TYPE: Vegetation deity and national god
ORIGIN: Western Semitic (Canaanite) [Northern Israel, Lebanon and later Egypt]
KNOWN PERIOD OF WORSHIP: Circa 2000 BCE or earlier to 200 BCE
SYNONYMS: Aliyn Baal; Hadad
CENTER(S) OF CULT: Ugarit [Ras Samra and Jebel el Aqra]; Asdod during the Philistine period. Otherwise generally down the grain-bearing coastal plain of the eastern Mediterranean, including Baal-Hazor, Baal-Sidon, and Baal-Tyre [Lebanon]. Memphis [Egypt].
ART REFERENCES: A stele from Ras Samra has a seated god with bull horns that is thought to be either Ball or Il; a modern calf recently discovered there may also symbolize Baal.
LITERARY SOURCES: Ugaritic creation texts from Ras Samra, particularly the legends of Baal and Anat and Bal and Mot; Vetus Testamentum.
SYMBOL: Bull, Ram, Thunderbolt
REGION: Ancient Syria especially Halab, Near around and at Ugarit, Canaan, North Africa, Middle Kingdom of Egypt.
PARENTS: Dagan and Shalash (in Syria); El and Athirat (in some Ugaritic texts)
SIBLINGS: Hebat (in Syrian tradition), Anat
CONSORTS: Possibly Anat and/or Athtart
OFFSPRING: Pidray, Tallay, Arsay
EQUIVALENTS:
INFORMATION:
Baal may have originated in pre-agricultural times as god of storms and rain. He is the son of Dagan and in turn is the father of seven storm gods, the Baalim of the Vetus Testamentum, and seven midwife goddesses, the Sasuratum. He is considered to have been worshiped from at least the nineteenth century BCE. Later he became a vegetation god concerned with fertility of the land. Baal is said to have gained his kingship in primeval times wrested, with the help of weapons made by divine craftsmen (See also Othin), from the powers of chaos in the form of the sea and the river tyranies, or more specifically the god Yamm.
Baal lives in a vast and opulent palace on a mountain called Sapan. Old connotations of a weather god remain in texts that describe the voice of Baal as being like thunder, and a hole in the floor of his palace through which he waters the earth. According to one texts his servants are in the form of seven pages and eight boars, aol of which like his daughters, Pidray daughter of mists and Tallay daughter of showers, probably have a fertility function. Brother of the goddess Anat, he reflects the confrontation theme, first established in ancient Near Eastern religions, of a god constantly and energetically engaged with the forces of disorder. It is a combat that causes his temporary ill-fortune but from which, annually, he emerges triumphant. Baal is said to have sired a bull calf, the guarantee of his power in absence, before descending to the underworld to challenge the forces of chaos in the form of the god Mot (see also Inana/Istar); he dies, is restored through the efforts of Anat and in the seventh year kills Mot (VT Exodus 23:10-11 describes six years of harvest followed by a seventh year in which the land must lie fallow). Victory was celebrated at the autumn festival of New Year in the month of Tisri pending the arrival of the rains. Baal-zebul (VT) derives form Baal and zbl meaning prince.
From the mid-sixteenth century BCE in the Egyptian New Kingdom, Baal enjoyed a significant cult following, but the legend of his demise and restoration was never equated with that of Osiris.
In the Greco-Roman period, Baal became assimilated in the Palestine region with Zeus and Jupiter, but as a Punic deity [Carthage] he was allied with Saturnus, the god of seed sowing.