DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.8944#0033
MYCENAEAN THEE AND PILLAR CULT.
131
of religious evolution might naturally account. It is possible that direct
Semitic influences may here and there have left their mark, as Egyptian
certainly did, on the externals of Mycenaean worship. But in dealing with
the phenomena of this very ancient form of cult, the underlying race con-
nexion between the prae-Hellenic population of Greece and its islands and
that of a large Anatolian region must also be taken into account. The
ethnographic community, which has left its traces in the names of places
and persons from Northern Syria to Western Greece, may well have had its
counterpart in the survival of certain specialised forms of primitive religious
tradition. At a later date, both in Palestine and Cyprus, we have the evi-
dence, of a return wave of Aegean occupation which must also have left its
impress on the local cult. In Cyprus this is abundantly clear. On the
Canaanite coast we seem to have at least one record of such a process in the
late survival of the cult of the Cretan Zeus in Philistine Gaza.
The knowledge of the parallel cults of these East Mediterranean shores
comes mainly through a Semitic medium and in a Semitised form. But a
large part at least belongs only in a geographical sense to the Semitic
world. This ancient underlying religious stratum whether in Anatolia or
Palestine was itself simply taken over from the older stock. The pure
Semite indeed is difficult to find in these regions. His very type has become
Armenoid. In Cilicia and Northern Syria he has largely assimilated elements
belonging to that old South Anatolian stock of which the Carians and old
Cilicians stand out as leading representatives and which was itself linked on
by island stepping stones to prehistoric Greece. In Cyprus the Semite
partly absorbed Hellenic elements and converted the Apollo of Amyklae
into Reshep Mikal. In Mitanni and other Syrian regions he seems to
have imposed his language on a race belonging to the same family as the
later Georgian group of Caucasian languages. The Amorites have been
ethnically grouped with the Libyans. In Philistia and other parts of the
coast of Canaan colonizing Aegean peoples were merged in the same Semitic
mass. Gaza was ' Minoan ' and the eponymus of Askalon was the brother of
Tantalos the founder of the Phrygian Royal House. Taklcarian Dor, in later
days at least, traced its origin from Doros. The prevailing elements in later
Phoenician art more and more declare themselves as decadent Mycenaean, and
the partial absorption of the intrusive European plantations on that coast may
perhaps account for a spirit of maritime enterprise among the men of Tyre
and Sidon quite foreign to Semitic tradition.
The undoubted parallelism observable between the tree and pillar cult
of the Mycenaean and that of the Semitic world should be always regarded from
this broad aspect. Even where, as will be shown, it extends to details it does
not necessarily imply a direct borrowing from Semitic sources. Neither is it
necessary to presuppose the existence in the Aegean world of a ' proto-
Semitic ' element in very early times. The coincidences that we find, so far
as they are not sufficiently explained by the general resemblance presented
by a parallel stage of religious evolution, may be regarded as parallel survivals
due to ethnic elements with European affinities which on the east Mediter-
131
of religious evolution might naturally account. It is possible that direct
Semitic influences may here and there have left their mark, as Egyptian
certainly did, on the externals of Mycenaean worship. But in dealing with
the phenomena of this very ancient form of cult, the underlying race con-
nexion between the prae-Hellenic population of Greece and its islands and
that of a large Anatolian region must also be taken into account. The
ethnographic community, which has left its traces in the names of places
and persons from Northern Syria to Western Greece, may well have had its
counterpart in the survival of certain specialised forms of primitive religious
tradition. At a later date, both in Palestine and Cyprus, we have the evi-
dence, of a return wave of Aegean occupation which must also have left its
impress on the local cult. In Cyprus this is abundantly clear. On the
Canaanite coast we seem to have at least one record of such a process in the
late survival of the cult of the Cretan Zeus in Philistine Gaza.
The knowledge of the parallel cults of these East Mediterranean shores
comes mainly through a Semitic medium and in a Semitised form. But a
large part at least belongs only in a geographical sense to the Semitic
world. This ancient underlying religious stratum whether in Anatolia or
Palestine was itself simply taken over from the older stock. The pure
Semite indeed is difficult to find in these regions. His very type has become
Armenoid. In Cilicia and Northern Syria he has largely assimilated elements
belonging to that old South Anatolian stock of which the Carians and old
Cilicians stand out as leading representatives and which was itself linked on
by island stepping stones to prehistoric Greece. In Cyprus the Semite
partly absorbed Hellenic elements and converted the Apollo of Amyklae
into Reshep Mikal. In Mitanni and other Syrian regions he seems to
have imposed his language on a race belonging to the same family as the
later Georgian group of Caucasian languages. The Amorites have been
ethnically grouped with the Libyans. In Philistia and other parts of the
coast of Canaan colonizing Aegean peoples were merged in the same Semitic
mass. Gaza was ' Minoan ' and the eponymus of Askalon was the brother of
Tantalos the founder of the Phrygian Royal House. Taklcarian Dor, in later
days at least, traced its origin from Doros. The prevailing elements in later
Phoenician art more and more declare themselves as decadent Mycenaean, and
the partial absorption of the intrusive European plantations on that coast may
perhaps account for a spirit of maritime enterprise among the men of Tyre
and Sidon quite foreign to Semitic tradition.
The undoubted parallelism observable between the tree and pillar cult
of the Mycenaean and that of the Semitic world should be always regarded from
this broad aspect. Even where, as will be shown, it extends to details it does
not necessarily imply a direct borrowing from Semitic sources. Neither is it
necessary to presuppose the existence in the Aegean world of a ' proto-
Semitic ' element in very early times. The coincidences that we find, so far
as they are not sufficiently explained by the general resemblance presented
by a parallel stage of religious evolution, may be regarded as parallel survivals
due to ethnic elements with European affinities which on the east Mediter-