The provenance file on Mūt
Provenance record 322 · Mūt · one temple, fully accounted for.
Provenance
1. The attestation. 𐤌𐤕, from the tradition's own record. On record: KTU (Ugaritic texts), Smith, The Ugaritic Baal Cycle, Coogan, Stories from Ancient Canaan, Day, Yahweh and the Gods and Goddesses of Canaan.
2. The preserved evidence. o → ū (Macron: long /uː/ (Mūt)) — absent from the ASCII form mot, present in the restoration, verifiable against the sources above.
3. The narrative record. The Appetite of Death — Death in the Canaanite imagination is not a reaper but an eater. When Baꜥal finishes his cedar palace and hosts the gods at his banquet, Mōt sends an answer from the underworld: because he was not invited, he will feast — and his dish is Baꜥal himself (KTU 1. The Storm God in the Mouth of Mot — Baꜥal does what no storm should: he goes down. Taking his clouds, winds, and bolts with him, he descends into Mōt's realm of dust, grime, and drought, 'into the throat of Death, son of El' (KTU 1.
4. The physical record. The Baꜥal Cycle tablets from Ras Shamra (KTU 1.4–1.6) are the principal witnesses to Mōt's mythology, preserving his threats, his swallowing of Baꜥal, and his dismemberment by ꜥAnat in alphabetic cuneiform. The Hellenistic Phoenician cosmogony survives only in the excerpts of Philo of Byblos transmitted by Eusebius. No distinct sanctuary of Mōt has been identified, but the widespread West Semitic word for death — Ugaritic mt, Phoenician mūt, Hebrew māwet, Akkadian mūtu — testifies to the concept's deep cultural reach.
5. The current holding. The temple at /mot/, classified Tier 1. The restoration preserves more than the ASCII form can express — stress, length, or a letter the Latin keyboard lost — which places it, mechanically, in Tier-1.
6. The documented resonances. Funerary & Memorial Services, Agriculture, Food & Harvest, Gaming, Fantasy & Entertainment IP — seats argued and weighted in the pattern atlas, read through the myths in this temple's Resonance File.
7. The continuing record. Mōt's name survives in Hebrew māwet, Arabic mawt, and the common Semitic root for death itself — the god never outlived the noun. His myth helped shape later personifications of death in biblical and apocalyptic literature, from the personified Death of Hosea 13:14 to the pale rider of Revelation, and the Baꜥal–Mōt cycle has long fascinated scholars as a Near Eastern parallel to — and a warning against facile equations with — later dying-and-rising god traditions.
At a Glance
- Restored name: Mūt
- ASCII form: mot
- Meaning: "Death"
- Domain of influence: Death, Underworld
- Pantheon: Phoenician
- Classification: Tier 1
- Original script: 𐤌𐤕
- Series: The Restoration Files, No. 322 of 546
The File Continues
Read the founding dispatch for the name's full story, the Resonance File for the archetype at work — or the whole archive in one sitting.
Continue the series — previous file: Mōšeh (read it here) · next file: Muspellheimr (read it here).
The Restoration Files are written from the same canonical record as the temples themselves: the lexicon, the lore catalog, the pattern atlas, and the cited scholarly sources. If a file ever disagrees with its temple, the temple is right — tell us, and the file will be corrected.