Canaanite Ugarit—Modern Ras Shamra
J. Philip Hyatt
On the Syrian coast at the point nearest the easternmost tip of Cyprus is a deserted mound known as Ras Shamra, the position of which is shown on the map, Fig. 3. Within it are the ruins of an ancient city named Ugarit. It was founded in the Late Stone Age and became an important and wealthy Canaanite center in the second millennium B.C. before its destruction by the Sea Peoples (of whom the Philistines were a part) in the twelfth century. Its wealth came from the commerce which flowed through it and its port of Minet el-Beida (called “White Haven” by the Greeks). This commerce was by caravan and ship between Syria and Mesopotamia on the one hand, and Egypt, Cyprus and the Aegean region on the other.
In 1928 a Syrian peasant while digging on his land at the ancient port, discovered a vaulted tomb containing some objects of gold. The matter was reported to the Antiquities Department of Syria, and in the following year excavations were begun by the French, directed by C.F.A. Schaeffer, at both the port and the deserted mound. During the first season’s excavation a discovery was made which has proven to be the moat important archaeological “find” for Biblical students made in the last quarter century. This was the uncovering of a scribal school and library, adjoining a temple, which was found to contain a store of clay tablets. Moat of the tablets were written in a new script which had never before bean encountered, and they were subsequently found to contain a portion of the long lost Canaanite literature, dating in the fifteenth and early fourteenth centuries B.C. That the building had been a school was proved by the presence in the ruins of exercise tablets, bilingual dictionaries, and the like. The scribes of Ugarit must have been very learned and skillful, for inscriptions in no less than six languages have been found at the site.*
Early Canaanite Literature
The texts with which We are here concerned were written with stylus on clay tablets in a cuneiform (wedge-shaped) alphabet of thirty signs (Fig. 5 ), the earliest known alphabet written with wedge-shaped characters. The Sumerians, Babylonians, Assyrians, Hittites and others had previously used cuneiform for writing syllable, and symbols for ideas, but had not developed alphabets. The language of these tablets is a Semitic dialect, closely akin to Biblical Hebrew, for which the name “Ugaritic” has been coined. The script was entirely unknown and undecipherable at the time of discovery, and there were no bilingual texts (sign dictionaries in two languages) to aid in the reading. That they can now be read and translated is due to the ingenuity of many scholars, of whom the pioneers were two French scholars, Ch. Virolleaud and P. Dhorme, and a German, Hans Bauer. It is significant that M. Dhorme had been decorated by his government for brilliant work on ciphers during the World War.
The outstanding feature of these texts is that they include not merely private documents (such as letters), but also genuine literature: poetic myths and legends which give us first-hand information concerning the religion of the early Canaanites. We need no longer depend, as formerly, upon late and second-hand sources for the study of Canaanite life and religion. The longest and most valuable of the poems is an early Canaanite version of the vegetation myth which was known all over the ancient Orient. Vegetation was personified as a god who was thought to die in the scorching summer sun, and rise with the returning rains in the fall. In Babylonia the principals were Ishtar and Tammuz (cf. Ezekiel 8:14); in Egypt, Isis and Osiris; and in Greek mythology, Aphrodite and Adonis. In the Canaanite version the dying-rising god Baal is overcome by the god Mut (Death), and later rescued by his sister Anat. This myth was designed to symbolize the changing seasons of the year, and was undoubtedly used in ritualistic ceremonies. Among the texts also are the poem of the “gracious and beautiful gods,” a poem describing a sacred marriage, and the legends of Daniel and Keret.
The Deities of Ugarit
The role of the gods and goddesses in the Ugaritic religion can be reconstructed from these tablets. The most important divinities may here be listed. Chief among the gods is El, who is designated as “the king, father of years” (compare Daniel 7:9). It is probably this deity who is depicted on the stele reproduced in Fig. 6 ; here he is represented as a bearded old man seated upon a throne, receiving the homage and offerings of a worshipper. Baal (or Aliyan Baal) is perhaps the god who is most frequently named. He is properly the Baal of Sapon (a mountain located north of Ugarit), where he has his residence. He is a weather god, representing the rainy season in the mythology. Rain and thunder come forth when he “opens the sluices of the clouds and gives forth his sacred voice.” He is the rider of the clouds” (compare Psalm 68:4). One of his titles is “Zabul (Prince), Lord of the Earth.” This has survived in the name of the god Baal-zebul of II Kings 1:2 and of Beelzebul (Satan) of the New Testament. The statuette shown in Fig. 1 undoubtedly represents Baal standing in the act of hurling a thunderbolt. This is a fine work of art: the body is of bronze, but the high helmet is made of polished stone and the two horns of electrum, and the god was originally clothed in gold leaf. One of the two temples excavated at Ras Shamra was dedicated to the worship of Baal, and one of the longer poems describes the planning and building of his sanctuary.
The deity Mut is the personification of death. In the mythology he represents the hot, dry season and is the opponent of Baal. The god of grain is Dagan, the father of Baal. He also possessed a temple which has been excavated at Ras Shamra. This is the same deity as the Philistine Dagon of Judges 16:23 and elsewhere. Yarich is the moongod (whose name possibly survives in the name of the city of Jericho), and Ashtar is the divinity derived from the planet Venus (as in South Arabia). Shalem is the deity of “peace,” whose name was probably used in the name of the city, Jerusalem.
The goddesses of Ugarit are not as numerous as the gods, but there are several of importance. The mother-goddess is Ashirtu (Asherah of the Old Testament). Her full title is “The Lady, Asherat-of-the-Sea.” The virgin Anat is the sister of Baal, patroness of fertility and a very fierce goddess. The sun deity is a goddess, Shapash, constantly referred to as the “lamp of the gods.” The goddess Ashtart (Ashtoreth of the Old Testament; Astarte of the Greeks) apparently plays a minor role at Ugarit, though in the Bible it is she who is represented as the patroness of fertility.
Canaanite Religion and Its Influence on the Hebrews
It will readily be seen that the religion of the Canaanites of Ugarit was polytheistic, and the strife among the gods reminds one of the struggles among the gods of Mt. Olympus in Greece. The texts reveal, furthermore, that the religion was highly ritualistic and ceremonial, involving elaborate sacrifices. Some of the tablets are merely lists of sacrifices to various deities, and the poems often refer to the making of abundant sacrificial offerings. The great aim which was sought by the worshippers in their ritual was fertility of the soil, and it is clear that the religion included that practice which was so distasteful to the Hebrews, sacred harlotry.
When the Hebrews entered Palestine, they immediately came into contact with the native Canaanites, a people whose material civilization was far superior to that of the newcomers, as has been abundantly proved by the excavations at Ras Shamra and elsewhere in Syria and Palestine. The native religion of the Hebrews was soon influenced by that of the inhabitants of Canaan; in some cases they adopted Canaanite customs and beliefs, and in others they prohibited certain practices because they were Canaanite—as, for example, the strange prohibition against boiling a kid in its mother’s milk (Exodus 34:26), whereas the Ugaritic texts have shown that boiling a kid in milk was a Canaanite ritualistic practice. Much of the invective of the great Hebrew prophets from Amos to Jeremiah against elaborate ceremonialism and practices such as religious harlotry can now be understood as a reaction against Canaanite fertility religion and a desire to return to the simpler religion of the desert. An ultimate synthesis or compromise of Canaanite and Hebrew ideas was brought about between the 7th and 4th centuries, and can be seen, for example, in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. It is now clear that many of the elements of these late codes are of very ancient origin, for many of the types of sacrifices and offerings prescribed in them were known earlier at Ugarit. The genius of the Hebrews is exhibited by the manner in which the best features of native Hebrew and Canaanite elements were combined, and crude and repulsive elements rejected.
An Early Daniel, and Other Parallels
A few other specific points of contact between the Ugaritic texts and the Old Testament may be added. The hero of one of the legends is Daniel (or Danel), who “decides the suit of the widow and judges the case of the orphan” (Fig. 5 ). This ancient hero is named, along with Noah and Job, in Ezekiel 14:14, 20 as an early example of a righteous man; and in 28:3 the prince of Tyre is taunted with the boast that he is “wiser than Daniel.” Again, in the myth of Baal and Anat, there occurs a seven-headed serpent-monster named Leviathan, described with precisely the same adjectives as in Isaiah 27:1, “swift” and “tortuous” (see also Job 41:1, Psalm 74:14, and 104:26 for other poetic allusions to this monster).
Among the texts is a veterinary treatise describing the treatment of horses, animals which were of great importance to the inhabitants of Ugarit. Some of the medicinal preparations are the same as those named in the Old Testament. Special mention may be made of the “pressed fig-cake,” the same as that prescribed in II Kings 20:7 for King Hezekiah’s boll. In the system of weights employed at Ugarit (of which many examples have been discovered), a talent of 3000 shekels was used instead of the more common talent of 3600 shekels prevalent in Mesopotamia. The Ugaritic standard is apparently the one employed in the description of the tabernacle, Exodus 38:24 ff. A one-mina weight in the form of a bull is shown in Fig. 7 .
It is significant that the literature of these early Canaanites is mostly in poetic form, as indeed was much of ancient Hebrew literature, although modern English translations do not always reveal the extent to which this is true. In the Ugaritic texts the metric patterns employed are often the same as those of Old Testament poetry, and parallelism of lines is a recurring feature, as in the poetry of the Hebrews and other Semitic peoples. In fact, it is very probable that some of the Psalms are Hebrew adaptations of early Canaanite originals. This has been claimed specifically for Psalm 29, where the meter and the religious ideas are almost identical with those of Ugaritic poetry:
“The voice of the Lord is upon the waters:
The God of glory thundereth…
The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedars;
Yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Lebanon.”
Many other direct or indirect parallels between the religious ideas and practices of Ugarit and those of the Hebrews might be pointed out. The foregoing examples are sufficient to demonstrate the tremendous importance of these finds for the study of the ancient Hebrews, especially by showing that their literature and religion did not come into existence in a vacuum.
