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KTU

Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit

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Kirta

KTU 1.14 II

[gold]; . . . . . . . . . . .
[and] perpetual [slaves]; a groom,
[horse]s, chariots from the stable of the son of a handmaid?
[Grant that] I may beget [chil]dren;
[grant that] I may multiply [kins]men."—
And Bull, his father El, [replied]:
Stop weeping, Kirta,
stop crying, gracious one, heir of El.
Wash yourself and rouge yourself;
Wash your [h]and to the elbow,
[your] fing[ers] up to the shoulder.
Enter the shade of a pavilion.
Take a lam[b in your hand],
a lamb of sac[rifice in (your)] right hand,
a kid in th[e other han]d,
. . . . . . . . . [ ] . . . . . .
Take a msrr, bird of
sacrifice. Pour wine [into a bo]wl of⁠
silver, honey into a bowl of [g]old.
{Mount to the top of a [to]wer.}
And mount to the top of a [to]wer;
mount up to the summit of the wall. Lift up your hands⁠
to heaven, sacrifice to Bull⁠
your father, El. Serve Baal
with your sacrifice, the Son of Dagan
with your oblation. Then let Kirta
descend from the housetops. Prepare
grain from the granaries,
wheat from the storehouses.
Let bread be baked of a fifth,
food of a sixth month.
Muster Ngb and let it come forth,
the host of the troops of Ngb.
And let come forth the assembled multitude,⁠
your troops, a mighty force:
three hundred myriads;
serfs uncounted,
peasants untold.
They march in thousands closely packed,
and in myriads massed.
After two, two march;
after three, all of them.
The solitary man closes his house;⁠
the widow hires herself
out; the sick man is carried in
(his) bed; the one-eyed man blinks
with one eye. And even the newly wed
bridegroom goes forth: he drives to another
his wife, to a stranger
his beloved.—(They are) like the locusts
that dwell on the steppe,

Texts in conversation

Jeroboam's Golden Calves Echo Bull El in the Legend of Keret

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Hebrew Bible

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Summary

A Ugaritic poem from the 14th century BCE instructs the king to sacrifice to Bull El, the high god. In 1 Kings 12, Jeroboam set up two golden calves to represent Israel’s God at Bethel, drawing on the same Canaanite bull imagery used for El.

Passages

KTU 1.14 II:23

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
Take a msrr, bird of sacrifice. Pour wine [into a bo]wl of silver, honey into a bowl of [g]old. {Mount to the top of a [to]wer.} And mount to the top of a [to]wer; mount up to the summit of the wall. Lift up your hands to heaven, sacrifice to Bull your father, El. Serve Baal with your sacrifice, the Son of Dagan with your oblation. Then let Kirta descend from the housetops. Prepare
1350–1185 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in KTU

1 Kings 12:28

Hebrew Bible
27 If these people go up to offer sacrifices in the Lord’s temple in Jerusalem, their loyalty could shift to their former master, King Rehoboam of Judah. They might kill me and return to King Rehoboam of Judah.” 28 After the king had consulted with his advisers, he made two golden calves. Then he said to the people, “It is too much trouble for you to go up to Jerusalem. Look, Israel, here are your gods who brought you up from the land of Egypt.” 29 He put one in Bethel and the other in Dan.
600–501 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in 1 Kings

References

... Granted that the golden calves denoted Yahweh rather than some foreign deity, the question still remains whence this imagery was derived. The most likely explanation is that it was appropriated from the Canaanite god El, known as “Bull El” in the Ugaritic texts, with whom Yahweh was identified. The following points speak in favour of this. First, in Canaanite religion it is supremely the god El with whom bull symbolism is associated so far as we can tell from the Ugaritic texts. Secondly, it may be significant that one of the two sites at which the golden calves were set up was Bethel, a name that literally means “house of El.” The god of Bethel is called El-Bethel in Genesis 35:7 ... Thirdly, it may be noted that the cult at Bethel was especially associated with the patriarch Jacob, and Jacob's god is referred to as ʼabîr yaʻăqōb, “the Mighty one of Jacob” (Genesis 49:24). However, the word ʼabîr is very similar to ʼabbîr, which means “bull,” so that Jacob's god may well have been called originally “the Bull of Jacob,” which would be appropriate for the deity El. ...
John Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan, JSOTSup 265 (London: Sheffield Academic, 2002), 36–37.

References are not endorsements of their contents. Read each reference in full to understand its author's intentions in using these texts.

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KTU 1.14 II:23 and 1 Kings 12:28

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