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I. Name Gatharu ( gṯr) is attested as a divine name in several genres of Ugaritic texts (vocabulary texts, rituals, a letter) and in sacrificial lists from Emar. The name is also attested as a theophoric element at Mari. It is plausibly derived from a root gṯr. It denotes ‘to be strong’, provided that the relationship with the Akkadian adjective gašru be accepted, where the strength denoted is particularly fierce and war-like. The god Gatharu has been tentatively connected with the bibilical anthroponym Gether ( Gen. 10.23). II. Identity The deity is most clearly at home in Syria…

I. Name Gapnu, ‘the vine’, is well attested as a divine name in the Ugaritic mythological texts, always in the binomial gpn w ugr, ‘vine(yard) and field’ ( KTU 1.3 iii 37; 1.4 vii 54; 1.4 viii 47; 1.5 i 12). In spite of some dissenting opinions, this interpretation of the names is widely accepted today (Pardee 1989/1990). The Ugaritic name is etymologically connected with Heb. gepen, ‘vine’. II. Identity Ginsberg (1944) has established that, in spite of the lack of separate attestations of gpn and ugr, various accompanying forms in the texts show that the phrase gpn w ugr does not designate a…

I. Name The kôṯarātu, apparently ‘the (female) skillful ones’, appear in Ugaritic mythological texts in passages dealing with human conception and in the ‘pantheon’ texts as the equivalent of Mesopotamian mother-goddesses. A biblical reference to these goddesses has been proposed in Ps. 68.7 (e.g. W. F. Albright, Yahweh and the Gods of Canaan [London 1968] 119). II. Identity The plural form kṯrt appears in the Aqhat legend ( KTU 1.17) and in the Marriage of Nikkal text ( KTU 1.24) in contexts associated with marriage and conception: and in poetic parallelism with bnt hll snnt. From t…

I. Name The divine name iṯm is attested as the second element of the divine binomial šgr w iṯm in the sacrificial list recorded on RS 24.643 verso ( KTU 1.148:31) and has been interpreted as related to the Hebrew word ʾāšām, ‘guilt’ and ‘guilt-offering’ (Astour 1966:281–282). II. Identity A new syllabically written ‘pantheon’ text from Ras Shamra now lays to rest the identification of iṯm with Hebrew ʾāšām. In 1992.2004:14 (reading and interpretation courtesy D. Arnaud) the entry corresponding to šgr w iṯm is d ḫar ùd gir3, indicating that iṯm is the Ugaritic equivalent…

I. Name The deity Kotharu (/kôṯaru/ < /kawṯaru/) appears in Ugaritic as an independent deity, and as part of the binomial kṯr w ḫss, ‘skillful and cunning’, of which the regular parallel is hyn d ḥrš ydm (lit. ‘the deft one who is a worker with his hands’). The meanings of the name and the associated epithets are in keeping with Kotharu’s function as craftsman deity. It has been proposed that this deity, under the form of Koshar, is alluded to in Ezek. 3.27 and Prov. 31.19. His name may occur, moreover, as an element in the name Cushan-Rishathaim ( Judg. 3.8, Judg. 10). II. Identity In the Ug…

I. Name The Hebrew word ʾĕlōah is derived from a base ʾilāh-, perhaps a secondary form of the Common Semitic word ʾil-, ‘god’. Cognate terms are known from Ugaritic, Aramaic, and Arabic/Arabian. The relationship between the common noun and the divine name is complicated and it varies considerably from one language to another. In Aramaic and in the epigraphic Arabian dialects, it is primarily a common noun, while in Ugaritic, Hebrew, and Arabic (Allah < al-ʾilāhu, ‘the god’) the usage as a divine name is clearly attested. There can be no doubt that the more common b…

I. Name Broken up, the word pair ‘mountains and valleys’ occurs in Mic. 1.4 in the context of a theophany: “and the mountains will melt under him, and the valleys will be cleft”. Until recently, the pair was thought to reflect the Ugaritic binominal deity *Mountains-and-Valleys (* ǵrm wʿmqt, *dḫur.sag.-meš u a-mu-tu[ m]). II. Identity The alleged Ugaritic divine pair *Mountains-and-Valleys, frequently compared with a similar pair Heaven-and-Earth ( arṣ wšmm, didim ùidim, šamû-erṣetum; see R. Borger, RA 63 [1969] 171), is based on a misreading of the texts. The pantheon list Ug…