Free Hebrew Myths by Robert Graves Page A

glory. Ezekiel (XXVIII. 11–19) is more explicit when he makes a similar prophecy against the King of Tyre, though omitting Lucifer’s name:
    Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying:
    ‘Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the King of Tyrus, and say unto him: “Thus saith the Lord God: Thou sealest up the sum full of wisdom, and perfect in beauty.
    ‘“Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering, the sardius, the topaz, and the diamond, the beryl, the onyx, and the jasper, the sapphire, the emerald, and the carbuncle, and gold: the workmanship of thy tabrets and of thy pipes was prepared for thee in the day that thou wast created.
    ‘“Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and
I
have set thee so: thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire
.
    ‘“Thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day that thou wast created, till iniquity was found in thee.
    ‘“By the multitude of thy merchandise they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned: therefore I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.
    ‘“Thine heart was lifted up because of thy beauty, thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness: I will cast thee to the ground, I will lay thee before kings, that they may behold thee.
    ‘“Thou hast defiled thy sanctuaries by the multitude of thine iniquities, by the iniquity of thy traffic; therefore will I bring forth a fire from the midst of thee, it shall devour thee, and I will bring thee to ashes upon the earth in the sight of all them that behold thee.
    ‘“All they that know thee among the people shall be astonished at thee: thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.”’
    2
. Helel ben Shahar was originally the planet Venus, the last proud star to defy sunrise: a simple Hebrew allegory which has, however, been combined with the myth of Phaethon’s fall—burned to death when he presumptuously drove his father Helius’s sun-chariot. This myth, though Greek, seems to have originated in Babylon where, every year, a masterless sun-chariot symbolizing the demise of the Crown—during which a boy-surrogateoccupied the royal throne for a single day—careered through the city streets. The surrogate, a favourite of the Goddess Ishtar (who controlled the planet Venus) was afterwards sacrificed. Isaiah seems, therefore, to be prophesying that the king must suffer the same death as his surrogate. In Greek myth, Phaethon son of Apollo became identified with a namesake, Phaethon son of Eos (‘Dawn’); according to Hesiod, the Goddess Aphrodite (Ishtar) carried him off to guard her temple. Ezekiel’s King of Tyre worshipped Ishtar and watched boys being burned alive as surrogates of the God Melkarth (‘Ruler of the City’).
    3
. Although
Job
XXXVIII. 7 describes the ‘morning stars’ singing together, the name ‘Helel’ occurs nowhere else in Scripture; but Helel’s father, Shahar (‘Dawn’), appears in
Psalm
CXXXIX. 9 as a winged deity. Ugaritic mythology makes Shahar, or Baal son of El, a twin-brother to Shalem (‘Perfect’). The Mountain of the North (‘Saphon’) which Helel aspired to ascend, can be identified with Saphon, Mount of God, upon which, according to Ugaritic myth, stood Baal’s Throne. When Baal was killed by Mot, his sister Anath buried him there. Saphon, or Zaphon, the 5800-foot mountain—now called Jebel Akra—on which the North-Semitic Bull-god El also ruled ‘in the midst of his divine assembly’, rises near the mouth of the Orontes. The Hittites named it Mount Hazzi, and held it to be the place from where Teshub, the Storm-god, his brother Tashmishu, and his sister Ishtar sighted the terrible stone-giant (the ‘diorite man’ as some scholars translate it) Ullikummi who planned their destruction; launched their attack