The traditional Berber religion is the ancient and native set of beliefs and deities adhered to by the Berbers. Many ancient Berber beliefs were developed locally, whereas others were influenced over time through contact with others like ancient Egyptian religion, or borrowed during antiquity from the Punic religion, Judaism, Iberian mythology, and the Hellenistic religion. Some of the ancient Berber beliefs still exist today subtly within the Berber popular culture and tradition. Syncretic influences from the traditional Berber religion can also be found in certain other faiths.
Archaeological research on prehistoric tombs in the Maghreb shows that the bodies of the dead were painted with ochre. While this practice was known to the Iberomaurusians, this culture seems to have been primarily a Capsian industry. The dead were also sometimes buried with shells of ostrich eggs, jewelry, and weapons. Bodies were usually buried in a fetal position.[1]
Unlike the majority of mainland Berbers, the Guanches mummified the dead. Additionally, in 1958 University of Rome Professor Fabrizio Mori (1925–2010) discovered a Libyan mummy around 5,500 years old—roughly a thousand years older than any known Ancient Egyptian mummy.[2][3]
Cult of the dead
Herodotus in The Histories stated that the cult of the dead was one of the distinguishing characteristics of Libya in antiquity.[4]Pomponius Mela reported that the Augilae (Modern Awjila in Libya) considered the spirits of their ancestors to be deities. They swore by them and consulted them. After making requests, they slept in their tombs to await responses in dreams.[5]
Herodotus (484 BCE–425 BCE) noted the same practice among the Nasamones, who inhabited the deserts around Siwa and Augila. He wrote:
They swear by the people among themselves who are reported to have been the most lawful and brave, by these, I say, laying hands upon their tombs; and they divine by visiting the sepulchral mounds of their ancestors and lying down to sleep upon them after having prayed; and whatsoever thing the person sees in their dream, this they accept.[6]
The Berbers worshiped their rulers, too.[7] The tombs of the Numidian rulers are among the most notable monuments left by the Classical Berbers.
The veneration (not worship) of saints which exists among the modern Berbers in the form of Maraboutism—which is widespread in northwest Africa—may or may not contain traces of prior beliefs or customs concerning the dead.[citation needed]
The tombs of the early people and their ancestors indicate that the Berbers and their forebears (the Numidians and Mauretanians) believed in an afterlife. The prehistoric people of northwest Africa buried bodies in little holes. When they realized that bodies buried in unsecured holes were dug up by wild animals, they began to bury them in deeper ones. Later, they buried the dead in caves, tumuli, tombs in rocks, mounds, and other types of tombs.[1]
These tombs evolved from primitive structures to much more elaborate ones, such as the pyramidal tombs spread throughout Northern Africa. The honor of being buried in such a tomb appears to have been reserved for those who were most important to their communities.
These pyramid tombs have attracted the attention of some scholars, such as Mohamed Chafik who wrote a book discussing the history of several of the tombs that have survived into modern times. He tried to relate the pyramidal Berber tombs with the great Egyptian pyramids on the basis of the etymological and historical data.[8] The best known Berber pyramids are the 19-meter (62ft) pre-Roman Numidian pyramid of the Medracen and the 30-meter (98ft)ancient Mauretanian pyramid.[9] The Numidian pyramid in Tipaza is also known as Kbour-er-Roumia or Tomb of Juba and Sypax, mistranslated by the French colonists as Tomb of the Christian Woman.[9] The Tomb holds the graves of King Juba II and Queen Cleopatra Selene II, the rulers of Mauretania.
Megalithic culture
Augustine of Hippo mentioned that the polytheistic Africans worshipped the rocks.[10]Apuleius stated as well that rocks were worshipped in the second century.[10] The megalithic culture may have been part of a cult of the dead or of star-worship.[10]
The monument of Msoura is the best-known megalithic monument in northwest Africa. It is composed of a circle of megaliths surrounding a tumulus. The highest megalith is over 5 meters (16ft). According to legend, it is the sepulchre of the Greaco-Roman giant Antaeus.[11] Another megalithic monument was discovered in 1926 to the south of Casablanca. The monument was engraved with funerary inscriptions in the Berber script known as Tifinagh.[10]
Herodotus mentioned that the ancient Berbers worshipped the moon and sun and sacrificed to them. He reported:
They begin with the ears of the animal, which they cut off and throw over their house: this done, they kill the animal by twisting the neck. They sacrifice it to the Sun and Moon, but not to any other deities. This worship is common to all the Libyans.[12]
Tullius Cicero (105–43 BCE) also reported the same cult in On the Republic (Scipio's Dream):
When I (Scipio) was introduced to him, the old man (Massinissa, king of Massyle) embraced me, shed tears, and then, looking up to heaven, exclaimed I thank thee, O supreme Sun, and you also, you other celestial beings, that before I departed from this life I behold in my kingdom, and in my palace, Publius Cornelius Scipio.[13]
There were some Latin inscriptions found in Northwest Africa dedicated to the sun-god. An example is the inscription found in Souk Ahras (the birthplace of Augustine; Thagaste in Algeria) written "Solo Deo Invicto".[14]Samuel the Confessor appears to have suffered from the sun-worshiping Berbers who tried unsuccessfully to force him to worship the sun.
The Berber pantheon also contained multiple deities, known by the Romans as the Dii Mauri (lit. the Moorish gods), represented on reliefs and also the subject of dedications.[15] During the Roman period, Saturn and Ops was the focus of an important cult, subsuming that of Baal Hammon and Tanit, two deities of Punic origin.[citation needed]
Libyan-Egyptian beliefs
The Ancient Egyptians were the neighbors of the Berbers, as such traces of the worship of ancient Egyptian deities by the Berbers was found, and it has been theorized that both cultures shared at least some of these gods:
The cult Isis and Set by the Berbers was reported by Herodotus when saying:
However, none of these Libyan tribes ever taste cattle's flesh, but abstain from it for the same reason as the Egyptians do, neither do they breed swine. Even at Cyrene, the women and men think it wrong to eat the flesh of the cattle, honoring Isis, the Egyptian goddess whom they worship both with fasts and festivals. Additionally the Barcaean women and men abstain also from the flesh of swine.[16]
Those Libyans did not eat the flesh of swine, because it was associated with Set, while they did not eat the cattle's flesh, because it was associated with Isis.[17]
The most remarkable common god of the Berbers and the Egyptians was Amun and Amunet.[18] These deities are hard to attribute to only one pantheon. Although most modern sources ignore the existence of Amun and Amunet in Berber mythology, he and she were two of the greatest ancient Berber deities.[19] He and She was honored by the Ancient Greeks in Cyrenaica, and was united with the Phoenician god Baal and goddess Anat due to Libyan influence.[20] Early depictions of rams and ewes (related possibly to an early form of the cult of these deities) across North Africa have been dated to between 9600 BCE and 7500 BCE. The most famous temple of Amun and Amunet in Ancient Libya was the augural temple at Siwa Oasis in Egypt, an oasis still inhabited by Berbers.
The Egyptians considered some Egyptian deities to have had a Libyan origin, such as Neith who has been considered by Egyptians to have emigrated from Libya to establish her temple at Sais in the Nile Delta. Some people also believe links between the way Egyptians depicted certain deities and the way they depicted Libyan people exist, such is the case for Ament.
Osiris was also among the Egyptian deities who were venerated in Libya and Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge (in addition to a few other scholars) believed that Osiris was originally a Libyan god saying of him that "Everything which the texts of all periods recorded concerning him goes to show that he was an indigenous god of Northern Africa (modern day Libya), and that his home and origin were possibly Libyan."[21]
Some legends even tell that Athena was born in Lake Tritonis (in modern Libya).
The Phoenicians were originally a Semitic people who inhabited the coast of modern Lebanon, and later also of Tunisia. The Phoenicians of Lebanon were seafarers and they founded Carthage in 814 BCE. They later gave birth to the so-called Punic culture, which had its roots in the Berber and Phoenician cultures. Some[who?] scholars distinguish the relationships between the Phoenicians and the Berbers in two phases:
Before the Battle of Himera (480 BCE)
When Phoenicians settled in Northwest Africa, they stayed in the coastal regions to avoid wars with the Berbers. They maintained their deities which they brought from their homeland. Therefore, early Carthaginians had two important Phoenician deities, Baal and Anat.
After the Battle of Himera
Carthage began to ally with the Berber tribes after the Battle of Himera, in which the Carthaginians were defeated by the Greeks. In addition to political changes, the Carthaginians imported some of the Berber deities.
Baal and Anat were the primary deities worshipped in Carthage. Depictions of these deities are found in several sites across Northern Africa. Also, the goddess Tanit and god Baal Hammon were worshipped, who are thought to be of Berber origin [citation needed]. The names themselves, Baal Hammon and Tanit, have Berber linguistic structure. Many Feminine and Masculine names end with "t" and "n" and in the Berber languages. Some scholars believe that the Egyptian goddess Neith and Egyptian god Khnum were similar to the Libyan goddess Tanit and the Libyan god Baal Hammon. There are also Massyle and Phoenician names that apparently contain roots from the god Baal, such as Adherbal and Hannibal and names also derived from Anat.
The ancient Greeks established colonies in Cyrenaica. The Greeks influenced the eastern Libya pantheon, but they were also influenced by Libyan culture and beliefs. Generally, the Libyan-Greek relationships can be divided into two different periods. In the first period, the Greeks had peaceful relationships with the Libyans. Later, there were wars between them. These social relationships were mirrored in their beliefs.
Before the Battle of Irassa (570 BCE)
The first notable appearance of Libyan influence on the Cyrenaican-Greek beliefs is the name Cyrenaica itself. This name was originally the name of a legendary Thessalian woman warrior and queen who was known as Cyrene, ruled Thessaly in Greece and later Cyrene in Libya. Cyrene was, according to the legend, a courageous huntress woman and queen who hunted and ate lions and all other animals. She gave her name to the city Cyrene in Libya. The emigrating Greeks made her their protector besides their Greek god Apollo.[22]
The Greeks of Cyrenaica also to have adopted some Berber customs. Herodotus (Book IV 120) reported that the Libyans taught the Greeks how to yoke four horses to a chariot (the Romans used these Libyan chariots later, after they were taught to do so by the Greeks). The Cyrenaican Greeks built temples for the Libyan deities Amun and Amunet instead of their original god Zeus and Hera. They later identified their thunderstorm god and goddess Zeus and Hera with the Libyan Amun and Amunet.[23] Some of them continued worshipping Amun and Amunet themselves. Amun and Amunet's cult was so widespread among the Greeks that even Alexander III of Macedonia decided to be declared as the son of Amun and Amunet in the Siwan temple of Amun and Amunet by the Libyan priests of Amun and Amunet and was declared so.[24]
The ancient historians mentioned that some Greek deities were of Libyan origin. The daughter of Brontes and Metis, Athena was considered by some ancient historians, like Herodotus, to have been of Libyan origin. Those ancient historians stated that she was originally honored by the Libyans in Libya in Lake Tritonis where she had been born from the god Brontes and goddess Metis, according to the Libyan legends. Herodotus wrote that the Aegis and the clothes of Athena were typical for Libyan women.
Herodotus also stated that Poseidon (an important Greek water god) was adopted from the Libyans by the Greeks. He emphasized that no other people worshipped Poseidon from early times apart from the Libyans who spread his cult:
These I think received their naming from the Pelasgians, except Poseidon; but about this god the Hellenes learnt from the Libyans, for no people except the Libyans have had the name of Poseidon from the first and have paid honour to this god always.[25]
Some other Greek deities were related to Libya. The goddess Lamia was believed to have originated in Libya, like Medusa and the Gorgons. The Greeks seem also to have met the god Triton in Libya. The modern day Berbers may have believed that the Hesperides were situated in modern Morocco. The Hesperides were believed to be the daughters of Atlas, a god who is associated with the Atlas Mountains by Herodotus. The Atlas Mountain were worshipped by the Berbers and the Canary Islands represented the daughters of Atlas.
After the Battle of Irassa
The Greeks and the Libyans began to break their harmony in the period of Battus II of Cyrene. Battus II began secretly to invite other Greek groups to Libya, Tunisia and East Algeria. The Libyans and Massyle considered that as a danger that had to be stopped. The Berbers began to fight against the Greeks, sometimes in alliance with the Egyptians and other times with the Carthaginians. Nevertheless, the Greeks were the victors.
Antaeus is depicted with long hair and beard, contrary to Heracles.
Some historians believe that the myth of Antaeus and Heracles was a reflection of those wars between the Libyans and Greeks.
Roman-Berber beliefs
The Romans allied firstly with the Massyle against Carthage. They defeated Carthage in 146 BCE. But later, they also annexed Massyle to the Roman Empire.
The Imperial Period
According to Pliny the Elder, the Libyans honored the war goddess Ifri, who was considered to be the protector of her worshipers (and seemed to have been an influential goddess in North Africa) and depicted her on the Berber coins. This goddess was represented in diverse ways on Numidian coins from the first century BCE. When the Romans conquered Northern Africa, she appeared in sculpture and on the coins of the Roman states in North Africa.
The Roman pantheon seems to have been adopted generally, although the cult of Saturn and Ops, as mentioned above, was perhaps the most important.
A new god appears in later texts, identified with tribes such as the Austuriani outside the Roman frontiers of Libya. Gurzil was a war god who identified with the son of Amun and Amunet. He was taken by the Berbers to their battles against the Byzantines. Corippus mentioned that the chiefs of the Laguata took their god Gurzil into battle against the Byzantines and Arabs. It is very likely that the sanctuary of Gurzil was located in Ghirza, in Libya, where remarkable reliefs show a noble Libyan receiving tribute while seated on a curule chair.[26]
↑ Tawalt, Libyan Massyle SiteArchived 2007-01-02 at the Wayback Machine(in Arabic), Chafik, Mohammed. Revue Tifinagh. Elements lexicaux Berberes pouvant apporter un eclairage dans la recherche des origines prehistoriques des pyramides].
1 2 Chafik, Mohammed. Revue Tifinagh. Elements lexicaux Berberes pouvant apporter un eclairage dans la recherche des origines prehistoriques des pyramides
Ancient Egyptian religion was a complex system of polytheistic beliefs and rituals that formed an integral part of ancient Egyptian culture. It centered on the Egyptians' interactions with many deities believed to be present and in control of the world. About 1500 deities are known. Rituals such as prayer and offerings were provided to the gods to gain their favor. Formal religious practice centered on the pharaohs, the rulers of Egypt, believed to possess divine powers by virtue of their positions. They acted as intermediaries between their people and the gods, and were obligated to sustain the gods through rituals and offerings so that they could maintain Ma'at, the order of the cosmos, and repel Isfet, which was chaos. The state dedicated enormous resources to religious rituals and to the construction of temples.
Tifinagh is a script used to write the Berber languages. Tifinagh is descended from the ancient Libyco-Berber alphabet. The traditional Tifinagh, sometimes called Tuareg Tifinagh, is still favored by the Tuareg Berbers of the Sahara desert in southern Algeria, northeastern Mali, northern Niger, and northern Burkina Faso for writing the Tuareg Berber language. Neo-Tifinagh is an alphabet developed by Berber Academy to adopt Tuareg Tifinagh for use with Kabyle; it has been since modified for use across North Africa.
Isis was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingdom as one of the main characters of the Osiris myth, in which she resurrects her slain brother and husband, the divine king Osiris, and produces and protects his heir, Horus. She was believed to help the dead enter the afterlife as she had helped Osiris, and she was considered the divine mother of the pharaoh, who was likened to Horus. Her maternal aid was invoked in healing spells to benefit ordinary people. Originally, she played a limited role in royal rituals and temple rites, although she was more prominent in funerary practices and magical texts. She was usually portrayed in art as a human woman wearing a throne-like hieroglyph on her head. During the New Kingdom, as she took on traits that originally belonged to Hathor, the preeminent goddess of earlier times, Isis was portrayed wearing Hathor's headdress: a sun disk between the horns of a cow.
Dodona in Epirus in northwestern Greece was the oldest Hellenic oracle, possibly dating to the 2nd millennium BCE according to Herodotus. The earliest accounts in Homer describe Dodona as an oracle of Zeus. Situated in a remote region away from the main Greek poleis, it was considered second only to the Oracle of Delphi in prestige.
Melqart was the tutelary god of the Phoenician city-state of Tyre and a major deity in the Phoenician and Punic pantheons. He may have been central to the founding-myths of various Phoenician colonies throughout the Mediterranean, as well as the source of several myths concerning the exploits of Heracles. Many cities were thought to be founded and protected by Melqart, no doubt springing from the original Phoenician practice of building a Temple of Melqart at new colonies. Similar to Tammuz and Adonis, he symbolized an annual cycle of death and rebirth.
Memphis, or Men-nefer, was the ancient capital of Inebu-hedj, the first nome of Lower Egypt that was known as mḥw ("North"). Its ruins are located in the vicinity of the present-day village of Mit Rahina, in markaz (county) Badrashin, Giza, Egypt. This modern name is probably derived from the late Ancient Egyptian name for Memphis mjt-rhnt meaning "Road of the Ram-Headed Sphinxes".
Amunet or Imnt is a primordial goddess in ancient Egyptian religion. Thebes was the center of her worship through the last dynasty, the Ptolemaic Kingdom, in 30 BCE. She is attested in the earliest known of Egyptian religious texts and, as was the custom, was paired with a counterpart who is entitled with the same name, but in the masculine, Amun. They were thought to have existed prior to the beginning of creation along with three other couples representing primeval concepts.
Astarte is the Hellenized form of the Ancient Near Eastern goddess ʿAṯtart. ʿAṯtart was the Northwest Semitic equivalent of the East Semitic goddess Ishtar.
In Ancient Egyptian religion, Taweret is the protective ancient Egyptian goddess of childbirth and fertility. The name "Taweret" means "she who is great" or simply "great one", a common pacificatory address to dangerous deities. The deity is typically depicted as a bipedal female hippopotamus with feline attributes, pendulous female human breasts, the limbs and paws of a lion, and the back and tail of a Nile crocodile. She commonly bears the epithets "Lady of Heaven", "Mistress of the Horizon", "She Who Removes Water", "Mistress of Pure Water", and "Lady of the Birth House".
Baal Hammon, properly Baʿal Ḥamon, meaning "Lord Hammon", was the chief god of Carthage. He was a weather god considered responsible for the fertility of vegetation and esteemed as King of the Gods. He was depicted as a bearded older man with curling ram's horns. Baʿal Ḥammon's female cult partner was Tanit.
Tanit or Tinnit was a Carthaginian Punic goddess, and the chief deity of Ancient Carthage, alongside her consort Baal Hammon.
The Canaanite religion was the group of ancient Semitic religions practiced by the Canaanites living in the ancient Levant from at least the early Bronze Age to the first centuries CE. Canaanite religion was polytheistic and, in some cases, monolatristic.
The Punic religion, Carthaginian religion, or Western Phoenician religion in the western Mediterranean was a direct continuation of the Phoenician variety of the polytheistic ancient Canaanite religion. However, significant local differences developed over the centuries following the foundation of Carthage and other Punic communities elsewhere in North Africa, southern Spain, Sardinia, western Sicily, and Malta from the ninth century BC onward. After the conquest of these regions by the Roman Republic in the third and second centuries BC, Punic religious practices continued, surviving until the fourth century AD in some cases. As with most cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, Punic religion suffused their society and there was no stark distinction between religious and secular spheres. Sources on Punic religion are poor. There are no surviving literary sources and Punic religion is primarily reconstructed from inscriptions and archaeological evidence. An important sacred space in Punic religion appears to have been the large open air sanctuaries known as tophets in modern scholarship, in which urns containing the cremated bones of infants and animals were buried. There is a long-running scholarly debate about whether child sacrifice occurred at these locations, as suggested by Greco-Roman and biblical sources.
During the Iron Age and classical antiquity, Libya referred to modern-day Africa west of the Nile river. Greek and Roman geographers placed the dividing line between Libya/Africa and Asia at the Nile.
The concept of Hellenistic religion as the late form of Ancient Greek religion covers any of the various systems of beliefs and practices of the people who lived under the influence of ancient Greek culture during the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire. There was much continuity in Hellenistic religion: people continued to worship the Greek gods and to practice the same rites as in Classical Greece.
Amun was a major ancient Egyptian deity who appears as a member of the Hermopolitan Ogdoad. Amun was attested from the Old Kingdom together with his wife Amunet. With the 11th Dynasty, Amun rose to the position of patron deity of Thebes by replacing Montu.
Ra or Re was the ancient Egyptian deity of the Sun. By the Fifth Dynasty, in the 25th and 24th centuries BC, he had become one of the most important gods in ancient Egyptian religion, identified primarily with the noon-day sun. Ra ruled in all parts of the created world: the sky, the Earth, and the underworld. He was believed to have ruled as the first pharaoh of Ancient Egypt. He was the god of the sun, order, kings and the sky.
Deities depicted with horns or antlers are found in many religions across the world. In religions that venerate animal deities, horned bulls, goats, and rams may be worshiped as deities or serve as the inspiration for a deity's appearance. Many pagan religions include horned gods in their pantheons, such as Pan in Greek mythology and Ikenga in Odinala. Some neopagan religions have constructed these deities as the Horned God, representing the male part of their duotheistic theological system.
Human habitation in the North African region began over one million years ago. Remains of Homo erectus during the Middle Pleistocene period, has been found in North Africa. The Berbers, who generally antedate by many millennia the Phoenicians and the establishment of Carthage, are understood to have arisen out of social events shaped by the confluence of several earlier peoples, i.e., the Capsian culture, events which eventually constituted their ethnogenesis. Thereafter Berbers lived as an independent people in North Africa, including the Tunisian region.
Oasis Polis is said by Herodotus to be an ancient Greek colony from Samos in the Egyptian Desert.
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