The Canaanite fertility god Baal is best-known in the West as a rival to the biblical god Yahweh.
"Museum Pieces" is a diary series that explores the history behind some of the most interesting museum exhibits and historical places.
A votive figurine of Baal, in the Museum of World Treasures, Wichita KS
The ancient land of Canaan lay in a crucially strategic area. Midway between the great civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt, in modern-day Israel and Lebanon, the Canaanites were astride one of the greatest trade routes of the ancient world, allowing them to prosper by both facilitating and taxing this commerce.
Despite their advantageous geographic position, however, Canaan was an ecologically poor place. Although the coastal plain along the Mediterranean usually received adequate rainfall, it was subject to seasonal droughts. The interior areas, meanwhile, were dry desert, and all of the agriculture there depended heavily upon the unreliable and variable flow of the Jordan River. Food production, then, tended to vary drastically from year to year, and the Canaanites were forced to store whatever surplus they could produce in the good years, in granaries and barns, in order to get through the frequent periods of drought.
Each desert town or village had to depend upon its own local resources to get by, and during times of drought many were forced to either migrate to another area (usually Egypt or Mesopotamia) or to fight over control of resources with neighboring villages. So, although the Canaanites as a whole shared much of their culture, there was no unifying political rulership akin to the Egyptian Pharaoh, and each settlement regarded itself as an independent entity whose relations to each other were often hostile. Being an inter-cultural trading center, there were also many “foreign” influences, and a variety of different languages were spoken.
One thing all of the Canaanites did share in common, however, was their religion, and given the central role that agriculture played in their lives, it was no surprise, then, that the most important god of the Canaanite pantheon was the rain god Baal. (Each city center tended to have its own local versions of religious beliefs, mythologies and practices, though, and many of the ancient writings refer to “Baal of this town” or “Baal of that town”.)
Archaeologically, much of what we know about Baal and Canaanite religion comes from excavations begun almost 100 years ago. In 1928, an ancient tomb was accidentally uncovered by a Syrian farmer near the modern town of Ras el Shamra, and when French archaeologists investigated, they found the remains of a Canaanite town called Ugarit, which had been an active trading center from 1400 BCE to 1200 BCE. Several decades of excavations revealed the palace of the local ruler, some temples to local gods, and several libraries.
The libraries contained some 1500 clay tablets that were impressed with cuneiform markings. This alphabet was common to a number of different languages in the region, and texts were found in these libraries that had been written in Akkadian, Sumerian and Hurrian, as well as Egyptian hieroglyphs. Many of the texts were also written in the local Ugaritic dialect, and some of these were religious myths and legends centering around the god Baal. In all, some 200 different Canaanite gods were mentioned.
Prior to these finds, the Canaanite gods were known mostly through excerpts in the biblical Old Testament. According to these stories, when the Israelites were taken by their god Yahweh from Egypt to conquer and settle in the lands which God had promised them in Canaan, they (in particular the local King Ahab and his wife Jezebel) began to assimilate over time with the local people and adopted their god Baal. The Old Testament tells us that the biblical figure Gideon also bore the name Jerub-Baal, and King Saul named one of his sons Ish-Baal. To combat what he viewed as this religious impurity, we are told, the Hebrew prophet Elijah arranged a contest between the priests of Yahweh and those of Baal. Both sides built a ceremonial pyre atop Mount Carmel, and prayed to their respective god to light it by a divine act. According to the biblical Book of First Kings, it was only Yahweh who sent fire down from heaven to set Elijah’s offering aflame. All of the Israelite Baal-worshippers were then killed. This story was repeated later in the Islamic Quran.
The Ugaritic cuneiform texts set out the Canaanite version of their legends. According to the stories, Baal was the god of storms, known as the “Lord of Rain and Dew” or as “He Who Rides the Clouds”. His position as the bringer of rain made him the most important of the Canaanite pantheon, and he was often depicted as a sort of co-ruler of all the gods, along with an older and wiser Creator deity named El. In one story Baal was depicted in conflict with the sea god Yamm who wanted to rule all the gods. With the help of the craftsman god Kothar, Baal defeated Yamm and beat him into submission with his magical mace.
In celebration of his victory, Baal wanted to have a palace to live in that was as splendid as that of the god El, and asked El’s wife Asherah (also sometimes known as Astarte) to persuade her husband to allow it. Baal then recruited Kothar to construct it, lining it with silver and gold. The magnificent palace atop Mount Zaphon was said to cover 10,000 acres. In return, the story said, Baal agreed to provide humanity with rain and water to make the land fertile and fruitful.
But now the god of death, Mot, tricked Baal into entering the underworld, where he was trapped and the rains stopped. Humanity suffered a deadly drought. In response Baal’s sister Anat, the goddess of the hunt, tracked him down to the realm of the dead, defeated Mot and rescued Baal, restoring the life-giving rain to the lands. Mot, however, revived (since gods are immortal) and continued to fight with Baal. Plentiful rains, the Canaanites believed, were therefore the result of Baal’s victories over Mot, while droughts and famine resulted when Mot was able to temporarily gain the upper hand. Baal thus replaced El as the chief among the gods.
Baal worship became widespread in much of the ancient world, carried by trade ties to Egypt, Babylon, Assyria, and on to Greece. By the time of the Roman Empire, the Phoenicians, who were descendants of the Canaanites and who retained much of their religion, had carried Baal-worship to their trading city of Carthage in North Africa. That city became a rival to the Romans, and the two fought several conflicts before Carthage was destroyed. Roman chroniclers of the time were quick to point out that the Carthaginian Baal-worshippers practiced child sacrifice, burning their firstborn sons, and also practiced ritual sex between the priests of Baal and priestesses of Astarte—both of which in Roman eyes confirmed their rival’s status as “barbarians”. Modern archaeological excavations have found gravesites at Carthage containing the cremated remains of children, indicating that the “human sacrifice” stories may have been true.
In art, Baal was usually depicted as a horned figure or with a horned helmet, often accompanied by goats or sheep. In a stone panel in the Louvre, he holds a spear from which plants are growing, symbolizing his dual role as the warrior-protector of humanity and as the life-giving rain god.
Today, the Museum of World Treasures in Wichita KS has a small votive figurine of Baal on display.
NOTE: As some of you already know, all of my diaries here are draft chapters for a number of books I am working on. So I welcome any corrections you may have, whether it's typos or places that are unclear or factual errors. I think of y'all as my pre-publication editors and proofreaders. ;)
