*4.1. Milkom and* ގ*El*

The main sources of information about nonphysical beings in Ammon are a small corpus of short inscriptions, various types of images recovered in the archaeology (statues, figurines, and iconography on seals), and several texts from the Hebrew Bible. While the evidence is incomplete, it provides some clues about the gods and goddesses known among the Ammonites. Of these, Milkom and ގEl are of particular importance.

The earliest reference to an Ammonite deity appears to be on the Amman Citadel Inscription (*CAI*, no. 59),1 which has been dated paleographically between the mid-ninth and early eighth century BCE (*CAI*, no. 59).<sup>2</sup> The block of limestone on which the inscription was incised was reworked for use in a later building, leaving eight lines of partially preserved text. The exact function of this inscription is debated; however, its composition on stone and the fact that it was discovered in the capital of the Ammonites, suggests that it was a monument commemorating a building project or other accomplishments of the king. The beginning of the first extant word on the inscription is missing, but most agree that it should be restored as [*m*]*lkm* and vocalized as the name of the deity Milkom (*CAI*, no. 59), giving us our earliest attestation of this deity name in Ammon. This is significant for two reasons. First, because monumental inscriptions are regularly associated with kings in the Iron Age Levant, and the deities mentioned on them are understood to support the king in his activities—especially military and building activities (Green 2010). Second, because later texts from the Hebrew Bible identify Milkom as "the god of the Ammonites" (1 Kings 11:5, 33; 2 Kings 23:13),

<sup>1</sup> *CAI* = Aufrecht, Walter E. Forthcoming. *A Corpus of Ammonite Inscriptions*, 2nd ed. University Park: Eisenbrauns.

<sup>2</sup> In keeping with the principle that our understanding of the ancient world should be built on inscriptions and other artifacts recovered from known archaeological contexts rather than items purchased on the market (Rollston 2004; 2010, pp. 137–44), all inscriptions discussed in the main body of the article are provenanced. Non-provenanced inscriptions are noted in the footnotes where relevant, and the symbol Ø is placed before the reference to flag their non-provenanced status.

a role that is parallel in the mind of the biblical author to the Israelite and Judean state3 god Yahweh, as well as the gods of other political groups in the region.

Milkom also appears as part of personal names on two Ammonite inscriptions. As with names in other Semitic languages, Ammonite names are often constructed from a deity name and a predicate (e.g., Abdallah, "Servant of Allah"). The first is a seal found at Tall al-ގUmayri, a site just to the southwest of the modern city Amman. Dated to about 600 BCE, the seal reads, "(Belonging) to Milkomގor, servant of Baގalyašuގ) "*CAI*, no. 129). Milkomގor, whose name means "Milkom is light," was apparently part of the court of king Baގalyašuގ, who is regularly identified with the Ammonite king Baalis mentioned in the biblical book of Jeremiah 40:14 (Becking 1993; Herr 1985, p. 172). The second name, Milkomyat, appears in a list of names of unknown purpose on an ostracon (ink on pottery) from Tall al-Mazar, and is dated to the fifth century BCE (*CAI*, no. 147).4 The name, Milkomyat, means something like, "May Milkom come." While the sample is tiny, the use of Milkom in personal names at the end of the Iron Age II illustrates the ongoing place of Milkom amongst the Ammonites.

As mentioned above, the Hebrew Bible speaks of the role of Milkom among the Ammonites. Written in ancient Israel and Judah, and then subsequently compiled in Judah, the biblical texts portray the gods of other people as a danger to the people of Israel and Judah, a snare that will lure them away from the proper worship of their god Yahweh. Milkom is unambiguously attested three times in the Hebrew text (1 Kings 11:5, 33; 2 Kings 23:13).<sup>5</sup> In each occurrence, Milkom of the Ammonites is part of a list of non-Israelite deities whom king Solomon is said to have followed, an act described by the biblical author as doing "what was evil in the sight of Yahweh" (1 Kings 11:6). The illicit nature of Solomon's attention to the deities of the surrounding peoples has to do with the exclusive nature of the relationship between Yahweh and the Israelites (Exodus 20:1–3). Following after gods other than Yahweh is presented as a perennial problem for the Israelites in much of the Hebrew Bible, but perhaps nowhere more systematically than in the Deuteronomistic History (Deuteronomy–2 Kings). There, the worship of Yahweh only is connected closely with the only true place to worship him, Jerusalem.

In several other biblical texts, there was confusion in antiquity as to what the consonant sequence *mlkm* represented. The translators of the Hebrew Bible into Greek (often referred to as the Septuagint or LXX) struggled with the meaning of the Hebrew *mlkm* in 2 Samuel 12:30; 1 Chronicles 20:2; Amos 1:15; Jeremiah 49:1, 3 [Greek 30:17, 19]; Zephaniah 1:5. This series of Hebrew consonants is variously rendered into Greek as *melchom*, *melchol*, *molchom*, *molchol*, <sup>6</sup> or translated as *basileus*, "king." Should this word be read as "their king" (the final *–m* representing the third masculine plural suffix attached to the word for king) or as the name of the Ammonite god?

In 2 Samuel 12:26–31, David's army captured Rabbah, the capital city of the Ammonites. Once the city was captured, the text states, "[David] took the crown of *mlkm* from his head—its weight was a talent of gold and it had a precious stone—and it was put on the head of David. And he brought out a great amount of the spoil of the city" (2 Samuel 12:30). The key word in Hebrew is *mlkm*, which the MT reads as *malkam¯* , "their king." However, the Greek translation of 2 Samuel 12:30 (paralleled in

<sup>3</sup> The choice of the designation "state god" is a matter of convenience. Several other possibilities, such as "national god," "dynastic god," or "royal god", are possible alternatives. Each comes with its own problems of meaning.

<sup>4</sup> Milkom appears on several non-provenanced inscriptions, either as part of a name (Ø*CAI*, nos. 1b, 127, 136), or in a blessing in the form of, "so-and-so, blessed of Milkom" (Ø*CAI*, nos. 55, 57).

<sup>5</sup> The traditional Hebrew text that is the basis for all modern translations is often called the Masoretic Text, abbreviated as MT. When it was originally written, Hebrew (as with other Semitic languages) was written with consonants only and did not graphically represent vowels. In 1 Kings 11:7, there is what appears to be a scribal mistake. In the same chapter and context as two other references to Milkom (vv. 5, 33), the MT says that Solomon built a *bam¯ â*, "high place" for Chemosh, the detestable (god) of Moab, and for *molek* the detestable (god) of the Ammonites. The context alone suggest that this was a simple scribal error, the consonants *mlk* being very close to the consonants for Milkom's name, *mlkm*. The Lucianic Greek translation of this verse represents it as *melchol*, which might be a confusion of M and L in Greek uncial script (on which, see the following note). In addition, the rest of the biblical evidence on *molek* (whether a god or as a designation of a sacrifice) is not connected with Milkom, nor with the Ammonites (Heider 1999). It thus seems most likely that this was a simple mistake on the part of the copyist.

<sup>6</sup> On the confusion of M and L in Greek uncial script, see (Puech 1999, p. 575).

1 Chronicles 20:2) has *melchol tou basileos aut ¯ on¯* "Melchol their king." It is thus difficult to determine whether the crown was taken off the human king of the Ammonites, or whether the crown was taken off of the head of a statue of Milkom. Involving the gods of enemy peoples in warfare was a common phenomenon in the ancient Near East, so David's despoliation of Milkom's crown would not be out of the ordinary in terms of military practice. Also, the weight of the crown is stated as one talent, which is about 75 lbs, suggesting that a statue might be in view here (Driver 1913, p. 294; Knoppers 2004, p. 734). Werse is correct to point out; however, that using the weight of the crown as an argument for it being on a statue runs square in the face of the following words that it was placed upon David's head (Werse 2018, p. 511). Other manuscript evidence also supports the MT, indicating that the Greek has added a reference to Milkom, while also preserving the reference to "their king." In this instance, the shorter reading that takes this as a simple reference to the Ammonite king is probably the best (Werse 2018, p. 511).

There are some issues with understanding the consonant sequence *mlkm* in the biblical prophetic books as well. Some Greek manuscripts of Amos take the occurrence of *mlkm* in Amos 1:15 to represent the Ammonite deity Milkom; however, in this case, the majority of the manuscript evidence indicates that "their king" is the proper translation (Werse 2018, pp. 512–13, n. 30). Likewise, the wider context of this verse has a focus on human rulers, making the reading of Milkom less likely (Paul 1991, pp. 70–71; Puech 1977; Werse 2018, pp. 512–13, n. 30).

In Jeremiah 49:1, 3 (Greek 30:17, 19) the Greek renders *mlkm* as *melchom*, while the MT reads *mlkm* as "their king." As part of a set of oracles aimed at the nations surrounding Israel and Judah, Jeremiah 49:1–6 accuses the Ammonites of wrong doing against Israel (v. 1) and hubris (v. 4), and subsequently issues a prediction of judgment (vv. 2–3, 5), and a final promise of restoration by the Israelite god Yahweh (v. 6). Since each of the oracles in this series are constructed in the same form, the textual problem in vv. 1 and 3 is best resolved by considering the parallel oracle against Moab in Jeremiah 48. There, in v. 7, the judgment is on the Moabite god Chemosh, who will "go out into exile, his priests and officials together." The similar wording in Jeremiah 49:3, "For *mlkm* will go into exile, his priests and his officials together" argues strongly in favor of reading Milkom rather than "their king" in 49:1 and 3 (Werse 2018, p. 512).<sup>7</sup>

Finally, in Zephaniah 1:5, while the MT and some Greek manuscripts read "their king," the Lucianic recension of the Greek translates *mlkm* as *melchom*, a reading also supported by the Syriac and the Latin Vulgate. Here, the key is to recognize the clear focus on illicit worship that makes "Milkom" the most likely translation. In this oracle of judgment on Judah, illicit religious practices are the target in 1:4–6. The worship of the god Baގal, astral worship ("the host of heaven"), and oath taking in the name of the Judean god Yahweh, as well as the being indicated by *mlkm*, are all condemned, along with a generalized lack of not following Yahweh. The act of swearing or oath-taking mentioned in v. 5 is a particularly important piece of evidence here, as the Hebrew Bible always identifies the entity that is sworn by as a deity (Werse 2018, p. 506). Thus, in this case, the manuscript evidence and the context support reading "Milkom" in Zephaniah 1:5.

The biblical passages that mention Milkom are not a significant source of evidence about Milkom, but they do regularly understand him as the god of the Ammonites, parallel in the mind of the writers to Chemosh of Moab and Astarte of Sidon. The epigraphic and biblical evidence thus overlap in the image of Milkom as a state god of the Ammonites. The earliest evidence (the Amman Citadel Inscription) comes from the late ninth to eighth centuries BCE, and the two seals and biblical texts provide data on the later end, dating to the seventh and sixth centuries BCE. What is interesting is that despite the connection between Milkom and the state, the rest of the Ammonite epigraphic record shows a surprising trend in the Ammonite onomasticon, where the deity name ގEl is much

<sup>7</sup> On the practice of deporting cult images, see (Cogan 1974, pp. 9–21).

more common than the theophoric element than Milkom.<sup>8</sup> Additionally, the names of several known Ammonite kings are ގEl names,9 while none contain Milkom.

The preponderance of ގEl names in the onomasticon appears to parallel a trend in the iconography. A collection of nine male sculptures carved from stone (Abou Assaf 1980, nos. I, III–VII, XVIII, XIX, XX; Amr 1990, no. 1), as well as a small clay head (Daviau and Dion 1994) have been discovered in the region around Amman, and they date from the eighth to sixth centuries BCE. While varying somewhat in their appearances, they all wear an *atef* crown, which has its origins in Egypt, but has a long history in the iconography of the Levant (Figure 2). In its application in the Levant, and in Ammon particularly, the *atef* crown is worn by a deity—including ގEl—who is typically in support of royal power (Burnett 2016, pp. 63–65; Daviau and Dion 1994, pp. 160–61). In combination with the number of ގEl names, all of the items in this corpus most likely represent an important—perhaps chief—god of the Ammonites, who is associated with royal power (Burnett 2009, pp. 153–58; Burnett 2016, p. 65). In the Ammonite context, this god is most likely ގEl (Daviau and Dion 1994, pp. 164).10

**Figure 2.** Atef crowned statuette from the Amman Citadel. Drawing by Thomas Norman.

Identifying ގEl as an Ammonite state god based on the epigraphic and iconographic evidence creates tension with the biblical texts that identify Milkom as the god of the Ammonites. There are several possible ways of dealing with this tension. First, it is entirely possible that ގEl and Milkom are two separate gods, with Milkom perhaps related to kingship. However, this solution has not been the one that scholars have often pursued. The patterns in the epigraphic, iconographic, and biblical record seem to call for something more. One main solution has been to argue that Milkom was indeed the god of the Ammonites, the state god or head of the pantheon, who was or had been identified with ގEl over a period of time, as seems to be the case with Yahweh in Israel and Judah (Lemaire 1994,

<sup>8</sup> For a list and discussion of names from provenanced Ammonite inscriptions and non-provenanced inscriptions that are plausibly Ammonite, see (Aufrecht 1999, pp. 156–58). One other possible Milkom name from the nearby site of Deir ގAlla appears on a worn seal that may or may not be Ammonite (*CSAJ*, pp. 404–5, Deir ގAlla 27).

<sup>9</sup> King Padoގil appears in several texts from the Neo-Assyrian Empire, which mention him paying tribute, or giving gifts and supplies to the Assyrian king (Grayson and Novotny 2012, p. 175, no. 22 ii 55; Leichty 2011, p. 23, no. 1 v 62; Postgate 1974, p. 337, ADD 1110+ A.i.5 –6 ). See also the non-provenanced seal in Ø*CAI*, no. 13.

<sup>10</sup> Abou Assaf also argues that these represent the chief god of the Ammonites, but identifies him as Milkom (Abou Assaf 1980, p. 78). ގAmr argues that they represent humans (Amr 1990, pp. 116–17), but he assumes an unmediated Egyptian influence, which seems unlikely in the eighth–sixth centuries BCE considering Egypt's relative inactivity in the Levant, except in the coastal areas at the end of the seventh and beginning of the sixth century. Daviau and Dion's argument assumes a more likely diffusion of the artistic motifs mediated by the coastal cultures. Furthermore, these heads may be seen as part of a sequence, beginning in the ninth century BCE with the clay head from Tall Jawa that Daviau and Dion publish (Daviau and Dion 1994, p. 163), and continuing down into the seventh century (Abou Assaf 1980, p. 71).

p. 143).11 This proposal, based on the reconstructed history of religion in ancient Israel and Judah, is dependent on the assumption that parallel processes operated in Israel and Judah on the one hand, and in Ammon on the other. While it is certainly possible that parallel processes worked out in both areas, the extant evidence for the two adjacent areas is different. In Judah and Israel, the biblical and epigraphic material demonstrate a distinct preference for personal names using the theophoric element Yahweh, as well as the use of Yahweh's name in blessings and salutations (Tigay 1987). Likewise, biblical texts such as Exodus 6:2–3 and others point to Yahweh's identification with ގEl, at least in the minds of some biblical authors (Smith 2002, pp. 32–43). The extant material from Ammon, consisting largely of names, does not fit this pattern strongly, and hence does not demonstrate that such a merger is likely (Cornell 2015).12

The other main proposal argues that ގEl was the head of the Ammonite pantheon and that Milkom was an epithet, or a way of speaking of ގEl (Burnett 2009; Daviau and Dion 1994, p. 164 n. 17; Tigay 1987, pp. 171, 187, n. 66). This takes seriously the reality that ގEl names far outnumber Milkom names in the Ammonite onomasticon, as well as the representations of ގEl in Ammonite iconography. It also lays emphasis on the linguistic connection between Milkom's name (*mlkm*) and the consonants for the Northwest Semitic root *mlk*, on which the verb for ruling and the noun for king (*melek*) are built. Milkom's name is most likely built on this root and thus has something to do with ruling, a proposal that is supported by the appearance of similar god names in earlier Semitic inscriptions from Ugarit (on the coast of Syria) and elsewhere (Puech 1999, p. 575). Burnett's formulation of this position is probably the best when he says that Milkom is a "title distinct to the Ammonite form of ގEl in his capacity as a royal god" (Burnett 2009, p. 161). While material uncovered in future archaeological excavations might necessitate a reconsideration of this position, the current state of the evidence favors the view that Milkom is a title or epithet of an Ammonite state god ގEl. In keeping with many of the state gods of the Levant, he was in all likelihood understood as a weather god (Hübner 1992, p. 262).
