Flora Unveiled

122 i Flora Unveiled

sacred tree of northern Mesopotamia became more stylized as it gradually transcended
its agricultural roots and took on cosmological and political significance. Whereas the
King’s authority in Sumer and Akkad was legitimized by Inanna/ Ishtar or her representa-
tives in the sacred marriage ritual, the Assyrian kings of the first millennium bce owed
their authority, as well as their responsibility to ensure the state’s welfare, to their special
relationship with the sacred tree and the sun god, without the direct intercession of the
Goddess. Nevertheless, the presence of Inanna/ Ishtar persisted implicitly in the guise of
the sacred tree.

Sacred Trees and Artificial Pollination

In some of the Northwest Palace sacred tree reliefs, the genii are shown applying the mullilu
to the surface of the sacred tree itself, as shown in Figure 5.15 As noted earlier, the currently
accepted interpretation is that the genii are using a pine or cedar cone as an aspergillum
(a device for sprinkling holy water) to anoint the king and the sacred tree. However, it is
worth noting a competing theory because it bears directly on the question of when pollina-
tion was discovered. In 1890, Edward Burnett Tylor, a British anthropologist,^78 proposed
a theory on the significance of the sacred tree ritual that was widely accepted for many
decades. Tylor, Curator of the Royal Museum at Oxford and a Fellow of the Royal Society,
presented photographic evidence that the inflorescence cluster of the male date rachis is
very cone- like in appearance when it first emerges from its prophyll sheath.^79 Tylor photo-
graphed the male inflorescence cluster as it looks when held in a person’s hand (his own)
and compared it with the image of the “pine cone” held by an Assyrian winged deity (Figure
5.16). The similarity is intriguing. Even at this early stage of emergence from the prophyll,
the flowers are beginning to open and pollen is being shed, so it is precisely this stage that
would be used for artificial pollination.
Based on his findings, Tylor proposed that the cone- shaped object in the hands of the
winged deities of Assyrian palace stone reliefs is not a pine cone, but the rachis of the male
date palm. The entire sacred tree tableau, according to Tylor, represents the artificial polli-
nation of the female date palm. Tylor believed that the Assyrians used the motif of artificial
pollination of date palms as a metaphor for agricultural fertility and the general prosperity
embodied by the king.
Tylor’s theory has fallen into disfavor in recent years because of the lexical evidence cited
in the previous section as well as the fact that at some locations in the palace the genius
appears to be anointing the king, himself, instead of the sacred tree.
On the other hand, Tylor’s pollination theory cannot be entirely ruled out. Date pollen
in Neo- Assyria could have acquired a symbolic significance similar to the sacred maize pol-
len in Navajo religion.

The Persistence of Vegetation Goddesses

in Monotheistic R eligions

Canaanite vegetation goddesses were common in the Levant during the Middle and
Late Bronze Age (1,750– 1,200 bce). Images of naked Canaanite goddesses associated