Stele of Baal with a Leafy Headdress, the God with the Feather
Unknown · Middle or Late Bronze Age, circa 2100 to 1150 BC
A limestone stele shaped like a tall pyramid, almost ninety centimetres high, with a base designed to be sunk into the ground. On its face stands a god on a pedestal, holding a spear, wearing a short kilt, a dagger, a necklace and a torque, and a tall crown of Egyptian type topped by what looks like a plume or a spray of leaves. The museum lists him under several names, the god with the feather and the stele of Aleyn Baal, the young Baal, and the leafy crown has been read as a sign of the god's power over vegetation. Look at the smooth, softened surfaces of the pale limestone.
The stele was found on the acropolis of Ras Shamra, the ancient Ugarit, west of the temple of Baal, together with a second stele showing a winged goddess, during the second campaign of the French excavations in nineteen thirty. It came to the Louvre in the division of finds with Syria. Beside the great stele of Baal with the thunderbolt, it offers a gentler image of the same god, the young lord whose rain makes the fields green.
Did You Know? The stele was dug up beside a companion stele of a winged goddess, and both stood west of Baal's temple on the acropolis of Ugarit.
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