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Writings from the Ancient World #9
Ugaritic Narrative Poetry
More than 500 years before the Odyssey and the Iliad, before the biblical books of Genesis or Job, masters of the epic lived and wrote on the Mediterranean coast. The Ugaritic tablets left behind by these master scribes and poets were excavated in the second quarter of the twentieth century from the region of modern Syria and Lebanon, and are brought to life here in contemporary English translations by five of the best known scholars in the field. Included are the major narrative poems, "Kirta," "Aqhat," and "Baal," in addition to ten shorter texts, newly translated with transcriptions from photographs using the latest techniques in the photography of epigraphic materials (sample plate included).
280 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
November 26, 2024
Kirta, Aqhat, the Baal Cycle, and a handful of shorter texts. It's a rare thing to find Assyriological text editions for anything resembling a reasonable price (the Brill edition of just the first two tablets of the Baal Cycle, also by Mark S. Smith, comes to just under €300), and while this edition forgoes all but the most obvious commentary, it's absolutely serviceable.
The commentary that is there occasionally makes dodgy claims ("the Mitanni Empire, dominated by Indo-European Hurrians"), there are a handful of typos even in the text itself (e.g. 'Asherah of Tyre' is aṯrt . ṣrm, but at one point she's aṯrt . srm without footnote), and it's annoying that 𐎀, 𐎛, and 𐎜 are transcribed a, i, and u instead of ʾa, ʾi, and ʾu (which is, admittedly, not uncommon), but the Society of Biblical Literature has published much worse.
The commentary that is there occasionally makes dodgy claims ("the Mitanni Empire, dominated by Indo-European Hurrians"), there are a handful of typos even in the text itself (e.g. 'Asherah of Tyre' is aṯrt . ṣrm, but at one point she's aṯrt . srm without footnote), and it's annoying that 𐎀, 𐎛, and 𐎜 are transcribed a, i, and u instead of ʾa, ʾi, and ʾu (which is, admittedly, not uncommon), but the Society of Biblical Literature has published much worse.
March 31, 2023
This is an incredibly handy volume for several reasons. The narrative poems are perhaps the most enlightening texts for most laypeople's purposes, and so having them collected in one place is great. The translations themselves (allowing for all the linguistic difficulties that Ugaritic presents) are very readable -- as opposed to the translations in ANET, which are at times strangely archaic. The introductions to each text give all the necessary context, as well as summaries of interpretive debates. This volume is perfect for any interested layperson who wants to understand a bit more about the pantheon worshiped around the ancient Levant.
This volume is also helpful for anyone who does know Ugaritic, as the texts are given in two columns: Ugaritic on the left, English on the right. This offers some great helps to beginning students (such as myself) who need access to the text without dropping $300+ on KTU, and who occasionally need help sorting out vocabulary and syntax. To that end, it's also helpful that each translation has textual notes.
My only criticism is that I wish the book used footnotes instead of endnotes. Perhaps that would have made the page look too busy and daunting, but it was rather irritation (especially in the longer poems) to flip back and forth.
This volume is also helpful for anyone who does know Ugaritic, as the texts are given in two columns: Ugaritic on the left, English on the right. This offers some great helps to beginning students (such as myself) who need access to the text without dropping $300+ on KTU, and who occasionally need help sorting out vocabulary and syntax. To that end, it's also helpful that each translation has textual notes.
My only criticism is that I wish the book used footnotes instead of endnotes. Perhaps that would have made the page look too busy and daunting, but it was rather irritation (especially in the longer poems) to flip back and forth.
February 17, 2009
A collection of three major poetic, mythological epics of the Canaanite kingdom of Ugarit in high quality transliteration and translation: Kirta, Aqhat, and the Baal Cycle. Translator s notes are abundant, providing insight and commentary on linguistic, historic, literary, cultural, and even biblically related issues. A plethora of shorter, lesser known texts that highlight religious, cultural, and mythological aspects of ancient Ugarit are also included many of which are very hard to find in English translation. The book presents not only a fun, quick read for those with passing interests, but a valuable, compact resource for professionals working with the original language.
December 31, 2014
This is a good book for those interested in the literature of the Ancient Near East. Parker has translated the Ugaritic epic poetry which provides much information to what the Canaanite religious life was like. The major epics of Dan'el, Keret, Aquat, and the Baal and Anat saga are all here.
January 18, 2026
good.
several things to note. These writings are the most similar to Scripture I have seen. They are Canaanite in origin. Hebrew is Canaanite in its language. The Jews came out of the land of Canaan. They were immersed in much the same world, same language, with similar words for God like El, and had similar poetry styles. Same references. really, very similar culture. So one would expect similarity between the two writings.
The Canaanite gods El and Ba'al in particular may resemble superficial resemblance to Elohim, especially if they were to be combined. However, it would be expected that the Israelites would use the same word they knew already for God to refer to their God, so they adopted the word for El, but knew from the beginning that there was only one God, as seen in Genesis, and more poignantly, the Shema. the monotheistic claim of Israel sometimes spoke of other gods which reveal an external contlict/tension, but really maintains an internal accordance of monotheism.
El is mostly proper name in Canaanite, but became to be used genericallt for god.
El is the Supreme Ruler, compassionate, Fatherly, distant. Ba'al is his warrior-king who rules, but his power is derivative from El.
Ba'al is a storm-god. He has his own mountain. like many ANE gods, they were considered holy. in terms of royalty and power and majesty. No ANE god is considered morally perfect with moral government or absolute otherness (and whose holiness is the foundations for all things). The other gods are characterized much more by caprice.
Holiness in the Bible is also communicable to humans ("be holy as I am holy") whereas holiness in the ANE religions is not communicable. The only similarities of honiess is the set apartness, sacredness, and ties to divine power.
One sees that food and drink is given to the gods to feed them.
El has the name Bull El, which is similar to calling Biblical God the "Lion of Judah." Bulls signified strength, virility, kingship, and fertility, and it was a royal-symbolic title. There were bull statues in Canaan. When the israelites left Egypt and built their golden calf, not only were they making an image (when God already said he had no form), but were evoking Bull El and calling YHWY, essentially, Bull El. They were also, in a sense, trying to control YHWH by making an idol, as idols are about bringing the divine down to earth for human manipulation, but thats just an aside. Sun and Moon are gods.
From what I have read of ANE writings so far, it shows that the Jews had a deep familiarity with their surrounding myths and religious texts and culture, but what comes out of the Abrahamic line is something vastly peculiar and different from its surrounding - an entirely sifferent metaphysic of monotheism, a very different character of God who sought to remain formless and not to be fed, a sacrificial system based on righteousness/sin, not God's hunger without any internal divine strife or chaos. Biblical God is creator of all, covenantal, ethical, historical, and universal.
similar writing style to the Scriptures with similar imagery. Canaanites have a holy mountain called Mt Saphon which is Ba'al's abode and the cosmic mountain where heaven and earth meet.
Asherah is El's consort (which is why the Israelites often tried to worship YHWH with Asherah, they were trying to pair them). Bull El is called Father.
it certainly seems like God accommodates himself to the culture and that revelation is progressive here.
Ba'al becomes king of the gods, defeats the sea god (Yam), but he is killed (or thought to be killed, but perhaps he is still alive but taken to the underworld) by the god of death (Mot, I think, opens his throat and consumes ba'al, bringing him to the underworld), Anat rescues Ba'al, and Ba'al takes back the throne of heaven and is restored, and in so doing restores feetility and order. There are three cycles in this, but the Ba'al cycle is most central to Canaanite myth. Ba'al wishes he had a house like other gods , and gets one made of silver (brought by the mountains), gold (briught by rhe hills) Ore, and lapus lazuli, wood from Lebanon and Ceder form Siryon. Ba'al argues with someone about the installation of a window. A flame is put inside of his house/palace (I assume his temple). then a great feast is given to the gods when it is finished.
several things to note. These writings are the most similar to Scripture I have seen. They are Canaanite in origin. Hebrew is Canaanite in its language. The Jews came out of the land of Canaan. They were immersed in much the same world, same language, with similar words for God like El, and had similar poetry styles. Same references. really, very similar culture. So one would expect similarity between the two writings.
The Canaanite gods El and Ba'al in particular may resemble superficial resemblance to Elohim, especially if they were to be combined. However, it would be expected that the Israelites would use the same word they knew already for God to refer to their God, so they adopted the word for El, but knew from the beginning that there was only one God, as seen in Genesis, and more poignantly, the Shema. the monotheistic claim of Israel sometimes spoke of other gods which reveal an external contlict/tension, but really maintains an internal accordance of monotheism.
El is mostly proper name in Canaanite, but became to be used genericallt for god.
El is the Supreme Ruler, compassionate, Fatherly, distant. Ba'al is his warrior-king who rules, but his power is derivative from El.
Ba'al is a storm-god. He has his own mountain. like many ANE gods, they were considered holy. in terms of royalty and power and majesty. No ANE god is considered morally perfect with moral government or absolute otherness (and whose holiness is the foundations for all things). The other gods are characterized much more by caprice.
Holiness in the Bible is also communicable to humans ("be holy as I am holy") whereas holiness in the ANE religions is not communicable. The only similarities of honiess is the set apartness, sacredness, and ties to divine power.
One sees that food and drink is given to the gods to feed them.
El has the name Bull El, which is similar to calling Biblical God the "Lion of Judah." Bulls signified strength, virility, kingship, and fertility, and it was a royal-symbolic title. There were bull statues in Canaan. When the israelites left Egypt and built their golden calf, not only were they making an image (when God already said he had no form), but were evoking Bull El and calling YHWY, essentially, Bull El. They were also, in a sense, trying to control YHWH by making an idol, as idols are about bringing the divine down to earth for human manipulation, but thats just an aside. Sun and Moon are gods.
From what I have read of ANE writings so far, it shows that the Jews had a deep familiarity with their surrounding myths and religious texts and culture, but what comes out of the Abrahamic line is something vastly peculiar and different from its surrounding - an entirely sifferent metaphysic of monotheism, a very different character of God who sought to remain formless and not to be fed, a sacrificial system based on righteousness/sin, not God's hunger without any internal divine strife or chaos. Biblical God is creator of all, covenantal, ethical, historical, and universal.
similar writing style to the Scriptures with similar imagery. Canaanites have a holy mountain called Mt Saphon which is Ba'al's abode and the cosmic mountain where heaven and earth meet.
Asherah is El's consort (which is why the Israelites often tried to worship YHWH with Asherah, they were trying to pair them). Bull El is called Father.
it certainly seems like God accommodates himself to the culture and that revelation is progressive here.
Ba'al becomes king of the gods, defeats the sea god (Yam), but he is killed (or thought to be killed, but perhaps he is still alive but taken to the underworld) by the god of death (Mot, I think, opens his throat and consumes ba'al, bringing him to the underworld), Anat rescues Ba'al, and Ba'al takes back the throne of heaven and is restored, and in so doing restores feetility and order. There are three cycles in this, but the Ba'al cycle is most central to Canaanite myth. Ba'al wishes he had a house like other gods , and gets one made of silver (brought by the mountains), gold (briught by rhe hills) Ore, and lapus lazuli, wood from Lebanon and Ceder form Siryon. Ba'al argues with someone about the installation of a window. A flame is put inside of his house/palace (I assume his temple). then a great feast is given to the gods when it is finished.
February 2, 2023
Personally, I really like this translation out of the various books translating myths in the Ugaritic corpus. The translations feel like they have a good balance between archaic and modern language. It makes the content easy to digest for the lay reader.
January 26, 2022
excellent resource for translating Ugaritic texts. However, this book seems to average about two typos a page.
July 19, 2025
A handy volume of the major Ugaritic poetry in one place, and the ebook is well formatted.
June 10, 2024
Fantastic edition as usual for this series, collecting the Ugaritic epic poems (Kirta, Aqhat and the Baal Cycle) alongside some shorter narrative poems, most of them of undeniable ritual use though what the ritual in question was for often remains highly obtuse.
Overall, this is a fantastic edition for the average person who wants to study Ugaritic literature and epic, important for understand the epic of ANE literature as a whole and thus that of Homer (which is, in fact, the context in which I re-read this), as well as highly useful for the students of Semitic languages, as this has to be by far the most accessible bilingual edition of the texts out there. The Ugaritic epics themselves are not some masterpieces like Gilgamesh or the Homeric epics, or even other Babylonian epics and literary pieces really, nor do they have some of the strange, amusing humor of Hittite narratives, nor do they have the early, primitive sophistication of Egyptian prose fiction, but they are important for a variety of reasons, namely that the cosmopolitan nature of Ugarit meant that this sort of poetry was likely transported elsewhere and developed into other forms of the epic, as well as, perhaps most importantly of all, the fact that these are our one and only insight into Canaanite pagan religion besides the extremely biased Biblical judgement on it - quite frankly, without the Ugaritic texts, understanding the Old Testament is a fool's errand.
The Baal Cycle is interesting too because it's a neat final tie in the historical cycle of how such divine succession myths came about, starting (as usual) with the Sumerian one and ending with the Greek Theogony. The Greeks, who imo are more likely to have gotten it from the Hittites but may just as well have gotten it from Ugarit or Phoenicia, no longer believed in their own theogony, and were free to interpret gods philosophically, which is what finally set them apart from the despotism of Bronze Age religion which is nonetheless so magical and fantastical to me and many of us. It is impressive, when compared with others in this frame - the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the Hittite-Hurrian Kumarbi Cycle, the Phoenician creation myth as recorded by Philo of Byblos, the Greek Theogony, etc - how closely the Baal Cycle fits, despite the fact that it is truly a cycle and thus concerned with other motifs: struggle for kingship against El and the Sea, then against Mot (Death), though it ends in an agreement for this latter one, etc. We see the origin of the the Greek Titans in a way, in this text: the Titans are purely mythological and bear no weight on Greek thought or cult; here they are essential for the Bronze Age view of the world, Baal must constantly fight against the returning Yam and Mot is never truly defeated, these recurring battles likely being the basis for the Titanomachy and then Gigantomachy sequel, etc, pure fairy tales in essence by then, but which once had a real cultic basis.
Again, excellent edition, I had previously read Stories from Ancient Canaan and that was a good enough edition to familiarize myself with these works and their importance but as I've deepened my studies of the time and place it's really not been enough: if you want a more in-depth edition of all those works in one place, with the Ugaritic originals, this is a good one to get.
Overall, this is a fantastic edition for the average person who wants to study Ugaritic literature and epic, important for understand the epic of ANE literature as a whole and thus that of Homer (which is, in fact, the context in which I re-read this), as well as highly useful for the students of Semitic languages, as this has to be by far the most accessible bilingual edition of the texts out there. The Ugaritic epics themselves are not some masterpieces like Gilgamesh or the Homeric epics, or even other Babylonian epics and literary pieces really, nor do they have some of the strange, amusing humor of Hittite narratives, nor do they have the early, primitive sophistication of Egyptian prose fiction, but they are important for a variety of reasons, namely that the cosmopolitan nature of Ugarit meant that this sort of poetry was likely transported elsewhere and developed into other forms of the epic, as well as, perhaps most importantly of all, the fact that these are our one and only insight into Canaanite pagan religion besides the extremely biased Biblical judgement on it - quite frankly, without the Ugaritic texts, understanding the Old Testament is a fool's errand.
The Baal Cycle is interesting too because it's a neat final tie in the historical cycle of how such divine succession myths came about, starting (as usual) with the Sumerian one and ending with the Greek Theogony. The Greeks, who imo are more likely to have gotten it from the Hittites but may just as well have gotten it from Ugarit or Phoenicia, no longer believed in their own theogony, and were free to interpret gods philosophically, which is what finally set them apart from the despotism of Bronze Age religion which is nonetheless so magical and fantastical to me and many of us. It is impressive, when compared with others in this frame - the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the Hittite-Hurrian Kumarbi Cycle, the Phoenician creation myth as recorded by Philo of Byblos, the Greek Theogony, etc - how closely the Baal Cycle fits, despite the fact that it is truly a cycle and thus concerned with other motifs: struggle for kingship against El and the Sea, then against Mot (Death), though it ends in an agreement for this latter one, etc. We see the origin of the the Greek Titans in a way, in this text: the Titans are purely mythological and bear no weight on Greek thought or cult; here they are essential for the Bronze Age view of the world, Baal must constantly fight against the returning Yam and Mot is never truly defeated, these recurring battles likely being the basis for the Titanomachy and then Gigantomachy sequel, etc, pure fairy tales in essence by then, but which once had a real cultic basis.
Again, excellent edition, I had previously read Stories from Ancient Canaan and that was a good enough edition to familiarize myself with these works and their importance but as I've deepened my studies of the time and place it's really not been enough: if you want a more in-depth edition of all those works in one place, with the Ugaritic originals, this is a good one to get.
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February 6, 2024You hasten! You hurry! You rush!
To me let your feet run,
To me let your legs race,
For a message I have, and I will tell you,
A word, and I will recount to you,
The word of the tree and the whisper of stone,
The word people do not know,
And earth's masses not understand,
The converse of Heaven with Hell,
Of Deeps with Stars.
I understand the lightning which the Heavens do not know,
Come and I will reveal it
In the midst of my mountain.
To me let your feet run,
To me let your legs race,
For a message I have, and I will tell you,
A word, and I will recount to you,
The word of the tree and the whisper of stone,
The word people do not know,
And earth's masses not understand,
The converse of Heaven with Hell,
Of Deeps with Stars.
I understand the lightning which the Heavens do not know,
Come and I will reveal it
In the midst of my mountain.
February 23, 2015
Excellent resource for Ugaritic studies. It includes the transliteration of the texts so you can see how the translator arrived at his interpretation.
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