Ugaritic Texts: Pertaining to Keret

By Scriptural Research Institute

Pertaining to Keret, also called the Legend of Keret, or the Epic of Keret is a collection of three tablets recovered from archaeological digs in the 1920s and 1930s at the ruins of Ugarit, a bronze-age city in northwest Syria, at the foot of the mountain Jebel Aqra on the modern Syrian-Turkish border. They date to Late-Bronze Era, specifically estimated to sometime around 1350 BC based on the name of the scribe Elimelek, who also transcribed the Ba‘al Cycle for King Niqmaddu of Ugarit. The story itself is set much earlier, and in a land far to the east of Ugarit, likely along the Khabur River in eastern modern Syria, and the Tur Abdin highlands of southeastern modern Turkey.

They tell parts of the story of an ancient Hurrian king named Keret, and his wife Hurriya, unfortunately, the tablets are quite damaged, and there were probably once more tablets to the story. The story begins and ends abruptly, suggesting that there was at least one tablet before and after the surviving tablets.Only part of the story of Keret and Hurriya has been found, on three tablets, all of which are broken, leaving a fragmentary story which is, unfortunately, is missing its beginning and ending, and there may have also been another tablet between Tablets 2 and 3. The surviving story begins with King Keret of Beth Khubur having already lost everything other than his throne. In some respects, the story has parallels to the Book of Job, both at the beginning and at the end, with a parallel to Homer’s Illiad in the middle. It begins with his entire family having died, and him being the only surviving son of his mother. Also, his wife and children have died, although the details of how everyone died have not survived.

The Bull god El came to Keret in his dreams and told him to march his army to the land of Ủdủm, and attack the towns and villages, capturing the women that worked the fields and as woodcutters. Then to wait seven days until the king of Ủdủm agreed to his terms, and surrendered his eldest daughter to Keret to become his new wife. While it is not entirely clear where the story is set, the names Beth Khubur and Ủdủm suggest the Khabur River tributary of the Euphrates River, in eastern modern Syria. Beth Khubur is a combination of two words, bt, meaning house or temple in Canaanite, and ḫbr, originally the Sumerian word for river, which was adopted by the Akkadians as the name for two major tributaries of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers. The Khabur which was a tributary for the Euphrates has four major sources, three of which are in the Tur Abdin highlands of southeastern Turkey, which is likely what was being referred to as Ủdủm in the story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scriptural Research Institute
• Release date: Oct 9, 2021
• ISBN: 9781990289262

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Copyright

While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher assumes no responsibility for errors or omissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

UGARITIC TEXTS: PERTAINING TO KERET

Digital edition. October 6, 2021

Copyright © 2021 Scriptural Research Institute

ISBN: 978-1-990289-26-2

This English translation was created by the Scriptural Research Institute in 2021, primarily from C. Virolleaud’s photographs and French translations in La ligende phinicienne de Danel (1936), Le roi Keret et son fils (II K), in Syria, volume 22 (1941), and Le mariage du roi Keret (III K), in Syria, Volume 23 (1945). Additionally H. L. Ginsberg’s The Legend of King Keret and C. H. Gordon’s transliteration in Ugaritic Hand-book (1947) were used for comparative analysis.

The image used for the cover is a photograph of AO 27987 at the Louvre, which is one of the best-surviving tablets found at Ugarit.

Note: The notes for this book include multiple ancient scripts. For your device to properly render them, it will require a Unicode font capable of displaying Akkadian Cuneiform, Arabic, Coptic, Greek, Extended Latin, Hebrew, Imperial Aramaic, Linear A, Linear B, Phoenician, Syriac, and of course Ugaritic. A Unicode font used to resolve these issues that runs on all operating systems is the Noto font family from Google.

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Pertaining to Keret, also called the Legend of Keret, or the Epic of Keret is a collection of three tablets recovered from archaeological digs in the 1920s and 1930s at the ruins of Ugarit, a bronze-age city in northwest Syria, at the foot of the mountain Jebel Aqra (جبل الأقرع / Cebel-i Akra) on the modern Syrian-Turkish border. They date to Late-Bronze Era, specifically estimated to sometime around 1350 BC based on the name of the scribe Elimelek, who also transcribed the Ba‘al Cycle for King Niqmaddu of Ugarit. The story itself is set much earlier, and in a land far to the east of Ugarit, likely along the Khabur River in eastern modern Syria, and the Tur Abdin highlands of southeastern modern Turkey.

They tell parts of the story of an ancient Hurrian king named Keret, and his wife Hurriya, unfortunately, the tablets are quite damaged, and there were probably once more tablets to the story. The story begins and ends abruptly, suggesting that there was at least one tablet before and after the surviving tablets. Additionally, there was probably an additional tablet between tablets B (III K) and C (II K). The tablets were not found and translated in the order of their place in the story of Keret, resulting in the academic names of the tablets being in the wrong order for the story, and therefore they are listed here as Tablets A, B, and C, representing the tablets I K, III K, and II K, respectively.

The tablets are written in Ugaritic, an ancient Canaanite script used in the city of Ugarit in the Late Bronze Age. The Ugaritic language was closely related to the later Canaanite language, and subsequent Aramaic and Hebrew languages, however, its script was unique. The Ugaritic script was an early alphabet, however, used the wedge shapes from the cuneiform scripts. Several abecedaries have been found in the ruins