The Cult of Venus by David S Brody

Author:David S Brody [Brody, David S]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780990741336
Publisher: Eyes That See Publishing
Published: 2017-10-05T06:00:00+00:00

Amanda had a funny feeling about Astarte traveling. She knew better than to ignore her intuition, but short of forbidding the girl from going on the ski club trip, the best she could come up with for a solution was to, well, follow her up to Vermont. Thankfully Cam had been of the same mind.

After walking Astarte to the bus stop, she flopped into an oversized chair overlooking the lake with her laptop and turned back to her research on Goddess iconography in America. A researcher from Oklahoma named Gloria Farley, in her book, In Plain Sight, had documented a number of Tanit goddess figurines in the American Southwest. But before she looked closely at the Farley book, Amanda dug deeper into who exactly Tanit was.

Tanit originated in the ancient port city of Ugarit, in what was today northern Syria, around 1,400 BCE. The local peoples of Ugarit may have sacrificed children to her. The neighboring Phoenicians (of modern-day Lebanon) then adopted her. Her popularity spread throughout the Mediterranean as Phoenician maritime influence did, the enterprising, sea-based Phoenicians having built a trading empire in the Mediterranean between 1,500 BCE and 300 BCE.

Amanda found an article written by Zena Halpern, a New York researcher and author, who explained how the famous Uluburun shipwreck off the coast of Turkey, dating back to 1,300 BCE, contained Tanit figurines brought along to protect the ship and its sailors from danger. What was remarkable about this find was that it proved that men in ancient times worshiped the Goddess. Amanda knew that women had done so, but she was surprised to learn about the sailors. The crew referred to the Goddess as “Lady Asherah of the Sea,” Asherah being an early name for Tanit. The Uluburun wreck was not an isolated find, as additional Tanit figurines from Biblical times having been found in shipwrecks throughout the Mediterranean. In fact, one of those ships, wrecked around 750 BCE, was itself named Tanit.

Apparently Tanit’s influence spread beyond the Mediterranean as well. As Zena Halpern wrote, “The metal trade spread west in the Mediterranean from major ports. The Goddess was carried on these Phoenician ships out to the Atlantic, to Britain, Wales, Ireland, Scotland and to America, where her symbol is found in over a dozen states.”

Amanda turned away from her computer screen and stared at the lake. Had ancient sailors really brought Tanit to America? She knew, as Zena Halpern implied, that the Phoenicians were trading for tin in the British Isles. This was during the Bronze Age, when tin and copper were needed to fuel the growing need for bronze weapons, tools, utensils and ornaments. Many historians believed the Phoenicians had a secret source of copper, a trade secret which Phoenician crews protected with their lives, and that this secret source was the Great Lakes region of America. She and Cam believed, and the research supported, that the Phoenicians had not only stopped on the way to the Great Lakes to build the America’s Stonehenge ceremonial

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