Ugaritic Baal Cycle (KTU 1.1–1.6)
The longest Canaanite mythological text: six tablets recovered at Ras Shamra (ancient Ugarit) narrating Baal's rise to kingship — defeat of Sea (Yamm), construction of his palace, and the confrontation with Death (Mot). Baal descends into Mot's gullet and dies; El and Anat perform mourning rites ("Baal is dead!"); Anat destroys Mot (splitting, winnowing, burning, grinding, sowing him); and Baal returns alive to his throne ("mightiest Baal lives, the prince, lord of the earth, exists"). It is the clearest pre-Christian, securely dated die-and-return divine narrative, and therefore the strongest single exhibit in Mettinger's case.
Baal's death and the explicit announcement of his return to life are in KTU 1.5–1.6; the proclamation that Baal lives follows El's dream-vision of the heavens raining oil and the wadis running with honey (Smith & Pitard, with vol. II context; KTU 1.6 iii).
The treatment of Mot by Anat (ground and sown like grain) and the fertility imagery around Baal's return ground — but do not prove — a seasonal/agricultural reading; Smith himself resists a simple annual-cycle interpretation, reading royal ideology and cosmology as primary.
Colophons name the scribe Ilimilku under King Niqmaddu — rare case of an ancient myth with a named copyist and a political context.
Tablet order of KTU 1.1–1.6 is partly reconstructed; key passages (including around Baal's revival) are broken, so the mechanism of his return is lost. The seasonal-cycle reading dominant mid-20th-century (de Moor, Gaster) is now widely qualified. Dating is archaeologically anchored (the city's destruction layer), making this one of the best-dated texts in the dossier.
dying-rising-god