Tuesday, February 15, 2022

El in the Ugaritic Pantheon as an Inebriated God

  

. . . 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)