iron came in about this time, perhaps from the north, and biblical history (1 Kings x. 28 seq., see the commentaries) even ascribes to Solomon the import of horses from Kue and Musri (Cilicia and Cappadocia). The cuneiform script, which continued in Egypt during the XIXth and XXth Dynasties, was perhaps still used in Palestine; it was doubtless familiar at least during the Assyrian supremacy. But in the meanwhile the “North Semitic” alphabet appears (from 850) with almost identical forms in extreme north Syria (e.g. Sam’al), in Cyprus, Gezer, Alphabet. and in Moab. The type is very closely related to the oldest European (Etruscan) forms, and, in a less degree, to the “South Semitic” (old Minaean and Sabaean); and since it at once begins (c. 700) to develop along separate paths (Canaanite and Aramaean), it may be inferred that the common ancestor was not of long derivation. This alphabet stands in contrast to the old varying types of the Aegean and Asia Minor area and can hardly be of local origin. Under what historical circumstances it was first distributed over Palestine and Syria is uncertain; it is a plausible conjecture that once more the north is responsible.[1] Too little is known of the north as a factor in Palestinian development to allow hasty inferences, but it is certainly noteworthy, at all events, that the names Amor and Ḥatti appear to move downwards, and that “Hittite” is applied to Palestine and Philistia by the Assyrians, and to Hebron in the Old Testament, and that Ezekiel (xvi. 3) calls Canaanite Jerusalem the offspring of an Amorite and a Hittite. It is to be observed, however, that the meaning of geographical and ethnical terms for culture in general must be properly tested—the term “Phoenician” is a conspicuous case in point. Thus, in north Syria the art has Assyrian and Hittite affinities, but is provincial and sometimes rough. Some of the personal names are foreign and find analogues in Asia Minor; but even as the Philistines appear in biblical history as a “Semitic” people, so inscriptions from north Syria (c. 800–700) are in Canaanite and early Aramaean dialects, and are in entire agreement with “Semitic” thought and ideas. The deities too generally bear familiar names. In Sam’al the kings Panammu and Q-r-l have non-Semitic names (Carian), but the gods include The Gods. Hadad, El (God par excellence), Resheph and the Sun-deity. In Hamath we meet with the Baal of Heaven, Sun and Moon deities, gods of heaven and earth, and others. A god “Most High” (ʽelyōn) was perhaps already known in Hamath.[2] The “Baal of Heaven,” reminiscent of the Egyptian title “lord of heaven,” given long before to Resheph, appears in the pantheon of Tyre (c. 677). The reference here is probably to the inveterate Hadad who, in his Aramaean form Ramman (Rimmon), is found in Palestine. Among the Hebrews, Yahweh, some of whose features associate him with thunder, lightning and storm, and with the gifts of the earth, has now become the national god, like the Moabite Chemosh or the Ammonite Milcolm. (For the Edomite gods, see Edom.) The name is known in the form Ya’u in north Syria (8th century), and, so far as the Israelite kings are concerned, appears first in the family of Ahab. No images of Yahweh or of earlier Canaanite deities have been unearthed; but images belong to a relatively advanced stage in the development of religion, and the aniconic stage may be represented by the sacred pillars and posts, by the small models of heads of bulls, and by the evidence for calf-cults in the Old Testament.[3] Yahweh was by no means the only god. Intercourse and alliance introduced the cults of Chemosh, Milcom, the Baal of Tyre and the Astarte of Sidon. Excavation has brought to light figurines of the Egyptian Osiris, Isis, Ptah, Anubis and especially Bes. Assyrian conquest and domination influenced the cults at all events outside Judah and Israel, and when Sargon sent skilled men to teach “the fear of God and the king” (cyl. inscr. 72–74) the spread of Assyrian religious ideas among the Hebrews themselves is to be expected. Certainly about 600 the Queen of Heaven, who has Assyrian traits, was a favourite object of veneration (Jer. vii. 18, xliv. 17–19, 25); yet already a century earlier the goddess “Ishtar of heaven” was worshipped by a desert tribe (see Ishmael), and the titles “lady of heaven,” “bride of the king of heaven,” had been applied centuries before to west Asiatic goddesses (Anath, Kadesh, Ashira, &c.). Although no goddess is associated with the national god Yahweh, female deities abounded, as is amply shown by the numerous plaques of the great mother-goddess found in course of excavation. The picture which the evidence furnishes is as fundamental for our conception of Palestine during the monarchies as were the Amarna tablets for the age before they arose. The external evidence does not point to any intervening hiatus, and the archaeological data from the excavations do not reveal any dislocation of earlier conditions; earlier forms have simply developed and the evolution is a progressive one. Down to and at the time of the Assyrian supremacy, Palestine in religion and history was merely part of the greater area of mingled peoples sharing the same characteristics of custom and belief. This does not mean of course that the religion had no ethical traits—ethical motives are frequently found in the old Oriental religions—but they were bound up with certain naturalistic conceptions of the relation between deities and men, and herein lay their weakness.[4]
In the age of the Assyrian supremacy Palestine entered upon
a series of changes, lasting for about three centuries (from about
740), which were of the greatest significance for
its internal development. The sweeping conquests
of Assyria were “as critical for religious as for civil
history.”[5] The brutal methods of warfare, the
Sequel of
the Assyrian Domination.
cruel treatment of vanquished districts or cities, and the
redistribution of bodies of inhabitants, broke the old bonds
uniting deities, people and land. The framework of society
was shattered, communal life and religion were disorganized.
As the flood poured over Syria and flowed south, Israel (Samaria)
suffered grievously, and the gaps caused by war and deportation
were filled up by the introduction of new settlers by Sargon,
and by his successors in the 7th century. Unfortunately,
there is very little evidence in the biblical history for the
subsequent career of Samaria, but it is clear that the old Israel of
the dynasties of Omri and Jehu received crushing blows. The
fact that among the new settlers were desert tribes, suggests
the introduction, not merely of a simpler culture, but also of
simpler groups of ideas. In the nature of the case, as time
elapsed the new population must have taken root as securely
as—one must conclude—the invading Israelites had done some
centuries earlier. As a matter of fact the prophets Jeremiah
and Ezekiel by no means regarded the population lying to the
north of Judah as strangers, and the latter in turn were ready
to share the Judaean distress at the fall of Jerusalem (Jer. xli. 5),
and in later years offered to assist in rebuilding Yahweh’s
temple. Indeed, since the Samaritans subsequently accepted
the Pentateuch, and claimed to inherit the ancestral traditions
of the Israelite tribes, it is of no little value in the study of
Palestinian history to observe the manner in which this people
of singularly mixed origin so thoroughly assimilated itself to
the land and at first was virtually a Jewish sect. But Samaria
was not the only land to suffer. Judah, towards the close of
the 8th century, was obviously very closely bound up with
Philistia, Edom and Egypt; and this and Hezekiah’s dealings
with the anti-Assyrian party at Ekron do not indicate that
any feeling of national exclusiveness, or any abhorrence of the
- ↑ On the points of contact with old Cretan and Anatolian scripts see A. J. Evans, Scripta Minoa (Oxford, 1909), p. 80 sqq. The persistence of evidence for the importance of Aegean and Asia Minor (“Hittite”) peoples in the study of Palestine and surrounding lands is one of the most interesting features of recent discovery. Cf. H. Hogarth, Ionia and the East (Oxford, 1909), pp. 64 sqq.; E. Meyer, Gesch. d. Altertums, i. §§ 490, 523.
- ↑ So Dhorme interprets the place-name Ur(light of)-ḥi-le-e-ni (Rev. Bibl. 1910, p. 67).
- ↑ See Calf, Golden, and note the representation of a calf at er-Rummān (Ramman＝Hadad) in east Jordan (Gressmann p. 35). It is obvious that the strict injunctions in Exod. xx. 4, Deut. iv. 16 sqq., 23, 25, and other references to idolatry, are the outcome of a reaction against images.
- ↑ W. R. Smith, Rel. of the Semites (London, 1894), p. 58.
- ↑ Ibid. p. 35; cf. pp. 65, 77 sqq., 358.
