The Baal Cycle is a sequence of tablets from the archive at Ras Shamra, ancient Ugarit on the Syrian coast, written in the alphabetic cuneiform of that city in the fourteenth or thirteenth century BC. The tablets are damaged and their order is partly reconstructed, but the shape of the narrative is clear and it moves in three stages.
First, kingship. Yam, the sea, is granted rule by El and demands that Baal be handed over as his servant. The assembly of the gods lowers its heads. Baal fights, armed with two clubs made and named for him by Kothar-wa-Khasis, the craftsman god: the first strikes Yam's shoulders and does not fell him, the second strikes his skull and does. Baal is proclaimed king.
Second, the palace. A king needs a house, and Baal has none. Anat and then Athirat are sent to petition El, who consents. Kothar builds it of cedar, silver and gold, and proposes a window; Baal refuses at first, fearing that Yam might reach his daughters through it, then relents, and when the window is opened his voice goes out through it as thunder. The window is the point of the episode: it is how rain reaches the world.
Third, death. Baal goes down into the throat of Mot, death. The message reaches El, who comes down from his throne, sits on the ground, gashes his skin and mourns. The earth dries. Anat searches, finds the body, buries it on the mountain, and then seizes Mot and splits, winnows, burns, grinds and sows him. El dreams that the heavens rain oil and the wadis run with honey, and knows that Baal lives. Baal returns; Mot returns too, after seven years, and they fight until the sun goddess Shapshu warns Mot that El has withdrawn support, and he yields.
The cycle is often read as a seasonal myth of drought and rain, and the imagery supports that, though the seven-year interval fits a longer cycle of famine years, and scholars disagree about how tightly the story maps onto the agricultural calendar.