Baal-Hadad

Hadad is the Canaanite and northwestern Semitic god of the storm, rain and fertility, known above all by his title Baal, which means «lord» or «master». In the Ugaritic texts (14th century B.C.) he appears as the son of Dagán (Dagon), the grain god, although he is sometimes also linked to the supreme god El. Lord of the clouds, he is called «the one who rides upon the clouds» and wields the lightning as a spear and the thunder as a voice. As the giver of seasonal rain, on which the harvests of Syria and Canaan depended, Hadad was one of the most important divinities in his pantheon, guarantor of the fertility of the land and of the agricultural cycle.

The great tale of Hadad is the Baal Cycle, preserved in the tablets of Ugarit. In it, Baal confronts Yam, the god of the sea and primordial chaos, and defeats him with two magical maces forged by the artisan god Kothar-wa-Khasis, thereby winning kingship among the gods. After his victory, with the help of his sister and consort Anat and the goddess Asherah, he obtains permission to build his own palace, a symbol of his sovereignty. Later he descends to the underworld defeated by Mot, the god of death and aridity, and his disappearance dries the earth; but Anat destroys Mot and Baal is resurrected, restoring the rain and life. This myth of death and return personifies the cycle of the seasons and the alternation between drought and fertility.

The cult of Baal spread throughout Syria-Palestine and was a rival of Israelite Yahwism, which is why the Hebrew Bible repeatedly condemns him as the idol par excellence (the confrontation of the prophet Elijah with the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel is its most famous episode). Under the name of Hadad or Adad he was also venerated in Mesopotamia and Aram, and in Hellenistic times he was identified with Zeus and Jupiter in his advocation as Jupiter Dolichenus. His iconography (the god with raised arm brandishing the lightning, standing on mountains or bulls) influenced the representation of other storm divinities of the eastern Mediterranean, and his figure remains central to understanding Canaanite religion.