British Museum EA , upper register of limestone stele of chief craftsman Qeh. Deir el-Medina Dynasty As such, it can be attached to almost any goddess, including the whole of the A-team: Anat, Astarte, Asherah and Athirat. The question is: did there exist an independent goddess named Qedeshet at all? She is not known from any Canaanite or Ugaritic texts or inscriptions.
Rather, she only appears as a named goddess in Egypt. There is much about this myth that is obscure, and nothing substantial that sheds light on Genesis Some Hellenistic era Phoenician traditions preserved in the writings of Philo of Byblos have been adduced as comparable to the themes and characters in Genesis 6: A.
These—he says—by rubbing sticks together discovered fire, and they taught its use. And they begot sons who in size and eminence were greater [than their fathers] and whose names were given to the mountain ranges over which they ruled, so that they Kassios, the Lebanon, the Anti-Lebanon, and the Brathys were called after them. From these—he says—were born Samemroumos who is also [called] Hypsouranios and Ousoos.
And—he says—they called themselves after their mothers, since the women of that time united freely with anyone upon whom they chanced. If these traditions were about primeval humanity, as the text suggests, then the comparison with Genesis would be warranted, particularly the birth of giants and perhaps the sexual adventures of women in primeval times. Gold pendant, possibly Astarte. Phoenician traditions about gods of mountains and about goddesses who have sex and bear divine offspring are interesting of themselves, but do not bear directly on the story or characters of Genesis But, perhaps because our textual evidence is so sparse, we lack other West Semitic narratives that are clearly related to Genesis Stuckenbruck, eds.
The Sumerian King List itself was still known in the Seleucid era, or rather versions of king lists that echo, structurally and stylistically, their ancient forerunners from the early second millennium. I also changed the link to the Sumerian King List to point to the beautiful edition by Thorkild Jacobsen generously published by the University of Chicago Press, available for free download off the web.
