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KTU

Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit

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Kirta

KTU 1.16 V

. . [ ]
. . [ ]
. . [ ]
. . . . [ ]
. . . . . . [ ]
. . . . . . [ ]
. . . . . . . . [ ]
a second time [ ]
a third time [ Then spoke]
the Kindly One [El Benignant: "Who]
among the gods can [remove the sickness],
driving out the disease?" [None among the gods]
answers him. [El] says [a fourth]
[time]: "Who among [the gods can remove]
the illness, driving o[ut the] disease?"
None among the gods a[nswers him].
He says a fifth time: "[Who among the gods]
can remove the illness, dr[iving out the] disease?"
None among the gods an[swers him]. He says a sixth,
a seventh time: "[Who] among the gods
can remove the illness, driving out the disease?"
None among the gods answers him.
Then spoke the Kindly One, El Benignant:⁠
"Remain seated, my sons, upon your seat[s],
upon yo[ur] thrones of princeship. I
will apply sorcery and will surely
bring about the removal of the illness, driving⁠
out the disease. With clay [his hand] he fills,
with good clay [ ]. He moulds⁠
. . . . . . . [ ] . . . .
[ ] dragon
[ ] dragon
[ ]
[ ]
[ ]
[ ]
. . . . [ ]
. . . . [ ]
a cup [he takes in his hand]
a flagon [in both his hands]:
"Do, Sha['taqat ]
. . . . . . . . [ ] Kir-
ta the Nob[le. ]
. . . . . [ ]
in the mouth of Sha[ta'qat ]
. . . . . . [ ]
Villages [fly over a hundred, towns]
fly over a m[ultitude . . . ]
sick[ness ]
the suf[fering one upon his/your head?]
. . . [ ]
. . . [ ]

Texts in conversation

Compare KTU 1.16 V:23 and Numbers 21:8

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Hebrew Bible

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Summary

Ugaritic tradition and Numbers 21 describe the creation of a figure that brings healing. In Kirta, El creates the goddess Sha’taqat to cure illness, while in Numbers, God tells Moses to create a serpent to heal the people.

Passages

KTU 1.16 V:23

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
a seventh time: "[Who] among the gods can remove the illness, driving out the disease?" None among the gods answers him. Then spoke the Kindly One, El Benignant: "Remain seated, my sons, upon your seat[s], upon yo[ur] thrones of princeship. I will apply sorcery and will surely bring about the removal of the illness, driving out the disease. With clay [his hand] he fills, with good clay [ ]. He moulds . . . . . . . [ ] . . . . [ ] dragon [ ] dragon
1350–1185 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in KTU

Numbers 21:8

Hebrew Bible
7 Then the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord that he would take away the snakes from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. 8 The Lord said to Moses, “Make a poisonous snake and set it on a pole. When anyone who is bitten looks at it, he will live.” 9 So Moses made a bronze snake and put it on a pole, so that if a snake had bitten someone, when he looked at the bronze snake he lived. 10 The Israelites traveled on and camped in Oboth. 11 Then they traveled on from Oboth and camped at Iye Abarim, in the wilderness that is before Moab on the eastern side.
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Numbers

References

"... In the Legend of Kirta, El created a goddess for the express purpose of delivering King Kirta from a mortal malady that no existing deity was capable of curing. The creation of Shatiqat is tied solely to the immediate situation of the narrative, namely, saving Kirta’s life. This particular goddess appears to meet the requirements stipulated above for being on the level of divine hierarchy of the artisan gods. The goddess had a clearly defined area of specialization in which she is quite competent, since the king did indeed recover. In the passage itself the goddess does only what she was requested to do and nothing more, but the narrative is much too short to determine whether or not she was envisaged as having volition of her own. Shatiqatu appears nowhere else in the texts from Ugarit, neither in narrative nor ritual sources, so all that exists with which to define her is a single literary composition. It is possible either that Shatiqatu was a recognized, though minor, deity in a Syro-Palestinian cult, or that she was a literary invention concocted for the plot development of this particular legend. In either case, it would be reasonable to assume that she was presented in a manner deemed plausible to the contemporary audience. A similar deity appears in biblical narratives, though no proper name is given to the god. The story of the creation of the image of the deity, as the story now appears, leaves the divine nature of the seraph out of the narrative (Numbers 21:8-9) ... that the passage refers to the institution of a cult for a healing deity can be seen in the passage that recounts the later destruction of the cultic image (2 Kings 18:4) ..."
Lowell K. Handy, Among the Host of Heaven: The Syro-Palestinian Pantheon as Bureaucracy (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 139.

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 1.16 V:23 and Numbers 21:8

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