Baetyl

And, among modern historians, concerns have risen over the precision, accuracy, and generalizing tendency of the usage of this term in describing ancient texts and material objects.

[12][8] The earliest known evidence for the baetyl concept in the ancient near east, where it designated either the name of a place or a god, comes from the 8th century BC, from the Sefire steles, a set of three Aramaic stelae discovered at the site of Sfire.

Furthermore, the Hebrew word for "pillar", maṣṣebah, was translated into Greek in the Septuagint as oikos theou ("house of god"), and not baitylos, further indicating a lack of connection between this narrative and the baetyl concept.

[15] Another first-century reference is from Pliny the Elder, who describes the baitylos in the following manner[16]:Sotacus distinguishes also two other varieties of the stone, a black and a red, resembling axe-heads.

According to him, those among them that are black and round are supernatural objects; and he states that thanks to them cities and fleets are attached and overcome, their name being baetuli while the elongated stones are cerauniae.A much later reference occurs in the works of Damascius, a 6th century Neoplatonist, according to later quotations of his text by Photios I of Constantinople in his Bibliotheca.

In studies of Phoenicia and Punic religion, the term baetyl is typically used to refer to a fairly small object that is ovoid or conical.

According to later sources, the Black Stone (a baetyl) was moved to this location from a nearby mountaintop in order to augment the sacred nature of the site when the area was under control of the Quraysh.

[26] In ancient Greek religion and mythology, the term was specially applied to the Omphalos of Delphi ("navel"),[2] the stone supposed to have been swallowed by Cronus (who feared misfortune from his own children) in mistake for his infant son Zeus, for whom it had been substituted by Gaea.

[27] In Rome, there was the stone effigy of Cybele, called Mater Idaea Deum, that had been ceremoniously brought from Pessinus in Asia Minor in 204 BC.

According to Tacitus, the simulacrum of the goddess at the temple of Aphrodite Paphia at her mythological birthplace at Paphos, on Cyprus, was a rounded object, approximately conical or shaped like a meta (a turning post on a Roman circus) but "the reason for this" he noted, "is obscure".