Baal (Baʿlu Haddu)

Lord Haddu

Baal is a title, "lord", and at Ugarit it belongs above all to the storm-god whose personal name was Haddu (Hadad). He is "Mightiest Baal" (aliyn bʿl) and "Rider of the Clouds" (rkb ʿrpt), and his voice is the thunder. Ugaritic texts call him the son of Dagan, a grain-god worshipped along the middle Euphrates, even though he lives among El's family; the tension between those two statements has never been fully explained. His home is Mount Zaphon (Ṣapānu), the mountain north of Ugarit now called Jebel Aqra, and one of the two great temples on Ugarit's acropolis is generally identified as his.

The Baal Cycle

Baal's story is told in the six tablets of the Baal Cycle (KTU 1.1-1.6). He defeats Yamm, the Sea, who had been granted kingship by El, using two clubs made by the craftsman Kothar-wa-Khasis. He then campaigns, with the help of Anat and Athirat, for a palace of his own, and when it is built on Zaphon he gives his thunder voice through a window in the clouds. Finally he challenges Mot, Death, and is swallowed; the earth dries up until Anat destroys Mot and El dreams that Baal lives. After seven years Baal and Mot fight again, and Mot yields.

Rain and the agricultural year

Many scholars have read Baal's death and return as reflecting the eastern Mediterranean year, with its dry summer and rainy winter. The texts support a link between Baal and rain (his absence dries the furrows) but do not state that the cycle was performed annually, and this site presents that seasonal reading as an interpretation.

Beyond Ugarit

Baal-Hadad was worshipped across the Levant and beyond, and under local titles (Baal Shamem, Baal of Tyre) into the first millennium BCE. The Hebrew Bible's polemic against "the Baals" reflects that later, wider cult; Ugarit preserves his mythology from his own worshippers.