Ugaritic Baal Cycle

This second volume of the commentary on the Baal Cycle, the most important Canaanite religious text from Ugarit, in Syria, analyzes KTU/CAT 1.3 and 1.4, the tablets that contain the long episode about how Baal secured permission from El to build his royal palace and how the palace was built. It includes a new edition of the tablets, supplemented by a DVD-ROM with 92 images and superimposible drawings, a comprehensive introduction, new translation and vocalized text, and detailed commentary. The authors develop an interpretation of the episode which places it into the larger context of the Baal Cycle as a whole.

'For all these endeavours, the book under review will be an indispensable tool. Coming generations of Ugaritologists and biblical scholars are deeply indebted to the authors'. Leiden University, July 2012 Holger GZELLA

Mark S. Smith, Ph.D. Yale, 1985, is Skirball Professor of Bible and Ancient Near Eastern Studies at New York University. He is the author of ten books on the religion of ancient Israel and Ugarit, most recently God in Translation: Deities in Cross-Cultural Discourse in the Biblical World, as well as many articles on the literature, religion and grammar in Ugaritic, the Hebrew Bible and the Dead Sea Scrolls. Wayne T. Pitard, Ph.D. Harvard, 1982, is Professor of Hebrew Bible in the Department of Religion and Director of the Spurlock Museum at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Ancient Damascus and numerous articles on Ugaritic texts and epigraphy, as well as Syro-Palestinian history.