Ba'alat Gebal: The Meteorite Goddess Who Gave Healing and Knowledge of the Future

 

Ba’alat Gebal : The Meteorite Goddess   Who Gave Healing and Knowledge of the Future

Deepta Roy Chakraverti

 

Born of fire and flashing skies, we find the ancient cult of Ba’alat Gebal  in Byblos, or Gublu, or Gebal as the old name was.  Byblos , lying on the Mediterranean coast, goes back to Neolithic times and signs of habitation going back about 7000 years have been found there. For the Phoenicians it was one of the most important cities. Not only that, it was a city which saw the rise and fall of many successive civilizations. It is there, in this old city, that at one time stood a temple to Ba’alat Gebal.

Who is Ba’alat Gebal?

Ba’alat Gebal, or the ‘Lady of Gebal’ was the patron goddess of Gebal or Byblos, as the Greeks later named it.  She was identified with Hathor, with Astarte, Aphrodite and Ishtar. She gave love, beauty, as well as warrior-like strength and protection.

The Pillar of Byblos (Phoenicia) depicts Ba’alat Gebal and here, she is assimilated with the Egyptian Hathor. Her headdress has two feathers of the guinea fowl, surmounting curved horns which support a disc. Her left hand holds a scepter and the right hand is raised in benediction. The King Yehaumelek offers her the “cup of deliverance”.  The pillar commemorates the building of a part of the temple of Byblos by him.

Olmstead describes another stela which shows the King  Yehaumelek in his long Persian robes , his left hand raised in adoration and presenting with his right, a bowl to the Lady of Gebal, who sits enthroned as the Egyptian Hathor. She holds a lotus topped sceptre in her left hand, and a vase is extended in her right. Yehumelek tells us that the Lady of Gebal, has made him king over Gebal. Whenever he has called upon her, she has heard his voice, wherefore he has made for her that bronze altar , and that golden stele, and this gold ureeus which is in the midst of the stone , which is above that gold stele, and this portico and its pillars and the capitals which are upon them and its roof. May she bless him and give him life and lengthen his days and his years over Gebal, for a righteous king is he. May she give him favour in the eyes of the gods and in the eyes of the people of this land. If any king or common man makes additions and in so doing erases the name of Yehaumelek, then the Lady of Gebal shall destroy that man and his seed.

Ruins at the Temple

The Temple of Ba’alat Gebal is dated to about 2800 BC and was one of the first truly enormous structures of the Syro-Palestinian region. About 200 years later, another temple, called the L-Shapped Temple by excavator Maurice Dunand, was built opposite it. In the Middle Bronze Age period, an Obelisk Temple was built over the remains of the earlier Balaat Gebal Temple.

 In the temple of the Lady of Byblos, three badly preserved colossal statues were found. Archaeologists believed one to be of the Lady of Byblos seated on a throne, another of El, the consort and the third figure which was standing was believed to represent Eshmun. The colossi were very badly disfigured with the upper portions missing and what remained, extremely weathered and broken. One of the figures was present at the National Museum in Beirut.

However, the origin of this awe inspiring goddess is a very strange one.

 

The Meteorite Goddess

It is believed, based on excavations and the geological history of the region at that time, that the Lady of Gebal was none other than a very powerful meteorite which had crashed to land from the skies.

Archaeologists like Fr. Stockton have pointed out, there is no doubt that at the centre of the worship of Ba’alat Gebal, was a unique cult object – a large cone shaped pillar or the central “baetyl”. A coin of Byblos dating from 218 A.D. depicts a colonnaded open-air precinct with a tall, cone-like object standing on a base in the centre, and to one side a shrine housing something which has been described as a statue or incense altar. The stone itself was not found by excavators of the 20^th century, but what was, has been shown quite clearly in inscriptions.

Further confirmation that the stone was a meteorite comes from documents from Byblos in Cannan which state that the sacred stone of the goddess Ba’alat had “fallen from heaven”. The stone of Byblos was said to contain the essence of the goddess and to heal upon contact. It was also described as “breathing with the knowledge of the future”.

Meteor Impacts in the Region

The Middle East Anomaly was a natural disaster of fires, great floods, and remarkable, a blast of over 100 megatons which was caused by a gigantic asteroid impact. The exact location has been gauged ot be the Umm al Binni Lake in modern day Southern Iraq. The crater lake created by the impact is dated to between 2000 and 3000 BC – very close to the time of the building of the temple of Ba’alat Gebal and when we first find records of her worship.

Moreover, the area covering what is today the Middle East and surrounding areas, including Iraq, Iran , Turkey, Syria and Lebanon at one time was at one time in history known for frequent sightings of fireballs, meteorites and asteroids. Historical accounts talk of meteors landing from the skies at Aegospotami and Abydus ( both in modern day Turkey) among others. Much of divinity of the time as well as divination, going into Greek and Roman times, also centred around meteorites. It is known that Helenos the seer had a meteor which he bathed, wrapped in clean garments, and brought to life through the use of spells, in order to hear its prophetic advice.

 

Other Meteorite Shrines

If we consider the region of Asia Minor, there were prominently, three temples to Venue (or Aphrodite) that were connected to a meteorite.  Aphaca was the first , second at Byblos, and Paphos had the third. At Aphaca, the goddess fell from the skies as “fire from a star” and at Byblos and Paphos, she was represented as an elongated cone, or omphalos in a temple with pillars.

Philo of Byblos wrote about how Astarte collected a fallen star from Heaven, that star obviously being a meteorite, whose cultic worship was prevalent at that time. He translated from Phoenician to Greek the Phoenician history by the remarkable writer Sanchuniyathon of Berytus.

“And Astarte set the head of a bull upon her own head as a mark of royalty; and in travelling around the world she found a star that had fallen from the sky, which she took up and consecrated on the holy island Tyre. And the Phoenicians say that Astarte is Aphrodite.”

The symbol of a round or oval stone, sometimes an elongated object, or a cone upon a stand has been the symbol of the goddess in these parts. Old coins show an oval object, like a roundish orb, on a portable shrine on several Tyrian coins of the 3^rd century AD.

The Worship of the Betyl

The cult of revering elongated obelisk like stones was prevalent across Asia Minor. Usually, these were meteorites, of ‘ fallen stars’ as locally known. They were symbols of the divine and placed on pedestals, altars, or thrones. They were usually kept in roofless enclosures such as temple courtyards, perhaps to retain their power and harmony with the celestial realm from where they had come.  In the Middle East, in places like Syria, Palestine and Lebanon, these structures, or Sun Stones were often like obelisks, or sometimes conical shaped, and revered as dwelling of the Sun.

Since prehistory, the Sun Stone was revered as the abode of the solar deity. The Egyptians called it the Ben-Ben. It was like a precursor of the obelisk- a pyramid with a conical top on a square shaped platform. The Semitic people called the Sun Stone “betyl” and – a version of the Hebrew “bethel” meaning abode of God. In Palestine, worship of the “betyl” can be traced back to the 8^th millennium, and in Jericho archaeologists have found an ancient temple enclosure, which has in the middle an upright betyl  on a stone pedestal. Carbon dating shows it to go back to 7000BC at the least.

The Baetyl is Revered with the Throne

Phoenicia has given us many Thrones as figures of deification and worship, inscriptions on some showing them to be dedicated to Astarte. They are of various sizes and many have sphinxes carves on the sides. The seats are often slanted in such a way which makes it clear the thrones were themselves the objects of worship or adoration, and not for anyone to sit on. Moreover, the inscriptions at the base are such that the feet of any figure seated on the throne would have hidden them. Interestingly, some of the thrones have carved spaces which would take these baetyls. Some have been found with baetyls carved into them upon the seat.

Thus, the baetyl along with the throne became the object of worship and in other cases, the empty throne itself became the symbol of the divinity.

 (Image Right: The throne with two baetyls, handcrafted in clay by Deepta, The Wiccan Brigade)

The Byblos Meteorite – Or life forms from outer space?

When we come to the cult stone at Gubla, can we say it was only a meteorite ? Or is it possible that there was more to it?

In recent times, space exploration has shown us how life forms from other worlds can cling to debris from outer space and enter our atmosphere. As recently as in February 2021, large meteorite fragments scattered over England and later investigations by the Natural History Museum in London showed them to have organic material which could provide the “ ingredients for life”.

I propose that the cult stone which was worshipped as Belaat Gebal, was said to heal on contact and to breathe knowledge of the future for a specific reason, i.e. when that meteorite came to earth, it was carrying with it, living organisims which adhered to the rock. These might have emitted impulses or given off waves or fumes in expiration, to give an impression of breathing. On physical contact, these impulses might have proven beneficial for the body and mind, and possibly heightened intuitive abilities of many. Thus, when scholars speak of documents from Byblos which tell us of the stone breathing, like a living being, of being able to heal through touch and of foretelling the future, it is very possible that there was much more to it than simply a rock.

Moreover, while many thrones depict a single baetyl upon it, some show carvings of two, side by side. Did that organism replicate? Reproduce perhaps.

And then -- are our gods of alien origin?

 

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