“... Gates also served a judicial function in the literature preserved from Ugarit, a city-state on the Mediterranean coast that thrived in the Late Bronze Age.39 According to the Ugaritic tale of Aqhat, the hero Danel “arose and sat at the entrance to the (city-)gate, among the leaders (sit­ ting) at the threshing floor, he judged the widow’s case, made decisions regarding the orphan” (KTU 1.17 v 6–8). The text bears witness to the gate as a space of judgment. [...] Here, the narrative evidently assumes the judicial function of the city gate. The plaintiff would arrive early in the morning, hoping to obtain justice from the king, and would seek justice in the city gate, a location where judges were known to be.90 But the king, although evoked by the narrator and by Absalom, was conspicuously absent from the gate. [...] The narra­ tive logic of v. 2, in which Absalom routinely stations himself at the gate in order to encounter plaintiffs, depends on the assumption that city gates were a well-known location of judicial activity. ...”