This video tells the the story of Baal, the Canaanite storm god associated with fertility. The story comes from the socalled Baal Cycle text, which was discovered on a series of clay tablets in the 1920s in Ugarit (modern day Ras Shamra), situated on the Mediterranean coast of northern Syria.

The Baal Cycle can be summarized as two parts:
In Part 1, Baal fights Yam (god of the seas and symbolic of chaos), and with the help of the war goddesses Anat and the mother goddess Asherah, becomes king of the gods and is rewarded with his own temple, establishing him as the protector of order and vanquisher of chaos.
In Part 2, Baal seeks to subjugate Mot (god of death and the underworld). But he fails and Mot kills him. Again it is Anat who comes to his rescue, helping him to overcome death.

Interestingly, where Yam is slayed and not mentioned again, both Baal and Mot return to life after having been killed. So, where Yam stays dead and beaten, Mot eventually only submits to Baal, implying that death can ultimately not be defeated.

0:00 Intro
0:20 Myth Summary
1:22 Yam Becomes King
2:12 Baal Challenges Yam
2:58 Baal Becomes King
4:07 Mot Challenges Baal
4:38 Baal's Death
6:12 Ashtar
6:39 Anat Defeats Mot
7:02 Baal's Resurrection
8:30 Anat Takes Revenge
9:40 Outro

Credits / Sources:
The Baal Cycle / The Epic of Baal
(https://emp.byui.edu/satterfieldb/uga...)
Baal Cycle Wikipedia
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baal_Cycle)

#nixsmyths #myths #canaanitemythology #mythology #baal #ugarit #BaalCycle