Ancient Akkadian cylinder seal depicting the goddess Inanna resting her foot on a lion while Ninshubur stands in front paying obeisance, (c. 2350–2150 BCE). Photo by Sailko on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0).
Years ago, across the Levant and the land surrounding it, Woman was worshiped.
The “Queen of Heaven” went by different names across different cities, but the evidence that remains—despite aggressive attempts to erase it—depicts thriving, sustainable societies during the eras of Her worship. She was named Astarte in Phoenicia, Anat in Canaan, Inanna in Sumer, Ishtar in Babylon, Cybele in Anatolia, Allat in Arabia, Isis and Hathor in Egypt, and Neith in Libya. This general list hardly illustrates the breadth of her worship. She was quite literally everywhere, not only as a sacred omnipresence but as a cultural icon: Goddess idols, charms, statues, and plaques were revered in temples, private homes, and political gathering places. Her face was carved into coins. She was implored to protect ships, heal the sick, and ensure bountiful harvests. Her influence was widespread for thousands and thousands of years, up until the violent patriarchal order arrived.
Then, man was worshiped.
“Violent patriarchal order” is what remains today. That we use male pronouns for God—and in turn believe in male prophets, adopt the masculine as the avatar for humanity, celebrate sons and resent daughters, pass citizenship and inheritance patrilineally, elect men for political office, entrust men to act as sacred guides in all places of worship—is as much political as it is religious. We only need to look as far as our current catastrophic times to witness the reality of a patriarchal apex and the damaging imperialistic systems it abets. We find ourselves, as we have throughout history, at the mercy of a handful of men. Unquestioned at their helms, fueled by greed, and operating through the delusion of divine entitlement, these “leaders” are actively destroying our world.
Our perception that modernity harms what is “ancient and sacred” stems from the threat to male power. But another set of “traditions” existed long before man built his own altar. What can we learn from the era of the Goddess, and how do we meaningfully build a path forward in the Levant and beyond?
Venus of Willendorf figurine, viewed from all four sides. Displayed at the Naturhistorisches Museum in Vienna, Austria. Photo by Bjørn Christian Tørrissen on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
As it was decreed by God
Patriarchal order can exist unchecked universally because we first experience it privately, within our families. It has made itself synonymous with “tradition” to keep out of reach of criticism and discourage retaliation. This is intentional. Questioning, speaking out, or demanding change is meant to feel taboo. Progress is meant to feel blasphemous. It is only by shrouding itself in tradition and the deep sentiments this word invokes that the violent patriarchal order continues to rule both the home and the state.
As a young girl, I did not know how to articulate that I was perceived and treated differently than my brother or male cousins. I rightly sensed that things were unfair. I remember one transgression in language that I ruminated over as a young teen: I was the firstborn in my family, but my father became “Abu Layth” and my mother “Umm Layth” when my little brother arrived thirteen years after me. When I asked hard questions, time and time again I was met with: “Because this is how it was decreed by God.” Of course, responding “because” to “why” is a thin veil. It suggests that the logic behind these beliefs does not exist.
When we think of tradition as doing things “a certain way for a long time,” the timestamp should be considered more closely here. Why? Abrahamic religions have only been in place for less than 3000 years. Goddess worship, on the conservative estimate, was in place for nearly eight thousand years—7000 BC until the closing of the last Goddess temples in 500 AD. Proof exists to suggest that Goddess worship tracks as far back as 25,000 BC. This is a miraculously longer period than the brief moments after Abraham.
So when we talk about “tradition” objectively, we must include the several millennia that doubtlessly live in our collective psyche, deep in our ancestral bones. Attempting to imagine the future of the Levant while excluding Goddess worship is ignorant and short-sighted. “Tradition” cannot be wielded meaningfully against revolution, progress, or reform if we are selective with what little bits of history we choose to include.
We must understand that modernity—at least when it concerns equality and women’s rights and rites—is far more aligned with our actual history and tradition than we have been led to believe.
God as Mother
What did it look like? What privileges did the women of our societies enjoy when God was a Woman—a Mother, a Warrior, a Scribe, a manifestation of Love, the source of all Creation and all Knowledge? While a comprehensive list is beyond the scope of this article, the excerpts below would be considered progressive by today’s standards.
Bronze relief sculpture of Isis (1st century BCE – 2nd century CE), discovered in Amrit, Syria. Department of Egyptian Antiquities, Room 180, Louvre Museum. Photo by Rama on Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0 FR).
In ancient Egypt, Isis was hailed as the “Goddess from whom all Becoming Arose.” Accounts from the Greek historians Herodotus, Diodorus, and Sophocles remark on the freedom of Egyptian women; They traveled to the market to trade and conduct business while their husbands stayed at home to weave on looms. Inheritance was passed matrilineally. Because daughters received property and money from their mothers, financial independence for women of a certain class was the norm. Evidence uncovered in tombs suggest women courted and chose their own husbands, and they occupied leadership roles in both the military and government. Interestingly, this freedom is demonized by name in the Old Testament: the “lewdness and harlotry brought from the land of Egypt” a direct threat to “the Lord God”.
Detail of the lower part of the limestone stela depicting Qeh and his family worshipping the goddess Anat. Discovered in Abydos, Egypt, around 1250 BCE. Department of Egypt and Sudan, the British Museum. Photo by The Trustees of the British Museum (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
In Ugarit in northern Canaan (modern-day Latakia in Syria), the Goddess Anat was revered as “the Strong,” undeniable “Mistress of the High Heavens.” Her powerful lore includes her singlehanded slaughter of Mot, the god of death and personification of evil. Excavations in Ugarit reveal that women held high positions in their home. Divorced and widowed women kept their property, and husbands left possessions to their wives rather than their children. Women across Canaan could hold roles in government, independently operate businesses, and give testimonies as witnesses.
Phoenician coin from Sidon that dates back to the 4th-3rd century BCE. The coin depicts the goddess Astarte standing on a ship with a star above, symbolizing fertility and protection. Photo by Reinhard Saczewsk. The Münzkabinett collection, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. Modified under (Public Domain Mark 1.0).
In neighboring Phoenicia, women held exclusive and prestigious roles as temple priestesses. They were responsible for conducting religious ceremonies, and they served worshippers who sought favors and protection from the Goddess—known affectionately in the city states as “Our Lady.” When it came to social life, surviving carvings show both women and men sharing space at tables, playing instruments, and wearing finery. Coins from Sidon (modern-day Saida) depict the Goddess Astarte guiding a Phoenician vessel with her hand, providing blessings and safety. “These people respected their women,” writes historian Sanford Holst. “The honor and deference they accorded to Mother Nature seemed to carry over to all of the women in their community.” Even the most well-known Phoenician women in the Western canon—Europa, Dido, and Jezebel—were all eminent political figures whose power and influence persists to this day in their lore.
Trends across Mesopotamia (modern-day Iraq) are particularly compelling because of surviving documentation. In Sumer and Babylon, Ishtar reigned as “Queen of Heaven, Goddess of the Universe” who “led us by the hand” from Chaos. Ishtar’s following remained strong even as the region had begun to incorporate patriarchal trends. Permission for marriage had to be received from both the mother and father of the bride and groom. Polyandry—the practice of marrying more than one husband—was acceptable for many years. But during the patriarchal Sumerian reforms of Urukagina in 2300 BC, this “adultery” is condemned only as it relates to women: “The women of former days used to take two husbands but the women of today would be stoned if they did this.”
From its dawn in the Paleolithic and Neolithic, the era of Goddess worship extended across continents and over bodies of water—from Anatolia to India, Crete to Canaan, Babylon to Greece, Egypt to Ethiopia. “Mother Earth” mythologies, in which the Goddess was the ultimate source of life and sustenance, continued to evolve with their respective communities. The women of these societies were in turn revered the same way—not only as cultivators and gatherers, but as mothers, the source of all humanity.
The “Queen of the Night” relief, a Mesopotamian terracotta plaque (c. 1800-1750 BCE), depicts Inanna and represents themes of power and the underworld in ancient Mesopotamian mythology. Photo by The Trustees of the British Museum, modified under (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).
The Fall of Mother Earth, the Rise of Eve
The loss of our Goddess was not a gradual act of nature, nor was Her disappearance the product of some universal epiphany. She was targeted by invaders. Over the course of centuries, the violent patriarchal order sought out, outlawed, and eradicated her followers. The social status of women predictably plunged with Her downfall.
Indo-European invaders from the north—in their quest to erase the Goddess and instill the new patriarchal order—destroyed idols, plaques, sculptures, and written records. As cities were invaded and converted, mythologies were rewritten. The Goddess was often demoted to the “wife” or “consort” of a male God. The Hittite conquest in Anatolia, for example, assigned the Sun Goddess of Arinna a husband. In Sumer, the once-powerful Goddess of the Underworld Ereshkigal is dragged from her throne and forced to marry Her attacker, the god Nergal. In other instances, the Goddess was either edited out completely or She was antagonized as demonic, associated with darkness and evil. Temples were burned down (sometimes with believers still inside) or converted to accommodate a male God. Goddess worshipers were termed pagans and polytheists, and for this crime they were systematically displaced, slaughtered, raped, stoned, converted, and enslaved.
In Abrahamic texts, hatred for the Goddess and Her followers is central. She is the enemy. The Old Testament inadvertently documents the Goddess’s widespread worship and appeal: Samuel cautions worshipers to “rid yourselves of the foreign gods and the [Astarte]s and commit yourselves to the Lord and serve him only” (Samuel 7:3). Jeremiah illustrates harmless Goddess rituals: “children gather wood, fathers kindle fire, and women knead their dough to make cakes to the Queen of Heaven.” But these acts apparently “provoke [God] to anger” (7:18). In explicit detail, Deuteronomy (21:10–14) expresses instructions for Hebrew invaders to take a wife from their “pagan” captives, only after giving her a month to “mourn her father and mother.” Then she is raped by her now-husband, who has slaughtered her entire family. In Surah An-Nisa in the Quran (4:117), Goddess worshipers are called out by name: “Allah will not tolerate idolatry […] The pagans pray to females, a rebellious Satan.” In both the Bible and Torah, certain cities are referenced, and serpent and cow imagery—long associated with Goddess worship—are invoked to symbolically admonish Her “cult.”
A terracotta figurine from the Roman, Egyptian Imperial period (ca. 2nd century CE) featuring a woman flanked by two caps, symbolizing a deity or high-status individual. Gift of Joseph W. Drexel, 1889. On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 171. (Public Domain).
Male anger at the Goddess was supposedly righteous as it stemmed from a perceived moralistic highground. Even back then, the “sacred” was weaponized by men. Abrahamic religions labelled pagan sexual rituals as perverse and immoral, yet murder and rape were justified in the same breath. The exalted priestesses who participated in sacred religious ceremonies were suddenly termed “temple prostitutes” and villainized.
It is obvious why liberated women would subvert patriarchal order. For thousands of years, these tribes followed matrilineal kinship and inheritance patterns, where mothers passed down their belongings and land to their children. Maternity was undeniable (mothers became pregnant and birthed children), whereas paternity was less significant and perhaps not fully understood (fathers participated in conception but had nothing to do with pregnancy or birth). A patriarchal society founded around patrilineal kinship, by definition, cannot allow female sexual agency.
Thus the violent patriarchal order created “divine” laws around women’s bodies. Virginity before marriage became sacrosanct and a wife’s infidelity was punishable by death. Even a widow became the property of her husband’s brother or father. In reality, these perceived “virtues” had absolutely nothing to do with divine order and everything to do with establishing paternity. How convenient that these rules were written and enforced by men.
The frantic erasure of Woman is perhaps clearest in the Biblical moniker for humanity, “Son of Man,” which not only suggests motherhood is not worth naming, but outright excludes it. All sons arrive in this world through a womb. Eve’s manifestation from a man’s rib is far less likely than Adam’s from a vagina. Yet in a broad and ignorant stroke we’ve erased the all-mighty Queen of Heaven and adopted the meek, subservient “helper” of man, born of his rib and blamed for his exile.
Ivory plaque of a “Woman Looking Through a Window,” possibly symbolizing the goddess Astarte and themes of sacred prostitution and religious iconography. From the 8th century BCE, likely from Arslan Tash, Syria. Exhibited at the Louvre, Paris, Room 230. Photo by Rama, on Wikimedia Commons. Modified under (CC BY-SA 3.0 FR).
Back to the Indigenous
Why is it that clinging to “tradition” so often coincides with upholding the patriarchy? How we’ve come to perceive and treat women—whether it’s the refusal to allow Lebanese women to pass Lebanese citizenship to their children, or the denial of a mother’s custody during a divorce, or the horrific honor killings, rapes, and attacks that women continue to suffer at the hands of men—is a result of the violent patriarchal order, all masquerading under the guise of “tradition.”
It is a fragile front. True “tradition” in the Levant—the indigenous ideologies that we upheld for centuries and centuries—aligns solidly with women’s rights. It is long past time to put an end to the disingenuous weaponization of “tradition.”
Modernity is perceived as a threat because the powers that be understand what they stand to lose. The violent patriarchal apex will always oppose those who challenge its flimsy sanctity, just as the oppressor will always oppose liberation. We have been trained not to question Abrahamic religions or the politics, cultures, and societal scripts they’ve manufactured. Critical thinking should not be synonymous with blasphemy. Who has the most to gain from these systems, and who continues to suffer when their arbitrary rules are enforced?
Change is necessary at the political level, but only after we—women from the Levant and the land surrounding it—internalize what our powerful ancestors already knew, and implement it both privately and within our circles. Misogyny is a product of the patriarchy. Woman is not inherently ‘less’ than man, and we have absolutely no business internalizing any part of the illogical patriarchal script. We exist beyond the relational roles of “mother” or “wife,” beyond the religious dichotomies of “prostitute” or “virgin.” We are infinitely more than the sum of our parts. We deserve to be trusted, respected, cared for, believed, and exalted. We deserve no less than to be worshiped. After all, it’s tradition.
References
Collins, Sheila D. 1974. A Different Heaven and Earth. N.p.: Judson Press.
Holst, Sanford. 2011. Phoenician Secrets: Exploring the Ancient Mediterranean. N.p.: Santorini Books.
Stone, Merlin. 1978. When God Was a Woman. N.p.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Woolmer, Mark. 2017. A Short History of the Phoenicians. N.p.: I.B.Tauris.
Ghinwa Jawhari
Ghinwa Jawhari is the author of the chapbook "BINT" (2021) and a recipient of fellowships from Kundiman and the Asian American Writers' Workshop. Her essays, fiction, and poetry appear in Catapult, The Margins, Mizna, The Adroit Journal, Split This Rock, and elsewhere.
- Ghinwa Jawhari
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