Arsay
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| Arsay | |
|---|---|
Daughter of Baal | |
| Major cult center | Ugarit |
| Genealogy | |
| Parents | Baal |
| Siblings | Pidray, Tallay, multiple others[1] |
| Equivalents | |
| Hurrian | Allatu |
Arsay (Ugaritic: ‘arṣy[2]) was a goddess worshiped in the city of Ugarit in the late Bronze Age. Her standing in the Ugaritic pantheon and her role in Ugaritic religion remain uncertain. It has been proposed that she was associated with the underworld or with groundwater, though neither theory found universal support. She was most likely regarded as a daughter of the weather god Baal, though neither of the goddesses most often associated with him, Anat and Ashtart, was ever described as her mother. In a single passage from the Baal Cycle she appears alongside Pidray and Tallay, and as a result these three goddesses are often grouped in scholarship, but there is no evidence that they were associated with her in other contexts.
Arsay's name was derived from the Ugaritic word ‘arṣ,[3] which can be translated as "earth" or "underworld."[4] The final sign, y, is a common suffix of feminine names.[5] The name is typically translated as "Earthy."[6][3]
Her epithet bt y y’bdr is usually translated as "daughter of y’bdr," but Aicha Rahmouni proposes that the translation "disperser of y’bdr" might also be a plausible option.[5] It occurs twelve times in known Ugaritic texts.[3] The meaning of the term y’bdr is unknown.[5] It has been suggested that it might be the name of an otherwise unknown deity, or possibly a particular attribute of Arsay.[5] Past proposals include a euphemism for the underworld, "wide earth" (based on Arabic wa’iba, "was spacious"), "ample flowing" (based on Arabic wa’ībun, "ample," and Akkadian nadarruru, "to run its course freely"), and "rainshower" (based on Arabic ‘abba, "pour down," and Akkadian darāru, a verb referring to freely flowing water).[5] All of these proposals found a degree of support in the field of Ugaritic studies, but Rahmouni remarks that the context does not give any clues about the meaning of y’bdr, and that many of the translations of it are most likely dubious.[5]
It is often presumed that Arsay was a goddess associated with water.[7] For example, Nicolas Wyatt places her in the category of deities "governing meteorological phenomena and fertility" alongside Baal (under various names), Pidray and Tallay.[8] However, no direct references to Arsay being associated with any weather phenomena are presently known from Ugaritic texts.[9] It has also proposed that she was associated with groundwater, though this assumption remains unproven.[7]
On the basis of an indirect equation between Arsay and Allatu it has been proposed that she was associated with the underworld.[10] However, some researchers, for example Manfred Krebernik, are skeptical about this assumption due to lack of other evidence pointing at such a connection.[4] Steve A. Wiggins proposes that the equivalence might have been based on some other shared feature of both goddesses.[10]