234 DK. E. W. G. MASTEEMAN, ON EECENT DISCOVERIES 



AsJierah may not have been the female counterpart of the male 

 Massebak. Originally a tree, and as such the dwelling-place of 

 the deity — like the stone — the idea of fertility may have been 

 increasingly connected with it, so that where the Massebali 

 became a phallus, the pole (Ex. xxxiv, 13, Judges vi, 25,. 

 etc.) may have been marked with some conventional sign (such 

 as may be seen in places in Palestine to-day) for the female 

 equivalent of the phallus. 



At a still later period the pole itself may have been roughly 

 shaped into a form somewhat similar to that seen on the plaques.. 

 That the " grove " or Ashe rah was at one time, even in the time 

 of the Hebrew Monarchy, shaped into an image of some kind,, 

 seems implied in i Kings xv, 13, and this is admitted by 

 Winckler.* The Asherah appears, too, to have been draped 

 (ii Kings xxiii, 7). In i Kings xv, 13, we read of an imago 

 which was erected by Maakah as a horrible or grisly thing for 

 (or belonging to) an Asherah. "Grisly thing" (E.V. "idol") 

 may here be a substitute for a word which moral or religious- 

 delicacy forbad the later scribes to write.f It need hardly be 

 pointed out that there is no philological connection between tho 

 words Ashtarte and Asherah, but the latter, the writer would 

 suggest, came gradually to represent the former. Ashtarte was 

 " the goddess of fertility and reproduction," as appears strikingly 

 in the myth of the descent of Ishtar. The Asherah from the first 

 seems to have represented the same ideas — fertility, and later on 

 reproduction ; so that unless there was, as is possible, a connection 

 even earlier, the Asherah gradually became the actual sign of 

 the goddess — the Ba'alat, as the Massehah was the sign of the- 

 Ba'al of the locality. This view has been greatly strengthened, 

 according to Winckler, by the finding in the Tell el Amarna 

 correspondence the name ' Ehcd-ashera (slave of the Ashcra) 

 where the word ashera has the determinative sign signifying a 

 divinity. The very name Asherah seems, then, to have been 

 somewhat loosely used instead of the goddess' name Ashtarte. 

 This mention of the name belongs to the period when we 

 should judge the cult of Ashtarte and of the "grove" (asherah) 

 to have been at its fullest development. At a later time, that of 

 the Hebrew m.onarcliy, the names appear to have been often 

 used interchangeably (compare Judges ii, 13, x, 4 ; i Sam. vii, 

 4, with Judges iii, 7 ; i Kings xvi, 32 ; ii Kings x.xi, 3). 



* In Keilmshriftcn v. das A. 7"., 3rd ed., p. 27G, on ii Kings 21. 

 t Prof. G. Ii. Smith, Expositor ^ Marcli, 1905, p. 231. 



