The canonical register: ꜥAsherah
Evidence dossier 036 — ꜥAsherah. Every exhibit catalogued, every ruling stated with its grounds.
At a Glance
- Canonical form: ꜥAsherah
- Original script: 𐎀𐎘𐎗𐎚
- Pantheon: Canaanite
- Convention: Ugaritic/Phoenician scholarly convention with matres and gutturals shown
- False forms on record: 0
- Contested forms: none attested
- Series: The Canonical Register, No. 36 of 287
The Evidence
Exhibit 1 — the attestation. The name is attested as Ἀσερά, as KTU (Ugaritic texts) and Coogan, Stories from Ancient Canaan preserve it. On the evidence, it means "Canaanite mother goddess, consort of Ēl and patroness of childbirth". The canonical transliteration is ꜥAsherah.
Exhibit 2 — the flattened form. The plain form asherah is not false — it is a fallback, and the register is exact about what that means. In systems that cannot carry diacritics (legacy databases, older tooling, parts of the address-bar pipeline) the flattened form is the accepted vehicle, and the rulebook names it explicitly as the final rung of the fallback hierarchy: full restoration first, circumflex where attested, macron-only by the academic standard, an attested variant, and only then plain ASCII.
What the fallback status forbids is promotion: asherah may carry the name where marks are impossible, but it may not represent the name where marks are possible. A fallback is a vehicle, never the primary.
Exhibit 3 — forms with legitimate standing. ʿAsherah (Semitic ʿayin (ʿ) is ideal but not registrable at the DNS root). Recorded with their grounds; none displaces the canonical primary.
Exhibit 4 — the physical record. The Ugaritic archive at Ras Shamra names her rbt ʾaṯrt ym in the Baʿal Cycle (KTU 1.3–1.4). Iconographic evidence includes the Taanach cult stands, the Lachish ewer, and Pella figurines showing a stylized tree or nude goddess. Kuntillet ʿAjrud inscriptions (KH1–KH3) and the Khirbet el-Qom tomb inscription mention 'Yahweh and his Asherah,' while biblical texts record her pole (ʾăšērâ) in Jerusalem's temple until Josiah's reform.
Exhibit 5 — the continuing record. ꜥAsherah is the hidden goddess of the Hebrew Bible. Wherever the prophets rage against 'the Asherah' or the women bake cakes for the Queen of Heaven, they testify to her persistent hold on popular devotion.
The Convention's Own History
Every tradition in this register has its own scholarly transliteration standard, built by its own specialists over decades or centuries, and the register follows each on its own terms: Ugaritic/Phoenician scholarly convention with matres and gutturals shown. The principle that unifies them is the one the whole project stands on: a name is evidence, and evidence is not negotiable — not for keyboards, not for convenience, not for anyone.
The Protocol's Position
Can the canonical form live in the address bar? Almost always, yes. IDNA 2008 admits every mark this register defends — the DNS stores them as `xn--` punycode and modern browsers render them natively. The real frictions are practical, not legal: some registrars stock only part of the IDN space, so a theoretically valid name can be temporarily unbuyable; and stacked combinations (an acute riding a macron) remain awkward to type on mobile keyboards even where the protocol accepts them.
The project's answer is a ranked ladder, not a compromise: the full restoration first, then attested fallbacks in descending order of completeness. The ladder's lowest rung, plain ASCII, is a vehicle for legacy systems — sanctioned, but never presented as the scholarly form.
The Verdict
Case closed on ꜥAsherah: canonical, cited, and defended. The keyboard form asherah rides as the sanctioned fallback — and stays in that lane. The register's files remain open: if a source surfaces that changes any line of this entry, the entry changes. Until then, the temple at /sites/asherah/ holds the canonical form.
The docket for this ruling: no false forms on the docket; no contested forms attested; the attestation rests on 10 cited sources — KTU (Ugaritic texts), Coogan, Stories from Ancient Canaan, Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism.
The Register Continues
The register holds 287 entries like this one — each temple with its own ruling. Read the temple's founding dispatch for the story, its Restoration File for the philology, its Resonance File for the industries, or the whole archive end to end.
Continue the register — previous entry: Ašavahišta (read it) · next entry: Aššur (read it).
The Canonical Register is written from the same canonical record as the lexicon itself. If a false form is missing from this page, it is because the evidence does not support calling it false — or because we have not seen it yet. Show us, with a citation, and the register will answer.