I. Name

The term ilib is found in Ugaritic texts both cultic and literary. In the former the ilib receives offerings and in the latter it is mentioned incidentally as the object of a particular family cult. There is very slight evidence for the ilib otherwise in Israelite literary and epigraphic sources.

There are various explanations of the form, the most obvious and widely accepted being that it is a modification of ʾil + ʾab, ‘god’ + ‘father’. Ilib would, on this argument, be the ‘divine ances…