A Primer on Ugaritic: Language, Culture, and Literature - enenuru

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Ugaritic <strong>Primer</strong>
dye manufacturing and ship building. In addition, the city
developed craft industries related to its trade in raw materials such
as copper. The fertile hinterland was also exploited for trade in
grains and oil. In the international age of the late second millennium
(fifteenth to thirteenth centuries BCE), a certain uneasy equilibrium
developed between the conflicting interests of the major powers of
Egypt, the Hittites, Mitanni, Kassite Babylonia, and Assyria.
Ugarit was well situated to serve as an intermediary of the
commercial interests of these major states. The rise of Ugarit at this
juncture reflects a skillful manipulation of the geographical
advantages of the city for the economy.
The head of state in ancient Ugarit was the king, whose line had
divine sanction. The special relationship between the gods,
particularly the chief deity El, and the king is clear, for example, in
the Keret epic (see exercise §6.4). The king was the principle
official in the Ugaritic religion; for example, the king could sacrifice
in the temple (KTU 1.119). There is some evidence to suggest that
the king may have even been given divine status in Ugarit. There
has even been some discussion as to whether ancient Israel also
accorded divine status to its kings, who were the “sons of Yahweh”
(e.g., Ps 2:7) and in one place called }elohim (Ps 45:6). The dead
king had the title rpu mlk {lm, “Rapiu, the eternal king,” which is
suggestive of a cult of the ancestors. The Rapiuma (cp. Hebrew,
Myapr) were the dead royal ancestors, who protected the royal
dynasty. 10 The commercial wealth of Ugarit, especially in the late
second millennium, was reflected in the size and opulence of the
royal palace. When the ruler of Byblos, for example, wished to
describe the grandeur of his own palace, he compared it to Ugarit
(EA 89:51).
The king also had the responsibility to defend the widow, the
orphan, the poor, and the downhearted ([Aqhat] KTU 1.17 v, 6–8;
see exercise §6.5). Members of the king’s clan exercised control in
10 Note that in ancient Israel, the dead kings had funerary pyres burned for them
in the valley of Rephaim, just to the west of Jerusalem (2Chr 16:14; 21:19),
which may suggest that some of these royal rituals and theology were also
current in southern Canaan.