Asherah

The Mother of the Gods

Domain: Motherhood, Sea & Fertility
Alignment: Neutral Good
Element: Water
Relics of Power: Sacred Pole

Speak with Asherah

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5 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

Canaanites & Phoenicians

Region

Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Israel)

Period

c. 3000 – 300 BC

The Canaanite gods were worshipped by the peoples of the Levant, including the Phoenicians, great navigators and traders of the Mediterranean. Headed by El and the storm god Baal, they were honored in cities such as Ugarit, Tyre, and Carthage. Their myths, rediscovered on the Ugarit tablets, closely echo the biblical traditions.

Worship followed Baal's agricultural cycle, with autumn festivals calling for the rains and laments for his descent into the world of the dead. The faithful worshipped at the "high places" (bamot) and in city temples, with stone steles, incense, and animal sacrifices.

At a glance

Asherah is at once the name of a goddess and a Hebrew word whose meaning specialists still dispute. At Ugarit, a city on the Syrian coast, alphabetic cuneiform texts call her Athirat (ʾaṯrt) and present her as the wife and companion of the god El and as the mother of the gods; Lemaire (2024, §3.5) sums up this position with the title qnyt ʾilm, “creator of the gods”, and with her link to the sea (ʾaṯrt ym). In the Baal Cycle, she is the one who receives the gifts of the storm god and Anat and then speaks to El so that Baal may have a palace. In the Hebrew Bible, by contrast, the word ʾăšērâ appears chiefly as a cult object planted or set up beside altars, next to stone pillars (maṣṣēbôt) and hilltop shrines (bāmôt). The law of Deuteronomy 16:21 forbids planting “an asherah, any tree” beside the altar of Yahweh, and the books of Kings tell how kings of Judah and Israel raised one, and how Hezekiah and Josiah destroyed it. Two eighth-century BCE inscriptions, one from Kuntillet Ajrud in the Sinai and one from Khirbet el-Qom in Judah, bless someone “by Yahweh and by his asherah”. That formula led many scholars to see a goddess consort of Yahweh; others, such as André Lemaire, read an object or sacred grove tied to Yahweh’s sanctuary, and still others understand the word as “sanctuary”. This entry does not pick a side: it shows what each source opens, cites every claim, and marks where the evidence ends.

18 min read · Reviewed on October 14, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The sacred tree, the wooden pole, the lion and the sea

Family

Asherah

Unions

El (supreme god of Ugarit; Lemaire describes Athirat as his paredra and mother of the gods)Yahweh (association debated: the inscriptions of Kuntillet Ajrud and Khirbet el-Qom link the asherah to Yahweh, but Lemaire reads it as a tree or grove, not a goddess)

Children

The sons and kinsfolk of Athirat, about whom she fears, in the Baal Cycle (Ginsberg translation, ANET), that they have slain one another; later in the cycle they appear as Baal’s enemies

Genealogy according to Lemaire 2024 (Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology 7); Ginsberg em ANET (Ciclo de Baal); catálogo Ugaritic Texts do WSRP; Sefaria (Êxodo, Deuteronômio, Juízes, Reis, Crônicas, Jeremias); Robertson Smith 1894; Wikipédia, Kuntillet Ajrud e Khirbet el-Qom

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

H. L. Ginsberg (trans.), in J. B. Pritchard (ed.), Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd ed. (Ugaritic Myths, Epics, and Legends). translation: English translation of the Baal Cycle and the Legend of Keret. read
Scribes of Ugarit, Ugaritic Texts (catálogo/catalogue). translation: Catalogue of Ugaritic texts of the West Semitic Research Project. read
Masoretic tradition, Tanakh (Exodus, Deuteronomy, Judges, Kings, Chronicles, Jeremiah). translation: Hebrew text with English translation at Sefaria. read
King James Translation (1611), The Holy Bible, King James Version. translation: King James Bible, full text. read
Inscriptions from Khirbet el-Kom and Kuntillet Ajrud, Hebrew inscriptions (Uriyahu; pithoi). translation: Inscriptions of Khirbet el-Kom and Kuntillet Ajrud discussed by Lemaire. read

Studies

André Lemaire, Judahite Hebrew Epigraphy and Cult. Jerusalem Journal of Archaeology 7, 2024. open
W. Robertson Smith, Lectures on the Religion of the Semites. A. & C. Black (Internet Archive), 1894. open
Wikipedia, Kuntillet Ajrud. Wikipedia, 2026. open
Wikipedia, Khirbet el-Qom. Wikipedia, 2026. open

Name and epithets

The Ugaritic form of the name is ʾaṯrt, conventionally read Athirat, and it occurs in formulas such as “Athirat of the sea” (ʾaṯrt ym) and “Athirat of the Tyrians”, the latter tied to the Legend of Keret (Lemaire 2024,…

In the ancient sources

Baal Cycle (tablets KTU 1.1–1.6), Ugarit, second millennium BCE. Main source of the image of Athirat as queen mother of the pantheon, intercessor for Baal and adviser to El. The episodes in this entry follow H. L.

The myths

Baal’s palace and Athirat’s mediation (Baal Cycle, tablet 4). In Ginsberg’s translation (ANET), Baal sends messengers to Anat so that she will join him in a visit to Athirat, “Lady Asherah of the Sea,” the “Progenitress…

Worship and archaeology

The cult of Athirat at Ugarit can only be described from what the Baal Cycle and the offering lists let us see. The West Semitic Research Project catalogue shows lists of sacrifices, calendars of obligations and lists o…

How the god was depicted

The iconography of Asherah is uncertain. The most cited images come from Kuntillet Ajrud, where the large jars (pithoi) bear drawings of animals, stylized trees and human figures, some of which may represent gods (Wikip…

What scholars debate

Goddess, tree, pole or sanctuary? The four readings of ʾšrh. Lemaire (2024, §3.5) summarizes the four proposals for the term.

After antiquity

The reception of Asherah went through three moments that the open sources allow us to reconstruct. First, ancient translators and traditional commentators understood her as a tree or grove: the Septuagint used alsos, th…

Did you know?

The King James Bible, available from Project Gutenberg, uses “grove” in dozens of passages, among them Exodus 34:13, Judges 3:7 and 6:25–30, and Deuteronomy 16:21.

Codex relic

Sacred Pole. The tree or wooden pole raised in her honor, symbol of springing life and the fertile womb.

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