Richter

(in his large work on Cyprus), as being a pole or post. [But this had long been pointed out by others. —Ep.] In the Tell el Amarna tablets—as Col, Conder has shown— the name ’Abd-Ashérah (belonging to an Amorite chief in the Lebanon) signifies “servant of Ashérah,” and the word Ashérah is preceded by “the sign for deity.” This term is rendered “the grove” in our English version of the Old Testament, In As syria the god Asir or A iir appears as a human archer, with wings and tail of an eagle (sometimes in a circular ring), shooting with the bow. His emblem was an artificial tree. [The same form occurs also in Phoenicia, and. even on Persian cylinder-seals as representing Ormazd.—Ep.] He wears the horned tiara, as did the A yrian bull Cherubs, and is sometimes ithyphallik (see Proc. Bib. Arch. Socy., June 1897, plate iii, 4). He is a sun god, without whose arrows (see Arrows) there is neither ~ light nor life (Proc. Bib. Arch. Socy., Feb. 1900), In the Rig Veda Astra-Maho (“the great spirit”) is a form of Rudra, called the “powerful: the archer, with the strong bow, and the sure arrow” (Rig Veda, Il, i. 4-6; V,x. 11; VII, xlvi, 1). In India to-day the bow is the weapon of the great Mahésa, In the Bible (1 Kings xv, 13) King Asa’s mother is said to have made an Ashérah which was a “shameful” emblem (“idol in a grove”), such as Herodotos saw on Syrian monuments (the Xteis). 194