Shapash was the sun, called "the Torch of the Gods" (npš ilm); she was a goddess in the Ugaritic system, in contrast to the masculine sun-gods of Mesopotamia and Egypt. She was the announcer of news among the gods, the searcher who could find what was hidden, and the messenger who carried word from the upper world to the lower. When Baal was killed, it was Shapash who guided Anat to his body; when Mot was destroyed, it was Shapash who brought back the news. "Pale Shapash," she is called in mourning passages; in her brightness, the bright torch.
Before thisResheph
Next on the wallAdonis
Curator’s note
What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay
Shapash is the Ugaritic counterpart of Hebrew Shemesh, the sun, who in earlier Israelite religion had cultic recognition (place-names Beth-Shemesh, Ein-Shemesh; the prophetic denunciations of sun-worship at the Jerusalem temple in Ezekiel 8:16 and 2 Kings 23:11). Her feminine gender at Ugarit links her to the female solar deities of Anatolia (Sun-Goddess of Arinna) and Arabia (Shams), as opposed to the male sun-gods of Mesopotamia (Shamash) and Egypt (Re). She has no developed myths of her own at Ugarit; her role is to be helpful to others.
Kin in the sources
Each tie is quoted from the entry that states it.
Companion ofAnatit was Shapash who guided Anat to his body
Companion ofBaalWhen Baal was killed, it was Shapash who guided Anat to his body
When the sources speak
Dated witnesses for Canaan and Phoenicia. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline
- c. 3400–3000 BCE
- Uruk-period writing and monumental temple economies create the earliest recoverable administrative setting for named divine institutions.
- c. 2900–2350 BCE
- Early Dynastic city-states preserve local cults, hymns, royal inscriptions, and god lists; later copies often transmit older compositions.
- c. 2334–2154 BCE
- The Akkadian Empire expands bilingual and imperial patterns of divine identification without erasing local cult titles.
- c. 2112–2004 BCE
- Ur III administration and scribal schooling standardize many Sumerian literary and liturgical forms.
- c. 2000–1600 BCE
- Old Babylonian schools copy major myths, laments, hymns, debates, and heroic narratives in the form most often used by modern editors.
- c. 1650–1200 BCE
- Hittite and Hurrian archives at Hattusa transmit Anatolian myths, imported Syrian materials, and ritual compositions.
- c. 1400–1190 BCE
- The tablets of Ugarit preserve the Baal Cycle, Kirta, Aqhat, ritual lists, and a dense Late Bronze Age West Semitic pantheon.
- c. 1000–612 BCE
- Neo-Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empires collect, revise, and politically reinterpret older learned traditions.