Mythology

instead of the Authorized Version rendering of the last clause of the verse, ‘He will be our guide, even unto death’, some scholars would render, ‘He will lead us against Mot [1]. Baal and Mot The tablets containing the account of Baal’s conflict with Mot are very imperfect and obscure. Further study and the discovery of fresh material may elucidate some of the present obscurity. What is here given rests upon the general agreement of the Ugaritic experts. Baal has apparently sent messengers, Gapn and Ugar, to Mot refusing tribute. They return with a threatening message from Mot which fills Baal with dread, and he sends back a humble reply, ‘Be gracious, O divine Mot; I am thy slave, thy bondman for ever.’ Mot rejoices and declares that Baal is humbled for ever. Then we are told that messengers arrive at the field of El and announce that they have found Baal lying dead, but what caused his death is not told. From what follows it can be inferred that Baal is in the underworld, like Tammuz. At the news El descends from his throne and sits on the ground, pours dust on his head, puts on sackcloth, and gashes his cheeks with a stone. He utters lamentations over Baal. Anath goes wandering in search of her brother, and having found his body, with the help of Shapash she carried it up to Zaphon, buries it, and makes a great funeral feast in his honour. It is to be inferred that Baal’s absence from the earth lasts for seven years, years of drought and famine. Anath then seizes Mot, splits him with her sword, winnows him with her fan, burns him with fire, grinds him in her hand-mill, and sows him in the ground actions which clearly symbolize the various things which are done to the corn. After a break in the text we learn that El dreams that Baal is alive. He laughs for joy, and lifts up his voice and proclaims that Baal lives; he shouts the news to the virgin Anath and to Shapash. But, though it is assumed that Baal lives, no one knows where he is, and the cry goes out, ‘Where is puissant Baal?’ ‘Where is the Prince, the Lord of earth?’ During Baal’s absence in the underworld the question of his successor had been raised, and Asherah puts forward her son Ashtar as a claimant for the vacant throne. Ashtar accordingly ascends the throne, but finds that his feet do not reach the footstool, nor does his head reach its top. So he descends from the throne and declares that he cannot rule in the heights of Zaphon. We then have a description of the parched condition of the soil because of Baal’s absence, and Shapash, the Torch of the gods, goes in search of the missing god. The concluding scene of what may be called the Baal-Mot epic represents Baal re-assuming his throne in Zaphon and renewing the conflict with Mot who appears to have come to life again. There is a terrific struggle; the two gods gore each other like bulls, kick each other like stallions, and both fall to the ground. Shapash separates the combatants and some sort of reconciliation takes place; Baal resumes his throne and rewards his supporters. The poem ends with a colophon giving the name of the scribe, and the name of the king of Ugarit, Niqmad, in whose reign the poem was written down. This enables us to date the writing down of the poem in the Amarna epoch, in the middle of the fourteenth century B.C. But the material of the poem is probably much more ancient. Ugarit lay within the sphere of influence of both Assyrian and Egyptian civilizations, and these north Canaanite myths show clear signs of both Akkadian and Egyptian mythology.

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