APPENDIX II

PORK ABSTINENCE AND THE WORSHIP OF SET

 

In recent years, anthropologists and archaeo-zoologists have accumulated a wealth of new material regarding the nature and spread of animal husbandry in the Near East during the Bronze Age and Iron Age. This alone has led to fresh ideas regarding the ethnicity of proto-Israelite sites in the Palestinian central highlands, based on the absence among the faunal assemblages of pig bones. For instance, sites from the early highland settlements in the Late Bronze Age, c. 1550-1200 BC, do contain the remains of pigs, reared and probably eaten as part of a staple diet, but those that thrived during the Iron Age, c. 1200-585 BC, contain almost none at all. As Brian Hesse of the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alabama at Birmingham admits in this respect, 'Iron Age sites in Palestine present a picture of mostly pigless deposits … Expanding the search for pig remains to later phases of the Iron Age as well as samples not well defined chronologically within the Iron Age just produces more negative results'.

Since pork abstinence forms such a major role in the religious customs of Jews and Muslims today, minimalist scholars such as Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman have proposed that the absence of pig bones among Iron Age communities in the central highlands defines their inhabitants as proto-Israelites, emerging for the first time with their own individual ethnicity. They point out that 'pigs were not cooked or eaten, or even raised' at these sites. Moreover, at the same time Iron Age sites in surrounding regions, which were the territories of Israel's traditional enemies, pig bones are found in abundance. Such statistics have led Finkelstein and Silberman to conclude:

Perhaps the proto-Israelites stopped eating pork merely because the surrounding peoples - their adversaries - did eat it, and they had begun to see themselves as different. Distinctive culinary practices and dietary customs are two of the ways in which ethnic boundaries are formed. Monotheism and the traditions of Exodus and covenant apparently came much later. Half a millennium before the composition of the biblical text, with its detailed laws and dietary regulations, the Israelites chose - for reasons that are not entirely clear - not to eat pork. When modern Jews do the same, they are continuing the oldest archaeologically attested cultural practice of the people of Israel.

Does this new understanding of pigless Iron Age sites in the central highlands really indicate the presence here of early Israelite communities developing their own unique form of ethnicity? Religious rules forbidding the eating of pork are to be found in the Pentateuch. Within the regulations for governing the relationship between Israel and Yahweh in the book of Leviticus, Chapter 11, it states, 'And the swine, because he parteth the hoof, and is clovenfooted, but cheweth not the cud, he is unclean unto you. Of their flesh ye shall not eat, and their carcases ye shall not touch; they are unclean unto you.' These same basic words are repeated in Deuteronomy, Chapter 14.

Although these regulations probably date only to the seventh century BC, when sweeping religious reforms were made in order to standardise the worship of Yahweh, they must reflect an older tradition of pork abstinence that reaches back to a time when the first Israelites settled in the central highlands. Indeed, according to biblical archaeologist Roland de Vaux,

The most likely answer is that the prohibition is pre-Israelite in origin and that it was preserved in Israel after its religious origins were forgotten. After all, Jews and Muslims of today abstain from eating pork without knowing why, except that it is forbidden by the Torah and by the Koran. And it is quite possible that this revulsion for the pig, which became second nature to the Israelites, was reinforced by the ritual usage which they saw made of it in certain pagan rites.

Scholars are generally of the opinion that the origins of pork abstinence among the early Israelites were derived from reasons of health, placement, distribution, religion and politics. Yet in the main, proto-Jewish pig taboos emerged because of reasons of hygiene. Pigs were considered unclean, uncouth animals, used on rubbish dumps to dispose of waste materials, and were often riddled with tapeworms. Thus there was always the naïve belief that diseases, such as leprosy, could be transmitted, simply by making contact with pigs or by drinking their milk. It was these health considerations that were the primary motivation behind the Israelite elders forbidding the consumption of pork, and in so doing they set themselves apart from neighbouring tribes, such as the Philistines, Moabites and Ammonites, who were less worldly-wise.

Although these considerations make perfect sense, and unquestionably played a role in the development of religious rules concerning the prohibition of pork among the Israelite tribes, it is possible that this tradition reflects ideas that stem originally not from Palestine but from ancient Egypt. Moreover, the absence of pig bones from assumed proto-Israelite sites in the central highlands is more likely to provide evidence of a strange fusion of the ancient Egyptians' fear and loathing of the pig, and the animal's association with the trickster god Set.

The unclean animal

Herodotus, the Greek historian and traveller of the fifth century BC, spent some considerable time in Egypt recording its customs and traditions. He noted that Egyptians considered the pig 'an unclean animal, so much so that if a man in passing accidentally touch a pig, he instantly hurries to the river, and plunges in with all his clothes on'. He further states: …

the swineherds, notwithstanding that they are of pure Egyptian blood, are forbidden to enter into any of the temples, which are open to all other Egyptians; and further, no one will give his daughter in marriage to a swineherd, or take a wife from among them, so that the swineherds are forced to intermarry among themselves. They do not offer swine in sacrifice to any of their gods, excepting Bacchus [Osiris] and the Moon, whom they honour in this way at the same time, sacrificing pigs to both of them at the same full moon, and afterwards eating of their flesh.

Herodotus also says with respect to a pig sacrificed at the full moon that 'the tip of the tail, the spleen, and the caul [a membrane enveloping the intestines] are put together, and having been covered with all the fat that has been found in the animal's belly, are straightway burnt'. What remains of the victim is eaten the same day, and 'at any other time they would not so much as taste it. The poorer sort, who cannot afford live pigs, form pigs of dough, which they bake and offer in sacrifice'. In the case of rites to Osiris, whom the Hellenic Greeks identified with Bacchus, the animal was sacrificed at the door of his temple, before being carried away by the swineherd from 'whom it was furnished'. In the first century AD the Roman biographer and moralist Plutarch also recounts how in Egypt, although the pig was seen as an impure animal, it was offered up once a year as a sacrifice to the moon goddess Selene.

In addition to these observations on pig taboos and sacrifice in ancient Egypt, the second-century Roman naturalist and historian Aelian had much to say about the pig in this country. According to him, the beast 'in sheer gluttony does not spare even its own young', and if it 'comes across a man's body it does not refrain from eating it'. For these reasons, the Egyptians detested 'the animal as polluted and omnivorous'. He cites Manetho also as having said 'that one who has tasted of sow's milk becomes covered with leprosy and scaly eruptions'. As a consequence, Aelian observed:

… the Egyptians are convinced that the Sow is an abomination to the sun and the moon. Accordingly when they hold the festival of the moon they sacrifice Pigs to her once a year, but at no other seasons are they willing to sacrifice them either to her or to any other god …

Finally, Aelian tells us that, according to the Greek astronomer and physician Eudoxus of Cnidus (d. 355 BC), Egyptians refrained from sacrificing pigs because, once the corn was sown, herds of them trod and pressed the seeds in order that they remained fertile and were not consumed by birds.

The black pig

Such were the customs associated with the pig in ancient Egypt: on the one hand it was reviled as an unclean animal, and on the other it was treated as sacred and offered up in sacrifice once a year at the time of the full moon. Although its revulsion may stem from considerations of hygiene and cleanliness, the pig's place in Egyptian society was connected directly with rites and rituals surrounding Set (or Seth, the Greek Typhon), the god of chaos and disorder, who was the ruler of the burning desert wastes.

One story that confirms Set's form as a pig is the myth concerning the coming into being of that powerful Egyptian symbol the Eye of Horus. In the 112th chapter of the Book of the Dead it speaks of how one day the sun god Re said to Horus, 'Let me see what is coming to pass in thine eye.' On looking, Re tells Horus, 'Look at that black pig', at which the falcon god sustained immediately an injury to his eye. The text goes on to relate how the injurer was none other than Set, who had transformed himself into a black pig. As a consequence of his actions, the god Re ordered that henceforth the pig was to be cast out as an abominable creature.

More importantly, Set appears as a pig also in the myth of Osiris, the god of the underworld, which expresses the eternal process of death and resurrection. After Osiris has been slain by his evil brother Set, Osiris' widow Isis flees to the Nile Delta in order to ensure the safety of their son Horus. Here she takes on the form of a kite, and 'keeps watch for the rampaging monster Set, the wild pig' as her son Horus, the falcon, remains concealed in the nest. Another tale, and one that seems to reflect an earlier tradition in which Osiris was slain by Set in the form a pig, or wild boar, tells of how 'Typhon was hunting a boar when he discovered the mangled and slain body of Osiris, and that for this reason pigs were sacrificed once a year'.

The sacrifice was thus an act of vengeance, inflicted on the slayer of Osiris, who took the form of a black pig, or boar. In his classic work The Golden Bough, first published in 1922, the British anthropologist Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941) argued that originally the pig sacrificed in the name of Osiris was the god himself, in his guise as the spirit of the corn. The clear connection between pigs and corn is expressed in Eudoxus' account of how, after the fields were sown each year, swine were sent out to trample down the seeds in order that the birds did not eat them. Only during much later times, so Frazer believed, was the animal seen as a subject of abhorrence and repulsion, fit only to represent the trickster god of chaos and disorder.

The worship of Set

Even though Set's form as a pig, or boar, is not in dispute, in ancient Egyptian art and literature he was portrayed more commonly as a mythical beast referred to as the set-animal, or fenekh, a hybrid form of the desert fox, and also as a hippopotamus. In addition to this, he was depicted with a human body and the head of the set-animal, carrying a spear in one hand. Through the association with his son Sobek, a crocodile-headed god, Set was venerated also in the form of a crocodile, particularly at the Temple of Kom Ombos in southern Egypt. Often he was shown in the company of Horus, his eventual slayer, standing over him (very possibly the origin of Christian iconography in which St Michael is shown spearing Satan in the form of a dragon). Through the predominance of the cult of Sobek in the Eastern Delta, Set of Ombos was also venerated with great passion here. For instance, at temples in the area of Tell ed-Dab'a, ancient Avaris and Pi-Ramesse (Raamses of the Bible), the god was worshipped by successive kings of the Thirteenth Dynasty, c. 1786-1700 BC, some of whom bore names honouring Sobek.

The Thirteenth Dynasty ran concurrently with the Fourteenth, and constituted the first half of the Second Intermediate Period of Egyptian history, c. 1786-1575 BC. These two dynasties were brought to a close when the Hyksos warlords overran Egypt around 1730-1650 BC and established their capital city at Tell ed-Dab'a. Since this was the cult centre of Sobek, and his father Set, the god of borderlands or frontiers and 'divine stranger', he became synonymous with the attributes of the Hyksos' own god Baal. Henceforth, this new, composite, deity was venerated under the name of Sutekh (a Babylonian rendering of Set), and even after the departure of the Hyksos from Egypt his cult thrived in the Eastern Delta.

Although the worship of Set had to go underground during Akhenaten's Amarna regime, it was revived in the reign of Horemheb, particularly within the Eastern Delta. For instance, he commissioned the construction of an enormous temple of Set at Tell ed-Dab'a, directly over a much earlier cult site. Here the Egyptian female ruler Sobek-nofru, or Sobekkare, c. 1789-1786 BC, had been venerated as a deity during the Thirteenth Dynasty, just prior to the arrival of the Hyksos. Indeed, it would seem that Horemheb's temple was built on the same axis as an Asiatic temple built also on the same site, showing a continuity through from the Thirteenth to late Eighteenth Dynasty, a period of over 400 years.

Another place in the Eastern Delta that became a centre for the worship of Set was the border town of Sile. Rameses I, who reigned for just over a year following the death of Horemheb, c. 1308 BC, had been the mayor here during the reign of his predecessor. Like his father Sethos, who governed the town during the time of Amenhotep III, Rameses is known to have been a devotee of Set. The tradition was continued by Rameses' son Seti I, and afterwards by Seti's own son Rameses II, who some time after Year 34 of his reign set up a commemorative stone known as the '400 years stela', which was found at Tanis. It shows the king paying homage to Set in his Semitic form as Baal, or Sutekh, complete with a human body and conical-shaped crown. The god's distinctive facial features depict him as an Asiatic, and thus he appears in his guise as ruler of foreign territories.

The '400 years stela' proclaims the veneration of Set by the king's immediate ancestors, including his great-grandfather Sethos, who also features in Manetho's story of Osarsiph-Moses. It also marks the 400th year of Set's reign in the Eastern Delta, which the Austrian Egyptologist Manfred Bietak believes began at ancient Avaris, modern-day Tell ed-Dab'a, during the age of a Thirteenth Dynasty king named Nehesy, who ruled c. 1720-1705 BC. However, as previously mentioned, the kings of this dynasty venerated the female ruler Sobek-nofru, a devotee of Sobek, at the very spot in Tell ed-Dab'a where a major Hyksos temple had almost certainly been dedicated to Sutekh (see below). This was likewise replaced during the reign of Horemheb by a huge stone temple also dedicated to Set. Thus there seems to be every reason to conclude that it was in fact she who introduced the worship of Sobek and Set into the Eastern Delta, and not any king of the Thirteenth Dynasty.

Line of transmission

Since the Hyksos embraced the worship of Set most fully when at Avaris, it seems likely that they would have made sacrifices to the god. Indeed, this is attested in one account dating back to the Ramesside period and relating to the Hyksos king Apophis, c. 1608-1575 BC. He is said to have made Set his personal god, and to have served no other in the land except him. A fine temple was built for the god, situated next door to the 'House of Apophis' and here the king 'appeared [every] day to make daily sacrifice to Seth'. There is, however, no indication that any of these sacrifices were of pigs. Indeed, at the site of Tell ed-Dab'a's main Hyksos temple, which has been compared in style to one found at Hazor in the northern highlands of Palestine, evidence has come to light that indicates that pigs were never sacrificed there.

Within the building's hollow mud-brick altar, known as a bamah (c. 3 ´ 2 metres in size), as well as in nearby refuge pits, a mass of ashes and charred bones have been found, the product of countless sacrificial burned offerings over a period of many years. Many of the bones belonged to cattle or, to a lesser degree, sheep, but no pig bones were found at all among the charred remains, even though there is ample evidence that the pig was used as a food offering in Hyksos tombs. As Bietak has commented with respect to these findings, 'It looks as if, for offerings to the gods, pigs were already considered as taboo.' Thus it is possible that the Hyksos adopted these religious practises from the native Egyptians. Yet before this statement might be justified it must be pointed out that the pig is thought to have been venerated in Palestine as early as Palaeolithic times, pre-10,000 BC, through to the Early Bronze Age, c. 3500-2200 BC, and Middle Bronze Age, c. 2000-1550 BC. Indeed, the pig, or wild boar, which seems to have become associated both with the high god Baal and chthonic, or underworld, deities, would seem to have been 'the sacrificial animal par excellence' in later ages. More significantly, it is known that there was widespread abstinence of pig meat among the Phoenicians of Syria and the Lebanon, the inhabitants of Cyprus (which included a major Phoenician colony), the pre-Islamic Arabs and many other Semitic-speaking peoples of the ancient world.

Despite this knowledge, there is no evidence of pork abstinence among the Late Bronze Age sites excavated anywhere in Palestine, implying a different line of transmission for the earliest Iron Age I communities of the central highlands. It is the authors' belief that this tradition originated in Egypt's Eastern Delta at the time of the Hyksos, had been adopted by later Asiatic settlers in the post-Hyksos period and was carried out of Egypt into the central highlands of Palestine in the wake of the collapse of the Amarna period. This, of course, was the time frame of the Exodus as suggested by various ancient writers such as Manetho and Apion. Although the earliest Iron Age I settlements date back no earlier that 1200-1100 BC, a period of perhaps a hundred years should be allowed for the migration and settlement of these peoples.

If pork abstinence among the proto-Israelite communities really did stem from Egypt, then it could be argued that it came about through the presence in Palestine of a strong Egyptian military presence, particularly during the reigns of Merneptah and his father Rameses II in the thirteenth century BC. However, outside of strategic garrison sites such as Jerusalem, Egyptian fortifications were to be found only along the coastal trade route between Egypt and Syria. This makes no sense whatsoever of the pigless Iron Age sites reported extensively in the central highlands, and not in the coastal lowlands where you might expect them to be found if an Egyptian presence was responsible for the introduction of pork abstinence.

The only contradiction to the pattern is Tell Jemmeh, a site on the south coast of Palestine where only 0.3 per cent of the bone assemblage unearthed from its Late Bronze Age refuge pits represents the pig. This has led Hesse to suppose that the evidence 'may reflect the establishment of dietary behaviour and perhaps food rules based on Egyptian social stratification'. In other words, the settlement of Egyptians in the area gave rise to an aversion of the pig at Tell Jemmeh.

Much more likely is that the biblical and Graeco-Egyptian and Graeco-Roman traditions of the expulsion of Egyptian and Asiatic peoples from the Egypt Nile Delta to Palestine in the wake of the Amarna age provides us with a more obvious line of transmission of pig taboos among the earliest Israelites. If nothing more, the powerful new evidence of pork abstinence among the bone assemblages at Iron Age I sites in the central highlands argues for an Exodus hundreds of years after the expulsion of the Hyksos.