Beher (god of the sea, member of the Aksumite triad)
Aksumite · deity · aksumite pre christian · Recorded classification
Beher is the Aksumite god of the sea, named alongside Astar and Mahrem in the protective triad of the royal inscriptions and rendered Poseidon in the Greek throne dedication of the Monumentum Adulitanum. His name derives from the Semitic word for 'sea', though the Ge'ez term bāḥr also carries the sense 'land/region', and in the parallel recensions of Ezana's inscription RIÉ 185 the name Medr ('earth') stands in his place — so that Beher and Medr are understood as a single chthonic power or as interchangeable deities of land and sea. The theonym survives into Christian Ge'ez within ʾəgziʾabəḥer, the standard word for God. Aksumite tradition makes him a son of Astar and brother of Mahrem.
Parentage
Domains
- sea and waters
- land and earth
Powers
- to rule the sea and its waters
Relations
- sibling: Mahrem (state war-god and dynastic patron of the Aksumite kings)Beher and the war-god Mahrem are both reckoned sons of the celestial head-god Astar and thus brothers within the divine family.Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, ed. Siegbert Uhlig, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003–2014, s.v. 'Maḥrem'. (secondary)
- ally: Medr (god of the earth, member of the Aksumite triad)In the parallel versions of Ezana's inscription RIÉ 185 the name Medr replaces Beher, and the two are treated as one and the same chthonic power or as functionally interchangeable deities of 'land/earth'.Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, ed. Siegbert Uhlig, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003–2014, s.v. 'Medr'. (secondary)
Sources
- Beher is the Aksumite god of the sea (and, by the meaning of his name, of land/earth), a son of Astar named in Ezana's protective triad and equated with Poseidon.: Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, ed. Siegbert Uhlig, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2003–2014, s.v. 'Beher'. (secondary); Stuart C. Munro-Hay, Aksum: An African Civilisation of Late Antiquity, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991. (secondary)