Death was personified and given distinctive character traits by theologians and writers in the ancient Middle East. Specifically, we are focusing here on the West Semitic writings of the Canaanite regions, as well as comments on Death and the underworld written down by the Hebrews of ancient Israel. In the Hebrew Bible (or Tanakh), most of the personification is attached to the Jewish realm of the dead—Sheol (the underworld, in general), Abaddon (“the place of destruction”), and Gehenna (the closest thing that the ancient Hebrews had to Hell). Biblical authors wrote of the underworld, often nicknamed the Pit or the Depths, having a huge mouth and an unsatiable appetite. It was sometimes described as a dark, damp chasm, and other times as a fiery place, but it was always hungry for human souls. The author of the Book of Isaiah wrote:
“Therefore Sheol has enlarged its appetite
and opened its mouth beyond measure;
the nobility of Jerusalem and her multitude go down,
her throng and all who exult in her.”
(Isaiah 5.14)
Similarly, the authors of Proverbs wrote:
“Sheol and Abaddon are never satisfied,
and human eyes are never satisfied.”
(Proverbs 27.20)
and
“Sheol, the barren womb,
the earth ever-thirsty for water,
and the fire that never says, ‘Enough.’”
(Proverbs 30.16)
While such characteristics of hunger, thirst, and an open maw, were usually associated with the underworldly places of Sheol, Abaddon and Gehenna, the Hebrew Bible does make rare mention of a personified Death figure, too. This personified Death entity, curiously, had a special connection to windows, as these structural features were believed to be a passageway through which the personification of Death could pass and spread deadly influence. On this notion that windows give Death some access to households, the author of the Book of Jeremiah wrote:
“Death has come up into our windows;
it has entered our palaces
to cut off the children from the streets
and the young men from the squares.”
(Jeremiah 9.21)
Interestingly, the connection between windows and the personification of Death is also present in the West Semitic religious writings of the Canaanite regions. This curious feature appeared in an ancient tale about a feud between the storm god, Baal, and the god of death, Mot. At the start of the tale, when Baal was unsure of his ability to resist the death god, he curiously went out of his way to make sure his abode was windowless. With this in mind, Baal made sure to veto any plans by the craftsman god, Kothar-wa-Hasis, to construct any semblance of a window for a palace that was being built for the storm god. This mythological tale was preserved on tablets entitled Belonging to Baal (or just Baal) in the ancient archive of the Kingdom of Ugarit (which fell around 1200 BCE). On the conversation between the storm god and the craftsman deity, the tablets stated:
“And Kothar-wa-Hasis replied:
‘Listen, Baal the Conquereor,
pay attention, Rider on the Clouds:
I should put an opening in the house,
a window in the palace.’
But Baal the Conqueror replied:
‘Don’t put an opening in the house,
a window in the palace.’”
(Baal, Tablet 4, Column 5, approximately lines 59-65)
Kothar-wa-Hasis followed Baal’s instructions, but the storm god began to reconsider after he ascended to more power and became a rival in influence to the high-god of the pantheon, El. Confident in his growing power and now less wary of the death god, Baal ultimately decided to bring back the craftsman deity, finally allowing him to build a window in the palace. Yet, Baal likely came to regret this decision, for he was overestimating his power and underestimating the destructive influence of the death god. Consequently, when Baal later clashed with Mot, the death god made short work of the storm deity. Mot, similar to the descriptions of Sheol and Abaddon in the Hebrew Bible, was said to have been a hungry and gluttonous being, longing to swallow the living down into his underworld depths. Fittingly, Mot was said to have chewed Baal to as close to death as a god can get, swallowing the storm god’s soul and trapping him in the realm of the dead. In the Ugaritic tablets, Mot described his quick destruction of the storm god:
“I approached Baal the Conqueror;
I put him in my mouth like a lamb;
he was crushed like a kid in my jaws.”
(Baal, Tablet 6, Column 2, approximately between lines 20-25)
Unfortunately, the tablets do not explicitly state whether the storm god’s palace window incident empowered Mot or weakened Baal. One has to read between the lines, as it were. Yet, when Baal’s sister, the war-goddess Anat (or Anath), later challenged Mot in an effort to save her brother from the gut of the death god, she fared much better than Baal. Perhaps the curse of the window did not apply to her. Whatever the case, whereas Baal was easily crunched and chewed by Mot, Anat contrastingly won her battle against Death, and went on to dismember Mot and curiously sowed his roasted and milled remains into the fields. As Mot and Baal were both immortal gods, the two slain deities ultimately revived and, after a period of recuperation, they resumed their feud.
Written by C. Keith Hansley
Picture Attribution: (The Doctor Dismissing Death, Peter Simon (1764–1813) and Francis Jukes (1747–1812) after Thomas Rowlandson (1757–1827), [Public Domain] via Creative Commons and the MET).
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).
- The Oxford Companion to the Bible, edited by Bruce M. Metzger and Michael D. Coogan. Oxford University Press, 1993.
- The New Oxford Annotated Bible: New Revised Standard Version With The Apocrypha (Fifth Edition, Fully Revised), edited by Michael D. Coogan and associates. Oxford University Press, 2018.
