Yarikh

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Yarikh
Member of Gaṯarāma/
Gaṯarūma[1]
Other namesArakh, Erakh
Major cult centerLarugadu, Ugarit, Jericho, Beth Yerach
PlanetMoon
Personal information
SpouseNikkal (in Ugarit)
Equivalents
Mesopotamian equivalentSin
Hurrian equivalentKušuḫ

Yarikh (

Ugaritic pantheon
due to the influence of Hurrian religion.

Ugarit ceased to exist during the

Bronze Age collapse, and while Yarikh continued to be worshiped in the Levant and Transjordan, attestations from the first millennium BCE are relatively rare. He played a small role in Phoenician, Punic, Ammonite and Moabite religions, and appears only in a small number of theophoric names from these areas. It is also presumed that he was worshiped by the Israelites and that the cities of Jericho and Beth Yerach were named after him. While the Hebrew Bible
contains multiple polemics against the worship of the moon, it is not certain if they necessarily refer to Yarikh.

Name

The name Yarikh (Yariḫ; 𐎊𐎗𐎃 YRḪ

celestial body.[2] A further meaning attested for it is "month."[2] Earlier forms of the name, (Y)arakh and (Y)erakh, are attested as elements of Amorite theophoric names.[6]

The name is grammatically masculine,[7] which is the norm for lunar deities across the Ancient Near East, in contrast with Greece, where the moon corresponded to a female deity, Selene.[8]

Cognates of Yarikh's name are present in many Semitic languages.[9] As a name for the celestial body and the ordinary word "month" they are attested in Hebrew: ירח YRḤ, Phoenician: 𐤉𐤓𐤇 YRḤ, Old Aramaic: 𐡉𐡓𐡇 YRḤ (however, the name of the Aramaic moon god, Śahr, is not a cognate[6]); Palmyrene Aramaic: 𐡩𐡴𐡧 YRḤ; and Nabataean Aramaic: 𐢌𐢛𐢊 YRḤ).[2] The Akkadian word warḫum, "month" or rarely "moon," is a cognate as well,[6] as are Old South Arabian wrḫ, "month," and the word warḫ, "moon" or "month," present in Ethiopian Semitic languages.[2]

In early Amorite tradition

It is presumed that the moon god was one of the major deities of the early Amorite pantheon.

Šanugaru.[17] Due to Yarikh's association with Larugardu, it has additionally been argued that the god Hadabal (dNI.DA.KUL), who was worshiped there in the third millennium BCE, had lunar character,[9] but this conclusion is not universally accepted.[16] Alfonso Archi assumes that the diffusion of Hadabal's cult, whose territorial extent is well documented in Eblaite texts, does not appear to match his presumed astral character.[16]

Yarikh (Erakh) is well attested in Amorite

Khabur Triangle (where particularly many are attested), the area around the Balikh, Suhum and Zalmaqum.[20] A certain Yantin-Erakh served as a troop commander under Zimri-Lim.[21] Similar theophoric names are also known from Eshnunna.[22] A document excavated there indicates that at one point in the Old Babylonian period a certain Abdi-Erakh was a king of an unspecified city in Mesopotamia.[23] After its initial discovery, Thorkild Jacobsen proposed that he ruled Eshnunna itself, but this view has since been disproved.[23] Another Abdi-Erakh, a contemporary of Ipiq-Adad of Eshnunna, apparently ruled over Ilip and Kish.[24]

It is sometimes argued that in Mesopotamia Erakh/Yarikh and Sin might have been understood as, respectively, Amorite and Akkadian names of the same deity, rather than two separate moon gods.[10][12] However, Ichiro Nakata lists them separately from each other in his overview of deities attested in Mari, unlike the various variants of the names of the weather or solar gods.[19] The deity Sin-Amurrum, attested in the incantation series Maqlû (tablet VI, verse 4)[12] according to Karel van der Toorn might be the Mesopotamian name of the Amorite moon god.[12]

In Ugarit

Yarikh was regarded as one of the primary deities of the

underworld god Resheph,[28] and is meant to signify high status.[29] Furthermore, a single passage refers to him as "the most pleasant of the gods" (n’mn ‘ilm), which was apparently meant to highlight his physical attractiveness.[30] According to Dennis Pardee, it is possible he was believed to spend the day in the underworld.[31] It has also been suggested that he could function as its gatekeeper, a role which is otherwise well attested for the god Resheph.[29] These two gods are paired in an incantation against snakebite.[32]

In the standard Ugaritic deity lists, Yarikh follows the

Shapash or both of these deities.[1]

Thirty individuals bearing

In addition to his presence in theophoric names, the Hurrian moon god Kušuḫ is also well attested in other documents from Ugarit.

bilingual.[45] Both this text and other sources from Ugarit indicate that Ugaritic and Hurrian deities could be worshiped side by side.[45] Further lunar deities known from Ugarit include Saggar, a god presumed to be analogous to Eblaite Šanugaru, who was worshiped in association with Ishara,[46] hll (reading uncertain, sometimes assumed to be analogous to the god Hulelu from Emar), the father of the Kotharat, whose name might be a cognate of the Arabic word hilālun, which lead to the proposal that he was the god of the lunar crescent,[47] and Kas’a, only attested in association of Yarikh and based on presumed cognates in other Semitic languages, for example Habrew, presumed to represent a presently unidentified lunar phase.[48] Dennis Pardee additionally suggests that yrḫ kṯy, a hypostasis of Yarikh, might be a lunar deity of Kassite origin.[13] The presence of the "Kassite Yarikh" in Ugaritic texts is also accepted by Mark Smith.[49] He is attested in a prayer for well-being[50] and in an offering list.[51]

Yarikh appears in a number of Ugaritic myths, but his role in them does not necessarily reflect his nature as a lunar deity.[52]

Marriage of Nikkal and Yarikh

Marriage of Nikkal and Yarikh (KTU 1.24) is the Ugaritic narrative composition which is focused on the moon god to the greatest degree.[53] It is agreed that it describes the circumstances which lead to the marriage of the eponymous deities, though its genre continues to be a topic of ongoing scholarly debate.[54] Steve A. Wiggins suggests that it is possible individual sections of the text do not necessarily belong to the same genre, making it possible to classify both as a myth and as a hymn.[54]

After a

son-in-law of Baal" (ḫtnm b’l), which might either refer to his prospective future after choosing Pidray, indicate that he was already married to another of the weather god's daughters, or simply serve as a courtesy title.[63] Yarikh ultimately rejects both proposals, and states that he is only interested in Nikkal.[64] He finally succeeds, and subsequently marries her.[64]

It is sometimes assumed that in addition to the scenes described above, Yarikh also appears in the heavily damaged section of the myth occupying lines 5-15 of the tablet, which according to this theory describe a sexual encounter between him and Nikkal, but this is far from certain.[65] Steve A. Wiggins points out that even if it is accepted that sex is described, neither deity is mentioned by name, which makes it difficult to evaluate this proposal.[65]

The background of the entire myth is most likely

Hurrian.[64][66] It might be either a direct Ugaritic translation of a Hurrian original,[67] or a less direct adaptation only relying on motifs from Hurrian mythology.[68] It is agreed that Ḫiriḫibi is a god of Hurrian origin.[55][69] Nikkal, presented as Yarikh's spouse in this context, but absent from other Ugaritic narratives, was a derivative of the Mesopotamian goddess Ningal, who was the wife of Sin/Nanna, the Mesopotamian moon god,[70] and was also worshiped by Hurrians as the wife of Kušuḫ.[71] Most likely the marital relationship between the corresponding Mesopotamian deities is also the reason behind portraying her as Yarikh's wife.[72] It is not certain if Nikkal entered the Ugaritic pantheon directly from one of the Upper Mesopotamian cities or through a Hurrian cultural intermediary.[73] The fact that most Ugaritic attestations of her are entries in Hurrian offering lists most likely supports the latter theory.[73] She is otherwise almost entirely absent from western Syrian sources from the second and first millennia BCE.[74]

Other Ugaritic narrative texts

In addition to Marriage of Nikkal and Yarikh, the moon god also appears in the text KTU 1.114.

While Yarikh himself makes no appearance in KTU2 1.12, a minor goddess appearing in this text, Talish (tlš

labor pain.[82] Since a well known Mesopotamian composition casts Sin in the role of a god helping in such situations, Yarikh's absence from the surviving sections of the text, coupled with Talish being explicitly associated with him, is considered difficult to explain by researchers.[84]

The myth KTU 1.92 mentions Yarikh in passing as one of the gods who receive game from Ashtart after her return from a hunt.[85]

In Emar

In Emar, the name of the moon god was represented by the logogram d30.[86] It is not certain if he can be identified as Yarikh.[86] According to Brian B. Schmidt the moon god worshiped in Emar was Sin.[10] However, it is not impossible that more than one deity of such character was present in the local pantheon,[86] and Gary Beckman lists the West Semitic reading as one of the four possibilities, next to Mesopotamian, Hurrian and Anatolian (Arma).[87] It has also been proven that in at least some cases the logogram refers to Saggar, already worshiped in the proximity of Emar, in Ma-NEki, in the third millennium BCE.[46] Other writings of his name are also attested, including multiple syllabic and a second logographic one, dḪAR.[88] Priests of the deity designated by d30 are attested in documents from Emar, but there is no indication that one of the few temples identified during excavations belonged to him.[89]

In the first millennium BCE

While Ugarit ceased to exist during the Late Bronze Age collapse, possibly due to the activity of the Sea Peoples,[90] the worship of Yarikh continued elsewhere in the first millennium BCE.[10]

Phoenician and Punic sources

The Phoenician version of the Karatepe bilingual.

No explicit references to Yarikh occur in any

maritime trade, shared by many of the major deities of this culture.[94] The Phoenician version of the Karatepe bilingual mentions the sun and the moon in a context which might indicate that deities corresponding to them are meant, but they are not singled out in such a way as the weather god Baal is in the same document.[95]

In known Punic sources, Yarikh is similarly absent from inscriptions, though he does appear in theophoric names.[96] One attested example is ‘bdyrḥ, "servant of Yarikh."[96] Similar evidence exists for another moon god, Saggar, who might have functioned as a personification of the new moon in Punic religion.[97] Lunar symbols are present on Punic stelae, though since the accompanying inscriptions usually only mention the heads of the pantheon, Baal Hammon and Tanit, it has been argued that they represent the former of these two deities, rather than Yarikh.[98] However, no textual sources support the theory that Baal Hammon was a lunar deity, and the fact that in Palmyra he was treated as entirely separate from the local lunar god Aglibol might be evidence on the contrary.[99] Additionally, it is possible that said symbols, as well as other similar astral ones, do not represent any specific god, but are meant to illustrate the celestial nature of the main deities.[100]

Ammonite and Moabite sources

As of 2000, only a single certain attestation of Yarkih from the kingdoms of the ancient

Neo-Assyrian period.[103]

The evidence from the Moabite kingdom, which developed in parallel with the Ammon in the early first millennium BCE,[103] is limited to artistic depictions of the lunar crescent.[104] It has been argued that they might indicate the national god of the Moabites, Chemosh, at some point developed lunar characteristics.[101] Known textual sources from Moab mention neither Yarikh nor Sin.[104]

Israelite and Judahite sources

The worship of the moon was most likely practiced in the

kingdoms of Israel and Judah both before the Babylonian captivity and afterwards.[105] Evidence includes toponyms and, according to Gabriele Theuer, theophoric names invoking Yarikh,[106] though according to Brian B. Schmidt certain examples of the latter are presently lacking.[107] Best known presumed examples of the former include Jericho and Beth Yerach.[108][109] It is also probable that the moon god of Harran, Sin, was also worshiped by the Israelites.[110]

It has been suggested that the numerous references to the moon being a celestial body subordinate to

Second Book of Kings 23:5 states that king Josiah of Judah banished priests making offerings to the moon alongside those devoted to other astral bodies and Baal.[114] It is difficult how many of these references can be considered sources of information about Yarikh, as it possible that they do not necessarily reflect a struggle against the preexisting cult of a local lunar deity, but rather the Mesopotamian traditions centered in Harran, which in the period of captivity and later might have been perceived as a competing creed.[115] Placing the polemics in the distant past might therefore have been only a rhetorical device.[115]

Palmyrene sources

In sources from

Mesopotamian and Arabian ones,[116] names with the element yrḥ refer to the local god Yarhibol, rather than Yarikh.[117] He was regarded as a solar deity.[118] However, it is possible that he was originally a moon god, and only developed his solar traits attested in historical sources secondarily.[118] Alternatively, his name might have instead been derived from Arabic yarḫu, "spring," which is argued to fit his association with the Palmyrene spring Efca.[118]

See also

  • Iah
  • Sin (god)
    aka Nanna

References

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Bibliography

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