Bronze figurine of a bull-calf with silver plating found in a temple deposit at Ashkelon, in Canaan, ca. first half of 2nd millenium BCE. The text accompanying the photo notes:
"Literary sources reveal that the bull and calf were attributes of El and Baal, the chief gods of the Ugaritic pantheons..."
(p.59. "Chalcolithic and Canaanite Periods." Irene Lewitt, et al. Editors. The Israel Museum, Jerusalem. New York. The Vendome Press. 1995. ISBN 0-86565-960-5.
Note that Ashkelon WAS NOT a Philistine city ca. 2000-1500 BCE. The Philistines arrived ca. 1174 BCE and destroyed Ashkelon (later rebuilding it), dispossessing the native Canaanites of their lands. I have argued that the Golden Calf is not an Egyptian phenomena so much as a Canaanite god, it being a form of Baal-Hadad and of Yahweh (Hebrew: Egel-yah, "bull-calf Yah"). Yahweh was also called Baal according to Hosea 2:16. I suspect, along with other scholars, that Yahweh absorbed the epithets and characteristics of the Canaanite gods Bull-El and Baal-Hadad. In erecting a Golden Calf in Yahweh's temples at Dan and Bethel, Jeroboam was merely honoring Yahweh as Egeliah, "the bull-calf iah" (as in Hezekiah).
