The
Canaanite religion was practiced by people living in the ancient
Levant throughout the
Bronze Age and
Iron Age. Until the excavation (1928 onwards) of the city of
Ras Shamra (known as
Ugarit in antiquity) in northern
Syria and the discovery of its Bronze Age archive of clay tablet alphabetic
cuneiform texts, scholars knew little about Canaanite religious practice.
Papyrus seems to have been the preferred writing material for
scribes at the time. Unlike the papyrus documents found in Egypt, ancient papyri in the Levant have often simply decayed from exposure to the humid
Mediterranean climate. As a result, the accounts in the
Bible became the primary sources of information on ancient Canaanite religion. Supplementing the Biblical accounts, several secondary and tertiary Greek sources have survived, including
Lucian of Samosata's treatise
De Dea Syria (The Syrian Goddess, 2nd century CE), fragments of the
Phoenician History of
Sanchuniathon as preserved by
Philo of Byblos (c. 64 – 141 CE), and the writings of
Damascius ( 458 – after 538). Recent study of the Ugaritic material has uncovered additional information about the religion, supplemented by inscriptions from the Levant and
Tel Mardikh archive (excavated in the early 1960s). Like other peoples of the ancient Near East, the Canaanites were
polytheistic, with families typically focusing worship on ancestral
household gods and goddesses while acknowledging the existence of other
deities such as
Baal,
Anath, and
El. Kings also played an important religious role and in certain ceremonies, such as the
sacred marriage of the
New Year Festival; Canaanites may have revered their kings as gods. According to the pantheon, known in Ugarit as 'ilhm (
Elohim) or the children of El (compare the Biblical "
sons of God"), the
creator deity called El, fathered the other deities. In the Greek sources he was married to Beruth (
Beirut, the city). The pantheon was supposedly obtained by
Philo of Byblos from
Sanchuniathon of Berythus (
Beirut). The marriage of the deity with the city seems to have biblical parallels with the stories that link
Melkart with
Tyre,
Yahweh with
Jerusalem, and
Tanit and
Baal Hammon with
Carthage.
El Elyon is mentioned (as
God Most High) in Genesis 14.18–19 as the God whose priest was
Melchizedek, king of Salem. Philo states that the union of El Elyon and his consort resulted in the birth of
Uranus and
Ge (Greek names for
Heaven and
Earth). This closely parallels the opening verse of the Hebrew Bible,
Genesis 1:1—"In the beginning God (
Elohim) created the
Heavens (
Shemayim) and the Earth" (
Eretz). It also parallels the story of the Babylonian
Anunaki gods. ==Abrahamic religions==