A personification of the goddess Asherah, this drawing was discovered on a 3-foot storage jar at Kuntillet Ajrud.* It depicts nibbling ibexes flanking a stylized, sacred tree,** all positioned above the back of striding lion.
The ancients would have immediately identified this symbolism with the goddess Asherah.The ibexes-flanking-and-nibbling-on-a-sacred-tree is an established Asherah motif throughout ancient Palestinian pottery. It dates back over 1,000 years before Kuntillet Ajrud's drawings.
The stylized sacred tree** is Asherah's sacred Tree of Life/Tree of Knowledge (the Pomegranate Tree^). Throughout antiquity, stylized, sacred trees were called asherahs after the goddess Asherah (reflected also in biblical text).
Epithets of Asherah include "Lion
Lady," and "the One of the Lion." The lion was one of Asherah's ancient
epiphanies and serves as the foundation of this configuration.
The numerous references to Asherah presented here, provide a window
into the past and a clue to understanding the importance of Asherah
worship in a forgotten time long ago.
*an Israelite-Judean
Sinai way-station with an attached shrine and "religious center."
(Although a southern complex under Israelite control, neutron analysis
of Ajrud's storage jars reveal they were produced by Judeans around the
Jerusalem area, affirming it had a far reaching northern presence also.)
**Fossilized chunks of wood, discovered at Israelite, archaeological sites, were initiallyidentified as "posts" and "tree trunks.”
Scholars have recently re-identified these remains as "Asherah-images.”
^As the "Source of All Life," to eat the fruit of the pomegranate tree was to "become one with the goddess" in communion. A tradition continued today by Catholics as they receive the body of Christ in communion.
-History’s Vanquished Goddess Asherah