Asherah

The Mystica Encyclopedia · All entries · Rewritten September 2026

Asherah at a glance

Asherah at Ugarit

The clearest picture of Asherah comes from the clay tablets of Ugarit, a city on the Syrian coast destroyed around 1200 BCE. In these texts, written in a local alphabetic script, she is called Athirat and is the wife of El, the aged head of the pantheon. She is described as the mother of the gods, whose children are said to number seventy, and bears the title "Lady Athirat of the Sea."

In the Baal Cycle, Athirat plays an important role in the negotiations over whether the storm god Baal will receive a palace. She is courted with gifts and intercedes with El, showing her as a powerful figure at the divine court. Baal's conflicts with other gods, including the death god Mot, form the background of these myths.

Asherah in the Hebrew Bible

The Hebrew word asherah (plural asherim or asherot) occurs about forty times in the Hebrew Bible. In most passages it refers to a cult object, apparently made of wood, that could be planted, set up, cut down or burned. English translations have rendered it as "grove" or "Asherah pole." In a few passages the word seems to name a goddess, as when 1 Kings 18 mentions prophets of Asherah alongside prophets of Baal.

The biblical writers condemn these objects. Gideon cuts down an asherah in Judges 6, and 2 Kings 23 reports that King Josiah removed an image of Asherah from the Temple in Jerusalem during his religious reforms. Such texts suggest that Asherah worship, or at least the use of her symbol, was widespread enough to provoke repeated opposition.

Inscriptions from Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom

Archaeology has added striking evidence. At Kuntillet Ajrud, a way station in the northern Sinai dated to around 800 BCE, inscriptions on storage jars include blessings "by Yahweh of Samaria and his asherah" and "by Yahweh of Teman and his asherah." A tomb inscription from Khirbet el-Qom near Hebron, from roughly the same period, also mentions Yahweh and "his asherah."

Scholars disagree about what these phrases mean. Some argue that they refer to Asherah as a goddess worshiped as Yahweh's consort in popular religion. Others hold that "his asherah" means a cult symbol belonging to Yahweh rather than a separate deity, partly because Hebrew grammar does not usually attach possessive endings to personal names. Many historians conclude that religion in ancient Israel and Judah was more varied than the final biblical texts describe.

Symbols, images and figurines

Asherah is closely associated with trees and with the stylized sacred tree common in ancient Near Eastern art. The Kuntillet Ajrud jars include drawings of a tree flanked by animals, which some interpret as a symbol of the goddess. A cult stand from Taanach in northern Israel shows similar motifs, including a tree with ibexes and a female figure between lions.

Thousands of small clay "Judean pillar figurines" of a woman supporting her breasts have been found in Judah, mostly from the eighth and seventh centuries BCE. They are often linked with Asherah or with household fertility and protection, although this identification cannot be proved, since the figurines carry no names.

Relations with other goddesses

Asherah is sometimes confused with Astarte (Ashtart) and Anat, other important goddesses of the region, and ancient sources themselves occasionally blur their roles. Modern scholars usually distinguish them: Asherah as the mother and consort of the high god, Astarte as a goddess of love and war, and Anat as a fierce warrior goddess and ally of Baal.

Similar names occur in Mesopotamian and South Arabian texts, suggesting a widely known divine figure, but their exact relation to the Canaanite Asherah is uncertain. Biblical references to foreign cults, including those associated with the Midianites, belong to the same world of competing local traditions.

Modern interest and legacy

Since the discoveries at Ugarit in 1928 and at Kuntillet Ajrud in the 1970s, Asherah has become a central topic in the study of ancient Israelite religion. Works such as William G. Dever's Did God Have a Wife? (2005) brought the debate to general readers, while other scholars have urged caution in reconstructing a goddess cult from limited evidence.

Asherah also attracts interest in feminist theology and in modern Goddess spirituality, where she is sometimes honored as a recovered divine feminine. Such contemporary uses are distinct from the historical evidence. Other biblical cult objects later rejected by reforming kings, such as the bronze serpent Nehushtan, show a similar pattern of earlier acceptance followed by condemnation.

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