Ritual and Cult at Ugarit.

• Author: Ilarri, Jesus-Luis Cunchillos
• Position: Book Review

Ritual and Cult at Ugarit. By DENNIS PARDEE. Writings from the Ancient World, vol. 10. Atlanta: SOCIETY OF BIBLICAL LITERATURE, 2002. Pp. xiii + 299. $29.95 (paper).

In 2000 Dennis Pardee published Les textes rituels, in two volumes of 1307 pages, full of reasonable new readings and useful remarks. It is a masterpiece, the result of twenty years' work. Pardee's epigraphic commentaries are always relevant for philologists who come after him, even if they do not always share his interpretation of the texts. As displayed by his detailed and thorough work, graced by insightful epigraphic notes, the author is today the best epigraphist dealing with the tablets of Ugarit. Pardee has raised the sorry level of Ugaritic epigraphy and is a worthy successor to Mlle. Andre Herdner, the queen of Ugaritic epigraphy. A detailed reading of a book of such length is not for everyone, but happily Pardee has now produced a smaller book from his monumental work. This volume makes the main part of his results accessible to readers of English not working at the level of epigraphy but at that of global interpretation. It is a worthy, practical, and clear publication aimed at biblicists, historians, etc.

Ritual and Cult at Ugarit is a good example of how to adapt a work of scholarship to the needs of readers or university students not themselves active in primary research. There is indeed a wider public desirous of accurate, but not technical, information who would not mind an even simpler version. There are three different levels of readership, and each is worthy and necessary. I believe that these three audiences should be addressed in a more systematic way.

Ritual and Cult at Ugarit contains an introduction and two parts. The first is entitled "The Sacrificial Cult" and contains deity lists, prescriptive sacrificial rituals (for a single month, for two months, for a single day, for a day and a night, etc.), descriptions of sacrificial rituals, memorials of a sacrificial rite for a mortuary offering with personal name, an ex-voto inscription, divination texts (practice and manuals), and prayers. The second part deals with ritual activity outside of the sacrificial cult and contains incantations, historiolae, rites including divine participation, a myth that explains a ritual practice, and administrative texts related to rites and cult. A chapter presenting a summary and conclusions is followed by a concordance of text numbers, bibliography, a glossary of cultic...