Iškur-Adad, later Ba`al, played a key role in the cosmology of Mesopotamia for the next 2,500 years. Until the early 2 nd millennium B.C., it wouldn’t have been a compliment for Enki, the god responsible for the fresh water of the abzu and the fundamental laws of civilization, the mes, to be compared with a minor deity like Iškur. Sometimes they’re brother-sister twins, such as Apollo and Artemis sometimes divine-mortal twins, like Castor and Pollux and sometimes, as in this case, a pair of brothers, one more important than the other, at least in the early days. This may be an early example of the “twin gods” motif in ancient mythology. As god of the heavenly waters, Iškur was sometimes praised as the twin brother of Enki. We know they’re the same because the Sumerian logogram for Hadda/Adad was the same used for Iškur ( dIM). He first appeared under the name Hadda at Ebla around 2500 B.C., and as Adad in Old Akkadian texts, the period of history that began with the empire of Sargon the Great around 2330 B.C. The storm-god brought necessary rain for the crops needed to survive but he could also destroy fields with wind, hail, and flood.

But based on prayers and rituals that have been preserved, it appears Iškur, like most of the Mesopotamian gods and goddesses, could be good or bad depending on his mood. Unfortunately, the ruins of Karkara haven’t been discovered yet, so we don’t know much about his cult or the local traditions about him. Adab was near Karkara, site of Iškur’s temple, the House of the Big Storms. The first written evidence of the cult of Iškur comes from the cities Lagash and Adab in the middle of the 3 rd millennium B.C. As the patron god of Karkara, a minor city near Uruk in southern Mesopotamia, Iškur’s cult center didn’t have enough political clout to elevate him into the upper rank of the pantheon, as Babylon later did for Marduk. This could mean that Iškur wasn’t a native Sumerian deity but an import from Sumer’s Semitic-speaking neighbors. He was believed to be the son of Anu, although some traditions claimed that Enlil was his father. This left Iškur looking like a pale imitation of the others, a third-tier superhero in a comic book universe. The chief god Enlil and his son, the war-god Ninurta, also had storm-god characteristics. Farther north, where rain was key to agriculture, Iškur played a larger role in the pantheon. Irrigation was far more important than rainfall for growing crops in southern Mesopotamia. That’s logical in a land that’s mostly desert, a god of storms and life-bringing rain wasn’t as important as Enki, who controlled the fresh waters of the Tigris and Euphrates. However, Iškur was a minor deity in the Sumerian pantheon. The earliest of these storm-god manifestations was Iškur (note: the š sounds like “sh”). Of course, Ba`al is best known as Zeus-Jupiter to the Romans. Ba`al has also been identified with the Hurrian god Teššub, the Hittite god Tarhunt (or Tarhun), the Urartian god Teisheba, the Sumerian god Iškur, the Amorite god Amurru (incorrectly, as it happens), and others.

Over time, Ba`al replaced the original name of the West Semitic storm-god Hadad (or Haddu), who was also called Adad/Addu by the Akkadians.

We’ve already seen how Sumerian Inanna became Babylon’s Ishtar, the Semitic Astarte, Aphrodite of Greece, and Venus of Rome. There may be a few here and there who try to recreate the old religion of the ancient Canaanites, but like aging pop divas, the old gods reinvented themselves as time and people moved on. He’s not recognized as an active deity in our world today, to the best of our knowledge. And Ba`al wasn’t the only one over time, Babylon’s chief god Marduk came to be known as Bel, which also means “lord”.īa`al has had a long career. That’s rather arrogant, when you think about it. It means “lord”, in the same way we Christians usually say Lord (and our Bibles read Lord) instead of saying Yahweh or spelling out YHWH. Stela at the Louvre from the ancient city of Ugarit depicting Ba`al with his characteristic mace and thunderbolt.īa`al isn’t a name, it’s a title. Jesus discussed him with the Pharisees (see Matthew 12:22-28). Ba`al, on the other hand, appears 106 times in 88 verses (including personal and place names, like Baal-zephon).īa`al arrives in Exodus and he’s still around in the New Testament. One could argue that he was even more of a villain in the Bible than Satan, who’s only mentioned in fourteen Old Testament verses, in the books of 1 Chronicles, Job, and Zechariah. Ba`al was the main enemy of Yahweh in the Old Testament.

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