Royal Hebrew High Places

The winged sun was a symbol of the High God.

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

The early Hebrew lords such as Cain and Nimrod are remembered for their city building efforts. They established settlements at high elevations near permanent water sources. These are what the Bible calls “the high places”. High places were fortified settlements on hills or mountains. The higher elevations made defense of these settlements easier. Built by rulers, the fortifications protected their palaces, royal temples, treasuries, and garrisons.

There were many high places in the ancient world. They were identified by the words "kar" (rock shelter) and "tamana" (great place). The term kar is associated with burnt offerings, charcoal and soot. The Turkish word kara means "black". In Magyar, korom refers to soot, as does the Korean word kurim. In the Sumerian language, Ekur (É.KUR) refers to a mountain house, pyramid, or elevated temple. The place name tamama has been found in over 188 countries and five continents. Votive offerings made at the tamama high places were called tama or tamata. The words are related to the ancient Akkadian word tamitu, meaning oath or pledge.

Some fortified settlements and temples were served by Hebrew royal priests. This is especially evident along the Nile River. Nekhen, the oldest known site of Horite Hebrew worship (4000 B.C.), had a temple with a large oval courtyard surrounded by a mud-plastered reed fence. The courtyard was paved with multiple layers of compressed mud. This temple appears to be the pattern for later temples as depicted on seals from the First Dynasty of Egypt (3100 – 2686 B.C.).

Nekhen was an established settlement at the time that some place Adam and Eve. in history. However, priestly some texts found in the Nile Valley have been dated to 4200 BC. Archaeology and anthropology provide some of the backstory to Adam and Eve, the parents of the Hebrew rulers Cain and Seth. These are historical people, but clearly, they were not the only Hebrew lords and ladies 6000 years ago.

The Hebrew ruler-priests living along the Nile were organized into two ritual groups or moieties: the Horite Hebrew and the Sethite Hebrew. The two groups helped each other but were often in competition. Descriptions of the Horites and Sethites are plentiful in ancient texts such as the Pyramid Texts (2400-2200 BC). These descriptions make it clear that the Horites and the Sethites maintained separate settlements. Utterance 308 addresses them as separate entities: "Hail to you, Horus in the Horite Mounds! Hail to you, Horus in the Sethite Mounds!" The more prestigious Horite Hebrew settlements were usually at a higher elevation that those of the Sethite Hebrew. Utterance 470 contrasts the Horite mounds with the Sethite mounds, designating the Horite Mounds "the High Mounds".

Multiple high places attracted pilgrims and generated revenue even as pilgrims and tourists are drawn today to shrines in the British Isles, France, Iran, Italy, Spain, and Jerusalem. The greater the fame and prestige of the shrine or temple, the larger the crowds. Naturally, competition arose between the sacred sites. That competition is evident in the Deuteronomist Historian’s antagonism toward all "high places" other than Jerusalem. A late source (800-400 BC), the Deuteronomist sought to centralize worship at the Jerusalem temple, and to shape national observances such as the Passover and Tabernacles.

Competition between the sacred high places of the Jews and Samaritans is mentioned in the New Testament. When Jesus was going to Samaria, the Samaritans who believed that he might be the Messiah hoped that he would establish Mt. Gerizim as the center of his kingdom. However, they no longer welcomed him once they learned that Jesus had "set his face to Jerusalem" (Lk. 9:51).

 

Related reading: Hebrew Priests at the High Places; Rulers of the Ancient World; Sun Cities of the Ancient World; Horite and Sethite Mounds; Competition Between the Horites and the Sethites

Some Marks of Prehistoric Religion

Alice C. Linsley

Humans have had an impulse to religious beliefs and rituals from the very beginning. This is evident from anthropological and archaeological studies of archaic populations. Such studies have given us a fairly good understanding of the general pattern of the religious life of early humans. These include rock shelters with shrines; ritual burial; observation of the stars and constellations, and symbolic communication through wall paintings and symbols such as T, X, O, V and Y. To the modern eye, these appear to be letters of the alphabet. However, these symbols once represented a complex of information helpful to early humans.


Rock Shelters

Archaic peoples lived in rock shelters for security. Later human populations lived at fortified mounds. Such shelters have been found virtually all over the Earth: Southern Africa, North and South American, the Pacific Islands, Australia, Siberia, parts of Europe, and parts of Asia.

The "high places" and fortified mounds are called "ophel" (Hebrew עֹ֫פֶל). The root of the word ophel is OP and pertains to a complex of interrelated ideas: seeing (optic); armed guards (opiltes); walled towns (oppida), and sun shrines (O'piru) served by a caste of priests known in the ancient world as Ha'piru, Ha'biru (Hebrew) and 'Apiru.

The oldest elevated settlements were near water sources. The oldest ophel in Jerusalem is near the Gihon Spring. Similar sites include Deir Tasi in Egypt; Jarmo in Iraq, and Tell Hassuna in Iraq. Of particular interest is the Paleolithic population that lived near the ravine or wadi known as Wadi-en-Natuf near Jerusalem. The Natufian population employed micro-flints, weapons, stone tools, and primitive agriculture. Artistic expressions included rock drawings and wall paintings, and they were sea travelers between 12,000 and 10,000 B.C. There are about 40 Paleolithic sites in the hills surrounding Jerusalem, many of them near Bethlehem. Surrounding Jerusalem, there are at least 28 Neolithic sites that fit the same description: elevated shelters near a water source.

Evidence of human habitation in the area of Bethlehem between 100,000-10,000 BC is well-attested along the north side of Wadi Khareitun where there are three caves: Iraq al-Ahmar, Umm Qal’a, and Umm Qatafa. These caves were homes in a wooded landscape overlooking a river. At Umm Qatafa archaeologists have found the earliest evidence of the domestic use of fire in Palestine.

Another word for these fortified shelters is kar. Karnak on the Nile and Carnak in Brittany are examples. In Dravidian car means "sheltered together" and kari refers to a river. In Manding kara means "to assemble."

Since the Kar were places of burnt offerings, the term is often associated with charcoal and soot. The Turkish kara means "black." In Magyar, korom refers to soot, as does the Korean word kurim. Among the Nilotic Luo, kar specifies a place with boundaries.

The kars of the archaic world were mainly circular. Ki-kar refers to a circle, as in Exodus 25:11: ki-kar za-hav ta-hor, meaning "circle of pure gold."

Many rock shelters (kar) have been identified in the Carpathian mountain range. The range is called Karpaty in Czech, Polish, and Slovak, and Карпати in Ukrainian, Carpați in Romanian, Karpaten in German, Kárpátok in Hungarian, Karpati in Serbian, and Карпати in Bulgarian. In Albanian, karpë means "rock."

Evidence of early rock shelters

In 2012, 44,000 year tools were recovered at Border Cave, a rock shelter in the Lebombo Mountains of South Africa.

This 77,000 year old red ocher stone with cross markings was found in the Blombos Cave of South Africa.

In 2008, a red ocher processing area was uncovered in the 100,000-year-old levels at Blombos Cave. Archaeologists also found two tool kits there. Counting devices have been found in this region also. They date between 43,000 and 80,000 years. 

There were tunnel mines 80,000 years ago in the Lebombo Mountains. This was the site of major mining operation. Stan Gooch reports:

"One of the largest sites evidenced the removal of a million kilos of ore. At another site half a million stone-digging tools were found, all showing considerable wear. All of the sites in fact produced thousands of tools and involved the removal of large quantities of ore; and while some were open quarries, others had true mining tunnels."

The world's oldest known mattress was unearthed in at the Sibudu Cave site in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The mattress consists of layers of reeds and rushes. Archaeologists found that bedding had accumulated in the cave over a period of 39,000 years, with the oldest mats dating to 77,000 years ago.

In the 1990's, archaeologists discovered this 70,000 year old python stone carved into the side of a mountain in an extremely secluded part of Botswana. The stone has over 300 indentations made by humans to give it the shape of a python. The python appears to have been a sacred symbol for the archaic humans who lived here, so this rock shelter also would have served as a shrine. There are two paintings on one wall of the cave.

Here are samples of 270 engraved eggshells that were excavated at Diepkloof Rock Shelter in South Africa. They date to 60,000 years. Rock paintings of boats, fishing and cattle are found around the Sahara and date to the Late Holocene (African Humid Period) when the Sahara was wet and able to sustain large herds and larger human populations.  The oldest shelters were at high elevations and also served as shrines where rulers and priests make offerings. Such shrine shelters were anciently called Tamana, a place name (toponym) that has been found in 188 countries and five continents. Over 1 million examples worldwide include Tamana-Irik, a village Gaulim in Papua New Guinea, Tamana Island in Micronesia, and the Tamana [ancient part] of the village of Palanka in Hungary. The word Tamana is a reference to the offerings made at the shrines. Votive offerings were called tama or tamata. Artist rendering of an Iron Age oppidum Many Tamana antedate the high places of Susa, Körös-Tisza, the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China. The term "tamana" means "stronghold" in the Manding language of Africa, the Magyar language of Hungary, and the Dravidian languages spoken in India. Dr. Clyde Winters believes that the peoples who built the earliest Tamana belonged to an ancient confederation called Maa. Members of the Maa Confederation included the Magyar, ancient Egyptians, Elamites, Manding, Dravidians, and ancient Afro-Asiatic peoples. Winters believes that this explains the genetic and linguistic connections between these peoples. Dr Vámos Toth Bátor believes that these widely dispersed Tamana peoples were Proto-Saharans. Humans continued to built fortresses at high elevations through the end of the Middle Ages. Ritual Burial Archaic human burial sites have been found around the world that date between 9,000 years and millions of years. Archaic human bones dating to millions of years have been found in many parts of Africa. Most recently, the Rising Star Expedition recovered the fossil remains of humans from a burial pit in South Africa. The 1500 bones and bone fragments represent at least 15 individuals. The adults were about 5 feet tall. There are many more human bones yet to be brought up and examined. There are numerous sets of bones from multiple individuals of different ages and sexes. The expedition leaders report that the bones/bodies were deposited over “some period of time.” The bones of the 15 individuals were recovered from a chamber accessible through a narrow chute about a hundred yards from the entrance of the Rising Star Cave (Dinaledi). The cavern has only fine sediment and no evidence of water transport of material from any outside source. No stone tools, clothing or other artifacts have been found in this burial site. There are many more bones awaiting further excavation. Parts of the skeletons resemble modern human anatomy while other skeletal remains resemble the australopiths, like Lucy. In other words, this burial pit contained the remains of people who ranged in appearance about as much as modern humans. These individuals show a range of anatomical features and yet were buried in the same place. Some of the features are robust like modern humans and others exhibit the smaller structure of Lucy and the australopiths. This amazing find raises serious doubt about the Darwinian theory that apes and humans share a common ancestor. The australopiths controlled fire and had butchering tools. They were ritually buried alongside the anatomically more modern humans, called Homo naledi. This find is being presented as a "new branch" of homo, called Homo naledi. These researchers do not consider Lucy and her kin to be fully human, though there is much evidence to suggest so. They hang a great deal on the size of brain cavity, though this is not an indicator of complexity of thought. In this view, H. naledi is slightly more human than the A. australopithecine and slightly less human than modern humans. Again this is based on the size of the brain cavity. That of H. naledi is less than half that of the average modern human skull, but proportional to the rest of the body. The cave burial of so many archaic humans suggests these people practiced ritual burial. Ritual burial is a religious practice. In 2000, Paul Sereno discovered what appears to have been an ancient cemetery. His team later unearthed 10,000 year old skeletons at Gobero in Niger. These were buried on the edge of a paleolake on the northwestern rim of the Chad Basin. The Gobero site is the earliest known cemetery in the Sahara and the skeletons found there indicated that some were at least 6 feet tall. Gobero skeleton (G3B8) measures 6 feet 6 inches Photo Mike Hettwer, courtesy Project Exploration The sun-baked dunes at Gobero preserved this Stone Age cemetery in the Sahara. Dr. Sereno’s group reported in the online journal PLoS One that this discovery opens “a new window on the funerary practices, distinctive skeletal anatomy, health and diet of early hunter-fisher-gatherers, who expanded into the Sahara when climatic conditions were favorable.” At the time of the Gobero population (9700-4400 years ago), humans were living in Africa, Europe, Asia, and on many islands from Madagascar to the Philippines. Burial in red ocher H.B.S. Cooke discovered the body of a small boy buried with a seashell pendant and covered in red ocher. The body is dated between 46,000 and 80,000. The "Fox Lady" of Doini Vestonice, Czechoslovakia, who was buried 23,000 years ago, was covered in red ocher. A 20,000 year old burial site in Bavaria reveals a thirty-year-old man entirely surrounded by a pile of mammoth tusks and submerged in red ocher powder. A man buried 45,000 years ago at La Chapelle-aux-Saints in southern France, was packed in red ocher. The "Red Lady" of Paviland in Wales was buried in red ocher about 20,000 years ago. Her skeletal remains and burial artifacts are encrusted with the red ore. The use of red ocher in burial was widespread in prehistoric times. The red ore symbolized blood, the substance of life. The earliest humans regarded themselves as blood-beings. That is the meaning of the word Adam (ha-dam = the blood). This is likely what stands behind the biblical expression "Life in in the blood." Augustine of Hippo noted that the ancient Egyptians never practiced cremation, as in the religions that seek to escape physical existence. They believed in the resurrection of the body and awaited a deified king who would rise from the grave and deliver his people from death. That is why they took great care in the mummification and elaborate tomb construction for their kings. On ancient Jewish ossuaries (bone boxes) the sun is shown as a 6-pointed star inside a circle (merkaba). This was the solar boat of the Creator, the vehicle of Light that would carry the dead to the place of rest. From that place they hoped to rise on the Last Day. 2000-year-old ossuary of Miriam, daughter of Y'shua with two 6-prong solar images During the Iron Age the mer-ka-ba was shown as a chariot. The chariot spokes within a circle represent the rays of the sun. It is likely that this image also appeared on the Ark of the Covenant. The Ethiopian Church preserved the practice of processional arks, called ta-bot. The Ethiopian ark is decorated with a central image of the 6-pointed star inside a circle. The spokes inside an orb also represent the precession of the equinoxes at various angles. The precession was symbolized by X inside a circle (see below). This morphed into the Tau, which is used by Christians to represent the upright cross. The precession cross and the merkaba are ancient cosmological images. They have been traced to the Horite temple at Heliopolis on the Nile. Heliopolis, called On in Genesis, was shown in Ancient Egyptian as NXN, with the X representing the Creator's presence at the sacred center. The O, T and X were all solar symbols and pertained to the universal rule of the Creator, whose emblem was the Sun. Astronomical Observations Early humans were very observant of the patterns in nature. They studied the stars and constellations and apparently kept track of their relative positions. By 4245 BC, the priests of the Upper Nile had already established a calendar based on the appearance of the binary star system Sirius that becomes visible to the naked eye once every 1,461 years. Apparently, Nilotes had been tracking this star and connecting it to seasonal changes for thousands of years. The Priest Manetho reported in his history (241 BC) that Nilotes had been “star-gazing” as early as 40,000 years ago. Plato, who studied for 13 years in Egypt, claimed that the Africans had been tracking the heavens for 10,000 years. Related reading: The High Places; Ancient African Astronomers; Ancient Wisdom, Science and Technology; The Urheimat of the Canaanite Y

The High Places

Artist rendering of an Iron Age oppidum

Alice C. Linsley

The iconoclastic Deuteronomist Historian makes a great fuss about the "high places" of ancient Palestine. These are represented as places of cultic debauchery and idolatry. Indeed, the high places of the archaic world - long before the time of the Deuteronomist - were fortified mounds, which in Hebrew are called "ophel" (Hebrew עֹ֫פֶל). These usually had a temple or a shrine under the supervision of a ruler and his royal priests.

For security, early human populations lived on sheltered elevated sites or fortified mounds. The root of the word ophel is OP and pertains to a complex of interrelated ideas: seeing (optic); armed guards (opiltes); walled towns (oppida), and sun shrines (O'piru) served by a caste of priests known in the ancient world as Ha'piru, Ha'biru (Hebrew) and 'Apiru. Some of the ancient fortresses were in the shape of a falcon, the totem of Horus. (The Shulba Sutras state that "he who desires heaven is to construct a fire-altar in the form of a falcon.")

Votive offerings at the high place shrines were called tama or tamata. This is related to an even more ancient word for fortified mounds: tamana. This place name (toponym) has been found in 188 countries and five continents. Over 1 million examples worldwide include Tamana-Irik, a village Gaulim in Papua New Guinea, Tamana Island in Micronesia, and the Tamana [ancient part] of the village of Palanka in Hungary.

Many Tamana antedate the high places of Susa, Körös-Tisza, the Indus Valley, Mesopotamia, Egypt, and China. The term Tamana means Stronghold in the Manding language of Africa, the Magyar language of Hungary, and the Dravidian languages spoken in India. Dr. Clyde Winters believes that the peoples who built the earliest Tamana belonged to an ancient confederation called Maa. Members of the Maa Confederation included the Magyar, ancient Egyptians, Elamites, Manding, Dravidians, and ancient Afro-Asiatic peoples. Winters believes that this explains the genetic and linguistic connections between these peoples. Dr Vámos Toth Bátor believes that these widely dispersed Tamana peoples were Proto-Saharans.

Abraham would have known the Chalcolithic high place temple at Ein-Gedi. It was constructed of stone and mud bricks and the roofing consisted of reeds. Typical of ancient sacred precincts, it was located near a permanent water source.

The Tuleilat al-Ghassul solar calendar dates to this same period and it has been suggested that it "would easily fit the world vision of a society whose life was based on a solar religion."


The phylogenetic tree of Haplogroup R1b

DNA studies confirm that the Neolithic R1b cattle-herding peoples had already dispersed across Africa, the Levant, Anatolia, and the Black Sea area by 20,000 year ago. R1b is the most common haplogroup in Western Europe, reaching over 80% of the population in Ireland, the Scottish Highlands, western Wales, the Atlantic fringe of France, the Basque country and Catalonia. It is also common in Anatolia and around the Caucasus, in parts of Russia and in Central and South Asia. Besides the Atlantic and North Sea coast of Europe, hotspots include the Po valley in north-central Italy (over 70%), Armenia (35%), the Bashkirs of the Urals region of Russia (50%), Turkmenistan (over 35%), the Hazara people of Afghanistan (35%), the Uyghurs of North-West China (20%) and the Newars of Nepal (11%). R1b-V88, a subclade specific to sub-Saharan Africa, is found in 60 to 95% of men in northern Cameroon.

The three main branches of R1b1 - R1b1a, R1b1b, R1b1c - are Middle Eastern. The southern branch, R1b1c (V88), is found mostly in the Levant and Africa. The northern branch, R1b1a (P297), seems to have originated around the Caucasus, eastern Anatolia or northern Mesopotamia. R1b1b (M335) has been found primarily in Anatolia and may be the genetic marker of the Saka.

The Hindu text Matsya Purana claims that the Saka (called “Scythians” by the Greeks) ruled the ancient world for 7000 years. Another text, Mahabharata, designates “Sakadvipa” as the “land of the Sakas” in northern India. Assyrian documents speak of the Saka presence between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea in the time of Sargon (722-705 B.C.)


The ancient Kar

Kar is another word for a sheltered or fortified site with shrine priests. Karnak on the Nile and Carnak in Brittany are examples. In Dravidian car means "sheltered together" and kari refers to a river. In Manding kara means "to assemble." In ancient Sumerian Ekur (𒂍𒆳 É.KUR) refers to a mountain house, pyramid, or elevated temple. This same triple mountain symbol has been found on seals from the Indus Valley civilization.

Since the Kar were places of burnt offerings, the term is often associated with charcoal and soot. The Turkish kara means "black." In Magyar korom refers to soot, as does the Korean word kurim. Among the Nilotic Luo kar specifies a place with boundaries. These connections suggest that the Karakorum Mountains which bridge Pakistan and China had fortified shrines with burnt offerings.

The kars of the archaic world were mainly circular. Ki-kar refers to a circle, as in Exodus 25:11: ki-kar za-hav ta-hor, meaning "circle of pure gold." In the Anchor Bible Commentary on Genesis, E.A. Speiser recognizes that kikar refers to a circle.

Many tamana have been identified in the Carpathian mountain range. The range is called Karpaty in Czech, Polish, and Slovak, and Карпати in Ukrainian, Carpați in Romanian, Karpaten in German, Kárpátok in Hungarian, Karpati in Serbian, and Карпати in Bulgarian. In Albanian karpë means "rock."


Paleolithic Tamana

The oldest elevated settlements were near water sources. The oldest ophel in Jerusalem is near the Gihon Spring. Similar sites include Deir Tasi in Egypt; Jarmo in Iraq, and Tell Hassuna in Iraq. Of particular interest is the Paleolithic population that lived near the ravine or wadi known as Wadi-en-Natuf near Jerusalem. The Natufian population employed micro-flints, weapons, stone tools, and primitive agriculture. Artistic expressions included rock drawings and wall paintings, and they were sea travelers between 12,000 and 10,000 B.C. There are about 40 Paleolithic sites in the hills surrounding Jerusalem, many of them near Bethlehem.

Evidence of human habitation in the area of Bethlehem between 100,000-10,000 BC) is well-attested along the north side of Wadi Khareitun where there are three caves: Iraq al-Ahmar, Umm Qal’a, and Umm Qatafa. These caves were homes in a wooded landscape overlooking a river. At Umm Qatafa archaeologists have found the earliest evidence of the domestic use of fire in Palestine.


Neolithic Tamana

Surrounding Jerusalem, there are about 28 Neolithic sites that fit the same description: elevated and near water.

The top of mount Üetliberg, near Zurich, was a Neolithic fortified area with a height of 2690 feet above sea level. It was surrounded by a system of earth walls. Some 60,000 artifacts have been found here, the oldest dating to about 4000 BC.


Iron Age Oppida

Iron Age high places are even more abundant, especially in ancient Gaul. The oppida of Gaul stand on the top of steep hills. Bibracte, on the summit of Mont Beuvray, is an example. It was the capital of the Celtic Aedui and an important opiddum in Gaul. The material culture of the Aedui corresponded to the La Tène culture (800 BC- 50 BC).

A famous high place in Armenia is Erebuni Fortress, also known as Arin Berd (Armenian: Արին Բերդ; meaning the "Fortress of Blood"). It was founded in 782 BC by the Urartian King Argishti I (ruled 785–753 BC) in Yerevan, Armenia. Built on top of a hill overlooking the Arax River, it served as a military stronghold to protect the kingdom's northern borders.



Shown right: A fresco of Erebuni Fortress (8th Century BC)

Dye used in the Erebuni frescos is composed of copper obtained from Armenian stone, which had been used in Mesopotamia since the 3rd millennium BC.







Related reading: Sanctuaries and Ancestor Worship at the Origin of the Oppida by M. Fernandez-Gotz; The Afro-Asiatic Dominion; Was Noah Mesopotamian or Proto-Saharan?; Stone Work of the Ancient World; The Relationship Between the Mande and the Japanese by Clyde Winters; A Kindling of Ancient Memory; Meroe on Orontes; Europe's Oldest Prehistoric Town Unearthed in Bulgaria; Log Cabins of Ancient European Cultures; Karampetsos, Karambet, Karoutes