Month: April 2021

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Lady Ḫuraya and Lady Wisdom

In my last post, I shared about the ancient Ugaritic text that tells the tale of Kirta, king of Ḫubur. In that post, I focused on Lady Ḫuraya, a wife that he takes by force from the royal family of Udum. I talked about how my wife had observed that one of the descriptions of her sounds a lot like the Virtuous Woman of Proverbs 31.

Later in the text, as Kirta is dying of a terrible sickness, he commands Lady Ḫuraya to prepare a banquet. The description is once again evocative of a text from Proverbs, this time the feast of Lady Wisdom in Proverbs 9.

An Icon of Holy Wisdom, as described in Proverbs 9.

Here is my translation of the text from Kirta:

He rests his feet on the footstool
and shouts to his wife:

“Listen, O Lady Ḫuraya.

Slaughter the fattest of your cattle.
Open the wide bottles of wine.

Shout to my seventy bull captains,
to the eighty deer captains,

The bull captains of great Ḫubur,
Ḫubur the glorious.”

Lady Ḫuraya listens.

She slaughters the fattest of her cattle.
Opens the wide bottles of wine.

She brings in his bull captains to him.
She brings in his deer captains to him.

The bull captains of great Ḫubur,
Ḫubur the glorious.

They enter the house of Kirta.

…

She reaches for the drinking bowl.
She wields a knife over the meat.

And Lady Ḫuraya speaks:

“I have called to you to eat and drink
at a sacrificial banquet for Kirta your lord.”

CAT 1.15 4

Compare this to Proverbs 9:1-6

9 Wisdom has built her house,
she has set up her seven pillars.
2 She has slaughtered her beasts, she has mixed her wine,
    she has also set her table.
3 She has sent out her maids to call
    from the highest places in the town,
4 “Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!”
    To him who is without sense she says,
5 “Come, eat of my bread
    and drink of the wine I have mixed.
6 Leave simpleness, and live,
    and walk in the way of insight.”

Proverbs 9:1-6

This is really not terribly surprising. It is quite apparent that Proverbs has drawn its motifs from much older traditions. The Virtuous Woman is something of an incarnation of Lady Wisdom. And both of them have a literary ancestor in Lady Ḫuraya.

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Ḥuraya, a Woman of Virtue in the Ugaritic Tale of Kirta

The Entrance to the Royal Palace of Ugarit

Recently, I introduced my family to a text that I have been studying for years, the Tale of Kirta. (Has anyone else ever discussed this around their dinner table?). This is a (now fragmentary) epic written in ancient Ugarit, probably in the 14th century BC. It tells about Kirta, the king of Ḫubur, who loses his wife and then all of his children in a series of disasters. (This is reminiscent of Job, of course). Mourning over the disappearance of his dynastic line, he cries himself to sleep. Il, the father of gods and men, comes to him in a dream with detailed instructions. Kirta is to assemble a huge army and march on Udum (perhaps a cognate to biblical Edom). When he gets there, he is to threaten Pabuli, the king of Udum, into providing his daughter Ḥuraya as a new wife for Kirta. Then he will be able to rebuild his family and provide an heir to his throne.

The Entrance to the Royal Palace of Ugarit
Disdero (talk · contribs), CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Today, over Sunday brunch, we read and discussed the first column of the second tablet in the tale. It tells how the people of Udum bewail the departure of their beloved Princess Ḥuraya. They especially remember all of her kind deeds to vulnerable citizens among them.

Here is my translation of these lines:

She reaches out her hand to the hungry.

She reaches out her hand to the thirsty.

…

As a cow lows for her calf,

as soldiers for their mothers,

so do the Udumites mourn.

CAT 1.15 1.1-2, 5-7

As we were discussing this, my wife, Robin, made a magnificent connection. Ḥuraya is praised for precisely the same activities practiced by the woman of virtue in Proverbs:

She opens her hand to the poor,

    and reaches out her hands to the needy.

Proverbs 31:20

Kudos to my own wife of virtue for helping me read the Tale of Kirta in a new light after so many years.