. . . El is most definitely
portrayed as the divine patriarch, around whom the rest gather. To quote the
most relevant lines:
El settles into his bacchanal.
El drinks wine until sated,
Vintage till inebriated.
El staggers to his house,
Stumbles in to his court.
Thukamuna and Shunama carry him . . .(CAT 1.114)
Some scholars have pointed out
that El’s inebriation is portrayed as excessive and therefore as one of the
multiple signs that he was already a diminished god, regarded by the younger
gods as part of the “old generation.” However, given the banqueting tradition
at Ugarit and in view of comparative evidence for the social importance of feasting
in the Mediterranean, it seems that El’s drunkenness was by Canaanite standards
quite in harmony with elite social and religious customs. (Carolina López-Ruiz, When the Gods Were
Born: Greek Cosmogonies and the Near East [Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 2010], 123)
