The Ugaritic pantheon included deities of local origin, many of whom are also known from
Eblaite
Eblaite (, also known as Eblan ISO 639-3), or Palaeosyrian, is an extinct East Semitic language used during the 3rd millennium BC in Northern Syria. It was named after the ancient city of Ebla, in modern western Syria. Variants of the language ...
sources from the third millennium BCE or
Amorite
The Amorites () were an ancient Northwest Semitic-speaking Bronze Age people from the Levant. Initially appearing in Sumerian records c. 2500 BC, they expanded and ruled most of the Levant, Mesopotamia and parts of Egypt from the 21st century BC ...
ones from the early second millennium BCE, as well as
Hurrian
The Hurrians (; ; also called Hari, Khurrites, Hourri, Churri, Hurri) were a people who inhabited the Ancient Near East during the Bronze Age. They spoke the Hurro-Urartian language, Hurrian language, and lived throughout northern Syria (region) ...
and
Mesopotamian
Mesopotamia is a historical region of West Asia situated within the Tigris–Euphrates river system, in the northern part of the Fertile Crescent. Today, Mesopotamia is known as present-day Iraq and forms the eastern geographic boundary o ...
ones. The Ugaritic pantheon is considered better documented than other aspects of
Ugaritic religion
Canaanite religion or Syro-Canaanite religions refers to the myths, cults and ritual practices of people in the Levant during roughly the first three millennia BC. Canaanite religions were polytheistic and in some cases monolatristic. They we ...
, such as the life of the clergy or the social context of various offerings. Over two hundred names of deities are known from
Ugaritic texts
The Ugaritic texts are a corpus of ancient cuneiform texts discovered in 1928 in Ugarit (Ras Shamra) and Ras Ibn Hani in Syria, and written in Ugaritic language, Ugaritic, an otherwise unknown Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic langua ...
, though it has been argued the number of these who were an object of active worship was lower. Many of the names are binomial, and as such may refer either to a single deity and their epithet, to two deities
syncretized into one, or to a closely associated pair.
The presence of Hurrian deities in the pantheon is considered one of the main differences between the
religion
Religion is a range of social system, social-cultural systems, including designated religious behaviour, behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, religious text, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics in religion, ethics, or ...
of the inhabitants of
Ugarit
Ugarit (; , ''ủgrt'' /ʾUgarītu/) was an ancient port city in northern Syria about 10 kilometers north of modern Latakia. At its height it ruled an area roughly equivalent to the modern Latakia Governorate. It was discovered by accident in 19 ...
and those known from other areas inhabited by speakers of
Northwest Semitic languages
Northwest Semitic is a division of the Semitic languages comprising the indigenous languages of the Levant. It emerged from Proto-Semitic in the Early Bronze Age. It is first attested in proper names identified as Amorite in the Middle Bronze ...
, for example
Canaan
CanaanThe current scholarly edition of the Septuagint, Greek Old Testament spells the word without any accents, cf. Septuaginta : id est Vetus Testamentum graece iuxta LXX interprets. 2. ed. / recogn. et emendavit Robert Hanhart. Stuttgart : D ...
, understood by researchers of
Ancient Near East
The ancient Near East was home to many cradles of civilization, spanning Mesopotamia, Egypt, Iran (or Persia), Anatolia and the Armenian highlands, the Levant, and the Arabian Peninsula. As such, the fields of ancient Near East studies and Nea ...
ern religions as the area between
Byblos
Byblos ( ; ), also known as Jebeil, Jbeil or Jubayl (, Lebanese Arabic, locally ), is an ancient city in the Keserwan-Jbeil Governorate of Lebanon. The area is believed to have been first settled between 8800 and 7000BC and continuously inhabited ...
and
Gaza
Gaza may refer to:
Places Palestine
* Gaza Strip, a Palestinian territory on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea
** Gaza City, a city in the Gaza Strip
** Gaza Governorate, a governorate in the Gaza Strip
Mandatory Palestine
* Gaza Sub ...
. It has been suggested that it is not possible to divide the gods worshiped into this city into separate Ugaritic and Hurrian pantheons.
The
iconography
Iconography, as a branch of art history, studies the identification, description and interpretation of the content of images: the subjects depicted, the particular compositions and details used to do so, and other elements that are distinct fro ...
of most Ugaritic deities is presently unknown due to lack of inscriptions identifying their depictions.
Major deities
Minor deities
Hurrian deities
Demons
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ugaritic deities
*
Ugaritic
Ugaritic () is an extinct Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeology, archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit, including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycl ...
Mythology-related lists