This source of comparatively late origin names a deity' **** or ***** as one of the major gods worshipped by the Phoenicians.37 That this was an astral deity follows from the statement of our text that Kronos-Elos was revered as the "star of Kronos."38 As in the terminology of the Greeks the "star of Kronos" is the planet Saturn, there remains little doubt that for the Phoenicians dealt with by Sanchuniathon this planet was El, the god par excellence.
The Phoenician deity Saturn, much as his Babylonian counterpart, was believed to be the son of the earth referred to by Philo as Ge.39 He, too, was involved in a terrible fight,40 after the victorious outcome of which he "surrounded his abode by a wall and founded as the first city Byblos in Phoenicia."41 Thus it is learned that in Byblos, much as in Nippur, Saturn's worshippers believed that their city had been founded by their god as the world's first city and that this settlement was built around a Saturn-sanctuary surrounded by a wall.
In further agreement with the Babylonian legend the Greek version relates42) that the city newly founded was given by Saturn to a goddess whose name Baaltis has, no doubt, the meaning "Lady (of Byblos)." On the other hand, Sanchuniathon's account contains one important piece of information about the god Saturn of which there is no trace in any Babylonian source: If, in consequence of a war, pestilence, or other public calamity, Saturn's congregation was threatened with catastrophe, it was customary that the ruler of the respective community sacrificed his most beloved child to that planet.43)
This custom, in turn, is explained by the legend that Saturn himself sacrificed his son on an altar when pestilence threatened his congregation.44) In fact, child-sacrifices appear to have been so typical a trait of the cult of the planet Saturn that still in the Middle Ages this star was known as the "children-devouring planet."
In the last place, our investigation into the cult of the planet Saturn must make use of mediaeval Arabic sources, not only because they contain legendary reminiscences of the pre-Islamic Arabian religions but also because they describe the worship of the planetary deities as practiced in the Near East until the Turks, more intolerant than their predecessors, extinguished the last remnants of the ancient Semitic religions.
Ad-Dimišgî, who devotes a full chapter of his Cosmography to the religious practices of the star-worshippers, relates that a temple of Saturn "was built in the form of a hexagon, black (being the color) of the stone work and the curtains."46) Whereas, to judge by the ancient Saturn-temples at Lagaš as well as elsewhere, the reference to the hexagon form must be due to a confusion,47) the predominance of the color black is well in line with the information provided by cuneiform sources; for there, no less than in mediaeval works on astrology, Saturn is frequently called the "black" or "dark" planet.43) Yet a remark of al-Mascûdî46) suggests that not necessarily the whole temple was built of black stone; for when this author relates that, in the opinion of the worshippers of the stars, the Kaaba at Mecca used to be a shrine of Saturn he implies that the presence of one sacred black stone such as the famous Hagar al-aswad characterized the sanctuary as a temple of Saturn. The correctness of al-Mascûdî's information is proved, at least indirectly, by the name of the idol which, according to the unanimous testimony of our Islamic sources, was worshipped in the Kacba in the pre-Mohammedan period. It was called Hubal 50) a name which, derived from the root **** has the meaning "He who violently deprives the mother of her children."
The manner in which the divine lord of Mecca was assumed to take children from their mothers is illustrated by the well-known legend told about Mohammed's grandfather, Abd al-Muttalib. He is reported to have vowed to sacrifice one of his sons to Hubal if he would be blessed with ten sons.52) For thus it is clear that the god worshipped in the Kaaba was wont to accept, or perhaps to demand, child-sacrifices from his worshippers. Since, as we have seen above,53) such sacrifices were considered a trait most characteristic of the planet Saturn, there remains no doubt that the tradition according to which the Kaaba was a sanctuary of Saturn is more trustworthy than is generally assumed.
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In applying to the pre-Israelite cult of Jerusalem and the Solomonic Temple the information thus gathered about the worship of the planet Saturn, we begin by calling attention to two significant external features of the sanctuary on Mt. Morîiâ. In I Ki. 6.20 it is related that the Holy of Holies measured 20 cubits in length, in width, and in height. Hence it had the same characteristic form of a cube which, to judge by its name "Cube", the Kacba at Mecca must originally have had.56) A further detail is revealed by the verse Cant. I. 5, where a young country belle is said to have exclaimed : "I am black, but comely, oh ye daughters of Jerusalem; as the tents of Kedar, as the curtains of Solomon." In the passage quoted above, p. 339, from ad-Dimišgî's Cosmography, black curtains are, in fact, listed as one of the traits typical of the temples of Saturn. It is perhaps not a mere coincidence that the Kaaba, today much as in the early centuries of Islam, is covered by a carpet of black cloth.
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Far more important from the point of view of the present discussion are the traditions dealing with the wells and water courses within the temple area proper. In the Jerusalem Talmud we read the following legend :62)
When David was digging the canals for the sanctuary, he dug fifteen-hundred cubits deep but did not reach the nether waters (tehôm) . Finally he hit a rock which he wanted to remove, even though the rock warned him not to do so because it was covering up the abyss. When, in spite of this warning, David lifted the rock, the tehôm rose and threatened to flood the earth. Thereupon it was decided to inscribe the Name of the Lord upon the stone and to throw it into the flood waters. Immediately the flood subsided, but the waters sank to so great a depth that the earth was now menaced by a drought.
The beginning of this legend vividly recalls a passage in Aššûr-nâsirapli's Annals, where, describing the preparations for the construction of the Ninurta-temple at Kalhu, the Assyrian king expresses himself as follows :
"I dug down to the level of the water, to a depth of one hundred and twenty layers of brick63) I penetrated. The temple of Ninurta, my Lord, I founded in its midst."64)
The reason why both David and Aššûr-nâsir-arpli dug down to the level of the nether water is somewhat illuminated by the fact that in the interior of the Kaaba at Mecca, there is a well across the opening of which was placed, in the pre-Islamic period, the statue of the god Hubal.05) That still in the Islamic period this well, though usually dry, was in communication with the subsoil water follows from al-Bîrûnî's remark that at the time of the Arafa-pilgrimage, it used to be full of water so that the pilgrims could quench their thirst.G7)
It is significant that in Mecca and, to all appearances, also in the Ninurta-temple at Kalhu, the well communicating with the subsoil water was within the shrine itself and not, as was usual in ancient Oriental sanctuaries, in the court yard.08) For this peculiarity suggests that a special relation was assumed to have existed between the deity inhabiting the shrine and the subsoil waters called by the Hebrews tehôm. The nature of this relation is elucidated by the aforementioned fact that the statue of Hubal was placed upon the opening of the well; for this indicates that the deity's own body was thought to prevent the nether waters from rising and flooding the earth. Now there is evidence to show that this same belief had once been current in Jerusalem.
In the afore-cited Talmudic legend, it was a stone, usually referred to in Jewish literature as Eben šetîiâ, which retained the tehôm within its bounds. Now according to other passages found in the post-biblical sources, the Solomonic Temple was built in such a way that the Eben šetîiâ was in the center of the Holy of Holiest, and upon it stood the Ark of the Covenant, Jahweh's earthly throne.71)
Thus it is evident that, much as in the Kaaba Hubal stood over the well connecting his sanctuary with the nether waters, so in the Jerusalemite Temple Jahweh throned above the opening by way of which the waters of the tehôm. were assumed to have flooded the earth. However, before Jahweh assumed the task of holding in check the destructive nether waters, another deity appears to have played this rôle in Jerusalem : the god embodied by the Eben šetîiâ.
That divine honors were actually rendered to this stone even by the Jews becomes particularly clear from the well-known remark in the Itinerarium Hierosolymit. of the Pilgrim of Bordeaux regarding the "lapis pertusus, ad quern veniunt Judaei singulis annis et unguent eum et lamentant se cum gemitu "72)
Further evidence to the same effect is supplied by the fact that, even as to the sacred stones of the pagan Arabs,73) sacrificial blood was applied to the Eben šetîiâ and incense was burnt on it. 75) It is equally significant that, in spite of the important part which, to judge by the post-biblical traditions, the stone appears to have played in the ritual of the Solomonic Temple, no mention of it is made in the biblical books recounting the construction of this sanctuary. Manifestly, the biblical writers considered the Eben šetîiâ so grossly a piece of heathendom that they refused to take notice of it.
Now it is a well-known fact that among the Semites, and particularly among the ancient inhabitants of the Arabian peninsula, stones frequently received divine honors.77) The real character of this stone-cult is easily explained if it is remembered that it was practiced by the same populations among which the worship of the heavenly bodies, and particularly of the seven planets, had its origin.78)
The connection between the religion of the stars and the veneration of stones is elucidated by a passage in Sanchuniathon-Philo-Byblios' work, where it is said that meteorites, being considered "stars fallen from the air," played a prominent rôle in the cult of the Phoenicians.
It is of particular importance to note that the meteorite referred to by the Phoenician author was set up and worshipped at "Tyre, the sacred island."79) For the name of this sacred meteorite of Tyre can be inferred from the treaty concluded by Aššûr-ah-iddina with Baal, king of Tyre. As usual in documents of this character, the treaty ends with an enumeration of the deities whom each of the two contracting parties entreated to punish the violator of the terms agreed upon. Now the first among the deities invoked by the king of Tyre is called Ba-a-a-ti. ilani meš, a name in which Langdon recognized the West Semitic Bêt-êl 82) well known from the Bible and from West Semitic theophoric proper names. 83) That this Tyrian god Bêt-êl actually is the sacred meteorite mentioned by Sanchuniathon-Philo Byblios is suggested by a further remark in these authors' work where ****** in general are defined as "inspirited stones" ******
In order to understand the full implication of this definition, we call attention to the belief held by the ancient star-worshippers about the nature of their deities. Since, as will be shown elsewhere, these ideas remained basically unchanged from the period attested by the cuneiform sources until the Middle Ages, we recapitulate, for the sake of convenience, the pertinent information provided by aš-ahrastânî (Haarbrücker, op. cit., II, pp. 66 f.) and ad-Dimišgî (op. cit., p. 47) :
The planetary gods were thought to be spiritual in character but each of them had its particular abode or body. These haiâkil or abdân of the planetary deities are the seven moving stars visible in the sky, and the rûh, or spirit, of each of them is to its haikal in the relation of the human soul to the human body. As the Arabic term haikal, "temple", "sanctuary" conveys much the same idea as the HebrewBêt-êl or the Akkadian bit ili, we realize that the meteorites worshipped by the ancient Semites were conceived as divine beings of exactly the same nature as the planets: they, too, consisted of a visible abode, a bit or haikal, inspirited and inhabited by a rûh, or soul.
These inferences are of particular interest for the subject here discussed because the most famous of the sacred stones of the Arabs, the Hagar al-aswad in the Kaaba at Mecca, actually is a meteorite.86)
As, on the other hand, this Black Stone was revered in a sanctuary dedicated to the cult of the "Black Planet" Saturn,86) we comprehend that a black meteorite, or a black stone resembling a meteorite, was thought to be a piece of the "Black Planet", which means a part of the body of a great god which, therefore, deserved the same veneration as the planet itself.87)
Thus it is apparent that the well connecting the temple with the nether waters could be sealed off either by the statue of the deity or by the black meteorite; in each case it was the god's body that was assumed to prevent the subsoil water from flooding the earth.
Still, the question might be raised why in some instances a black stone and in others an image of the god fulfilled this function. The answer to this question can be inferred from the afore-cited mediaeval treatises exposing the views of the star-worshippers with regard to their deities: In their belief, man can turn in prayer and supplication only to a being visible to his eyes.
