Sacred Stones

The setting up and veneration of stones is a feature of the ancient religious traditions of Arabia, the Levant and the Mediterranean.

In Nabataean Aramaic inscriptions extending from southern Syria to northern Arabia, as also in Hebrew, Safaitic, Hismaic and other Epigraphic Ancient North Arabian (ANA) languages, the action of setting up such stones is expressed through the verbal root NṢB, “erect (a cultic stone)”. For the stones themselves the terms MṢB, NṢ(Y)B, NṢBT and also MSGD (from SGD, “bow down in worship”) appear: in Nabataean, e.g., CIS II 182 nṣb (Ṣalḫad, Ḥawrān); R1088 nṣyby (const. plur.) and Milik 1958: 246-9, no. 7 mṣbʾ (Petra) (see Nehmé 2011: 51) and also msgd/mśgd: e.g. CIS II 161, 176, 185,188 (Ḥawrān), 218 (Ḥegra) (Cantineau 1932 (II): 116; Nehmé 2011: esp. 47-51); in Safaitic CIS V 527; JaS 100.1; KRS 929 (see al-Jallad and Jaworska 2019: 107); in Hismaic HU 571; in Dadanitic AH 288; in Taymanitic TM.T.020 and ELHT Wādī al-Zaydāniyyah Tay 21. Further south we note Qaryat al-Fāw (al-Said 2018: bny wnṣb) and for ASA see Robin 2012: 34-36, 100-1 (mnṣb/t used for cult installations; nṣb/t used to represent the dead). The verb nṣb and its corresponding noun are common also in Biblical Hebrew literature, where they are used precisely in relation to the erection of stone pillars and memorials: verb hiṣṣīb (hifʿīl) and nouns maṣṣēbāh/maṣṣebet (notably at Gen. 28: 10-22, where the maṣṣēbāh leads to the naming of Bethel, “house of God” — see baitylia below). There is also other ANE evidence of the cult of stones (see, e.g., Durand 2004; Michel 2014).

Geographically, such cults are heavily concentrated in northwest Arabia, Nabataea, southern Syria and Palestine (with some slight evidence from Mecca — the Black Stone set into the Kaʿaba, a pre-Islamic artefact which has retained its sanctity — and Qaryat al-Fāw [Ja 2122: Jamme 1967: 181-3]). They are often contrasted with religious traditions which use images of divinities, though this contrast is not clear-cut, since such fundamentally non-figural representations of deities sometimes have facial features carved on them (so that there is a continuum from the totally non-figural, to the minimally anthropomorphic and to the fully anthropomorphic) (see Robin 2012: 70-80).

The cult of stones in their natural, unmodified form or carved into simple rectangular shapes with no attempt to represent the human form is a widespread phenomenon. Studies on this kind of “aniconic” embodiment of a deity have focused mostly on the Levant (Mettinger 1995) and the Greek world (Gaifman 2012), but they provide a useful framework for the much more fragmentary evidence from pre-Islamic north Arabia. The Book of Idols by Ibn al-Kalbī (d. 819) is a rich source of information on pre-Islamic cults of this kind, though Robin has argued convincingly that such sources exaggerated the role of cultic stones in Arabia, since there is only very slight evidence either of the cult of stones or of statues outside northwest Arabia and Nabataea (2012: especially 101-3; contrast Lammens 1928: 101-79, and note Mettinger 1995: 69-79). In some cultures, the stones at the focus of cult were completely uncarved boulders, as appears to have been the case in the cult of the main god at Emesa (Ḥomṣ in modern Syria) (Herodian v.3.4-5). In the Greek world, Pausanias’ Description of Greece (2nd cent. CE) informs us of numerous cults in which only a rough-hewn stone was worshipped (Gaifman 2012: 47-75). “Programmatic” aniconism, to use the term adopted by Mettinger, is the theological prohibition of making anthropomorphic images of the deity, as in Judaism and Islam, but other more complex situations are also known: e.g. in Phoenicia the cult of empty thrones, on which the invisible deity was believed to sit (e.g. at the Eshmun temple near Sidon: Doak 2015: 109-15), and rare similar structures have been found in Nabataea (Petra and al-Silaʿ: Le Bihan 2013: §§40-44, figs 21-22) and in southwest Arabia (Najrān and the Yemeni Jawf: Robin 2012: 61-68; Arbach et al. 2012).

The non-programmatic tendency to represent and worship deities in the form of stone blocks, minimally carved stelae (often engaged carvings on rock-faces), etc., is particularly evident among the Nabataeans whose carved stone “betyls” — Greek βαιτύλια, a word probably of Semitic origin (Philo of Byblos, Phoenician History frag. 2, in Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica 1.10.16, 23) — are ubiquitous (Wenning 2001; see Fig. 1), though the Nabataeans also sometimes made anthropomorphic images, probably under Hellenistic and Roman influence (Healey 2001: 188-89). In a unique case in the period of the Nabataean Kingdom, the god Obodas (ʿbdt), probably a deified king, was represented by a statue (ṣlmʾ), though his deification gives him a more complicated status than that of “normal” deities (Nehmé 2012). That the stone blocks somehow “represented” a god or goddess is evident from accompanying inscriptions, which often identify the deity, and sometimes from the addition to the blocks of facial markings to produce so-called “eye betyls” (see Fig. 2). In another rare Nabataean example, a betyl and an anthropomorphic representation are combined, though they were perhaps not carved at the same time (Fig. 3). The term betyl (from the Greek, above) is given explicit meaning in the well-known passage in Gen. 28: 18-22 referred to earlier. The implication there is that the stone which was erected and given attention was regarded as the dwelling of the deity (not the deity himself!): it is the bēt ʾēl, “the House of God”.

The specific theological significance of these cults is usually unknown. They do not necessarily reflect a belief that it would be improper or impossible to depict the deity in the form of a statue and they could arise in some cases from belief in the intrinsic potency of certain stones, especially stones which appeared to have an unusual origin, such as meteorites. In Greece they often existed alongside cults involving figural representations of deities. In pre-Islamic Arabia there appears to be a geographical division between the Nabataeans and others in the northwest (where sacred stones predominate) and the rest of Arabia (where the evidence for worship of stones and statues is extremely rare) (Robin 2012). This situation provided the backdrop and partial explanation for the slow and rather marginal Christianization of Arabia when Christianity was flourishing in Syria and Palestine and for the Islamic hostility to the cult of stones reflected in Ibn al-Kalbī (Villeneuve 2010).

John F. Healey

References and suggested reading

Sources

• OCIANA: http://krcfm.orient.ox.ac.uk/fmi/webd/ociana
• Ibn al-Kalbī / ed. Ahmed Zeki Pacha, Abū-l-Mundhir Hishām b. Muḥammad b. al-Sāʾib b. al-Bishr. 1924². Le livre des idoles (Kitab el asnam). Ed. Ahmed Zeki Pacha. Cairo: Imprimerie Bibliothèque Egyptienne. (English translation: N.A. Faris. 1952. Ibn al-Kalbi: The Book of Idols. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.)

Studies

• Arbach, M., G. Charloux, C.J. Robin, S.F. al-Saïd, J. Schiettecatte & S.M. Āl Murīḥ 2012. Un sanctuaire rupestre au dieu dhū-Samāwī à ʿān Halkān (Arabie Saoudite), in C.J. Robin & I. Sachet (eds) Dieux et déesses d’Arabie: images et représentations. Actes de la table ronde tenue au Collège de France (Paris) les 1^er et 2 octobre 2007 (O&M, 7): 119–28. Paris: De Boccard.
• Cantineau, J. 1932. Le nabatéen II. Choix de textes — Lexique. Paris: E. Leroux (reprint 1978, Osnabrück: O. Zeller).
• Doak, B.R. 2015. Phoenician Aniconism in its Mediterranean and Ancient Near Eastern Contexts (Archaeology and Biblical Studies, 21). Atlanta, GA: Society of Biblical Literature Press.
• Durand, J.-M. 2005. Le culte des pieres et les monuments commémoratifs en Syrie Amorrite (Florilegium marianum, 8; Mémoire de NABU, 9). Paris: SEPOA.
• Gaifman, M. 2012. Aniconism in Greek Antiquity (Oxford Studies in Ancient Culture and Representation). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Healey, J.F. 2001. The Religion of the Nabataeans: a Conspectus (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World, 136). Leiden, Boston, MA, Köln: E.J. Brill.
• al-Jallad, A. & K. Jaworska 2019. A Dictionary of the Safaitic Inscriptions (Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, 98). Leiden, Boston, MA: E.J. Brill.
• Jamme, A. 1967. New Hasaean and Sabaean Inscriptions from Saudi Arabia. OA 6: 181–187.
• Lammens, H. 1928. L’Arabie occidentale avant l’hégire. Beirut: Imprimerie catholique.
• Le Bihan, A. 2013. Bétyles et plates-formes cultuelles: un aspect des pratiques religieuses en Syrie du Sud, in A. Le Bihan, P.M. Blanc, F. Braemer, J. Dentzer-Feydy & F. Villeneuve (eds) Territoires, architecture et matériel au Levant. Doctoriales d’archéologie syrienne, Paris-Nanterre, 8–9 décembre 2011 (Colloques et journées d’études, 1). Beirut: Presses de l’Ifpo. https://books.openedition.org/ifpo/2962
• Mettinger, T.N.D. 1995. No Graven Image? Israelite Aniconism in its Ancient Near Eastern Context (Collectanea Biblica, OT Series 42). Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International.
• Michel, P.M. 2012. Le culte des pierres à Emar à l’époque hittite (Orbis Biblicus et Orientalis, 266). Fribourg, Göttingen: Academic Press-Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
• Milik, J.T. 1958. Nouvelles inscriptions nabatéennes. Syria 35: 227–251. DOI: 10.3406/syria.1958.5328.
• Nehmé, L. 2011. Note sur deux “Autels” de Hégra, in V. Rondot, F. Alpi & F. Villeneuve (eds) La pioche et la plume. Autour du Soudan, du Liban et de la Jordanie. Hommages à Patrice Lenoble: 45–54. Paris: Presses de l’Université Paris-Sorbonne.
• Nehmé, L. 2012. Le dieu Obodas chez les Nabatéens : hypothèses anciennes et découvertes récentes, in I. Sachet & C.J. Robin (eds) Dieux et déesses d’Arabie : images et représentations. Actes de la table ronde tenue au Collège de France (Paris) les 1^er et 2 octobre 2007 (O&M, 7): 181–224. Paris: De Boccard.
• Robin, C.J. 2012. Matériaux pour une typologie des divinités arabiques et de leurs representations, in I. Sachet & C.J. Robin (eds) Dieux et déesses d’Arabie : images et représentations. Actes de la table ronde tenue au Collège de France (Paris) les 1^er et 2 octobre 2007 (O&M, 7): 7–118. Paris: De Boccard.
• al-Said, S.F. 2018. The Kingdoms of Ḏākir, ʾAmīr, and Muhaʾmir in the Light of a New Inscription from Al-Fāw, Saudi Arabia. ZOrA 11: 404–411.
• Villeneuve, F. 2010. La résistance des cultes bétyliques d’Arabie face au monothéisme : de Paul à Barsauma et à Muhammad, in S. Destephen & B. Dumézil (eds) Le problème de la christianisation du monde antique (Textes, images et monuments de l’Antiquité au Haut Moyen Âge): 219–231. Paris: Picard.
• Wenning, R. 2001. The Betyls of Petra. BASOR 324: 79–95.

_{Alternate spellings: Cult of stones, Betyl, Baetylus, Baetyl, Bethel, Standing stone}