Death itself, with a lip to earth and a lip to sky, who swallowed the storm-god Baal and was ground to dust by the goddess Anat for it.
Born
1500 BCE
Died
100 CE
Lived
1,600 years
Dead for
1,926 yrs
Cause of death
Forgotten
Replaced by
later Levantine religions
The Obituary
Mot was the Canaanite and Ugaritic personification of death and the underworld, the devouring power of drought and sterility. In the Baal Cycle his appetite is cosmic, one lip to the earth and one to the sky, and he swallows the storm-god Baal, bringing barrenness to the world. The warrior-goddess Anat then splits, burns, and grinds him to dust. Known almost entirely from the Ugaritic tablets unearthed at Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra, Syria), his cult ended with the Bronze Age collapse and was forgotten.
Worth remembering
He is described with one lip touching the earth and the other the heavens, his throat an endless grave.
After he swallows Baal, the goddess Anat destroys him, and his cyclical death-and-return mirrors the dry season.
Gallery
Stone palace entrance and corbel at the ruins of Ugarit (Ras Shamra), SyriaDisdero · CC BY 3.0Entrance to the archaeological site of Ugarit (Ras Shamra), north of Latakia, SyriaMbenoist · CC BY-SA 3.0
Sources
Mot was the Canaanite god of death and the underworld Wikipedia
In the Baal Cycle, Mot swears to devour Baal, who cannot be defeated by magical weapons; Baal sends a double in his place and the gods mourn; eventually Anat kills Mot and Baal re-emerges, with Mot's defeat representing the return of rain and fertility World History Encyclopedia
A graveyard tradition: leave a stone to show you came, and remembered.
Buried nearby — by shared fate or a neighbouring lifespan.
