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Ancient Levantine civilizations
Societies, texts and material culture in the ancient Levant.
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Original photograph
Concept
Judean pillar figurines
Clay female figurines with pillar bases in Judah, especially widespread in the eighth/seventh centuries BCE; identity and function not determined by form alone.
Female pillar figurine from Lachish, ceramic, about eighth–seventh century BCE; Metropolitan Museum 34.126.53, height 18.4 cm. Actual artifact; attribution to Asherah is unresolved
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Illustration
Entity
Dagan
Deity known in Syria and Mesopotamia, attested in Ugaritic lists, offerings and names; Baal is called his son. Temple attribution remains debated.
Modern comparison of Ugaritic evidence for Dagan; not a divine likeness or a settled identification of the temple
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Illustration
Entity
Urtenu and his house
Ugaritic figure close to court and commerce, associated with a south-central archive; family and personal texts helped identify its owner.
Modern grouping of evidence types from Urtenu’s house in the selected 1995 pages; not a room plan or complete archive census
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Illustration
Entity
Ilimilku
Ugaritic scribe associated with the Baal Cycle, Kirta and Aqhat; handwriting and colophons aid attribution. His work alone does not date the traditions’ origins.
Modern distinction between Ilimilku’s scribal work and the origin of recorded traditions; no portrait or claim that he invented the myths
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Original photograph
Concept
Ugaritic alphabet
Long cuneiform alphabet of 30 signs, chiefly consonantal. Its wedge shapes do not imply Akkadian syllabic principles or priority as the first alphabet.
Incomplete Ugaritic abecedary, Louvre AO 19992 / RS 10.087, museum date about 1400–1200 BCE; found 1938, 7 letters missing. Not the complete RS 12.033 found 1948
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Illustration
Entity
Kothar-wa-Hasis
Craftsman god in the Baal Cycle, supplying weapons and building the palace.
Modern explanation of the craftsman’s battle and building roles; no reconstruction of the weapons or palace
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Illustration
Entity
Athtar
God who tries Baal’s throne on Saphon during his absence, then descends; it is not El’s throne.
Modern diagram of KTU1.6I; Athtar is not presented as a fallen angel or denied all kingship beyond Saphon
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Illustration
Entity
Shapshu
Ugaritic sun goddess; involved in Baal’s crisis and intervening verbally in the Mot conflict.
Modern explanation of Shapshu’s roles in the passages consulted; her warning does not mean El actually deposed Mot in the scene
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Illustration
Entity
Mot
God of death in the Baal Cycle; an adversary who returns even after a violent attack.
Modern diagram of three points in Mot’s story; no proof of an annual agricultural rite or a complete revival mechanism
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Illustration
Entity
Yam / Nahar
Sea god and Baal’s opponent for kingship, also associated with Nahar, River.
Modern narrative diagram of Baal and Yam; no likeness of the Sea god or reconstruction of the cycle’s lost opening
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Illustration
Concept
Marziḥu
A banqueting institution or association in Ugaritic documents, with religious functions not reducible to one ritual.
Modern diagram of evidence relevant to the marziḥu; no reconstruction of El’s feast, guest count or ritual
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Illustration
Concept
KTU: Ugaritic Text References
Abbreviation for a modern scholarly corpus of alphabetic cuneiform texts; its numbers are references, not dates.
Modern reference guide: KTU1.114 corresponds to RS24.258 in Spronk’s chapter. No ancient writing or tablet surface reproduced
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Illustration
Concept
Ancient of Days
Designation of the divine figure with white hair, throne and court in Daniel7.
Modern textual comparison, depicting neither El nor the Ancient of Days and proving no direct transmission route
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Illustration
Concept
Aniconism
Avoidance of divine images in a particular practice or tradition; not inferred solely from an unidentified artifact.
Modern diagram of different explanations for an unidentified image; not evidence that any one occurred at Ugarit
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Original photograph
Concept
Iconography
Study of images, their attributes and contexts; resemblance alone does not prove identity.
Seated god, possibly El; Ugarit, 1400–1300 BCE according to the catalogue; gold-covered bronze, RS 23.394 / S3573. Catalogue information names Damascus Museum in 2011; current whereabouts not verified here. Attribution to El remains tentative
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Illustration
Concept
Calibrated years before present (cal BP)
A calendar dating convention anchored to 1950, distinct from an uncalibrated radiocarbon age.
Modern guide: BP is anchored to 1950; cal BP is calibrated calendar age. BCE examples are rounded. Uncalibrated radiocarbon ages require calibration, not simple subtraction
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Illustration
Concept
Sedentism
Reduced residential mobility and prolonged or recurring occupation; architecture alone does not establish year-round residence.
Modern diagram: buildings, equipment and repeated burial indicate investment in place. Year-round residence needs additional evidence; settlement alone does not establish a temple
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Illustration
Entity
Philo of Alexandria
First-century CE Alexandrian Jewish author. In Life of Moses he presents Greek translation as inspired; the passage does not explicitly assign a separate room to each translator.
Modern comparison: Aristeas describes collaboration; Philo emphasizes inspired agreement without explicit separate rooms; Irenaeus explicitly separates translators and broadens scope. Witness order does not prove every detail’s transmission
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Illustration
Book
Letter of Aristeas
Hellenistic Jewish account, commonly dated to the second century BCE, of 72 elders translating Hebrew law in Egypt. Not contemporary minutes or a Torah-composition account.
Modern guide to Aristeas: Hebrew law from Jerusalem, 72 elders, collaborative translation on Pharos, community approval. These are claims of the later narrative, not independently proved events or a story of new composition
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Entity
Ptolemy II Philadelphus
Ptolemaic ruler of Egypt, sole reign c.282–246 BCE. Aristeas associates him with Greek Torah translation; royal sponsorship details lack independent confirmation.
Gold coin obverse, reign of Ptolemy II, Alexandria, c. 261–246 BCE. The portrait is Arsinoe II, not the king. Met 30.115.23. Context for Ptolemaic Egypt, not evidence of Torah translation. Original preserved; resized without cropping
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Illustration
Book
Samaritan Pentateuch
Samaritan Hebrew five-book tradition sharing an older textual history, with linguistic and theological variants, including readings involving Mount Gerizim.
Modern map of textual plurality, not a settled genealogy. Affinities with Masoretic, Greek or pre-Samaritan witnesses do not divide all copies into three closed families. The Samaritan Pentateuch shares earlier history and includes Gerizim readings
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Illustration
Manuscript
Dead Sea Scrolls
Judaean Desert manuscripts, especially Qumran cave finds. Biblical copies and other works reveal textual diversity; a copy’s age is not the work’s initial date.
Modern diagram of the Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran manuscripts from the third century BCE to the first CE, with multiple languages and works. Not all are biblical; a copy’s age alone does not date a work’s initial composition. Not an artifact photograph
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Illustration
Concept
Documentary hypothesis
Model explaining the Torah through combined sources such as J, E, D and P. Boundaries, dating and editing are debated alongside supplementary models.
Modern diagram: editors combine sources, or texts grow through supplements. J/E/D/P is a scholarly model with disputed boundaries and dates. Literary materials can cross the current book divisions
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Illustration
Book
Torah / Pentateuch
Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy: Mosaic corpus with a compositional history. Torah can also mean teaching or law beyond these five books.
Modern overview of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. Topic order describes the present literary structure, not the order of composition. Torah has a broader meaning in some ancient usages
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Illustration
Concept
Tetragrammaton
Designation for YHWH written with four Hebrew letters; it does not settle the earliest pronunciation or etymology.
Modern diagram: El belongs to the Semitic word family for god; YHWH has four letters. Religious identification does not establish linguistic derivation of one name from the other. Not an ancient inscription or a solution to Yahweh’s etymology
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Illustration
Region
Midian
Name for groups and a wilderness-associated landscape in Hebrew narratives; Moses’s link to its priest supports a hypothesis, not proof of Yahweh worship’s transfer.
Modern diagram of names in poetry and narrative. It draws no Midianite borders or certain Sinai/Paran locations, and does not equate a divine appearance with the origin of worship
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Original photograph
People
Shasu
Egyptian designation for mobile pastoral groups; Yhw occurs in their lists without automatically identifying a deity or Israel.
Soleb temple in Sudan, from Amenhotep III’s reign; photograph by Hans Birger Nilsen, 2017. Context for the Egyptian list, not a photograph of the Yhw entry or a temple of Yahweh
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Original photograph
Concept
Baal Cycle
A group of Late Bronze Age Ugaritic religious texts recounting Baal’s conflicts, relationships with the gods and the building of his palace.
Baal Cycle tablet AO 16640 / RS 3.367 from Ugarit, about 1400–1200 BCE, associated with KTU 1.2; Louvre. Not the palace-authorization tablet KTU 1.4. A photograph of actual textual evidence, not imagined gods
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Illustration
Entity
Anat
An active and violent goddess in Ugaritic literature; pressures El over Baal’s palace and addresses him with paternal and wisdom language.
Modern diagram of the palace episode: Anat presses and petitions, Athirat intercedes, El grants permission, and Baal obtains the palace. Narrative summary, not a chronology of every line, a divine constitution or an archaeological reconstruction
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Illustration
Entity
Athirat
A high-ranking goddess commonly understood as El’s consort in Ugaritic texts; associated with the progenitress epithet and the palace intercession.
Modern divine-household diagram: El as father and king, Athirat as consort with the progenitress epithet, and divine-group designations. Baal is Dagan’s son and also addresses El as father. Not a definitive birth genealogy or identification of all Athirat’s sons as known biological sons of El
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Original photograph
Entity
Baal
Storm god and protagonist of Ugarit’s Baal Cycle; exercises active kingship while El retains importance and authorizes the palace.
Baal with Thunderbolt stela from Ugarit, limestone, Louvre AO 15775 / RS 4.427. The museum assigns a broad date of 2000–1150 BCE. This depicts Baal, not El, and does not prove that Baal overthrew him
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Original photograph
Language
Amorite language
A West Semitic language studied especially through personal names, much of whose evidence comes from the Old Babylonian period (ca. 2000–1600 BCE).
Photograph of the ruins of Mari, the setting of documents preserving Amorite names. The place explains the context of preservation; the photograph itself is not a text in the Amorite language
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Original photograph
Concept
Ancient Near East
A historical and geographical term covering Mesopotamia, the Levant and neighbouring ancient societies.
Lamassu: a human-headed winged bull from Nimrud, ca. 883–859 BCE; The Met, 32.143.1. An example of Assyrian art in the ancient Near East, not a representation of every regional culture or of El
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Original photograph
Language
Aramaic
A group of Northwest Semitic language varieties with a long history across the Near East.
Palmyrene funerary relief with an Aramaic inscription, ca. 181 CE; The Met, 02.29.4. An example of a historical Aramaic variety, not a representation of Syriac or every stage of the language
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People
Ancient Israel
A name for an ancient population and later historical traditions, attested on the Merneptah Stele.
Plate of the Merneptah inscription published by Petrie in 1897: a historical drawing in mirrored orientation. This witness contains the name Israel; the image depicts neither the community nor its beliefs
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Illustration
Deity
Yahweh
The divine proper name written YHWH in the Hebrew Bible.
The four Hebrew letters יהוה (YHWH) in a modern typographic illustration. A presentation of the written name, not a depiction of the deity or a reproduction of a particular ancient inscription
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Original photograph
People
Amorites
Groups associated with West Semitic speech in the Levant and Mesopotamia, whose dynasties were particularly prominent in the nineteenth and eighteenth centuries BCE (ca. 1900–1700 BCE).
Top of Hammurabi’s stele, showing the Babylonian king before Shamash; eighteenth century BCE; Louvre, SB 8. An example from the world of Amorite-period kingdoms, not a collective portrayal of Amorites or their beliefs
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Original photograph
Deity
El at Ugarit
A deity prominent in West Semitic traditions, especially as head of the divine family in Ugaritic texts.
Ugaritic tablet from the Baal Cycle, ca. 1400–1200 BCE; Louvre, AO 16640. It provides the mythological textual context in which El is studied, rather than a portrait of him or verification of his name on this face
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