Baal and the Politics of Poetry.

• Author: Natan-Yulzary, Shirly

Baal and the Politics of Poetry. By AARON TUGENDHAFT. The Ancient Word. London: ROUTLEDGE, 2017. Pp. xviii+ 165, ilius. $140.

The monograph under review is an interpretation of the Baal Cycle (KTU 1.1-1.6), read against the background of the historical-political reality of its time within the geographical arena extending from Egypt to Anatolia and from Mari to the Mediterranean Sea.

In the final days of the Hittite Empire, its kings asserted a stronger link to the gods. According to the author, the claims to legitimacy by the Hittite sovereign motivated an individual author in the subordinate kingdom of Ugarit to compose a political poem. That individual was Ilimilku, who, in Aaron Tugendhaft's opinion, was not merely a scribe, but an accomplished statesman, who served in an elevated diplomatic position during the Assyrian-Hittite struggle.

Tugendhaft's study rests on the basic premise that the poem of the Baal Cycle is a unique creation composed under specific historical circumstances and therefore must be analyzed synchronically. The advantage of such an analysis consists in the attempt to understand the work's message. The synchronic reading that the author performs is a complex undertaking that takes into account the political messages and motifs embedded in the documents that were discovered in the Ras Shamra excavations--in diplomatic treaties, edicts, and political correspondence from the Late Bronze Age, including the Akkadian texts from the House of Urtenu, which were published relatively recently (Yon and Arnaud 2001; Arnaud 2007; KTU (3) 2013). A list of the kings of the Late Bronze Age along with several diagrams and maps included in this volume help acquaint the reader with the historical background.

The book's main argument is that the purpose of the Baal Cycle was to challenge traditionally accepted ideological tenets within the Hittite Empire and among the peoples of the region, including in the kingdom of Ugarit. In other words, according to the author, the work mounts a literary counterattack on the royal ideology's claim that the king's authority and right of sovereignty derive from divine grace. More precisely, Tugendhaft claims that Ilimilku opposed Hittite claims to dominion over Ugarit.

In the introduction, the author presents Hittite royal ideology as it is articulated in letters, edicts, and ritual texts as well as in iconography of the "divine embrace" enjoyed by the Hittite king (see figs. 0.2-0.4). He continues by introducing the central idea that will be elaborated within the book's other chapters--the figure of the Ugaritic storm-god, Baal, as an inverse image of the Hittite sovereign. Both these figures attained royal status, but while the Hittite king is beloved by the gods and his kingship is based on divine grace, Baal is not loved, and is not endowed with the epithet "the beloved of El" (mdd. il), nor does he enjoy the support of El, the supreme god.

The monograph answers three questions: First, what was the poet's intention when he fashioned that figure of Baal as victor, yet still refrains from presenting him as the gods' preferred ruler? Second, what is the political power matrix that the Baal Cycle is portraying as a counterpoint to the political reality of the time? And, finally...