Some New Divine Names from Ugarit

Author(s): Michael C. Astour

Source: Journal of the American Oriental Society , Jul. - Sep., 1966, Vol. 86, No. 3 (Jul.
- Sep., 1966), pp. 277-284
Published by: American Oriental Society

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/597035

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 SOME NEW DIVINE NAMES FROM UGARIT

MICHAEL C. ASTOUR
SOUTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY

THE 24TH EXCAVATIONS CAMPAIGN of Ras
Shamra (1961) has produced, for the first time
since the discovery of the temple library in 1931,
a new lot of Ugaritic mythological and ritual
texts. Fourteen tablets of mythological, magic or
liturgical character will appear in the forthcoming
Ugaritica V in autography, transliteration, and
commented translation by Charles Virolleaud.'
With Professor Virolleaud's kind permission I
shall briefly report on some divine characters and
names in the new texts that appear there for the
first time in Ugaritic literature, or in a signifi-
cantly new aspect, and on the light some of them
help shed on the origin of certain deities already
known, or presumed, outside of Ugarit.
1. RS 24.244 and RS 24.251
One of the longest texts of the lot is the excel-
lently preserved tablet RS 24. 244 (Virolleaud's
Text No. 7)-a conjuration against serpent-bite.2
Its main character is introduced in the first lines
of the text thus: (1) um. phl. phlt. bt. 'n. bt. abn.
bt smm w thin (2) qrit. 1 sps. umh. sps. Um. q1.
thebl,
Gilgames Epic; " back flew the arrow when ZA had
"the mother of Phl, Phlt, daughter of the Spring,
daughter of the Stone, daughter of the Sky and
of the Ocean, calls to ?ps her mother, ?ps mother
of QJ-b 1."3 3We learn for the first time that the
Ugaritic Sun-goddess had at least two children.
The name of the son, Q1-b1, seems to mean "voice
of destruction "; 4 this feature is not without par-
1 " Les nouveaux textes mythologiques et liturgiques (cognate of Ugar. cr, Heb. cayir, " ass ").
de Ras Shamra (XXIVe campagne, 1961) ," being
Chapter III of Ugaritica V (Claude F.-A. Schaeffer,
editor), pp. 545-604. Ch. Virolleaud gave preliminary
reports on several of the new texts in CRAI, 1962, pp.
105-113; Comptes Rendus du GLECS, IX, pp. 41 and
51-52; RIR, 1962, p. 25.
2 I hope to publish in the near future a special study
of this text.
3 Each of the ten strophes following the first one
begins with the same words as those in Line 2, but with
the verb " to call " in imperfect (tqru) instead of
perfect (qrit).
4The noun belti is found only once in the Bible (Isaiah
38 :7), but the verb bald, " to destroy, annihilate," is
quite common. Akk. balit also means (in D-stem) "to
extinguish, exterminate."
allels in Babylonian literature,5 but the personality
of Ql-bl remains mysterious.6 The daughter's
name characterizes her as a " mare," and she is the
mother of a "stallion." 7 The mare-goddess is
engaged in magic struggle against poisonous
snakes. At the end of the text, after a conflict
with the god Horon, she is ready (following my
interpretation) to "enter his house" if he pays
her bridal price in serpents, to which he agrees in
the closing two lines of the tablet.8
The Ugaritic mare-goddess, her association with
serpents, and the poetic attributes given to her in
the text, are extraordinarily reminiscent of Pausa-
nias' (VIII: 42: 1-13) description of an archaic
wooden image (xoanon) of a goddess that was
reputed to have been worshipped in remote times
in a cave near Phigalia in southwestern Arcadia.9
The goddess was called Demeter 3lelaina (" Black
Demeter") or DMM Hippolechos ("Deo who bore
a horse lo).10 Victor Berard, in 1894, surmised the
Oriental character of the image," but at that time
5 Cf. " Uumbaba-his roaring is the storm-flood " in
shouted at it " in the myth of Zfi (quoted from E. A.
Speiser's translations in ANET, pp. 79 and 515).
6'In RS 24. 251 (Text No. 8), thematically connected
with RS 24. 244, Ql-bl seems to appear in a badly broken
context.
7 So translated by Virolleaud, in Ugaritica V, p. 566.
PhI (found hitherto in Ugaritic in parallelism with cr,
"ass ") is the same word as Arab. fahl, Assyr. puhalu,
"stallion." The feminine padt is constructed in the
same way as Akk. uritu, " mare," from uru, " stallion"
8ytt. nhim. mhrk. bn btn (76) itnnk.
9 According to Pausanias, the original wooden image
was destroyed by fire, and only after a very long period
of time, at the demand of the Delphic oracle, did the
Phigalians install a new statue that the sculptor Onatas
of Aegina (early fifth century B.C.) made for them in
bronze after the description of the old one. In Pausa-
nias' time, the second statue was not extant either.
10 A myth was told in neighboring Thelpusa that
Demeter had changed herself into a mare to escape the
enamored Poseidon, but the god turned himself into a
stallion, mated with her and sired the divine horse
Areion (Pausanias VIII:25:4-9). In Greek art, Areion
was often depicted with serpents growing from his
mane.
I" De l'origine des cultes arcadiens, pp. 104-109.

277

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 278 ASTOUR: Some New Divine Names from Ugarit

it was a question rather of intuition than of fac- come more understandable. Tt (Heb. tit, Akk.
tual support. RS 24. 244, unearthed thirty years tftu) signifies " clay " which, together with "dust"
after V. Berard's death, offers an exact parallel to and " darkness," was one of the attributes of the
all details given by Pausanias. The Phigalian Babylonian Nether World."'
xoanon had the body of a woman with the head The alternate name of Tt is 't which was perti-
and mane of a horse, "and there grew out of her nently explained by Virolleaud 17 as Heb. 'ayit,
head images of serpents and other beasts." It was "bird of prey" (eagle or vulture).18 This, too,
located near a spring of cold water-cf. bt Cn; is an image from the Babylonian "Land without
sitting on a rock-cf. bt abn; having a dolphin on return," the residents of which are described as
one of her hands and a dove on the other, symbols winged and feathered bird-like creatures. The
of the sea and the sky-cf. bt Smm w thhm. We doublet Tt = 't leads us to a Greek mythological
may safely ascribe the introduction of this icono- character, Tityos, son of Earth, who in the Nekyita,
graphic entity into southwestern Arcadia to the an interpolation in Book XI of the Odyssey (576-
Mycenaean Age.12 581), is depicted as being punished in the Hades
The mare-goddess appeals, in almost identically by having his liver eternally torn by two vultures.
worded incantations against serpents, to her Since early Greek religion ignored the idea of
mother 9ps together with eleven otherposthumous deities or torments in the ilades, one may as-
divine pairs. Ten of them are known from earlier sume that Tityos, the son of Earth, was originally
Ugaritic texts,'3 one, that in strophe VII, is new: a chthonic god and that the vultures were simply
T w Kmt (line 36). The same binomial appears his symbolic attributes.'9
in an analogous enumeration in the related tablet The existence of a West Semitic god 'Ayit
RS 24.251 (Virolleaud's Text No. 8, obv.: 16), vindicates another Greco-Semitic mythological and
but in the list of gods RS 24. 271 (Text No. 10, linguistic rapprochement. The baneful Aietes
obv.: 5) it is very clearly written 't w Kmt. The from the Argonauts myth, whose name signifies
second component of the binomial (as seen by "eagle" and whose country and family members
Virolleaud) is identical with the later chief god of bear names of predatory birds, plays a role similar
the Moabites, ileb. Kemos, LXX Chamos, Moabite to that of the Babylonian Storm-bird Zuf, as this
inscriptional Km', Assyrian Ka-am-mu-su.14 The has been expounded elsewhere.20 The Ugaritic 't
name also appears in an Assyrian list as dKa-am- provides us with a connecting link between the
mus, a deity connected with Nergal.15 If one pro- two.
ceeds from the latter indication and one assumes
The gods evoked in RS. 244 as helpers against
that Kmt-Kemos was a god of chthonic or infernal
serpent-bite also appear in RS 24. 251: obv. 13-19
nature, the semantics of the first component be-
as collectors of venom, but with the addition of a
new
12 On the very early connection of Poseidon with a binomial: [ctt]r w 'tpr (obv. 16), restored
after 'ttr 'ttPr, RS 24. 271 (Text No. 10): obv. 10.
mare-goddess, cf. F. Schachermeyr, Poseidon und die
The second member of the binomial is new and,
Entstehung des griechischen Gbtterglaubens (1950), p.
31; L. R. Palmer, The Interpretation of Mycenaean
Greek Texts (1963), p. 256. For the survival of Myce- 16" . . . the house wherein the dwellers are bereft of
naean Age imagery in classical Greece, cf. the Theban light, / Where dust is their fare and clay their food, /
national emplem-Herakles strangling two serpents- They are clothed like birds, with wings for garments, /
that goes back to a unique Babylonian cylinder seal, one And see no light, residing in darkness " (Gilgameg Epic
of the famous hoard of Near Eastern seals discovered VII:iv: 36-39, transl. E. A. Speiser, ANET, p. 87);
(in 1963/4) in the Theban royal palace of the My- almost the same words are used in Descent of IMtar,
cenaean Age. obv. 8-10.
1s Together with the gods, their residences are men- 17 Ugaritica V, p. 585.
tioned, part of which are new and mostly unidentified. 18 On reduction of diphthongs in Ugaritic cf. C. H.
1, In the name of the Moabite king mKa-am-mu-su- Gordon, Ugaritic Textbook (1965),, ? 5.18. A vulture-
na-ad-bi (or mKam-mu-su-na-ad-bi) in Sennacherib's An- god Nasr was worshipped by pre-Islamic Arabs, cf., e. g.,
nals (Cyl. of King, II:81; Prism of Taylor, II:53). W. Robertson Smith, The Religion of the Semites (2nd
15 CT 24, 36:66; see A. Deimel, Pantheon Babylonicum ed., 1894), p. 226.
(1914), No. 1628 (" ad Nergal pertinens ") ; P. Jensen, 19 Tityos, moreover, was said to be the father of a
" Alttestamentlich-Keilinschriftliches," ZA, NF 8 (1934), Europa whose name, according to Hesychius, signified
pp. 236-237 ("eine Erscheinungsform des Nergal "). "darkness." Cf. this author's Helleno8emitica (1965),
The name does not seem to have a Semitic (or any pp. 128-132.
other) etymology. 20 Op. cit., pp. 283-297.

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 ASTOUR: Some New Divine Names from Ugarit 279
though obviously Semitic, extremely difficult to
explain.2' I would tentatively propose to analyze
'ttpr as *cttr-pr, "'Aftar the Young Bull," with
elision or assimilation of the final r of the first
component (as this sometimes occurs in Ugaritic
and Akkadian 22) favored by the presence of
another r in the following syllable of the com-
pound.23
2. RS 24. 643
RS 24. 643 (Text No. 9) is a sacrificial text
divided into five independent sections. The first
and longest section contains (with insignificant
deviations) the same divine names and in the same
order as in the list of gods RS 1929 No. 17 and its
Akkadian translation RS 20. 24.24 By comparing
the three versions, one obtains several restorations
of destroyed lines or words, and interesting
equations.
The first four entries of the restored list are
II Spn (not preserved in the Akkadian version),
Ilib (Akk. Il-a-bi), II (Akk. Rum) and Dgn
(Akk. Dacgan). These are four hypostases of the
head of the Ugaritic pantheon. In the Phoenician
theogony of Philo of Byblos, El is also split into
four personalities: Ilos or 812os (glossed Kronos)
= II of the Ugaritic list; Baitylos, i. e., bet-'jl, the
divinized sacred stone, = Rlib which has exactly
the same meaning in Ugaritic; 25 Dagon (glossed
21 No explanation proposed either in Ugaritica V, ad
loc., or in UT, ? 19. 1941 where the binomial is quoted.
22 UT, ? 5. 27; W. von Soden, Grundriss der akkad.
Gramm. (1952), ? 35d.
23Another, less probable, possibility would be to see
in cttpr an ifteal of the root TPR (attested in Ugaritic
in the noun tprt, a garment, perhaps-by analogy with
the Arabic root tapara and its derivatives-a loincloth)
with the shift of prothetic 'aleph to cayin under the
influence of r (C. Brockelmann, Grundriss d. verg.
Gramm d. Sem. Spr., I [1908], ? 189a; L. Koehler-
W. Baumgartner, Lexicon in Vet. Test. Libros [2nd
print, 1958], p. 731 s.v. ?:fl.
24RS 20. 24 will be published by J. Nougayrol in
Ugaritica V as " Le pantheon d'Ugarit." My knowledge
of the text is limited to Nougayrol's preliminary report:
" Nouveaux textes d'Ugarit en cuneiformes babyloniens
(20e campagne, 1956)," CRAI, 1957, pp. 77-86, esp.
82-84.
25 Cf. for occurrences UT, ? 19. 165; C. H. Gordon re-
marks that the word "designates a religious stela of
some sort; [also] a god's name; can the word be ia + ib
'god of the father'?; with ib for ab (cf. 'KtI:L) like
ih for ah . . ." The Akkadian spelling Il-a-bi speaks
in favor of the latter suggestion; however, taking into
account other terms for sacred stone, derived from roots
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Siton and Zeus Arotrios26) = Dgn ;27 and Atlas,
whose Phoenician name is unfortunately not given
by Philo, but who may well correspond, as the
homonym of a mountain, to II Spn, El of Mt.
Casius.28
These are followed by seven hypostases of the
next highest ranking god: Adad bursagHazi, Adad
1, Adad 2, and so on up to Adad 6 in the Akkadian
version; [B'l .pn], then B l-rM 29 repeated six
times, in the Ugaritic. An Assyrian text from
Assur also lists seven Adads, among them Adad of
Hal-la-abKI,30 the famous Storm-god of Aleppo,
and we shall presently meet B'l Hlb in the fifth
section of RS 24. 643. We may assume that the
seven Baals or Adads were differentiated not by
some theological reasons, but merely according to
the most renowned shrines of the Storm-god. The
four hypostases of El and seven of Baal are re-
cipients each of an ox and a sheep; the deities that
follow them have right only to a sheep each.
The next entry in RS 24.643 (obv. 5) is ars tw
smm, which permits us to restore the correspond-
ing line in RS 1929 No. 17: obv. 12 as [ars] w
sr nmY1 The same cultic unit recurs RS 24. 643:
signifying "to erect, to set up," it may be preferable to
explain ilib by the Arabic la'aba with the very same
meaning.
28 J. e., the " grain-god " or the " tiller-god," the god's
name being explained by degan, " corn."
27 The position of DagAn with regard to El in the
pantheon of Ugarit was ambiguous. On the one hand,
Baal is called bn Dgn in the Ugaritic poems, but DagAn
never appears there as an acting character. One of the
two great temples of Ugarit was dedicated to Baal, the
other to Dagan (not to El). Baal is never presented
in the Poems as son of El, but he is the brother of
Anath, and the latter is clearly a daughter of El. These
circumstances would suggest that Dagan was the real
personal name of the supreme god, and El (" god "), his
surrogate designation. On the other hand, however, in
RS 24. 244 and RS 24. 251 El and Dagan are invoked
separately and are treated as two distinct personalities,
not just names.
28 A much closer homologue of Atlas, " the Carrier "
(from tla6), is another Ugaritic hypostasis of El: Tkmn
w Snm, "Carrier-and-Summit"; but the substantiation
of this equation would exceed the framework of the
present survey.
29 The final -m is rather an enclitic (with the meaning
"C also," cf. UT, ? 19. 1402) to mark a repetition than
the suffix of plural.
30 E. Ebeling, KAR No. 142:1:14-21; ibid.:III:11-18;
transliteration and commentary: B. Meissner, " Si-
murru," OLZ, 1919, No. 3/4, col. 69-70. The 7 dIMTMES
are listed according to sanctuaries and cities, all of
which except Aleppo belong to Mesopotamia.
I1 In his preliminary report (see n. 24), Nougayrol
280 ASTOTTR: Some New Divine Names from Ugarit
rev. 2. This is the first time that Earth and
Heaven appear in a Ugaritic text as a divine
entity. According to Philo of Byblos, Ilos with
his brothers and sisters were born of a union of
Uranos and Ge. The sequence-Earth standing
before Heaven-is the opposite of the Sumerian
and Akkadian usage (an . k i, samui u ersetu)
followed in the cosmogony of P (Gen. 1 :2; 2:1),
but is the same as in the creation story of J (Gen.
2: 4b) which has preserved the Canaanite pattern.2
Of the subsequent part of the first section I
shall mention only the new Ugaritic-Akkadian
equations established by the new text. The Ugari-
tic original of Sasuritum is not Rhmy, personifica-
tion of " mother-womb," as surmised by Nougayrol
in 1957, but Ktrt, the well-known group of (prob-
ably seven) goddesses who in Ugaritic poems assist
at childbirth. Sasuratum is therefore to be under-
stood as plural of Akk. sassuru (known, e. g., from
the Atrabasis epic) which, for independent reasons,
is now translated "birth assistant, midwife " 3 2-
an interpretation wholly corroborated by the Uga-
ritic equivalent of Sasurdttum. Ea of the Akka-
dian list turned out to be the counterpart of the
Ugaritic Ktr. This equation is not quite surpris-
ing: the Sumerian-Hurrian-Ugaritic vocabulary
of divine names 33 gives the identification [d] a. a:
e-ia-an: ku-sar-ru, in which a. a stands for P. A.34
The reason for syncretism of Ktr with Ea lies in
both gods' reputation of wisdom and craftsman-
quoted the corresponding line of the Akkadian version
(RS 20. 24: obv. 11) as " Adad-et-gamag." As he kindly
informed me in his letter of March 15, 1966, the Akka-
dian text has dIDIM' X' IDIM which can be read Adad Uf
gamag, but also sami Mb ersetum (and perhaps even
guqamruna if ?umaliya). The Ugaritic parallel, un-
known yet in 1957, definitively established that the
second reading was the correct one. Nougayrol's de-
tailed study of the " Pantheon of Ugarit," with utiliza-
tion of even more recently discovered texts, will occupy
pp. 42-64 and 320-322 of Ugaritica V.
32 The symmetric spelling dIDIM u IDIM does not
disclose in what order " Earth " and " Heaven " were
read in the Akkadian version.
32a I am indebted to Prof. W. F. Albright for calling
my attention to this lexical development. As he in-
formed me in his letter of October 15, 1966, " W. G.
Lambert is going to discuss gassfiru and demonstrate
conclusively that it means 'midwife' . . . in his forth-
coming publication of the Atrahasis Epic." Cf. for the
time being W. G. Lambert's referring to the gassurd tum
as to " a group of seven [or fourteen] birth-goddesses "
in " The Creation of Man in Sumero-Babylonian Myth,"
Compte rendu de 1'XIe rencontre assyriologique inter-
nationale, pp. 101-102.
33 To be published by J. Nougayrol in Ugaritica V;
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ship. The Hurrian warrior-god Astabi35 of the
Akkadian list is equated with irmn, a name that
appears only here. It may be derived from Arab.
farima which in the IVth stem signifies "to de-
stroy, ruin," whence jartm, " destruction, ruin,
utter disaster." 36 This may have been the god's
real name, for the Hurrian Astabi, constructed
with the genitive suffix -bil/-we, is actually an
ethnic similar to Kumarbi, " (the one) of Ku-
mar,"37 and may signify " (the one) of Astate"
(on the Euphrates, between Syria and Mitanni).
After a series of goddesses, none of whom is
new, there follow il t'dr bc, "the helper-gods of
Baal" 38 (obv.: 8). These are probably the same
as Baal's "seven lads, eight boars" who descend
with him into the Nether World (I* AB [-UT
67]: V: 8-9). The " canonical list of the Pan-
the Hurrian part will be studied, along with other
Hurrian texts, by E. Laroche, ibid. A preliminary
report on the vocabulary was given by Nougayrol,
"Nouveaux textes accadiens de Ras-Shamra," CRAI,
1960, p. 167.
14 It is not a case of confusion between Ea and dA-a
(Aia), consort of fama;, but an unusual phonetic spell-
ing of E-a. According to the recent conclusion of E.
Sollberger, the actual reading of Ee was 'a.
35 Preceded by Ijebat, followed by a destroyed name.
In RS 24. 643, its counterpart's name is preceded by
Pdry, followed by [x-x]t, probably to be restored[ Ub]t.
If, thus, [Ub]t and Pdry have exchanged their places in
the list as compared with the sequence of the Akkadian
version, the destroyed name following Agtabi in RS 20.
24 may be restored as dPi-id-ra-i (PRU IV, RS 17.
116:3') or some other syllabic transcription of Pdry.
This would be the first occurrence of Uebat in a non-
Hurrian alphabetic text from Ras Shamra. Attb and
Ubt figure in RS 1929, No. 4 (Hurrian).
36 The final n is plainly discernible on Virolleaud's
autography. The word !rmn occurs once in V AB
( Cnt) : II:11; it has not been explained, except by J.
Aistleitner, Wbuch d. ugarit. Spr. (1963), No. 2172, who
equated it with Heb. caremd, Arab. caramat, " heap ";
but the Ugaritic toponyms derived from the root cRM
begin with c. The context in which 4rmn appears
(description of cut-off heads and hands after the massa-
cre performed by Anath) would agree with the deriva-
tion from Arab. jarima proposed for the god Ormn.
37 E. Forrer, "Eine Geschichte des G6tterkbnigtums
aus dem Hatti-Reiche," in MIlanges Franz Cumont
(1936), p. 702; E. A. Speiser, Intr. to Hurrian (1941),
p. 43; A. Goetze, "Ujurrian Place Names in -?(?)e," in
Festschrift Johannes Friedrich (1959), p._199.
3 The plural is assured by DINGIRMES til-la-at dIM
in the Akkadian version (RS 20. 24). They are also
mentioned in section 5 (rev. 11) as [il. tcl dr, restored
by Virolleaud after il tcdr in RS 24. 253 (Text No. 13):
rev. 1. RS 1929 No. 17: rev. 4 is to be read, accord-
ingly, i[l tcd]r. bcl (in UT No. 17, reverse has been
taken for obverse, and vice versa).
 ASTOUR: Some New Divine Names from Ugarit 281

theon " in all three versions ended in deified per- Trty, an ethnic derived from a Hurrian city-name
sonifications of certain cult objects and sacrifices. like ?e-er-se vel sim.,45 is probably a third hy-
RS 1929 No. 17: rev. 9-12 has utht, knr, mlkm, postasis of Baal.
slm: "censer, lyre,39 moll-sacrifices (the plural is L. 9: Sgr w Itm-a new double divine name.
established by the Akkadian version), peace-offer- Its first component appears in the Punic theopho-
ing (Akk. salimu) ." 40 RS 24. 643 omits utht and rous name 'bdsgr,46 and was explained by Harris 47
has lcnr, m![lflk w slmm.4' as a deity of fertility of animals by analogy with
In the brief section 2, Ilib and I[l] are followed, Heb. Seger, "offspring" (of cattle). The noun
according to my reading of the autography, by sgr, with the same probable meaning, is also at-
ugbl Spn, then by B'l-m repeated, as in section 1, tested in lgaritic.48 Itm is the same word as the
six times. Ugbl, a new word in Ugaritic, repre- Ugaritic noun itm = Arab. 'itm = Heb. 'asam,
sents gbl, "mountain," with a prothetic U.42 Sec- i. e., " guilt," " transgression," and " guilt offer-
tions 3 and 4, also very short, do not contribute ing." to 49 Verbal forms of this root are also known
the subject of this survey.43 in Ugaritic.50 We have seen that the sacrifices
Section 5 (reverse of the tablet) is another list molh and selamlm were personified and divinized
of offerings to gods, containing some of the namesin Ugarit and themselves received offerings. The
listed in section 1, but in a different order and same evolution of 'istam, the "guilt offering," was
with several additional names and epithets, some presumed by this author in 1951/52, when he
of which appear for the first time. wrote: 51
L. 1 has il hyr Ilib instead of simple Ilib of " Disease was considered the result of some fault
section 1. Ilib is here qualified "the kind, or or guilt ('sa-m) that had first to be identified and
benevolent, god" (Arab. hayr), to be compared to then atoned.52 The patient had to have recourse
El's standard epithet in the Poems ltpn II dpid, to priests who, by the usual way of divination,
"benevolent El the cordial." established what guilt had caused the disease and
LI. 4b-6 list B'l IHlb, B'l Spn and Trty as re- administered for it a sacred fine (also called 'dsajm)
cipients of an ox and a sheep each, while all other to be paid to the sanctuary of the god offended by
gods mentioned in the section receive only sheep.
It is for the first time that the Storm-god of "4Also in RS 24. 253 (Text No. 13) :16, preceded by
Alepppo appears in a Ugaritic-written text.44 Bcl Ugrt.
4" There was a city ge-er-geKI or ?e-er-?i-niK1 some-
39 On the god Knr (d 4Ki-na-rum in the Akkadian where in Mesopotamia (see NPN, p. 256, for further
version) and its relationship to the Greek Kinyras, references), gerede in Kudmuhi cited by Tiglath-Pileser
father of Adonis, cf. A. Jirku, "Der kyprische Heros I (AR, I, ? 222), and-much closer to Ugarit-?e-er-?e-
Kinyras und der syrische Gott Kinaru(m)," FuF, 37 ni-naKI in the kingdom of Alalah (AT 305:31). Cf. the
(1963), p. 211. element ?er?- in several pers. n. from Nuzu (NPN, 1. c.).
40 Not the god elm from the divine pair 9hr w Sim 4C6 IS, I (1881), No. 2669.
of SS (=UT No. 52), also mentioned in the new texts 47 Zellig H. Harris, A Grammar of the Phoeb. Lang.
RS 24. 244, 24. 251, 24. 271, but the personification of (1936), pp. 130, 149.
peace-offering, as shown by w ?1mm in the parallel 48 I* AB (= UT 67) :II: 16, 17, cf. UT. ? 19. 2384.
passage of RS 24. 643. 49 I* AB (=UT 67) II:24, cf. Aistleitner, Wbuch,
41 w ?mm is written after the dividing line, but the No. 474 (" Schuldopfer? ") and UT, ? 19. 418 (" open to
comparison with the other two versions and the strange- question "); the reference for atm ("guilt offering? ")
ness of the conjunction w opening a new section speaks in UT, ? 19. 442 should read " 27 " instead of " 7 "; the
in favor of w 9lmm having been inserted beneath the text (perhaps Hurrian) is almost completely destroyed.
line simply because of lack of space in the preceding Itmh recurs in the new text RS 24. 252 (Text No. 2):
line.
obv. 14 as the only word in a broken line.
42 The existence of gbl (Arab. Mbl) for " mountain " in 50 Cf. UT, ? 19. 422 (Gt: yittm, tittmm).
the West Semitic of the second millennium B. C. is 51 In a lengthy manuscript dealing with the ethno-
proven by the city-name Gubla (Byblos) and the occur- genesis of Israel which may, some time, be rewritten
rence of gbl in the Krt Epic (UT No. 127:57), where for publication.
tqln bgbl can be translated "mayst thou fall from a 52 "This view was shared by the Phoenicians; Rib-
mountain! " For the prothetic u, cf. the Ugaritic place-
Addi of Byblos wrote to the Pharaoh: 'I am old, and
names Ubrc, Ubnp, Ugkn (from the roots BRc, UJNP,
my body is afflicted with a severe disease. And let the
6KN).
king, my lord, know that the gods of Gubla are angry,
43 Section 3 (11. 13-17) is in Hurrian and will be and (consequently) the disease is worse, and I have
investigated by E. Laroche in his study of the new Hur- acknowledged my sins to the gods' (EA 137 :29-33,
rian texts from Ugarit, in Ugaritica V. Section 4 (11. transl. S. A. B. Mercer) " (note in the manuscript of
18-22) describes in detail the offerings given to CAstart. 1951/52).

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282 ASTOUR: Some New Divine Names from Ugarit
the committed transgressions Paying the 'dsim
was supposed to automatically bring upon a re-
covery. Therefore the healer-god, too, received the
name 'AJsm, as one of the gods of the Jewish
colony in Elephantine was called.54 Amos 8: 14
mentions this deity as 'Agemat of Samaria; II
Kings 17:30 knows him, in the Aramaic form
Syriac
'Asimd'. as a god of the men of Hamath. Theand Ethiopic. In Biblical Hebrew, the
Phoenician healer-god 'EsmiJn bears the same
name with the suffix -un.." 55
We may now add that the first vowel of 'Egmuin
(established by Damascius' transcription Es-
mounos and by the spelling of names composed
with 'Esmitn in Greek inscriptions) 56 agrees with
that of Ugaritic Itm. We have here the earliest
recorded mention of the god that later, in the first
millennium B. C., was worshipped all over the West
Semitic world under names derived from the root
'TM.
S. RS 24. 271
Besides Ct w Kmt (obv. 5) and 'ttr 'ttpr (obv.
10), discussed above, the obverse of this short
tablet (Text No. 10) includes the following new
divine names or epithets:
Li. 6-7: The Moon-god appears twice: as Yrh
w ksa (ileb. kese' "full moon") and Yrh mkty,
58 "c An excellent illustration is provided by the story
of I Sam. 5-6 on the bubonic plague inflicted by the
ark of Yahweh upon its Philistine capturers. The
terrified seran-tm turned to their priests and oracles;
these named the cause of the epidemic and prescribed
the '&sam to be given to the ark upon its return from
the captivity: five golden tumors and five golden mice
(symbols of plague) according to the number of the
Philistine city-states: 'then you will be healed"
(ibid.).
54 Triad: Yhw, Cnt-bt'l, and '?m-bt'l (Pap. 18
[Sachau]: VII: 6), analogous to the triad Hadad,
Atargatis, and Simios (or Asclepios) of the Hellenistic
times.
56 Identification of 'LXam with 'Egmi'n has been pro-
posed by M. Noth, Die Israel. Personennamen (1928),
p. 124, who derived both names from the root AM, and
by A. Vincent, La rel. des Jud eo-Arameens d'i1l6phantine
(1937), pp. 564 f., without etymology. The equation
Itm = 'Jsam = Egma'n eliminates Damascius' (cf. n. 56)
speculations as to the derivation of the latter name from
"eight" (Phoen. smn, Ugar. tmn) or "efire" (Heb. 'es,
Ugar. itt). Nor can the Ugar. p. n. a#dmny be con-
nected with '3Esmltn (as in UT, ? 19. 101); it is rather
composed with the Hurrian element agm- (NPN, p. 207;
D. J. Wiseman, The Alalakh Tablets 1953, pp. 129 f.;
cf. the Ugaritic p. n. adml[, admtn, Ag-mu-wa-na).
5 Damascius, Vita Isidori 302 (not Herodotus 2:51,
as erroneously stated in Harris, Grammar, p. 82);
Pauly-Wissowa, Realencyclopddie, VI, col. 675 f.
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or possibly Yrh-m kty (with the enclitic -n) 67 as
in Yrh kty, RS 24.246 (Text No. 14): obv. 14.
One would expect that kty, as contrasted with ksa,
relates to the "new moon," but there are no lin-
guistic reasons to understand it this way.
L. 12: Ngh w Srr. The verb NGH (with con-
sonantal h), "to shine," occurs in Ugaritic,68
noun nogah = "brightness," in Mishnaic Hebrew
it is the name of the planet Venus. The verb SRR
means in Hebrew "to rebel," in particular against
God; in Akkadian, the D-form of sararu, has the
same meaning. The two epithets characterize
their bearer with utmost clarity. We have here
the earliest occurrence of the rebellious hero of the
magnificent mythological poem, Isaiah 14: 12-15:
Hilel ben-gahar, " Morning Star (literally, " Shin-
ing One," LXX Heosphoros, Vulgate Lucifer),
son of Dawn," who tried "to ascend to heaven,"
to "sit on the Mount of Assembly in the far
North " and to make himself " like the Most High
('Elyon)," but was brought down to Sheol.59 The
further evolution of this image in the Christian
church, which identified Lucifer with Satan, is
well known. One feels a certain emotion in dis-
covering its prototype in a Ugaritic tablet written
some six or eight hundred years before the dirge in
Isaiah 14 and some three thousand years before
Milton's Paradise Lost.
L. 13: 'd w sr.60 (d has many meanings in
Ugaritic and in other Semitic languages. It also
appears in the Ugaritic personal names 'dmlk,
'dr p. If preference is given to the sense "eter-
nity" (as in Hebrew and Arabic), one may think
of this god as of a precursor of Aion in the the-
ogony of Philo of Byblos.
L. 14: Sdq Mgr (to be divided thus rather than
Sdqm sr) personifications of " righteousness"
and " justice," Babylonian Kettu and Mecarut
(personified as sons of Samas, the god of justice),
57 Cf. n. 29. Professor Nougayrol informs me that in
one of the Akkadian-written letters from Alasia that he
is going to publish in Ugaritica V (RS 20. 18, his Text
No. 22), he noticed "un emploi de -ma a la fagon du
-que latin, c'est-h-dire: en fin d'enumeration."
68 UT, ? 19. 1605b.
59 Cf. 0. Gruppe, Griech. Mythologie (1906), II, p.
943, and P. Grelot, " Isale XIV 12-15 et son arri~re-plan
mythologique," RHR, 149 (1956), pp. 18-48, and my
Hellenosemitica, pp. 268-271, on the Greek versions of
this myth (Phaethon and Bellerophon).
6? Jr, " prince," occurs as a title of Ugaritic gods, e. g.
II gr in this same text, obv. 3; Mt w 9r, SS (= UT
52:8).
 ASTOUR: Some New Divine Names from Ugarit 283

Philo's sixth pair of primeval brothers, Misor and
Sydyk.6' The nouns sdq and msr have been
known in Ugaritic literary texts, the former also
in personal names,62 but this is the first time that
they are found as a divine pair.
L. 15: Hnbn il dn-another deity connected
with justice: "The Compassionate One (cf.
Arabic haniba), god of judgment." 63
The reverse of the tablet contains a few familiar
divine names along with some unintelligible lines
and the new, very obscure, binomials atdb w r 64
and thr w bd.65
4. RS 24.60 and RS 24.245
The short tablet RS 24. 60 (Text No. 11) con-
tains the instruction for the king's sacrifice to
Ushr hlmt (or, once, simply Hlmt), Bbt, Ilbt, and
Qlh. Us1hr (written Us1hry elsewhere in Ugaritic
texts) is the Babylonian healer-goddess Is'hara, the
patroness of matrimony; what is completely new
is her epithet hlmt, in which Virolleaud 66 recog-
nized the Akkadian hulmittu (also spelled hul-
As noticed by Virolleaud, the obverse of this
mittu, 4ulmiddu), a kind of a snake.67 The con-
nection of fertility- and healer-gods with snakes is
extremely old and widespread (in Mesopotamia,
Phoenicia, Judah, Greece), and the serpent or
dragon was indeed an emblem of Ishara (ba-as-
mu-um sa Es-har-ra); 68 but this is so far the only
piece of evidence on the existence of serpent-cult
in Ugarit.
Ilbt, evidently the "god of the house (or tem-
ple)," appears in several other tablets of the new
lot. So does Bbt, whose name is ambiguous: is
61 Cf. H. Zimmern in Keilinschr. u. d. AT (3d ed.,
1903), p. 370; H. Winckler, ibid., p. 224, n. 1; Deimel,
Panth. Babyl., No. 1750; Lewis B. Paton in Hastings,
ERR, XI, p. 179; Ed. Dhorme, Les ret. de Babyl. et
d'Ass. (1949), p. 67.
62 Cf. UT, ? 19. 2147.
63 The last extant line of obv. (1. 16) may perhaps be
69 Deimel, Panth. Babyl., No. 316: III:1, 2; IV, last
restored [k?]bd w an[n?]: cf. kbd d it gd/b[, rev. 4,
and bt il ann, UT 1090:17-19, apparently " temple of
the god Ann." Cf. '6nan Gen. 38.
64 Atdb, Gt of 'DB, Heb. and Arab. "invite to a
meal "? cr, " ass " (cf. PhI above) ? or "watchful "'?
Cf. cEr Gen. 38.
65 Thr seems non-Semitic; cf. Hurrian element guhur
(NPN, p. 258) ? bd, " singer" (UT, ? 19. 444) ?
66 Ugaritica V, p. 586.
67 CAD, U, p. 230; called " snake," seru but perhaps
and Ktr are not included in the corresponding part of
a lizard (said to have " four feet"); ideogram MU9.
RS 1929 No. 1; conversely the latter has w 1 4jmt after
fUUL, " evil snake."
68 CT 2, 47:20, quoted Deimel, Panth. Babyl., No.
1603: II:1, and CAD, B, p. 141.
she the Sumerian fertility-goddess Ba-ba6, later
identified with the healer-goddess Gula?69 or the
personification of "gate" (bdbu, bdbtu), attested
in Babylonian iconography ? 70 or simply b-bt, " the
one in the house"? In RS 24. 249 (Text No. 12):
obv. 8 one finds a deity Btbt, to be understood as
" daughter of the house," comparable to the Baby-
lonian dMar-biti (or dDumu.e') and dMdrat
(DUMU. SAL)4--babbar-ra.71 The situation is
further complicated by the phrases Rsp bbt (RS
24.249: obv. 11), bbt B7l Ugrt (RS 24.253:11),
and Rsp bbth (RS 24. 244: 31); in the latter pas-
sage, bbt (with the locative suffix -h) is, according
to the context, Rsp's residence. Finally, Qlh bears
a name that is certainly Semitic (in view of h),
but its root is unknown; besides the place-name
Qa-l-hi in a list of Ramses II (now Qalhat near
Enfeh in Lebanon),72 its only lexical occurrence is
in the Hebrew qallaihat, " caldron," which does not
help us at all.
5. RS 24.246
small tablet (Text No. 14) presents a list of gods
that consists, in the main, of the same names and
in the same order as those figuring in RS 1929
No. 1: 13-19 and can be used for restoring the
latter.73 The following divine names should be
mentioned in the framework of this survey:
L. 8: Dqt, literally "a female head of small
cattle for sacrifices." 74 The presence of a goddess
who is a " ewe " or a " she-goat " does not surprise
us in a pantheon of which several members are
identified with different animals, but the term
used in this particular instance may call for addi-
tional attention. It was pronounced (as its Arabic
and Akkadian cognates) daqqatu or diqqatu. Now
Di-ka-tu was the Linear A name of Cretan Mt.
paragraph.
70 Cf. UT, ? 19. 2721: " note the personified winged
gates with ;ama; on seal no. 15 in C. H. Gordon, The
Living Past 125."
71 Deimel, Panth. Babyl., Nos. 763 and 2076.
72 W. Helek, Die Beziehungen Agyptens zu Vorderasien
(1962), p. 221, No. 17; R. Dussaud, Topographie his-
torique de la Syrie (1927), map V:A:3.
73 Ugaritica V, p. 594. Ilbt (RS 24. 246: obv. 1)
Yrh kty.
74 UT. ? 19. 695. Cf. Baruch Levine, "Ugaritic De-
scriptive Rituals," JCS, 17 (1963), pp. 105-111.

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284 ASTOUR: Some New Divine Names from Ugarit
Dikte 75 (Di-ka-ta in Linear B) 76 which Hesiod
(Theog. 481) called Aigaion oros, " Goat's Moun-
tain," adding that the infant Zeus had been
reared there in a cave. According to Greek myths
of a later period, he was nourished there by a
goat.77 The two names of the mountain, very
probably, represent a Greco-Semitic onomastic
doublet. Among the nine Cretan and Pelopon-
nesian toponyms in a recently published list of
Amenophis III,778 the name Di-qa-' figures with
the determinative "high." I recognized in it the
Semitic spelling Dqt with the clipped ending -a
instead of -atu, as this was rather common in West
Semitic feminine names of the second millen-
nium. I may add that the occurrence of a
Semitic toponym in the eastern part of Crete is
by no means exceptional."
L. 9: Trt, literally "grape-juice" (synonym of
"wine"), Heb. tir3s, Phoen. (Karatepe) trS, Ugar.
trt. A king of Hazor, Abdi-Tir-si, appears in EA
228: 3. Already the early students of cuneiform
onomastica made the correct inference that the
second element of this name was a divine name.81
75J. Chadwick, "Minoan Linear A: A Provisional
Balance Sheet," Antiquity, 33 (1959), p. 273.
7" M. Ventris and J. Chadwick, Documents in Myce-
naean Greek (1956), p. 146 (in the forms Di-ka-ta-de,
" from Dikte," and Di-ka-ta-jo, ethnic); R. L. Palmer,
Interpr. of Myc. Greek Texts, pp. 36, 235 f. One should
remember that the sound rendered by q in our trans-
literations of Linear A and B was different from the
Egyptian and Semitic q which, at least in Linear A.
was transcribed by k, e. g. Linear A sa-mu-ku = Ugar.
smqm, Heb. simmitqtm, " raisins " (E. Peruzzi, " Note
minoiche," Minos, 6, 1 [1958], p. 13).
77 Cf. R. H. Hutchinson, Prehistoric Crete (1962), pp.
201 f.
78 K. A. Kitchen, "Theban Topographical Lists, Old
and New," Orientalia, NS 34 (1965), p. 5 and pl. II,
Fig. 4 (statue-base C at Kom el Hetan).
79 Cf. my forthcoming "Aegean Place-Names in an
Egyptian Inscription," AJA, 70 (1966), No. 4.
80 Cf. Hellenosemitica, pp. 140-144.
81 A. Clay, Personal Names from Cuneiform Inscrip-
tions of the Cassite Period (1912), p. 207; K. L.
Tallqvist, Assyrian Personal Names (1914), p. 262; A.
Deimel, Panth. Babyl. (1914), p. 263.
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According to W. F. Albright, " this hitherto
unknown divinity may perhaps have been a kind
of Bacchus from whose name the Israelites 82 got
their poetic word tirds for 'wine."' 83 This hy-
pothesis has now been completely confirmed by the
occurrence of the deity Trt in two Ugaritic lists of
gods. The proposed derivation of the term thyrsoi,
the sacral wands carried at the festivals of Diony-
sos, from this West Semitic words for "wine,"84
has also been strengthened by the disclosure that
trt had a religious connotation in the West Semitic
world.
Finally, in 1. 11, the goddess Anath bears the
fitting epithet " destroyer"-nt bly (from the
common Semitic root HBL that appears here for
the first time in Ugaritic), and 1. 13 names iltm
4nqtm, " the two strangling gooddesses." It is im-
possible to specify as yet what kind of mythological
beings are hidden under the latter designation.
One may recall that the Greeks told about a female
monster called Sphinx, "the strangler," and that
the Greek iconographic conception of winged
female sphinx was, according to the consensus of
art historians, borrowed from Syro-Phoenician
imagery.
This survey was limited in its scope. It left
aside the highly interesting mythological and
magic side of the new texts, which requires sepa-
rate detailed studies. The Greco-Semitic paral-
lels that came up in the course of this survey
contribute to what the Mycenologist L. R. Palmer
called in his recent book 85 "the picture of an
Aegean Oriental religious xol which emerges
from our analysis [and] is consistent with previous
findings by students of Minoan-Mycenaean re-
ligion," and confirm his statement that "for the
student of Mycenaean contacts with the Orient,
Canaanite Ugarit is of greatest importance."
82 And, for that matter, other West Semites.
83 W. F. Albright, " Recent Books on Archaeology and
Ancient History," BASOR No. 139 (Oct. 1955), p. 18.
84 Cf. Hellenosemitica, pp. 186 ff.
85 Interpr. of Myc. Greek Texts, p. 256.