The yoni of the Arabian goddess
Posted by Sjur Cappelen Papazian on February 25, 2014
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Arabian mythology is the ancient, pre-Islamic beliefs of the Arab people. Prior to Islam the Kaaba of Mecca was covered in symbols representing the myriad demons, djinn, demigods, or simply tribal gods and other assorted deities which represented the polytheistic culture of pre-Islamic Arabia.
The Black Stone is a Muslim relic, which according to Islamic tradition dates back to the time of Adam and Eve. Historical research claims that the Black Stone marked the Kaaba as a place of worship during pre-Islamic pagan times.
It is the eastern cornerstone of the Kaaba, the ancient stone building towards which Muslims pray, in the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia.
The Stone is a dark rock, polished smooth by the hands of millions of pilgrims that has been broken into a number of fragments cemented into a silver frame in the side of the Kaaba.
Enki is a god in Sumerian mythology, later known as Ea in Akkadian and Babylonian mythology. He was originally patron god of the city of Eridu, but later the influence of his cult spread throughout Mesopotamia and to the Canaanites, Hittites and Hurrians.
Enki was the deity of crafts (gašam); mischief; water, seawater, lakewater (a, aba, ab), intelligence (gestú, literally “ear”) and creation (Nudimmud: nu, likeness, dim mud, make beer).
The main temple to Enki is called E-abzu, meaning “abzu temple” (also E-en-gur-a, meaning “house of the subterranean waters””), a ziggurat temple surrounded by Euphratean marshlands near the ancient Persian Gulf coastline at Eridu. He was the keeper of the divine powers called Me, the gifts of civilization. His image is a double-helix snake, or the Caduceus, very similar to the Rod of Asclepius used to symbolize medicine. He is often shown with the horned crown of divinity dressed in the skin of a carp.
The pool of the Abzu at the front of his temple was adopted also at the temple to Nanna (Akkadian Sin) the Moon, at Ur, and spread from there throughout the Middle East. It is believed to remain today as the sacred pool at Mosques, or as the holy water font in Catholic or Eastern Orthodox churches.
As Ea, Enki had a wide influence outside of Sumer, being equated with El (at Ugarit) and possibly Yah (at Ebla) in the Canaanite ‘ilhm pantheon, he is also found in Hurrian and Hittite mythology, as a god of contracts, and is particularly favourable to humankind. Amongst the Western Semites, it is thought that Ea was equated to the term hyy (life), referring to Enki’s waters as life giving.
In 1964, a team of Italian archaeologists under the direction of Paolo Matthiae of the University of Rome La Sapienza performed a series of excavations of material from the third-millennium BCE city of Ebla. Much of the written material found in these digs was later translated by Giovanni Pettinato.
Among other conclusions, he found a tendency among the inhabitants of Ebla to replace the name of El, king of the gods of the Canaanite pantheon (found in names such as Mikael), with Ia.
Jean Bottero (1952) and others suggested that Ia in this case is a West Semitic (Canaanite) way of saying Ea, Enki’s Akkadian name, associating the Canaanite theonym Yahu, and ultimately Hebrew YHWH.
This hypothesis is dismissed by some scholars as erroneous, based on a mistaken cuneiform reading, but academic debate continues. Ia has also been compared by William Hallo with the Ugaritic Yamm (sea), (also called Judge Nahar, or Judge River) whose earlier name in at least one ancient source was Yaw, or Ya’a.
Allah is the Arabic word for God (literally ‘the God’, as the initial “Al-” is the definite article). It is used mainly by Muslims to refer to God in Islam, Arab Christians, and often, albeit not exclusively, by Bahá’ís, Arabic-speakers, Indonesian and Maltese Christians, and Mizrahi Jews. Christians and Sikhs in Malaysia also use and have used the word to refer to God.
The term Allāh is derived from a contraction of the Arabic definite article al- “the” and ilāh “deity, god” to al-lāh meaning “the [sole] deity, God”. Cognates of the name “Allāh” exist in other Semitic languages, including Hebrew and Aramaic.
The corresponding Aramaic form is ʼĔlāhā in Biblical Aramaic and ʼAlâhâ in Syriac as used by the Assyrian Church, both meaning simply ‘God’. Biblical Hebrew mostly uses the plural form (but functional singular) Elohim. In the Sikh scriptures, Guru Granth Sahib, the term Allah is used 37 times.
Many inscriptions containing the name Allah have been discovered in Northern and Southern Arabia as early as the 5th century B.C., including Lihyanitic, Thamudic and South Arabian inscriptions.
The name Allah or Alla was found in the Epic of Atrahasis engraved on several tablets dating back to around 1700 BC in Babylon, which showed that he was being worshipped as a high deity among other gods who were considered to be his brothers but taking orders from him.
Dumuzid the Shepherd, a king of the 1st Dynasty of Uruk named on the Sumerian King List, was later over-venerated so that people started associating him with “Alla” and the Babylonian god Tammuz.
The name Allah was used by Nabataeans in compound names, such as “Abd Allah” (The Servant/Slave of Allah), “Aush Allah” (The Faith of Allah), “Amat Allah” (The She-Servant of Allah), “Hab Allah” (Beloved of Allah), “Han Allah” (Allah is gracious), “Shalm Allah” (Peace of Allah), while the name “Wahab Allah” (The Gift of Allah) was found throughout the entire region of the Nabataean kingdom.
From Nabataean inscriptions, Allah seems to have been regarded as a “High and Main God”, while other deities were considered to be mediators before Allah and of a second status, which was the same case of the worshipers at the Kaaba temple at Mecca.
As Hebrew and Arabic are closely related Semitic languages, it is commonly accepted that Allah (root, ilāh) and the Biblical Elohim are cognate derivations of same origin, as in Eloah a Hebrew word which is used (e.g. in the Book of Job) to mean ‘(the) God’ and also ‘god or gods’ as in the case of Elohim, ultimately deriving from the root El, ‘strong’, possibly genericized from El (deity), as in the Ugaritic ’lhm “children of El” (the ancient Near Eastern creator god in pre-Abrahamic tradition). In Jewish scripture Elohim is used as a descriptive title for the God of the scriptures whose name is YHWH, as well as for pagan gods.
The Aramaic word for “God” in the language of Assyrian Christians is ʼĔlāhā, or Alaha. Arabic-speakers of all Abrahamic faiths, including Christians and Jews, use the word “Allah” to mean “God”. The Christian Arabs of today have no other word for “God” than “Allah”.
(Even the Arabic-descended Maltese language of Malta, whose population is almost entirely Roman Catholic, uses Alla for “God”.) Arab Christians for example use terms Allāh al-ab meaning God the Father, Allāh al-ibn mean God the Son, and Allāh al-rūḥ al-quds meaning God the Holy Spirit.
According to Islamic belief, Allah is the proper name of God, and humble submission to his will, divine ordinances and commandments is the pivot of the Muslim faith. “He is the only God, creator of the universe, and the judge of humankind.” “He is unique (wāḥid) and inherently one (aḥad), all-merciful and omnipotent.” The Qur’an declares “the reality of Allah, His inaccessible mystery, His various names, and His actions on behalf of His creatures.”
The main god in the Arabian peninsula was Hubal, who is regarded as the most notable and chief of the gods. An idol of Hubal said to have been near the Kaaba is described as shaped like a human with the right hand severed and replaced with a golden hand.
There may be some foundation of truth in the story that Amr travelled in Syria and had brought back from there the cults of the goddesses ʻUzzāʼ and Manat, and had combined it with that of Hubal, the idol of the Khuza’a. According to Al-Azraqi, the image was brought to Mecca “from the land of Hit in Mesopotamia” (Hīt in modern Iraq).
Philip K. Hitti, who relates the name Hubal to an Aramaic word for spirit, suggests that the worship of Hubal was imported to Mecca from the north of Arabia, possibly from Moab or Mesopotamia.
Hubal may have been the combination of Hu, meaning “spirit” or “god”, and the Moab god Baal meaning “master” or “lord”. Outside South Arabia, Hubal’s name appears just once, in a Nabataean inscription; there hbl is mentioned along with the gods Dushara and Manawatu — the latter, as Manat, was also popular in Mecca.
On the basis of such slender evidence, it has been suggested that Hubal “may actually have been a Nabataean”. There are also inscriptions in which the word Hubal appears to be part of personal names, translatable as “Son of Hubal” or “made by Hubal”.
Mircea Eliade and Charles J. Adams assert that he was “a god of rain and a warrior god. Towards the end of the pre-Islamic era he emerged as an intertribal warrior god worshipped by the Quraysh and the allied tribes of the Kinana and Tihama.” The view that he was a warrior rain god is repeated by David Adams Leeming.
Hubal was a god worshipped in pre-Islamic Arabia, notably at the Kaaba in Mecca. His idol was a human figure, believed to control acts of divination, which was in the form of tossin arrows before the statue. The direction in which the arrows pointed answered questions asked of the idol.
The origins of the cult of Hubal are uncertain, but the name is found in inscriptions from Nabataea in northern Arabia (across the territory of modern Syria and Iraq). The specific powers and identity attributed to Hubal are equally unclear.
Access to the idol was controlled by the Quraysh tribe. The god’s devotees fought against followers of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad during the Battle of Badr in 624 CE. After Muhammad entered Mecca in 630 CE, he removed the statue of Hubal from the Kaaba along with the idols of all the other pagan gods.
According to Quran and Islamic tradition the Kaaba, or The Cube, also known as the Sacred House and the Ancient House, was built by Ibrahim (Abraham). It is stated in the Qur’an that this was the first house that was built for humanity to worship Allah (God).
The earliest reference we have to a goddess worshipped as a cube-shaped stone is from Neolithic Anatolia. Alternatively, ‘Kubaba’ may mean a hollow vessel or cave, which would still be a supreme image of the goddess. The ideograms for Kubaba in the Hittite alphabet are a lozenge or cube, a double-headed axe, a dove, a vase and a door or gate—all images of the goddess in Neolithic Europe.
Deities of other cultures known to have been associated with black stones include Aphrodite at Paphos, Cybele at Pessinus and later Rome, Astarte at Byblos and the famous Artemis/Diana of Ephesus. The latter’s most ancient sculpture was, it is said, carved from a black meteorite.
The earliest form of Cybele’s name may have been Kubaba or Kumbaba, which suggests Humbaba, who was the guardian of the forest in the Epic of Gilgamesh, the world’s oldest recorded myth from Assyria of circa 2500 BCE of the ‘Sumerites Literature’ and as scholars reveal more of the text as the source of most of the major mythological themes of later civilizations.
The origin of Kubaba may have been kube or kuba meaning ‘cube’. The earliest reference we have to a goddess worshipped as a cube-shaped stone is from Neolithic Anatolia.
The stone associated with Cybele’s worship was, originally, probably at Pessinus but perhaps at Pergamum or on Mount Ida. What is certain is that in 204 BCE, it was taken to Rome, where Cybele became ‘Mother’ to the Romans. The ecstatic rites of her worship were alien to the Roman temperament, but nevertheless animated the streets of their city during the annual procession of the goddess’s statue.
Alongside Isis (god of the Egyptians), Cybele retained prominence in the heart of the Empire until the fifth century BCE, when the stone was then lost. Her cult prospered throughout the Empire and it is said that every town or village remained true to the worship of Cybele. Various Classical writers describe the rituals, which went on her in her honor, in which a tapering black stone, the object of veneration at her temple, was used.
At Mecca, the Goddess was ‘Shaybah’ or’ Sheba’, the Old Woman, which was worshipped as a black aniconic stone like the Goddess of the Scythian Amazons. The sacred Black Stone that now enshrines in the Kaaba was her feminine symbol, marked by the sign of the yoni (vagina), and covered like the ancient Mother by a veil. No one seems to know exactly what it is supposed to represent today?
The Black Stone rests in the Haram, “Sanctuary”, cognate of “harem,” which used to mean a Temple of Women, in Babylon, a shrine of the Goddess Har, mother of harlots! Hereditary guardians of the Haram were the Koreshites, “children of Kore”, Mohammed’s own tribe. The holy office was originally held by women, before it was taken over by male priests calling themselves ‘Beni Shayban’ (“Sons of the Old Woman”).
In her book, Islam: A Short History, Karen Armstrong asserts that the Kaaba was at some point dedicated to Hubal, a Nabatean deity, and contained 360 idols that probably represented the days of the year, or were effigies of the Arabian pantheon. But by Muhammad’s day, the Kaaba was venerated as the shrine of Allah, the High God.
The Black Stone is the eastern cornerstone of the Kaaba, the ancient stone building toward which Muslims pray, in the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is revered by Muslims as an Islamic relic which, according to Muslim tradition, dates back to the time of Adam and Eve.
The Black Stone was revered well before the preaching of Islam by Muhammad. By the time of Muhammad, it was already associated with the Kaaba, a pre-Islamic shrine that was revered as a sacred sanctuary and a site of pilgrimage.
The Semitic cultures of the Middle East had a tradition of using unusual stones to mark places of worship, a phenomenon which is reflected in the Hebrew Bible as well as the Qur’an.
Once a year, tribes from all around the Arabian peninsula, whether Christian or pagan, would converge on Mecca to perform the Hajj, marking the widespread conviction that Allah was the same deity worshiped by monotheists.
The three daughters of Hubal, and chief goddesses of Meccan Arabian mythology, were Al-lāt, Al-‘Uzzá, and Manāt. Each is associated with certain domains and had shrines with idols located near Taif which have been destroyed.
Allat, or Al-lāt, is the goddess associated with the underworld. She is frequently called “the Great Goddess” in Greek in multi-lingual inscriptions. According to Wellhausen, the Nabataeans believed al-Lāt was the mother of Hubal (and hence the mother-in-law of Manāt).
Especially in older sources, Allat is an alternative name of the Mesopotamian goddess of the underworld, now usually known as Ereshkigal. She was reportedly also venerated in Carthage under the name Allatu.
The goddess occurs in early Safaitic graffiti (Safaitic han-‘Ilāt “the Goddess”) and the Nabataeans of Petra and the people of Hatra also worshipped her, equating her with the Greek Athena and Tyche and the Roman Minerva.
This passage is linguistically significant as the first clear attestation of an Arabic word, with the diagnostically Arabic article al-. The Persian and Indian deities were developed from the Proto-Indo-Iranian deity known as Mitra.
According to Herodotus, the ancient Arabians believed in only two gods: They believe in no other gods except Dionysus and the Heavenly Aphrodite; and they say that they wear their hair as Dionysus does his, cutting it round the head and shaving the temples. They call Dionysus, Orotalt; and Aphrodite, Alilat.
In the 6th century the city of Tā’if was dominated by the Banu Thaqif tribe (Thaqif tribe still lives in and around the city of Taif today). The town is about 100 km (62 mi) southeast of Mecca. The walled city was a religious centre as it housed the idol of the goddess Allāt, who was then known as “the lady of Tā’if.”
The shrine and temple dedicated to al-Lat in Taif was demolished on the orders of Muhammad, during the Expedition of Abu Sufyan ibn Harb, in the same year as the Battle of Tabuk (which occurred in October 630 AD). The destruction of the idol was a demand by Muhammad before any reconciliation could take place with the citizens of Taif who were under constant attack.
Manāt was the goddess of fate, the Book of Idols describes her as the most ancient of all these idols. She was known by the cognate name Manawat to the Nabataeans of Petra, who equated her with the Graeco-Roman goddess Nemesis, and she was considered the wife of Hubal, a god worshipped in pre-Islamic Arabia, notably at the Kaaba in Mecca.
Access to the idol was controlled by the Quraysh tribe. The god’s devotees fought against followers of the Islamic Prophet Muhammad during the Battle of Badr in 624 CE. After Muhammad entered Mecca in 630 CE, he removed the statue of Hubal from the Kaaba along with the idols of all the other pagan gods.
According to Grunebaum in Classical Islam, the Arabic name of Manat is the linguistic counterpart of the Hellenistic Tyche, Dahr, fateful ‘Time’ who snatches men away and robs their existence of purpose and value. There are also connections with Chronos of Mithraism and Zurvan mythology.
The temple of Manat was raided and the idol was destroyed on the orders of Muhammad, in the Raid of Sa’d ibn Zaid al-Ashhali, in January 630 AD (8AH, 9th month, of the Islamic Calendar), in the vicinity of al-Mushallal.
Al-‘Uzzá, “The Mightiest One” or “The Strong”, was an Arabian fertility goddess. She was called upon for protection and victory before war. She was also worshipped by the Nabataeans, who equated her with the Greek goddess Aphrodite Ourania (Roman Venus Caelestis). A stone cube at aṭ-Ṭā’if (near Mecca) was held sacred as part of her cult.
The first known mention of al-‘Uzzá is from the inscriptions at Dedan, the capital of the Lihyanite Kingdom, in the fourth or third century BC. She had been adopted alongside Dushara as the presiding goddess at Petra, the Nabataen capital, where she assimilated with Isis, Tyche, and Aphrodite attributes and superseded her sisters. During the 5th century Christianity became the prominent religion of the region following conquest by Barsauma.
Al-‘Uzzá, like Hubal, was called upon for protection by the pre-Islamic Quraysh. “In 624 at the ‘battle called Uhud’, the war cry of the Qurayshites was, “O people of Uzzā, people of Hubal!”
The temple dedicated to al-ʻUzzá and the statue itself was destroyed by Khalid ibn al Walid in Nakhla. Shortly after the Conquest of Mecca, Muhammad began to despatch platoons and errands aiming at eliminating the last symbols reminiscent of pre-Islamic practices.
He sent Khalid ibn Al-Walid in Ramadan 8 A.H. to a place called Nakhlah, where there was a goddess called Al-‘Uzza worshipped by Quraish and Kinanah tribes. It had custodians from Banu Shaiban. Khalid, at the head of 30 horsemen arrived at the spot and exterminated it.
On his return, Muhammad asked him if he had seen anything there, to which Khalid replied, “No”. Here, he was told that it had not been destroyed and he had to go there again and fulfill the task. He went back again and there he saw a black Abyssinian (Ethiopian) woman, naked with torn hair. Khalid struck her with his sword and tore her into “two parts” according to the Muslim scholar Safi ur Rahman al Mubarakpuri. He returned and narrated the story to Muhammad, who then confirmed the fulfillment of the task.
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