CHARIOTS OF THE SUN. Sun worship as part of the general cult of heavenly bodies is referred to often in the OT (Exod 23:24; Lev 26:30; 2 Chron 14:5; 34:4, 7; Isa 17:8; 27:9; Ezek 6:4, 6). One of the cult objects was the “sun chariot” which could be hewn down and burned (2 Chron 34:4, 7). In the same category were “the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun” (2 Kings 23:11). Only here in the OT is the connection of the horse with the sun mentioned. Elsewhere in the ancient world this is not unknown. Aramaic inscrs. for Zinjirli in the 8th cent. b.c. refer to a deity Rekub’el who is associated with the Sun God Shamash, perhaps as his charioteer. The same inscrs. show that Assyrian sun worship existed alongside Canaanite worship as in Judah, for the sun was worshiped alongside Baal-Hadad (q.v.). The Assyrians called the Sun God rākib narkabāti (chariot rider). The Sumer. word for horse anše-kur-ra, “ass of the mountain” or “foreign land,” which some interpret as “ass of the east,” perhaps because the chariot driving, horse riding, Aryans seemed to come from the E c. 1800 b.c. In early Rom. imperial times at Rhodes, four horses were cast into the sea at the annual sun festival.

Bibliography J. Gray, I and II Kings (1964), 670.