*4.5. Shrines at Forts*

We have already discussed the temple at Arad, which is best considered, not as a "household shrine", but as a place of worship incorporated into a small hilltop fort, where probably only a few conscripted soldiers were in residence. Nevertheless, the rites of worship were probably the same as those of the families from which they came—perhaps given a special concern for personal survival, when considering the implicit dangers of being posted at this isolated border fort.

A unique sanctuary and shrine as an integral part of a fortress-cum-caravansevai (way-station) and pilgrim site is Kuntillet 'Ajrûd (Horvat Teman), in the remote southwestern Sinai desert. This remarkable 8th cent. BCE site was discovered in the late 19th cent., but it was not excavated until the 1970s, and it was only fully published in 2012.

The shrine comprises two long narrow rooms flanking the double-entryway gate, entered only via the gate threshold. These chambers feature low mudbrick benches; plastered walls; and, a favissa partitioned off beyond the back wall. There were few objects found in these two rooms, but on the plastered walls here and in the adjoining courtyard there were numerous painted Hebrew inscriptions, many of them with accompanying pictorial representations on two large storejars.

These inscriptions, although best perhaps considered as graffiti, constitute our largest corpus of non-biblical liturgical Hebrew texts. Many are blessing formulae, but they invoke, not only the name of Yahweh, but also of El, Ba'al, and Asherah.

The pictorial scenes include a lion and an iconic tree—with both symbols directly connected with the goddess Asherah. Another scene depicts a half-nude female, sitting on the sort of lion throne that elsewhere is principally associated with deities. The accompanying Hebrew inscription is a blessing formula for someone deceased that ends with the phrase "May X be blessed by Yahweh of Samaria and his Asherah".

Some scholars have taken the Hebrew term 'ašerah to simply refer to a tree-like symbol that is often associated with Asherah, not the goddess herself. However, here reading is forced, especially if the seated female depicted next to the inscription represents Asherah. To be sure, of the 40 or so times the word 'ašerah occurs in the Hebrew Bible, most do refer to a symbol of Asherah, a tree, or a wooden pole that should be chopped to pieces and burned. However, in at least five or six passages, the term 'ašerah is associated with the well known male deity Ba'al. Thus, we have "Ba'al and Asherah;" and if Ba'al is a deity here, so is Asherah (Meshel 2012; cf. Dever 1984; Olyan 1998; Hadley 2000; Becking 2001; Dever 2005, pp. 160–67; Zevit 2001, pp. 374–79).
