An abbreviated colophon at the end of KTU 1.16 confirms that Ilimilku is responsible at least for the writing of this text. Some suppose there to have been further tablets (e. g. Pardee 1997c: 333; Margalit 1999: 204), but the extant text is broadly coherent, and comes to a satisfying if uncomfortable solution. The narrative runs as follows.
KTU 1.14 (6 columns: about 75 percent surviving): Keret’s family is destroyed (whether seven wives or seven children remains uncertain); El appears to the distraught king, offering wealth as consolation. Keret refuses, and El instructs him on how to find a new wife by seizing her from Pabil of Udum. He must reject Pabil’s attempts to buy him off. En route to Pabil’s kingdom, Keret turns aside to make a vow to Athirat. He besieges Udum; Pabil sues for peace. . .
KTU 1.15 (6 columns: about half surviving): Pabil reluctantly gives his daughter Hurriya. Keret feasts the gods. El blesses him, foretelling a fruitful marriage, guaranteeing the succession. The gods depart; El’s promises are fulfilled. The vow to Athirat is not fulfilled, and she remembers. At a banquet for the nobility, Hurriya announces that Keret is dying. The banquet seems to turn into an anticipatory wake.
KTU 1.16 (6 columns: about a third missing): Keret’s son Ilhu weeps for him; the king tells him to fetch his sister... She arrives, also bewailing Keret... A ritual fragment compares Keret’s death to Baal’s... Divine heralds are instructed to summon the gods. El asks which of them will heal Keret. When no one offers, he creates a goddess, who does so. The heir Yasib bursts in on the now cured Keret, demanding his throne, assuming that he is still ill, and is cursed by the king.
Early analysis of Keret (first treated in toto by Ginsberg 1946) fell into historicist, or myth-and-ritual, frames of understanding, as was well characterized in Margalit (1999, with references). But in the latter’s evaluation of Pedersen (1941) and Merrill (1968), he went too far in dismissing an ideological dimension; and Margalit’s own analysis of Keret, which he treated as theater (literally: a drama in three acts), a light-hearted romp and a parody of Late Bronze Age religion, and particularly its royal ideology, was wide of the mark.
The broad subject matter is self-evidently royal and ideological in nature (see, broadly, though with reservations, Gray 1964). Its interpretation as satirical (as in Margalit) or as a critique of old royal dogmas (as in Parker 1977) is dubious in my view; rather is it a fairly serious analysis of the limits of individual autonomy within a dynastic line, and of the absolute requirement of true piety in a monarch. Keret fails, and thus shows how disastrous is irreligion. Thus the old values are firmly upheld.
In the matter of historicity, we have noted the claimed link with Didanu/Ditanu. If Keret is to be identified with Kirta (perhaps = Sanskrit krta) king of Mittanni (Wilhelm 1989: 28), we may suggest a romance on some episode in the life of the king, adapted to Ugaritian concerns. Similarly, we may ask whether his capital of Bet Hubur (= Khabur) is the lost Hurrian capital of Wassukanni. But this is conjecture. The motif of the childless king is shared not only with Aqhat, but with Job, and is a common folklore motif.
World History
