It is relatively easy to link HaShem, the supreme God of Judaism, to the Saturnine deity – indeed, the Canaanite god El, who alongside Yahweh was the major influencing deity of Judaism, was commonly syncretised with Saturn. However, to fully understand the implications of linking HaShem with the Saturnine deity, we must explore the Near-Eastern origins and features of this deity.
Hesiod’s Theogony, which was imported into Roman religion, describes Cronus – syncretised with Saturn – as the son of Ouranos and Gaia.1 When Ouranos angered Gaia by imprisoning Cronus’s monstrous older brothers, Cronus conspired with Gaia to castrate Ouranos, thereby inheriting his power. Cronus then presided over a Golden Age, a time when humankind did not need laws to guide them because they naturally comported themselves according to the greater good.
Gaia, however, was angry with Cronus for not freeing his brothers, and she predicted that his son would overthrow him as Cronus had his father. Fearing her prophecy, Cronus ate the children his wife Rhea bore him until she tricked him into consuming a rock instead of his youngest son, storm god Zeus. Upon maturation, Zeus did indeed rise up against Cronus, freeing his siblings from Cronus’s belly and imprisoning him in Tartarus, the deepest pit of Hades.
The first interesting thing to note is that Ouranos, Gaia, and Zeus are all of Indo-European origin. Ouranos, linked with the Rigvedic god Varuna, represents the night sky; Zeus, like Rigvedic deity Dyaus, represents the daytime sky; and Gaia hearkens back to the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European earth goddess Dheghom, variously paired with both the daytime and night sky in different pantheons. However, Cronus does not have an obvious Indo-European origin. Where, then, lie the roots of this prototypical Saturnine deity?
The answer is linked to the fact that Hesiod’s work was almost certainly influenced by an older Hurrian text, Kingship in Heaven,2 which itself demonstrates a development of both King Lists3 and Separation of Sky and Earth4 motifs. Much of what is known about the Hurrians stems from their influence on the Hittites, although treaties referencing Indo-European deities have been found whilst excavating the Hurrian kingdom of Mitanni. The Nuzi texts, which have been used by archaeologists to provide more context to the Book of Genesis, also hail from Mitanni.
Kingship in Heaven differs from Theogony in several interesting ways. In it, primordial chthonic god Alalu reigns upon the heavenly throne for nine years before being deposed by his cup-bearer Anu and fleeing to the underworld. Anu, a sky deity borrowed from the Sumerians, then rules for nine years, but his cup-bearer Kumarbi moves to depose him. The title of ‘cup-bearer’ deserves mention here – within this context it could refer to a son, servant, or perhaps vizier. It also calls to mind the cup-bearer constellation of Aquarius, ruled by Saturn in traditional astrology.
After being deposed Anu flees to the skies, but Kumarbi pursues him and bites off his genitals. Anu then gloats to him:
When Kumarbi had swallowed Anu’s manhood, he rejoiced and laughed. Anu turned back to him and to Kumarbi he spake: ‘Thou feelest joy about thine interior, because thou hast swallowed my manhood.
‘Do not feel joy about thine interior! Into thine interior I have laid a seed: first I have impregnated thee with the heavy Weather-God; secondly I have impregnated thee with the river Aranzaḫ [i.e. the Tigris]; thirdly I have impregnated thee with the heavy god Tašmišu. Three fearful gods I have laid as a seed into thine interior. In the end thou shalt have to strike the rocks of the mountains with thy head!’
In a motif reflected in The Contendings of Horus and Set,5 Kumarbi angrily spits out Anu’s genitals, which sire the three rival gods – including a conquering storm god – from the ground instead.
We can therefore surmise from the thematic content of Kingship in Heaven that the Saturnine deity first became clearly defined in the Near East, situated at the crossroads between the Indo-European pantheon (reflected by Anu’s role) and the Egyptian pantheon (reflected by succession motifs). Indeed, Kumarbi’s name is potentially Semitic in origin, further reflecting Egyptian influence. One could theorise that the unique cosmology of the ancient Near East stems from the union of a native Semitic population (Akkadians) with a peaceful, technologically superior immigrant population from the Indian subcontinent (Sumerians?), but such theories are beyond the scope of this present work.
Within the god Kumarbi can be found the signatures of a number of other Near-Eastern deities, all enthroned at the top of their respective pantheons. The oldest of these is the Sumerian Enlil whose first definitive attestation occurs in early 3rd millennium BCE, although the series of signs comprising his name has been found in tablets dating to the late 4th millennium BCE, possibly referring to his cult centre of Nippur. Though Nippur was never the seat of a ruling dynasty, Enlil was seen as conferring legitimacy to Sumerian rulers through his approval. Interestingly, by the Babylonian period of the early 2nd millennium BCE, Enlil – or Ellil, as he was known by then – had peacefully conferred his authority to his nephew, the storm god Marduk, who in a familiar pattern superseded him as the King of the Gods.
Enlil’s name change during the Babylonian period is also interesting due to parallels with the Semitic god El, whose cult was potentially established as early as the mid-3rd millennium BCE in Syria before spreading widely throughout the Levant, and with whom Enlil was syncretised along with Cronus. One of El’s epithets was ‘ab šnm, which possibly translates to ‘Father of the Years’, reflecting the Saturnine deity’s association with time. El is prominently represented in Ugaritic myths as the father of the gods, and along with Dagan is characterised as the father of Baal-Hadad, the Ugaritic iteration of the storm god worshipped in various guises across the Near East.
Dagan also bears mentioning because, although he is less well-known than other Saturnine deities, his cult was among the most important in Bronze Age Syria and, like El, is attested in pre-Sargonic 3rd-millennium BCE texts. In his role as conferrer of kingship, Dagan was frequently associated or syncretised with Enlil, and his epithet ‘Lord of the Offspring’ reflects his assumption of Enlil’s role as father of the gods. His consort Shalash is also paired with Kumarbi, further entrenching Dagan within the mould of Near-Eastern Saturnine deities.
Furthermore, Dagan’s ritual cult holds particular interest for its motifs later reflected in Jewish ritual. Of special concern for this author is the zukru festival performed every seven years by the city of Emar in Dagan’s honour:
[The zukru festival was] held for seven days, starting with the 15th day of the first month, that is the first full-moon day of the new year. It is interesting to note that this month is designated by the Sumerogram SAG.MU, ‘head of the year’, in the festival text…while in the annual-ritual text it is called Zarati…a word most probably related to “seed” and “sowing”…. This suggests that the zukru ritual and festival took place in autumn, the season of sowing.6
Here we have a Saturnine deity being celebrated with an agricultural festival every seven years, echoing the Hebrew shmita year at the end of the Torah’s seven-year agricultural cycle, during the first full moon after the ‘head of the year’, which plausibly correlates with the Hebrew New Year of Rosh HaShanah taking place in the autumn. Dagan’s zukru festival therefore coincides exactly with the week-long Jewish harvest holiday of Sukkot.
With this Near-Eastern context in mind, we can begin to examine the Saturnine deity as a whole. What characteristics are shared by these gods which formed the early basis of the Saturnine deity?
Kingship
Every iteration of the Saturnine deity sits at the top of his respective pantheon of gods. This father figure is deferred to as the ultimate king and confers the office of kingship to men. In later iterations of the Saturnine deity, this god directly presides over a Golden Age. The Saturnine deity then transfers his kingship to a younger storm deity. Earlier Saturnine deities, such as Enlil, effect this transition peaceably, whereas later ones cede their kingship by force. Interestingly, this seems to correlate with the Bronze Age collapse, at which point Chaoskampf motifs are incorporated into the Saturnine cosmology.
Kingship is the most obvious unifying characteristic of the Near-Eastern Saturnine deity, but it is far from the only one. In fact, it behoves us to question the Saturnine deity’s role as both kingmaker and King of the Gods. What qualifies this deity to occupy the kingship role?
Harvest and grain
Another common feature of the various Near-Eastern deities syncretised with Saturn is that they all have a close association with grain agriculture and the harvest. For example, Enlil is given the epithet ‘Lord of Abundance’ in a third-millennium hymn, and in parallel with HaShem receives ‘first-fruit offerings’ from other gods. As the patron of farmers, Enlil was also associated with the constellation Boötes, said to depict a plowman.
Dagan is also strongly associated with the harvest, as previously discussed with the zukru harvest ritual and festival which were central to his cult. Feliu’s seminal monograph on Dagan cites Philo of Byblos as having proposed the most widely accepted etymology for Dagan’s name, that being the west Semitic word dgn, meaning ‘grain’.7 Interestingly, an Indo-European etymology has been proposed more recently which relates Dagan’s name to *ghdem-, or ‘earth’, further cementing his status as a chthonic god.8 Though these etymologies have yet to be proven and the extent of Dagan’s association with grain is unclear, he, like many other Saturnine deities, is paired with various fertility and grain goddesses as consorts, including Shalash (also paired with Kumarbi, as discussed previously) and Enlil’s consort Ninlil.9
Therefore, like scythe-bearing Saturn and his grain-goddess consort Ops, these Near-Eastern deities presided over the annual grain harvest. It behoves us to ask: what is the connection between grain agriculture, first found in the Near East possibly as early as 21,000 BCE,10 and kingship? Bottéro offers a helpful hypothesis:
There was little (primarily winter) precipitation in Mesopotamia, and its two rivers had few and weak tributaries. The soil was devoted to raising sheep and large-scale grain crops. The inhabitants realized one fine day that they could expand the territory watered by the rivers, and thereby increase productivity, by digging canals branching off from existing sources of water. … Such an undertaking eventually created a much better nourished workforce and made it indispensable to have some organization and above all a centralized, energetic, and disciplined management, one that brought together, at least for the irrigation work, villages that until then had been independent.11
Bottéro’s hypothesis is additionally interesting due to its link with irrigation and life-giving water, both strongly associated with HaShem.
Fermentation, decay, and death
That the Saturnine deity confers kingship by presiding over the grain harvest also links him to other processes surrounding both grain and harvesting generally. Most compellingly, the Saturnine deity is linked with the brewing of beer, which is postulated to have begun possibly even before the baking of bread.12 Beer was a ritual drink in ancient Sumer which was integral to Enlil’s worship, offered alongside both bread and wine.13 The ritual importance of fermentation is later reflected in the debauched Roman holiday of Saturnalia, an annual week-long festival in Saturn’s honour which occurred at the winter solstice, which featured ritual intoxication and social role subversion similar to the festivals honouring Bacchus.
Given that the process of fermentation is essentially controlled decay, the Saturnine deity’s link with fermentation also opens up other related associations, particularly with death. It’s easy to see that a god involved in both the harvest and fermentation of grain is well-placed to assume a wider role as a death-dealing god. However, this creates a unique challenge for efforts at syncretism, as most deities associated with earth, the underworld, and crops such as grain are female. Indeed, the ruler of the underworld in ancient Sumer was Ereshkigal, and as mentioned previously, the Indo-European earth goddess Dheghom was also regarded as ruling the underworld.
It is precisely this contrast, arising from the unique cultural context of the Near East, which gives rise to the Saturnine deity’s most interesting shared aspect.
Male appropriation of female power
Scratch below the surface of Hesiod’s Theogony and the Hurrian Kingship in Heaven text upon which it’s based, and the Saturnine deity’s androgyny quickly becomes apparent. Both Cronus and Kumarbi become ‘pregnant’, Cronus by swallowing his own children and Kumarbi by swallowing Anu’s genitals. However, perhaps in reference to attitudes towards receiving practitioners of gay sex in the Near East,14 these ‘pregnancies’ are treated as a subversion of the natural order – something which could be reflected in the child sacrifice rituals of Saturnine deities such as Ba’al Hammon in Carthage.15
When the above attributes of the Saturnine deity are taken all together, a picture emerges of a male deity using female generative power, particularly as present within the process of agriculture itself, to entrench a male power system. This is particularly interesting when considering the Near East context, given that Enlil’s city of Nippur rose to prominence in parallel with the city-state of Uruk, where Venusian deity Inanna had her cultic centre.16 Anu, later cast as the Saturnine deity’s nemesis, also had a prominent cult in Uruk alongside Inanna. Perhaps this early competition between city-states influenced the Saturnine deity’s role as a usurper of power – female power specifically.
In the Near East, at the nexus of Indo-European and Egyptian-Semitic belief systems, we therefore have the emergence of a deity of power, reflecting a shift in social roles accompanying the rise of grain agriculture in the area. Viewing Saturn’s power as an appropriation and subversion of traditional female power is instructive – the earth’s fertility now falls under the domain of the King alone. This formulation of the Saturnine deity has enormous ramifications both for subsequent religions arising in the Near East, such as Judaism, as well as for modern-day Saturnists seeking a fuller understanding of their great and terrible God.
- Barry B. Powell, The Poems of Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, and The Shield of Herakles (University of Californa Press, 2017), p. 37. ↩︎
- Hans G. Güterbock, ‘The Hittite Version of the Hurrian Kumarbi Myths: Oriental Forerunners of Hesiod’, American Journal of Archaeology, vol. 52 issue 1 (1948), pp. 123-134. ↩︎
- John Dillery, ‘Time: Berossus, Manetho, and the Construction of King Lists’, in Clio’s Other Sons: Berossus and Manetho (University of Michigan Press, 2015), pp. 55-122. ↩︎
- A. Seidenberg, ‘The Separation of Sky and Earth at Creation’, Folklore, vol. 70 issue 3 (1959), pp. 477-482. ↩︎
- Alan H. Gardiner, ‘The Contendings of Horus and Seth’, in The Chester Beatty Papyri, No. 1 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1931), pp. 13-26. ↩︎
- Masamichi Yamada, ‘The zukru Festival in Emar: On Royal Cooperation with the City’, Orient, vol. 45 (2010), pp. 111-128. ↩︎
- Lluís Feliu, The God Dagan in Bronze Age Syria, translated by Wilfred G.E. Watson (Boston: Brill, 2003), p. 279. ↩︎
- Ibid., p. 281. ↩︎
- Ibid., p. 290. ↩︎
- Dolores R. Piperno, et al, ‘Processing of wild cereal grains in the Upper Palaeolithic revealed by starch grain analysis’, Nature, vol. 430 issue 7000 (2004), pp. 670-673. ↩︎
- Jean Bottéro, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001), p. 8. ↩︎
- Brian Hayden, et al, ‘What Was Brewing in the Natufian? An Archaeological Assessment of Brewing Technology in the Epipaleolithic’, Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, vol. 20 (2013), pp. 102-150. ↩︎
- Samuel N. Kramer, ‘BM 23631: Bread for Enlil, Sex for Inanna’, Orientalia, vol. 54 issue 1/2 (1985), pp. 117-132. ↩︎
- Vern L. Bullough, ‘Attitudes toward Deviant Sex in Ancient Mesopotamia’, The Journal of Sex Research, vol. 7 issue 3 (1971), pp. 184-203. ↩︎
- Anthony J. Frendo, ‘Burning Issues: mlk revisited’, Journal of Semitic Studies, vol. 61 issue 2 (2016), pp. 347-364. ↩︎
- Julia Krul, ‘Chapter 1: The Historical Background of the Anu Cult’, in The Revival of the Anu Cult and the Nocturnal Fire Ceremony at Late Babylonian Uruk (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 9-78. ↩︎
Sonya Blanck writings 