Chief Priest Attanu the Diviner and Scribe Ilimilku of Shuban,
subjects of King Niqmaddu of the Kingdom of Ugarit
(c. mid-14th century to late-13th century BCE)
“A mortal—what does he get in the end?
What does a mortal finally get?
Glaze poured on his head,
lime on top of his skull.
As every man dies, I will die;
yes, I too will surely die.”
- This quote comes from the tablet archive of the ancient Kingdom of Ugarit (which fell around 1200 BCE). Ugarit was a city-state that espoused Canaanite religious beliefs and had a language of the Northwest Semitic linguistic family—to which Hebrew and Aramaic also belong. Ruins of Ugarit were unearthed at Ras Shamra/Cape Fennel, Syria, in 1928, resulting in the discovery of intact and restorable tablets. The quote above comes from a particular tablet series labeled “Belonging to Aqhat”—specifically, the passage can be traced to Aqhat, Tablet 1, Column 6, between lines 35-40. It involves the legendary Canaanite ancestors, Danel and his son Aqhat (hence the title of the series), and their complicated experiences with the Canaanite gods. A certain Ilimilku of Shuban, under the direction of Chief Priest Attanu the Diviner and supported by the patronage of King Niqmaddu of Ugarit, was a scribe responsible for copying down many of the tablets involving Canaanite mythology, including the Aqhat series. This passage was translated into English by Michael D. Coogan and Mark S. Smith in their book, Stories from Ancient Canaan (Second Edition), published by Westminster John Knox Press in 1978 (and a second edition in 2012).
