The main source of information about Mot in Canaanite mythology comes from the texts discovered at Ugarit,[1] but he is also mentioned in the surviving fragments of Philo of Byblos's Greek translation of the writings of the Phoenician Sanchuniathon.

'Anat then comes upon Mot, seizing him, splitting him with a blade, winnowing him in a sieve, burning him in a fire, grinding him under a millstone, and throwing what remains in the end over a field for birds to devour.

A single combat between the two breaks out until the sun goddess Shapash upbraids Mot, informing him that his own father, El, will turn against him and overturn his throne if he continues.

Modern scholars have disputed such views as a failure to take into account the original narrative and cultural context, pointing instead to a purposeful subversion of the Baal/Mot myth on the part of the authors of the Hebrew Bible, working in a framework of an audience who were well-acquainted with the religious worldview of the surrounding nations.

In this account, Death is a son of 'El and counted as a god, as the text says in speaking of 'El/Cronus: And not long after another of his sons by Rhea, named Muth, having died, he deifies him, and the Phoenicians call him Thanatos ['Death'] and Pluto.But in an earlier philosophical creation myth, Sanchuniathon refers to a great wind that merged with its parents, and that connection was called 'Desire' (πόθος): From its connection, Mot was produced, which some say is mud, and others a putrescence of watery compound; and out of this came every germ of creation and the generation of the universe.