THE BAAL CYCLE

 

The Baal Cycle is an Ugaritic text (c. 1300–1100 BCE) about the Canaanite god Baal, a storm god associated with fertility. It consists of six tablets, itemized as KTU 1.1–1.6. 

 

Tablets one (KTU 1.1) and two (KTU 1.2) are about the cosmic battle between the storm-god Baal and the sea god Yam, where the former attains victory. 

 

The next two tablets (KTU 1.3–1.4) describe the construction of Baal's palace that marks his cosmic kingship. The last two tablets (KTU 1.5–1.6) describe Baal's struggles against Mot, the god of the underworld.

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The text identifies Baal as the god Hadad, the Northwest Semitic form of Adad. The stories are written in Ugaritic, a Northwest Semitic language, and written in a cuneiform abjad. It was discovered on a series of clay tablets found in the 1920s in the tell of Ugarit (then known as Ras/Tell Shamra), situated on the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria a few kilometers north of the city of Latakia and far from the current coastline.