Tablet with the Legend of Danel and Aqhat
Unknown · Late Bronze Age II, circa 1400 to 1200 BC
Three fragments rejoined into a tablet seventeen centimetres high, inscribed in the alphabetic cuneiform of Ugarit with the opening of a legend told on three tablets. The story is that of Danel, a righteous and childless ruler who prays to the gods and is granted a son, Aqhat. The craftsman god Kothar gives the boy a marvellous bow, the goddess Anat covets it, and when Aqhat refuses her she has him killed, bringing drought upon the land. Look at the corners of the tablet, chipped and broken, and at the joins where the fragments meet; two of them were found in the same room.
The fragments were excavated in the house of the High Priest on the acropolis of Ras Shamra, ancient Ugarit, in nineteen thirty-one, and came to the Louvre in the division of finds with Syria. The tale of Danel and Aqhat is one of the three great narrative poems of Ugarit, alongside the Baal Cycle and the legend of King Keret. Its righteous hero Danel has long been compared with the Daniel mentioned in the Book of Ezekiel alongside Noah and Job, a hint that Israel's neighbours shared its stories of the just man tested by loss.
Did You Know? The Bible's prophet Ezekiel names a wise and righteous Daniel alongside Noah and Job, and many scholars see in him an echo of Ugarit's Danel.
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