Beher
Beher was the pre-Christian Eritrean and Ethiopian (Aksumite) god of the sea. He was part of a trinity of pre-Christian Eritrean and Ethiopian religion, together with Astar and Mahrem. Beher may be related to one of the main Tewahedo Christian terms for god, egziabher.
↻ synthesized from 4 sources
When
- First attested
- 100 BCE
- Attested period
- -100 – 2020
- Historical notes
- Pre-Christian Eritrean and Ethiopian (Aksumite) god.
Relationships
- co occurs with
- Ashtar, Astar, Maher, Igziabeher
- sibling of
- Maher
- syncretized with
- Meder
- child of
- ʿAṯtar
Mentioned by
Sources
Source passages
“Beher is the god of the land and of the sea and is associated with agricultural fertility. He is also identified with Meder, the earth mother. All of these names appear together in the writings of Ezana of Axum, in which the throne is dedicated to Astar, Beher, and Meder”
#3390 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001
“his counterpart was Beher, god of the sea”
#3497 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5
“In the fourth century, the Axumites ruled a large part of modern-day Eritrea and Northern Ethiopia. People in their realm worshipped several gods, called Beher, Astar, and Maher. Igziabeher is possibly a variant of the name Beher, making it a Christianization of the earlier pagan deity.”
#23836 · extracted by google/gemini-2.0-flash-001
“father of the other members of the Axumite pantheon: Maher and Beher”
#23851 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5