuntillet ‘Ajrud should not be definitely linked to a local Israelite goddess, 241. However, the motif was widely known and used in Palestine throughout the Iron Age, so this absence from Israelite glyptic is better explained by the fact that other motifs, such as the protective Horus-like deity, were favored for this particular iconographic medium. Note that it is attested on a terracotta cult stand from Yavneh and on a pottery bowl from Buseirah in southern Jordan. Bull, cow, and calf imagery continued to be used to symbolize deities in Philistia as late as the Persian period, Gitler and Tal, The Coinage of Philistia, no. II.4D; XX.5D.
[74] For the text, see “The Aramaic Text in Demotic Script,” translated by Richard Steiner (COS 1.99.309-327). The appropriateness of the suckling cow image for evoking the Israelite primary goddess is suggested by the evidence of pillar figurines found in Israel and Judah, which emphasize the goddess’ breasts and nourishing role.
[75] Irit Ziffer, “Western Asiatic Tree-Goddesses,” Egypt and the Levant 20 (2010): 411-430.
[76] It is worth noting that the Bes figure both in Egypt and elsewhere in the eastern Mediterranean was consistently linked with a mother-type goddess in the archaeological record, whether Taweret/Hathor in Egypt, Astarte-Isis in Phoenicia, or the local goddess of Cyprus. For Cypriote Bes’ association with the great goddess of Cyprus, also identified with Hathor, see Isabelle Tassignon, “Le Baal d’Amathonte et le Bès égyptien.” See also Christian Vartavan, “Bes the Bow-legged Dwarf or the Ladies’ Companion,” BP&MOS 1 (2005), 81-95. According to Bill Dever, Bes amulets have often been found in the same contexts as Israelite pillar figurines, “Asherah, Consort of Yahweh? New Evidence from Kuntillet ʿAjrûd” BASOR 255 (1984): 25-26, n. 19.
[77] Cf. Ziony Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel, 387.
[78] Beck, “The Drawings and Decorative Designs,” 147.
[79] “The Inscriptions,” in Kuntillet ‘Ajrud (Horvat Teman), 87.
[80] Beck notably expressed skepticism that the inscription and drawings were the product of the same hand because of the smaller brush size and finer handwriting of the former, but different brush sizes could have easily been employed by the same individual and it is highly difficult to distinguish stylistic hands when crossing distinct genres of written expression. On the whole, the evidence does not argue decisively against unified authorship. See Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel, 381.
[81] Schmidt, “The Iron Age Pithoi Drawings,” 112.
[82] The distribution of Bes symbolism suggests that it was substantially more popular in the Northern Kingdom and areas it directly influenced than in Judah.
