Canaanite religion
Encyclopedia
Levant
The Levant or ) is the geographic region and culture zone of the "eastern Mediterranean littoral between Anatolia and Egypt" . The Levant includes most of modern Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel, the Palestinian territories, and sometimes parts of Turkey and Iraq, and corresponds roughly to the...
from at least the early Bronze Age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
through the first centuries of the Common Era
Common Era
Common Era ,abbreviated as CE, is an alternative designation for the calendar era originally introduced by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century, traditionally identified with Anno Domini .Dates before the year 1 CE are indicated by the usage of BCE, short for Before the Common Era Common Era...
.
Canaanite religion was polytheistic
Polytheism
Polytheism is the belief of multiple deities also usually assembled into a pantheon of gods and goddesses, along with their own mythologies and rituals....
, and in some cases monolatristic
Monolatrism
Monolatrism or monolatry is the recognition of the existence of many gods, but with the consistent worship of only one deity...
.
Pantheon
Deity
A deity is a recognized preternatural or supernatural immortal being, who may be thought of as holy, divine, or sacred, held in high regard, and respected by believers....
were worshiped by the followers of the Canaanite religion; this is a partial listing:
- AnatAnatAnat, also ‘Anat is a major northwest Semitic goddess.-‘Anat in Ugarit:In the Ugaritic Ba‘al/Hadad cycle ‘Anat is a violent war-goddess, a virgin in Ugarit though the sister and lover of the great Ba‘al known as Hadad elsewhere. Ba‘al is usually called the son of Dagon and sometimes the son of El....
, virgin goddess of war and strife, sister and putative mate of Ba'al Hadad - AthiratAsherahAsherah , in Semitic mythology, is a Semitic mother goddess, who appears in a number of ancient sources including Akkadian writings by the name of Ashratum/Ashratu and in Hittite as Asherdu or Ashertu or Aserdu or Asertu...
, "walker of the sea", Mother Goddess, wife of El (also known as Elat and after the Bronze Age as Asherah) - AthtartAstarteAstarte is the Greek name of a goddess known throughout the Eastern Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to Classical times...
, better known by her Greek name Astarte, assists Anat in The Myth of Ba'al - Baalat or Baalit, the wife or female counterpart of BaalBaalBaʿal is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant and Asia Minor, cognate to Akkadian Bēlu...
(also Belili) - Ba'al HadadHadadHaddad was a northwest Semitic storm and rain god, cognate in name and origin with the Akkadian god Adad. Hadad was often called simply Ba‘al , but this title was also used for other gods. The bull was the symbolic animal of Hadad. He appeared as a bearded deity, often shown as holding a club and...
(lit. master of blacksmiths), storm god, perhaps superseded El as head of the Pantheon - Baal Hammon, god of fertility and renewer of all energies in the Phoenician colonies of the Western Mediterranean
- DagonDagonDagon was originally an Assyro-Babylonian fertility god who evolved into a major northwest Semitic god, reportedly of grain and fish and/or fishing...
, god of crop fertility and grain, father of Baal or Hadad - El Elyon (lit. God Most High) and El; also transliterated as Ilu
- EshmunEshmunEshmun was a Phoenician god of healing and the tutelary god of Sidon.This god was known at least from the Iron Age period at Sidon and was worshipped also in Tyre, Beirut, Cyprus, Sardinia, and in Carthage where the site of Eshmun's temple is now occupied by the chapel of Saint Louis.According to...
, god, or as Baalat Asclepius, goddess, of healing - Ishat, goddess of fire. She was slain by AnatAnatAnat, also ‘Anat is a major northwest Semitic goddess.-‘Anat in Ugarit:In the Ugaritic Ba‘al/Hadad cycle ‘Anat is a violent war-goddess, a virgin in Ugarit though the sister and lover of the great Ba‘al known as Hadad elsewhere. Ba‘al is usually called the son of Dagon and sometimes the son of El....
. - KotharatKotharatThe Kotharat, or Kotharot, or Kathirat , 'the skilful ones' were a group of northwest Semitic goddesses appearing in the Ugartic texts as divine midwives...
, goddesses of marriage and pregnancy - Kothar-wa-KhasisKothar-wa-KhasisKothar-wa-Khasis is a Canaanite god whose name means "Skillful-and-Wise" or "Adroit-and-Perceptive" or "Deft-and-Clever". Another of his names means "Deft-with-both-hands". Kothar is smith, craftsman, engineer, architect, and inventor...
, the skilled, god of craftsmanship - LotanLotanLotan or Lawtan is the seven-headed sea serpent or dragon of Ugaritic myths. He is either a pet of the god Yamm or an aspect of Yamm himself; the cosmic ocean of myth is often known as a great stream. In the Hebrew analogue Lotan is who was also known as Yam the Leviathan. He represents the mass...
, the twisting, seven-headed serpent ally of Yam - MarqodMarqodMarqod, also known as Baal-Marqod , was a a Phoenician god of healing and dancing. It is unknown if Marqod's association with dancing came as a result of the Phoenician belief that Marqod was the creator of dancing or because dancing was the proper way to worship the deity...
, God of Dance - MelqartMelqartMelqart, properly Phoenician Milk-Qart "King of the City", less accurately Melkart, Melkarth or Melgart , Akkadian Milqartu, was tutelary god of the Phoenician city of Tyre as Eshmun protected Sidon. Melqart was often titled Ba‘l Ṣūr "Lord of Tyre", the ancestral king of the royal line...
, king of the city, the underworld and cycle of vegetation in Tyre - Molech or Moloch, putative god of fire
- Mot or Mawat, god of death (not worshiped or given offerings)
- Nikkal-wa-IbNikkalStanislas Marie Adélaïde, comte de Clermont-Tonnerre was a French politician.-Early life and career:Born in Pont-a-Mousson, in what is today the Meurthe-et-Moselle department in north-eastern France...
, goddess of orchards and fruit - Qadeshtu, lit. "Holy One", putative goddess of love, modernly thought to be a sacred prostitute, although there is no evidence of sacred prostitution in ancient Canaanite cities
- ReshephReshephResheph was a Canaanite deity of plague and war. In Egyptian iconography Resheph is depicted wearing the crown of Upper Egypt surmounted in front by the head of a gazelle. He has links with Theban war god Montu and was thought of as a guardian deity in battle by many Egyptian pharaohs...
, god of plague and of healing - ShacharShahar (god)Shahar is the god of dawn in the pantheon of Ugarit. He is the twin brother and counterpart of Shalim, the god of dusk. The name is a cognate of the Hebrew word Shachar meaning dawn.-External links:*...
and ShalimShalimShalim was the name of a god in the Canaanite religion pantheon, mentioned in inscriptions found in Ugarit in Syria. William F. Albright identified Shalim as the god of dusk, and Shahar as god of the dawn...
, twin gods of dawn and dusk, respectively - ShamayimShamayimShamayim is the Hebrew word for "heaven"-Heaven in the Old Testament:Shamayim comes from shameh, a root meaning to be lofty. It literally means the sky."Shamayim" is a crucial concept in the Bible...
, (lit. skies) the god of the heavens - Shapash, also transliterated Shapshu, goddess of the sun; sometimes equated with the Mesopotamian sun god Shemesh whose gender is disputed
- Yam-naharYam (god)Yam, from the Canaanite word Yam, meaning "Sea", also written "Yaw", is one name of the Ugaritic god of Rivers and Sea. Also titled Judge Nahar , he is also one of the 'ilhm or sons of El, the name given to the Levantine pantheon...
or Yaw (lit. sea-river) the god of the sea and the river, also called Judge Nahar (judge of the river). - Yahwi may exist as an ending of some Amorite male names, though the only Canaanite mention of YahwehYahwehYahweh is the name of God in the Bible, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Jews and Christians.The word Yahweh is a modern scholarly convention for the Hebrew , transcribed into Roman letters as YHWH and known as the Tetragrammaton, for which the original pronunciation is unknown...
, found on the Mesha SteleMesha SteleThe Mesha Stele is a black basalt stone bearing an inscription by the 9th century BC ruler Mesha of Moab in Jordan....
, refers to the God of Israel contrasted with ChemoshChemoshChemosh , was the god of the Moabites . The etymology of "Chemosh" is unknown. He is also known from Ebla as Kamish....
. - YarikhYarikhYarikh, in Canaanite mythology, Yarkhibol in Phoenician, also written as Jerah, Jarah, or Jorah , is a moon god whose epithets are illuminator of the heavens, illuminator of the myriads of stars, and lord of the sickle. The latter epithet may come from the appearance of the crescent moon...
, god of the moon and husband of Nikkal
Afterlife and Cult of the Dead
According to Canaanite beliefs, when the physical body dies, the npš (usually translated as "soul") departs from the body to the land of Mot. Bodies were buried with grave goods, and offerings of food and drink were made to the dead to ensure that they would not bother the living. Dead relatives were venerated and sometimes asked for help.Cosmology
So far, none of the inscribed tablets found in 1929 the Canaanite city of UgaritUgarit
Ugarit was an ancient port city in the eastern Mediterranean at the Ras Shamra headland near Latakia, Syria. It is located near Minet el-Beida in northern Syria. It is some seven miles north of Laodicea ad Mare and approximately fifty miles east of Cyprus...
(destroyed ca. 1200 BC) has revealed a cosmology. Any idea of one is often reconstructed from the much later Phoenician text by Philo of Byblos
Philo of Byblos
Philo of Byblos was an antiquarian writer of grammatical, lexical and historical works in Greek. He is chiefly known for his Phoenician history assembled from the writings of Sanchuniathon.-Life:...
(c. 64–141 AD), after much Greek and Roman influence in the region.
According to the pantheon, known in Ugarit as 'ilhm (=Elohim
Elohim
Elohim is a grammatically singular or plural noun for "god" or "gods" in both modern and ancient Hebrew language. When used with singular verbs and adjectives elohim is usually singular, "god" or especially, the God. When used with plural verbs and adjectives elohim is usually plural, "gods" or...
) or the children of El, supposedly obtained by Philo of Byblos from Sanchuniathon
Sanchuniathon
Sanchuniathon is the purported Phoenician author of three lost works originally in the Phoenician language, surviving only in partial paraphrase and summary of a Greek translation by Philo of Byblos, according to the Christian bishop Eusebius of Caesarea...
of Berythus (Beirut
Beirut
Beirut is the capital and largest city of Lebanon, with a population ranging from 1 million to more than 2 million . Located on a peninsula at the midpoint of Lebanon's Mediterranean coastline, it serves as the country's largest and main seaport, and also forms the Beirut Metropolitan...
) the creator was known as Elion, who was the father of the divinities, and in the Greek sources he was married to Beruth (Beirut = the city). This marriage of the divinity with the city would seem to have Biblical parallels too with the stories of the link between Melkart and Tyre; Chemosh
Chemosh
Chemosh , was the god of the Moabites . The etymology of "Chemosh" is unknown. He is also known from Ebla as Kamish....
and Moab
Moab
Moab is the historical name for a mountainous strip of land in Jordan. The land lies alongside much of the eastern shore of the Dead Sea. The existence of the Kingdom of Moab is attested to by numerous archeological findings, most notably the Mesha Stele, which describes the Moabite victory over...
; Tanit
Tanit
Tanit was a Phoenician lunar goddess, worshipped as the patron goddess at Carthage. Tanit was worshiped in Punic contexts in the Western Mediterranean, from Malta to Gades into Hellenistic times. From the fifth century BCE onwards Tanit is associated with that of Baal Hammon...
and Baal Hammon in Carthage
Carthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...
.
From the union of El Elyon and his consort were born Uranus and Ge, Greek names for the "Heaven" and the "Earth".
In Canaanite mythology there were twin mountains Targhizizi and Tharumagi which hold the firmament up above the earth-circling ocean, thereby bounding the earth. W. F. Albright, for example, says that El Shaddai is a derivation of a Semitic stem that appears in the Akkadian shadû ("mountain") and shaddā`û or shaddû`a ("mountain-dweller"), one of the names of Amurru. Philo of Byblos states that Atlas was one of the Elohim, which would clearly fit into the story of El Shaddai as "God of the Mountain(s)." Harriet Lutzky has presented evidence that Shaddai was an attribute of a Semitic goddess, linking the epithet with Hebrew šad "breast" as "the one of the Breast". The idea of two mountains being associated here as the breasts of the Earth, fits into the Canaanite mythology quite well. The ideas of pairs of mountains seem to be quite common in Canaanite mythology (similar to Horeb and Sinai in the Bible). The late period of this cosmology makes it difficult to tell what influences (Roman, Greek, or Hebrew) may have informed Philo's writings.
Mythology
In the Baal cycleBaal cycle
The Baal cycle is a Ugaritic cycle of stories about the Canaanite god Baal, also known as Hadad the god of storm and fertility. They are written in Ugaritic, a language written in a cuneiform alphabet, on a series of clay tablets found in the 1920s in the Tell of Ugarit , situated on the...
, Ba'al Hadad is challenged by and defeats Yam, using two magical weapons (called "Driver" and "Chaser") made for Him by Kothar-wa-Khasis. Afterward, with the help of Athirat and Anat, Ba'al persuades El to allow him a palace. El approves, and the palace is built by Kothar-wa-Khasis. After the palace is constructed, Ba'al gives forth a thunderous roar out of the palace window and challenges Mot. Mot enters through the window and swallows Ba'al, sending him to the Underworld. With no one to give rain, there is a terrible drought in Ba'al's absence. The other deities, especially El and Anat, are distraught that Ba'al has been taken to the Underworld. Anat goes to the Underworld, attacks Mot with a knife, grinds him up into pieces, and scatters him far and wide. With Mot defeated, Ba'al is able to return and refresh the Earth with rain.
The Canaanites
The Levant region was inhabited by people who themselves referred to the land as 'ca-na-na-um' as early as the mid-third millennium BCE. There are a number of possible etymologiesEtymology
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.For languages with a long written history, etymologists make use of texts in these languages and texts about the languages to gather knowledge about how words were used during...
for the word.
Some suggest the name comes from Hebrew "cana'ani" word meant merchant, for which, as Phoenicians, the Canaanites became justly famous.
The Akkadian word "kinahhu", however, referred to the purple-colored wool, dyed from the Murex
Murex
Murex is a genus of medium to large sized predatory tropical sea snails. These are carnivorous marine gastropod molluscs in the family Muricidae, commonly calle "murexes" or "rock snails"...
molluscs of the coast, which was throughout history a key export of the region. When the Greeks later traded with the Canaanites, this meaning of the word seems to have predominated as they called the Canaanites the Phoenikes or "Phoenicians", which may derive from the Greek word "Phoenix" meaning crimson or purple, and again described the cloth for which the Greeks also traded. The Romans transcribed "phoenix" to "poenus", thus calling the descendants of the Canaanite settlers in Carthage "Punic".
Thus while "Phoenician" and "Canaanite" refer to the same culture, archaeologists and historians commonly refer to the Bronze Age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
, pre-1200 BC Levantines as Canaanites and their Iron Age
Iron Age
The Iron Age is the archaeological period generally occurring after the Bronze Age, marked by the prevalent use of iron. The early period of the age is characterized by the widespread use of iron or steel. The adoption of such material coincided with other changes in society, including differing...
descendants, particularly those living on the coast, as Phoenicians. More recently, the term Canaanite has been used for the secondary Iron Age states of the interior, that were not ruled by Aramaean peoples, a separate and closely related ethnic group which included the Philistines
Philistines
Philistines , Pleshet or Peleset, were a people who occupied the southern coast of Canaan at the beginning of the Iron Age . According to the Bible, they ruled the five city-states of Gaza, Askelon, Ashdod, Ekron and Gath, from the Wadi Gaza in the south to the Yarqon River in the north, but with...
and the states of Israel and Judah
Kingdom of Judah
The Kingdom of Judah was a Jewish state established in the Southern Levant during the Iron Age. It is often referred to as the "Southern Kingdom" to distinguish it from the northern Kingdom of Israel....
.
Influences
Canaanite religion was strongly influenced by their more powerful and populous neighbors, and shows clear influence of MesopotamiaMesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
n and Egyptian religious practices. Like other people of the Ancient Near East Canaanite religious beliefs were polytheistic, with families typically focusing worship on ancestral household gods and goddesses, the Elohim, while acknowledging the existence of other deities such as Baal
Baal
Baʿal is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant and Asia Minor, cognate to Akkadian Bēlu...
and El
El (god)
is a Northwest Semitic word meaning "deity", cognate to Akkadian and then to Hebrew : Eli and Arabic )....
. King
Monarch
A monarch is the person who heads a monarchy. This is a form of government in which a state or polity is ruled or controlled by an individual who typically inherits the throne by birth and occasionally rules for life or until abdication...
s also played an important religious role and in certain ceremonies, such as the sacred marriage
Hieros gamos
Hieros gamos or Hierogamy refers to a sexual ritual that plays out a marriage between a god and a goddess, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual where human participants represent the deities. It is the harmonization of opposites...
of the New Year Festival may have been revered as gods. "At the center of Canaanite religion was royal concern for religious and political legitimacy and the imposition of a divinely ordained legal structure, as well as peasant emphasis on fertility of the crops, flocks, and humans."
Human sacrifice
A number of scholars maintain that there is significant evidence of living child and animal sacrifices made to Molech idols, based on numerous claims from the ancient Hebrews and Romans, coupled with the discovery of Molech statues with charred skeletal remains, as well as the graves of many children near certain Punic religious sites in North AfricaNorth Africa
North Africa or Northern Africa is the northernmost region of the African continent, linked by the Sahara to Sub-Saharan Africa. Geopolitically, the United Nations definition of Northern Africa includes eight countries or territories; Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, South Sudan, Sudan, Tunisia, and...
, such as Carthage
Carthage
Carthage , implying it was a 'new Tyre') is a major urban centre that has existed for nearly 3,000 years on the Gulf of Tunis, developing from a Phoenician colony of the 1st millennium BC...
. Opponents of the theory of Punic human sacrifice suggest that these children died naturally, some perhaps in an epidemic and point to the few undeveloped fetuses amongst the other dead as evidence for this. Both positions remain speculative, although some form of infanticide was common among all ancient cultures, including ancient Rome and Greece.
Contact with other areas
Canaanite religion was influenced by its peripheral position, intermediary between Egypt and Mesopotamia, whose religions had a growing impact upon Canaanite religion. For example during the HyksosHyksos
The Hyksos were an Asiatic people who took over the eastern Nile Delta during the twelfth dynasty, initiating the Second Intermediate Period of ancient Egypt....
period, when horse-using maryannu
Maryannu
Maryannu is an ancient word for the caste of chariot-mounted hereditary warrior nobility which dominated many of the societies of the Middle East during the Bronze Age.The term is attested in the Amarna letters written by Haapi...
Asiatics ruled in Egypt, at their capital city of Avaris
Avaris
Avaris , capital of Egypt under the Hyksos , was located near modern Tell el-Dab'a in the northeastern region of the Nile Delta, at the juncture of the 8th, 14th, 19th and 20th Nomes...
, Baal became associated with the Egyptian god Set
Set (mythology)
Set was in Ancient Egyptian religion, a god of the desert, storms, and foreigners. In later myths he was also the god of darkness, and chaos...
, and was considered identical - particularly with Set in his form as Sutekh. Iconographically henceforth Baal was shown wearing the crown of Lower Egypt
Lower Egypt
Lower Egypt is the northern-most section of Egypt. It refers to the fertile Nile Delta region, which stretches from the area between El-Aiyat and Zawyet Dahshur, south of modern-day Cairo, and the Mediterranean Sea....
and shown in the Egyptian-like stance, one foot set before the other. Similarly Athirat
Asherah
Asherah , in Semitic mythology, is a Semitic mother goddess, who appears in a number of ancient sources including Akkadian writings by the name of Ashratum/Ashratu and in Hittite as Asherdu or Ashertu or Aserdu or Asertu...
(known by her later Hebrew name Asherah), Athtart
Astarte
Astarte is the Greek name of a goddess known throughout the Eastern Mediterranean from the Bronze Age to Classical times...
(known by her later Greek name Astarte), and Anath henceforth were portrayed wearing Hathor
Hathor
Hathor , is an Ancient Egyptian goddess who personified the principles of love, beauty, music, motherhood and joy. She was one of the most important and popular deities throughout the history of Ancient Egypt...
-like Egyptian wigs.
From the other direction, Jean Bottero
Jean Bottéro
Jean Bottéro was a French historian. He was a major Assyriologist and a renowned expert on the Ancient Near East...
has suggested that Yah
Yah
Yah may refer to:* Jah, shortened form of "Jehovah" used at and elsewhere. Also, the name of God favored by Rastafarians.* Yah, shortened form of Yahweh , one of the names of God in Judaism...
of Ebla
Ebla
Ebla Idlib Governorate, Syria) was an ancient city about southwest of Aleppo. It was an important city-state in two periods, first in the late third millennium BC, then again between 1800 and 1650 BC....
(a possible precursor of Yam
Yam (god)
Yam, from the Canaanite word Yam, meaning "Sea", also written "Yaw", is one name of the Ugaritic god of Rivers and Sea. Also titled Judge Nahar , he is also one of the 'ilhm or sons of El, the name given to the Levantine pantheon...
) was equated with the Mesopotamian
Mesopotamian religion
Mesopotamian religion refers to the religious beliefs and practices followed by the Sumerian and Akkadian peoples living in Mesopotamia that dominated the region for a period of 4200 years from the fourth millennium BC to approximately the 3rd century AD...
god Ea
Enki
Enki is a god in Sumerian mythology, later known as Ea in Akkadian and Babylonian mythology. He was originally patron god of the city of Eridu, but later the influence of his cult spread throughout Mesopotamia and to the Canaanites, Hittites and Hurrians...
during the Akkad
Akkad
The Akkadian Empire was an empire centered in the city of Akkad and its surrounding region in Mesopotamia....
ian period. In the Middle and Late Bronze Age, there are also strong Hurrian and Mitanni
Mitanni
Mitanni or Hanigalbat was a loosely organized Hurrian-speaking state in northern Syria and south-east Anatolia from ca. 1500 BC–1300 BC...
te influences upon the Canaanite religion. The Hurrian goddess Hebat
Hebat
Hebat, also transcribed Kheba or Khepat, was the mother goddess of the Hurrians, known as "the mother of all living".- Family :Hebat is the consort of Teshub and the mother of Sarruma. Originally, as Kheba or "Kubau" it is thought she may have had a Southern Mesopotamian origin, being the divinised...
was worshiped in Jerusalem, and Baal
Baal
Baʿal is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant and Asia Minor, cognate to Akkadian Bēlu...
was closely considered equivalent to the Hurrian storm god Teshub
Teshub
Teshub was the Hurrian god of sky and storm. He was derived from the Hattian Taru. His Hittite and Luwian name was Tarhun , although this name is from the Hittite root *tarh- to defeat, conquer.- Depiction and myths :He is depicted holding a triple...
and the Hittite
Hittite mythology
Most of the narratives embodying Hittite mythology are lost, and the elements that would give a balanced view of Hittite religion are lacking among the tablets recovered at the Hittite capital Hattusa and other Hittite sites: "there are no canonical scriptures, no theological disquisitions or...
storm god Tarhunt. Canaanite divinities seem to have been almost identical in form and function to the neighboring Aramaeans
Aramaeans
The Aramaeans, also Arameans , were a Northwest Semitic semi-nomadic and pastoralist people who originated in what is now modern Syria during the Late Bronze Age and the Iron Age...
to the east, and Baal Hadad
Hadad
Haddad was a northwest Semitic storm and rain god, cognate in name and origin with the Akkadian god Adad. Hadad was often called simply Ba‘al , but this title was also used for other gods. The bull was the symbolic animal of Hadad. He appeared as a bearded deity, often shown as holding a club and...
and El
El
EL, El or el may refer to:* El , a Semitic word for "God"; also a senior god mentioned in the Ugarit and Ebla texts found in ancient Syria.* El , a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet* El , the letter L...
can be distinguished amongst earlier Amorites, who at the end of the Early Bronze Age
Bronze Age
The Bronze Age is a period characterized by the use of copper and its alloy bronze as the chief hard materials in the manufacture of some implements and weapons. Chronologically, it stands between the Stone Age and Iron Age...
invaded Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...
.
Carried west by Phoenicia
Phoenicia
Phoenicia , was an ancient civilization in Canaan which covered most of the western, coastal part of the Fertile Crescent. Several major Phoenician cities were built on the coastline of the Mediterranean. It was an enterprising maritime trading culture that spread across the Mediterranean from 1550...
n sailors, Canaanite religious influences can be seen in Greek mythology
Greek mythology
Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks, concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece...
, particularly in the tripartite division between the Olympians
Twelve Olympians
The Twelve Olympians, also known as the Dodekatheon , in Greek mythology, were the principal deities of the Greek pantheon, residing atop Mount Olympus. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, and Hades were siblings. Ares, Hermes, Hephaestus, Athena, Apollo, and Artemis were children of Zeus...
Zeus
Zeus
In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the "Father of Gods and men" who ruled the Olympians of Mount Olympus as a father ruled the family. He was the god of sky and thunder in Greek mythology. His Roman counterpart is Jupiter and his Etruscan counterpart is Tinia.Zeus was the child of Cronus...
, Poseidon
Poseidon
Poseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...
and Hades
Hades
Hades , Hadēs, originally , Haidēs or , Aidēs , meaning "the unseen") was the ancient Greek god of the underworld. The genitive , Haidou, was an elision to denote locality: "[the house/dominion] of Hades". Eventually, the nominative came to designate the abode of the dead.In Greek mythology, Hades...
, mirroring the division between Baal
Baal
Baʿal is a Northwest Semitic title and honorific meaning "master" or "lord" that is used for various gods who were patrons of cities in the Levant and Asia Minor, cognate to Akkadian Bēlu...
, Yam
Yam (god)
Yam, from the Canaanite word Yam, meaning "Sea", also written "Yaw", is one name of the Ugaritic god of Rivers and Sea. Also titled Judge Nahar , he is also one of the 'ilhm or sons of El, the name given to the Levantine pantheon...
and Mot
Mot
In Ugaritic Mot 'Death' is personified as a god of death. The word is cognate with forms meaning 'death' in other Semitic and Afro-Asiatic languages: with Arabic موت mawt; with Hebrew מות ; with Maltese mewt; with Syriac mautā; with Ge'ez mot; with Canaanite, Egyptian Aramaic, Nabataean, and...
, and in the story of the Labours of Hercules, mirroring the stories of the Tyrian Melkart, who was often equated with Hercules.
Parallels with the Hebrew Bible
El Elyon also appears in Baalam's story in Numbers and in Moses song in . The Masoretic TextMasoretic Text
The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew text of the Jewish Bible and is regarded as Judaism's official version of the Tanakh. While the Masoretic Text defines the books of the Jewish canon, it also defines the precise letter-text of these biblical books, with their vocalization and...
s suggest:
- When the Most High (`Elyōn) divided to the nations their inheritance, he separated the sons of man (Ādām); he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the sons of Israel
The Septuagint suggests a different reading of this. Rather than "sons of Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
" it suggests the "angelōn theou" or 'angels of God' and a few versions even have "huiōn theou" 'sons of God'. The Dead Sea Scrolls
Dead Sea scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls are a collection of 972 texts from the Hebrew Bible and extra-biblical documents found between 1947 and 1956 on the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, from which they derive their name...
version of this suggests that there were in fact 70 sons of God
Sons of God
Sons of God is a phrase used in Levantine Bronze and Iron Age texts to describe the "divine council" of the major gods.- The term "sons of God" :...
sent to rule over the 70 nations of the Earth. This idea of the 70 nations of Earth, each ruled over by one of the Elohim (sons of God) is also found in Ugaritic texts. The Arslan Tash
Arslan Tash
Arslan Tash , ancient Hadātu, is an archaeological site in northern Syria,in Aleppo Governorate, around 30km east of the Euphrates Riverand nearby the town of Ain al-Arab.-History:...
inscription suggests that each of the 70 sons of El Elyon were bound to their people by a covenant. Thus as Crossan
John Dominic Crossan
John Dominic Crossan is an Irish-American religious scholar and former Catholic priest known for co-founding the Jesus Seminar. Crossan is a major figure in the fields of biblical archaeology, anthropology and New Testament textual and higher criticism. He is also a lecturer who has appeared in...
translates it
- "The Eternal One (`Olam) has made a covenant oath with us,
- Asherah has made (a pact) with us.
- And all the sons of El,
- And the great council of all the Holy Ones (QedeshQeteshQetesh is a Sumerian goddess adopted into Egyptian mythology from the Canaanite religion, popular during the New Kingdom. She was a fertility goddess of sacred ecstasy and sexual pleasure....
). - With oaths of Heaven and Ancient Earth."
Sources
The sources for Canaanite religion are literary sources, mainly from Late Bronze Age UgaritUgarit
Ugarit was an ancient port city in the eastern Mediterranean at the Ras Shamra headland near Latakia, Syria. It is located near Minet el-Beida in northern Syria. It is some seven miles north of Laodicea ad Mare and approximately fifty miles east of Cyprus...
and supplemented by biblical sources, and from archaeological discoveries.
Literary sources
Until the excavation of Ras Shamra in Northern SyriaSyria
Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....
(the site historically known as Ugarit
Ugarit
Ugarit was an ancient port city in the eastern Mediterranean at the Ras Shamra headland near Latakia, Syria. It is located near Minet el-Beida in northern Syria. It is some seven miles north of Laodicea ad Mare and approximately fifty miles east of Cyprus...
), and the discovery of its Bronze Age archive of clay tablet
Clay tablet
In the Ancient Near East, clay tablets were used as a writing medium, especially for writing in cuneiform, throughout the Bronze Age and well into the Iron Age....
alphabet
Alphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
ic cuneiform
Cuneiform
Cuneiform can refer to:*Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC*Cuneiform , three bones in the human foot*Cuneiform Records, a music record label...
texts, little was known of Canaanite religion, as papyrus
Papyrus
Papyrus is a thick paper-like material produced from the pith of the papyrus plant, Cyperus papyrus, a wetland sedge that was once abundant in the Nile Delta of Egypt....
seems to have been the preferred writing medium. Unlike in Egypt, where papyrus may survive centuries in the extremely dry climate, these have simply decayed in the humid Mediterranean climate
Mediterranean climate
A Mediterranean climate is the climate typical of most of the lands in the Mediterranean Basin, and is a particular variety of subtropical climate...
. As a result, the accounts contained within the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
were almost the only sources of information on ancient Canaanite religion. This was supplemented by a few secondary and tertiary Greek sources (Lucian of Samosata's De Dea Syria
De Dea Syria
De Dea Syria is the conventional Latin title of a work, written in a Herodotean-style of Ionic Greek, which has been traditionally ascribed to the Hellenized Syrian essayist Lucian of Samosata. It is a description of the various religious cults practiced at Hierapolis Bambyce, now Manbij, in Syria...
(The Syrian Goddess), fragments of the Phoenician History of Philo of Byblos
Philo of Byblos
Philo of Byblos was an antiquarian writer of grammatical, lexical and historical works in Greek. He is chiefly known for his Phoenician history assembled from the writings of Sanchuniathon.-Life:...
, and the writings of Damascius
Damascius
Damascius , known as "the last of the Neoplatonists," was the last scholarch of the School of Athens. He was one of the pagan philosophers persecuted by Justinian in the early 6th century, and was forced for a time to seek refuge in the Persian court, before being allowed back into the empire...
). More recently detailed study of the Ugaritic material, other inscriptions from the Levant and also of the Ebla
Ebla
Ebla Idlib Governorate, Syria) was an ancient city about southwest of Aleppo. It was an important city-state in two periods, first in the late third millennium BC, then again between 1800 and 1650 BC....
archive from Tel Mardikh, excavated in 1960 by a joint Italo-Syrian team, have cast more light on the early Canaanite religion.
Archaeological sources
Archaeological excavations in the last few centuries have unearthed more about the religion of the ancient Canaanites. The excavation of the city of Ras Shamra and the discovery of its Bronze Age archive of clay tablet alphabetAlphabet
An alphabet is a standard set of letters—basic written symbols or graphemes—each of which represents a phoneme in a spoken language, either as it exists now or as it was in the past. There are other systems, such as logographies, in which each character represents a word, morpheme, or semantic...
ic cuneiform
Cuneiform
Cuneiform can refer to:*Cuneiform script, an ancient writing system originating in Mesopotamia in the 4th millennium BC*Cuneiform , three bones in the human foot*Cuneiform Records, a music record label...
texts, helped provide a wealth of new information. More recently, detailed study of the Ugaritic material, other inscriptions from the Levant and also of the Ebla
Ebla
Ebla Idlib Governorate, Syria) was an ancient city about southwest of Aleppo. It was an important city-state in two periods, first in the late third millennium BC, then again between 1800 and 1650 BC....
archive from Tel Mardikh, excavated in 1960 by a joint Italo-Syrian team, have cast more light on the early Canaanite religion.