Kuntillet Ajrud

Earliest record: 8th century BCEInk inscriptions on pithoi from Kuntillet ʿAjrud, excavated by Ze'ev Meshel in 1975-76, dated on palaeographic grounds to c. 800 BCE (Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God, 2nd ed., 2002).

Meshel, the excavator, first read 'YHWH our guardian and his sanctuary'; by 1979 he read 'Samaria' and allowed that asherah might mean a consort.

Saul M. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel (1988), pp. 25-26.

Iron Age way-station in Sinai, c. 800 BCE, whose jars bless by 'YHWH and his asherah'.

Sources3 sources

Scholarship

Saul M. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel (SBL Monograph Series 34), 1988, pp. 25-26Meshel first read smrn as 'our guardian' and ʾšrth as 'his sanctuary'; by 1979 he read 'Samaria' and allowed 'his consort' among possible readings.
Originally, he argued that smrn was to
Saul M. Olyan, Asherah and the Cult of Yahweh in Israel (SBL Monograph Series 34), 1988, p. 26By 1979 Meshel read šmrn as Samaria and said the goddess Asherah may have been Yahweh's consort in some circles.
By 1979, Meshel was
Mark S. Smith, The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel (2nd ed., Eerdmans), 2002, ch. 3, section 3, 'The Inscriptional Evidence'The Kuntillet ʿAjrud inscriptions date to c. 800 BCE and include the blessing 'by Yahweh of Samaria and his asherah'.
are dated on paleographic grounds to ca. 800.