Tablet with the List of the Gods of Ugarit
Unknown · Late Bronze Age II, circa 1400 to 1200 BC
A fragment of a clay tablet, less than eight centimetres high, inscribed in cuneiform with a list of divine names. The museum identifies it as a duplicate of the so-called Pantheon of Ugarit, the official roll of the city's gods in their ranked order. Look at the lines of wedges: each is a name, beginning with the father of the gods, El, and continuing through Dagan, the several manifestations of the storm god Baal, the sun goddess Shapash and many more. Lists like this were used by priests to organise sacrifices, so that no deity was forgotten.
The tablet comes from Ras Shamra, the ancient Ugarit, and was acquired by purchase rather than through the excavations. Its value is that it exists in several copies, in the local alphabetic cuneiform and in Babylonian syllabic script, which allowed scholars to match the Ugaritic names of gods with their Mesopotamian equivalents. The hierarchy it records is the same one that structures the myths on the neighbouring tablets, where El presides and Baal fights for kingship. For a visitor it is a rare chance to see a religion's entire cast of characters written out on a single small page of clay.
Did You Know? The Ugarit god list survives in both alphabetic and Babylonian cuneiform versions, which gave scholars a key for matching the two pantheons.
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