Ritual and Cult at Ugarit (Writings from the Ancient World)
Dennis Pardee
The Ugaritic ritual texts provide the only extensive   documentary data for Late Bronze cultic practice in the greater   Syro-Palestinian region. These texts, in a West-Semitic language that   belongs to the same family as Hebrew and Aramaic, reflect the actual   practice of a sacrificial cult in the city of Ugarit in the late   twelfth-early eleventh centuries B.C.E. Based on new collations of the   tablets, these texts and translations provide ready access to this direct   witness to the form taken by one of the predecessors of the biblical   sacrificial cult. In addition to the narrowly ritual texts, which were   composed in prose and in a very laconic form of expression, a number of   poetic texts are presented that reveal the ideological link that existed   between cultic practice and the concept of royalty. While the prose ritual   texts document a regular system of offerings to the great deities of the   pantheon, related directly to the lunar cycle and less directly to the   solar year, some of the poetic texts reveal the desire on the part of the   kings of Ugarit to maintain ties with their departed ancestors. The kings   saw their effective power as consisting of a continuum from the royal   ancestors through to the reigning king and the passage of this power as   being effected by ritual practice. More mundane concerns were also   addressed ritually, such as protecting horses or other equids from   snakebite, finding a cure for a sick child, or defending people from attack   by sorcerers. The practice of divination at Ugarit is documented by other   texts, both in the form of "manuals," collections of collections of omens   from past practice, and in the form of accounts of real-world consultations   with a divinatory priest by someone seeking guidance.