5 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.
The Canaanite gods were worshipped by the peoples of the Levant, including the Phoenicians, great navigators and traders of the Mediterranean. Headed by El and the storm god Baal, they were honored in cities such as Ugarit, Tyre, and Carthage. Their myths, rediscovered on the Ugarit tablets, closely echo the biblical traditions.
Worship followed Baal's agricultural cycle, with autumn festivals calling for the rains and laments for his descent into the world of the dead. The faithful worshipped at the "high places" (bamot) and in city temples, with stone steles, incense, and animal sacrifices.
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At a glance
Mot (Ugaritic: 𐎎𐎚, Môtu; Biblical Hebrew: מָוֶת, Māweṯ; Phoenician: 𐤌𐤕, Mūt) is the Northwest Semitic god of inescapable physical death, sterility, scorched summer drought, and the subterranean netherworld. Serving as the primary antagonist across the second major movement of the Ugaritic Baal Cycle preserved in alphabetic cuneiform from Ras Shamra (c. 14th–12th centuries BCE), Mot personifies the entropic cosmic forces that periodically challenge terrestrial life and fertility. Recognized by supreme patriarch El under the affectionate title ydd il ("Beloved of El") and binu ʾilīma Môtu ("Divine Son of the Gods, Motu"), his imperial seat is established within the subterranean city of Hmry ("Miry Deep" or "Muck"), where his throne rests upon pits of filth and putrescence. Unlike celestial gods who relish grain offerings and libations of wine, Mot possesses an insatiable, monstrous appetite likened to lions roaming desert wastes and predatory marine beasts: his colossal maw is described with an inferior lip resting on the earth and a superior lip brushing the heavens, while his tongue licks the stars. In the epic tablets, he demands the total surrender of storm lord Baal-Hadad and swallows him into the nether depths, inflicting universal desiccation upon Canaanite soils and provoking cosmic mourning from El and Anat. Following a seven-year cycle, warrior maiden Anat tracks Mot down, cleaves his body with a sword, winnows him in a sieve, scorches him in fire, pulverizes his bones under millstones, and scatters his remnants across the fields for birds. Revived through his primeval nature, Mot engages Baal in an exhausting hand-to-hand duel atop Mount Saphon until sun goddess Shapshu intervenes on El's behalf, warning Mot that the high patriarch will overturn his underworld throne should he persist, compelling Mot to capitulate and formally concede Baal's everlasting dominion.
Genealogy according to Ciclo de Baal de Ugarit (tabletes KTU 1.4 VIII, KTU 1.5 I–VI, KTU 1.6 I–VI); História Fenícia de Filão de Biblos / Sanchuniathon (preservada em Eusébio, Praeparatio Evangelica I.9–10); Textos Bíblicos Hebraicos (Habacuque 2:5; Jó 18:13; Isaías 28:15; Jeremias 9:21); Umberto Cassuto (1962); John C. L. Gibson (1978); Mark S. Smith (1994, 2002); Nicolas Wyatt (2002)
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Sources and further reading
Primary sources
Scribes of Ras Shamra & Virolleaud, Charles, Baal Cycle of Ugarit (Cuneiform tablets KTU 1.4 VIII, KTU 1.5 and KTU 1.6 of the Louvre Museum). translation: Critical edition, cuneiform transcription and documentation on the Wikipedia portal. read
Sanchuniathon & Philo of Byblos (trans. Eusebius of Caesarea), Phoenician History / Theogony of Byblos (fragments of Praeparatio Evangelica Book I, chs. 9–10). translation: Classical text preserved on Muth, Thanatos and Pluto on the Wikipedia portal. read
Biblical scribes of Judah, Hebrew Prophetic Texts on the Personification of Death (Jeremiah 9:21; Habakkuk 2:5; Job 18:13). translation: Masoretic Codex and philological studies on the Wikipedia portal. read
Studies
Equipe Editorial do Projeto Enciclopédico Wikimedia, Entry Mot (deity): Death in the Canaanite Pantheon, Ugaritic Texts and Semitic Record. Wikimedia Foundation, 2026. open
Spar, Ira & Curatorial Team of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Gods and Goddesses of Canaan. The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History, 2023. open
Cassuto, Umberto, Baal and Mot in the Ugaritic Texts. Israel Exploration Journal, vol. 12, no. 2, 1962. open
Name and epithets
The theonym Môtu is identical to the Proto-Semitic common noun *mawt- ("death"), attested across all branches of the Afroasiatic language phylum (Arabic mawt, Aramaic mōtā, Hebrew māweṯ, Akkadian mūtu).
In the ancient sources
Baal Cycle of Ras Shamra (Tablets KTU 1.4 VIII, KTU 1.5 and KTU 1.6), 14th–12th centuries BCE. The paramount literary and theological record detailing the summons sent to Baal, the swallowing of the storm god, Anat's re…
The myths
The Nether Summons and the Swallowing of Baal (KTU 1.4 VIII – KTU 1.5). Upon finalizing the architectural construction of his mountain palace on Mount Saphon, Baal-Hadad dispatches his messengers Gupan and Ugar into the…
Worship and archaeology
Unlike beneficent deities governing rain, fertility, and civil kingship, Motu received no established public temples, civic priesthoods, or regular sacrificial calendars in Ugarit or coastal Phoenicia.
How the god was depicted
Iconographic depictions of Motu in ancient Levantine literature focus intensely upon his monstrous and boundless oral anatomy.
What scholars debate
Seasonal Agrarian Cycle versus Cosmic Existential Crisis. Scholars of Semitic religion debate whether the struggle between Baal and Motu portrays the annual Mediterranean dry season followed by autumn rains (the seasona…
After antiquity
Modern scholarship on Motu was inaugurated in the 1930s following the discovery and translation of the Ras Shamra tablets by Charles Virolleaud and René Dussaud.
Did you know?
In Biblical and Modern Hebrew, the regular noun for death is māweṯ (construct state: môt), preserving the identical Northwest Semitic root that designated the Canaanite underworld god over three millennia ago.
Codex relic
Jaws of the Underworld. The colossal jaws that stretch from sky to earth to swallow the living and the gods alike.
The rest of this scroll is sealed
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