Letter to Grdn on the Ruin of a Town

KTU 2.61

To Grdn,
my lord, say:
The son of Hrn, when
he arrived […]
he struck,
the troops and […]
the town.
The grain on the threshing floors⁠
he burned;
the vineyards too⁠
he destroyed.
Our town is destroyed.
So know it, know it.

Texts in conversation

Compare KTU 2.61:10 and Deuteronomy 20:19

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Hebrew Bible

Summary

Deuteronomy's limit on destroying fruit trees challenges the siege practice reported in the Ugaritic letter, protecting the food supply that people would need after the fighting.

Passages

KTU 2.61:10

Ancient Near East, Ugaritic · Cuneiform Texts from Ugarit

To Grdn, my lord, say: The son of Hrn, when he arrived […] he struck, the troops and […] the town. The grain on the threshing floors he burned; the vineyards too he destroyed. Our town is destroyed. So know it, know it.

1350–1185 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in KTU

Deuteronomy 20:19

Hebrew Bible

17 Instead you must utterly annihilate them—the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—just as the Lord your God has commanded you, 18 so that they cannot teach you all the abhorrent ways they worship their gods, causing you to sin against the Lord your God. 19 If you besiege a city for a long time while attempting to capture it, you must not chop down its trees, for you may eat fruit from them and should not cut them down. A tree in the field is not human that you should besiege it! 20 However, you may chop down any tree you know is not suitable for food, and you may use it to build siege works against the city that is making war with you until that city falls.

750–400 BCE (scholarly estimate) Read in Deuteronomy

References

“... This destruction of food resources is implied by KTU 2.61, which seems to be a letter from another settlement in the kingdom to the capital and reports: When your messenger arrived, the army was humiliated and the city was sacked. Our food in the threshing floors was burnt and the vineyards were also destroyed. Our city is sacked. [...] For example, 2 Kings 3, 19: ‘You shall conquer every fortified town and every splendid city, you shall fell every good tree and stop up every spring, and every fertile field you shall ruin with stones’. [...] Cf. Deuteronomy 20, 19–20, which bans the destruction of fruit trees during a siege, or Tiglath-Pileser III’s boast that he cut down all the gardens and orchards of Damascus when he besieged it in 733 BC (Tadmor 1994, 78, cited by Eph’al 2009, 52, see also 14–15). ...”

Philip J. Boyes, Script and Society: The Social Context of Writing Practices in Late Bronze Age Ugarit (Oxford: Oxbow, 2021), 267.

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

Letter to Grdn on the Ruin of a Town

KTU347 chapters

Compare KTU 2.61:10 and Deuteronomy 20:19

Summary

Passages

KTU 2.61:10

Deuteronomy 20:19

References

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