Tablet with the Mythological Poem of the Death of Baal
Unknown · Late Bronze Age II, circa 1400 to 1200 BC
Two fragments joined into a tablet fifteen centimetres square, inscribed in alphabetic cuneiform with part of the Baal Cycle, the section concerning the death of the storm god. In the poem, Baal descends into the throat of Mot, the god of death, and the earth dries up; El and the goddess Anat mourn him, gashing their skin in grief, until Anat seizes Mot, cleaves him with a sword, winnows and grinds him like grain, and Baal returns with the rains. Look at the break that runs through the tablet; the two pieces carry separate inventory numbers.
The fragments were found in the house of the High Priest on the acropolis of Ras Shamra, ancient Ugarit, in the second and third campaigns of the French excavations, around nineteen thirty and thirty-one, and came to the Louvre in the division of finds with Syria. The poem of Baal's death and return has been read as a myth of the seasons, of the dry summer and the return of winter rain, and its images of mourning and harvest have close parallels in the Hebrew Bible.
Did You Know? In this poem the goddess Anat kills Death himself, splitting, winnowing and grinding him like grain so that Baal can return.
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