Myth written in stone. The submerged monument in the kinneret sea in the light of the ugaritic myth of aqhat

Abstract

ABSTRACT The literary corpus found in Ugarit/Ras Shamra includes some 1500 administrative and religious texts found so far. One of the most famous texts is the myth of Aqhat, who was murdered by an assassin, and whose death was avenged by his family. Many literary and grammatical aspects of this text have been widely discussed during the last decades. They mostly treat it as a purely fictional story, which may not be studied in a real historical or geographical context. However, the mythological motives and imaginary stories of gods and heroes were created by real people, who lived in the real world. They grew up and lived in a physical landscape which must have had a profound influence on their personality and perception of the surrounding world, and it should not surprise us to find traces of this landscape in the mythology. We try to explain these discrepancies and propose the general historical and cultural background for this story and the way the Aqhat myth has roots in landscape of the Lower Galilee and Sea of Galilee.