Baal

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(Palmyra’s Temple of Baal in better days. They hung the 80-year-old archeologist/curator of the site from one of the columns to the right).

I was a small part of one of these deals before, and it is a little eerie. It was during the Gulf War. The first one, that is, or more precisely, the first American one, since they have been fighting in the Fertile Crescent since someone noticed it was fertile.

Anyway, we got a large format image of a couple MIG-21 Fishbed fighter jets parked at either side of a ramshackle pile of something that had obviously been constructed by the hand of man.

The pile was within the security perimeter of one of the Iraqi airbases, and part of what we were charged with doing was finding likely targets for the massive air campaign to set up the ground component of the liberation of Kuwait. A couple old jets would qualify as a legitimate target, and I looked at the image as something nagged at distant memory. Finally it registered- the decrepit pile of mud brick was the fabled Great Ziggurat Temple of Ur, purported to be the oldest human-constructed structure on earth.

I took the picture down to the J2 office in the Pentagon to point that out, and was greeted with the usual sigh- Saddam had been baiting us in an attempt to get us to hit the jets and damage the cultural heritage of all Personkind.

I was leaving the office when the J2 asked: “Did we actually hit it yet?”

“I’ll check, Sir.”

Thankfully, we hadn’t, and the Temple survived. Of course, I don’t know how much longer it will.

With all the other crazy stuff going on, the ISIS atrocities in Palmyra, the ancient Semitic city in present Homs Governorate, Syria. We have mostly been focused on important stuff- the big Alaskan trip, and the important change of name for the tallest mountain in North America, and the ritual burnings alive of opponents to the Islamic Extremists, the execution of the elderly archaeologist and all that rightly takes a back seat to the legacy stuff. Sort of ironic that it is Mr. McKinley’s legacy that is getting thrown under the bus to create the new one, but I am not an Alaskan and they seem to want it. There is some other stuff going on up there, which reminded me of what H.L. Mencken, sage of Baltimore, observed long ago: “”The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

There is plenty of stuff in the here and now that is not imaginary and very scary indeed. Have you looked at the 401k lately?

Anyway, in terms of real hobgoblins, I saw this image this morning, and it looks like the cultural barbarians have been busy boys. It appears they have taken a bulldozer to the ancient Temple of Baal, one of the coolest relics of a bygone town in a city of fantastic monuments.

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(Baal, before and after.)

According to Canaanite mythology, Baal was the son of El, the chief god, and Asherah, the goddess of the sea. Baal was considered the most powerful of all gods, eclipsing El, who was seen by pundits in the agora as rather weak and ineffective.

In various battles Baal defeated Yamm, the god of the sea, and Mot, the god of death and underworld. Baal’s sisters/consorts were Ashtoreth, a fertility goddess associated with the stars, and Anath, a goddess of love and war. The Canaanites worshiped Baal as the sun god and as the storm god, and usually depicted, when the carvings survived, as holding a lightning bolt. He was also worshiped as a fertility god, “rooted in sensuality and involved ritualistic prostitution in the temples.” The priests of Baal appealed to him in rites of wild abandon” which included loud, ecstatic cries and self-inflicted injury.” It is said that Baal also appreciated human sacrifice as a demonstration of sincerity.

I believe in having a good time at church, but I can see why the Zealots of 8th century Jihad felt the need to scour the earth of the place.

As if.

Wouldn’t it be a pleasant change of pace to deal with reality that is actually happening?

Where is Mr. Mencken when we need him?

Copyright 2015 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com
Twitter: @jayare303

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