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KTU

Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit

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Baal Cycle

KTU 1.4 V

A court, like Athirat's sons.
And Lady Athirat of the Sea responds:
You are great, El, so very wise;
The gray hair of your beard instructs you
Your soft beard down to your chest.
So now may Baal enrich with his rain⁠
May he enrich with abundant water in a downpour.
And may he give his voice in the clouds
May he flash lightning to the earth.
Is it a cedar house that he would complete
Or a brick house that he would construct
Let it be told to Mightiest Baal:
Invite a caravan into your house,
commodities amid your palace.
The mountains will bring you ample silver,
the hills, the finest gold;
the top-tier ore will be brought to you.
So build a house of silver and gold,
a house of pure stones, of lapis lazuli.
Young Anat rejoices; she stamps
her feet and leaves the ground.
Now she travels
to Baal on the heights of Sapan,
across a thousand fields, ten thousand hectares.
Young Anat laughs; she raises
her voice and cries out: Hear good news, Baal!
I bring you good news. There will be given
to you a house like your brothers, and a court
like your kin. Invite a caravan
into your house, commodities amid
your palace. The mountains will bring you
ample silver, the hills the finest
gold. So build a house of silver
and gold, a house of pure stones,
Mightiest Baal exults;
He invites a caravan into his home
Commodities amid his palace.
The mountains contribute ample silver
The hills, the finest gold;
The top-tier ore is brought to him.
He summons Kothar-wa-Hasis.
And turns to the passage in the text:
When the boys are dispatched.
Then Kothar-wa-Hasis arrives;
He places an ox before him
A fatling right in front of him. A throne is arranged, and he takes a seat
At the right hand of Mightiest Baal
As the gods dine and drink.
Mightiest Baal declares:
[…] [Kothar-wa-Hasis]
Hurry, the house, Kothar⁠
Quickly construct the palace.
You must promptly build the house
You must swiftly construct the palace⁠
On the peak of Sapan.
Let the house span a thousand fields
The palace, ten thousand hectares.
And Kothar-wa-Hasis replies:
Listen, Mightiest Baal
Comprehend, Cloudrider:
Shall I not fix a window in the house⁠
A vent in the midst of the palace?
And Mightiest Baal retorts:
You shall not install a window in the house
A vent in the midst of the palace.

Texts in conversation

Compare KTU 1.4 V:6 and Genesis 2:8

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Hebrew Bible

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Summary

The name Eden in Genesis 2 uses the same language of fruitful land found in Ugaritic descriptions of Baal's rain, connecting the garden's abundance with an older picture of a god's care for the earth.

Passages

KTU 1.4 V:6

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit
A court, like Athirat's sons. And Lady Athirat of the Sea responds: You are great, El, so very wise; The gray hair of your beard instructs you Your soft beard down to your chest. So now may Baal enrich with his rain May he enrich with abundant water in a downpour. And may he give his voice in the clouds May he flash lightning to the earth. Is it a cedar house that he would complete Or a brick house that he would construct Let it be told to Mightiest Baal: Invite a caravan into your house, commodities amid your palace. The mountains will bring you ample silver, the hills, the finest gold; the top-tier ore will be brought to you. So build a house of silver and gold, a house of pure stones, of lapis lazuli.
1350–1185 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in KTU

Genesis 2:8

Hebrew Bible
7 The Lord God formed the man from the soil of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being. 8 The Lord God planted an orchard in the east, in Eden; and there he placed the man he had formed. 9 The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow from the soil, every tree that was pleasing to look at and good for food. (Now the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil were in the middle of the orchard.) 10 Now a river flows from Eden to water the orchard, and from there it divides into four headstreams. 11 The name of the first is Pishon; it runs through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. 12 (The gold of that land is pure; pearls and lapis lazuli are also there.)
750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Genesis

References

“... 34. Rather than an Akkadian loan edinu, “steppe” (popularized by E. A. Speiser, Gen- esis [AB 1; New York: Doubleday, 1964] 16, 19), the BH word Eden (‘e¯den) means “fertility, abundance, luxuriance.” The root of the word “Eden” first appears in the Baal Cycle in reference to the storm-god, Baal-Hadad (J. C. Greenfield, “A Touch of Eden,” Acta Iranica deuxie`me se´rie, volume IX. Orientalia J. Duchesne-Guillemin Emerito-oblata [Leiden: Brill, 1984], 219–24; A. Millard, “The Meaning of Eden,” VT 34 [1984], 103–06; Ottoson, “Eden and the Land of Promise,” 177). It is the word that describes what his rains do for the earth; Baal fertilizes (‘dn//y‘dn [!]) the earth with his rain (mtfirh) in CAT 1.4 V 6–7. The word appears later, in line 4 of the Tell Fekheriyeh inscription (see A. Abou-Assaf, P. Bordreuil, and A. Millard, La Statue de Tell Fekherye et son inscription bilingue assyro-arame´enne [Etudes Assyriologiques 10; Paris: Recherche sur les civilizations, 1982], 23, 62). This text describes Hadad, that is Baal, as the god who makes the earth fertile (m‘dn). Eden may be thought then to be the terrestrial sacred mountain fertilized by the storm-god and in this sense a “garden.” For the date of the association of the divine mountain with Eden, see Wallace, The Eden Narrative, 85–86. ...”
Mark S. Smith, The Origins of Biblical Monotheism: Israel's Polytheistic Background and the Ugaritic Texts (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 293.

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 1.4 V:6 and Genesis 2:8

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