Beher

A slab of stone once stood at a place called Sado in Aksum, shaped to form the back of a throne. The king who raised it, Ezana son of Ella Amida, had just come home from punishing the people of Afan, who had killed a trading caravan. He counted his dead enemies, his prisoners and his captured cattle, and then he had the mason cut the lines that mattered most. The throne was placed under the protection of Astar, Beher and Medr. Whoever tore it out would be torn out in turn, with his land and his kin.

That is very nearly everything Beher is ever seen to do. His name appears in two royal inscriptions of the fourth century, always in company, never alone, and never with a word of description. The other is an account of Ezana’s campaign against the Bega, cut in twin versions, in which six defeated kings were resettled with their people and given more than twenty-five thousand cattle. Statues of gold, silver and bronze went to Mahrem, the war god the king called his father. Then the monument itself was dedicated, in one version to Astar, Beher and Mahrem. The throne at Sado is the only text that lists all four gods of Aksum together. No hymn to Beher survives. No temple has been tied to him, and no story says where he came from, what he did, or how he looked. He was a god of the first rank in a kingdom whose kings wrote in Greek as well as Ge’ez, and his whole record would fit on a postcard.

Even his office has to be worked out. In Ge’ez, the language of the inscriptions, beher is an ordinary word meaning land or country, and the same stones use it that way again and again. Taken at face value, Beher would be a god of the land, standing rather awkwardly next to Medr, whose name means earth. The Bega texts make the awkwardness worse. Where one version names Beher, its twin names Medr in exactly the same place, as though the two could be swapped.

The scholar who published these stones, Enno Littmann of the German Aksum Expedition, weighed that reading in 1913 and rejected it. He gave two reasons. The first comes from the coast. In the sixth century a traveller named Cosmas stood in the heat of the Red Sea port of Adulis and copied a Greek inscription from a stone throne set up by an earlier Aksumite king, whose name is lost. After listing his conquests, the king says he came down to Adulis and offered sacrifice to Zeus, to Ares and to Poseidon, whom he asked to befriend all who go down to the sea in ships. Then he set the throne in place and consecrated it in the twenty-seventh year of his reign. The salt air, the smoke of the offering and the creak of moored hulls are easy enough to supply. The point is the third god. A king of Aksum was praying to a lord of the sea.

Littmann’s second reason is older than Aksum. Ancient Semitic religion liked to divide the world among three powers, sky, earth and water, as Babylon did with Anu, Enlil and Ea. Put Astar in the sky and Medr in the earth, and the empty seat is the water. So Littmann read the Greek names at Adulis as local gods in translation: Zeus for Astar, Ares for Mahrem, Poseidon for Beher. The king had not borrowed his gods from the Greeks. He had only lent them Greek names. On this reading the god kept an old meaning of his name, cousin to the Arabic bahr, sea, long after the everyday word had drifted inland to mean dry ground. Ethiopian church historians writing in 1970 gave the same pairing, Baher to Poseidon.

It is an inference, and it should be called one. No Ge’ez text says Beher rules the waves. Later retellings have smoothed the problem over by making him god of land and sea at once, or by merging him with Medr as an earth mother. The stones do not support the mother. Littmann noted that the grammar of Ezana’s later inscription treats the earth as masculine, an earth god and not a goddess.

What Beher could do, then, is what the inscriptions ask of him. He guarded what kings set in stone, and he gave force to the curse that protected it. If he is the Poseidon of Adulis, he also held the sea road that made Aksum rich, and the safety of every crew on it. His limits are just as plain. He never acts alone and is never given a deed of his own.

He also did not outlast his king. When Ezana became a Christian he raised another throne at Sado and put it under the protection of the Lord of Heaven, and of the earth that bears it. Littmann heard the old formula of Astar, Medr and Beher still echoing in that line, with the sea god quietly dropped. The common noun fared better. Egzi’abher, Lord of the Land, became the usual Ge’ez word for the Christian God, and Littmann was careful to say that it does not mean lord of the sea god. The word for country went on being spoken every day. The god who shared its sound was left on two stones.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Beher in Ethiopian mythology?

Beher is one of the four gods of pre-Christian Aksum, the ancient kingdom of northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. He is named in two fourth-century inscriptions of King Ezana beside Astar, Medr and Mahrem. He is usually identified as the god of the sea.

Is Beher a god of the sea or of the land?

Beher is most often read as a sea god, but the reading is an inference. In Ge’ez the word beher normally means land or country. Enno Littmann argued in 1913 that the god’s name kept an older meaning, sea, because an Aksumite king sacrificed to Poseidon at Adulis and because sky, earth and water form an old Semitic triad.

Which Greek god is Beher equated with?

Beher is equated with Poseidon. A Greek inscription copied at the port of Adulis by the traveller Cosmas records an Aksumite king sacrificing to Zeus, Ares and Poseidon. These are read as Greek names for Astar, Mahrem and Beher.

What did Beher protect?

Beher protected the thrones and monuments that Aksumite kings set up after their wars. King Ezana placed his throne at Sado under the protection of Astar, Beher and Medr, with a curse on anyone who tore it out. If Beher is the Poseidon of the Adulis inscription, he was also asked to befriend everyone who travelled by sea.

What does Beher look like?

No source describes Beher. No inscription gives him a form and no statue has been identified as his. No hymn or story about him survives either, so he is known only from his name in royal inscriptions.

Related Entries

Astar, Arwe, Angabo, Adbar, Poseidon, Zeus, Ares, Anu (Mesopotamian), Enlil, Enki, Yam (Yamm), Neptune