BAAL, ASHERAH, MOT AND ANAT

Statue of the god Baal
In his raised right hand he held a thunderbolt,
in his left a stylized bolt of lightning 

THE ANCIENT GODS OF CANAAN

The main fertility god in ancient Israel was BAAL, the god of water - rain, storms, river-water.

In the theology of Canaanite religion, Baal was divine semen that fell on the earth, penetrated it, and stimulated it to produce life. The earth might be female, but it needed Baal's power to fertilize it. Without him, there was no life. Baal was water in all its forms; without him, the earth was parched and barren. His power was benevolent. He rode the clouds, sending lightning and thunder to show his power, but also dispensing the kindly rains in their season to make the earth fertile.

He was complemented by ASHERAH, the Earth, from which all life sprang. She was the Great Mother of plants, animals and humans. She had the gift of life within her, because she could produce new life from her own body.

When people thought of an image that summed up her qualities, they often saw her in animal form as a cow suckling her calf from great fat udders full of milk.

We still use the term 'Mother Earth', and ancient people venerated the earth as if it were their own mother. They saw in the curves and crevices of the earth something that reminded them of the body of a woman. In some countries they even painted the entrances of caves to look like the vulva of a woman.

Baal's counterfoil was MOT, the god of Death in Nature. He was the summer heat which killed all vegetation, a necessary part of the cycle of life, but feared.

His power began to rise in late autumn, getting the better of Baal, so that water disappeared, vegetation wilted and died, and hunger stood ready to kill all humans, especially the weak and the sick. His image was a lion, ready to tear humanity apart.

Another deity, important to ordinary women, was ANAT, the daughter of Asherah. She was woman: young girl, married woman and matriarch. She protected and controlled everything to do with the household, producing a family then guarding its welfare fiercely. As brave as a lioness in the face of danger, she was ready to fight and kill in defense of her family.

This ancient ideal of womanhood was never yielding or submissive - quite the reverse, in fact. Anat could be quite terrifying. One of the Canaanite myths tell of the way she slaughtered Baal's enemies then decorated herself with the heads and hands of the slain, wading in their blood up to her knees.

She was loyal to the men of her family if they needed her, and in fact the relationship between Anat and her brother Baal is one of the most enduring in ancient mythology. But Anat could bully and manipulate the men in her family if she judged it to be in their best interest. She was all softness when she loved, "as the heart of an antelope yearns for its fawn, so is the heart of Anat", but she took her revenge on anyone who hurt her family. This was the model of womanhood that ancient Israelite women learnt about as children, and practised as women.

Phoenician statue of a bull calf, covered in gold leaf,
the Golden Calf of the Bible