Ilimilku of Shuban was a scribe responsible for copying down religious tales and legends on clay tablets in the Kingdom of Ugarit. Ugarit was a city-state located at Ras Shamra/Cape Fennel, Syria, that espoused Canaanite religious beliefs and had a language of the West Semitic linguistic family—to which Hebrew and Aramaic also belong. Ilimilku lived between the mid 14th and late 13th century BCE, and carried out his scrivener tasks under the direction of the city’s chief priest at the time, Attanu the Diviner. Ilimilku and Attanu were both supported in their efforts by the patronage of King Niqmaddu of Ugarit, one of several Ugaritic kings by that name. This information is known because Ilimilku wrote down his name and occupation on the clay documents that he transcribed, and also listed the chief priest and king alongside his signature. On one tablet, Ilimilku lengthily wrote, “The scribe: Ilimilku from Shuban, student of Attanu, the diviner, chief of the priests, chief of the herdsmen, the officiant of Niqmaddu, king of Ugarit, master of Yargub, lord of Tharumani” (Baal, Tablet 6, Column 6, scribal colophon). Ilimilku’s lifetime of work was stored in Ugarit’s temple district, where his tablets, featuring clear and precise writing, were preserved for posterity.
Unfortunately, the Kingdom of Ugarit’s days were numbered, and the city-state ultimately fell around 1200 BCE. Ilimilku’s tablets survived the city’s immediate downfall, but they, like the temple district they were housed within, were buried under the earth. Millennia later, the ruins of Ugarit were rediscovered in 1928. After archaeologists went to work on the site, a treasure trove of Ugaritic and West Semitic cultural material was uncovered, including a vast archive of inscribed clay tablets with contents including the kingdom’s governmental documents (laws, diplomatic correspondence, and temple logs), along with medical texts and materials concerning language (including the complete Ugaritic alphabet and a thesaurus for corresponding foreign words). Most important for this article, Ilimilku of Shuban’s tablets were also discovered remarkably intact, containing his detailed stories about legendary heroes and the Canaanite gods and goddesses.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (Ugaritic Relief with two men signing a contract, [Public Domain via Creative Commons, Catholic University of Leuven, and Europeana).
Sources:
- Stories from Ancient Canaan (Second Edition), translated and edited by Michael D. Coogan and Mark S. Smith. Published by Westminster John Knox Press in 1978 (second edition in 2012).
