Yarikh

In the Ugaritic texts, Yarikh appears both in strictly religious context, in rituals and offering lists, and in narrative compositions.

Ugarit ceased to exist during the Bronze Age collapse, and while Yarikh continued to be worshiped in the Levant and Transjordan, attestations from the first millennium BCE are relatively rare.

The name Yarikh (Yariḫ; 𐎊𐎗𐎃 YRḪ[2]) is an ordinary Ugaritic word which can refer not only to the lunar god, but also to the moon as a celestial body.

[17] Due to Yarikh's association with Larugardu, it has additionally been argued that the god Hadabal (dNI.DA.KUL), who was worshiped there in the third millennium BCE, had lunar character,[9] but this conclusion is not universally accepted.

[16] Alfonso Archi assumes that the diffusion of Hadabal's cult, whose territorial extent is well documented in Eblaite texts, does not appear to match his presumed astral character.

[10][12] However, Ichiro Nakata lists them separately from each other in his overview of deities attested in Mari, unlike the various variants of the names of the weather or solar gods.

[19] The deity Sin-Amurrum, attested in the incantation series Maqlû (tablet VI, verse 4)[12] according to Karel van der Toorn might be the Mesopotamian name of the Amorite moon god.

[29] Furthermore, a single passage refers to him as "the most pleasant of the gods" (n’mn ‘ilm), which was apparently meant to highlight his physical attractiveness.

"[41] Additionally, a single name known from a text written in the standard cuneiform script uses the logogram d30 as the theophoric element, but it is not certain if it refers to Yarikh or another lunar deity.

[45] Further lunar deities known from Ugarit include Saggar, a god presumed to be analogous to Eblaite Šanugaru, who was worshiped in association with Išḫara,[46] hll (reading uncertain, sometimes assumed to be analogous to the god Hulelu from Emar), the father of the Kotharat, whose name might be a cognate of the Arabic word hilālun, which lead to the proposal that he was the god of the lunar crescent,[47] and Kas’a, only attested in association of Yarikh and based on presumed cognates in other Semitic languages, for example Habrew, presumed to represent a presently unidentified lunar phase.

[52] Marriage of Nikkal and Yarikh (KTU 1.24) is the Ugaritic narrative composition which is focused on the moon god to the greatest degree.

[53] It is agreed that it describes the circumstances which lead to the marriage of the eponymous deities, though its genre continues to be a topic of ongoing scholarly debate.

[54] After a proemium, which mentions some of the deities involved in the plot, and a number of verses dealing with the Kotharat, Yarikh is introduced bargaining with the god Ḫiriḫibi (who is not attested in any other sources[55]) to be granted the permission to marry Nikkal.

[55] Yarikh offers to pay a high bride price, including large amounts of gold, silver and lapis lazuli, and additionally states that he will "make her [Nikkal's] fields orchards," which is most likely an euphemistic way to refer to his ability to sire an heir.

[65] Steve A. Wiggins points out that even if it is accepted that sex is described, neither deity is mentioned by name, which makes it difficult to evaluate this proposal.

[82] Talish occurs in parallel with Dimgay, another minor goddess, the handmaiden of Athirat, which is sometimes used to argue in favor of them being a single deity with a binomial name, Dimgay-wa-Talish (dmg w tlš).

[82] Since a well known Mesopotamian composition casts Sin in the role of a god helping in such situations, Yarikh's absence from the surviving sections of the text, coupled with Talish being explicitly associated with him, is considered difficult to explain by researchers.

[10] However, it is not impossible that more than one deity of such character was present in the local pantheon,[86] and Gary Beckman lists the West Semitic reading as one of the four possibilities, next to Mesopotamian, Hurrian and Anatolian (Arma).

[89] While Ugarit ceased to exist during the Late Bronze Age collapse, possibly due to the activity of the Sea Peoples,[90] the worship of Yarikh continued elsewhere in the first millennium BCE.

[92] The research of Phoenician religion is considered difficult due to the scarcity of written materials and the small number of direct references to deities other than the principal patron of each city, such as Baalat Gebal in Byblos, Eshmun in Sidon or Melqart in Tyre.

[94] The Phoenician version of the Karatepe bilingual mentions the sun and the moon in a context which might indicate that deities corresponding to them are meant, but they are not singled out in such a way as the weather god Baal is in the same document.

[97] Lunar symbols are present on Punic stelae, though since the accompanying inscriptions usually only mention the heads of the pantheon, Baal Hammon and Tanit, it has been argued that they represent the former of these two deities, rather than Yarikh.

[99] Additionally, it is possible that said symbols, as well as other similar astral ones, do not represent any specific god, but are meant to illustrate the celestial nature of the main deities.

[101] One of the Ammonite kings bore the name yrḥ'zr (Jeraheazar), "Yarikh is my helper," as attested in an inscription on the plinth of a royal statue dated to around 700 BCE.

[102] Ammonite seals depicting the crescent moon are known from the seventh century BCE, but they might be related to the worship of Sin of Harran, who was known in many areas to the west and south of his cult center in the Neo-Assyrian period.

[103] The evidence from the Moabite kingdom, which developed in parallel with the Ammon in the early first millennium BCE,[103] is limited to artistic depictions of the lunar crescent.

[105] Evidence includes toponyms and, according to Gabriele Theuer, theophoric names invoking Yarikh,[106] though according to Brian B. Schmidt certain examples of the latter are presently lacking.

[110] It has been suggested that the numerous references to the moon being a celestial body subordinate to Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible might reflect a religious polemic against the worship of lunar deities,[111][112] though researchers note that caution is required in using this information to reconstruct the culture of the kingdoms prior to the period of Babylonian captivity.

[114] It is difficult how many of these references can be considered sources of information about Yarikh, as it possible that they do not necessarily reflect a struggle against the preexisting cult of a local lunar deity, but rather the Mesopotamian traditions centered in Harran, which in the period of captivity and later might have been perceived as a competing creed.