Ackerman 2008 Asherah Goddess of Weaving

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JNES

67 no. 1 (2008)]

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2008 by The University of Chicago.All rights reserved.0022–2968–2008/6701–0001$10.00.

1

ASHERAH, THE WEST SEMITIC GODDESS OF SPINNING

AND WEAVING?

SUSAN ACKERMAN, Dartmouth College

I. Goddesses of Spinning and Weavingin the Ancient Near Eastern and Eastern Mediterranean Worlds

I

n

Oikonomikos

, his fourth-century

b.c.e.

treatise on estate management, the Greekauthor Xenophon describes how the fourteen-year-old bride of a wealthy friend knewnothing of the world other than how to work wool herself—and how to allot woolworkto the maidservants.

1

Although it is almost two millennia older, scholars of the ancientNear East might well be reminded of the Sumerian mythological poem called by ThorkildJacobsen “The Bridal Sheets of Inanna,” in which the young bride-to-be and goddessInanna teases back and forth with her brother Utu, the sun god, about the process of makinglinens for her marriage bed. He begins by suggesting that he bring her flax to render intocloth but without telling her explicitly that she will be producing the bedsheets that will beused on her wedding night. She, however, seems to sense the purpose for which the clothis to be made, yet coyly works to prolong the process of revelation by asking Utu repeatedlyby whom the various stages of preparing the fabric—the retting, the spinning, the doublingup of the threads, the dying, the weaving, and the bleaching—will be performed,

2

forexample:

3

1

Xenophon

Oikonomikos

7; this reference wasbrought to my attention by E. J. W. Barber, “The Peplosof Athena,” in J. Neils, ed.,

Goddess and Polis: ThePanathenaic Festival in Ancient Athens

(Hanover, NewHampshire and Princeton, 1992), pp. 104–5.

2

In the translation of this poem found in DianeWolkstein and Samuel Noah Kramer,

Inanna, Queenof Heaven and Earth: Her Stories of Hymns from Sumer

(New York, 1983), pp. 30–31, Wolkstein and Krameroffer a slightly different list of the stages of cloth pro-duction: combing, spinning, braiding the thread, settingthe warp, weaving, and bleaching. Here I have followedThorkild Jacobsen,

The Treasures of Darkness: A His-tory of Mesopotamian Religion

(New Haven andLondon, 1976), pp. 30–31. Yet I cannot agree withJacobsen that the purpose of Inanna’s repeated ques-tioning of her brother is due to her being “on guard”and “attempting to push” the whole matter of the bed-sheets aside, leery that the groom that has been chosen

for her will not be the suitor she prefers. Nor do Iagree with Tikva Frymer-Kensky that Inanna “declinesto ret, spin, dye, weave, or bleach” the raw flax becausethis headstrong and independently minded goddessdenies women’s role in fabric production (

In the Wakeof the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the BiblicalTransformation of Pagan Myth

[New York, 1992],pp. 26–27). Rather, as my remarks here suggest, I findInanna’s “spinning out” of the exchange with herbrother Utu to be both a marker of her aristocraticstatus—spinning and weaving is work she expectsmaidservants to do—and also coquettish in character,a coy dialogue leading up to the pronouncement thatshe eagerly awaits: that she is to be the bride of herbeloved Dumuzi. I would also take the lines from adifferent text that Frymer-Kensky quotes as evidenceof Inanna’s “gender-bending” rejection of a woman’stypical tasks of spinning and weaving—lines in whichher husband Dumuzi tells her she shall not weave orspin—as indicating instead Inanna’s aristocratic statusas a woman whose spinning and weaving will be doneby others.

3

Translation by Jacobsen,

Treasures of Darkness

,p. 31.

Journal of Near Eastern Studies

2

Brother, when you have brought me the flax,who will ret for me, who will ret for me,who will ret its fibers for me?

Here one thinks of the maidservants to whom woolworking was to be assigned by the youngbride of Xenophon’s text and this despite the millennia and miles that separated ancientSumer from Classical Greece.

Still, it should come as no surprise that these two otherwise disparate texts share theperception that young women were responsible for producing, or at least overseeing theproduction of, textiles in the home, for domestic fabric-making was a primary task ofwomen in all parts of the ancient world. E. J. W. Barber has written of Greek women, forexample, that “spinning and weaving occupied most of the women’s time in ClassicalGreece . . . properly married Athenian women . . . spent their lives sequestered at homespinning and weaving for the family’s needs,” and Tikva Frymer-Kensky has similarlynoted that “producing cloth” was the most “basic economic task” of Mesopotamian wivesand their “most important and characteristic nonprocreative function.”

4

Indeed, in the Greekworld, a tuft of wool was customarily placed on the door of a house upon the birth of ababy girl in order to symbolize the critical role that spinning and weaving would play inthis child’s later life, and, similarly, in the ancient Near East, the spindle or distaff servedas the characteristic emblem of femininity.

5

Because of the importance of spinning and weaving in these ancient cultures, it reason-ably follows that the various pantheons of the Near East and eastern Mediterranean wouldinclude a deity who was patron of the arts of spinning and weaving, and it also followsreasonably enough that because of the almost stereotypical association of women with thedomestic arts of spinning and weaving,

6

this patron deity of spinning and weaving would

4

Barber, “The Peplos of Athena,” p. 104; Frymer-Kensky,

In the Wake of the Goddesses

, p. 23.

5

On the Greek tradition, see Jenifer Neils, “Childrenand Greek Religion,” in J. Neils and J. H. Oakley,eds.,

Coming of Age in Ancient Greece: Images ofChildhood from the Classical Past

(New Haven andLondon, 2003), p. 143; on the ancient Near East, seeHarry A. Hoffner, Jr., “Symbols for Masculinity andFemininity: Their Use in Ancient Near Eastern Sympa-thetic Magic Rituals,”

JBL

85 (1966): 329; also PhyllisBird, “Women (OT),” in D. N. Freedman, ed.,

AnchorBible Dictionary

, vol. 6 (New York, 1993), p. 954a(this reference was brought to my attention by ChristineRoy Yoder,

Wisdom as a Woman of Substance: A Socio-economic Reading of Proverbs 1–9 and 31:10–31

[Berlin and New York, 2001], p. 81, n. 43); andSteven W. Holloway, “Distaff, Crutch or Chain Gang:The Curse of the House of Joab in 2 Samuel III 29,”

VT

37 (1987): 370–71.

6

While domestic weaving was almost entirely, ifnot exclusively, the province of women, weaving thatwas done outside the home was often the work of men.See, for example, for the Greek world, the data collectedby Wesley Thompson, “Weaving: A Man’s Work,”

Classical World

75 (1981–82): 217–22 and also JohnScheid and Jesper Svenbro, “From the Sixteen Women

to the Weaver King: Political Weaving in Greece,” intheir

The Craft of Zeus: Myths of Weaving and Fabric

(Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1996), pp. 23 and181, n. 75. In Egypt, the famous Middle Kingdom text,“The Satire of the Trades,” presents the professionalweaver as male, indeed, a male so miserable in hiswork that he is “worse off than a woman” (translationby Miriam Lichtheim,

Ancient Egyptian Literature

,vol. 1,

The Old and Middle Kingdoms

[Berkeley, LosAngeles, and London, 1975], p. 188). Isa. 19:9–10 alsouses masculine grammatical forms in three of its fourreferences to Egyptian textile workers, indicating, at aminimum, that some of the laborers to whom it referswere men (although, according to the rules of Hebrewgrammar, women could be included in the collec-tives described by this passage’s masculine pluralforms). Exod. 35:35; 36:14, 35, 37; 38:22–23; 39:27–29; 2 Chron. 2:11–13; Isa. 38:12; and Job 16:15 simi-larly refer to male textile workers within the Israelitesphere. Moreover, the name of one of the sons ofIssachar, Tola (

<

tôlaº

, “[dyed with] scarlet stuff ”),can be taken to indicate that this man was the head ofa clan of professional dyers (as pointed out by AvigailSheffer, “Needlework and Sewing in Israel from Pre-historic Times to the Roman Period,” in A. B. Becket al., eds.,

Fortunate the Eyes That See: Essays in

Asherah, The West Semitic Goddess of Spinning and Weaving

? 3

be female. To be sure, gender roles in Near Eastern and eastern Mediterranean pantheonsdo not invariably follow the gender roles assumed within the human communities of theNear East and eastern Mediterranean;

7

in these communities, for example, the arts of war aremost typically associated with men; yet warrior goddesses—Mesopotamian Inanna/Ishtar,Canaanite Anat, and Greek Athena—are well attested. Still, in the case of spinning andweaving, a correlation between women spinners and weavers on earth and a female patronof spinning and weaving in the heavens does seem to hold, as is suggested by evidencefrom three ancient Near Eastern and eastern Mediterranean societies. In Mesopotamia thepatron deity of spinning and weaving, at least in the Sumerian period, was the goddessUttu. In Egypt the divine patron of spinning and weaving was the goddess Tait (Tayet). InGreece the deity of spinning and weaving, and indeed of all crafts, was the goddess Athena.

Uttu

According to the myth “Enki and Ninhursag,” Mesopotamian Uttu comes from a distin-guished lineage, as she is the great-granddaughter (or perhaps the great-great-granddaughter)of the Sumerian mother goddess Ninhursag.

8

More important for our purposes, though, isa myth commonly called “Enki and the World Order,” which describes how the god Enki,in assigning to the various gods of the pantheon oversight of the main features of bothcosmos and civilization (for example, the regulating of the water flow of the Tigris andEuphrates, the economies of agriculture and herding, and the technologies of the pick-axeand brick-mold), decrees that Uttu will be in charge of “everything pertaining to women,”and, specifically, the weaving of textiles.

9

Frymer-Kensky in addition describes how Uttuis recognized as the patron goddess of weaving in the philosophical disputation “Laharand A

s

nan” (“Ewe and Grain”), as she is also in a bilingual Sumerian and Akkadian bookof incantations.

10

In logographic writing, moreover, the same sign that is used for Uttu’sname is sometimes used to write the word “spider,” probably because of the expertise inweaving that Uttu and the spider shared.

11

Tait

Egyptian Tait is best known as the goddess who provides the linens used in rituals ofembalming and mummification. In the Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts, for example, she is

Honor of David Noel Freedman in Honor of HisSeventieth Birthday

[Grand Rapids, Michigan andCambridge, 1995], p. 544, n. 13). On male profes-sional weavers in New Testament times, see PhyllisA. Bird, “Spinning and Weaving,” in P. Achtemeier,ed.,

Harper’s Bible Dictionary

(San Francisco, 1985),p. 988b.

7

See, for example, the discussion by W. G. Lambert,in J.-M. Durand, ed., “Goddesses in the Pantheon,”

Lafemme dans le Proche-Orient antique: compte rendude la XXXIII

e

Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale(Paris, 7–10 juillet 1986)

(Paris, 1987), p. 127.

8

On the two versions of this myth, see Jacobsen,

Treasures of Darkness

, pp. 112–13.

9

Frymer-Kensky,

In the Wake of the Goddesses

,p. 23; see, similarly, Samuel Noah Kramer, The Su-merians: Their History, Culture, and Character (Chi-cago and London, 1963), p. 74; Samuel Noah Kramerand John Maier, Myths of Enki, the Crafty God (NewYork and Oxford, 1989), p. 53.

10 Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses,p. 23.

11 Jeremy Black and Anthony Green, Gods, Demons,and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia (Austin, Texas,1992), p. 182.

Journal of Near Eastern Studies4

said to be the mother who clothes the dead king and lifts him to the sky.12 Similarly, inthe Middle Kingdom “Story of Sinuhe” the courtier Sinuhe, years after he left Egypt foran extended exile in the Levant, is urged by the Pharaoh Sen-Usert to return to his homeland,in particular so that proper burial rites might be observed at the time of Sinuhe’s death.These include, among other observances, a funeral procession, coffining in a mummy casemade of gold, and “a night . . . made for you with ointments and wrappings from the handof Tait.”13 The Egyptian goddess Neith, too, can be associated with the ointments andwrappings of mummification and so, consequently, with weaving:14 an inscription from thePtolemaic temple at Esna, for example, speaks of Neith as “Mistress of the oil of unctionas well as the pieces of cloth.”15 There is also a minor Egyptian god, Hedjhotep, who isassociated with fabrics and weaving: thus he is described in a New Kingdom papyrus ascreating the cord that is attached to an amulet of healing.16 By the time of the New Kingdom’sNineteenth Dynasty, moreover, Hedjhotep is identified as the consort of Tait, although insome materials from the Late Period of Egyptian history, Hedjhotep appears as a goddessin the company of Tait.17 Still, throughout most of Egyptian history, Tait’s place as thepatron goddess of weaving seems primary. It is thus Tait who is said to weave the curtainthat hangs in the tent of purification where the embalming rituals take place;18 an Egyptianmagical spell further describes linen bandages that are used to prevent hemorrhage as the“land of Tait”;19 and numerous first-millennium b.c.e. images of the goddess show herholding two pieces of cloth.20

Athena

Although we may more readily think of Athena as the Greek goddess of wisdom as wellas of war, the evidence demonstrating her role in Greek culture as the goddess of spinningand weaving is substantial. At several points, she is identified in Greek tradition as AthenaErgane, or Athena the “Worker Goddess,” the goddess of handicrafts (technai ) and thusthe divine patron, for example, of potters (see fig. 1), of goldsmiths, and, preeminently, ofweavers and others involved in the production of textiles.21 Athena’s role as patron of

12 Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Gods andGoddesses of Ancient Egypt (London, 2003), p. 168,citing Pyramid Text 741.

13 Translation by Lichtheim, Ancient Egyptian Lit-erature, vol. 1, p. 229; this text was brought to my atten-tion by George Hart, A Dictionary of Egyptian Godsand Goddesses (London and New York, 1986), p. 212and Wilkinson, The Complete Gods and Goddesses ofAncient Egypt, p. 168.

14 C. J. Bleeker, “The Goddess Neith,” in E. E.Urback, R. J. Z. Werblowsky, and Ch. Wirszubski,eds., Studies in Mysticism and Religion Presented toGershom G. Scholem on His Seventieth Birthday byPupils, Colleagues, and Friends (Jerusalem, 1967),pp. 42, 54; Hassan el-Saady, “Reflections on theGoddess Tayet,” Journal of Egyptian Archaeology 80(1994): 216.

15 Quoted in Susan Tower Hollis, “Queens andGoddesses in Ancient Egypt,” in K. L. King, ed., withan introduction by K. J. Torjeson, Women and Goddess

Traditions: In Antiquity and Today, Studies in Antiquityand Christianity (Minneapolis, 1997), p. 212.

16 Marco Zecchi, “The God Hedjhotep,” Chro-nique d’Égypte 76 (2001): 5, 7.

17 Zecchi, “The God Hedjhotep,” pp. 8–9.18 Hart, Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and God-

desses, pp. 212–13; Wilkinson, The Complete Godsand Goddesses of Ancient Egypt, p. 168.

19 Hart, Dictionary of Egyptian Gods and God-desses, p. 213.

20 El-Saady, “Reflections on the Goddess Tayet,”p. 214.

21 On Athena as a divine patron of potters, seeJenifer Neils, “The Panathenaia: An Introduction,” inNeils, ed., Goddess and Polis, p. 21; on Athena as apatron of goldsmiths, see Odyssey 6.233, as pointedout by Herbert Jennings Rose and Charles MartinRobertson, in “Athena,” Oxford Classical Dictionary(Oxford, 1970), p. 138.

One Line Long

Asherah, The West Semitic Goddess of Spinning and Weaving? 5

Fig. 1.—Calyx-krater showing Athena Ergane in a pottery shop. Inv. no. 1120: “Cratere a calice afigure rosse detto ‘del vassio’ 499–450 a. C., conservato presso il Museo Regionale della Cera-mica di Caltagirone (Sicilia – Italia).” From Neils, ed., Goddess and Polis, p. 21.

weavers is further illustrated in several literary texts. In Homer’s Odyssey 7.110–11, it issaid that the Phaiakian women “are skilled in weaving,” having been “dowered with wisdombestowed by Athene, to be expert in beautiful work”; later in the same text, Athena isdescribed as the one who instructed the daughters of Pandareos “in glorious handiwork”(Odyssey 20.72).22 This same sentiment is expressed elsewhere in the Homeric tradition inthe Homeric “Hymn to Aphrodite,” lines 10–11 and 14–15, in which we read that “pleasure”for Athena lies “in fostering glorious handicrafts,” so that she “taught smooth-skinned palacemaidens at work in their quarters to weave with bright strands.”23 Athena is also identifiedin Iliad 14.178–79 as having made an elaborately decorated robe for the goddess Hera,and in Iliad 5.735 she is similarly described as having made her own elaborate dress.According to Hesiod’s story of the creation of Pandora found in his Works and Days,moreover, Athena is charged with teaching Pandora “to weave a complex warp”; Athena,in addition, according to a second version of the Pandora story found in Hesiod’s Theogony,

22 Translations by Richmond Lattimore, The Odys-sey of Homer (New York, 1965 and 1967), pp. 114 and300; these references were brought to my attentionby Silvia Milanezi, “Headaches and Gnawed Peplos:Laughing with Athena,” in S. Deacy and A. Willing,eds., Athena in the Classical World (Leiden, Boston,

and Cologne, 2001), p. 323, n. 63.23 Translation by Thelma Sargent, The Homeric

Hymns: A Verse Translation (New York, 1973), p. 46;this reference was brought to my attention by Milan-ezi, “Headaches and Gnawed Peplos,” p. 323, n. 63.

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made Pandora’s girdle, robe, and veil.24 We can note as well the story told in Ovid’s Meta-morphoses—but known to be centuries older than Ovid—of the maiden Arachne’s chal-lenging Athena to a weaving contest. This act is such utter hubris on Arachne’s part, givenAthena’s expertise in textile production, that it results in Arachne’s transformation into aspider, doomed to weave forever.25

Scholars know that Ovid’s story of the weaving contest of Arachne and Athena is hundredsof years older than Ovid’s first-century b.c.e./first-century c.e. text because it is foundrepresented on a small Corinthian jug dating from ca. 600 b.c.e. (fig. 2). Other icono-graphic materials demonstrating Athena’s association with weaving include the severalloom weights that show Athena’s characteristic bird, the owl, spinning wool from a basketthat sits in front of her (fig. 3), and the numerous fragments of terra-cotta plaques foundon the Athenian Akropolis that depict weaving scenes.26 Scholars have also suggested thatat least three sixth- and fifth-century b.c.e. images depict Athena herself as a spinner: afragmentary fifth-century b.c.e. terra-cotta relief from Sicily (fig. 4), a sixth-century b.c.e.statue from the Akropolis (fig. 5), and a late fifth- or early fourth-century b.c.e. terra-cottarelief plaque that comes from the Akropolis as well and that, while fragmentary, seems toshow Athena in the same pose as assumed in a contemporaneous relief by a mortal womanwho is spinning (figs. 6 and 7).27

Finally, we must cite in this catalogue of Athena’s associations with textile productionthe fact that the central event in the celebration of the central festival of Athena, thePanathenaia, is the offering of a newly woven peplos, a robe elaborately decorated withimages of the cosmogonic battle between the gods and the gigantic Titans that is drapedover Athena’s cult statue (figs. 8 and 9). Indeed, so closely is the weaving of Athena’sPanathenaic peplos associated with her role as the goddess of textile production that theactual making of the peplos is inaugurated in October-November, nine months prior to thecelebration of the Panathenaia, at a festival known as the Chalkeia, which was held inhonor of Athena in her guise as Athena Ergane, Athena the “Worker Goddess,” patron ofhandicrafts.28

II. Asherah, the West Semitic Goddess of Spinning and Weaving?

The presence of these goddesses of spinning and weaving in the pantheons of Mesopo-tamia, Egypt, and Greece suggests that we might well expect to find a goddess patron ofspinning and weaving also in the pantheons of the West Semitic world. Below, I proposethat this responsibility is assumed by the Canaanite mother goddess Asherah. Three majorbodies of evidence lend support to this conclusion. They are (1) Late Bronze Age Ugariticand Hittite mythological texts; (2) first-millennium b.c.e. biblical texts from the book ofProverbs and also, perhaps, 2 Kings 23:7; and (3) Iron Age archaeological data from thesites of Taºanach, Tel Miqne-Ekron, and Kuntillet ºAjrûd.

24 Hesiod Works and Days 60–65; idem, Theogony573–75; both as quoted in Barber, “The Peplos ofAthena,” p. 105.

25 Ovid Metamorphoses 6.5 ff.; this reference wasbrought to my attention by Barber, “The Peplos ofAthena,” pp. 105–6.

26 Barber, “The Peplos of Athena,” p. 106.

27 Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, “Images of Athenaon the Akropolis,” in Neils, ed., Goddess and Polis,pp. 138–39.

28 Neils, “The Panathenaia,” p. 17; for the datesof the Chalkeia and Panathenaia, see Scheid andSvenbro, “From the Sixteen Women to the WeaverKing,” pp. 18–19.


Ugaritic and Hittite Mythological Texts

In a scene found in Tablet 4 of the Ugaritic Baal cycle, the gods Baal and Anat come tothe mother of the gods, Asherah, in order to secure her help as they seek permission fromthe high god of the pantheon, El, to have a palace built for Baal. Baal and Anat find Asherahundertaking domestic chores: setting a pot upon a fire, carrying her robes into the river(presumably to wash them), and holding a spindle (plk) in her hand (CAT 1.4.2.3–9).29

According to some translations of the Hittite myth of Elkunirsa, Asherah (Ashertu) alsocarries a spindle with which she attempts to stab Baal after he refuses to sleep with her.30

To be sure, as noted above, the spindle is a typical symbol of femininity in the ancient NearEast, and so the fact that Asherah is depicted as holding one in these Ugaritic and Hittitemyths may be a marker only of her gender. I have in addition just mentioned that only sometranslations of the Hittite myth of Elkunirsa describe Asherah grasping a spindle, this

Fig. 3.—Loom weight with Athena’s characteristic bird, the owl, spinning. Ella Riegel MemorialMuseum, Bryn Mawr College, gift of C. C. Vermeule. From Neils, ed., Goddess and Polis, p. 107.

29 CAT = Manfried Dietrich, Oswald Loretz, andJoaquín Sanmartín, The Cuneiform Alphabetic Textsfrom Ugarit, Ras Ibn Hani and Other Places, 2d ed.(Münster, 1995).

30 This text was brought to my attention by ElizabethR. Willett, “Women and Household Shrines in Ancient

Israel” (Ph.D. diss., The University of Arizona, 1999),p. 104, who cites Albrecht Goetze’s translation in ANET,3d ed., p. 519, and Harry A. Hoffner’s translation in“The Elkunirsa Myth Reconsidered,” Revue hittite etasianique 23 (1965): 6–8.



because of lacunae in the crucial passage.31 Still, the Ugaritic reference to Asherah with aspindle in her hands is secure; moreover, Asherah is the only goddess in our rather richUgaritic mythological corpus who appears with a spindle. This perhaps indicates thatAsherah had a special association with spinning and weaving in Late Bronze Age mytho-logical tradition.

Texts from the Hebrew Bible

Much more suggestive than the Hittite and Ugaritic materials, however, is the portraitof the ªeset-hayil, the “woman of valor” or “capable wife,” who is found in the biblical tra-dition in Prov. 31:10–31, especially when this text is considered in conjunction with thetexts describing Woman Wisdom that are found interspersed in Proverbs 1–9 (Prov. 1:20–33;3:13–18; 4:1–9; 7:4–5; 8:1–36; 9:1–6). Several scholars have suggested that the Wisdomfigure of Proverbs 1–9 takes over “in rather unabashed fashion,” to use Claudia Camp’s

31 In his 1965 article “The Elkunirsa Myth Re-considered,” Harry Hoffner writes that, although thereading “spindle” is restored, “there is no reason todoubt” it (p. 7, n. 10). In his 1998 translation of themyth, however, Hoffner marks each of the three pos-

sible occurrences of the term “spindle” with emptybrackets: Harry A. Hoffner, Jr., “A Canaanite Myth,”in H. A. Hoffner, Jr., Hittite Myths, 2d ed., Society ofBiblical Literature, Writings from the Ancient World,no. 2 (Atlanta, 1998), pp. 90–91.

Fig. 4.—Drawing of relief from Scornavacche, Sicily showing Athena Ergane (?) with a distaff inher left hand. From Antonio Di Vita “Atena Ergane in una terracotta dalla Sicilia ed il culto delladea in Atene,” Annuario della Scuola Archeologica di Atene e delle missioni italiane in Oriente30–32 (1955): 143.



words, imagery associated with older ancient Near Eastern goddesses,32 and although manygoddesses have been nominated as Wisdom’s primary antecedent (Egyptian Maºat, Meso-potamian Ishtar, Canaanite Astarte, Canaanite Anat),33 the most compelling arguments, inmy opinion, view Woman Wisdom as a reflex of Canaanite Asherah.34 Especially notablein this regard is the Proverbs 8 description of Woman Wisdom as present with, and the

32 Claudia Camp, “Woman Wisdom as Root Meta-phor: A Theological Consideration,” in K. G. Hoglunget al., eds., The Listening Heart: Essays in Wisdom andthe Psalms in Honor of Roland E. Murphy, O. Carm.,JSOT, Supplement Series 58 (Sheffield, 1987), p. 61.

33 See Camp, “Woman Wisdom as Root Metaphor,”p. 61; Michael D. Coogan, “The Goddess Wisdom—‘Where Can She Be Found?’ Literary Reflexes of Pop-ular Religion,” in R. Chazan, W. W. Hallo, and L. H.Schiffman, eds., Ki Baruch Hu: Ancient Near Eastern,Biblical, and Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch A.Levine (Winona Lake, Indiana, 1999), pp. 203– 4;Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses, p. 179;Judith M. Hadley, “Wisdom and the Goddess,” in J. Day,R. P. Gordon, and H. G. M. Williamson, eds., Wisdom

in Ancient Israel: Essays in Honour of J. A. Emerton(Cambridge, 1995), p. 235; and (with extensive refer-ences) Yoder, Wisdom as a Woman of Substance, p. 4.

34 Michael D. Coogan, “Canaanite Origins andLineage: Reflections on the Religion of Ancient Israel,”in P. D. Miller, P. D. Hanson, and S. D. McBride, eds.,Ancient Israelite Religion: Essays in Honor of FrankMoore Cross (Philadelphia, 1987), pp. 119–20; MarkS. Smith, “Myth and Mythmaking in Canaan and Israel,”in J. M. Sasson, ed., Civilizations of the Ancient NearEast, vols. 3–4 (1995; Peabody, Mass., 2000), p. 2039;cf. also Hadley, “Wisdom and the Goddess,” pp. 234–43. This latter reference was brought to my attentionby Yoder, Wisdom as a Woman of Substance, pp. 4–5,n. 13.

Fig. 5.—Statue of Athena (as spinner?) attributed to the sculptor Endoios. From Neils, ed.,Goddess and Polis, p. 138.



partner of, the Israelite god Yahweh in the creation, a tradition that parallels closely bothUgaritic materials that describe Asherah as “creatress” (qnyt), the consort of the creatorgod (qny) El,35 and the biblical and extrabiblical materials that suggest an ancient Israelitebelief that Asherah was the consort of Yahweh.36 In Prov. 3:18, moreover, Woman Wisdomis described as a “tree of life” (ºes-hayyîm), language that recalls not only the tree of life(ºes hahayyîm) in Gen. 3:22 and the associated tree of the knowledge of good and evil thatso obviously draws on wisdom motifs, but also the stylized pole or tree that is frequently

35 For Asherah as qnyt, see, for example, CAT1.4.1.23; 1.4.3.26, 30, and 35; and 1.4.4.32; for El asqny, see CAT 1.10.3.6, a reading based on the re-construction proposed by H. L. Ginsberg, “Baºl andºAnat,” Or., n.s., 7 (1938): 9.

36 The bibliography is vast. I have most recentlydescribed my own position and listed supportingreferences in my articles, “Women and the Worshipof Yahweh in Ancient Israel: Two Case Studies,” inS. Gitin, J. E. Wright, and J. P. Dessel, eds., Confront-ing the Past: Archaeological and Historical Essays on

Ancient Israel in Honor of W. G. Dever (Winona Lake,Indiana, 2006), pp. 189–97 and “At Home with theGoddess,” in W. G. Dever and S. Gitin, eds., Symbi-osis, Symbolism, and the Power of the Past: Canaan,Ancient Israel, and Their Neighbors from the LateBronze Age through Roman Palaestina: Proceedingsof the Centennial Symposium, W. F. Albright Instituteof Archaeological Research and American Schools ofOriental Research, Jerusalem, May 29–May 31, 2000(Winona Lake, Indiana, 2003), pp. 455–58.

Fig. 6.—Terra-cotta relief plaque of a mortal woman spinning. From Neils, ed., Goddess andPolis, p. 139.



associated with the goddess Asherah in biblical literature and arguably in the West Semiticiconographic tradition.37 That “happiness” accrues to those who hold fast to Woman Wisdomin 3:18 further alludes to her identity as Asherah, as the Hebrew word for “happy” (ªsr) isa pun on the goddess’s name.38

Scholars have in addition argued that the ªeset-hayil of Prov. 31:10–31 is a reflex orpersonification of Woman Wisdom. Thomas McCreesh has pointed out, for example, that

37 Smith, “Myth and Mythmaking,” p. 2039. On theevidence for associating Asherah with a stylized poleor tree in biblical literature, see especially Deut. 16:21,which speaks of “planting” (nataº) a tree to serve as anªåserâ, which I, along with most commentators, pre-sume refers to the cult object that represented the god-dess Asherah and that is called by her name (althoughcf. Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahwehand the Other Deities in Israel [San Francisco, 1990],pp. 80–94 and also the more nuanced position Smithputs forward in the second edition of this volume[Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2002], pp. xxx–xxxvi; seealso the useful survey of scholarly positions found inJohn Day, “Asherah in the Hebrew Bible and in North-west Semitic Literature,” JBL 105 [1986]: 398–404).Elsewhere in the Bible (for example, in 1 Kings 14:15,23; 16:33; 2 Kings 17:10, 16; 21:3; 2 Chron. 33:3), the

ªåserâ cult object is described as being “made” (ºa¶â),“built” (banâ), “stood up” (ºamad ), or “erected”(hissíb), all terms that well describe a stylized pole ortree, as do the terms that describe what happens to theªåserâ if it is destroyed: it is “burned” (bí ºer or¶arap), “cut down” (karat), “hewn down” (gadaº),“uprooted” (natas), or “broken” (sibber). For the evi-dence that likewise associates Asherah with sacred treesin West Semitic iconographic representations, see RuthHestrin, “The Lachish Ewer and the ªAsherah,” IEJ 37(1987): 212–23 and also “The Cult Stand from Taºanachand Its Religious Background,” in E. Lipinski, ed.,Studia Phoenicia, vol. 5, Phoenicia and the EastMediterranean in the First Millennium B.C., OrientaliaLovaniensia Analecta 23 (Leuven, 1987), pp. 61–77.

38 Smith, “Myth and Mythmaking,” p. 2039.

Fig. 7.—Terra-cotta relief plaque of Athena, perhaps in the same “spinning” pose as assumed bythe mortal woman in fig. 6 above. From Neils, ed., Goddess and Polis, p. 139.

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the ªeset-hayil is described in Prov. 31:10 as more precious than pénînîm, “variously trans-lated as ‘pearls’, ‘corals’, or simply ‘jewels’,” a description that is also offered of WomanWisdom in Prov. 3:15, which states “She [Wisdom] is more precious than jewels” (yéqarâ hîªmippénînîm, reading with the Qéreº for the Kétîb mippéniyyîm), and in the related Prov. 8:11,where we read “for Wisdom is better than jewels” (kî tôbâ hokmâ mippénînîm). Likewise,McCreesh notes that the husband of the ªeset-hayil is said to trust in her (Prov. 31:11), asthe student of Wisdom is exhorted to “love,” “prize,” and “embrace” her in Prov. 4:6, 8–9,rather than “trust in his own mind” in Prov. 28:26.39 Christine Roy Yoder adds that the noun

39 Thomas P. McCreesh, “Wisdom as Wife: Proverbs31:10–31,” Revue biblique 92 (1985): 41–42.

Fig. 9.—Small terra-cotta statue of Athena showing what her cult statue with the peplos drapedover it may have looked like. The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Miss Annette Finnigan.From Neils, ed., Goddess and Polis, p. 122.



sahar, which she translates as “merchant profit” (more typically it is rendered “income” or“revenue”), occurs in Proverbs only in Prov. 31:18, where the ªeset-hayil perceives thather merchandise is profitable, and in Prov. 3:14, where Woman Wisdom’s income is saidto be better than silver. Both the ªeset-hayil and Woman Wisdom, Yoder also points out, aredifficult to “find” (masaª; Prov. 1:28; 8:17; 31:10); each has a house (bayit; 9:1; 31:15, 21,and 27) and a staff of young women (naºårot; 9:3; 31:15); each provides food for her com-panions (lehem; 9:5; 31:14) and offers a life of security (batah; 1:33; 31:11). Both areknown at the city gates (séºarîm; 1:21; 8:3; 31:31), and each stretches out her hand (yad )to the needy (1:24; 31:20).40 Moreover, “as Wisdom rejoiced (mé¶aheqet) before God at alltimes” according to 8:30, the ªeset-hayil in 31:25 delights (watti¶haq) in each coming day.41

Al Wolters has somewhat similarly argued that the rare participial form of the verbsapâ, “to watch over,” used to describe the ªeset-hayil at the beginning of Prov. 31:27(sôpiyyâ, instead of the more typical feminine participial form sôpâ and also in lieu of theperfect or imperfect verb forms used everywhere else in the poem to describe the deedsof the ªeset-hayil ), was deliberately chosen by the poem’s authors as a Hebrew pun onthe Greek word sophia, “wisdom.”42 This evidence, Walters writes, lends support to theconclusion that the ªeset-hayil is the “personification of wisdom . . . the Valiant Woman rep-resents wisdom in action and . . . her deeds are the practical and concrete incarnation ofwhat it means to be wise . . . she personifies wisdom in both word and deed.”43 McCreeshlikewise concludes: “The remarkable similarities between the portrait of the wife and variousdescriptions of Wisdom . . . indicate that the poem in chapter 31 is the book’s final, masterfulportrait of Wisdom,”44 as does Yoder: “The specific nature and extent of [the] parallelssuggest that . . . the Woman of Substance (31:10–31) and Woman Wisdom (1–9) . . .essentially coalesce as one figure.”45

If McCreesh, Yoder, Wolters, and the several other scholars who have urged this corre-lation between the ªeset-hayil and Woman Wisdom are correct,46 and if, moreover, it iscorrect to see Woman Wisdom in Proverbs 1–9 as a reflex of the goddess Asherah, then itbecomes significant for our purposes to note the degree to which the activities associatedwith textile production dominate in the description of the ªeset-hayil. Of the verses in thepoem that speak specifically to tasks undertaken by the ªeset-hayil, the largest number—fully five and perhaps up to seven—speak to this woman’s work in the making of bothwoolen and linen cloth. She procures the necessary raw materials (wool and flax), accord-ing to v. 13; uses a spindle and a related implement (the kîsôr, traditionally translated as“distaff ”) to spin these fibers into thread, according to v. 19;47 and makes clothing for herself

40 Yoder, Wisdom as a Woman of Substance, pp.91–92.

41 Mary Petrina Boyd, “The House that WisdomWove: An Analysis of the Functions of Household inProverbs 31:10–31” (Ph.D. diss., Union TheologicalSeminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Edu-cation, 2001), p. 9, n. 46.

42 Al Wolters, “Sôpiyyâ (Prov 31:27) as HymnicParticiple and Play on Sophia,” JBL 104 (1985): 577–87; see also Gary Rendsburg, “Bilingual Wordplay inthe Bible,” VT 38 (1988): 354–55.

43 Wolters, “Sôpiyyâ (Prov 31:27),” pp. 580–82.44 McCreesh, “Wisdom as Wife,” p. 46.

45 Yoder, Wisdom as a Woman of Substance, p. 93.46 For older exegetes (including those dating back

to the patristic period), see the catalogue assembled byWolters, “Sôpiyyâ (Prov 31:27),” p. 581; for the mostrecent interpretations, see Yoder, Wisdom as a Womanof Substance, pp. 91–93 and the references listed innn. 78–83.

47 The word kîsôr is a hapax legomenon in Hebrew.It has traditionally been rendered as “distaff,” as trans-lators have assumed that “distaff ” is the logical parallelof the pelek, “spindle,” mentioned in the second colonof Prov. 31:19. Al Wolters has argued, however, thatnone of the several spinning technologies of the ancient


and, it seems, for her household as well, according to vv. 21–22. Also, according to v. 24, shemakes additional textiles—linen garments and woven sashes—to sell; v. 18, which describesher merchandise as profitable, may likewise refer to these textiles as being produced forcommercial purposes, and there is another allusion to her own garments in v. 25, this onemetaphorical (“Strength and dignity are her clothing”). Moreover, as befits a womanwhose description is derived from the Proverbs 1–9 portrayal of Woman Wisdom, thefabrics the ªeset-hayil produces seem to be of the highest quality: the clothes she makesfor her household are a richly dyed crimson (v. 21), and some of her own clothing is alsocolored with a rich purple dye (v. 22). Her other garments are fine linen, rather than beingthe easier-to-produce and less-luxurious garments made of wool (v. 22).

The association of the ªeset-hayil with so much imagery concerning luxury textile pro-duction, when coupled with the ªeset-hayil’s associations with the figure of Woman Wisdom-cum-Asherah, speaks clearly to the hypothesis I have been exploring here: the possibilitythat Asherah was the West Semitic goddess of spinning and weaving. It is also of interestfor my thesis that, like Asherah as represented in the Hittite myth of Elkunirsa, who uses herspindle to attack Baal, the ªeset-hayil is described in Prov. 31:10–31 not just in terms oftextile production but also in terms of militaristic imagery. Wolters has catalogued multipleinstances of militaristic language in the poem, and Bruce K. Waltke and Mary Petrina Boydhave added more.48 These scholars note, for example, that the very term hayil used todescribe the poem’s subject (v. 10) implies strength and virility; indeed, Wolters proposesthat the ªeset-hayil should “probably be understood as the female counterpart of the gibbôrhayil, the title of the ‘mighty men of valour’ who are often named in David’s age.”49

Boyd, in her Ph.D. dissertation on Prov. 31:10–31, somewhat similarly observes that when

Near East used a distaff, at least until the Hellenisticperiod; Wolters further suggests that the grammar ofProv. 31:19a, which has the ªeset-hayil putting her“hands” (a Hebrew dual form) to the kîsôr, mitigatesagainst the meaning “distaff,” as a distaff is not normallygrasped in this way (a distaff is held in one hand orstuck into a belt or into a special backstrap; see E. J. W.Barber, Prehistoric Textiles: The Development of Clothin the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Referenceto the Aegean [Princeton, 1991], p. 69). Likewise,Wolters suggests, the translation of “spindle whorl”for kîsôr that is sometimes proposed is disallowed, asthe technology of spinning does not involve graspingthe spindle whorl at all, with either one hand or two.Wolters thus proposes a translation of “grasped spindle,”a large kind of spindle known to have been used in theancient Near East, especially for respinning or doublingin order to make two-ply or three-ply yarn out of pre-viously spun thread (although not cited by Wolters,the illustrations found in Barber, Prehistoric Textiles,pp. 57–58 [figs. 2.18 and 2.21], of a spindle held intwo hands are particularly instructive). See Al Wolters,“The Meaning of Kîsôr (Prov 31:19),” HUCA 65(1994): 91–104; also Gary A. Rendsburg, “DoublePolysemy in Proverbs 31:19,” in A. Afsaruddin andA. H. M. Zahniser, eds., Humanism, Culture, andLanguage in the Near East: Studies in Honor of Georg

Krotkeff (Winona Lake, Indiana, 1997), pp. 267–74,who, although for different reasons than those ofWolters, similarly advocates translating kîsôr as“spindle.” One should be aware, however, regardingWolters’s arguments, that the evidence regarding theancient Near Eastern use of the “distaff ” is not as con-clusive as he claims: while there is indeed no evidenceof the use of distaffs in Egypt (Barber, PrehistoricTextiles, p. 50), distaffs may have been used in Meso-potamia for spinning as early as the fourth millennium(Barber, Prehistoric Textiles, pp. 56–57 and idem,“Textiles of the Neolithic through Iron Ages,” in E. M.Meyers, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia of Archaeologyin the Near East, vol. 5 [New York and Oxford, 1997],p. 192); what was possibly a Late Bronze Age distaffwas also found at Enkomi, on Cyprus (Barber, Prehis-toric Textiles, p. 63).

48 Al Wolters, “Proverbs XXXI 10–31 as HeroicHymn: A Form-Critical Analysis,” VT 38 (1988): 446–57; Bruce K. Waltke, “The Role of the ‘Valiant Wife’in the Marketplace,” Crus 35/3 (Summer 1999): 23–34;Boyd, The House That Wisdom Wove, pp. 180–234.

49 Wolters, “Proverbs XXXI 10–31 as HeroicHymn,” p. 453. For gibbôr hayil, see Judg. 6:12; 11:1;1 Sam. 9:1; 16:18; 1 Kings 11:28; 2 Kings 5:1; 1 Chron.12:28; 28:1; 2 Chron. 13:3; 17:16, 17; 25:6; 32:21;Ruth 2:1; and multiple other citations in the plural.


hayil occurs with the masculine ªîs in the Hebrew Bible, it typically describes a “warrior”or “mighty man,” which suggests the conjunction of hayil with the feminine ªissâ shouldbe analogously understood.50

A number of other terms in the poem can also be viewed as having military connotations.Wolters notes in this regard (1) ºalâ ºal in v. 29, typically translated in the Proverbs 31context as “to surpass” but used “elsewhere in the sense of going out to do battle against anenemy”; (2) salah yad bé, “to reach out the hand,” in v. 19, which “always has an aggres-sive connotation elsewhere” (most notably for our purposes in Judg. 5:26, where it is used[albeit with the preposition lé instead of bé] to describe Jael’s grasping of the weapon [tent-peg, parallel to laborers’ hammer] with which she kills the Canaanite war leader Sisera);51

(3) tanâ, “to celebrate in song,” used in v. 31 to command the poem’s audience to extol theªeset-hayil, but used elsewhere in the context of heroic poetry (again, notably, in the“Song of Deborah” in Judges 5) to describe songs sung in celebration of military triumphs(Judg. 5:10); (4) salal and terep in vv. 11 and 15, typically translated “profit” and “food”in the context of Proverbs 31, but used elsewhere as “warlike words” meaning “plunder” and“prey.”52 Waltke notes in addition that (1) “ ‘laughs [in victory]’ is a war-like term” (v. 25),and (2) “ ‘watching over’ (v. 27) glosses the normal Hebrew term for ‘to reconnoiter’ and‘to spy’.”53 Both Wolters and Waltke, among others, further point out that the “strength”(Hebrew ºôz) with which the woman metaphorically clothes herself in v. 25 carries mili-taristic connotations, as does the phrase “she girds her loins with strength” (again ºôz) inv. 17a.54 Yet Boyd has very provocatively suggested that the mention of the woman’s strongarms in v. 17b alludes more to the woman’s work as weaver, since “the task of weaving,as she beats the weft into the warp, requires strong arms.”55 If Boyd is correct, then encap-sulated in the description of the ªeset-hayil in v. 17a–b is the same motif of weaver/warriorencapsulated in the Hittite Asherah’s use of her spindle as a weapon. This further supportsthe series of correspondences I have been arguing for here, that the ªeset-hayil of Proverbs 31is to be equated with Woman Wisdom-cum-Asherah in Proverbs 1–9 and thus manifests,as I propose does Asherah, an association with the arts of textile production and also, asdoes Asherah at least as represented in the Hittite tradition, an association with militaristicimagery.56

50 Boyd, The House That Wisdom Wove, pp. 4, n. 8and 182–85. For ªîs hayil as a “warrior” or “mightyman,” see Judg. 3:29; 1 Sam. 31:12; 2 Sam. 24:9;1 Chron. 10:12; 11:22; cf., however, 1 Kings 1:42 and1 Chron. 26:8.

51 Repointing to read MT tislahna as tislahannâ, athird-person feminine singular form with energic nûn,was first proposed by C. F. Burney, The Book of Judges(London, 1920), p. 153 and followed in turn by FrankM. Cross, Jr. and David Noel Freedman, Studies in An-cient Yahwistic Poetry, Society of Biblical Literature,Dissertation Series, no. 21 (Missoula, Montana, 1975),p. 19, n. r and by Michael D. Coogan, “A Structural andLiterary Analysis of the Song of Deborah,” CBQ 40(1978): 150–51, n. 52.

52 Wolters, “Proverbs XXXI 10–31 as HeroicHymn,” pp. 453–54.

53 Waltke, “The Role of the ‘Valiant Wife’,” p. 25.54 Wolters, “Proverbs XXXI 10–31 as Heroic

Hymn,” p. 453; Waltke, “The Role of the ‘ValiantWife,’ ” pp. 24–25; M. Beth Szlos, “A Portrait ofPower: A Literary-critical Study of the Depictionof the Woman in Proverbs 31:10–31,” USQR 54 (2000):102; the Szlos reference was brought to my attentionby Boyd, The House That Wisdom Wove, p. 6, n. 24.

55 Boyd, The House That Wisdom Wove, p. 6, n. 25.56 Asherah might also be taken to have an associa-

tion with militaristic imagery at Ugarit, if we are totranslate her standard epithet in the Ugaritic mytho-logical corpus, rbt ªatrt ym, as “the Lady who treads onthe Sea(-dragon)” (as proposed, for example, by FrankMoore Cross, Canaanite Myth and Hebrew Epic:Essays in the History of the Religion of Israel [Cam-bridge, Mass., 1973], p. 33), and see, reflected in thattitle, a now otherwise lost tradition that describedAsherah as playing a role in the cosmogonic battleagainst the sea god Yamm.


There is another text in the Hebrew Bible that explicitly associates Asherah with traditionsof weaving: this is 2 Kings 23:7, which alludes to a group of women weavers who werehoused in the temple compound in Jerusalem in King Josiah’s day (ca. 640–609 b.c.e.).The most typical translation of this verse, and the one that I would in fact advocate,57 under-stands these women weavers to be engaged in the process of weaving garments, which weredraped over the cult statue of Asherah that stood somewhere within the temple precinctbefore it was removed and destroyed as a part of Josiah’s religious reforms.58 The Jeru-salem Bible perhaps makes this most explicit when it translates, “He [Josiah] pulled downthe house . . . which was in the Temple of Yahweh and where the women wove clothes forAsherah.” I would further suggest, as do multiple commentators, that the clothing ofAsherah’s cult statue in this verse is to be understood as correlating with the tradition ofclothing cult statues that is well known elsewhere in the ancient Near East and the easternMediterranean world,59 attested in the Bible, for example, in Jer. 10:9 and Ezek. 16:17–18and in extrabiblical texts: Ep. Jer. 6:9, 11–13, 20, 33, 72.60 According to this interpretation,it follows that there is nothing exceptional about the fact that the women resident in Jeru-salem’s temple compound were weaving garments for Asherah, as opposed to any otherdeity, and thus there is no indication of any special association of Asherah with the arts oftextile production.

It is possible, however, to translate 2 Kings 23:7 to read: “he [Josiah] destroyed the houses(battîm) . . . where the women wove, [namely] the houses (battîm) for [i.e., “dedicated to”]Asherah.”61 This translation has the advantage of reading the two occurrences of battîmin 2 Kings 23:7 as having the same meaning, as opposed to the translation I have pre-viously presented, which emends the second battîm to a hypothetical form kuttønîm (for themore usual kuttønôt), meaning “robes” or “tunics,”62 or to baddîm, “white linen garments,”63

57 See my articles “The Queen Mother and the Cultin the Ancient Near East,” in King, ed., Women andGoddess Traditions, p. 193; “Women and the Worshipof Yahweh in Ancient Israel”; and “Digging UpDeborah: Recent Hebrew Bible Scholarship on Genderand the Contribution of Archaeology,” Near EasternArchaeology 66/4 (2003): 180, 182, n. 11.

58 So, for example, the NJPS, JB, NJB, NEB, REV,NAB translations and, among commentators, MordechaiCogan and Hayim Tadmor, II Kings, Anchor Bible,vol. 11 (Garden City, New York, 1988), p. 286; JohnGray, I & II Kings: A Commentary, Old TestamentLibrary (London, 1964), p. 664; James A. Montgomery,A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Booksof Kings, International Critical Commentary, vol. 10(Edinburgh, 1951), p. 531; and J. Robinson, The SecondBook of Kings, The Cambridge Bible Commentary(Cambridge, 1976), p. 220.

59 See, for example, A. Leo Oppenheim, “TheGolden Garments of the Gods,” JNES 8 (1949): 172–93(pointed out by Cogan and Tadmor, II Kings, p. 286);Eiko Matsushima, “Divine Statues in Ancient Meso-potamia: Their Fashioning and Clothing and Their Inter-action with Society,” in E. Matsushima, ed., OfficialCult and Popular Religion in the Ancient Near East:Papers of the First Colloquium on the Ancient NearEast—The City and Its Life—Held at the Middle Eastern

Cultural Center in Japan (Mitaka, Tokyo), March 20–22, 1992 (Heidelberg, 1993), pp. 209–19; A. RosalieDavid, Religious Ritual at Abydos (c. 1300 BC) (War-minster, 1973), p. 89; John M. Mansfield, “The Robeof Athena and the Panathenaic Peplos” (Ph.D. diss.,University of California, Berkeley, 1985), pp. 438,442–43, 445.

60 Hugo Gressmann, “Josia und das Deuterono-mium,” ZAW 44 (1924): 325–26 and n. 2 on p. 326(pointed out by Cogan and Tadmor, II Kings, p. 286); toGressmann’s references from the Epistle of Jeremiah,add Ep. Jer. 6:20, 33.

61 Suggested to me by Peter Machinist (personalcommunication).

62 Gray, I & II Kings, p. 664, n. b.63 According to William G. Dever, “The Silence of

the Text: An Archaeological Commentary on 2 Kings23,” in M. D. Coogan, J. C. Exum, and L. E. Stager,eds., Scripture and Other Artifacts: Essays on the Bibleand Archaeology in Honor of Philip J. King (Louisville,Kentucky, 1994), p. 150, this emendation forms thebasis of the RSV translation “vestments.” But Devergives no references in support of this claim, and heseems mistaken, moreover, about the specifics of it, asthe RSV in fact reads “hangings.” On the RSV trans-lation, see further below, n. 66.

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or to battîm, a hypothetical cognate of Arabic batt, meaning “cloak” or more generally“garment.”64 It further would suggest, in support of the thesis I am exploring here, a specialassociation of Asherah with the arts of spinning and weaving, as it is she in particular whohas houses dedicated to her within the temple’s walls in which weaving is undertaken.Still, despite the support this translation offers for my thesis, I cannot, as I have alreadyindicated, embrace it. This is because, first, the emended reading “garments” or the likethat I advocate does find a significant piece of corroboration in the versions, specifically inthe Lucianic recension of the LXX, which reads stolas, “garment, robe.” It is important tonote, moreover, that the Lucianic recension of 2 Kings generally seems to offer an earlierand more reliable text than the main tradent of the LXX, which “apparently represents arevision based on a form of the Hebrew text current at a later time.”65 Also important tothe note is the fact that the Masoretic accentuation does not support a translation thatreads the second battîm of 2 Kings 23:7 as the first word of a concluding appositionalclause, and such a translation in addition leaves a very awkward sam dangling at the endof the main clause.66 I conclude that, unlike the Proverbs materials we have examined,2 Kings 23:7—despite its tantalizing juxtaposition of Asherah and weaving—does notseem to provide evidence that argues in favor of my thesis that Asherah is the patrongoddess of textile production in the West Semitic world.

Iron Age Archaeological Data

As I have just intimated, we might reasonably expect textile production to be presentat any ancient Near Eastern religious site where a divine image or divine images stoodbecause of the well-known ancient Near Eastern tradition of clothing cult statues. Inaddition, we might just as reasonably expect textile production to be present at religioussites without a cult statue (for example, Israelite religious sites that adhered to the biblicaldicta forbidding the making of graven images), since the cult required fabric for many pur-poses other than clothing cult statues: for example, for priestly vestments; for curtains andother types of draperies that hung in and around cult sanctuaries; and for coverings of things

64 This reading was originally proposed by A. Sanda,Die Bücher der Könige übersetzt und erklärt, vol. 2,Exegetisches Handbuch zum Alten Testament 9(Münster, 1912), p. 344 (as pointed out by Cogan andTadmor, II Kings p. 286; by John Day, “Asherah inthe Hebrew Bible,” p. 407; and by Gray, I & II Kings,p. 664, n. b); and also by G. R. Driver, “SupposedArabisms in the Old Testament,” JBL 55 (1936): 107(as pointed out by Cogan and Tadmor, II Kings, p. 286,and by Gray, I & II Kings, p. 664, n. b).

65 L. C. Allen, “More Cuckoos in the Textual Nest:at 2 Kings XXIII.5; Jeremiah XVII.3, 4; Micah III.3;VI.16 (LXX); 2 Chronicles XX.25 (LXX),” Journal ofTheological Studies 24 (1973): 70, who cites in supportEmmanuel Tov, “Lucian and Proto-Lucian: Toward aNew Solution of the Problem,” Revue biblique 79(1972): 101–13, esp. 106.

66 A compromise translation is the one advanced by,for example, the RSV: “And he [Josiah] broke downthe houses . . . which were in the house of the Lord,where the women wove hangings for the Asherah.” This

translation apparently does take the second battîm of2 Kings 23:7 to mean “houses” rather than relying onan emended text, although “houses” is rather broadlyinterpreted to mean “hangings,” a reference presumablyto a tent-like structure somewhat analogous to the tentshrine that housed the Yahwistic ark of the covenantor to the “colorful shrines” that Jerusalem, envisionedas an apostate harlot, is said to make with her garmentsin Ezek. 16:16. This translation has the advantage ofpreserving the Masoretic text as it stands and in addi-tion does not go against the Masoretic accentuationor leave an awkward dangling sam, as opposed tothe emendation-free translation I have just presentedin the main text; however, it also, as opposed to theemendation-free translation presented in the main text,does not indicate that there is anything distinctiveabout the women doing weaving for Asherah withinthe temple compound, since the sort of tent-shrine towhich it alludes might also be made for some otherdeity. Thus it does not suggest any special associationof Asherah with the arts of textile production.


such as the table of the bread of presence in the Yahwistic tradition.67 We should not besurprised to learn, then, that evidence for textile production has been found by archaeologistsin the excavations of several Levantine sites identified as cultic. Fifteen loom weights werefound in Room 204, which the excavators identified as a “kitchen,” perhaps used “for thepreparation of ritual meals,” that was located just north of Temple 131 in Stratum X (lateeleventh/early tenth century b.c.e.) at the Philistine site of Tell Qasile.68 Eleven more loomweights were found scattered in the various rooms of Building 225, which was just southof the temple.69 Also, twenty-one loom weights were found in Room 1 of Megaron Build-ing 350 (a Philistine temple) from Stratum V (the first half of the eleventh century b.c.e.)at Tel Miqne-Ekron.70 Seven more loom weights were found in the eleventh-century b.c.e.“Twin” temple complex at Beth-Shean (four in the Northern Temple, one in the SouthernTemple, and two in the rooms in between).71 A single loom weight was found in the IronAge I Temple Building 30 (Phoenician) at Tell Abu Hawam,72 and one loom weight wasalso found in a room north of the inner sanctuary of the so-called Solar Shrine found inpostexilic Lachish.73 Paul W. Lapp in addition reports (unfortunately with no reference)that a cache of loom weights was found in a cultic context at Megiddo.74 None of thesesites, however, has any demonstrable connection with Asherah worship, so none offers anyevidence in support of my thesis that posits a special association between Asherah andtextile production.

Strikingly, though, two of the largest collections of loom weights that have been foundin West Semitic cultic contexts—indeed, collections substantially larger than any of thosejust described—come from sites arguably associated with the worship of Asherah. We beginwith the remains from tenth-century b.c.e. Tell Taºanach discovered in the 1963 excava-tions of Lapp. These include artifacts from two rooms of a large building (much of whichhad been destroyed by the trenching of the earlier excavations of Ernst Sellin) called byLapp the “Cultic Structure” because of the arguably cultic nature of many of the finds: forexample, one hundred forty sheep and goat astragali, most likely used in divination rites;a complete mold of the “figurine-with-a disk” type, probably used for making votiveofferings; and three small standing stones or massebôt.75 All of these remains were found

67 Note in this regard the biblical evidence sug-gesting that textiles were part of the cultic treasury ofthe temple of Baal in Samaria (2 Kings 10:22).

68 Amihai Mazar, Excavations at Tell Qasile, pt. 1,The Philistine Sanctuary: Architecture and CultObjects, Qedem, vol. 12 (Jerusalem, 1980), p. 42; seealso idem, Excavations at Tell Qasile, pt. 2, The Phil-istine Sanctuary: Various Finds, the Pottery, Conclu-sions, Appendixes, Qedem, vol. 20 (Jerusalem, 1985),p. 80. The Qasile materials were first brought to myattention by Avigail Sheffer and Amalia Tidhar, “Tex-tiles and Basketry at Kuntillet Ajrud,” Atiqot 20 (1991):22, n. 27.

69 Garth Hugh Gilmour, “The Archaeology of Cultin the Southern Levant in the Early Iron Age: AnAnalytical and Comparative Approach” (Ph.D. diss.,University of Oxford, 1995), p. 260; see also Mazar,Excavations at Tell Qasile, pt. 2, p. 80, althoughMazar’s math seems a little confused. In the chart onp. 80, he notes that three loom weights were found inLocus 168 of Building 225, then another three in

Locus 171, then five in locus 187, for a total of eleven;in the text on the same page, however, Mazar writes ofthe “10 weights . . . scattered in the various rooms” (em-phasis mine).

70 Discussed in Ziony Zevit, The Religions ofAncient Israel: A Synthesis of Parallactic Approaches(London and New York, 2001), p. 135.

71 Gilmour, Archaeology of Cult in the SouthernLevant, p. 260.

72 Ibid.73 Olga Tufnell, Lachish, vol. 3, The Iron Age, Text

(London, New York, and Toronto, 1953), p. 143.74 Lapp mentions these loom weights in “The 1968

Excavations at Tell Taºannek,” BASOR 195 (1969): 45but with no citation.

75 Lapp actually identified the one hundred fortyastragali as pig, but more recent investigators identifythem as sheep and goat. See Paul W. Lapp, “The 1963Excavation at Taºannek,” BASOR 173 (1964): 28 andZevit, The Religions of Israel, p. 237.

One Line Long


in Room 1 of Lapp’s “Cultic Structure,” in which the objects were, according to him, sotightly packed that it should be considered a room in which various cultic paraphernalia werestored.76 A large assemblage of loom weights (fifty-eight according to Lapp’s originalpublication; sixty-two according to Glenda Friend’s 1998 study of Tell Taºanach’s loomweights) was also found as part of this apparent collection of cultic paraphernalia, gatheredin an eight-handled krater (figs. 10 and 11).77 Friend in addition reports that the Room 1loom weights were uniform in dimension and weight and that they represent 68 percent ofall the Iron Age loom weights found at Taºanach. Together, these data, in addition to thepresence in Room 1 of five bone spatulas that Friend proposes were tools used to pickup threads in order to weave patterned textiles, suggest to her “large-scale” as well as“specialized textile production.”78

Then, in his 1968 excavations, “within a few meters of the 1963 cultic finds,”79 Lappfound the most famous of Taºanach’s three cult stands, an impressive rectangularly shapedobject standing over half a meter tall whose iconography has suggested to many that tenth-century b.c.e. Taºanach was a site associated with the worship of Asherah (fig. 12).80

In particular, scholars have suggested that the first and third registers of the stand’s fourregisters (counting from the bottom) are replete with Asherah imagery. In the first, a nakedwoman with a crudely modeled headdress of the Hathor type stands facing frontally, with herarms extended to grasp two lions. All of these aspects (the naked woman facing frontally,the Hathor headdress, and lions) are well known from other iconographic representationsof Asherah: several Late Bronze Age gold and electrum pendants that come from Ugaritand other sites in the northern Levant, for example, arguably depict Asherah standing atopa lion.81 In the third register, the lions reappear, this time flanking two caprids that rear upto graze on a stylized tree. As I have mentioned already in discussing Prov. 3:18, this sortof “sacred tree” image, like lion imagery, is well known as a part of Asherah iconography,and, indeed, gold and electrum pendants similar to those that show Asherah standing atopa lion depict her with a tree or a branch etched in her pubic region.82 Textual traditions in

76 Ibid.77 Ibid. (pointed out by Sheffer and Tidhar, “Textiles

and Basketry at Kuntillet Ajrud,” p. 12); Glenda Friend,Tell Taannek 1963–1968 III/2: The Loom Weights, ed.K. Nashef (Birzeit, Palestine, 1998), pp. 10, 43. It shouldbe noted that, in his report on the 1963 season, Lappindicated he had some doubts about identifying theseveral dozen doughnut-shaped clay objects he foundin the eight-handled krater as loom weights; he usedquotation marks around the term loom weights whendescribing them and footnoted an article by RodneyYoung raising doubts about identifying a similar hoardof 500 of these objects at Gordion as loom weights(Rodney Young, “The 1961 Campaign at Gordion,”American Journal of Archaeology 66 [1962]: 165).Then, in his report on the 1968 season, Lapp raisedeven more concerns, arguing that the “loom weights”he had found in 1963 within the “Cultic Structure” wereunfired and so extremely fragile that they could havehardly served in weaving: see Lapp, “The 1968 Exca-vations at Tell Taºannek,” p. 47; also idem, “TaanachBy the Waters of Megiddo,” BA 30 (1967): 25. AvigailSheffer, however, has demonstrated that such weights,baked only in the sun, function perfectly “to keep the

warp threads properly taut during the weaving process”and that the weights are quite durable, sustaining “[n]odamage . . . even when the loom had to be moved fromplace to place.” See Sheffer, “The Use of PerforatedClay Balls on the Warf-Weighted Loom,” Tel Aviv 8[1981]: 82–83; also Friend, Tell Taannek . . . TheLoom Weights, p. 5, who discusses problems both withLapp’s analysis of the doughnut-shaped objects as heatabsorbers used during sacrificial rituals and with thesuggestions of excavators at other sites that similardoughnut-shaped objects were not loom weights butjar stoppers.

78 Friend, Tell Taannek . . . The Loom Weights, p. 10.79 Lapp, “The 1968 Excavations at Tell Taºannek,”

p. 42.80 Hestrin, “The Cult Stand from Taºanach,” pp. 61–

77; J. Glen Taylor, “The Two Earliest Known Repre-sentations of Yahweh,” in L. Eslinger and J. G. Taylor,eds., Ascribe to the Lord: Biblical and Other Studies inMemory of Peter C. Craigie, JSOT, Supplement Series67 (Sheffield, 1988), pp. 557–66.

81 Hestrin, “The Cult Stand from Taºanach,” p. 68.82 Ibid., p. 71 and idem, “The Lachish Ewer,”

pp. 215–17.


addition associate Asherah with lions and with sacred trees: in CAT 1.3.5.37; 1.4.1.8;1.4.2.25–26, for example, the children of Asherah are called her “pride of lions,” sbrt ary,and Deut. 16:21 forbids the Israelites to plant a tree representing Asherah beside any altarof Yahweh.83

The obvious conclusion to be drawn from the evidence of this cult stand is the one I havestated above: that tenth-century b.c.e. Taºanach was a site associated with the worship ofAsherah, probably—whatever the proscriptions articulated in Deut. 16:21 and related texts—in conjunction with the Israelite god Yahweh (who is arguably represented on the Taºanachcult stand’s second and fourth registers; this is suggested, for example, by the two repre-sentations of cherubim, which are so often associated with Yahweh in biblical tradition,that flank the second register). Less obvious, but I believe a probable conclusion based on

83 See further n. 37 above and my discussion inUnder Every Green Tree: Popular Religion in Sixth-

Century Judah, Harvard Semitic Monographs, no. 46(Atlanta, 1992), pp. 189–91.

Fig. 10.—Remains from the storage room of the so-called Cultic Structure at Tell Taºanach, showing eight-handled krater filled with 58 loom weights. From Lapp, “The 1963 Excavation at Taºannek,” p. 28.



the other data I have presented, is that the Asherah worship at Taºanach is to be associatedwith the rather extraordinary collection of loom weights and other tools of textile produc-tion found there. The Taºanach data, in short, seem to support my thesis that Asherah wasthe patron deity of spinning and weaving in the West Semitic world. Indeed, we might go sofar as to suggest that it was because Asherah was the patron deity of spinning and weaving inthe West Semitic world that she was worshiped at Tell Taºanach, her cultic presence there

Fig. 11.—Plan of Taºanach cultic structure. From Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel, p. 236. By kind permis-sion of Continuum.

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/action/showImage?doi=10.1086/586668&iName=master.img-010.png&w=372&h=419


an appropriate and perhaps even a necessary part of the large-scale and specialized textileindustry to which the Taºanach artifacts point.

The second Levantine site that has produced a rather extraordinary assemblage of loomweights is Tel Miqne-Ekron, where a large number of loom weights were found in associationwith the enormous olive-oil production complex of the seventh century b.c.e. (Stratum ICand possibly IB). Seymour Gitin, one of the primary excavators at Ekron, has theorizedthat the presence of these loom weights intermingled with olive-oil production equipmentat Ekron is due to the fact that the olive-oil industry is seasonal, and so the installations foroil production were idle six to ten months a year; during this time, he proposes, Ekron’sso-called industrial zone was reconfigured as a textile-production workshop.84 Gitin hasfurther proposed, based on the discovery of nine horned altars in the “industrial zone,”that this seemingly secular manufacturing area should actually be understood as “sacred

Fig. 12.—Drawing of Taºanach cult stand. From Zevit, The Religions of Ancient Israel, p. 319. Bykind permission of Continuum.

84 Seymour Gitin, “Tel Miqne-Ekron: A Type-Sitefor the Inner Coastal Plain in the Iron Age II Period,”in S. Gitin and W. G. Dever, eds., Recent Excavationsin Israel: Studies in Iron Age Archaeology, Annual ofthe American Schools of Oriental Research, vol. 49

(Winona Lake, Indiana, 1989), p. 50; Trude Dothan andSeymour Gitin, “Miqne, Tel (Ekron),” in E. Stern, ed.,The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavationsin the Holy Land, vol. 3 (Jerusalem, 1993), p. 1058.

http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/action/showImage?doi=10.1086/586668&iName=master.img-011.png&w=251&h=283


space.”85 But sacred to whom? Religion as practiced in Ekron was a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon, but the seventh-century b.c.e. data indicate that Asherah was amongthe deities being worshiped there.86 Baruch Halpern, moreover, has argued that, of the Ekrondeities, Asherah is to be particularly associated with the “industrial zone,”87 as is suggestedby the fact that the two store jars found at Ekron that were inscribed with Asherah’s namewere specifically used for storing oil.88 To be sure, this evidence might seem more to pointto Asherah’s association with oil production than the making of textiles,89 but the presence oftextile production along with oil production in the Ekron industrial zone’s “sacred space,”in conjunction with some of the other evidence I have cited, could be taken to indicatethat, in addition to being associated with oil production, Asherah was also considered tobe the patron deity of spinning and weaving at Ekron. Indeed, as at Taºanach, we mightsuggest that it was due to Asherah’s role as the patron deity of spinning and weaving inthe West Semitic world that her cult was present in the industrial zone at Ekron, the goddessrevered there because of the divine blessings she could provide the site’s textile workers.

The evidence from Taºanach and Ekron, moreover, might lead us to suggest that twoother cultic sites at which major textile-production complexes were found are to be asso-ciated with Asherah worship. These are Tell el-Hammah, located at the southern end of theBeth-Shean Valley, and Tel ºAmal, which lies 3 kilometers west of Beth-Shean.90 Tell el-Hammah was excavated most recently (in 1985, 1987, and 1988) by Jane M. Cahill, DavidTarler, and Gary Lipton on behalf of the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University ofJerusalem; artifacts suggesting a spinning and weaving center—including wood spindles andspindle whorls, remains of thread wrapped around spindle fragments, stone and clay loomweights, and textile scraps—were found in two adjoining rooms that were part of one of thetwo building complexes of the tenth-century b.c.e. layer.91 The other building complex,

85 Seymour Gitin, “The Four-Horned Altar andSacred Space: An Archaeological Perspective,” in B. M.Gittlen, ed., Sacred Time, Sacred Place: Archaeologyand the Religion of Israel (Winona Lake, Indiana,2002), p. 113.

86 Seymour Gitin, “Seventh Century B.C.E. CulticElements at Ekron,” in A. Biran and J. Aviram, eds.,Biblical Archaeology Today, 1990: Proceedings of theSecond International Conference on Biblical Archae-ology, Jerusalem, June–July 1990 (Jerusalem, 1993),p. 250 and fig. 2a on p. 251; Seymour Gitin, TrudeDothan, and Joseph Naveh, “A Royal Dedicatory In-scription from Ekron,” IEJ 47 (1997): 13; SeymourGitin, “Israelite and Philistine Cult and the Archaeo-logical Record in Iron Age II: The ‘Smoking Gun’Phenomenon,” in Dever and Gitin, eds., Symbiosis,Symbolism, and the Power of the Past, p. 280.

87 Baruch Halpern, “The Baal (and the Asherah) inSeventh-Century Judah: YHWH’s Retainers Retired,”in R. Bartelmus, T. Krüger, and H. Utzschneider, eds.,Konsequente Traditionsgeschichte: Festschrift für KlausBalzer zu seinem 65. Geburtstag, Orbis Biblicus andOrientalis 126 (Freiburg, Switzerland and Göttingen,1993), p. 137.

88 Seymour Gitin and Mordechai Cogan, “A New

Type of Dedicatory Inscription from Ekron,” IEJ 49(1999): 196.

89 Halpern’s suggestion that Asherah is the deityparticularly associated with the industrial zone hinges,in fact, on his supposition that Asherah is speciallyassociated with the oil production facilities there, thisbecause of Asherah’s well-known association withtrees (nn. 37 and 83 above), including, Halpern seemsto imply, the sort of tree iconography we know betterfrom the Egyptian tradition, which depicts an Asherah-like tree goddess/mother goddess giving suck to thepharaoh. This evidently suggests to Halpern (althoughhe does not say so explicitly) a more general associa-tion of Asherah with the production of liquids fromtrees, such as the oil from olive trees produced in vastquantities at Tel Miqne-Ekron. See Halpern, “The Baal(and the Asherah) in Seventh-Century Judah,” p. 137.

90 These sites were brought to my attention by BethAlpert Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions ofCanaan and Israel (Boston, 2001), pp. 180–81.

91 Jane M. Cahill, Gary Lipton (Lipovich), andDavid Tarler, “Tell el-Hammah, 1985–1987,” IEJ 37(1987): 280–83; Jane M. Cahill, David Tarler, and GaryLipton (Lipovich), “Tell el-Hammah in the Tenth Cen-tury B.C.E.,” Qadmoniot 22 (1989): 36; and Jane M.


which lay across a courtyard from the first, also consisted of at least two adjoining rooms,one room of which contained artifacts that seemed to the excavators cultic in character (forexample, a kernos with five projectiles, a zoomorphic vessel, and a multihandled kraterwith horned animal appliqués).92 Also found in this room were the upper half of a femaleplaque figurine, a large quantity of astragali, and perhaps a faience amulet.93 Some similarobjects were found in the textile-production building as well.94 In his Ph.D. dissertation oncultic sites from the southern Levant, Garth Hugh Gilmour suggests that the cultic activi-ties implied by these finds may be related to the Tell el-Hammah’s textile industry,95 andI would then ask, in the light of the thesis I have advanced here, whether we might suggestthe cultic activities were thus associated with the goddess Asherah in her role as the WestSemitic patron goddess of spinning and weaving. I would also ask the same question ofTel ºAmal, where excavations revealed a three-room building from the period of the tenthand ninth centuries b.c.e. in which both textile production and cult activities—culticremains include votive vessels, a decorated bowl, chalices, a tambourine-playing figurine,a fenestrated ceramic stand, a cup-and-saucer lamp, and stone cultic stands—took place.96

Because, however, none of the cultic remains from either Tell el-Hammah or Tel ºAmalcan be connected explicitly to the worship of Asherah, any conclusions regarding thesesites remain tenuous. Also tenuous, although somewhat less so, are any conclusions wemight draw regarding the final site I will discuss here, the early eighth-century b.c.e. siteof Kuntillet ºAjrûd, in the northern Sinai. As is well known, both epigraphic evidence andalso (according to some) iconographic data found at Kuntillet ºAjrûd suggest that Asherahwas worshiped—probably, as at Tell Taºanach, in conjunction with the Israelite godYahweh—as a part of the cultic activities that took place at the site:97 particularly critical

Cahill and David Tarler, “Hammah, Tell el-,” in Stern,ed., The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excava-tions in the Holy Land, vol. 2, p. 562; this last referencewas brought to my attention by Gilmour, Archaeologyof Cult in the Southern Levant, p. 93. See also, on theartifacts suggesting a spinning and weaving centerat Tell el-Hammah, Nakhai, Archaeology and the Re-ligions of Canaan and Israel, pp. 180–81.

92 Jane M. Cahill, Gary Lipton (Lipovich), andDavid Tarler, “Tell el-Hammah, 1988,” IEJ 38 (1988):193; Cahill and Tarler, “Hammah, Tel el-,” p. 562. Seealso, on the cultic remains from Tell el-Hammah,Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions of Canaanand Israel, p. 181.

93 Cahill, Lipton, and Tarler, “Tell el-Hammah,1988,” p. 193; Gilmour, Archaeology of Cult in theSouthern Levant, p. 94; Nakhai, Archaeology andthe Religions of Canaan and Israel, p. 181.

94 Nakhai, Archaeology and the Religions ofCanaan and Israel, p. 181.

95 Gilmour, Archaeology of Cult in the SouthernLevant, p. 95.

96 Shalom Levy and Gershon Edelstein, “Cinqannées de fouilles à Tel ºAmal (Nir David),” Revuebiblique 79 (1972): 331–44; Nakhai, Archaeology andthe Religions of Canaan and Israel, p. 181; Gilmour,Archaeology of Cult in the Southern Levant, p. 95.

97 The bibliography is vast. Key references include

Ze’ev Meshel and Carol Meyers, “The Name of Godin the Wilderness of Zin,” BA 39 (1976): 6–10; Ze’evMeshel, “Kuntillet ºAjrûd—An Israelite Site from theMonarchical Period on the Sinai Border,” Qadmoniot 9(1976): 118–24 (Hebrew); idem, “Kuntillet ºAjrûd—An Israelite Religious Center in Northern Sinai,” Ex-pedition 20 (1978): 50–54; idem, Kuntillet ºAjrud: AReligious Centre from the Time of the Judaean Mon-archy on the Border of Sinai, Israel Museum Catalogue,no. 175 (Jerusalem, 1978); idem, “Did Yahweh Have aConsort? The New Religious Inscriptions from Sinai,”BARev 5/2 (1979): 24–35; William G. Dever, “RecentArchaeological Confirmation of the Cult of Asherahin Ancient Israel,” Hebrew Studies 23 (1982): 37–43;idem, “Asherah, Consort of Yahweh? New Evidencefrom Kuntillet ºAjrud,” BASOR 255 (1985): 21–37;André Lemaire, “Date et origine des inscriptionshebraiques et pheniciennes de Kuntillet ºAjrud,” Studiepigraphici e linguistici 1 (1984): 131–43; idem, “Whoor What Was Yahweh’s Asherah?” BARev 10/6 (1984):42–51; Saul M. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahwehin Israel, Society of Biblical Literature, MonographSeries, no. 34 (Atlanta, 1988). The most recent studiesare Judith M. Hadley, The Cult of Asherah in AncientIsrael and Judah: Evidence for a Hebrew Goddess(Cambridge and New York, 2000) and Bob Becking,ed., Only One God? Monotheism in Ancient Israel andthe Veneration of the Goddess Asherah (London, 2001).


are the inscription that reads, “I bless you by Yahweh of Samaria and by his Asherah/asherah” and the two different inscriptions that seem thrice to mention “Yahweh of Temanand his Asherah/asherah.”98 What is somewhat less well known is that a large assemblageof textile fragments (more than one hundred), mostly linen with only a few (somewherebetween seven and eleven) pieces of woolen fabric, was also found at Kuntillet ºAjrûd,along with remains of looms (worked wooden beams and loom weights) and a bundle offlax fibers, spun yarn, and twisted thread.99

The quality of many of the textiles found at Kuntillet ºAjrûd, moreover, is extremelyhigh: fragments exhibit, for example, complicated and meticulously executed sewing tech-niques (fig. 13), in addition to the use of some colored threads for decoration (blue, and inone example red; see fig. 14). In fact, the quality of the fabrics found at Kuntillet ºAjrûdis so high that the scholar who has written most extensively on the site’s textiles, AvigailSheffer, has suggested that their excellence should be related to the site’s cultic activities.100

Similarly, Sheffer and Amalia Tidhar have argued that the overwhelming predominance oflinen textiles at Kuntillet ºAjrûd may also be due to the cultic activities that occurred at thesite—given both that linen is the fabric known from the Bible (and from elsewhere in theancient Near East) to be preferred for priestly vestments and other cultic cloth101 and alsothat the presence of so many linen fragments at Kuntillet ºAjrûd can otherwise be difficultto explain. The site’s proximity to the sheep-herding region of the Negev, and its distancefrom flax-growing regions such as the Jezreel and Beth-Shean Valleys, should mean thatwoolen textiles would be far more prevalent.102 Sheffer and Tidhar have in addition sug-gested a religious explanation for the three pieces of fabric at ºAjrûd that mix wool andlinen fibers, something that is generally forbidden to the ancient Israelites according toLev. 19:19 and Deut. 21:11 but is prescribed for priestly vestments in Exod. 28:4–8 and39:2–5, 24, 27–29.103

If Sheffer and Tidhar are correct regarding any or all of these various assessments of theKuntillet ºAjrûd fabrics as cultic, then their analysis could be taken to suggest a relationshipbetween textile production and a cult incorporating the worship of Asherah as practiced atthe ºAjrûd site. As in our discussion of loom weights above, however, we must recall thattextiles would presumably have been present at any ancient Near Eastern cultic site and

98 The ºAjrûd material has never been properlypublished; I rely here on the most recent reports by theexcavator, Ze’ev Meshel: “Teman, Horvat,” in Stern,ed., The New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excava-tions in the Holy Land, vol. 4, p. 1462, and “KuntilletºAjrud,” in Meyers, ed., The Oxford Encyclopedia ofArchaeology in the Near East, vol. 3, pp. 311–12.

99 Meshel, “Teman, Horvat,” p. 1461; AvigailSheffer, “The Textiles,” in Ze’ev Meshel, KuntilletºAjrud: A Religious Centre from the Time of theJudaean Monarchy; Sheffer and Tidhar, “Textiles andBasketry at Kuntillet Ajrud,” p. 1. In the 1978 IsraelMuseum catalogue, Sheffer puts the pieces of woolenfabric at seven, as does Meshel in The New Encyclo-pedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land;in their “Textiles and Basketry at Kuntillet Ajrud”article, however, Sheffer and Tidhar give the numberof woolen fragments as eleven.

100 Sheffer, “Needlework and Sewing in Israel,”pp. 547–50.

101 See, for example, in the biblical traditionExod. 26:1, 36; 27:9; 28:4–5 and, for the East Semiticworld, the comments of D. T. Potts, Mesopotamia:The Material Foundations (Ithaca, New York, 1997),p. 119.

102 Sheffer and Tidhar, “Textiles and Basketry atKuntillet Ajrud,” pp. 3, 11, 12, and 14. Sheffer else-where has explained that the reason flax-growing iscentered in the north, especially in the Beth-Sheanregion of the Jordan Valley, is because of the fairlysignificant amount of water required for growing thiscrop (Sheffer, “The Use of Perforated Clay Balls on theWarf-Weighted Loom,” p. 82).

103 Sheffer, “Needlework and Sewing in Israel,”p. 547, n. 16; Sheffer and Tidhar, “Textiles and Bas-ketry at Kuntillet Ajrud,” p. 12.


so the presence of arguably cultic textile fragments at Kuntillet ºAjrûd need not be spe-cifically related to the cult of Asherah that is seemingly represented there. Moreover,while the high concentration of loom weights found in conjunction with Asherah worshipat the sites of Taºanach and Tel Miqne-Ekron did suggest a correlation between textileproduction and the goddess’s cult, the high concentration of textile fragments found atKuntillet ºAjrûd in conjunction with Asherah worship cannot as definitely indicate a specialassociation between Asherah and the arts of spinning and weaving. This is because KuntilletºAjrûd is a desert site, and thus the high concentration of textile fragments found at thislocation, as opposed to other cultic locales, may be due only to climatological factors,the aridity of the eastern Sinai allowing for the preservation of textile remains over themillennia. Similar preservation, however, would not have happened at other, more humidreligious sites.104 Moreover, the overall corpus of remains from Kuntillet ºAjrûd, in addition

Fig. 13.—Rolled hem from textiles at Kuntillet ºAjrûd. From Beck et al., eds., Fortunate the Eyes That See,p. 551.

Fig. 14.—Linen with colored wool decoration from Kuntillet ºAjrûd. From Sheffer and Tidhar, “Textiles andBasketry at Kuntillet Ajrud,” p. 8.

104 Sheffer, “Needlework and Sewing in Israel,”pp. 527 and 547.




to indicating cultic activity, demonstrates that the site was a caravanserai, meaning wecannot dismiss the possibility that at least some of the textile fragments found at ºAjrûdwere a part of the trading stock brought by merchants traveling from the textile-producingarenas of the Jezreel and Beth-Shean valleys (for example, the sites of Tell el-Hammah andTel ºAmal discussed above) into the Arabian peninsula and were not a part of the site’scultic paraphernalia.

Still, the remains from Kuntillet ºAjrûd do include, as I have already noted, loom parts(worked wooden beams and loom weights) and a bundle of flax fibers, spun yarn, andtwisted thread, indicating that some textile production did take place at the site, presumablyin order to fabricate materials for use at Kuntillet ºAjrûd itself and not for trade. More-over, at least some of the cloth being produced at Kuntillet ºAjrûd was linen (as evidencedby the presence of bundled flax fibers), even though wool was the only raw material forfabric production locally available. This suggests that at least some of the fabrics beingproduced at ºAjrûd were for some sort of special use. That the special use in question isreligious is strongly indicated both by the cultic activities otherwise attested at the siteand by Sheffer’s and Tidhar’s reminder that linen is the fabric known from throughout theancient Near East to be preferred for cultic purposes. That the fabrics produced at ºAjrûdare specifically to be associated with the worship of Asherah that is seemingly attested thereis less sure, but I believe the ºAjrûd data, when considered in conjunction with the otherdata suggesting an association between Asherah and the arts of spinning and weaving I havepresented, are highly suggestive.

III. Conclusion

I have entitled this paper “Asherah, the West Semitic Goddess of Spinning and Weaving?”with a question mark at the end because I readily admit that none of the evidence I haveassembled here is secure. Nevertheless, as I noted above, the comparative evidence avail-able to us from Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Greece seems to indicate that, as in these cultures,there should be a patron goddess of spinning and weaving in the West Semitic pantheon.While the data that Asherah is this patron goddess are not ironclad, I believe a better casecan be made for her than for any other West Semitic goddess. I therefore tentatively proposethat Asherah, among her many other roles in West Semitic religion, served as the goddess ofspinning and weaving in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age West Semitic world.

Documents

Ackerman 2008 Asherah Goddess of Weaving