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Ugaritic Texts: Ba'al Cycle
The Ba‘al Cycle, or Ba‘al Saga, is a collection of stories about Ba‘al Hadad, the supreme god of the Canaanite pantheon in the late bronze age. The Ugaritic Texts are ancient tablets that were recovered from archaeological digs at the ruins of Ugarit, a bronze-age city in northwest Syria, at the foot of the mountain Jebel Aqra on the modern Syrian-Turkish border.
The Ba‘al Cycle is generally divided into several sections, based on the groupings of the tablets that were discovered, however, this series of translations is divided into just two sections, Victorious Ba‘al, and Ba‘al Defeats Mot. These divisions are always subjective. Some translators divide the central section regarding the building of Ba‘al’s Temple on Mount Zaphon from the preceding battle with Yam. Others also separate out the intermediate section involving Ba‘al’s discussion with Anat, however, this series is divided based on the apparent shift in source material between the early section and the later section. The earliest section appears to be a translation from ancient Egyptian and includes Egyptian loanwords, as well as numerous references to the houses of the gods, which seems to be a reference to the system of decans used in Egypt from the Old Kingdom onward, to tell time at night.
The main section of Ba‘al Defeats Mot, appears to have been translated from an old Akkadian text that retold a Hurrian and Hattic story about two gods descending into the underworld. Many Akkadian, Hattic, and Hurrian loanwords are found in the later section, which are mostly missing from the earlier section, as well as the conclusion. The major exception being the messenger Ủgar, who was a Hurrian psychopomp, like the Canaanite Horon, and Greek Charon. As the city of Ugarit was named after him, this name clearly predates the text itself, and so it cannot be used to date the text. Nevertheless, does indicate that the city was originally a Hurrian settlement before becoming Semitic, which helps to explain why the older second section, appears to be a translation of an Akkadian retelling of a Hurrian story. Additionally, Luwian names are found in the second section, which places the origin of the Akkadian source text to sometime between when the Luwians settled in western Anatolia, generally dated to circa 2000 BC, and when the Hittites absorbed the Hattians around 1700 BC. As the text appears to have then been translated into Egyptian, before Ugaritic, it may trace the route the Hyksos took to Egypt, via the Luwian, Hattic, and Hurrian lands.
The first section, Victorious Ba‘al, appears to be a later text, written after 1700 BC, when a massive series of earthquakes destroyed most of the Minoan cities and palaces. The earthquake marks the division between the Old Palace Period and the New Palace Period of Minoan architecture. At the time, there was a significant change in the sky, as the Bull stopped being the asterism that marked the northern vernal equinox, and the Ram replaced him. Unlike the Bull, the Ram was not on the ecliptic, the line in the sky that the sun and planets travel on relative to the earth, but above it. Below the ecliptic, and closer to it, was the Sea Monster, later called Cetus. The battle in the Victorious Ba‘al, was about the storm-god Hadad battling the sea-god Yam, to take over the kingship from the ram-god Attar, and appears to be about the struggle between these two gods to rule the earth after the bull god El had turned over his throne to the ram god Attar. That transition would have happened in circa 1700 BC, and so this text had to be written later than that.
The Ba‘al Cycle is generally divided into several sections, based on the groupings of the tablets that were discovered, however, this series of translations is divided into just two sections, Victorious Ba‘al, and Ba‘al Defeats Mot. These divisions are always subjective. Some translators divide the central section regarding the building of Ba‘al’s Temple on Mount Zaphon from the preceding battle with Yam. Others also separate out the intermediate section involving Ba‘al’s discussion with Anat, however, this series is divided based on the apparent shift in source material between the early section and the later section. The earliest section appears to be a translation from ancient Egyptian and includes Egyptian loanwords, as well as numerous references to the houses of the gods, which seems to be a reference to the system of decans used in Egypt from the Old Kingdom onward, to tell time at night.
The main section of Ba‘al Defeats Mot, appears to have been translated from an old Akkadian text that retold a Hurrian and Hattic story about two gods descending into the underworld. Many Akkadian, Hattic, and Hurrian loanwords are found in the later section, which are mostly missing from the earlier section, as well as the conclusion. The major exception being the messenger Ủgar, who was a Hurrian psychopomp, like the Canaanite Horon, and Greek Charon. As the city of Ugarit was named after him, this name clearly predates the text itself, and so it cannot be used to date the text. Nevertheless, does indicate that the city was originally a Hurrian settlement before becoming Semitic, which helps to explain why the older second section, appears to be a translation of an Akkadian retelling of a Hurrian story. Additionally, Luwian names are found in the second section, which places the origin of the Akkadian source text to sometime between when the Luwians settled in western Anatolia, generally dated to circa 2000 BC, and when the Hittites absorbed the Hattians around 1700 BC. As the text appears to have then been translated into Egyptian, before Ugaritic, it may trace the route the Hyksos took to Egypt, via the Luwian, Hattic, and Hurrian lands.
The first section, Victorious Ba‘al, appears to be a later text, written after 1700 BC, when a massive series of earthquakes destroyed most of the Minoan cities and palaces. The earthquake marks the division between the Old Palace Period and the New Palace Period of Minoan architecture. At the time, there was a significant change in the sky, as the Bull stopped being the asterism that marked the northern vernal equinox, and the Ram replaced him. Unlike the Bull, the Ram was not on the ecliptic, the line in the sky that the sun and planets travel on relative to the earth, but above it. Below the ecliptic, and closer to it, was the Sea Monster, later called Cetus. The battle in the Victorious Ba‘al, was about the storm-god Hadad battling the sea-god Yam, to take over the kingship from the ram-god Attar, and appears to be about the struggle between these two gods to rule the earth after the bull god El had turned over his throne to the ram god Attar. That transition would have happened in circa 1700 BC, and so this text had to be written later than that.
184 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 31, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
June 3, 2023
The Ba'al Cycle is an Ugaritic epic poem, one of three which has made its way onto us in cuneiform tablets found in 1928-29. It is mostly important because of its clear relation to the Bible - as its own work of literature, even from what survives in a more or less intact fashion, it cannot be compared to the great works of pre-classical literature such as Gilgamesh or Enuma Elish, with which it shares some clear similarities. However, the poem is fragmentary to an extent with which it can hardly be judged on its literary merits, rather, being important for what it can show us about the formation of the biblical YHWH, as well as being of linguistic importance, as Ugaritic is a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew, making this a very important find for serious students of Semitic languages.
Now, unfortunately, this edition is absolutely terrible, bordering on unreadable. From the look of the cover itself (when you see enough Amazon Kindle self-published book-shovelware you learn to recognize it) I could tell that this was likely to be a thrown together cash-grab, above all because this has the name of no scholar or indeed anyone attached to him. The "Scriptural Research Institute" which "publishes" (in reality, sells on kindle, and on-demand print editions of that) a bunch of biblical and Near Eastern texts. There's no way to know who did the translation and commentaries on the text, which is not a shock because no scholar, even an amateur one, would want to be associated with an edition of such visibly poor editorship (more on that in a bit).
Speaking of the commentary: it is absolutely embarrassing. In texts like this, the commentary is most of the text that one will see, just due to the obscure and fragmentary nature of the original cuneiform text. Look at this text-to-footnote ratio from Religious Texts from Ugarit:
The foreword, which isn't all that long but does cover a lot of useful territory, is whatever. It's also filled with typos (again, more on this later). But I thought it was whatever. Deeply suspicious is the total lack of bibliography, references, etc, which is inadmissible for any such work.
What gets embarrassing is when I, going through the actual text of the Ba'al Cycle, I find out that most of the explanatory footnotes and commentary are taken largely from the foreword itself. How shameful - did they just think that nobody reading would notice? Most of the footnotes commenting on the text are direct copy-pastes from the foreword!
And not just that, even more embarrassingly, the footnotes for the second part of the text, "Ba'al Defeats Mot", are repeated verbatim! Word-for-word, the explanations of the meanings of words, deities, etc, are repeated. I guess someone really wanted to pad out that page number to hide the fact that they were selling a scam edition?
That's all bad enough to totally dismiss this edition, but that's without even considering the typos: it is absolutely riddled with them. Just look in my status updates on this review to read some. Just in the first page of the foreword there's "The same system is used in the Testament of Solomon, however, it is unclear she the text was written."
In the text itself: "Then he will certainly his face toward El at the source of the two rivers between the two deep springs".
He will certainly what?
Embarrassing typos, one after another, "Them Ba‘al rebuked they", "There the I will destroy with the sword", etc, where it seems like there's either an extra word or a missing one, as if this entire translation was done on fucking Discord.
These texts, as I said, are fragmentary to the point of genuine unreadability - how do you think typos add to that!
A little segway here, is that, as you can see there, this is a prose translation - this is inadmissible.
Now, normally, when I say that, I mean it for literary reasons: prose translations of epic verse suck ass, because what's done for verse (and specially that which comes from oral tradition like Homer) isn't done for prose for a version and a poem won't make for a good novel. But here I mean it for entirely scholarly reasons, for reasons, indeed, essential for understanding what one is reading.
As mentioned multiple times by now, these texts are extremely fragmentary. As such, translations will normally be verse by verse, with lacunae marked to let you know what you're missing. Look at this page from Nergal and Ereshkigal for an example:
Notice that, to notice what amount of the tablet is missing, it needs to be in verse accurate to the original, so that we may see what we're missing.
The Ba'al Cycle is itself, way way more fragmented than the text I used for an example: and this edition, in prose, when the lacuna are just of a line rather than multiple lines, instead places an ambiguous ellipsis. The issue is, this is worthless. Is there a word missing? Most of the line, almost all of it? The reader has no idea what he's missing with a translation like
«He raised his voice and shouted, “Where then is Ba‘al? ... Where is Hadad? ... Ba‘al rose with his seven messengers, and his eight slave-girls, and he approached ... food ... while the gods ate and drank. They were served a suckling, and they carved a fatling with a sharp knife. They drank mugs of wine, from silver cups... mugs ... and ... they went up. The new wine ... the Palace of El ... for the ruler ... who has sent ... restate ... the reviler ...»
(the lack of quotes ending Mot's shouting for Ba'al may be excused by the fact that the sentence is fragmentary and afterwards come 25 missing lines but do keep in mind that even in more intact sections, quotes are opened and never closed due to the typo issue above-mentioned and the total lack of care lol.)
All in all, genuinely abysmal translation and edition, on just about every way. If you want to read the Ba'al Cycle, get the excellent Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, which includes both the Ba'al Cycle and the other two surviving epics, Pertaining to Keret and Pertaining to Aqhat. It's also available in other collections of Ugaritic texts like the already mentioned Religious Texts from Ugarit. There's also the extremely, extremely extensively annotated and commented edition of the Ba'al Cycle by Mark S. Smith, which is very much overkill unless you are a very serious student of Semitic languages.
In any case, avoid this edition at all costs.
Now, unfortunately, this edition is absolutely terrible, bordering on unreadable. From the look of the cover itself (when you see enough Amazon Kindle self-published book-shovelware you learn to recognize it) I could tell that this was likely to be a thrown together cash-grab, above all because this has the name of no scholar or indeed anyone attached to him. The "Scriptural Research Institute" which "publishes" (in reality, sells on kindle, and on-demand print editions of that) a bunch of biblical and Near Eastern texts. There's no way to know who did the translation and commentaries on the text, which is not a shock because no scholar, even an amateur one, would want to be associated with an edition of such visibly poor editorship (more on that in a bit).
Speaking of the commentary: it is absolutely embarrassing. In texts like this, the commentary is most of the text that one will see, just due to the obscure and fragmentary nature of the original cuneiform text. Look at this text-to-footnote ratio from Religious Texts from Ugarit:
The foreword, which isn't all that long but does cover a lot of useful territory, is whatever. It's also filled with typos (again, more on this later). But I thought it was whatever. Deeply suspicious is the total lack of bibliography, references, etc, which is inadmissible for any such work.
What gets embarrassing is when I, going through the actual text of the Ba'al Cycle, I find out that most of the explanatory footnotes and commentary are taken largely from the foreword itself. How shameful - did they just think that nobody reading would notice? Most of the footnotes commenting on the text are direct copy-pastes from the foreword!
And not just that, even more embarrassingly, the footnotes for the second part of the text, "Ba'al Defeats Mot", are repeated verbatim! Word-for-word, the explanations of the meanings of words, deities, etc, are repeated. I guess someone really wanted to pad out that page number to hide the fact that they were selling a scam edition?
That's all bad enough to totally dismiss this edition, but that's without even considering the typos: it is absolutely riddled with them. Just look in my status updates on this review to read some. Just in the first page of the foreword there's "The same system is used in the Testament of Solomon, however, it is unclear she the text was written."
In the text itself: "Then he will certainly his face toward El at the source of the two rivers between the two deep springs".
He will certainly what?
Embarrassing typos, one after another, "Them Ba‘al rebuked they", "There the I will destroy with the sword", etc, where it seems like there's either an extra word or a missing one, as if this entire translation was done on fucking Discord.
These texts, as I said, are fragmentary to the point of genuine unreadability - how do you think typos add to that!
A little segway here, is that, as you can see there, this is a prose translation - this is inadmissible.
Now, normally, when I say that, I mean it for literary reasons: prose translations of epic verse suck ass, because what's done for verse (and specially that which comes from oral tradition like Homer) isn't done for prose for a version and a poem won't make for a good novel. But here I mean it for entirely scholarly reasons, for reasons, indeed, essential for understanding what one is reading.
As mentioned multiple times by now, these texts are extremely fragmentary. As such, translations will normally be verse by verse, with lacunae marked to let you know what you're missing. Look at this page from Nergal and Ereshkigal for an example:
Notice that, to notice what amount of the tablet is missing, it needs to be in verse accurate to the original, so that we may see what we're missing.
The Ba'al Cycle is itself, way way more fragmented than the text I used for an example: and this edition, in prose, when the lacuna are just of a line rather than multiple lines, instead places an ambiguous ellipsis. The issue is, this is worthless. Is there a word missing? Most of the line, almost all of it? The reader has no idea what he's missing with a translation like
«He raised his voice and shouted, “Where then is Ba‘al? ... Where is Hadad? ... Ba‘al rose with his seven messengers, and his eight slave-girls, and he approached ... food ... while the gods ate and drank. They were served a suckling, and they carved a fatling with a sharp knife. They drank mugs of wine, from silver cups... mugs ... and ... they went up. The new wine ... the Palace of El ... for the ruler ... who has sent ... restate ... the reviler ...»
(the lack of quotes ending Mot's shouting for Ba'al may be excused by the fact that the sentence is fragmentary and afterwards come 25 missing lines but do keep in mind that even in more intact sections, quotes are opened and never closed due to the typo issue above-mentioned and the total lack of care lol.)
All in all, genuinely abysmal translation and edition, on just about every way. If you want to read the Ba'al Cycle, get the excellent Ugaritic Narrative Poetry, which includes both the Ba'al Cycle and the other two surviving epics, Pertaining to Keret and Pertaining to Aqhat. It's also available in other collections of Ugaritic texts like the already mentioned Religious Texts from Ugarit. There's also the extremely, extremely extensively annotated and commented edition of the Ba'al Cycle by Mark S. Smith, which is very much overkill unless you are a very serious student of Semitic languages.
In any case, avoid this edition at all costs.
October 21, 2022
Interesting book, helps u discover the mythical story behind El, Ba'al, Mot, and other mythical creatures of the ancient middle eastern civilisations.
I wonder if this story used to be considered a sacred one thus made them put effort into documenting it for future generations, or was it just one random litteraure creation withing a rich Ugaritic bibliography that happen to be lost..
I wonder if this story used to be considered a sacred one thus made them put effort into documenting it for future generations, or was it just one random litteraure creation withing a rich Ugaritic bibliography that happen to be lost..
May 17, 2023
Every time I re-read this book, I am reminded that it is perhaps one of the greatest works to come from the ancient world. Pity it’s clearly undervalued.
January 19, 2024
I wish they had read through the introduction and notes for grammar and spelling. I am concerned by the lack of authorship
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews