Ugaritic religion
The basis for the Ugaritic religion was its mythology from around 1500–1200 BC. BC, which was based on older Sumerian and Akkadian ideas. Also Hittite and Hurrian influences are present.
Some gods of this mythology were also mentioned by name in the writings of the Phoenicians and in the traditions of the Bible . The initially dominant God of the polytheism practiced there in the city of Ugarit was the creator of the world El , which essentially corresponds to his role in the creation story of the Bible , which emerged much later . Later, the importance of his cult was increasingly supplanted by that of the fertility and weather god Baal.
swell
The Ugaritic myths since 1929 are mainly based on extensive cuneiform tablet finds in Ugaritic , Akkadian and Hurric languages during excavations around 1192 BC. Known by the so-called sea peoples destroyed city of Ugarit (near Ras Shamra on the coast of Syria ). These are partly recorded in Akkadian cuneiform , but the Ugaritic texts from the 14th century BC. BC also in a specially developed alphetic cuneiform script, the Ugaritic script . The panels illuminate the religious ideas in the city-state in legends and epics , myths , prayers , lists of gods and victims of the ceremonial texts and regulations. There are interrogations of the gods by liver oracles . Several clay models of sheep's livers were found, along with hints on how to interpret them. Detail are sacrificial ceremonies described for various gods. Funeral ceremonies at which the ancestors were summoned are described very precisely . There are also incantation texts against harmful natural forces, illness, sterility, demons , the consequences of drunkenness and snake poisons . These insights into the Ugaritic religion are also significant for the interpretation of the religion of Canaan . In addition to the ritual texts, there are texts that indicate equations with gods from other regions. The bilingual text RS 20.24 equates Ugaritic with Mesopotamian gods:
- d a-na-tum = ʾnt (Anat)
- d aš-ra-tum = aṯrt (Athiratu)
- d šîn = yrh
- d tâmtum = ym (Jam).
Male gods
El
The god El was the creator of the world and of men, chief arbiter and nominally the head of all gods and demons . He had nicknames such as B. "King", "The Kind" or "Taurus". The invocation "Taurus-El" suggests that its symbol was the bull . His rule was permanent and eternal (unlike some creator gods in other myths , which later lost their meaning or were defeated and disempowered or killed by other dynasties of gods, → Demiurge , Titanomachy ). He was depicted in human form, calm and powerful, in royal robes. He has been described as gray-haired and bearded. The myth of the beautiful and gracious gods, only handed down in a fragment, reports how El surprised two goddesses ( Athirat and Šapšu ) at the well and made them pregnant. They gave birth to the pair of gods Šaḫar (dawn) and Šalim (dusk). In total he fathered 70 gods and goddesses with Ašera, including many terrifying demons. El fathered other children with Šapsu; all of El's children were called "Banu Elima" (El's sons). A typical prayer to El was:
"Oh El! Oh sons of Els!
Oh assembly of the sons of El!
Oh meeting of the sons of Els
…
Oh El and Aširat
Be gracious, oh El
Sei support, oh El
El, hurry, El, come quickly
to the aid of Zaphons ,
to the aid of Ugarits
With the lance, oh El,
with the raised one, oh El.
With the battle ax, oh El,
with the crushing one, oh El. "
The believers turned to El as the most powerful of the gods in great need for help. El also appeared as part of theophoric names. In the plural form Elohim (pluralis majestatis zu Herrgott), El often occurs in the Bible as God's name.
Baal
Baʿal was worshiped as the main god after El. The mountain Baʿal-Zephon north of Ugarit was considered his home . Baʿal was the most important god in the Ugaritic myth, to whom the most extensive myth cycle in the cuneiform finds was dedicated. He was originally a son of Dagān and Tiroš , but was integrated into the gods of Ugarit via Anat .
Baʿal, also Baʿal-Haddad ( Adad ), was associated with thunderclouds. In ending the drought, he was the giver of fertility . Storm clouds were known as Adad's calves . The thunder was interpreted as Baʿal's voice. Pictures show Baʿal-Haddad standing on a bull and hurling lightning.
An excerpt from the Keret epic illustrates the dominant position of Baʿal:
“He poured out oil and said: 'Refresh earth and sky.'
He circled the edges of the farmland,
the Emmer in the furrowed lowlands.
The rain of Baʿal shall come on the farmland,
and the rain of the Most High on the field!
Sweet be the rain of Baʿal on the farmland,
and the rain of the Most High on the field!
Let it be sweet for the wheat in the furrow,
in the new breach [freshly plowed field] like a fragrance,
in the furrow like the scent of herbs!
The plowmen lifted their heads,
the grain workers upstairs.
The bread in their baskets was
used up, the wine in their skins
used up, the oil in their vessels used up. "
Baʿal was responsible for water, bread, wine, oil, herbs (food of cattle) and their prosperity. There are clear parallels here with Psalm 65, where these qualities were ascribed to YHWH . Baʿal was especially venerated in the northern kingdom of Israel for hundreds of years and still in biblical times. The prophets of the Bible constantly railed against the cult of Baʿal.
Baʿal fought with his brother Jam for the rule of the earth. He defeated Jam and thus also became the ruler of the seas. According to an alternative source, Baʿal established his rule over the world by subjugating the cosmic water, which was symbolized by a snake or a dragon .
Mot
The god of the dead Mot gets his name from the common Semitic word mawt / môt "death". He was considered a mortal enemy of the god Baʿal. In the so-called Baʿal cycle, Baʿal's descent into the underworld is depicted, from which he is freed after a fight by the goddess Anat , comparable to the Tammuz of Akkadian mythology.
Mot is also interpreted as a grain god. When Anat Mot kills in revenge for the death of Baʿal, this is described with analogies from the realm of harvest and threshing. "She threw it with a pitchfork, burned it with fire, crushed it with a millstone, scattered it in the field ..." But the resurrection does not occur because the birds of the sky ate its remains.
Dagān and Tiroš
Dagān (also Dagon) and Tiroš are an agricultural pair of gods from Halab ( Aleppo ) who wereintegratedinto the Ugaritic pantheon . In competition with El and Ašera, they could barely gain a foothold and are hardly mentioned in the texts. Dagan later went into El. Baʿal was their successful son.
Jam
The sea god Jam ( sea ) is also called Nahar ( river ) and is considered a water deity. He receives the name Jaw from El.
Tsedeq
For the Ugarites, Tsedeq or Zedek was a hypostasis or personification of the sun god Šamaš . This mighty God watched over the world as a judge to uncover hidden crimes and to judge the iniquities committed against the innocent. The God also appears frequently in the Bible in theophoric names , for example in the name of Melchizedek .
Kothar
Kothar is the god of the blacksmiths, who is sometimesequatedwith the Greek Kinyras , the father / grandfather of Adonis .
Goddesses
Anat
Baʿal's wife is Anat (the "queen of heaven" in the myths of the late Bronze Age), possibly based on Ištar , the Akkadian queen of heaven . It is also called Attart-šem-Baʿal , 'Attart, name of Ba'al'. Other sources refer to her as the sister and consort of Baʿal.
Ašera
Ašera (sometimes also referred to as Athirat ), wife of the creator god El, who gave birth to 70 gods and goddesses, is the goddess of fertility. In an Aramaic inscription she is referred to as the goddess of Teman . Their name (Ugaritic aṯrt , presumably Aširatu ) derives from aṯr / ašr , meaning holy place. Her nickname is "the saint". She is venerated in a cult stake depicting a stylized tree ( Ašere ). The name ašera appears around forty times in the Bible, both as the name of the goddess and as a name for the cult stake. At times she was considered the wife of YHWH in ancient Israel. In Kuntillet's Adschrud, for example, a storage jug from the 8th to 7th centuries was found with the following inscription:
“… I have blessed you through YHWH and his Asherah.
Amaryo said to his Lord:…
I have blessed you through YHWH and his asera.
May he bless you,
and he may keep you,
and may he be with my Lord. "
The following inscription was found on a wall in Ḫirbet el Kom (near Hebron ):
“Urijahu, the rich man, wrote this:
Urijahu is a blessed one through YHWH -
through Ašera he saved him from his afflictions.
Through Onjahu. "
The Bible mentions (1 Kings 15:13) that Queen Mother Maacha of Asherah had erected a statue. King Manasseh (2 Kings 21.7) set up a cult image of the Asherah. 1 Kings 18:19 mentions 400 prophets of Asheras eating at Jezebel's table . King Joschiah removes objects from the temple “which were made for Baal, Asherah and all the host of heaven ” (2 Kings 23: 4).
Ašera was sometimes equated with the Egyptian goddess Hathor and represented with her attributes, two lotus blossoms .
Aštoreth
Jam / Jawa's wife was called Aštoreth . She is referred to in an Egyptian papyrus as "The Bride of the Tyrrhenian Sea ". In the Old Testament, where she is found as Ashtoreth, her sexual aspect is particularly emphasized.
Aštoreth finds its equivalent in the goddess Astarte .
Divine units
Since the sources often strongly confuse the gods Baʿal and Yaw, Anat and Ashtoreth are also often interpreted as one person. Since El, as a universal god, is inherent in all gods, one even finds the person of Athirat involved in him in some cases.
Bisexual double deities ( Janus head ) are particularly known from the Persian period. Examples: Ašart-Anat, Aštart-Yaw, Anat-Yaw (is considered the sun god), Ašim-Beth El, Anat-Bet El (corresponds to the Phoenician Aštart-Melk) and Aštart- Ešmun .
Ugaritic cult calendar and festival of sacrifices
New year celebration
The Ugaritic New Year celebrations began before the autumnal equinox on the 1st day of the last calendar month Ra'šu-Yeni , the name of the month, the first wine, referring to the upcoming grape harvest . The New Year celebration was the most important festival of the year. Of utmost importance was the full moon , which heralded the beginning of the religious cults. On the eve of the full moon, the king climbed onto the roof terrace of the palace temple and sacrificed to the highest gods. Before that, symbolic huts for the gods were built from cut branches on the roofs of temples, palaces and houses. On the 15th day of the last month the ritual harvest festival started and the first wine was welcomed . The same huts were built in the fields of the grapevines , into which the owners of the Wingerte moved during the harvest time to protect the grapevines from the birds. Climatically, the festival of the first wine was associated with the beginning of the rainy season and the sowing. For the Hebrews, the Ugaritic New Year festival corresponds to the Sukkot festival, but its origin is described differently.
Marzihu Festival
The marzihu festival was celebrated in honor of the dead. The prelude was the invitation of the rapi'uma , the spirits of the dead who appeared for the feast in the temple of the god El. The god El, embodied by the high priest ( rab kehenim ), sits drunk in the marzihu . In addition to the spirits of the dead, the underworld god Habay appears , who steps in front of El and makes El fall into a deep swoon. Through this act the connection to the realm of the dead is established. Anat and Astarte awaken El with herbs from this trance state . The Ugaritic population celebrated the marzihu just as exuberantly and drunk in order to achieve the necessary trance. The marzihu corresponds to the Sumerian Kispu festival. It is not known in which month the Ugaritic feast of the dead was celebrated.
Notes and individual references
- ^ Fritz Stolz : Structures and Figures in the Cult of Jerusalem: Studies on the ancient oriental, pre- and early Israelite religion . Walter de Gruyter, 1970, ISBN 978-3-11-083887-9 , pp. 146 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed August 18, 2015]).
- ↑ Louvre, inventory number AO 29393
- ↑ Sebastian Grätz: Baal. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (eds.): The scientific Bibellexikon on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff., Accessed on August 18, 2015.
- ^ Stephanie L. Budin, A Reconsideration of the Aphrodite-Ashtart Syncretism. Numen 51/2, 2004, 99
- ↑ a b Klaus Koch in The great religions of the ancient Orient and antiquity, ed. Emma-Brunner Traut , W. Kohlhammer Verlag 1992, p. 75
- ^ Dominik Markl SJ: Adoni-Zedek. In: Michaela Bauks, Klaus Koenen, Stefan Alkier (eds.): The scientific biblical dictionary on the Internet (WiBiLex), Stuttgart 2006 ff., Accessed on August 8, 2015.
- ↑ Eckart Otto : The ancient Jerusalem: Archeology and history . CH Beck, 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56881-7 , pp. 46–47 ( limited preview in Google Book Search [accessed June 19, 2015]).
- ↑ cf. the description of the Ugaritic New Year on cuneiform tablet KTU 1.41; Transl. Wyatt, Texts , 348-355.
- ↑ cf. the description of the Ugaritic feast of the dead in the rapi'uma cuneiform tablets KTU 1.20-22 and 1.114315-323; Transl. Wyatt, Texts , 348-355.
See also
literature
Main sources for this article (Introducing the Pantheon):
- André Caquot: At the roots of the Bible ; in: World and Environment of the Bible, Heft 1, 2002, pp. 37–42
- Dirk Kinet: "Baal let his holy voice ring out ..." The theological output of the religious texts from Ugarit ; in: World and Environment of the Bible, Heft 1, 2002, pp. 43–48
- Thomas Staubli: The Baal Myth (The Myth of Baal and Anat) ; in: World and Environment of the Bible, Heft 1, 2002, p. 49
- Gabriele Theuer: Goddesses in Ugarit - and in the Old Testament? ; in: World and Environment of the Bible, Heft 1, 2002, pp. 50–53
further literature
- Article Baal ; in: RGG 3 (Electrical Resource); Berlin: Directmediapublishing, 2004; ISBN 3-89853-412-X
- Sibylle von Reden: Ugarit and his world ; Bergisch-Gladbach: Gustav Lübbe, 1992; ISBN 3-7857-0634-0
- Manfred Hutter: Religions in the Old Testament Environment ; Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer, 1996; ISBN 3-17-012041-7
- Herbert Niehr: Religions in Israel's Environment ; Würzburg: Echter: 1998; ISBN 3-429-01981-8
- Beltz, Walter: God and the Gods, Biblical Mythology ; Berlin-Weimar: Construction, 1990 6 ; ISBN 3-351-00976-3
- Ranke-Graves: Hebrew Mythology. About the creation story and other myths from the Old Testament ; Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1994; ISBN 3-499-55411-9 .
- Stephen Herbert Langdon: The Mythology of All Races - Semitic , Vol. 5; Boston: Marshall Jones Company, 1931
- John Gray: The god Yaw in the Religion of Canaan ; in: Journal of Near Eastern Studies 12 (1953)
- TH Gaster: Myth, Mythology ; in: Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible; Nashville Tenn .: Abingdon Press, 1962
- Samuel Noah Kramer , John Maier: Myths of Enki, the Crafty God ; New York; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989
- Norman Cohn: The Expectation of the End Times. From the origin of the Apocalypse Translated by Peter Gillhofer & Hans-Ulrich Möhring. Insel, Frankfurt 1997 ISBN 3-458-16880-X (German version of: Cosmos, Chaos and the World to Come. The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith Yale UP, New Haven et al. 1993 ISBN 0-300-05598-6 )
- N. Wyatt: Religious Texts from Ugarit ; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998; ISBN 1-85075-847-6
- Simon B. Parker: Ugaritic Narrative Poetry ; Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Scholars Press, 1997; ISBN 0-7885-0336-7
- Dennis Pardee: Ritual and Cult at Ugarit ; Leiden: Brill, 2002; ISBN 90-04-12657-0