Ugaritic texts in the context of "Kinnaru"

Ugarit (/juːˈɡɑːrɪt, uː-/; Ugaritic: 𐎜𐎂𐎗𐎚, ủgrt /ʾUgarītu/) was an ancient Levantine coastal city located in what is today northern Syria. The site, with its corpus of ancient cuneiform texts, was discovered in 1928. The texts were written in a previously unknown Northwest Semitic tongue—the Ugaritic language. Archaeological excavations of Ugarit show evidence of occupation since the 8th millennium BC. Research has focused on the late Bronze Age levels; relatively little is known about earlier occupation. The ongoing archaeological investigation of Ugarit has proven to be invaluable to the study of the Bronze Age in the eastern Mediterranean.

Ugarit is 10 km north of the Syrian city Latakia; at its zenith it ruled an area roughly equivalent to the modern Latakia Governorate. The ruins are often called "Ras Shamra" or "Tell Shamra" after the local place names.

Canaanite religion or Syro-Canaanite religions refers to the myths, cults, and ritual practices of people in the land of Canaan in the southern Levant during roughly the first three millennia BC. Canaanite religions were polytheistic and in some cases monolatristic. They were influenced by neighboring cultures, particularly ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian religious practices. The pantheon was headed by the god El and his consort Asherah, with other significant deities including Baal, Anat, Astarte, and Dagon.

Canaanite religious practices included animal sacrifice, veneration of the dead, and the worship of deities through shrines and sacred groves. The religion also featured a complex mythology, including stories of divine battles and cycles of death and rebirth. Archaeological evidence, particularly from sites like Ugarit, and literary sources, including the Ugaritic texts and the Hebrew Bible, have provided most of the current knowledge about Canaanite religion.

Ugaritic (/ˌ(j)uːɡəˈrɪtɪk/ (Y)OOG-ə-RIT-ik) is an extinct Northwest Semitic language known through the Ugaritic texts discovered by French archaeologists in 1928 at Ugarit, including several major literary texts, notably the Baal cycle.

Ugaritic has been called "the greatest literary discovery from antiquity since the deciphering of the Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mesopotamian cuneiform".

Anat (/ˈɑːnɑːt/, /ˈænæt/), Anatu, classically Anath (/ˈeɪnəθ, ˈeɪˌnæθ/; Ugaritic: 𐎓𐎐𐎚 ʿnt; Hebrew: עֲנָת ʿĂnāṯ; Phoenician: 𐤏𐤍𐤕, romanized: ʿNT; Greek: Αναθ, romanized: Anath; Egyptian: ꜥntjt) was a goddess associated with warfare and hunting, best known from the Ugaritic texts. Most researchers assume that she originated in the Amorite culture of Bronze Age upper Mesopotamia, and that the goddess Ḫanat, attested in the texts from Mari and worshiped in a city sharing her name located in Suhum, should be considered her forerunner.

In Ugarit, Anat was one of the main goddesses, and regularly received offerings, as attested in texts written both in the local Ugaritic language and in Hurrian. She also frequently appears in myths, including the Baal Cycle and the Epic of Aqhat. In the former, she is portrayed as a staunch ally of the weather god Baal, who assists him in his struggle for kingship, helps him with obtaining the permission to obtain a dwelling of his own, and finally mourns and avenges his death at the hands of the personified death, Mot. The precise nature of the relation between Anat and Baal is uncertain, and the conventional views that they were lovers, siblings or both remain a matter of dispute among researchers. Another deity who frequently appears alongside her is Ashtart. Interactions between Anat and the sun goddess Shapash and moon god Yarikh are described in myths as well. In Hurrian ritual texts, she appears alongside deities such as Šimige, Aštabi and Nupatik. Elsewhere in the Levant and in nearby regions of inland Syria, Anat's status apparently was not equally high, though she is nonetheless attested in Emar, Hazor and elsewhere.

The Sutean language (Sutû) is a language mentioned in a clay tablet from the Middle Assyrian Empire, presumably originating from the city of Emar in what is now northeast Syria, among a list of languages spoken in the region. The other languages are Akkadian, Amorite, Gutian, "Subarean" (Hurrian) and Elamite. The Sutean people may have lived in the region of Suhum. Their language is only known from names, most of which are Akkadian or Amorite. The few which are neither also appear to be Semitic. Such names include the name of a Sutean tribe, "Almutu", and the Sutean warrior "Yatpan" who was mentioned in 13th century BCE Ugaritic texts.

Wolfgang Heimpel suggests Sutean may have been an early form of Aramaic or even Arabic, while emphasizing the former.

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.