The Epic of Kirta
c. 1400–1200 BCE · Late Bronze Age · Ugarit (Ras Shamra), Syria
*This translation is not currently available.* The Epic of Kirta was found at Ras Shamra in 1929 alongside the Baal Cycle tablets. No English translation could exist before the discovery of the tablets. We are actively exploring ways to include this text. Subscribe to our email list at anunnaki.ai for updates when new texts are added.
notes
The Kirta Epic (also called the Legend of King Keret) is one of the three great mythological-epic texts from ancient Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra, Syria), discovered in the archive of the royal palace in 1929. It survives on three clay tablets in the Ugaritic alphabetic cuneiform script, dated to approximately 1400–1200 BCE. The text was copied by a scribe named Ilimilku, who is also named in the Baal Cycle and the Aqhat Epic, suggesting these three texts were commissioned by the same patron or institution. Unlike the purely mythological Baal Cycle, the Kirta Epic is focused on a human king — though one whose origin is explicitly divine (he is described as the "son of El"). The epic addresses the central political and theological concerns of a Bronze Age kingdom: the continuity of the royal dynasty through male heirs, the king's obligation to the gods and to his people, the divine sanction of royal authority, and the consequences of illness and incapacity in a ruler. The text's opening — Kirta alone, all his wives lost, all his children dead, the dynasty extinguished — is one of the most affecting scenes in Ugaritic literature. El's response to Kirta's grief is unusual: he does not offer consolation for loss but a practical solution (march against Udum, take their princess as wife). The god's advice is strategic rather than emotional. The vow-breaking episode, in which Kirta becomes ill because he failed to honour a vow to Athirat, introduces a classic ancient Near Eastern theological structure: prosperity requires fulfilled obligations to the gods, and illness or disaster is the consequence of neglect. El's creation of the healing figure Sha'taqat specifically for Kirta's recovery demonstrates the importance of the king's survival to cosmic order — the gods intervene to heal the king in ways they would not necessarily intervene for ordinary mortals. Yasub's rebellion at the end of the surviving text raises the political question that was evidently of central concern to the Ugaritic court: what legitimises kingship? Yasub's argument — that Kirta failed to perform the functions of kingship during his illness — is an early formulation of the idea that kingship is conditional on performance. Kirta's curse in response is a reassertion of divinely inherited authority against the accountability argument. The conclusion of this debate is lost with the broken tablet, which may be why the text was copied and preserved with such care.
currently held: National Museum of Damascus
related texts
*This translation is not currently available.* The tablets of the Baal Cycle were discovered at Ras Shamra on the Syrian coast in 1929 — the same year the Ugaritic script was first identified. All translations necessarily postdate that discovery. We are actively exploring ways to include this tex…