Stele of Baal with Thunderbolt

An oolitic limestone bas-relief stele from Ugarit (modern Ras Shamra, Syria), showing the storm and rain god Baal, also known as Hadad, in a striding pose on a pedestal carved with mountains and sea, symbols of his dominion over the natural world. Baal raises a club overhead in his right hand and holds in his left, pointing toward the ground, a lance whose shaft resembles vegetation, understood as a stylized thunderbolt. He wears an Egyptianizing horned crown, a striped kilt, a curved dagger and a mantle, a blend of Egyptian and Syrian artistic conventions typical of Late Bronze Age Ugarit. A smaller male figure beside him, most likely representing the king of Ugarit, stands in a gesture of deference. Discovered on 28 May 1932 about twenty metres from the Temple of Baal on the acropolis of Ugarit, by the archaeological mission led by Claude Schaeffer, it is considered the most important of the Ugaritic stelae for its scale and the clarity of its iconography of the storm god at the height of his power.