Английская Википедия:Baalat Gebal
Шаблон:Short description Шаблон:Infobox deity
Шаблон:Fertile Crescent myth (Levantine)Шаблон:Middle Eastern deities Baalat Gebal (Шаблон:Lang-phn,Шаблон:Sfn BʿLT GBL; also romanized as Ba’alat GebalШаблон:Sfn or Baalat Gubal;Шаблон:Sfn literally "Lady of Byblos"), also known as Bēltu ša Gubla (Akkadian: dNIN ša uruGub-la)Шаблон:Sfn and Baaltis,Шаблон:Sfn was the tutelary goddess of the city of Byblos. While in the past it was often assumed her name is only an epithet, presently researchers assume that it is a proper name, meant to highlight her close connection to the corresponding city. She was identified with Hathor and later possibly with Isis by ancient Egyptians, and with Aphrodite by ancient Greeks. Philo of Byblos instead refers to her as "Dione", though the reasons behind this choice remain unknown. She was the main goddess in the local pantheon of Byblos, and a temple dedicated to her, which remained in use from the third millennium BCE to the Roman period, was located in the center of this city. She was venerated by the kings of Byblos, with a large number of references to her found in letters sent by Rib-Addi as a part of the Amarna correspondence. There is also evidence that she was worshiped by Egyptians, both in Byblos and in Egypt. She is mentioned in a number of literary texts, including the so-called Letter of Hori, the writings of Philo of Byblos, and Lucian's De Dea Syria.
Name and identity
The Phoenician theonym Baalat Gebal (b’lt gbl) can be translated as “Lady of Byblos”.Шаблон:Sfn A direct Akkadian translation, dNIN ša uruGub-la, read as Bēltu ša Gubla, occurs in the Amarna letters.Шаблон:Sfn Shortened variants dNIN-nu (bēletnu, “our lady”) and dNIN are also attested.Шаблон:Sfn The name was meant to highlight her connection to the city.Шаблон:Sfn It has been proposed that a male deity with a similar name, the “Lord of Byblos”, also existed, and can be identified with the figure of AN.DA.MU from the Amarna letters, but this proposal is not universally accepted.Шаблон:Sfn Nadav Na'aman instead suggests interpreting AN.DA.MU as a “honorific title” of Baalat Gebal herself, “the living goddess”.Шаблон:Sfn
In the past researchers have often attempted to prove that “Baalat Gebal” should be understood as an epithet rather than a proper name.Шаблон:Sfn She has been variously identified as a local form of Asherah, argued to be an appropriate tutelary goddess for a port city due to being addressed as “lady of the sea” in Ugarit, Anat (as suggested by Edward Lipiński) and especially commonly Astarte.Шаблон:Sfn Frank Moore Cross argued that Baalat Gebal might have been identical with Qudshu, who he identifies as an alternate name of Asherah (Elat) according to him used in Ugarit and Egypt.Шаблон:Sfn However, Christiane Zivie-Coche describes Qudshu as an Egyptian invention, with no forerunners in the Ancient Near East.Шаблон:Sfn Izak Cornelius also considers her to be a separate deity,Шаблон:Sfn and rejects an association between Baalat Gebal and Asherah, noting that a link to Astarte is more plausible.Шаблон:Sfn Evidence for the presumed identification of Baalat Gebal with Astarte is limited to three late, unprovenanced inscriptions; in one, which is bilingual, Astarte occurs in Greek and Baalat Gebal in Phoenician, which appears to indicate the former served as interpretatio graeca of the latter, while in the other two Astarte is addressed as the goddess of Byblos, though with the title rbt gbl rather than b’lt gbl.Шаблон:Sfn Direct evidence on the contrary comes from Philo of Byblos’ Phoenician History, where Astarte and Baaltis (Baalat Gebal) are two separate goddesses, portrayed as sisters, and only the latter is linked to Byblos.Шаблон:Sfn
As argued recently by Шаблон:Ill (2013), it is not impossible that inhabitants of Byblos saw “Baalat Gebal” as a proper name, with no other “true name” designating the local goddess.Шаблон:Sfn She points out that in Phoenician inscriptions her name is left undivided, while a divider occurs between the two elements of the title mlk.gbl (“king of Byblos”Шаблон:Sfn), which she assumes indicates the former was understood as a proper name rather than a title like the latter.Шаблон:Sfn Zernecke’s approach has also been adopted by Michael J. Stahl in his study of the goddess (2021).Шаблон:Sfn It has been pointed out that most of the explicit evidence for the identification of Baalat Gebal and other deities is limited to Egyptian and Greek sources, which makes it possible that such texts constitute an example of interpretatio graeca and analogous phenomena.Шаблон:Sfn Frances Pinnock has suggested that the vagueness of her name might have resulted in foreign rulers from Egypt, and possibly also Ebla and elsewhere, being able to identify her as an aspect of their own deities.Шаблон:Sfn
Due to contacts between Byblos and Egypt, Baalat Gebal came to be identified with Hathor.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn Egyptians referred to the latter goddess as the “Lady of Byblos” (nbt kpn), a reflection of Baalat Gebal’s name.Шаблон:Sfn She could also be referred to as “Lady of Dendera who dwells in Byblos”.Шаблон:Sfn The oldest attestation of the connection between the two goddesses occurs in the Coffin Texts.Шаблон:Sfn In the relevant passage, Hathor is addressed as the “Lady of Byblos” while she is invoked as a protector of the passengers of the solar barque.Шаблон:Sfn This association finds parallels in instances of linking the same Egyptian goddess to various other distant areas, including Sinai, Punt, Wadi el-Hudi and Gebel el-Asr.Шаблон:Sfn It is possible that this phenomenon had an ideological dimension, as interpreting foreign goddess as Hathor made it possible to present payments made to local temples in areas such as Byblos and Punt, possibly made to acquire local goods, as a display of piety towards an Egyptian deity.Шаблон:Sfn In a text from the reign of Thutmose III, the official Minmose lists the temple of “Hathor, Lady of Byblos” among these belonging to Egyptian deities, and it is possible that the connection was reinforced by Egyptian involvement in local construction projects.Шаблон:Sfn No references to the connection between Baalat Gebal and Hathor postdate the New Kingdom, both due to less frequent contact with Byblos and due to the latter being partially replaced by Isis in Egyptian religion.Шаблон:Sfn These two Egyptian goddesses were also partially identified with each other, and there is evidence that Baalat Gebal might have been identified with Isis as well, including an inscription on a statue of Osorkon II found in Byblos, which mentions Isis, and to a reference to a connection between Isis and the city of Byblos in Plutarch's De Iside et Osiride.Шаблон:Sfn Marwan Kilani notes that the inhabitants of Byblos might have attempted to accommodate the changes occurring in the religion of Egypt by identifying their goddess with Isis.Шаблон:Sfn Depictions of Baalat Gebal from the Achaemenid period show similarity to images of “Hathor-Isis” from Egypt, which might indicate she was specifically identified with the syncretic form of these two goddesses.Шаблон:Sfn She was portrayed holding an Egyptian scepter and wearing a horned crown decorated with the sun disk.Шаблон:Sfn
Greek authors seemingly regarded Baalat Gebal as analogous to Aphrodite.Шаблон:Sfn Philo of Byblos instead equates her with Dione.Шаблон:Sfn According to Alan I. Baumgarten, due to lack of evidence it is impossible to determine what factors guided this choice.Шаблон:Sfn Frank Moore Cross suggested that the identification of Baalat Gebal as Dione reflected the parallel between the names Zeus and Dione and El and Elat.Шаблон:Sfn This has been criticized by Baumgarten, who points out the name Elat was never used to refer to Baalat Gebal, and that even if Cross’ theory was adjusted to apply to names Baalat and Baal, it would remain impossible to prove.Шаблон:Sfn
Worship
Baalat Gebal was the principal deity in the local pantheon of Byblos,Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn located on the Mediterranean coast in modern Lebanon.Шаблон:Sfn She has been described as “the most recurrent character in the history of the city”.Шаблон:Sfn She was associated with commerce.Шаблон:Sfn A temple dedicated to her was located in the center of the settlement.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn It remained in use without interruption from the third millennium BCE down to the Roman period.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn It was the largest sanctuary in Byblos.Шаблон:Sfn As it is unlikely that Baalat Gebal had more than one temple in the city, the "Obelisk Temple" also identified during excavations might have been instead dedicated to a male figure connected to her.Шаблон:Sfn A number of sheet metal figurines have been discovered as a part of the temple deposit in the temple of Baalat Gebal.Шаблон:Sfn Most are representations of men, either in conical hats or without,Шаблон:Sfn while a single one might be depiction of Anubis holding the was scepter.Шаблон:Sfn It is commonly assumed that they were produced locally,Шаблон:Sfn though it has also been proposed that they were imported from Egypt roughly between 2050 and 1800 BCE due to stylistic parallels with similar objects from Mentuhotep II’s tomb located at Deir el-Bahri.Шаблон:Sfn
Baalat Gebal was venerated by the kings of Byblos, possibly as early as in the early Bronze Age,Шаблон:Sfn though no individual rulers are identified in sources from that period.Шаблон:Sfn Rib-Addi, who reigned during the period documented in the Amarna letters, ended most of the messages he sent to the pharaoh with a wish for Baalat Gebal to protect the latter.Шаблон:Sfn Similar formulas appear in his letters to other Egyptian officials.Шаблон:Sfn A total of twenty seven instances have been identified.Шаблон:Sfn This habit which finds no parallels in the rest of the correspondence belonging to this text corpus.Шаблон:Sfn While wishes for wellbeing of the recipient were common, no other local ruler invoked his own local deity to bless the pharaoh.Шаблон:Sfn Furthermore, in a single case Rib-Addi presented Baalat Gebal as one of the deities the pharaoh owed his position to, which similarly is not otherwise attested for rulers of Levantine polities.Шаблон:Sfn It is not known if he used similar formulas in letters addressed to people from outside Egypt, as no such texts survive.Шаблон:Sfn In most cases he only invokes Baalat Gebal, though in a few instances she is paired with the Egyptian god Amun, who in all of these cases occur before her.Шаблон:Sfn It is not known how the letters were received, though Marwan Kilani speculates that the frequent references to Baalat Gebal presumably would not be perceived positively by Rib-Addi’s contemporary Akhenaton due to his religious policies.Шаблон:Sfn No direct references to this pharaoh’s attitude towards the goddess are known, but during his reign Byblos was not recognized in Egyptian sources as a religious center of particular importance, and played no role in what Kilani deems “Atonist ideology”.Шаблон:Sfn
In one letter Rib-Addi mentions a certain Ummaḫnu, the “maidservant” of Baalat Gebal, presumed to be her priestess.Шаблон:Sfn Apparently she attempted to play a role in the city’s foreign relations, which finds no parallel in the cases of any other religious personnel mentioned in the Amarna letters.Шаблон:Sfn This situation was accepted by the king, who tried to act as a middleman between the supposed priestess and the pharaoh, who she wanted to contact.Шаблон:Sfn Marwan Kilani notes that in contrast with sources from Egypt and Mesopotamia, references to female clergy are rare in texts from Bronze Age West Semitic speaking areas, and suggests that the fact that Byblos’ tutelary deity was a goddess rather than a god might be the reason behind Ummaḫnu’s relative prominence.Шаблон:Sfn
Multiple first millennium BCE kings of Byblos, including Abibaal, Elibaal and Shipitbaal, referred to themselves as protected by Baalat Gebal.Шаблон:Sfn Elibaal dedicated a stele to her, as indicated by the surviving inscription of this object, in which he addresses her as “his mistress”.Шаблон:Sfn Shipitbaal in own inscription asked her for a long reign.Шаблон:Sfn Another king of Byblos, Yehawmilk, who reigned in the fifth century BCE, similarly hoped Baalat Gebal would grant him a long life and reign.Шаблон:Sfn
Egyptian reception
There is evidence that Egyptians were involved in the cult of Baalat Gebal in Byblos.Шаблон:Sfn Egypt and Byblos had a long history of interactions dating back to the third millennium BCE, as recognized by local rulers such as Rib-Addi, who at one point wrote that “Byblos is not like those other cities. Byblos has been my lord the king’s loyal city from time immemorial” in a letter sent to the pharaoh.Шаблон:Sfn It is assumed that the temple of Baalat Gebal played a role in the political interactions between them.Шаблон:Sfn
An Old Kingdom relief with an Egyptian inscription referring to a monarch whose name is not preserved as the “beloved of Hathor, Lady of Byblos” has been identified during excavations of the temple of Baalat Gebal.Шаблон:Sfn A dedication to the same deity has also been found in the so-called Temple of the Obelisks, where it was presumably reused in the Middle Bronze Age.Шаблон:Sfn An inscription on a stone table from the former of the two temples mentions an endowment on her behalf made during the reign of Pepi I of the Sixth Dynasty.Шаблон:Sfn Later texts, dated to the reign of Thutmose III, allude to Egyptian involvement in the maintenance of her temple.Шаблон:Sfn The pharaoh himself mentions her in on a stela from the temple of Amun in Jebel Barkal in Nubia, which commemorates the construction of ships for a military campaign in the north from wood from the “neighborhood of the Lady of Byblos.”Шаблон:Sfn A reference to her might also be present in a damaged text found in the Theban tomb of one of his officials, Senneferi, which describes an expedition to Byblos.Шаблон:Sfn Andrés Diego Espinel notes that the Egyptian acts of devotion to Baalat Gebal might have been one of the means to secure favorable political and economic relations with local rulers, as Byblos was a major center of trade and a source of wood, oil, wine and lapis lazuli imported to Egypt.Шаблон:Sfn
It is presumed that Baalat Gebal was worshiped in some capacity in Egypt as well.Шаблон:Sfn The translation of her name, nbt-kbn, is attested as a given name, with one of its bearers being the nurse of one of Ahmose I’s daughters.Шаблон:Sfn Oldest examples have been identified in texts from the Middle Kingdom.Шаблон:Sfn It is not known if families of any of the women named nkt-kbn originated in Byblos, or if the choice of this name was influenced by the Egyptian worship of Baalat Gebal.Шаблон:Sfn
Miscellaneous attestations
A reference to Baalat Gebal has been identified in the satirical Egyptian text known as Letter of Hori, possibly originally composed during the reign of Ramesses II, in which the eponymous figure discusses her cult center: “I will tell you of another mysterious city. Byblos is its name; what is it like? And their goddess, what is she like?”Шаблон:Sfn According to Marwan Kilani, is not certain if describing Byblos as “mysterious” (or alternatively: “hidden”) is an allusion to an unknown mystical or religious event, or a sarcastic figure of speech meant to highlight that the average scribe should be familiar with the city.Шаблон:Sfn
Baalat Gebal is also mentioned twice in a collection of Egyptian incantations, most of them directed against snakes, from the reign of Ramesses XI (BM EA 9997 + 1030).Шаблон:Sfn In the sixth of the preserved texts , which describes Isis healing her son Horus, who is portrayed as a child and has been bitten by a snake, she is invoked to heal the poison alongside other goddesses, such as Nephthys and Serket.Шаблон:Sfn Based on a restored damaged passage she is most likely identified with Hathor in this context.Шаблон:Sfn
For unknown reasons, Baalat Gebal is entirely absent from the Story of Wenamun, even though it describes a journey to Byblos.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn An implicit reference to her might only be present in the description of a sacrifice to the local deities.Шаблон:Sfn
In the Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos, which he presents as a Greek a translation of the works of a Phoenician author, Sanchuniathon,Шаблон:Sfn but which modern researchers consider to be a combination of both Phoenician and Greco-Roman elements,Шаблон:Sfn Baalat Gebal is referred to as Dione.Шаблон:Sfn Ouranos sends her and her two sisters, Astarte and Rhea, to trick and defeat their brother Kronos, but the latter instead marries them, and they subsequently give birth to his children.Шаблон:Sfn Ouranos most likely stands for a Phoenician deity representing heaven.Шаблон:Sfn Rhea is not explicitly identified with any Phoenician deity, and might be the Greek goddess.Шаблон:Sfn Kronos is also referred to as El elsewhere in the Phoenician History,Шаблон:Sfn but there is no other evidence for a consort relation between Baalat Gebal and El, and the pairing of Dione and Kronos is also unusual from Greek perspective, as the goddess bearing this name was typically associated with Zeus instead.Шаблон:Sfn The number and names of Dione’s children are not preserved.Шаблон:Sfn Later on, when Kronos assigns cities to various deities, she receives Byblos as her domain.Шаблон:Sfn
The temple of Baalat Gebal is mentioned in Lucian’s De Dea Syria.Шаблон:Sfn She is referred to as the “Byblian Aphrodite” (Шаблон:Lang-gr).Шаблон:Sfn Lucian states that in Roman times rites focused on Adonis took place in her temple, which might be an echo of the worship of a possible unidentified male deity related to her, who according to Marwan Kilani was associated with the Obelisk Temple in earlier periods.Шаблон:Sfn
References
Bibliography
- Шаблон:Cite book
- Шаблон:Cite book
- Шаблон:Cite journal
- Шаблон:Cite book
- Шаблон:Cite book
- Шаблон:Cite book
- Шаблон:Cite journal
- Шаблон:Cite journal
- Шаблон:Cite book
- Шаблон:Cite journal
- Шаблон:Cite book
- Шаблон:Cite journal
- Шаблон:Cite journal
- Шаблон:Cite journal
- Шаблон:Cite journal
- Шаблон:Cite journal
External links
- Roman statue of Ba‘alat Gebal - Silk Road Seattle, University of Washington
- A statuette of the goddess of ByblosШаблон:Dead link in the British Museum
Шаблон:Middle Eastern mythologyШаблон:Authority control
