Baal with Thunderbolt Stele

Overview

The Baal with Thunderbolt stele is a white limestone relief from Ugarit, about 1.42 m high, showing the storm god Baal striding with a club raised in his right hand and a spear in his left whose shaft ends in a stylised thunderbolt. He wears a horned helmet and a kilt; a smaller figure, usually taken to be the king of Ugarit, stands before him on a low base. It is the best known of the Ugaritic stelae.

Archaeological Evidence

The stele was found in 1932 on the acropolis of Ugarit, about twenty metres from the temple of Baal and on its southern slope, during the excavations directed by Claude Schaeffer; it is generally thought to have stood inside the temple. It is dated to the Late Bronze Age, around the fifteenth century BC, and is held by the Louvre in Paris as AO 15775.

Biblical Significance

Baal is the deity whose worship the Old Testament repeatedly condemns, from the Baal of Peor (Numbers 25) to the contest on Mount Carmel (1 Kings 18) and the reforms of Josiah (2 Kings 23). This relief is the clearest surviving image of how his worshippers depicted him: a storm god holding the lightning, the same claim to power over rain and harvest that the prophets set against the LORD.