A fertility deity is a god or goddess associated with fertility, sex, pregnancy, childbirth, and crops. In some cases these deities are directly associated with these experiences; in others they are more abstract symbols. Fertility rites may accompany their worship. The following is a list of fertility deities.
Baal (/ˈbeɪ.əl, ˈbɑːl/), or Baʿal (/bɑː.ɑːl/), was a title and honorific meaning 'owner' or 'lord' in the Northwest Semitic languages spoken in the Levant during antiquity. From its use among people, it came to be applied to gods. Scholars previously associated the theonym with solar cults and with a variety of unrelated patron deities, but inscriptions have shown that the name Baal was particularly associated with the storm and fertility god Hadad and his local manifestations. The Ugaritic god Baal (𐎁𐎓𐎍) is the protagonist of one of the lengthiest surviving epics from the ancient Near East, the Baal Cycle.
Known by epithets like “rider of the clouds” and “Victorious Baal,” he was associated with rain, lightning, wind, fertility, and kingship, and was often depicted in opposition to sea and death deities like Yammu and Mot. Worship of Baal spread throughout the Levant, Egypt, and the Mediterranean via Phoenician colonization, with regional forms such as Baal Hammon in Carthage. The god was also known as "the mighty one", and "the one without equal" ("there is none above him").
The Baal Cycle is an Ugaritic text (c. 1300–1100 BCE) about the Canaanite god Baʿal (𐎁𐎓𐎍 lit. "Owner", "Lord"), a storm god associated with fertility. It consists of six tablets, itemized as KTU 1.1–1.6. Tablets one (KTU 1.1) and two (KTU 1.2) are about the cosmic battle between the storm-god Baal and the sea god Yam, where the former attains victory. The next two tablets (KTU 1.3–1.4) describe the construction of Baal's palace that marks his cosmic kingship. The last two tablets (KTU 1.5–1.6) describe Baal's struggles against Mot, the god of the underworld.
The text identifies Baal as the god Hadad, the Northwest Semitic form of Adad. The stories are written in Ugaritic, a Northwest Semitic language, and written in a cuneiform abjad. It was discovered on a series of clay tablets found in the 1920s in the Tell of Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra), situated on the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria, a few kilometers north of the modern city of Latakia and far ahead of the current coastline. The stories include The Myth of Baʿal Aliyan and The Death of Baʿal. A critical edition of the Baal Cycle was published by Charles Virolleaud in 1938. A fragment of the Baal Cycle was discovered in pre-Islamic Arabia.