[For] I alone am he that shall be king over the gods,
[that] indeed fattens gods and men,
that satisfies the multitudes of the earth.23
In his temple, Baal and his consort, Anat, celebrated their great victories which had restored order to the world:
Did I not destroy Yam the darling of El …
Was not the dragon captured and vanquished?
I did destroy the wiggling serpent,
the tyrant with seven heads.24
The people of Ugarit, who lived just twenty miles from Baal’s dwelling on Zaphon, felt that because they lived in Baal’s territory they shared in his victory. In the hymns of Ugarit, Baal calls Zaphon “the holy place, the mountain of my heritage … the chosen spot … the hill of victory.” Zaphon was the center of their world. It was a “holy mountain,” a “beautiful height,” and the “joy of the whole earth.”25 Because Baal lived there, he had made Zaphon an earthly paradise of peace, fertility, and harmony. There he would “remove war from the earth. Pour out peace in the depths of the earth.” “Love would increase in the depths of the fields.”26 To make sure that they would also enjoy this divine fertility and peace, the people of Ugarit built a temple which was a replica of Baal’s palace on Mount Zaphon. They copied it down to the last detail that had been revealed to them, so that, according to the principle of imitatio dei, Baal would dwell with them too. Thus heaven would come to earth in their city and they would create an enclave of life as it was meant to be in the midst of a dangerous world.
Baal’s presence among them in his temple made human life possible in Ugarit. When the people entered the temple, they felt that they had entered another dimension of existence and were once again in communion with the natural and divine rhythms of life that were normally hidden from them. They could hear
The speech of wood and the whisper of stones,
the converse of heaven with the earth
Of the deeps with the stars.
… lightning which the heavens do not know,
Speech which men do not know
And the multitude of the earth do not understand.27
In the ancient world, the temple was often experienced as a place of vision, where people learned to see further and in a different way. They were stretching themselves imaginatively to see into the life of things. The liturgy and the architecture of the temple were part of that creative effort to imagine a fuller and more intense mode of existence. But it was also a program for action. In their ritual, the people of Ugarit reenacted the battles of Baal and his enthronement on Mount Zaphon in a sacred drama. This autumnal festival marked the start of the New Year: Baal’s victories were repeated and imitated so that the lifegiving rain would fall once again and the city be preserved in safety against the lawless forces of destruction. This enthronement ceremony also made Ugarit part of Baal’s “eternal heritage,”28 a haven—or so they hoped—of peace and plenty.
A central figure in the liturgy was the person of the king, who sat enthroned, his head glistening with the oil of victory as Baal’s representative. Like other kings in the Near East, he was regarded as the viceroy of the god and had clearly defined duties. At this point, the people of the Near East did not have extravagant hopes of religion. “Salvation” for them did not mean immortality: that was a prerogative of the gods alone. Their aim was more modest: to help the gods to sustain a decent, ordered life on earth, holding hostile forces at bay. War was an essential part of the king’s duties: the enemies of a city were often identified with the forces of chaos, because they could be just as destructive. Yet war was waged for the sake of peace. At his coronation, a Near Eastern king would often swear to build temples for the gods of his city and keep them in good repair. Thus the city’s lifeline to the divine world would be preserved intact. But he also had a duty to build canals for the city and to ensure that it was properly fortified at all times. No city was worthy of the name if it could not provide its citizens with security from their enemies. At the beginning and end of the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh, the people of Uruk were exhorted to admire the strength and craftsmanship of the city walls:
Inspect the foundation terrace and examine the brickwork
If its brickwork be not of burnt bricks
and if the seven [wise men] did not lay its foundations.29
King Gilgamesh had tried to transcend the human condition; he had left his city and gone to seek eternal life. His quest failed, but, the poet tells us, at least he had been able to ensure that his city was safe from attack, and had anchored himself in Uruk, the one place on earth that he was meant to be.
But a Near Eastern king also had another task. He had to impose the law, which was widely regarded as a divine creation which had been revealed to the king by the gods. In a famous stele, the great eighteenth-century Babylonian king Hammurabi is shown standing in front of the enthroned god Shemesh and receiving the laws from him. In his law code, he asserts that he was appointed by the gods
to cause justice to prevail in the land,
to destroy the wicked and the evil,
that the strong might not oppress the weak.30
Besides maintaining the physical fabric of the city, the king was bound to preserve its social order. It was no good building fortifications against external foes if exploitation, poverty, and discontent were likely to cause instability within the city. The king therefore presented himself as the shepherd of his people, as Hammurabi explained in the epilogue of his code:
I made the people rest in friendly habitations;
I did not let them have anyone to terrorize them …
So I became the beneficent shepherd whose scepter is righteous;
My benign shadow is spread over the city.
In my bosom I carried the people of Sumer and Akkad;
They prospered under my protection;
I have governed them in peace;
I have sheltered them in my strength.31
In Ugarit too the king was supposed to take good care of widows and orphans:32 by making sure that justice and fair dealing prevailed in the city, he would also ensure that famine and drought would be held at bay and the land would remain fertile. Both were essential to the divine order. A city could not be a peaceful, fecund enclave unless the welfare of the people was a top priority.33 Throughout the Near East, this ideal of social justice was crucial to the notion of sacred kingship and the holy city. People were very much aware that only a privileged elite was able to enjoy the benefits of civilization. The fragile order could easily be overturned by an angry peasantry. Hence the battle for social justice was crucial to the ideal of the city of peace.
Just how crucial can be seen in the history of Ugarit, where some 7,000 city dwellers, who were mostly dependents of the palace, were supported by a mere 25,000 peasants in the surrounding