Fertility Cult Research Articles

The Literary Influence of the Ugaritic Fertility Myth On the Old Testament

study of fertility myths and ritual 1) is of considerable importance, since, in the last few years, so much in the Old Testament has been interpreted in the light of such myths and rituals. The knowledge of the general pattern of Near-Eastern religion has placed in perspective the religion of the Hebrews. essence of this pattern is found in the fertility cult, which centred in the worship of the vegetation deity, who died in the autumn and was resurrected in the spring. religious services took the form of a dramatisation of the death of the god, his resurrection, and his marriage to the mothergoddess. popularity of this cult among the Hebrews has been abundantly evidenced by Old Testament scholars. It was the predominant cult among the Egyptians, Syrians, Babylonians, Assyrians and many other peoples of the Near East. 2) More and more have Old Testament scholars been led to find fertility cult symbolism in a considerable part of the Hebrew scriptures. Gradually it has been emphasised that the 'Canaanite' religion of Palestine was but a variation of the seasons cult ... the early religion of Israel in Palestine was little more than a syncretistic fertility cult with Yahweh predominant. 3) This tendency: to interpret much of the Old Testament in terms of fertility cult and ritual, has been strengthened by the discovery of the Ras Shamra tablets. main part of this literature, in alpha-

A Group of East Greek Bronzes

The six bronzes which it is convenient to take as our starting point have already attracted a certain amount of attention, partly because of their enigmatic subject and partly because they provide a good illustration of an early type of plough. All six bronzes are substantially identical (Plate I). Each represents a naked ploughman standing with feet apart, his left hand on the plough handle, his right behind his back. All are bearded and give the appearance of being bald, though this may not be intended. The ploughs consist of stock, tail with handle, beam, pole, and double yoke. No joints are shown between stock, tail, and beam, which are perhaps all three to be thought of as formed from a single piece of wood. The joint between beam and pole is carefully indicated by a slanting incision or by making them overlap each other. On all but one plough the yoke joins the pole without any suggestion of how it would be attached in real life. On the exception (no. 2) it is fastened by a rivet which allows a small turning movement checked by a lug on the pole. Like the ploughmen the two oxen of each team are standing still. They are yoked by their horns, one (sometimes the right, sometimes the left) facing forwards, the other reversed to face the ploughman. No satisfactory explanation of the reversed ox has been suggested. As Drachmann points out, it can hardly represent the turning of the plough at the end of the furrow; this is usually done by lifting the plough up by the tail and carrying it round. Possibly the reversed ox symbolises in a more general way the boustrophedon process of ploughing. But ploughing is so often part of fertility cult that an explanation is perhaps more likely to be found in ritual or magic.

An Australian Aboriginal Fertility Cult

Kunapipi A Study of an Australian Aboriginal Religious Cult. By Ronald M. Berndt. Pp. xxxi + 224 + 17 plates. (Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire Pty., Ltd.; London: Angus and Robertson, Ltd., 1951.) 39s. 6d.

The Religion of Greece in Prehistoric Times. The Sather Lectures, XVII. By Axel W. Persson. Pp. 189; pl. 11 + 29 text figs. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, and Cambridge University Press, 1942. 12s.

Dr. Persson's account of prehistoric Greek religion is based upon precise observation of his archaeological material and general inference from cults in the nearer ‘Afrasian’ countries. There is also a chapter on its survivals in classical Greek religion and another on comparisons with that of the Nordic Bronze Age. His archaeological evidence consists mainly of twenty-eight engraved signetrings from Crete and the Greek Mainland, rather more than have hitherto been counted among religious documents ; their subjects are excellently reproduced in enlarged photographs and are very fully, ingeniously and plausibly described. A twenty-ninth illustration shows the elaborate design of the ‘Ring of Minos’ convincingly analysed into three subjects which have been copied with inadequate knowledge from other rings. The ‘Ring of Nestor’ and those of the ‘Thisbe Treasure’ are more discreetly bypassed. Dr. Persson's conclusion is that Minoan–Mycenaean religion as shown in the pictorial series of the signets, even in the bull-fighting scenes, was principally concerned with the annual vegetation cycle, in which human death and burial were involved. He finds here a single goddess and a young god whom he identifies or compares with the divine consorts of fertility cults in Asia Minor, Syria, Babylonia and Egypt. The multiplicity of deities apparently persisting from prehistoric times, in later Greek cult and mythology, is reasonably explained by the adoption of invocatory epithets as proper names, partly through the ignorance of the Hellenic population, partly through their inclination towards definite ideas and persons in religion.

Fertility Cult Functionaries in the Old Testament

Fertility Cult Functionaries in the Old Testament

Research Items

Fertility Cults in East and West

The Cerne Giant

THE ‘Cerne Giant’, it is announced, will come under the auctioneer's hammer on June 16 next when the Abbey estate, Cerne Abbas, near Dorchester, Dorset, is to be sold in lots. The ‘Cerne Giant’ is one of a small group of remarkable and curious antiquities of Britain which were described by Sir Flinders Petrie some years ago in a special publication of the Royal Anthropological Institute. They are figures of considerable size cut in the turf on the chalk in outline. They are of unknown purpose and unknown age, though almost certainly some, if not all, are prehistoric. The best known, owing in part to its appearance in popular fiction, is the Berkshire ‘White horse’, but the ‘Wilmington giant’ in Sussex and the ‘Cerne Abbas giant’ are almost equally famous. The ‘Wilmington giant’ is on a slope so steep as almost to appear to be standing upright. The ‘Cerne giant’ is on Trendle or Giant's Hill, and is a huge ithyphallic figure, one hundred and eighty feet high, brandishing a. club, which is one hundred and twenty feet long and in breadth runs from seven to twenty-four feet. The head appears disproportionately small. The outline is cut in trenches two feet broad by one foot deep. The ‘Wilmington giant’ is rather larger, being approximately two hundred and forty feet high, with a head of twenty-one feet breadth. Various explanations of the giants' figures have been put forward. It has been suggested that the ‘Cerne giant’ is the figure of the Saxon god Heil, but in all probability it is much older, possibly Iron Age. The circle above the figure of the giant in which the Cerne maypole used to stand, together with the ithyphallic character of the figure, support the obvious attribution to a very ancient fertility cult. The remarkable character of the figure and its great interest for the light it throws on ancient British culture make it regrettable that the ground on which this figure is cut should be in private ownership and subject to such vicissitudes as that now impending.

Gunnu, a Fertility Cult of the Nupe in Northern Nigeria.

Gunnu, a Fertility Cult of the Nupe in Northern Nigeria.

Megalithic Work in Assam

DR. J. H. HUTTON, in discussing megalithic work in Assam, in a paper read on September 11 before Section H (Anthropology) at the Leicester meeting of the British Association, stated that it is important not only as bearing on the cultural and racial relations between Assam and the adjoining regions, but also on the whole question of Indian pre-history and cultural and racial relations with the Mediterranean and with Oceania. Megalithic work in Assam, and probably throughout India, has definite associations with the dead and with their post-mortem future. At the same time it is, at any rate in Assam, definitely phallic in certain aspects and constitutes a fertility cult of the dead.

The Fertility Cult in Hosea

The Fertility Cult in Hosea

Some Nigerian Fertility Cults

Some Nigerian Fertility Cults Some Nigerian Fertility Cults. By P. Amaury Talbot, Resident, Nigeria. ( Oxford University Press. 1927. 140 pp., 47 illustrations. 12s. 6d. net.) G. A. S. N. G. A. S. N. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar African Affairs, Volume XXVII, Issue CVI, January 1928, Pages 195–196, https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordjournals.afraf.a100516 Published: 01 January 1928

Some Nigerian Fertility Cults

MR. AMAURY TALBOT here describes the beliefs of the Ibo and Ijaro tribes of the Degamo division to which he was posted in 1914. For the most part they centre around the cult of Ale, the Mother- Earth goddess, and her consort, the Thunderer. Mr. Talbot describes at some length the Mbari houses or shrines and the ceremonies connected with them. He has brought considerable acumen to bear on the interpretation of these rites; but perhaps his most pregnant suggestion is made in connexion with the cult of the Great Drum. By an ingenious line of reasoning, he unravels the symbolism of the representation of the tortoise and identifies it with the female pudenda. Of the many ceremonies and beliefs connected with the promotion of the fertility of the crops which serve to illustrate the principles of the “Golden Bough,” the most striking is that relating to the priest of the Elele Yam cult, whose office, like that of the priest of Nemi, reverted to the man who succeeded in slaying him.

Research Items

EXCAVATIONS AT UR.—A further report by Mr. C. Leonard Woolley on the discoveries at Ur and Tel-el-Obeid appeared in the Times of February n. The finds at Ur include gate sockets of Bur-Sin and Gimel-Sin, kings of the Third Dynasty (circa 2200 B.C.) and a number of terra-cotta figures and reliefs, pottery and inscribed cylinder seals of that period. At Tel-el-Obeid more than a dozen examples of the copper friezes of cattle in relief have now been recovered, as well as a number of statues of oxen in the round made of plates of copper on a wooden core and originally with golden horns. Sections 3-4 feet long of a frieze which adorned the front wall of the Temple show cattle walking in line, a reed enclosure, from which two heifers are walking, milking operations and men pouring a liquid into jars. The prominence of the cow suggests an agricultural fertility cult, possibly of the goddess Nin-khursag. A gold scaraboid bead bearing the name and title of the king of the First Dynasty by whom the Temple was founded, was also discovered. This, on the Sumerian reckoning which placed the First Dynasty at about 4600 B.C., is the oldest known piece of royal jewellery.

Research Items

THE SHEEL-NA-GIG AT OAKSEY.—The Sheel-na-gig or phallic figure, usually found in churches, is probably the survival of a fertility cult. That at Oaksey, in North Wiltshire, is described in the September issue oiMan by Miss M. A. Murray and Mr. A. D. Passmore. It is carved out of the same stone as that of the church, a thirteenth - century edifice, but there is nothing to show whether it is in its original position, or whether it is contemporary with, or earlier than, the church. But the size and importance of the left hand in the sculpture are noteworthy and suggest a pre-Christian origin for the figure. The flat surface of the stone has been slightly hollowed so as to make the figure stand out in relief. The weathering of the stone has practically destroyed the features, which appear to have been rudely indicated.