Francesca Stavrakopoulou

This is like the late Bronze Age, early Iron Age.

And it's a time that's got remarkable similarities to today in the sense that it's a time of mass movement of peoples and migrations because there is economic collapse on the brink.

There is climate crisis going on.

It's the collapse of a lot of the late Bronze City states.

It's a time of huge mobility.

And this little corridor of land, as today, is still a hugely important piece of land in terms of trade, economics, and people going down into Africa, up again into Mesopotamia, and round again.

So there's always people going in and out of Egypt, basically.

And we know that this carries on right into the Roman era and beyond.

From the 8th century BCE, from sites in and around Judah, ancient Judah, so in and around the West Bank, today's West Bank, near Jerusalem, we have inscriptions.

We also have inscriptions in the Sinai Desert, again, dated to the 8th century BCE.

It's almost like a motorway kind of service station, the equivalent in the ancient world.

And we have inscriptions there too.

And these inscriptions, written in Hebrew, ask for blessings from Yahweh and his Asherah.

Now, we know Asherah.

really well we know her from late bronze age texts from the syrian one of the big gods of the levant at this period she's a major yeah yeah she's a big deal she's a huge deal she's almost like the first lady if you like of kind of the the ancient policy the queen of heaven to to use a phrase that is used of her yeah exactly that was something i had in my catholic upbringing but didn't refer to a sharer no but you can see how much recycling goes on in it

So Asherah, known as Atherat in other parts of the Levant, she's most often coupled with the high god of the pantheon.

The high god of the pantheon who is most often sort of semi-retired deity.

He's the kind of the father god.

He's leaving the business of running the cosmos up to his younger generation of gods and goddesses.

The God El.