Hadad (), Haddad, Adad (Akkadian: DIM, pronounced as Adād), or Iškur (Sumerian) was the storm- and rain-god in the Canaanite and ancient Mesopotamian religions. He was attested in Ebla as "Hadda" in c. 2500 BCE.
From the Levant, Hadad was introduced to Mesopotamia by the Amorites, where he became known as the Akkadian (Assyrian-Babylonian) god Adad. Adad and Iškur are usually written with the logogram ORACC – Iškur/Adad (god) - the same symbol used for the Hurrian god Teshub. Hadad was also called Rimon/Rimmon, Pidar, Rapiu, Baal-Zephon, or often simply Baʿal (Lord); however, the latter title was also used for other gods. The bull was the symbolic animal of Hadad. He appeared bearded,Sacred bull, holy cow: a cultural study of civilization's most important animal. By Donald K. Sharpes –Page 27Studies in Biblical and Semitic Symbolism - Page 63. By Maurice H. Farbridge often holding a club and thunderbolt and wearing a bull-horned headdress.Academic Dictionary Of Mythology - Page 126. By Ramesh ChopraThe New Encyclopædia Britannica: Micropædia. By Encyclopædia Britannica, inc – Page 605 Hadad was equated with the Greek god Zeus, the Roman god Jupiter (Jupiter Dolichenus), as well as the Babylonian Bel.
The Baal Cycle or Epic of Baal is a collection of stories about the Canaanite Baal, also referred to as Hadad. It was composed between 1400 and 1200 B.C. and rediscovered in the excavation of Ugarit, an ancient city in modern-day Syria.
The storm-god Adad and the sun-god Shamash jointly became the patron gods of oracles and divination in Mesopotamia.
Adad in Akkad and Sumer In Akkadian, Adad is also known as Rammanu ("Thunderer") cognate with Raˁmā and Raˁam, a byname of Hadad. Many scholars formerly took Rammanu to be an independent Akkadian god, but he was later identified with Hadad.
Though originating in northern Mesopotamia, Adad was identified by the same Sumerogram that designated Iškur in the south. His worship became widespread in Mesopotamia after the First Babylonian dynasty. A text dating from the reign of Ur-Ninurta characterizes the two sides of Adad/Iškur as threatening in his stormy rage, and benevolent in giving life.
Iškur appears in the list of gods found at Shuruppak but was of far less importance, perhaps because storms and rain were scarce in Sumer and agriculture there depended on irrigation instead. The gods Enlil and Ninurta also had storm god features that diminished Iškur's distinct role, and he sometimes appears as the assistant or companion of these more prominent gods.
When Enki distributed the destinies, he made Iškur inspector of the cosmos. In one litany, Iškur is proclaimed again and again as "great radiant bull, your name is heaven" and also called son of Anu, lord of Karkara; twin-brother of Enki, lord of abundance, lord who rides the storm, lion of heaven.
In other texts Adad/Iškur is sometimes son of the moon god Nanna/Sin by Ningal and brother of Utu/Shamash and Inanna/Ishtar. He is also sometimes described as the son of Enlil.
The bull was portrayed as Adad/Iškur's sacred animal starting in the Old Babylonian period (early 2nd millennium BCE).
Adad/Iškur's consort (both in early Sumerian and the much later Assyrian texts) was the grain goddess Shala, who is also sometimes associated with the god Dagānu. She was also called Gubarra in the earliest texts. The fire god Gibil (Girra in Akkadian) is sometimes the son of Iškur and Shala.
He is identified with the Anatolian storm-god Teshub, whom the Mitannians designated with the same Sumerogram . Occasionally he is identified with the Amorite god Amurru.
The Babylonian center of Adad/Iškur's cult was Karkara in the south, his chief temple being ; his spouse Shala was worshipped in a temple named . In Assyria, Adad was developed along with his warrior aspect. During the Middle Assyrian Empire, from the reign of Tiglath-Pileser I (1115-1077 BCE), Adad had a double sanctuary with Anu in Assur, and the two are often associated in invocations. The name Adad and various alternate forms (Dadu, Bir, Dadda) are often found in Assyrian king names.
Adad/Iškur presents two aspects in hymns, incantations, and votive inscriptions. On the one hand, he brings rain in due season to fertilize the land; on the other, he sends storms to wreak havoc and destruction. He is pictured on monuments and cylinder seals (sometimes with a horned helmet) with the lightning and the thunderbolt (sometimes in the form of a spear), and in hymns his sombre aspects predominate. His association with the sun-god Shamash, with the two deities alternating in the control of nature, tends to imbue him with some traits of a solar deity.
According to Alberto Green, descriptions of Adad starting in the Kassite period and in the region of Mari emphasize his destructive, stormy character and his role as a fearsome warrior deity, in contrast to Iškur's more peaceful and pastoral character.
Shamash and Adad jointly became the gods of oracles and divination, invoked in all the ceremonies to determine the divine will: through inspecting a sacrificial animal's liver, the action of oil bubbles in a basin of water, or the movements of the heavenly bodies. They are similarly addressed in royal annals and votive inscriptions as bele biri (lords of divination).
Hadad in Ugarit
In religious texts, Ba‘al/Hadad is the lord of the sky who governs rain and crops, master of fertility and protector of life and growth. His absence brings drought, starvation, and chaos. Texts of the Baal Cycle from Ugarit are fragmentary and assume much background knowledge.
The supreme god El resides on Mount Lel (Night?) where the assembly of the gods meets. At the beginning of the cycle, there appears to be a feud between El and Ba‘al. El appoints one of his sons, called both prince Yamm (Sea) and judge Nahar (River), as king over the gods and changes Yamm's name from yw to mdd ’il (darling of El). El tells his son that he will have to drive off Ba‘al to secure the throne.
In this battle Ba‘al is somehow weakened, but the divine craftsman Kothar-wa-Khasis crafts two magic clubs for Ba’al as weapons that help Ba’al strike down Yamm and Ba'al is supreme. ‘Athtart proclaims Ba‘al's victory and salutes Ba‘al/Hadad as (Rider on the Clouds), a phrase applied by editors of modern English Bibles to Yahweh in Psalm 68.4. At ‘Athtart's urging Ba‘al "scatters" Yamm and proclaims that he is dead and warmth is assured.
A later passage refers to Ba‘al's victory over Lotan, the many-headed sea dragon. Due to gaps in the text it is not known whether Lotan is another name for Yamm or a character in a similar story. These stories may have been allegories of crops threatened by the winds, storms, and floods from the Mediterranean sea.
A palace is built for Ba‘al with silver, gold, and cedar wood from Mount Lebanon and Sirion. In his new palace Ba‘al hosts a great feast for the other gods. When urged by Kothar-wa-Khasis, Ba’al reluctantly opens a window in his palace and sends forth thunder and lightning. He then invites Mot (Death, the god of drought and the underworld), another son of El, to join the feast.
But Mot, the eater of human flesh and blood, is insulted when offered only bread and wine. He threatens to break Ba‘al to pieces and swallow him, and even Ba‘al cannot stand against Death. Gaps here make interpretation dubious. It seems that by the advice of the sun goddess Shapash, Ba‘al mates with a heifer and dresses the resultant calf in his own clothes as a gift to Mot, and then himself prepares to go down to the underworld in the guise of a helpless shade. News of Ba‘al's apparent death leads even El to mourn. Ba‘al's sister ‘Anat finds Ba‘al's corpse, presumably really the dead calf, and she buries the body with a funeral feast. The god ‘Athtar is appointed to take Ba‘al's place, but he is a poor substitute. Meanwhile, ‘Anat finds Mot, cleaves him with a sword, burns him with fire, and throws his remains to the birds. But the earth is still cracked with drought until Shapsh fetches Ba‘al back.
Seven years later Mot returns and attacks Ba‘al, but the battle is quelled when Shapsh tells Mot that El now supports Ba’al. Mot surrenders to Ba‘al and recognizes him as king.
Hadad in Egypt The Egyptian god Set and Baal - the god of storms and benevolence from the Canaan-Syria region - became strongly identified with one another (a process of syncretism, or the merging of deities) during the period of Hyksos rule (the Second Intermediate Period) and the subsequent New Kingdom. In Egypt, Set was the god who presided over storms, thunder, the desert, and foreign lands. Meanwhile, Baal - a deity from West Asia - was a god of war who brought storms, thunderstorms, and fertility. They were easily conflated because both shared the divine character of a fierce war god who commanded thunder and storms. The Hyksos, who migrated from West Asia to Egypt, identified their supreme deity, Baal, with the god Set, who was already established in the region. In their capital, Avaris, they fervently worshipped him as "Set of Avaris" (i.e., Baal).
Even after the expulsion of the Hyksos, this identification did not vanish; rather, it became entrenched within Egypt's official religious culture. During the New Kingdom (18th and 19th Dynasties), Baal - along with other foreign deities such as Anat, Astarte, and Resheph - was officially embraced in Egypt. There are numerous instances where, even though the name "Set" appears in inscriptions, the accompanying depictions or epithets clearly refer to Baal. Pharaohs of the 19th Dynasty (such as Ramesses II) placed great importance on the god Set; they treated Set and Baal as synonymous, describing the might of their armies in terms such as "like Baal in battle" or "like the wrath of Set".
The characteristics of both deities also merged in art and relief sculpture. In Egyptian wall paintings and reliefs, there are numerous examples of the god being depicted with the features of Set (specifically the head of the "Set animal," characterized by long ears and a curved snout) while simultaneously wearing Baal's distinctive Asian-style attire and conical crown, or wielding a spear or club. Thus, although the two gods originated from completely different backgrounds and mythological systems (such as the Osiris myth), historical interaction and cultural syncretism led to them being treated in ancient Egypt as essentially the same deity - simply under different names or in different forms.
In the Amherst Papyrus, Baal Zephon (Hadad) is identified with the Egyptian god Horus: "May Baal from Zephon bless you", Amherst Papyrus 63, 7:3 and in 11:13-14: "and from Zephon may Horus help us". Classical sources translate this name as Zeus Kasios, since in Pelusium, the statue of Zeus Kasios was considered the image of Harpocrates (Horus the Child). Zeus Casius had inherited some traits from Apollo as well. They also recall his conflict with Typhon over that mountain (Mount Casius on the Syrian-Turkish border or Casion near Pelusium in Egypt).
The reason why Baal could be both identified with Horus and his rival Set; is because in Egypt the element of the storm was considered foreign as Set was a god of strangers and outsiders, thus because the Egyptians had no better alternative to identify their native god Set with another neighboring deity, they tentatively associated him with Hadad since he was a storm-god, but when the god Baal (Hadad) is not specifically attributed the traits of rain and thunder and is instead perceived as a god of the sky generically, which is what is embodied by his form "Baal Zaphon" as the chief deity who resides on the mountain (for example a 14th-century letter from the king of Ugarit to the Egyptian pharaoh places Baʿal Zaphon as equivalent to Amun also), in that case he's more similar to the Egyptian Horus in that capacity (comparable to Baalshamin as well).