Interesting Observations on Kingship

I've had reason recently to dip back into Barbara G. Walker's incredibly informative "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" and I came across this entry on KINGSHIP.  Here is a part of it, verbatim, that I typed word for word from my 1986 edition.

If you want to read the entirety of the lengthy and very informative/interesting entry online, you can find a scanned edition of "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" online at archive.org (also in various formats, including PDF and in various zip formats, that you can read online or download).  It is the complete 2007 edition with footnotes and Bibliography.  I have found this book to be an invaluable resource in doing my research over the years and it is a treasure trove of information.

Kingship

In early Asiatic civilizations, kingship depended on the choices of women.  There was no law of primogeniture.  Kings were rarely succeeded by their sons.  Kings of Sumeria and Assyria were of unknown fatherhood.  King Esakhuruna was called "the son of Nobody." (1)  Women were the kingmakers in the land he ruled. (2)

Marriage with the earthly representative of the Goddess, in the form of the queen, was essential to the position of kingship; this was the original meaning of "holy matrimony" (hieros gamos).  Akkadian kings apparently went on military expeditions chiefly to prove themselves worthy of the sacred marriage. (3)

Ashurbanipal said he ruled by the grace of the Goddess Ishtar, he was he king "whom her hands created."  Shamash-shum-ukin of Babylon said he was chosen for kingship by the same Goddess under her title of Eura, Queen of the Gods.  King Esarhaddon of Assyria said he was "beloved of Queen Ishtar, the goddess of everything, the unsparing weapon, who brings destruction to the land of the enemy." (4)  Ishme-Dagan, king of Isin in 1860 B.C., said he was "he whom Inanna, queen of heaven and earth, has chosen for her beloved husband.(5)  The Bronze Age King Iion of Thessalian Lapithis married the Mother of the Gods after killing her former mate, described as his father-in-law, because each king's successor was supposed to call his defeated rival "father."(6)  The queens were the same as Goddess, or Mother of God.  The pharaoh Amenhotep III built a temple for his wife Ti, who was worshipped as the Goddess. (7)

The goddess-queen's choice largely depended on the candidate's sex appeal.  If she tired of the king's lovemaking, he could be deposed or killed, for the queen's sexual acceptance of him determined the fertility of the land.  In many early societies the old king was killed by the new king, usually called a "son," though he was no blood relative.  Hence the unbroken chain of Oedipal murders that puzzled modern scholars before it was known that the words "father" and "son" were used in a different sense.  A Babylonian tablet says:

Haharni laid claim for himself to lordship over Dunnu.  Earth raised her face to her son Anakandu, "Come let me make love to you,"she said to him; in Dunnu, which he loved, they laid him to rest.  And Anakandu took over his father's lordship and Nether Sea, his sister, he took (as wife).  Lahar, son of Anakandu, came and Anakandu he killed and in Dunnu in the (tomb) of his father he caused him to rest.  Nether Sea, his mother, he took (as wife). (8)

After this Lahar's son killed Lahar and took his sister River as wife; he in turn was killed by his son, who married his sister Ningesh-tinna, "Lady of the Vine of Heaven," a shortened name of the Goddess Nin-gest-inanna.  Sovereignty passed from mother to the daughter, beginning with Earth, the Goddess Dunnu herself, foundress of the line - the same as Crete's Danuna, Anatolia's Danu, Greece's Danae, the Gaulish Diana.  Kings were expected to kill their predecessors or pseudo-fathers, "Son" meant "successwor," and "wsister" was synonymous with "wife." (9)

The length of a king's reign was often predetermined, because people thought the Goddess needed the refreshment of a new lover at stated intervals.  Up to 1810 A.D., kings of Zimbabwe were ceremonially strangled to death by their wives at the moon temple every four years. (1)  Kings of ancient Thebes reigned for seven years; so did kings of Canaan.  Myths suggest a similar seven-year period for each king of Crete.  Cretan kings were never allowed to grow old, they always died in the full bloom of youth. (11)  More recently, Nigerian kings were strangled after the queen's pregnancy was established, which meant each king fulfilled his role in life by begetting one royal offspring. (12)

White explorers in Africa spoke of tribal "kings," but rarely mentioned that the real rulers of the tribes were queens.  "In the oldest times there were no reigning princes in Africa, but the negroes had large kingdoms [sic] which were ruled by goddesses. (13)  Ghana was governed by kings of matrilineal succession whose divine right passed through sisters' sons.  The Lovedu were ruled by a female "king" who took a series of lovers but always left the government to one of the royal princesses. (14)  Angola was ruled by women until the Portuguese invasions.  Ashanti was ruled by queens until the British Protectorate in 1895.  Its kings were subject to the queen mothers; its princesses took no husbands but kept a series of lovers.  Similar customs obtained in Loango, Daura, the country of the Abrons, and other African nations.  The queen of Ubemba was called Manfumer, "Mother of Kings," and did all the governing. (15)

The Gospels' "Candace queen of the Ethiopeans" (Acts 8:27) was not a single individual but the hereditary title of queen mothers who governed the Nubian states. (16) Ethiopian kings were ritually slain from the earliest times.  Regicide was still the custom of Nubian Kassites of the Upper Nile in the 1st century B.C.  Diodorus said only one Ethiopian monarch escaped the kingly fate because he was educated in Greece and dared to disobey tribal law.  He led a party of soldiers into the sanctuary and killed all the priests before they could kill him. (17)

The Javanese Singasari dynasty had matriarchal queens similar to Candace, typified by Queen Dedes whose statues show her as a beautiful Shakti of wisdom.   She married a number of new kings after they killed her previous consorts, each apparently holding office for a seven-year period. (18)

Legends consistently associate kingship with ceremonial death.  A seal from Lagash shows the Goddess taking her new kin by the hand, while he raises a weapon to slay the old king, prostrate under the queen's feet. (19)  King Sennacherib of Assyria was "beaten to death with stauettes of the gods," in the temple at Nineveh.  Perpetrators of the deed were his "sons," one of whom succeeded him as King Esarhaddon.  Upon his succession, Esarhaddon proclaimed"  "I am powerful.  I am omnipotent.  I am a hero, I was gigantic, I am colossal!" (20)

Sometimes, kings had to proclaim they were embodiments of the Goddess herself so as to rule with the same authority as queens.  Antiochus of Commagene announced that he could rule because he was the Goddess. (21)  A king's investiture used to mean putting on female robes, so the king could be displayed as a transvestite Goddess (see Transvestism).

In the ancient Middle East generally, kings were not so much governing figures as ceremonial ones, primarily concerned with dedication of temples and other religious responsibilities. (22)  Sometimes they were also war leaders, able to preserve their lives in time of danger by convincing the people that no one else could defeat the enemy.  In such a case, a surrogate victim might be found - a real or adopted son, a prophet, a condemned criminal, or a divine animal.

A war leader of Carthage "clothed his best and most beloved son in royal robes and crucified him as a sacrifice" to secure the blessing of Baal on his military campaigns. (23)  Similarly, the god-king Isra-El clothed his only-begotten son Ieud in royal robes and sacrificed him "according to the custom of the Jews," as Philo said. (24)   The king became Jesus, "king" of the Jews (John 18:33).  Since a king was God, any king's real or adopted son was naturally the Son of God, and Yahweh himself was embodied in the Jewish king.  "In the early period of the Hebrew monarchy the central element of the annual New Year festival was the ritual enthronement of Jahveh as King. (25)

Son-killing was a habit, not only of the Jewish god-king but of many other god-kings who modified the old custom by shedding the blood of someone else in the proper season.  A Swedish king named Aun extended his reign for nine years by sacrificing one of his nine sons each year to ransom his own life. (26)

Footnotes and Bibliography for the material above:

1.  Assyr. & Bab. Lit., 198.
2.  Bachofen, 215.
3.  Hooke, S. P., 49.
4.  Assyr. & Bab. Lit., 91, 114, 130.
5.  Gray, 59.
6.  Campbell, C. M., 422.
7.  Budge, D. N., 83.
8   Albright, 94.
9.  Albright, 94, 128.
10.  Lederer, 132.
11.  Campbell, Oc. M., 59.
12.  Stone, 132.
13.  Briffault 3, 26-32.
14.  Hays, 296, 312.
15.  Hartley, 161.
16.  Briffault 3, 41.
17.  Campbell, P. M., 200.
18.  Campbell, M. I., 216-17.
19.  Campbell, Oc. M., 42.
20.  de Camp, A. E, 64.
21.  Cumont, M. M., 95.
22.  Hooke, S. P., 49.
23.  de Lys, 450.
24.  Frazer, G. B., 341.
25.  Hooke, S. P., 110.
26.  Frazer, G. B., 337.

1.  Assyrian and Babylonian Literature, Selected Translations, New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1901.
2.  Bachofen, J. J., Myth, Religion and Mother Rite, Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1967.
3.  Hooke, S. H., The Siege Perilous, Freeport, N. Y.:  Books for Libraries Press, 1970.
4.  Assyrian and  Babylonian Literature, Selected Translations, Ibid.
5.  Gray, John, Near Eastern Mythology, London: Hamlyn Publishing Group Ltd., 1963.
6.  Campbell, Joseph, The Masks of God: Creative Mythology, New York; Viking Press, 1970.
7.  Budge, Sir E. A. Wallis, Dwellers on the Nile, New York: Dover Publications, 1977.
8.  Albright, William Powell, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1968.
9.  Albright, William Powell, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan, Ibid.
10.  Lederer, Wolfgang, The Fear of Women, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Inc., 1968.
11.  Campbell, Joseph, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology, New York:  Viking Press, 1964.
12.  Stone, Merlin, When God was a Woman, New York: Dial Press, 1976.
13.  Briffault, Robert, The Mothers (3 vols.), New York: Macmillan, 1927.
14.  Hays, H. R., In the Beginnings, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1963.
15.  Hartley, C. Gasquoine, The Truth About Woman, New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1913.
16.  Briffault, Robert, The Mothers (3 vols.,) Ibid.
17.  Campbell, Joseph, The Masks of God: Primitive Mythology, New York: Viking Press, 1959.
18.  Campbell, Joseph, The Mythic Image, Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1974.
19.  Campbell, Joseph, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology, Ibid.
20.  de Camp, L. Sprague, The Ancient Engineers, New York: Ballantine Books, 1960.
21.  Cumont, Franz, The Mysteries of Mithra, New York: Dover Publications, 1956.
22.  Hooke, S. H., The Siege Perilous, Ibid.
23.  De Lys, Claudia, The Giant Book of Superstitions, Secaucus, N. J.: Citadel Press, 1979.
24.  Frazer, Sir James G., The Golden Bough, New York: Macmillan, 1922.
25.  Hooke, S. H., The Siege Perilous, Ibid.
26.  Frazer, Sir. James G., The Golden Bough, Ibid.

My Notes:

1.  Frazer's The Golden Bough (my edition is a 1963 paperback issued by Collier Books of Macmillan Publishing Company, New York) has an entire chapter devoted to "The Killing of the Divine King" (Ch. XXIV) and consisting of:  I.  The Mortality of the Gods; II.  Kings Killed When Their Strength Fails; and III.  Kings Killed at the End of a Fixed Term.

There are also separate chapters devoted to:  Ch. XXV -- Temporary Kings; and Ch. XXVI -- Sacrifice of the King's Son (also cited in Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia...").  This would be considered a form of "substitute" King sacrifice.

2.  Wikipedia has an interesting entry on the ancient Egyptian Sed festival or "Jubilee," that tested the stamina and physical/mental fitness of the Pharaohs.  You may want to follow-up on Footnote 4 in the Wikipedia entry:

3.  For some "light" reading (har!), check out Human Sacrifice in Jewish and Christian Tradition by Karin Finsterbusch Amin Lange at Google Books online starting on page 21 under "5.3.  Ritual of the Substitute King."

The Goddess and the Palm Tree

From Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets." (Image: 12th century CE, Byzantine representation of Inanna, the Tree of Life -- a date palm) Palm Tree In the Babylonian myth of the primal garden, the palm tree was the Tree of Life, a dwelling-place of the Goddess Astarte. The Hebrew version of her name was Tamar, "Palm Tree."(1) Her male counterpart was Baal-Peor, or Phoenix, the god of Phoenicia whose name meant "Land of the Palm." As a phallic deity, Baal-Peor was symbolized by a palm tree between two large stones. Sexual orgies in the temple celebrated his union with the Goddess in Phoenicia and in Israel until priests of Yahweh killed the celebrants in the midst of their rites (Numbers 25:8): [Here's the story in the Bible, from the "Living Bible" translation: Numbers 25:1: While Israel was camped at Acacia, some of the young men began going to wild parties with the local Moabite girls. (2) These girls also invited them to attend the sacrifices to their gods, and soon the men were not only attending the feasts, but also bowing down and worshipping the idols. (3) Before long, all Israel was joining freely in the worship of Baal, the god of Moab; and the anger of the Lord was hot against his people. (4) He issued the following command to Moses: "Execute all the tribal leaders of Israel. Hang them up before the Lord in braod daylight, so that his fierce anger will turn away from the people." {such a kind, loving god, ahem...} 5) So Moses ordered the judges to execute all who had worshipped Baal. {If ALL of Israel was joining freely in the worship of Baal, who would be left to continue the nation of Israel after Moses had them all killed??? - What is being talked about here is the MEN of Israel, that is, dudes old enough to copulate.} (6) But one of the Israeli men insolently brought a Midianite girl into the camp, right before the eyes of Moses and all of the people, as they were weeping before the door of the Tabernacle. (7) When Phineas (son of Eleazor and grandson of Aaron the priest) saw this, he jumped up, grabbed a spear, (8) and rushed after the man into his tent, where he had taken the girl. He thrust the spear all the way through the man's body and into her stomach. So the plague was stopped, (9) but only after 24,000 people had already died. {Okay, so after ordering Moses to have his priests kill the Israelites because they had ALL SINNED, Yahweh changes his mind - without telling Moses - and decides to kill the Israelites more slowly, with a plague, and they were gathered around the Tabernacle praying for their lives as Yahweh was no doubt sitting on his throne up on Jupiter or wherever laughing his butt off; and then one Israelite dude decides to bring a girl into camp to screw in his tent, right under the eyes of everyone??? Yeah, right. If they were that stupid, it was better their genes were killed than passed on to children!

What I want to know is why the priests did not carry out Yahweh's orders to kill ALL of Israel immediately after the order was issued? Did their arms get tired? And is Moabite the same as Midianite? Moses MARRIED a Midianite woman himself!} (10, 11) Then the Lord said to Moses, "Phineas (son of Eleazar and grandson of Aaron the priest) {I guess the Lord had to let Moses know just who the good guy was in case Moses didn't understand which Phineas killed the bad guy and his gal} has turned away my anger for he was angry with my anger, and would not tolerate the worship of any God but me. So I have stopped destroying all Israel as I had intended. (12, 13) Now because of what he has done - because of his zeal for his God, and because he has made atonement for the people of Israel for what he did - I promise that he and his priests shall be priests forever." (14) The name of the man who was killed with the Midianite girl was Zimri, son of Salu, a leader of the tribe of Simeon. (15) The girl's name was Corbi, daughter of Zur, a Midianite prince. (Emphasis added). [Summary: Yahweh got his BLOOD SACRIFICE of both an Israelite prince and a Midianite princess, and thus his blood lust was temporarily satisfied. This is classic substitute king sacrifice, in this case, the "king" being Moses, who was raised in the Egyptian rites. Being a relatively new Hebrew religion, the priests added the "bad girl" into the blood sacrifice because she represented a much older tradition of the Temptress Goddess, which was a great threat to the upstart god Yahweh's authority, and therefore she had to be diminished in some way. What better way than to kill her off with a "spear" (phallic symbol) through her "stomach" (a euphenism for her female parts) while she was copulating with the sacrificial male victim, who himself was a substitute for the very same god that ordered his death?] Still, the feminine connotations of the palm tree remained. The Goddess was often embodied in a Mother-palm, giving the food of life in the form of coconut milk or dates. A complicated biblical myth shows Tamar the Palm-tree as the mother of a slain "firstborn of Judah;" and as a veiled sacred harlot decorated with the signet, staff, and bracelets of the nation of Judah; and as a widow (Crone) to whom offerings of goats were made; and as an idol "by the wayside," whom priests of Yahweh wanted to burn (Genesis 38). She gave birth to the rival twins Pharez and Zarah, Hebrew counterparts of Osiris and Set. The spirit of the palm tree was still the Great Mother in the tradition of early Christians, who gave the title of Holy Palm (Ta-Mari) to the virgin Mary.(2) Yet Egyptians continued to call a man's penis his "palm tree."(3) Notes: (1) Graves, W.G., 197. (2) Hughes, 55. (3) Book of the Dead, 518. Compare Ta-Mari to this Walker entry on Ta-Mera: "Land of Waters," an old name of Egypt. Mera or Mara was an archaic name for the Goddess of the primordial sea [thus, for instance, all those "Mares" {"sea of"} names on the face of the Moon and Mars - named by male scientists, by the way, lol!] In Egypt she was even coupled with the sun god as an androgynous deity, Meri-Ra. Among the meanings of Mera were such female symbols as a water-course, ditch, pit, sea, and lovingness.(1) Notes: (1) Budge, E.I., 76. ********************************************************************** Just why is it that female horses are called MARES, and in xiang qi (Chinese chess) the horse is called "ma?" It couldn't have anything to do with "sea horses," could it? And I'm not talking about those cute little critters one keeps in an aquarium. Staunton's model for his knight was reputedly the horses of the Elgin Marbles stolen from the Greek Parthenon. But we all know where the Greeks got their inspiration from...

The Secrets of the Ass

See my comments about the bison in this prior post. Here's a quote from Barbara Walker's "The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets:" "After castrating Set, Horus spread his blood on the fields to render them fertile - the usual fructification-by-male-blood found in the oldst sacrificial Mysteries." Eek! The imagery is ghastly, of course, but the concept is there, that of a male blood sacrifice used to sanctify and reinvigorate the land at the start of the growing season. Interestingly, I found this quote under the Encyclopedia's entry on "Ass!" This entry is loaded with information. Ass The ass-god Pales had an extensive cult throughout the ancient world. Palestine, Philistia, and the Palatine Hil in Rome were named for Pales, who was both male and female.(1) [I expect today's "Palestinians" would be rather upset with this bit of etymological history.] The Old Norse word Ass meant both "Asian" and "deity," possibly indicating that the divine ass originated in Asia.(2) The pre-Vedic sacred king Ravbana sported ten crowned human heads surmounted by one ass head, symbolizing the spirit of the ass god incarnate in ten kings.(3) The long ears of the ass seem to have had the same significance of virility in ancient India as the horns of the sacred bull or stag.(4) Tacitus said the Jews worshipped the ass because wild asses were responsible for their survival in the desert.(5) According to Genesis 36:24, it was the tribal matriarch Anah, or Hannah, who first found asses in the wilderness. Balaam's oracular she-ass may have been a manifestation of the spirit of Anah, as Balaam himself was another name for Baal. Samson slew the Philistines with an ass's jawbone, the same bone still regarded as a seat of the soul by some African tribes.(6) Jesus entered Jerusalem on an ass's colt, symbol of the New Year. The lilim or Children of Lilith were ass-haunched, for they were spirits left over from the real source of the Jewish ass-cult: Egypt, home of the ass-headed god Set, or Seth. Set once ruled the dynastic gods, and in token of his sovereignty displayed a pair of ass's ears at the tip of a reed scepter. The Hyksos kings of Egypt revived Set's cult in the 2nd millenium B.C., perhaps because their own ass-eared Midas was a similar god-king. The annual alternation of Set and his brother Osiris (or Horus), who murdered each other in perpetual rivalry for the favors of Isis, refleced constant replacement of sacred kings in pre-dynastic times.(7) Ass-eared Midas, a son of Cybele, died of drinking bull's blood. In other words, he was connected with the Taurobolium or bull-sacrifice made in honor of both Cybele and Isis. Midas has been identified with Mita ("Seed"), a king of the Moschians or "calf-men," who invaded the country of the Hittites from Thrace during the second millenium B.C. Midas's Golden Touch and ass's ears link him with the cult of Set and the Golden Calf (Horus), whose image was worshipped by the Israelites (Exodus 32:2-4). Under Eygpt's Hyksos kings, Set was a god of the hot desert wind, known as the Breath of the Ass. He was "Lord of the Chambers of the South," whence storm winds came.(8) His wind from the desert was supposed to bring pestilence, i.e., typhus, derived from Set's Greek name, Typhon. This name was interlingual and world-wide. It means both the ass god and the wind called tufan in Arabic and Hindustani; t'ai fung in chinese; and tuffoon or Typhoon in the South Pacific.(9) Ass-headed Set was a sacrificial deity in the cult of Horus and Osiris. He was crucified on a furka and wounded in the side.(10) He and Horus were represented as alternating year-gods who fought and castrated one another, each being baptized in the blood the other's "pahllic eye," as the Pyramid Text said" "Horus is purified with the Eye of his brither Set; Set is pruified with the Eye of his brother Horus."(11) (Pyramid Texts: Collections of prayers, hymns, and magic spells inscribed on the inner walls of the pyramids at Saqqarah, dating from the 5th through 7th dynasties.) The Eye or phallus passed from one to the other. A statute of Horus at Coptos carried Set's severed phallus in his hand.(12) After castrating Set, Horus spread his blood on the fields to render them fertile - the usual fructification-by-male-blood found in the oldest sacrificial Mysteries.(13) Thus, Set and Horus were remnants of a primitive sacred-king cult, which the Jews adopted. The story of the rival gods appeared in the Bible as Seth's supplanting of the sacrificed shepherd Abel, evidently the same "Good Shephered" as Osiris-Horus (Genesis 4:25). Their rivalry resolved in Egypt by having the pharaoh unite both gods in himself. Tomb paintings of Ramses IV shoed him as both Set and Horus, two heads set upon one neck.(14) Similarly, the Jewish God uniting both Father and Son was sometimes an ass-headed man crucified on a tree. This was one of the earliest representations of the Messiah's crucifixion. some said Christ was the same as the Jewish ass-god Iao, identified with set.(15) Jews in Rome were said to worship an ass's head as their deity.(16) the Roman cult of the ass apparently originaed in Libya, home of the bisexual Pales, whose temple stood on the Palatine Hill and gave rise to the word "palace."(17) Servius said Pales was a Goddess, the Diva Palatua, a disguise of Vesta. Others said Pales was either a female protectress of hered animals, or Vesta's male consort. In the first two centuries A.D., Pales was worshipped as a priapic god at the festival of the Palilia, traditional date of the founding of Rome, when the Palladium was brought to Vesta's temple.(18) Priests of Pales wore ass-head masks as they danced in honor of the long-eared deity. The Palilia was taken into the Christian calendar as the Feast of St. George. One of its old customs may have given rise to the Halloween game of "Pin the Tail on the Donkey," which recalls Rome's sacrifices of equine tails triumphantly carried to the temple of Vesta.(19) Notes: (1) Larousse, 209. (1) Turville-Petre, 23. (3) Norman, 123. (4) Rawson, E.A., 25. (5) Tacitus, 658. (6) Book of the Dead, 270-71. (7) Graves, G.M. 1, 283-84. (8) Graves, W.G., 301. (9) Encyc. Brit., "Typhoon." (10) Campbell, M.I., 29. (11) Norman, 42. (12) Knight, S.L., 124. (13) Budge, G.E. 2, 59. (14) Norman, 38, 48. (15) M. Smith, 62. (16) Guignebert, 53. (17) Briffault 3, 18. (18) Larousse, 209. (19) Dumezil, 221. *************************************************************************************** Is Walker's interpretation of Genesis 36:24 correct? I checked the three bible translations I have here at home, and a couple more online and found only the King James Version (and New King James Version) agreed with her:

• The Book (The Living Bible): "The children of Zibeon: Aiah, Anah. (This is the boy who discovered a hot springs in the wasteland while he was grazing his father's donkeys.")
• The New World Translation put out by the Jehovah's Witnesses: "And these are the sons of Zibeon: Aiah and Anah. This is the Anah who found the hot springs in the wilderness while he was tending the asses for Zibeon his father."
• The King James version: "And these are the children of Zibeon: both Ajah, and Anah: this was that Anah that found the mules in the wilderness, as he fed the asses of Zibeon his father."
• The New International Version (online): "The sons of Zibeon: Aiah and Anah. This is the Anah who discovered the hot springs in the desert while he was grazing the donkeys of his father Zibeon."
• English Standard version (online): "These are the sons of Zibeon: Aiah and Anah; he is the Anah who found the hot springs in the wilderness, as he pastured the donkeys of Zibeon his father."
• The New King James Version: "These were the sons of Zibeon: both Ajah and Anah. This was the Anah who found the water[a] in the wilderness as he pastured the donkeys of his father Zibeon." Footnotes: [a] Following Masoretic Text and Vulgate (hot springs); Septuagint reads Jamin; Targum reads mighty men; Talmud interprets as mules.

The Kumari

From The Times of India JUGULAR VEIN Divine rites 6 Jan 2008, 0000 hrs IST,Jug Suraiya Modi’s victory and Benazir’s assassination obscured perhaps an even more historic event in the neighbourhood: the ending of Nepal’s 250-year-old Shah dynasty. The constitutional change turning the mountain kingdom into a republic has been made and now only requires ratification by the new parliament. Few will shed tears for Gyanendra, who ascended the throne in dubious circumstances after the 2001 royal massacre and whose criminally inept handling of the Maoist insurgency in Nepal pushed the country to the brink of chaos. Gyanendra’s unpopularity was compounded by that of his loutish son, crown prince Paras, whose idea of an evening’s entertainment was to beat up innocent citizens with the help of his goons. The constitutional boot to royalty came just a couple of days before Paras’s 36th birthday, an apt nativity present. Serves the yob right. Well-wishers of Nepal can now only hope that that long-embattled, desperately poor country will finally get the democracy it deserves. As both a staunch republican and a long-time friend of Nepal, I had ambivalent feelings about the monarchy even before the egregious Gyanendra came to the throne. Did kings - even constitutional kings like Gyanendra’s murdered predecessor, Birendra - really have a place in the 21st century? But Nepal’s monarchy had a divine dimension beyond the day-to-day devices of democracy: the Hindu kingdom’s ruler was traditionally venerated as the ‘living Vishnu’, preserver of the country and its people. During Dussehra, long lines of devotees, many from the remote reaches of the land, would form outside the Narayanhity Royal Palace in Kathmandu to receive the tika from their god-king. I’d seen the worship in their eyes, glowing with the unwavering flame of faith. Faced with such belief, my republicanism felt like an interloper, a gatecrasher at a devout gathering. The news of the palace killings came as a bolt from the black, literally. It was 2 a.m. when the phone call from Dubby, my friend in Kathmandu, woke me. Could I somehow get the news into the following morning’s papers? Impossible. Well, at least you’re the first journalist in India to know what’s happened, said Dubby, a bitter knowledge that brought no solace. That night was the beginning of the slippery slope that would eventually lead to the downfall of the monarchy. I do not know how, if at all, the toppling of Nepal’s throne will affect another divine tradition of that country: the institution of the Kumari, the living goddess who complemented the god-king, on whom she would bestow her blessings once every year, ensuring his rule for another 12 months. Actually there’s not one, but three living goddesses; one in Kathmandu, and one each in Bhaktapur and Patan. But for all touristy purposes the Kathmandu Kumari represents the sacred sorority. The Kumaris - selected from the caste of silversmiths after having passed a series of spiritual tests (including the terrifying one of spending a night alone in a dark room with the severed head of a buffalo) - are anointed in early childhood and demit their divine office at the first sign of puberty. Earlier, it was believed that whoever married a former Kumari would die before the year was out, a cruel superstition which forced many ex-goddesses into prostitution. Thankfully, that taboo has been exorcised, and Kumaris can now safely make the transition to everyday housewives. But the Kumari remains a poignant parable of goddess, interrupted. I remember years ago going to see the then Kumari in Kathmandu. The living goddess, draped in gilded robes, sat on her throne, her heavily made-up face an ageless and inscrutable mask. In the dim light I saw that in one, tiny hand was a small, plastic toy helicopter, symbol of a lost childhood. With the monarch gone, will the living goddess be even more isolate in her sacrificial divinity? *********************************************************************************** It was believed that whoever married a former Kumari would die before the year was out... This belief seems to be right in line with ancient myths in the West about the "king" being sacrificed after six months or a year's blissful marriage to the sacred priestess. In some legends, the king would be torn to bits by frenzied female acolytes in a sacred grove, his heart pulled out and offered up for sacrifice on a sacred stone (altar) in the middle of the grove. In the Celtic tradition, I recall reading that in some instances the deceased "king's" head was preserved (I do not know in what manner) and used as an oracle by local elders - giving new meaning to Shakespeare's hommage in Hamlet "Alas, poor Yorick..."