Epic
The Ugaritic Baal Cycle
Cycle de Baal
Anonymous · -1350
Synopsis
The cycle features Baal, god of the storm. He first confronts Yam, the Sea, for the kingship of the gods, armed with two clubs forged for him by the divine craftsman Kothar. Victorious, he obtains from the old god El, with the support of his sister Anat and of the queen Athirat, permission to build a palace on Mount Saphon. Then comes the challenge of Mot, Death, who draws him down to the underworld, while the rain stops and drought strikes the land.
Context
The six tablets of the cycle, now fragmentary, were found at Ugarit, present-day Ras Shamra, on the Syrian coast: the site was discovered in 1928 and excavated from 1929. They are written in Ugaritic, a north-west Semitic language, in a cuneiform alphabet of about thirty signs, in the hand of the scribe Ilimilku. Their date is disputed, from the middle of the fourteenth to the twelfth century BCE depending on the author. The site yielded about fifteen hundred texts, and scholars note the parallels between this master of the rain, victorious over the Sea, and biblical poetry.
Who it is for
A set of myths in verse, more than three thousand years old, to be read in a scholarly translation, with its introduction and notes, which point out the gaps.
Prizes and reception
Translated into French in the Textes ougaritiques published by Éditions du Cerf in 1974, it received in English the annotated edition by Mark S. Smith and Wayne Pitard at Brill.
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