Athirat of Ugarit, Mother of the Gods

In the Ugaritic texts, the Late Bronze Age tablets from Ras Shamra on the Syrian coast that are our best direct source for Canaanite religion, the goddess appears as Athirat, the consort of the high god El and the mother of the gods (the seventy sons of Athirat), a dignified matriarch of the divine family. She bears the title usually read Lady Athirat of the Sea (the meaning of the word rendered sea is disputed). Her role in the great Baal Cycle is that of an intercessor: it is Athirat whom Baal and his sister Anat must win over so that she will persuade El to permit Baal a palace fitting to his kingship. This Canaanite mother-goddess is the direct background to the biblical Asherah.

Archaeologists have proposed that a stylised tree-of-life motif, found repeatedly on painted pottery, seals and ornate cult stands from Israelite and Judahite sites such as Taanach and Lachish, may represent Asherah in a non-figural, symbolic form parallel to the wooden cult pole the Hebrew Bible associates with her name; a tenth-century terracotta cult stand from Taanach, carved with alternating registers of a nude goddess flanked by lions and a stylised tree flanked by ibexes, is among the most frequently cited pieces of evidence in this debate, though, as with the inscriptional evidence, archaeologists disagree over how directly the imagery should be read as depicting the goddess herself rather than a more general fertility symbol.